The GOD-KING of Dumbfuckistan

Ladies and gentlemen, I present His Majesty and Savior, The God-King. The divine instrument of the Lord, chosen to lead America to the Promised Land of Dumbfuckistan via Proposition 2025.  Dumbfuckistan has NEW RULES. 1. Worship the God-King. 2. Obey all orders of the God-King. 3. All other rules are hereby repealed. 

The God-King's road to total power as FOTUS was greatly smoothed by the six SUPREME SAINTS of SCOTUS. They have ruled that he can do anything he wants, from stealing classified documents and inciting insurrection, to rape, bribery, theft, and pedophilia. His powers include shooting someone on Fifth Ave  -- as long as he is president.   

In his quest to unify the USA, the God-King chose as his vice-president a man dedicated to the values of the Lord's People. The Senator from O-WHY-O defends the peaceful tourists who wanted to visit the capitol on January 6, 2021 and carry away souvenirs, including a few heads. He denounces migrants and un-American brown people although he is married to one. He calls the UK a "Muslim country" but decides to vacation there. It can't be worse than Vermont or LA, he reasons.

Senator ADVANCE once denounced the God-King as "America's Hitler" and "an idiot." But that was before GOD sent the senator an epiphany on the Road to Washington: a huge donation from a billionaire, and polls showing Trump was likely to win changed his perspective. Like St. Paul, ADVANCE is now on the side of the "Angels" of Trump, AKA MAGATs.  

Some Americans who voted for Trump in 2024 are confused by recent events, especially Trump's refusal to release the Epstein Files, which he told them were filled with the names of Democrat pedophiles. But not to worry. Most of them will return to the support of the God-King. They internalized the Gospel of Trump, helped by endless hours of watching and listening to FOX News and its ilk.

Image: Trump astride his Golden Throne. 

American Exceptionalism Revisited

I originally wrote this piece a while back, while still under the illusion that the USA retained SOME potential as a force for good. Trump's reelection and the MUSK dictatorship have torn away the veil of that illusion for the time being, maybe forever. 

American Exceptionalism holds that the USA is fundamentally different from other countries, usually with the implication that it is also superior. The idea stems from the belief that through its revolution, America broke free from the chains and constraints of the “Old World.”  

The new country had a duty, a mission, to spread the benefits of its institutions to the rest of humanity, benefits like individual freedom, republicanism, democracy, equality before the law, a free market economy, and religious freedom.

None of these ideas or institutions originated in the United States. All can be traced to earlier history, from the Greco-Roman world and European history from the Middle Ages to the eighteenth century Enlightenment. 

The Patriots appealed to “Anglo-Saxon Liberty,” Magna Carta (1215), the English Revolutions and British philosophy, to justify claims to individual freedom and legal equality. In the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson drew heavily on the ideas of English philosopher John Locke (1632-1704). The Scottish Declaration of Arbroath (1320) and The Irish Remonstrance (1317) contain similar arguments. 

There was nothing new about a republic. The Founding Fathers were influenced by the Roman Republic, founded five centuries before Christ. The Netherlands, Venice, Genoa, and the Swiss Confederation were or had been republics for hundreds of years by 1776. Even Britain had been a republic as well, though for only eleven years (1649-1660).

The US was not a democracy in its origins, and in some respects it still is not. The makers of the Constitution were generally opposed to democracy, which they equated with mob rule. They created the Electoral College to ensure that presidents were not elected by the popular vote.* Their distrust of democracy also partly explains why the Senate is a thoroughly undemocratic body, with two Senators from every state, regardless of population. State legislatures, not the voters, elected senators until 1913. 

Voting was restricted to white males before the Civil War, and some states enforced literacy tests and poll taxes. Women did not get the right to vote or hold public office until 1919, except in a couple of western states. After the end of slavery, many states denied blacks of civil rights, including voting rights.

As for free market economics, Scottish philosopher Adam Smith published the founding text in 1776, The Wealth of Nations. His concern, however, was with the good of consumers (everybody) not employers and traders, who he viewed as a conniving, dishonest bunch in general.  

Smith was more sympathetic to workers. He recognized that they were in a weak bargaining position vis a vis the merchants and employers. Not surprisingly, today's capitalists seldom dwell on that part of Smith’s work. Nor do they tend to highlight his robust condemnation of monopolies and government subsidies to companies, AKA socialism for the wealthy. 

Much is made of "pilgrims" coming to America to enjoy freedom of worship. Some colonists came for that reason, but once they got their freedom, they denied to others, as Roger Williams and the Quakers found out. 

The idea of religious freedom in the West arose out of the deadly Wars of Religion that followed the Protestant Reformation. The Dutch introduced religious toleration in the late 16^th century, the British by the late 17th. Enlightenment thinkers in Europe advocated complete freedom of religious belief. People in America were part of that discussion. They did not invent it.

The view that the USA is morally superior to other nations is belied by its history of slavery and segregation, horrific treatment of Native Americans, and discrimination against immigrants of “inferior races," including the Irish, Asians, Jews, Southern and Eastern Europeans, and Hispanics.

Historically, the US has been all too exceptional in its insistence on other countries obeying international laws and moral standards while failing to observe them itself. It can't even obey or execute its own laws, as witnessed by the re-election of Donald Trump after inciting an insurrection on January 6, 2021 and being convicted of numerous crimes. 

The first month of Trump's, or Elon Musk's, administration reveals that the USA is not protected by a so-called perfect constitution. The cover is lifted off, the veil of illusion gone. 

The Great Experiment in liberty seems destined to end  in a fascist dictatorship, unless Americans rouse themselves from their lethargy and stop the current trajectory. There is still great value in the opening words of the Declaration of Independence. 

The USA is quite exceptional in other ways. It is one of the most violent countries on earth. The most coveted right in American culture is the right to possess firearms of the most potent type. With millions of people armed to the teeth with semi-automatic weapons, it is hardly surprising that mass shootings are an almost everyday occurrence. 

The USA is the only developed nation without a system of universal health care. Countries with considerably less wealth have some kind of system that covers the entire population. Not surprisingly, the USA also leads the world in medical bankruptcies. 

*Some Southern slaveholders argued that white male democracy was possible, but only with a large population of slaves to do most of the physical work, freeing the white elite to handle governance. 

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Wilkes and Liberty!

John Wilkes (1725-1797) is an enigmatic figure. At various times radical defender of liberty, rake, xenophobe, and conservative politician, he eludes easy categorization.

During the early 1760s, while an MP, Wilkes published a journal called the North Briton, which specialized in attacking the government led by George III's Scots tutor, John Stuart, Lord Bute, and Scots in general.

The North Briton (itself a reference to Scotland) claimed that Bute and other Scots were taking over the government with the goal of establishing a "Stuart" tyranny. The idea resonated with many Englishmen, who feared that Scots immigrants into England and its colonies threatened their livelihoods and liberties. 

In issue No. 45 of the North Briton, Wilkes attacked the King's Speech on the Treaty of Paris (1763) that ended the Seven Years War. Wilkes was incensed by what he saw as the treaty's overly generous treatment of France and blamed Bute. The government prosecuted Wilkes and other involved in the publication for seditious libel. In the end the Court of Kings Bench sided with Wilkes. Radical Whigs cheered the verdict as a major victory for liberty.

During the battle over No. 45 William Hogarth, who disliked Wilkes, immortalized him in a famous engraving.

Wilkes soon overreached himself, helping to write and print an obscene poem, a parody of Alexander Pope's poem, An Essay on Man. The parody, An Essay on Woman, is perhaps best known for the line "Life can little else supply, but a few good fucks and then we die."

Wilkes was a member of the Hellfire Club, AKA Medmenham Monks, a notorious gang of rakes and libertines, who included Lord Sandwich. Unfortunately for Wilkes, he had offended Sandwich, who in revenge read the poem to the House of Lords. Wilkes fled to -- of all places -- France to avoid arrest and prosecution but was found guilty of obscenity and blasphemy in absentia and declared an outlaw. 

Wilkes fell into debt in France, and in 1768 he returned to England. He submitted himself to jail but also put himself up for election to Parliament for the constituency of Middlesex County. The voters elected him by a wide margin, but the House of Commons declared him ineligible due to his conviction. He ran two more times and won each time before the House, bowing to the popular will, finally seated him.

During the campaigns Wilkes' supporters incited riots on his behalf, in one of which several people were killed by government troops. Radicals hailed Wilkes' eventual seating as a victory for the idea that the electorate, not the House of Commons, should determine the fitness of their representatives. 

In Parliament during the 1770's, Wilkes defended the cause of the American colonies, and became a hero to the future Patriots.

In 1780, London's mostly radical voters elected Wilkes Lord Mayor Ironically, he soon ended up cooperating with the government of George III in suppressing the anti-Catholic Gordon Riots (1780). During this episode he led a militia regiment that shot many rioters.

Wilkes' stance during the Gordon Riots cost him much of his popular following, and he gradually became more conservative.

Wilkes was famous for witty repartee. On one occasion, when running for Parliament, he asked a voter for his support. The voter replied, "I'd rather vote for the Devil." Wilkes shot back, "Naturally. But if your friend decides not to run, may I hope for your support?"

Another comeback often attributed to Wilkes may or not be apocryphal. On one occasion Sandwich said to Wilkes, "Sir, I fear you are destined to die on the gallows, or of the pox." (syphilis) Wilkes replied, "That depends my lord, on whether I embrace your lordship's principles or your mistress."

Today, Wilkes is memorialized by the names of several towns and counties in the USA and a statue in Fetter Lane in London.

  
Further Reading: 

George Rude, Wilkes and Liberty (1962)
Peter D. G. Thomas, John Wilkes, Friend to Liberty (1996)