Choose your leaders
with wisdom and forethought.
To be led by a coward
is to be controlled
by all that the coward fears.
To be led by a fool
is to be led
by the opportunists
who control the fool.
To be led by a thief
is to offer up
your most precious treasures
to be stolen.
To be led by a liar
is to ask
to be told lies.
To be led by a tyrant
is to sell yourself
and those you love
into slavery.
Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Talents
“… this is not a golden calf”; or, so said pastor Mark Burns, a member of Pastors for Trump, at the May 6th inauguration of the over 6 metre tall, gilded statue dedicated to Donald Trump, at his Doral, Florida golf course.
Commissioned by a collective of crypto investors, created by sculptor Alan Cottrill, the pastor also informed those attending the event that the statue “stands as a reminder of the hand of God and His protection over President Trump’s life”. (Independent, 07/05/2026)
Never wishing to think the worst of people, we imagined the pastor engaged in some form of irony, perhaps as a master of paradoxical or even antiphrastic speech. But, no, it would seem that idolatry and cynical self-interest continue to weave their grotesque tapestries.
We avoid commenting on Trump, in general, for his public stupidity and buffonery only serves to cover over the terrible violence that his government is meting out to so many. And the pastor’s words only made the spectacle even more ridiculous.
But what Bertolt Brecht said of “The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui” – written in 1941 and a satire of Hitler – we perhaps should say of Trump: that he is neither an idiot nor a great leader, but someone who permits “great political crimes”. And the “great political criminals must be exposed and exposed especially to laughter”. (“Laughing at Criminals”, HAC, 06/01/2024)
Trump’s “Don Colosus” deserves to be mocked, laughed at, graffitied, shat upon, and then placed in some new Washington DC monument building for posterity. Or, on this occasion, let us more modestly borrow the poetry of June Jordan, in an exercise of Juvenalian satire, when she indignately derided John Ashcroft, a former Attorney General under President George W. Bush; a man given over to both religious zealotry and the seductions of “gold”.
In Defense of Christianity:
Sermon from the Fount
dedicated to John Ashcroft, Inc.
by June Jordan
“And seeing the multitudes
he closed up his laptop
computer
and because the multitudes let him begin
to imagine a global market
big
bigger than anybody’s kingdom
of heaven
he cleared his throat
he gulped a pretty cool
gulp of natural
spring water
and speaking into the omni-
directional microphone
at last
he spoke out loud
he spoke to the multitudes
saying
Blessed are the rich: For theirs will be the wealth of the world!
Woe to the poor! For they will find it difficult
to eat the eye of a camel
with or without a needle!
Blessed are the blithe and the oblivious
for they shall require no comfort!
Blessed are the proud and the mighty: For they shall conquer
the earth and subdivide
and subjugate the peoples who abide
therein!
Blessed are they who inherit inheritance and who
do away with inheritance taxation so that they
like the lilies of the field
they and their children and their children’s children
shall prosper without toil and flourish without sweat!
Blessed are they which do preach and pursue
supremacy
for they shall rule supreme and cleanse our tribes
of all impurities
even as an infinitesimal mustard seed shall become
a huge tree where birds of the air
find refuge
even so
even the seeds of supremacy shall spread
and shelter
everyone whosoever
believes!
If any man shall smite thee on thy right
cheek
amputate his arms and turn also thy sword
against his family and his village!
If any man or nation-state shall injure
or otherwise diminish indispensable self-esteem
you shall decapitate that man
you shall obliterate that nation-state
even unto the third and following
generations!
Blessed are they who make conspicuous
and compulsory
public display of piety
and who advertise such obvious
parade
as virtue!
Blessed are they who worship the magic
of money and the mythology of gold and who
prostrate themselves to profit making
and who despise and ostracize the unprofitable
elements among us!
For, verily, this is my particular commandment unto you:
Do unto others as reliable market indicators
shall clearly counsel, or proscribe!
But above all and beyond all else, Judge that ye be not judged!
Judge that ye be not judged!
And, so saying,
And having so said,
he left the multitudes behind
as he stepped aboard
a gleaming
luxury yacht
waiting for him and his
disciples only
on the Sea of Galilee
he just sailed
away”
Source: The Essential June Jordan, 2021