Smashing the Law
Trump Makes the Ten Commandments Not So Great
The Ten Commandments Made Great Again
1 I am Trump, who brought you out of the land of Biden, out of one house of bondage into another house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before Me.
2 Thou shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any “AI” likeness of anything that mocks Me; except that thou shall make a triumphal arch for Me; and thou shall build a new ballroom in the East Wing of the White House for Me and My wealthy friends to dance in. For I, Trump, am a jealous SOB, punishing the iniquity of Minnesotans who dare to protest ICE and university students who annoy Me; but showing mercy to those who love Me and contribute to my election campaign.
3 Thou shall not take the name of Trump in vain, for I am a thin-skinned autocrat and I will not hold you guiltless! So watch what you say or you’ll see what happens!
4 Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Except when Israel and the United States bomb the Hell out of Iran and massacre 165 school girls on the Sabbath because, you know, God said I’m doing God’s work, so STFU already. Seven days you shall labor and do all your work for capitalist parasites. Even if fascists didn’t actually make the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, they now own them all. So you’re all just renting your life while they get to rest seven days a week lolling about on their yachts in the Caribbean and the Mediterranean.
5 Honor Our AIPAC lobbyists and My campaign donors, for they are My Mummy and Daddy.
6 Thou Shall Not Kill. Well, I am sure that got garbled in the translation because God, at that time, was an undocumented miracle-worker who barely spoke English as a second language. I am sure what He meant to say was that - generally speaking - thou shalt not kill. But it’s OK to kill folks who I don’t like or the heads of states who annoy Me. And that includes any Iranians, Palestinians, Mexicans, Cubans, kids, mothers, college students, union workers, communists and anyone else who Ticks Me Off!
7 Thou shall not commit adultery. Whoa! That’s gotta be a typo! In any event, it’s a Darwinian world out there. Dog eat dog. Big fish eat little fish and I’m the Biggest, Fishiest One of all. Thou shall get screwed. Me and My Friends shall do all the screwing. However - thou damned well Shall Not... I REPEAT, THOU SHALL NOT... release the full Epstein Files and all the videos therewith because everyone knows that for years he was running a well-funded Mossad kompromat operation creating and acquiring a lot of blackmail-able dirt on politicians (Republican and Democrat), royals, businessmen, pundits, entertainers, and billionaires around the world. And if Bibi ever releases those files on Me and my Friends, it will reveal a lot of rich and powerful bastards for the criminal parasites that they really are. Then I’m a gonna have to start a nuclear war to distract everyone, and you don’t want a nuclear war, do you?
8 Thou shall not steal. Really? How did that get in there? For sure, it’s OK for Me to kidnap people and call it “capturing” them. And it’s OK for Me to steal oil, gold and national sovereignty from Venezuela, Russia, Syria and Iran. And it’s OK for My billionaire buddies to steal from you. And it’s OK to raise your taxes in the guise of imposing tariffs on imports. But Thou Shall Pay Up because my good friend God said so, and God is even more supreme than the Supreme Court.
9 Thou shall not bear false witness. On the other hand, I can say whatever I feel like saying whenever I feel like it, whether it’s true or false. Never give a sucker an even break, that’s what the Bible says. I know because I helped God write it.
10 Thou shall not covet thy neighbor’s house. But Me and My friends have coveted your house and all the houses in the West Bank and in Gaza for a long time. After We remove the Palestinians, My Board of Peace (of which God and I are co-CEOs) is gonna build a Club Med resort for the owners of this world. Gambling casinos, championship golf courses, race tracks - the works! Me and My friends shalt covet your wife and your neighbor’s wife, too, maybe to work in Our hotels and brothels. And some of My creepy Tech Bro supporters are gonna covet your male servants. And your sons. Also your daughters.
* * * * *
I needed to get this off my chest even though it is a crude screed.
I prefer to publish other things on this Substack - music, short stories, novellas, poetry. But all I get every day and every night is Trump Trump Trump Trump Trump and he just overwhelms my senses. The last thing I wanted to write was another Trump-screed. But there he is yammering, day and night, getting in my face along with the other obnoxious yammerers of his cabinet. The U.S. and Israel seem to be into “regime change” all around the world and “decapitating” national leaders they don’t like. Because we live in a (nominal) democracy, may we suggest a few additional names for the decapitation list? May we propose our own regimes to change?
Am I just doom-scrolling? Everywhere I see corruption. It’s corruption not just in the criminal sense, but also, literally, as in metal corroding, wood rotting, things wearing out, systems grinding down, society getting more frictious.
My Democratic friends insist that it was, and would be, better if Democrats were in control. That’s not exactly true. Since at least 1945, both Democrats and Republicans have fed from the same donor trough. They differ in style, but both parties support endless war, endless distraction, endless deception, and endless immiseration. We can flip the two-sided coin all we like and we always come up losers.
Quietly (for fear of retribution), we know that our political, economic and judicial systems have been compromised. “Kompromat” is a Soviet era term meaning compromising material. Kompromat is used to extort and to blackmail. The Epstein operation was similar to, but significantly bigger in scope and ambition than the dirt that J. Edgar Hoover Hoovered-up with his FBI “black bag jobs.”
Quietly (for fear of retribution), you disapprove unconstitutional war and the assassination of an 86 year old spiritual leader in Iran. “Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?” asked Benjamin Netanyahu. Whereupon the American President, and the Congress, and the Pentagon, stepped up and killed him.
We have done this before. The Vietnam War was a “bipartisan” colonial project that the U.S. acquired from France. It was aggressively pushed by both Democrats and Republicans. Together with NATO, we ruined Libya to steal its oil. Muammar Gaddafi was sodomized and murdered. Hillary Clinton - then Secretary of State in the Obama administration - gloated: “We came, we saw, he died.” Saddam Hussein allegedly built weapons of mass destruction; but, in truth, had none. During the George W. Bush administration, the U.S. and its coalition allies raped Iraq, subjugated it, and unleashed our local proxies to hang Saddam Hussein.
There were many others. The list is long and ignoble... and “bipartisan.”
At least... perhaps... we know now the answer to the riddle why the “good Germans” never overthrew the Nazis or the Third Reich or intervened to stop its atrocities leading up to and during World War II. We know now the riddle’s answer because, when it was our turn, we, too, didn’t do anything.
As for the original Ten Commandments - they’re gone. Destroyed. Broken into smithereens. The story - whether that of the Book of Exodus or of Cecil B. DeMille’s cast-of-thousands 1956 Hollywood Cinerama extravaganza - is that Moses was disgusted with Israelis dancing around the Golden Calf after he came down to present them with the Law. That’s why, in anger, embarrassment, disgust and frustration, he smashed the tablets to the ground.
Which is how I feel, too.
Israel, today, is no more a Jewish state than the U.S. has Equal Justice and the Rule of Law. Or that true Islamic values are embraced by the motley collection of Kings, Despots and Emirs propped up by Europe and the U.S. in the Middle East. Or that Europe is a bastion of Higher Civilization.
We are all, once again, dancing about a Golden Calf. We have smashed all law into dust.
* * * * *