"Together we will vanquish the virus and America will rise from the crisis to new and even greater heights.....(for) In America....we are the captains of our own fate."
Those were words in a President Trump 2020 Memorial Day speech in Baltimore. I wonder who actually added those words to the speech...."We are the captains of our own fate"....for they were a very poorly chosen choice of words at best. William Ernest Henley's poem.....Invictus....(Latin for 'unconquerable).....published in 1875....has consistently since then kept Henley and that poem not only in the mind's eye of the world but America. A Clint Eastwood film was titled Invictus. Nelson Mandela recited it while in prison. And at least two mass killers referenced it.
"Out of night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishment the scroll,
I am master of my fate,
I am captain of my soul."
Hopefully you can easily see that these are not Christian thoughts....but this is essentially what we have become in the past five years....constructed from an Invictus mentality....and christened with Ayn Rand's view of life....but now floundering under the banner proclaiming that we were indeed the masters of our own fate. The following paragraph in red were my thoughts that were posted before the pandemic hit....and after the 2020 State of the Union....as we were bragging about how rich we were....and vainglory wafted through the chamber of the House of Representatives...."The most pressing issue is that God has....as of now....forsaken us....big fancy mega-churches and all....booming economic statistics notwithstanding....we are undone....woe to us....we tried to do it on our own....throwing God's name around as if it were a magic word....but are left as were Hophni and Phinehas who thought that the mere presence of the Ark of the Covenant would secure victory in battle....but who perished....the Ark being captured....and the news of which brought on the death of Eli....and led to the naming of a child....Ichabod...."the glory has departed!"
The following is a recent post....July 21 of this year....and the title of it was the title of this post:
In a very real sense we won....in that we accomplished what our rebellious minds wanted to accomplish. We fought the government on coronavirus restrictions just about every chance that we got.....almost every step of the way. We would use the Bible or the Constitution.....or anything that made half-sense to us.....we used it to cause as many problems as we could....because the banner raised behind it...'trying to save as many lives as possible'.....was not helpful to Donald Trump's reelection....so it must be opposed at every single opportunity. We didn't totally stop masks and all of the rest....but we caused enough trouble that they were not going to be able to bring about an early end to the pandemic.....and that's all we cared about....to make them look bad.
So in a Tucker Carlson or Rand Paul world.....we kind of won....but in reality we not only lost our honor....we may have set the stage for something even more dangerous and revolutionary and demonic....for there are surely more serious challenges ahead of us in America....and whereas for decades as the liberals turned progressives turned communist useful idiots....where they challenged the rule of law and common sense every chance that they got....and we conservatives stood tall to hold the line as best we could.....we have now taken their playbook as our own....so if the government tells us to do something.....we just don't do it....for we are....in our own minds anyway....freedom fighters.....patriots....flag-draped Christians; and when those future difficult times come....whether it be an even more killing pandemic....or war....whatever it may be....no one....no one on their side or our side....has to listen or obey anymore. Congratulations to all whose heads that are proudly....unbowed....as the author of the poem Invictus described it....(where paraphrasing just a little here).....It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll. We....are the masters of our own fate....the captains of our own souls!
Addendum: In Chapter three of Jeremiah....God excoriated Judah because they had seen how their sister Israel had rebelled....and was punished because of it.....yet Judah.....knowing what happened....became every bit the idolatrous people that Israel had been. That's us folks! We saw for a half century how the liberals were rebelling against God....and how God had lifted His hand in punishment as America slid into oblivion. The evidence of God's judgment was all around us....but what did we do....conservative America.....or 'Judah' if you will....we became every bit the idolatrous people that Israel was....as our greed and our pride and our treachery and our lack of compassion became clearly evident. We became just as mercenary and idolatrous as the false prophet who had first bewitched us. We did not fear judgment from God....as we like Judah merely.....'feigned'....reverence towards Him....with our pious slogans and prayer marches. God may also say of us if we do not turn back to Him...."Faithless Israel has shown herself more righteous than treacherous Judah."
