It Was Believed The Man Was A Lunatic
“God will bring every work into judgment,
including every secret thing, whether good or evil.”
Ecclesiastes 12:14
“…after this the judgment.”
Hebrews 9:27
TO: The enablers, acolytes and torchbearers of the 45th president of the United States
Almost two years after his inauguration, David A. Graham of The Atlantic reported on the 45th president’s “indifference to the printed word.” The magazine cited the now former president’s chief economic advisor, Gary Cohn: “It’s worse than you can imagine… [He] won’t read anything – not one-page memos, not the brief policy papers, nothing.” The magazine quoted author Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury: “He didn’t process information in any conventional sense. He didn’t read. He didn’t really even skim. Some believed that for all practical purposes he was no more than semi-literate.”
If this is true – and it has been reported ad infinitum by even his most sycophantic enablers, we have something for you to read. Hopefully, you – Lindsey Graham and your now-we-condemn-him-now-we-won’t-‘cause-we’re-afraid confreres - who are predicting “riots in the streets” if the man who twice lost the popular vote is prosecuted for mishandling classified information will explain to him the implications of your - and his - cheerleading. Our caution is urgent because just weeks ago, the former president told a conservative talk show host:
“I think if it happened, I think you’d have problems in this country the likes of which perhaps we’ve never seen before. I don’t think the people of the United States would stand for it… I think they’d have big problems. Big problems. I just don’t think they’d stand for it. They will not sit still and stand for this ultimate of hoaxes.”
But first some context.
Samuel Clemens – Mark Twain, popularly known for some of the most important American literature of the 19th Century, was also a literary conscience of America.
When Cubans began their war for independence from Spain on March 27, 1898, President William McKinley issued an ultimatum, demanding Spain relinquish control of the island. The resulting war was over almost before it had begun; the treaty signed in December gave the United States control of the Philippines, Puerto Rico and Guam. In the brief conflict, Spain lost 55,000 to 60,000 men and 3,5000 American soldiers were killed.
Nonetheless, the Filipinos refused to accept American control and declared independence on June 12, 1898. The conflict, which did not end until 1913, resulted in more than 200,000 Filipino casualties and 4,300 American deaths.
Born in the era of American chattel slavery, Twain was viscerally opposed to cruelty inflicted on any people – regardless of race. As a result, in the closing years of his life, he produced a number of polemic essays: against anti-Semitism, “Concerning the Jews” (1899); a denunciation of imperialism, “To the Man Sitting in Darkness” (1901); on lynching, “The United States of Lyncherdom” (1923); and a pamphlet on the brutal and exploitative Belgian rule in the Congo under Leopold II, King Leopold’s Soliloquy (1905). Anticipating a profoundly negative reaction, Twain, who died in 1910, directed that The War Prayer not be published until his death. It first appeared in 1916.
In it, Mark Twain addresses the horror of war and civil war. He opens describing
”a time of great and exalting excitement. The country was up in arms, the war was on… It was indeed a glad and gracious time, and the half dozen rash spirits that ventured to disapprove of the war and cast a doubt upon its righteousness straightway got such a stern and angry warning that for their personal safety’s sake they quickly shrank out of sight and offended no more in that way.
[It’s as though Twain was anticipating the reactions of many members of today’s U.S. Congress – “they quickly shrank out of sight and offended no more.”]
In church on that “grand and glorious” Sunday,
“Then came the ‘long’ prayer. None could remember the like of it for passionate pleading and moving and beautiful language. The burden of its supplication was, that an ever-merciful and benignant Father of us all would watch over our noble young soldiers, and aid, comfort, and encourage them in their patriotic work; bless them, shield them in the day of battle and the hour of peril, bear them in His mighty hand, make them strong and confident, invincible in the bloody onset; help them crush the foe, grant to them and to their flag and country imperishable honor and glory…”
Suddenly, a stranger entered and, making his was to the altar, stared-down the preacher, announcing:
“’I come from the Throne - bearing a message from Almighty God!’ The words smote the house with a shock... He has heard the prayer of His servant… and will grant it if such be your desire after I, His messenger, shall have explained to you its import - that is to say, its full import. For it is like unto many of the prayers of men, in that it asks for more than he who utters it is aware of - except he pause and think. God’s servant and yours has prayed his prayer. Has he paused and taken thought? Is it one prayer? No, it is two - one uttered, and the other not. Both have reached the ear of Him who heareth all supplications, the spoken and the unspoken. Ponder this - keep it in mind. If you would beseech a blessing upon yourself, beware! lest without intent you invoke a curse upon your neighbor at the same time. If you pray for the blessing of rain on your crop which needs it, by that act you are possibly praying for a curse on some neighbor’s crop which may not need rain and can be injured by it.
“You have heard your servant’s prayer - the uttered part of it. I am commissioned by God to put into words the other part of it - that part which the pastor - and also you in your hearts - fervently prayed silently. And ignorantly and unthinkingly? God grant that it was so! You heard the words ‘Grant us the victory, O Lord our God!’ That is sufficient. The whole of the uttered prayer is compact into those pregnant words. Elaborations were not necessary. When you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory - must follow it, cannot help but follow it. Upon the listening spirit of God fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen!
“’Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth into battle - be Thou near them! With them - in spirit - we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended in the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames in summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it -
“’For our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet!
“’We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.’”
Twain ended by reporting, “It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said.”
More than a century after the publication of what some consider Mark Twain’s most intense work, the weapons of war are infinitely more powerful. Consider snippets of the testimony of the medical examiners who performed the autopsies of four of those killed in the February 14, 2018 attack at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School:
One girl had her head blown open.
Another had the front of her right shoulder blade missing
Another was missing most of a forearm and bicep from three wounds.
One girl would have died from a bullet that grazed the top of her head as a shock wave fractured her skull, causing extensive brain damage. She also suffered a fatal wound through her chest.
“Gunshot Wound A is a penetrating gun shot wound to the right side of the chest. It injures the upper lobe of the right lung and the spinal cord is transected. There is 600 millimeters of blood in the right side of the chest and the seventh thoracic vertebrae is also fractured….”
Senators Graham, Tuberville, Hawley and others,
We’ve all seen his acolytes. Carrying automatic rifles, their bandoliers of armor-piercing bullets, marching in lockstep as they shout their anti-Semitic, anti-people of colors, anti-LGBT litanies.
Their “prayer” is not directed to the loving God of the Abrahamic religions, the Lord of Life and Prince of Peace. They are the kowtowing supplicants of a man-child, who find their masculinity by carrying weapons of war, their gender identity only in the collective mob, and their patriotism and love of country in assaulting and killing police officers on January 6. The so-called Proud – boys is especially appropriate because they have the insight of prepubescents - vie to achieve Judas Iscariot status – ratting each other out to the feds when facing the mere threat of federal prison, and the chorus of their song of praise is “Please don’t lock me up ‘cause I was only following the orders of the man who promised to be but was not with us.”
And you, his Congressional apologists, genuflect before the dual altars of the threat and fear of electoral primary challenges.
So, members of Congress, pay heed to Mark Twain’s War Prayer. Understand the true meaning of those crazed and crazy threats – yours’ and his – of “riots in the streets” and “big problems” and – if he can give up the false claims of a “stolen election” for five minutes, explain to him what you and he are really calling for.
Or…
Be satisfied that “It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said.”