By Walt Garlington, an Orthodox Christian living in Dixieland. His writings have appeared on several web sites, and he maintains a site of his own, Confiteri: A Southern Perspective.
The run-up to the celebration of the much-hyped 250th anniversary of the United States on July 4th was disappointing to say the least, leaving us wondering how the culminating moment of all the celebrations would turn out. Sadly, it too was underwhelming but also frightening from a spiritual perspective.
This supposedly memorable event opened with another very unmemorable performance of one of the MAGA cult’s favorite songs, Lee Greenwood’s ‘God Bless the USA’, which is one of the most syrupy, saccharine, mediocre songs ever to be composed (via Newsweek, which is also the source for the quotes from Pres Trump). Things went downhill from there, and considering how bad that song is, the reader will have a fair idea of what’s coming.
Mr. Trump showed his usual lack of humility and ignorance of history near the opening:
Because this is the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Nothing like it. For two and a half centuries, our American republic has stood as the crowning achievement of human history. This country is the home of freedom. This is the land of liberty. And this is a flag that’s the banner of the most extraordinary, most exceptional, most incredible nation ever to exist on the face of the earth. And we’re doing better now than we’ve ever done before.
He was just getting started, though:
No people have done more good, shown more courage, made more progress, righted more injustice, or achieved more greatness than you, the American people. For 250 years, the United States of America has been the hope, the promise, the light, and the glory among all of the nations of the world. All over the world, they try and be like us. Nobody can be like us. And with God’s help, we will always be this, or even better. We’re going to be better.
‘God’ (we’re not sure which one) didn’t receive much attention in this speech at all. When He was invoked, it was in the sense seen in the previous quote, like the genie from the magic lamp, a powerful being that will grant one’s wishes for worldly prosperity and power.
In like manner, Mr Trump does his best to continue what has been an horrible error of many in the States from their earliest days following independence from Britain: to replace Christianity with Americanism, to transfer from Christ’s Church the powers of salvation to the new ‘church’ of sacred America. It is no longer the martyrs and the saints of the Orthodox Church that stand as the greatest exemplars of humanity; it is instead the heroes of America:
Americans must never forget that we are a historic and heroic people, with a heroic spirit and a heroic purpose on this beautiful earth of ours. We are made the courage and the fire and the flesh and the blood of the best and the bravest people this world has ever produced. We are the bravest and the best. Tonight, we pledge allegiance to the flag they gave us. And we say: God bless the immortal patriots of 1776, and long live the cause of independence. May it reign forever and ever and ever. We will always be on top. We will never let our country fall. We will always be the best.
Enjoy your new ‘saints’, America. We will see what help they will be to us when difficult times come.
Because all of this is so, the Antichurch of Americanism has taken on the universalism of Christ’s authentic Church:
Across the generations, Americans have fought, bled, and died not just to secure those [inaudible] but to expand them to citizens of every race, religion, color, and creed. Because we are one people. We are one family—you showed that tonight—with one flag. And as our Declaration of Independence tells us, we are all made in the image of one Almighty God.
This, of course, is a heap of non-sense and contradictions. A collection of people holding different religions and creeds will never be ‘one people’ no matter how hard you close your eyes and make a wish to the Declaration’s vague, philosophical ‘God’. This is why even to this day, Yankees and Southerners remain two very different people – because the Southerners had and have a more traditional view of God and the Church and Northerners have a much more revolutionary/progressive view of Them.
Furthermore, how is it to the advantage of the confederation of States that the same rights be extended to every religion? Are we really better off that Mormonism and Christian Science have an equal right to spread their heresies and lies amongst us as the Orthodox Church does, which possesses the purity of the Christian Faith?
The answer, to use one of MAGA’s favorite phrases from the Declaration, would seem to be ‘self-evident’.
It is also noteworthy that Americanism also tries to give us holy relics. Mr Trump repeatedly spoke of the flag of the United States as something holy and sacred:
Few heroes remind us of this more than William Carney, who escaped slavery to become a Union soldier in the Civil War, which was a very big, big deal at the time. In the battle, he saw comrades struck down by enemy fire while carrying the Stars and Stripes, and Sergeant Carney dove to the ground to keep the flag from touching the mud. He didn’t want to have it touch the ground. He didn’t want to have it touch the mud. He wanted it to be perfect. He raised it high above the field and was shot four times. They thought he was gone, but he kept moving forward. He loved our country. He loved our flag. Before he returned to camp and announced, “Boys, the old flag never touched the ground.”
Unsurprisingly, this anecdote portrays the South, one of the most conservative regions in the union, as the villain in the ‘American story’, something all of those in Dixie should take note of: Southerners are not loved by the political establishment; they are merely useful tools who are too easily duped into voting for power-hungry men like Pres Trump.
There was plenty of hypocrisy on display, too, like this:
Together, we are also reasserting the truth that American strength and power is not something to be ashamed of. It is something that we are very, very proud of. This country has been the greatest force for peace and justice on Earth. In the last century, we defeated tyrants, demolished evil, and saved freedom again and again and again.
The greatest force for peace and justice, except when the federal government was installing terror regimes in South America through programs like Operation Condor or funding Islamic radicals to overthrow moderate governments in places like Syria with Operation Timber Sycamore.
No speech by an aging American president would be complete without an overstatement about the greatness of the World War II generation:
So, ladies and gentlemen, these are the fighters and the banners of the Greatest Generation. They are the greatest generation. I hate to admit that, but they are. They saved the world, and they made America very, very proud. We’re very proud of you, heroes all.
Yes, the generation that allowed Christianity to fall into decay, that legalized child-murder, no-fault divorce, and same-sex ‘marriage’, that dropped not one but two nuclear bombs on Japan, and fire-bombed the Christian fabric of European cities to ‘save the world’ – truly the Greatest Generation.
The crux of Trump’s MAGA Americanism is worldly materialism. This is one of the ultimate goals, if not the ultimate goal, of the MAGA cult – to be the wealthiest place in the world:
Americans expanded the blessings of freedom, and we have never stopped expanding our ambitions and our dreams. We had the American dream. We never had the American dream, however, like we have it right now. The American dream is back, very strong, beautiful. . . .
Our stock market is the strongest it’s ever been. We have $19.2 trillion being invested in our country, which is six times more than ever happened before. We’re building more factories in the United States than ever before. Everyone’s 401(k)s at the highest number they’ve ever been. And more people are working today in the United States than at any time in the history of our country.
The Orthodox Church views all of this quite differently. The obsession that Trump/MAGA have with worldly greatness the Orthodox view as a satanic deception to separate the soul from God, thus killing it. The priest-monk Fr Paul Schcherbachev illustrates this starkly in an homily of his on the demoniac that lived among the tombs:
St. Paisius of Mt. Athos noticed very subtly that today the worldly spirit has become our greatest enemy. In our era in the world, much that is worldly has entered, very much of the “spirit of this world”. This worldly spirit is destroying the world. Having received into ourselves this world, having become worldly within, people have cast Christ out of their souls. Those whose hearts are given over to the vain and worldly live under the rule of the ruler of this age. That is, the devil rules vanity and that those who are enslaved to vanity, enslaved to the spirit of this world—the world in the patristic sense.
Vanity and pride are two of the chief identifying marks of Trump and his MAGA cultists, which unites them with the devil and his demons. The result is exactly what we are witnessing all across the States: shallowness, confusion, and the like:
The heart that is captive to this vain world keeps its soul in a state of underdevelopment, and the mind in darkness. Then a man only seems to be a man; in essence he is really a kind of spiritual premature infant, defective, the living dead, buried alive like the Gadarene demoniac in the many graves where he abides. What is this graveyard of corpses? Many of us are familiar with them, and not only by hearsay. On these graves the shadows verily walk of those who consider their goal in this earthly existence to be insane entertainments, sacrificing to them their abilities and talents; those who steal from their own selves the most precious time that God gives us for achieving lofty things, unreasonably squandering it, wandering through absolutely unnecessary information, which only scatters the mind and casts his inner world into chaos. This today is the mightiest generator of the spirit of this world. The demon, which is called the man-hater and destroyer, doesn’t consider it so important to destroy us physically as he did the herd of swine in Gadara as to draw our immortal souls into the darkness of this age.
The condition of the peoples of the States are not unlike that of a woman in Russia shortly after the fall of communism: Many have unknowingly made a pact with the devil that grants them blessings in this world in exchange for their souls for eternity after death (bolding added) –
We recall one very interesting, edifying incident. A certain woman who lived in Russia in the 1990s became very interested in television. In those days we were inundated with the contents of a thrown-open Pandora’s box—a huge amount of various programs. They were unnecessary, empty, vulgar, preaching violence and depravity, and bringing into the masses this spirit of the vanity of this world. So she watched the television and was particularly drawn to programs about psychics and healers; it was very interesting to her and she tried not to miss a single evening of it. Then suddenly and unexpectedly she learned that she was stricken with a very serious illness. She found out that she had cancer, and this cancer had penetrated her spinal cord, bringing her unbearable pain. Then she went personally to one of those healers, she found an opportunity to go to him and said, “Do whatever you need to do to heal me of this illness and escape this terrible suffering. He said, “Alright, I’ll help you, only I have one condition. I will write a note and put it in a sealed envelope. When you feel pain, place it on your spine and the pain will go away.” She did as he instructed, and the pain really did subside. But then a worse catastrophe befell her. She felt such emotional heaviness and depression, such meaningless in life that the thought came to her more and more often of suicide. Then she asked a Christian friend who was fortunately the spiritual child of Archimandrite Kirill (Pavlov). This person helped her to get to see Fr. Kirill, and Fr. Kirill said to her, “My dear, let’s have a look at what’s in the envelope.” “No!” she said. “Under no circumstances! That healer told me that as soon as I open the envelope I’ll die.” He said, “Alright, let’s do this. As a priest and confessor I promise you that if anyone dies it will be me. I will take that punishment upon myself.” When they opened the envelope they saw the note on which was written, “Satan, help her while she lives in this life, but her soul is yours.”
So long as Americanism thrives amongst the peoples of the States, so long will they remain in thrall to Satan, and so long will the world writhe in anguish as a result.
