The combine

On demoniac rage and American apocalypse

What could possess a comfortably middle-class conservative to risk life and limb assaulting the United States Capitol? A truly powerful wight indeed: Beelzebul, the Lord of the Flies, the Prince of Demons. By his wiles many have made an idol of dung’s fleshly katabasis: President Donald J. Trump. Last night they dreamt that he loved them. With the recklessness of unrestrained Eros, they assailed the damsel's tower only to find it empty. They wrote her a love letter from hell. In useless rage, they came face to face with their fear: their absent future. By morning their god of foundation and toner spat out the truth—he is just as alone, hated, and weak as they are.

What Washington witnessed on a banal Wednesday in January is the mad power of passion. Chaotic, disorganized, a morass of resentments, a maw of misunderstandings, a lost tribe of potatoes sacked the Capitol of the world Leviathan.

Trump believes in the power of positive thinking. He doesn't have a clue what power positively is. He's a lost fool in a wicked world: that is why he is the ultimate president of the United States of America. Though his beautiful boaters blew shofars in the Senate cloak room—baffling their adversaries!—no ally came to their aid. The chosen few drew themselves up on the mount of lies, they besieged the the bog-city of iniquity, yet their dead gods did not arrive in billowing smoke. These were the true believers, and they would not cringe before their enemies. They were not plotting a coup, they were hoping for a miracle. And blind faith carried them farther than any adversary of the American Republic since her wars of independence.

Why couldn't the chuds do the deed and topple the rotten edifice of liberal democracy? Because they are mired in bondage to the Big Dumb Man. Their hooliganism merely defaced liberal democracy’s sheen of political respectability: they never escaped the script of the spectacle. Trump supporters have no future as Trump supporters. Their fate has been clear for some time now. All they could do was ham up their death rattle for the cameras. Worse, when they bounded over the limits and into the halls of power, they discovered that power doesn't reside there but only passes through from time to time.

The moment was apocalyptic, if not messianic: in a moment American glory was suddenly shamed. The lairs costing millions of dollars to win were lounged in by buffoons. The grand intellectual venture of liberal conservatism dressed up for Halloween as the Village People's Davy Crockett. The police did not prevent their masters' humiliation. Dramatic insurrection turned to mulling about marble floors. It was a rare moment of clarity.

Worried liberals were quick to announce that their long-feared day of reckoning had come. But if this was truly an abortive coup d'état, who preformed it? Why did they decide on such a strange strategy? Why couldn't the President of the United States rely on the support of his own Vice President? What exactly would occupying the Capitol building do to prevent the passage of power? The simple answer is that there was no logic, no reason, no vision at all. There were angry and aggrieved hooligans getting a thrill.

A friend pointed out that when one of the MAGA horde began to dispute with a police officer, he revealed a salient detail about himself: he considers himself to be a small-business owner. Why would he say that mid-shouting-match? If we follow Marx and read the petite-bourgeoisie as transitory—the result of social mobility either up or downward—we can see why. This beast of Belial’s burdens sees himself as fit to rule, not be ruled. The policeman ought take his orders to stand down. Trump's tax cuts were for him. The pandemic is a conspiracy against him. This egoism is terrifying because it is so easy to understand. The I is essential.

The world the chuds cherish is passing away. And not only because of their litany of woes: declining birthrates, escalating abortions, the feminization of society, etc. No, the norm-ful normal that even the despised libs long for is never coming back. The frame of this world is passing away.

He who has tried it knows
how cruel is
sorrow as a companion
to the one who has few
beloved friends: the path of exile holds him,
not at all twisted gold,
a frozen spirit,
not the bounty of the earth.
He remembers hall-warriors
and the giving of treasure,
how in youth his lord
accustomed him to the feasting.
All the joy has died!

Is it any wonder that the thick-armed and round-bellied ex-marine is the one who rolls up to rumble in these latter days we know? What a man like that has seen is his imagined birthright perish: from the glorious eighties to the dismal twenties he has suffered the slights of a society in steady, steep decline. Materially he may or may not be precarious: but he is afraid. He lives riven by sad passions, captive to the demands of his innards like a ruminant. He takes up the boom-stick not for lack of the phallus but from want of the womb: if only he could rampage his way to a future! Alas, alack, his bullets and ballots and pipe bombs will only hasten his dissolution.

The Trump era is flaming out. Yet even in the deep delusion of the Q-believers, a hard little truth roils the world: the present age is passing away. The threat of insurrection has stained the oolitic limestone. Dug down deeper than a mole in the mountain’s root, how can such little eggs survive the pressure? And to those who feel themselves buried under the weight of the present moment: how quickly can it burn! If the George Floyd Rebellion wasn’t enough for you, will you ignore this sign? The End has come. The Beginning, therefore, cannot be far off.

Will you be ready when the gates are thrown open? Will you be dazed by the dancing flame? Will you breathe alone or together? Will you cry out for the artifices of man for salvation, or will you turn your soul to the Eternal?