Live with courage, die with dignity.

Live with dignity, die with courage.

Either could be the title of a self-help book for geezers looking for purpose in their remaining years. Most people would take one or the other carved into their tombstone or as a great lead sentence for their obituary.

“He lived with courage; he died with dignity.”

Amen.

What better epitaph for a human life.

But what does it say about people who practise the antitheses of those uplifting mottos.

Live in fear, die without honour.

Live without honour, die in fear.

RIP Lindsay Graham, Devin Nunes, Mike Pompeo, Mick Mulvaney et al.

The latter statements are fitting tag lines to lay on Republican politicians. The President of the United States is becoming increasingly unhinged as they shrink in the shadow of his madness.

Before heading into the workplace next week, paint your face orange and whip your hair into an aircraft carrier combover. Put on a baggy blue suit and pull an oversize red tie low enough to cover the pee stains. Walk onto the job site, into the office, the warehouse or store and tell your workmates that you are a very stable genius who knows more about everything… military tactics, technology, ISIS, banking, tax law, debt… than all the experts who have immersed themselves in the subjects for decades; pronounce that you have great wisdom and are the chosen one; that you have the best words, and the best memory;  then brag about a fat murderous dictator with even worse hair who sends you love letters; tell everyone the Ukrainians are out to get you;  insist that nobody can trust what they see and hear but should only believe you, their Dear Leader

People will start moving away, cellphones in hand, fingers poised over emergency phone numbers. Some will click on audio record while others discreetly video your every move from a safe distance watching for an AR-15 assault rifle to appear from a tear-away pant leg. These are not things normal people say, unless they are two sheets and a jib sail to the wind at the company Christmas Party. To proclaim these boasts to the world with zero self-awareness and no shame is to signal the men with the funny farm nets to come and make a pickup.

However, if your workplace is full of Evangelical Christians they will applaud you as a prophet and herald you as the Second Coming—even though they may know you are a pathological liar, a grifter who cheats charities, a proud pussy grabber and a person of low character who denigrates patriots—as long as you can convince them you will overturn Roe vs Wade.

On the Monday before U.S. Thanksgiving I saw the scariest thing I’ve ever seen on a television screen in the serene madness of Republican commentator Alice Stewart’s reply to a question from CNN anchor Laura Coates.

Coates cited retiring Energy Secretary and Dancing  With The Stars alumni Rick Perry’s recent televised assertion that Donald Trump was indeed the Chosen One. She asked Stewart, an Evangelical Christian and Trump sycophant, if she agreed.

Stewart stared into the camera like a Jim Jones disciple holding the Kool Aid glass to her child’s lips and replied “Absolutely,” noting that as a “woman of faith” she believed God hand-picked the degenerate orange porn star humper, Donald J. Trump, just as He had all the presidents before him, claiming God took a direct interest in U.S. politics, insisting nothing happened in the world without her Sovereign Lord’s oversight.

But doesn’t that also mean God chose Hitler for the German people, Stalin for the Russians, Kim Jong Jun for the Koreans and Pol Pot for the Cambodians. By Stewart’s logic wouldn’t God be responsible for the torture, imprisonment and genocide of millions of people of all faiths around the world. Wouldn’t he be the one who gave the thumbs up to the world’s serial killers and child molesters. And, of course, He would have fanned the favourable westerly winds to ensure the slave traders speedy and profitable voyages.

Stewart dresses well, often accessorising with a tasteful crucifix. She gets her hair done frequently, applies her make-up with skill and speaks calmly and rationally during most of her defenses of Trump before a national TV audience, putting distance between her Christian self and his most grievous offenses, tweets and utterances by noting we are all flawed human beings. Hate the sin, not the molesting priest, as my devout Catholic mother used to say.

Stewart seems normal until the subject of religion rears its ugly, murderous head and that is what should scare poop pellets out of every tightly clenched Democratic ass. She and tens of millions of heavily armed citizens are in a cult. A religious cult waiting anxiously for the Rapturous End Times, when true believers and their families and dead friends are whisked to the safety of heaven to watch everyone else die horrible deaths as the world destructs in an orgy of violence.

She believes, along with senior government officials like Mike Pence, Rick Perry and Mike Pompeo, what is trumpeted from the pulpits by religious grifter scions Jerry Falwell Jr. and Franklin Graham, that Trump, God’s imperfect instrument, is the right man at the right time to lead the Evangelical Christian Crusade.

It matters not to brainwashed religious zealots that the American Constitution specifically calls for separation of religion and state. Evangelicals are every bit as fanatical, and delusional, as the Muslim terrorists who decapitate non-believers and burn them alive in cages in hopes of rising to a place where virgins are plentiful. Under the right circumstances, with the tacit consent of the state, MAGA maniacs might defend their way of life by castrating non-believers, hanging them from trees for target practise, dragging them behind cars and burning them alive in the town square as other righteous white Americans did to black people in the south as late as the 1950s.

Will Stewart and Trump’s Holy Water drinkers stand with the majority if Trump is defeated next November and refuses to leave office or will they align themselves with corrupt, craven, compliant Republican politicians who have insinuated themselves so far up Trump’s flabby, mottled ass cheeks they are at the point of no return.

The adulation he gets at his Klan rallies has pushed Trump over the edge, into madness and a fantasy world, his followers encamped in Red States, instead of a South American jungle, mixing Kool Aid with Holy Water for End Times.

In 2016 he was just a conman, the leader of a criminal family who figured he could make money by enhancing his brand by running for President. He was between opportunities having run his course on reality TV and in legal trouble for overseeing a bogus university scam. But over three years of Republican supplication and adoration from his all-forgiving base he began drinking his own Holy water.

Encouraged by cult lieutenants like Pence, Perry and Pompeo, and with the wild-eyed devil/imp Rudy Giuliani whispering in his ear and legions of glassy-eyed deplorables chanting at his rallies, he has embraced the madness and come to see himself as the Chosen One.

That is truly scary.

The only question that remains is: “If Dear Leader calls for Jihad against Non-Believers after losing in 2020, will sixty million heavily armed cult members heed the call?