"CURSES ARE LIKE YOUNG CHICKEN,
THEY ALWAYS COME HOME TO ROOST."
Thou shalt live in thy pain,
While Kehama shall reign,
With a fire in thy heart,
And a fire in thy brain;
And sleep shall obey me,
And visit thee never,
And the Curse shall be on thee
For ever and ever.
The Curse of Kehama, Robert Southey [1812]
The notion
From time immemorial, some individuals ... even entire nations ... have occasionally paused to consider the notion that there is a link between their fleeting life [both active and passive] and the greater, inter-temporal cosmos ... where the "occasion" is usually an extreme state of success or suffering. This complex encounter reaches from the Vedic karma and the Hebrew Book of Job thru the New Testament's Gal 6:7 right down to contemporary series like LOTR or Harry Potter ... or yesterday's Politico where founding editor, John Harris, proposed the following proposition:
"Trump’s Chickens Come Home To Roost. So Do America’s."
The scope
To be sure, there are screeching and sweeping prophetic voices on both sides of such grand thoughts. And Trump [being POTUS notwithstanding] is only one man whose actions over 4 years cannot [in any sense that is meaningful to most of us] be held responsible for such a monumental thing as America's fate [be it blessing or curse].
And so, in an attempt to narrow the scope of his ruminations to something today's average, sound-byte attentive American might possibly grasp, Harris steps back from any attempt to articulate some Dantian or Trumpian vision of "divine justice" and contents himself with generally musing about America's place in mankind's history of sociological experimentation:
"The answer is to embrace a different tradition of American exceptionalism, one that doesn’t depend on a belief in divine intercession. As originally understood, American exceptionalism didn’t flow principally from religious revelation. It flowed from America’s unique history as the world’s first democracy, and as a new country resting on a foundation of ideas, not on an old foundation of feudalism and monarchy.
"American exceptionalism based on divine franchise implies unconquerable destiny, and invites arrogance and feelings of special entitlement. American exceptionalism based on history forged by frail mortals implies experiment and fragility, and invites humility and feelings of special responsibility."
The problem
Although most of us can appreciate what Harris is trying to say, it is futile to think that he, Trump, Biden or America can dialectically avoid the deeper, troubling, existential questions that arise if we even cursorily examine the theme and keywords in his essay.
You cannot separate divinity from justice from ideas from feudalism from democracy. The essence of a "universe" is that they are all and always linked ... for better or for worse ...for blessing or for cursing. And yes, humility and responsibility are helpful ... and arrogance and entitlement are not.
If anything, it would appear that America's post-1971 practice of deceitful and repressive global monetary policy [all claims by the FED to humble, responsible, ideological experimentation notwithstanding] has plunged the entire world into Harris' anathema of financial feudalism [elites, vassals and serfs] that is supra-national in scope. And that raises some very serious cosmic questions for America which Harris and each of us must face ... sooner or later.
And the very "idea" of "democracy" on which Harris hangs his entire argument has always been and apparently remains seriously confused in America where political and economic systems lurch back and forth dysphorically between "class-driven" parties that BOTH use of their political power to economically plunder the other in the name of justice, because neither party understands and respects the complementary differences between private property [which requires individual liberty] and commonwealth [which requires collective justice].
It is well established that ignorance of the law is no defense. And it has long been suspected [and even believed by some] that, unless God can be mocked, we reap what we sow. God bless America? How can this be?
