The Last Judgment painted by Stefan Lochner in the 15th century.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt took on a combative tone with the media at her first press briefing Tuesday, vowing to hold them accountable for telling the truth.
Jeffrey Wilson of Harvard wrote a paper declaring Trump – SATAN! Is this true? Is press secretary Karoline preparing Republicans for Judgment Day – when Demonized Democrats will be damned to hell by Jesus – who will judge the dead? Is Wilson a cousin, descend from Rev; John Wilson who had a long narrow face and nose?
Trump lied about sending Our Marine in to bring water to the suffering victims of the LA Hellfire. His minion are telling lies about The Great Food Pause. I am going to raise the dead, to be the Judges in these matters. Has the Day of Judgement – arrived?
Two days ago I went out on my balcony to gaze at the aligned planets, and wondered……why?
John ‘The Nazarite’
Repent!
Forty years later (Numbers 20:1, 28; 33:38), there was a moment of Déjà vu. “There was no water for the community … The people quarreled with Moses and said, ‘If only we had perished when our brothers perished before the Lord. Why have you brought the Lord’s assembly into this wilderness for us and our livestock to die here?’ ” (Numbers 20:2-4).
This time, God’s instruction was different. God didn’t tell Moses to strike the rock, but to “speak to the rock while they watch, and it will yield its water” (Number 20:8). Interestingly, “Moses raised his hand and struck the rock twice with his staff, so that abundant water gushed out, and the community and their livestock drank” (Number 20:11). For this act of disobedience, God imposed a harsh punishment. “Because you did not trust me to demonstrate my holiness in the sight of the Israelites, you will not bring this assembly into the land I have given them” (Number 20:12). Moses didn’t make it to the Promised Land.
Although the planet parade won’t look quite like this, these are NASA-furnished representations of Jupiter, Mercury, Uranus, Mars, Neptune and Saturn.
The Last Judgment[a][b] is a concept found across the Abrahamic religions and the Frashokereti of Zoroastrianism.
Christianity considers the Second Coming of Jesus Christ to entail the final judgment by God of all people who have ever lived,[1] resulting in the salvation of a few and the damnation of many. Some Christian denominations believe most people will be saved, some believe most people will be damned, and some believe the number of the saved and of the damned is unknown. The concept of the Last Judgment is found in all the canonical gospels, particularly in the Gospel of Matthew. The Christian tradition is also followed by Islam, where it is mentioned in many chapters of the Quran, according to some interpretations.
The Last Judgment has inspired numerous artistic depictions, including painting, sculpture and evangelical work.
Jeffrey R. Wilson
Instructional Design Lead, Office of the Vice Provost for Advances in Learning
- Region: England; United States
- Time: 16th Century; 17th Century
- Theme: British Literature; Cultural History; Intellectual History; Renaissance; Shakespeare; Social History
Jeffrey R. Wilson is a teacher-scholar at Harvard University. He is the author of three books: Richard III’s Bodies from Medieval England to Modernity: Shakespeare and Disability History (2022), Shakespeare and Game of Thrones (2021), and Shakespeare and Trump (2020). As an Instructional Design Lead in the Office of the Vice Provost for Advances in Learning, he creates courses and events for Harvard Online. From 2014-22, he taught the “Why Shakespeare?” course in the Harvard College Writing Program.
Donald Trump speaks during event on ending surprise medical billing
Spectator USA
Paradise Lost in Washington, DC
Jeffrey R. Wilson
Trump is Satan
Donald Trump is Satan. The Satan in question is perhaps the greatest literary character in
the finest epic poem in the English language, John Milton’s Paradise Lost. That makes
Washington Republicans the other fallen angels.
In 2016, Republicans made a deal with the devil. Like Dr Faustus, they sold their souls
for power. Now they stifle their consciences, never speak ill of President Trump, hug him
closely, fearing the wrath of his base. The same Lindsey Graham who in 2016 wrote, ‘If
we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed … and we will deserve it,’ recently said, ‘To
every Republican, if you don’t stand behind this president, we’re not going to stand
behind you.’ Meanwhile, Trump skulks in the White House, mired in ‘the swamp.’
The first epic simile in Paradise Lost introduces Satan awash in a swamp of his
own, ‘prone on the Flood’, having fallen from heaven to hell. As massive as ‘that Seabeast Leviathan,’ Satan hulks so big from the sea that the pilot of ‘some small nightfounder’d skiff’ might mistake him for an island, and seek to pass the night in safety
‘with fixed anchor in his scaly rind.’ It’s an old Norwegian seafarer’s fable. When the beast wakes, it dives into the depths of the ocean. The anchored skiff is dragged along. The sailor is pulled to his watery grave. Similarly, Republicans who have anchored their boat to Trump, thinking he’s an island providing protection from the sea, risk being dragged down to their demise when, like a whale startled from sleep, he goes plunging. Trump as Satan: you might think it’s absurdly over-the-top, or want to celebrate it as a (literally) epic takedown, but this is not a political statement hurling invective. It’s an analytical statement describing what is happening – what will happen – and why, aided by the Miltonic intervention. Great literature helps us understand the world. Both politicians and literary critics do their jobs best when they’re willing to use literature to think about life. Published in London in 1667, Paradise Lost is a Christian humanist epic about the war in Heaven and the fall of humankind in the Garden of Eden. Though he’s the ‘author of evil,’ Satan is shockingly an attractive character. He charms us with his energy. When God the Father anoints his Son king over the other angels, Satan, ‘Great in power’, doesn’t think it’s fair. The system was rigged. Milton – one of the fathers of modern liberalism, active in the Puritan rebellion against the royal absolutism of Charles I – lent Satan his own freedom-loving, tyrant-hating language, the outraged angel mounting a rebellion ‘to cast off this Yoke.’ A powerful orator, but loose with the truth, Satan secures a base of support, ‘and with lyes drew after him the third part of Heav’ns Host.’ This third of the angels back Satan to the bitter end, no matter what. Satan’s opponents see his rhetoric as ‘calumnious art of counterfeited truth’ and ‘argument blasphemous, false and proud.’ The first Never Satan-er to stand up is an angel named Abdiel, earning God’s admiration: ‘Servant of God, well done, well hast thou fought The better fight, who single hast maintaind Against revolted multitudes the Cause Of Truth’ War in Heaven erupts, angel against angel, the apostate against the faithful. After three days, God sends the Son to end it. The mere sight of the Son’s flaming chariot thundering toward them turns the apostate on their heels. They sprint away in retreat. The gates of Heaven open for them: ‘Headlong themselves they threw Down from the verge of Heav’n, Eternal wrauth Burnt after them to the bottomless pit.’ Trump’s minions won’t fall so willingly. Resistance to Trump hardly thunders with God’s wrath. Republicans are more likely to fall like the stars in the Book of Revelation, Milton’s source: ‘His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth.’ That image of a falling Satan’s tail whipping out behind him, snagging the third of the angels that backed him, pulling them down, is what Milton invoked in the poem’s first epic simile. After crashing down in Hell, Satan lies belly-down in the swamp, a slumbering Leviathan. The Leviathan is a massive sea monster from the book of Job. But Leviathan was also the name of a 1651 book by Milton’s contemporary, the monarchist Thomas Hobbes. He argued a king is, like the Leviathan, a massive figure with limitless power, one to be feared and respected, or else. Milton opposed Hobbes in the debate about monarchy, insisting kings should be subject to laws. Trump wants to be Hobbes’s Leviathan. Republicans will find he is Milton’s Leviathan. Paradise Lost doesn’t say what happens when the beast awakens. Milton leaves us in suspense. Similarly, Trump is still afloat, but he’s going down, and not just in his willingness to take a fight into the gutter. Whether through impeachment, resignation, or democratic vote, his time is short. And then he will go down as one of the worst presidents in history. When he goes down, Trump will drag along those tethered to him. For decades, Americans will decline to forgive the Republicans of the Trump era. As sleeping pilots on a dangerously anchored boat, Washington Republicans have a choice. Wake up and cast off from Trump — speak your conscience, your faith, and your family values — or get dragged down into the abyss, never to be heard from again. Jeffery R. Wilson teaches in the Writing Program at Harvard University
Trump says military ‘turned on the water’ in California. State officials say that’s false.
“The military did not enter California,” said the state’s Department of Water Resources.
USA TODAY
0:28
1:05
California officials said late Monday that the U.S. military did not enter the state and release a large flow of water, as President Donald Trump had earlier claimed in the latest back-and-forth between Trump and the state over water resources.
Trump, who visited fire-ravaged parts of Los Angeles last week, wrote Monday night on Truth Social that “The United States Military just entered the Great State of California and, under Emergency Powers, TURNED ON THE WATER flowing abundantly from the Pacific Northwest, and beyond.”
“The days of putting a Fake Environmental Argument, over PEOPLE, are over,” he said. “Enjoy the water, California!!!”
The California Department of Water Resources soon shot back, saying “The military did not enter California.”
Instead, the agency said, the federal government “restarted federal water pumps after they were offline for maintenance for three days,” adding, “State water supplies in Southern California remain plentiful.”
The exchange comes after Trump toured areas scorched by the blazes on Friday and signed an executive order that tasked federal officials with delivering more water and other resources to Southern California, even if it means “overriding” state and local officials.
The executive order – Trump’s second related to California’s water system since taking office – tasks the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, a national agency, to deliver more water through the Central Valley Project, a network of dams, canals and other infrastructure.
In a section titled “Overriding Disastrous California Policies,” the order calls on the interior and commerce secretaries to “to override existing activities that unduly burden efforts to maximize water deliveries.” The order also directed the White House to see whether it could attach conditions on federal aid to California to ensure cooperation.
Last week, on his first day in office, the president signed an executive order directing federal agencies “to route more water” from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to other parts of the state – an effort to change the environmental protections of the smelt, a tiny fish on the Endangered Species List.
Trump has criticized the state for its handling of the recent wildfires, chiding officials after some fire hydrants ran dry in Los Angeles. California Gov. Gavin Newsom has repeatedly defended his state’s water system and hit back at Trump’s criticisms.
“Maybe the president doesn’t know that there’s not a spigot that can be turned to solve all the water problems that he alleges exist that don’t exist when it comes to the state water system here in California,” he told reporters last week before the president’s visit.
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Newsom met Trump upon his arrival in California on Friday and the two men, whose relationship has often been contentious, spoke with the media. Newsom said the state will need the president’s support in the recovery effort. “We’re going to get it done,” Trump responded.
The Palisades and Eaton fires broke out on Jan. 7 and have torched an area larger than the city of Miami, destroyed thousands of structures and killed at least 29 people. Firefighters have increased containment on both blazes and others in Los Angeles County and San Diego County as winds slowed and rain eased dry conditions.
Rosamond Press 
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