“The Emperor Has No Clothes” was a folktale published in 1837 by Hans Christian Anderson, a Danish author.
The plot begins with two swindlers in the capital city. These men pose as boastful weavers who offer to supply the emperor with magnificent robes invisible to those who are stupid or incompetent. The emperor hires them so the men set up their looms to begin their royal duty. A succession of officials, and even the emperor himself, check on their work, but each finds empty looms, but they all pretend otherwise to avoid being thought a fool.
Finally the weavers report that the emperor’s new regal robes are finished. They mime dressing him and he sets off in a proud and bogus procession in front of the entire city. The townsfolk go along with the pretense, not wanting to appear inept or stupid, that is until a child blurts out that the emperor is wearing nothing at all. The people then realize that everyone has been fooled. Although found naked and exposed. The emperor continues the procession, walking more proudly than ever.
Hans Christian Anderson did not tell us what happened to the trumped-up weavers, We can easily imagine imprisonment for fraud or sedition.
This story seems an accurate parable about Donald J. Trump and his parade of misfits in DC, huddling in their right-wing cabals throughout America to foment insurrection. In Trump’s case, the two swindlers are two attendant blocks of contrarians: “Christian” evangelicals and GOP officials and their titillating, prevaricating media feeds like FOX and Rush Limbaugh et al. Each of whom has willingly ignored, excused, and downplayed four full years of Trump’s deadly sins.
They all seem perfect candidates for the inner circles of Hell. They are Christs’ “brood of vipers.” These malcontents declared a sacred protest, but their ravenous whining was a murderous insurrection. The last time a mob stormed the Capitol was during the War of 1812 when the British invaded Washington. Trump’s army of treasonous traitors and thugs make up an ideological ecosystem of disinformation, extremism, rage, and bigotry.
The country will now suffer the long-term economic impacts of their vile behaviors and beliefs:
Numerous groups have stepped forward to condemn Trump and his COP conspirators, including: Businesses, Sports Associations, Colleges and Universities, the Hospitality Industry, Big Banks, Healthcare, Retailers and Payment Platforms, Science and Environmental Advocacy Societies, and many of our international partners and agencies.
The January riot left five people dead including one Capitol police officer. The anarchists even built a full-on gallows outside the Building with a hanging noose attached with the mob then trying to hunt down Nancy Pelosi and Mike Pence: “Give us Pelosi!!!”
More than 160 case files have been opened and 70 people are charged so far including two men bringing plastic restraints into the Capitol. The most iconic arrests included Jake Angeli, aka ‘Q Shaman.’ The man wearing a horned headdress. He was arrested and jailed and later made his first appearance in Arizona for charges related to the storming of the US. Capitol e.g., disorderly conduct and violent entry. His mother reported that her boy hasn’t eaten for days because the detention facility where he’s held in quarantine, won’t feed him organic food! What an unbelievably crybaby complaint! His real name is Jacob Anthony Chansley, aka Jake Angeli, self described as the ‘QAnon Shaman,’who views COVID-19 as a hoax. His mother whined, “He needs to eat.” So … this tough guy has turned chicken, and is not a protesting martyr for his lost cause. He’s just a silly Halloween spook.
I have worked for years in Latin America and elsewhere alongside male and female healers, learning from them about their deep knowledge about the natural and spiritual worlds. I found the theft of the word, “shaman,” by this fake cartoon goon deeply offensive and stupid, as I found the marauders who carried Confederate flags and who sprawled their filth throughout those sacred hallways.
I am proudly a 10th generation Virginian whose ancestors migrated to America to escape religious persecution and who then fought and died valiantly on both sides of America’s Civil War, and, yes, some sadly forced their slaves to work their fields and build their homes. Still, I viewed these Capitol flag-flappers as despicable traitors for their displaying THAT flag in these chambers of freedom and liberty. These DC vandals who marched murderously against liberty all need to grow up and seek psychiatric counseling to heal their 150-year-old festering wounds and delusions.
Now that Trump’s been impeached a second time, and the Nation is just days away from the inauguration of the 46th President: Joe Biden, the question that weighs on our hearts and haunts our minds is a simple one: “What now in the fading days of Trump’s reign?
Of course he’s called belatedly for law and order during the transition (recognizing his grotesque accountability for his incitement of insurrection and other criminal offenses during the four dark years full of failed promises, Thus his call for order seems a vacuous response by a diminishing and a radioactive monarch. Now that the enchantment has been vanquished. It’s time for us all to proclaim the Tyrant unclothed and get back to the business of stewardship of the poor and downtrodden throughout our great Nation.
I’d like to close my article with two apropos quotes from our Nation’s Founding Fathers: to help guide our national and individual healing:
- Lincoln: “America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.” Let us remember that our national documents: the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Bill of Rights far exceed the meager value of empty religious creeds and contrived political allegiances and their principles and values will help us to ward off all threatening tyrants and swindlers.
- Jefferson: “Eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty.”
Let us remain vigilant in our resistance to the world’s Trump’s and McCarthy’s who will never disavow their hunger for America’s freedoms. Let us always cast them aside as we once did that crazed monarch, George the Third: ‘Sic Semper Tyrannis.’ ”Thus always to Tyrants.”
H. Bruce Rinker, Ph.D. is an Ecologist, Educator, and an Explorer who resides in Staunton, Virginia, and he’s the author of A Pearl in the Brain: The Cancer Journey of A Scientist in His Search for the Seat of the Soul.
