If you had truly loved your neighbor, it would’ve occurred to you long ago to divest yourself of this wealth. But now your possessions are more a part of you than the members of your own body, and separation from them is as painful as the amputation of one of your limbs. - St. Basil, Homilies

I don’t know how to write about the Trump regime. I feel anger and fear, not poetry.

Caesars corrode the soul. The idolaters in power bleed the state and sell it for parts, synthesizing CEO and president. To do so, they degrade not only mechanisms that resist their power but also the moral core of social life. The reactionaries foment an epistemic atmosphere that swallows knowledge and expels ignorance, simultaneously collapsing social bonds and flattening our self-image. The energeia of capital is M-C-M’, the constant and accelerating Time-Machine that extracts surplus value from the activity of life. Those caught in the flow of capital come to reflect this energeia, the soul being partitioned, quantified, described, and sold for parts — M-C-M’ as identity. The world that this flow produces is progressively hollowed out, idolatrous, and necrotic. If there are demons, they reside in capital accumulation.

I fucking hate this. Why does my writing sound like that? What am I even talking about? M-C-M’ blah blah blah fuck off. I hate being a fucking political signifier, worse, an ever-present yet erased political signifier — trans people must now both exist to play the enemy and not exist as a principle of policy. Fuck off.

Capital has decreed: liberal democracy has ended, techno-feudalism approaches. Socialism or barbarism, and the tech bros clap: barbarism. Their goal is not only to block the information flow that sustains democracy, but to direct our attention towards apathy, resentment, and rage. When you’re privatizing the American government, it’s important to be able to conjure enemies at will. The question resistive forces face is how to re-direct that attention away from capital accumulation and the social factory and toward a republic of the commons. We must be able to reveal the utopian potential of the human species-life and re-organize our togetherings into a force of anti-power — the distribution of power into a horizontal and flexible network that is able to challenge Leviathan. Mutual aid, black bloc, the Party. Forget the restricted image of what you think these are and think of them as creative patterns: (1) Mutual Aid: a common holding of resources able to re-distribute them throughout the community, (2) Black Bloc: horizontal and flexible strategies of community defense and solidarity, (3) the Party: cadres dedicated to building dual power in the heart of the community.

I’m so fucking tired of politics. Let us rest. Let us live. What do you even want from us? Spoiled little brats playing with toy rockets, vampirically sucking out the life force of the world they live in. There’s no genius there, just ill-used wealth. Musk is an 8Chan troll, Zuckerberg is a manosphere weirdo, Bezos is a lecherous incel. Oh, look at me, I’m so big and strong with my shitty fucking websites and cars that explode. Are you proud of me, daddy? While our communities suffer, these bawling little baby men get to determine our public policy. Meritocracy my ass.

Reaction is idolatry. Tempted by the Adversary, they cloak themselves in the mirrored image of the Begotten One, turning sibling against sibling and neighbor against neighbor for the sake of Caesar rather than the Kindom. Rendering unto Caesar what is his, they claim the whole cosmos for Rome. Don’t mince words: there is no god but God; there is no king but Christ. No gods, no masters, no priests, no popes. In the desert, ha-Satan offers fire and majesty and the capital-poisoned elite bow. Meanwhile, the Begotten One refused power, instead incarnating the creating-begetting-proceeding that grounds creation. This is the vision of the beatitudes,the revelation of the Ghost loosed upon the world. Christ is executed, liberates Tartarus, is resurrected into glory, and sends the Ghost out into the midst of the ekklesia. The One who wears the crown of God humbles herself to the oppressed and washes their feet, becoming in body and blood the bread and wine by which we feed one another.

Are liberals even going to do anything? These Democrat dorks are all licking boots, shining Trump’s shoes for him. At least the tech dweebs are under no illusions about their interests. The Democrats are jumping ship and suckling on whatever morsels of power Trump allows them. Oh, please, sir, may I have some more? You were crying fascism the whole election while you Weekend at Bernie’d Biden’s skeleton. And then when it arrived you started groveling. We are the world, kumbaya, imagine no heaven, may I just have a little treat, sir? Just a taste of influence? A smidgen? I promise to be good. Spit in their face, useless ass politicians.

Sin emerges from idolatry, separating our souls from the Holy One. Idolatry is taking something as a substitution for God and creation and imbuing it with power. In the myth of Adam and Eve, the original humans are tempted into idol worship by the Serpent, who through the fruit of the garden makes them ashamed of their nakedness, interjecting good and evil into the relationship between human and divine. It is this false knowledge that separates them from Eden, the flaming Cherubim a sign of their alienation. In imagining part of creation as good and another as evil, they create the first form, becoming Demiurges. No longer is the good-itself whole and complete, identical with creation, but is a fragment of the world separated off and made transcendent, taking for itself the power of God. This is the source of capital; commodity fetishism is idolatry and it leads only to one place: hell.

I’m just sad. And scared. And angry. I want to live my life in peace and quiet. I don’t want to be a political symbol, a topic of partisan chess-playing. Just let me and my family and friends be. Just let everyone be. Our elites are tiny boymen who play with katanas and dream about being the king of Mars, why should we listen to any of them? They made Trump emperor, a husk of a human filled with nothing but excess ego and old rich grandpa rage. The bourgeoisie are filled with nuclear dust, fragile yet dangerous. Actually, they don’t deserve metaphors. Fuck them. Just leave us alone. Just leave me alone. I’m not your fucking game. None of us are.

Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so. Little Ones to Her belong. We are weak but She is strong.

God grant me strength. God grant me safety. God grant me wisdom. Please, protect us and guide us. Please, we need your help. I need you. Please, God hear me. Please.

Blessed are the poor in spirit,
  for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn,
  for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek,
  for they will inherit the Earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
  for they will be satisfied.
Blessed are the merciful,
  for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart,
  for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers,
  for they will be called the Sons of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
  for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.
Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me.
Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you...

- Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew 5.3-12

Image: Adam and Eve Expelled from Paradise by Marc Chagall (1961)