The Reckoning

Dike and Nemesis, by Pierre-Paul Prud’hon

“But let’s be clear what happens to you and your family when old ghosts in new garments seize power, [who] come for the freedoms you thought belonged to you . . .” — Remarks by President Biden to the Morehouse College Class of 2024

Oh, we and our families get it, Mr. President, starting with our recognition that your speechwriters’ characterizations of “MAGA Republicans” as racist fascists led by a new Grand Wizard are, in fact, chiaroscuro projections of themselves. And of you.

Can it be, Mr. President, that in your long life no one has stood before you, as Nathan stood before David, to proclaim that “You are the man”? That you are that man — the “old ghost” of Marxists past, wearing a new-spun garment made from that synthetic fabric known as DEI, the material so flattering that it allows Antifa, BLM, transsexual and Pro-Hamas thugs to view themselves in the mirror as saints, and that transforms globalist Titans into saviors of the world?

Of course, it would be equally true to point out that you are also that man in Prud’hon’s painting above, making off with a stolen garment, like David’s stolen wife, and with it another man’s life and identity. When your new garment endears you with one audience but not with another, it’s always good to be able to slip into something more traditional and familiar, as you did at Morehouse College in wearing the mantle of a Martin Luther King Era champion of Civil Rights, ill-fitting as that garment might be.

We get it, Mr. President, you’re a serial plagiarist who can steal anything from anyone. Something old, something new — whatever works in the moment, and whatever helps line your pockets and consolidate your power.

And if you are the man in this painting, we’re the guy on the ground, whom neither the police nor the courts are any longer able or willing to protect, from whom you and your cartel have stolen everything from elections to our urban parks and playgrounds, which you are filling up with every manner of human filth.

“Let’s be clear,” you say? By all means. It’s time to take off those “aviator” sunglasses and raise your eyes, Mr. President. Somewhere on “a street called Straight,” an Ananias could be waiting for you, to remove the scales from those eyes.

And what you might see then, as in this painting, is that she is coming for you — that winged, dark-faced goddess from whom there is no escape. Who carries a measuring rod (or tally stick) and scales, and wields a whip or a sword by which to mete out what is due, in proportion to what is deserved.

She is Nemesis, and it is she who bends the long arc of the Universe toward justice. Implacable justice.

And, lest you think she is confined to Greek mythology, it is she who, with the disembodied hand of a man, wrote the writing on the wall beheld by Belshazzar in the Book of Daniel — You have been tried in the balance and found wanting.

She is universal, Mr. President, sensed by every soul across the spectrum of humankind, who for whatever reason fears a reckoning.

Surely your Catholic Faith, Mr. President, with its notion of mortal sin, has alerted you to her presence.

Surely you have heard phrases like “poetic justice” and expressions like “What goes around comes around.” Surely you know what they mean.

But perhaps you don’t. You pretend not to know what Donald Trump meant when he used the term blood bath. “What the hell is that about?!” you shout, doing your demagogic best to inspire fears of a Reign of Terror should Trump prevail. Never mind that he was speaking metaphorically of an economic downturn following your kleptocratic and foolish policies. Never mind that when he said he would be a dictator, but only on Day One, he was parodying your own conduct on your first day in office.

You pretend also that the judgment of the Supreme Court doesn’t apply to your effort to buy votes by dismissing student debt with taxpayer dollars. What the hell do they know, these servants of Lady Justice, who like Nemesis holds a balance and a sword? They say I can’t do it, but I’m going to find a way to do it. To hell with The Take Care Clause. I did away with the Nation’s borders, and no one did squat about it.

But she is not no one, and she’s coming, Mr. President. With winged haste and fury. You may be near death, but do not think that Death can cheat her.

“The prayers of a righteous man availeth much,” you said to the Morehouse graduates. Are you that man? Who will say so? Who will testify to your “fundamental decency,” that you have found so lacking in your political opponent that you have unleashed every weapon in your Justice Department in an effort to imprison or at least impugn him?

When your hands are clutching your Rosary, beseeching the Mother of God to pray for you in the hour of your death, will she be hearing the voice of a righteous man? Or that of just one more of us who continue to crucify Her Son?

Do you beseech that son — O My Jesus, forgive us our sins, Save us from the fires of hell —while simultaneously flogging his Evangelical and Rad-Trad Catholic followers as “domestic terrorists” and “MAGA extremists”? And while incongruously making the Sign of the Cross in bizarre contexts and settings, as at pro-abortion rallies?

You have become a Clown Catholic. And a Cartoon President.

What good have you done for anyone? How will this end well?

It can’t. It won’t.