-by Frank Macdonald
As a young Catholic, I became fairly well versed in the Crusades. It seemed England’s heroes were always returning from the Holy Land only to discover that their own kingdoms had been taken over by evil brothers and cousins who plotted the death of the heir apparent.
As young students, we didn’t get a really strong sense of about the purposes of the Crusades themselves beyond some Biblical need to slay the Infidels and defend the Holy Land. That defence also seemed to include the careful gathering up of treasures such as gem-encrusted golden goblets and other Godly artifacts. The purpose of these holy plunders was to ensure that the forces for good, the Knights Templar, for example, would bring them back to England and other havens of European safety where they would be protected from the deadly sin of Greed.
The Crusaders were idols we were encouraged to look up to, even greater than Rocket Richard. They were pure of purpose because they only slaughtered Infidels.
Through later years, we learned a lot more about the Crusades, not very flattering versions of most of them. I know that somewhere in my youth I gave up my vocation to become a Crusader. Instead, in high school, there were new warriors to emulate. They were those fortunate Americans who were winning lotteries for the opportunity to go to Vietnam and kill Communists.
I can recall in 1964, a homework assignment to our class requiring us to write a 500-word essay “defending the American position in Vietnam.” I was able to rattle that off in an hour or so between commercials and envied those fortunate Americans their lottery win.
My father was a middle-aged man at the time, ancient, but it was through him that he gently weaned me away from country songs of that good war going on over there, introducing me instead to Joni Mitchell, Buffy Saint Marie, a young man named Young, and even Country Joe & the Fish.
Overall, it was a successful corruption of a son by a father. He didn’t throw me out of the house to spend time mixing with other young people, even hippies, but he did buy me the backpack I began wearing as I hitched around, meeting people who made me like myself more than any war ever would.
This was all a long time ago, of course, although the CD player often gets caught playing all that Young company from a generation or two ago.
These long ago remembrances are resurfacing now, but not as an old man’s nostalgia. They come to the surface as Donald Trump, unworthily referred to down there as “president,” and Pete Hegseth, self-baptized as Secretary of War, have begun their own crusade in the Middle East. Hegseth has told soldiers during something resembling a rapture gathering that Jesus has told him He wants blood on the war minister’s hands. Hegseth would probably have preferred that Jesus told him He wanted to see Democrats’ blood on his hands, but he gotta go with what the Good Lord ordered.
While Hegseth is dispatching America’s youngsters into a war that will be as endless as the Hatfields and McCoys, Donald Trump is focussing his Holy War elsewhere. On Pope Leo in the Vatican.
That confrontation is a clash of IQs separated by about 125 points, but that’s never stopped Trump before. He’s not afraid to put his double digits to work where money is to be made, and the Vatican is arguably one of the wealthiest cities on the planet. The fact that it isn’t interested in hoisting a Trump Hotel beside St. Peter’s Basilica doesn’t settle well with the Trump clan.
The two Americans have been sparring for a while now.
Well, Trump has been sparring. Pope Leo, I suspect, has been trying to preform an exorcism in an effort to save his birth nation (and maybe hang onto his citizenship?).
So now Trump is fighting a Holy War on two fronts, Islam and the Catholic Church.
At 3:00 a.m. in his gold-plated Oval Office, where Trump eats Big Macs between tweets, he gives thought to all he has to lose, should he lose these holy wars, and should he need to leave the White House in handcuffs once his term in office has expired.
He can’t help counting all those Bitcoin billions that will be his if he can begin to market his own bible, one that he is not afraid to touch as he was when taking the oath of office during the inauguration. During that ceremony, his hand hovered over, but wisely refused to risk being placed on the Bible itself. He now has issued a bible of his own, selling it at a hefty price to his own followers.
But as he engages the United States in his unholy wars, he spends his nights counting the profits of selling his bible to both a converted Islam and 1.4 billion Catholics!
It’s enough to make him want to grab the first woman he sees by the…
But you might need to read his bible to get the full impact of this new commandment.