The Hungarian Election
The Trump administration has spent much time and energy in recent months desperately trying to prop up Viktor Orbán in Hungary, in yet another obvious self-revelation of the truth of what Trump likes to call “The Russia Hoax.” Hungary was occupied and decimated for decades by a brutal, expansionist Russian dictatorship which supported a series of Hungarian puppet regimes to oppress the people on its behalf. In the midst of the country’s post-Soviet rebirth as a free and independent nation, its independence came under assault once again, by what increasingly became a new, de facto puppet regime under the effective control of the latest iteration of Russian dictatorship — which, truth be told, is nothing but a more pragmatic and less ideologically masked version of the old Russian dictatorship, ruled by an officer trained in propaganda and foreign intrigue by that old dictatorship itself.
Incidentally, it may be noted that Orbán’s policies may at times have aligned with the priorities of North American Christians or fiscal conservatives. This on its face cannot be adduced as sufficient reason for supporting him against his legal and legitimate Hungarian electoral opponents, however, in light of the overriding fact (clearly Trump’s primary consideration in forming such a vocal and election-interfering alliance) that Orbán has openly positioned himself as pro-Putin and anti-Ukraine — and hence anti-NATO and anti-civilization — since Russia’s full invasion of that country in 2022.
And so, to state the matter plainly, the Trump administration, including not only the president himself but also, most publicly, his two top-ranking officials, vice president J. D. Vance and secretary of state Marco Rubio, have been spending time, energy, and America’s dwindling credibility over the past months, right up to the week of the Hungarian election, in a last-ditch effort to save, not merely or primarily prime minister Orbán, but rather, and quite undeniably, Vladimir Putin’s de facto control of Hungary’s policy towards the West. That is, the United States Federal Government was officially and unequivocally seeking to promote and deepen Putin’s latest poisoning mission, namely the poisoning of the European Union and, even more importantly to the Trump team, the poisoning of the NATO alliance, with an internal mole and anti-liberal-democratic vote, which is to say a consistent and reliable Putin veto and contrarian voice sitting right at the table with international bodies whose primary raison d’être has been to combat and resist the influence and aggression of Russian tyranny.
Trump, Vance, Rubio, and the whole treason racket they are running will have their day, and it will, I suspect, be a very long, hot day. Let us not become despondent then, but rather take the philosophic view, which is to enjoy the true freedom that comes of understanding, and which also, at times, is able to achieve that spiritual alchemy which only the philosophic perspective may provide, transforming tears of treachery and tyranny into tears of laughter, or at least an ironic smile.
The Place of the Damned
Jonathan Swift
All folks who pretend to religion and grace,
Allow there’s a HELL, but dispute of the place:
But, if HELL may by logical rules be defined
The place of the damned — I’ll tell you my mind.
Wherever the damned do chiefly abound,
Most certainly there is HELL to be found:
Damned poets, damned critics, damned blockheads, damned knaves,
Damned senators bribed, damned prostitute slaves;
Damned lawyers and judges, damned lords and damned squires;
Damned spies and informers, damned friends and damned liars;
Damned villains, corrupted in every station;
Damned time-serving priests all over the nation;
And into the bargain I’ll readily give you
Damned ignorant prelates, and counsellors privy.
Then let us no longer by parsons be flammed,
For we know by these marks the place of the damned:
And HELL to be sure is at Paris or Rome.
How happy for us that it is not at home!
