Black Sacrament

And on Trump's unwitting prophecy

As I’ve said countless times, some gods don’t care how things end, only that they do. And some gods certainly would like to see the end of capital and the world it’s trying to build, and Trump really seems like the ideal tool for them to make that happen. Amoral and so engorged on his own ego that he cannot imagine himself ever to be wrong, he’s the perfect sort to wage the kind of wars that would make “a whole civilization … die, never to be brought back again.”

It’s just not the civilization he was thinking of.

Yesterday, I was standing at the bus stop in my tiny village, waiting for my ride to the larger village where I do my grocery shopping and go to my gym, when I read the words that shook my soul.

You’ve read them too, I’m sure, or heard them quoted. They were from Trump’s social media ultimatum directed at Iran, “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”

My bus was late, as usual. I try not to look at my phone when I wait for the bus, I try instead to take in the sound of the stream across the street, the hum of tractors and lowing of cows on the dairy farm behind the bus stop. But I did, anyway.

I read the words and shook my head. Then, I put my phone in my backpack to make it more out of reach, and almost put the words themselves out of mind. But then, I found myself shuddering and soon laughing the sort of laughter which always erupts involuntarily whenever some present moment echos back to a previous dream.

I’ve written about that dream, quite a few times. A dead bard on a hill, standing next to me, looking out over a long valley to another hill upon which a small village stood. He showed me the life of that village, and then its apparent death, as time bent around us to show decades, centuries, and millennia sweep across that place. Another village sprung up in its ruins, larger, more vibrant, and then it, too, fell into ruin until its surviving descendants, generations later, again founded a village.

Time passed and the cycle continued. Building, thriving, collapsing, forgetting, and then trying again. Each time, the settlement was larger, and then larger still, until finally the hill was covered with the most glorious city you could imagine. Golden light reflected off every window from an unseen sun, illuminating the faces of the city’s countless inhabitants.

But then it, too, fell to ruin. I stood next to my strange companion, waiting for the next turn of the cycle and the even greater rebirth. I watched. I waited. And then I waited more, and then a deep sorrow shook me as the truth finally settled in me.

There would be no rebirth. No new city, nor town, nor even the smallest of hamlets. There was nothing left with which to rebuild.

“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”

You can’t read those words, having had such a dream, and not wonder at them. Trump certainly thought he was talking about Iran, though it wasn’t hard to notice something more true that he’d unwittingly said.