{"id":79885,"date":"2025-01-30T08:07:14","date_gmt":"2025-01-30T08:07:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=79885"},"modified":"2025-01-30T09:10:14","modified_gmt":"2025-01-30T09:10:14","slug":"is-trump-taking-us-on-a-descent-into-hell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2025\/01\/30\/is-trump-taking-us-on-a-descent-into-hell\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Trump taking us on a descent into hell?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Until I was a teenager, my parents demanded that I attend Church of England services each Sunday. As a consequence, I ended up learning by heart what is called the Apostles\u2019 Creed. In that, there is a statement which says that Jesus \u201cdescended into hell\u201c. I often wondered what this meant, but I never asked, and I do not recall anyone offering an explanation.<\/p>\n

I have, however, recalled those words too often for comfort since Trump got into the White House. It seems to me that he is intent on taking the USA, and the world behind it, on a descent into hell.<\/p>\n

Some may not like me using those words in this context, but if, like me, you think that the words of the Lord\u2019s Prayer, which I also learned by heart and which suggest that the Kingdom God should be present here on earth as well as in heaven, then it seems to me that consideration of what hell on earth might mean is entirely fair.<\/p>\n

If releasing emotional terror is not part of a descent into hell, then I am not sure what is.<\/p>\n

If trying to dismantle the structure of a society without seeking to put any form of order in its place is not, once more, a descent into hell, then again, I do not know what is.<\/p>\n

If the process of issuing intimidation, threats, and aggression from what has been thought of as the single global superpower is, again, not a descent into hell, then what might it be?<\/p>\n

Saying this, I am, of course, aware that in the Apostles\u2019s Creed, the idea that follows from the descent into hell was that Jesus rose again on the third day. I presume that the MAGA in the USA think that this is what will happen after Trump has released his terror. I really do not think that any sane person could possibly agree. Trump intends to create chaos, and there is no plan for anything else. That is why I think my argument is most especially justified.<\/p>\n

We are most certainly descending. Hell might be the destination.<\/p>\n

\n

An afterthought.<\/p>\n

I wrote (or, rather, dictated) the above during a walk yesterday, not knowing if I would use it or not. I do this sometimes to work out my own thinking.<\/p>\n

Then, last night, I read Aurelien's latest Substack<\/a>, which included this observation:<\/p>\n

For all that the Allies had long considered themselves to be fighting absolute Evil, it was still a shock to realise that for the Nazi regime the lives of non-Aryans were simply worth nothing<\/em>: they were consumables, worked to death if they could work, summarily killed if they could not, or just left to die of cold and starvation as millions of Soviet prisoners of war were. This realisation, together with accounts of the almost-unbelievably sick barbarity of the War in the Balkans, Poland and elsewhere, was an existential shock to a continent, and to an elite, which had considered itself civilised.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There is not a direct comparison with Trump, but the last line hit me strongly. Maybe I have been naive. Maybe I have been guilty of thinking that evil on the scale that Trump is delivering just could not happen.<\/p>\n

I assumed the existence of empathy when there is none.<\/p>\n

I presumed those seeking political office care when those around Trump clearly do not.<\/p>\n

I did not believe that hate of the order that he obviously suffers from could so readily inform policy.<\/p>\n

I assume he was civilised, and clearly, he is not.<\/p>\n

I have to rethink, to consider what I thought unthinkable. But maybe that is what is necessary to understand what we are up against, and to find the way to solutions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Until I was a teenager, my parents demanded that I attend Church of England services each Sunday. As a consequence, I ended up learning by
 Read the full article…<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[215,14,204,16,106,75],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-age-of-aggression","category-corruption","category-economic-justice","category-ethics","category-politics","category-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79885"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79885\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79904,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79885\/revisions\/79904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}