This Fifth of November

 

Today is the Fifth of November, which means that it is Guy Fawkes Day, the day to remember the nefarious Gunpowder Plot of 1605, in which seditious recusants conspired to blow up King James I (VI of Scotland) as he opened the next session of Parliament with a speech from the throne in the House of Lords.  The plot was foiled when Guy Fawkes was discovered guarding the gunpowder, King James went on to reign for another twenty years in which with his authorization an English translation of the Bible that has never been surpassed was produced, and ever since effigies of Fawkes have been made and burned on the bonfires celebrating the defeat of the plot.

 

It is also the Tuesday after the first Monday in November.  Which means that our small-r republican neighbours to the south will be deciding today whether they want a big-R Republican or a big-D Democrat for their next president.  George Wallace used to say that there is not a dime’s worth of difference between the two.  If that is still true today, there doesn’t seem to be many Americans who think so because their country is more polarized today than at any point since the election of their first big-R Republican president sparked the powder keg that blew up into the internecine war that remains to this day the bloodiest in their history.

 

I don’t really have a dog in this fight.  For one thing, I am a Canadian not an American.  For another, I don’t believe in elected heads of state.  I am of the firm conviction that earthly governments should represent the government of the universe in Heaven which is headed by the King of Kings.  All republics, democracies, and presidents are therefore illegitimate in my opinion.   

 

If someone were to ask me which of the two candidates I like better as an individual person and which of the two has, in my opinion, the better ideas and policies, my answer to both questions would be Donald the Orange.  There is not really any contest there.  The Democratic candidate, currently J. Brandon Magoo’s vice-president, belongs to the category of politician that I despise the most.  Lest you think that to be a comment on her sex or skin colour, I will add that our own much loathed prime minister, Captain Airhead, who is white, at least on the rare occasion when he is not wearing blackface, and male, or so I am told, belongs to the same category.  That is the category of empty-headed, arrogant, jackasses who like to boast about how much more compassionate and caring they and their sycophants are than everybody else while doing their worst to screw the largest number of people over, who are endlessly apologizing for the sins of those who have gone before them while never acknowledging any wrongdoing on their own part, and who attach themselves to every radical fad manufactured by academia or the mass media, no matter how inane.  Liberals.  Progressives.  Leftists.  I can’t stomach any of them, and to be clear that this is not a partisan matter, even though the party Captain Airhead leads is entitled “Liberal,” I am referring to small-l liberals who can be found in every party.  While Donald the Orange is a liberal too, his liberalism is the liberalism of fifty years ago, and liberalism has been getting consistently and progressively worse each generation ever since the start of the Modern Age.

 

I am not going to venture a predication as to the outcome.  Under ordinary circumstances I would say we will know the results tomorrow.  The precedent of the last American presidential election, however, advises against saying any such thing.

 

God Save the King.