Deadline Poet / July 2, 2024

Metaphorical Advice to Those Who Want to Be Donald Trump’s Running Mate

Calvin Trillin

Since fawning is his principal demand,
Your strategy is easy to deduce.
Just pucker up your lips and move
Directly toward that Trumpian caboose.

Calvin Trillin

Calvin Trillin is The Nation’s “deadline poet.”

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if you simply find it logically incoherent and morally repugnant that a supposedly all-powerful Supreme Being was *unable* to lift a curse that he himself had put onto humanity for the crime of merely being born (“of Adam”), that something *compelled* this supposedly all-powerful being to indulge in the gory sadomasochistic orgy on Golgotha, where he “sacrificed” (temporarily) the life of his Son/himself, supposedly to “redeem” humanity, but that the supposedly all-loving God would still consign the vast majority of the eternal souls he created to infinite torment. What a sick notion it is, the idea of “redemption” from vicarious suffering, and even the idea that suffering “atones” for anything. How does anyone’s suffering, let alone their dying, “pay off” anything someone else supposedly owes? Who collects what from that? I guess a sicko who delights in inflicting pain might have an orgasm.

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