Trump has new 'commandments' for MAGA — and everyone else, too - The Wake Weekly

The Ten Commandments have been the moral and civic guide for the Western world for over 3,000 years. No longer, however. President Donald J. Trump has been to the mountaintop and has brought down his own super-modern code of conduct.

The commandment on loving God and remembering God’s consistently pro-equality work in the world, like leading Israel out of the furnace of oppression in Egypt, has been changed. Today, Americans are asked to love the modern authoritarian Pharaoh and honor his ever-changing arbitrary and capricious dictates.

The commandment on not making and worshipping molten, graven images and shunning the associated practice of golden calf-style aristocratic greed is now replaced by a proliferation of the image and name of the Dear Leader on coins, banners and buildings. Getting rich while in office is now a positive thing, too.

The commandment on not taking the honorable name of the Lord in vain has been ditched as well. For millennia, God’s name has been used as a legal witness to the swearing of oaths or making of commitments. Taking on God’s name helped ensure citizens and leaders would fulfill promises, contracts and political oaths. Today, however, this socioeconomic precept has been replaced by a license to frequently upset commitments and to flip-flop on major political promises, like moving from peace to war and from lower prices to higher prices.

The commandment related to working six days a week and keeping the seventh day as a holy Sabbath day of education, spirituality and restoration of working strength has been broadly altered. Health, education and welfare for the people has been replaced by a fully exploitative wealthy class that “does whatever the hell they wanna do” to everybody else, including on the Sabbath day, in order to keep the working class ignorant and exhausted.

The commandment on honoring maternal authority as well as paternal authority and thus honoring the authority of families and communities to make localized best-practice decisions has been replaced by the implementation of centralized, uniform political policy by force, along with a big dose of sexism and racism.

The commandment against killing has been replaced by murderous domestic repression in places like Minneapolis, military adventurism abroad in Venezuela and Iran and a ceasefire in Gaza characterized by the greenlighting of ongoing daily murders of civilian Muslims.

The commandment against marital adultery and by extension constitutional adultery, as the biblical Jeremiah interpreted the commandment, has been replaced by social and sexual exploitation and constitutional usurpation and backsliding.

The commandment against stealing has been replaced by legitimizing economic monopoly and egregious deregulation of banking allowing double- and triple-digit interest rate theft of the minimal discretionary wealth of the poor and middle classes.

The commandment against false witness and thus injustice has been replaced by arbitrary and politicized government “justice,” a captive judiciary, perjury, bribery and witness tampering.

The commandment against coveting the spouse and property of the neighbor, and thus overturning the social health and legal strength of the neighbor’s family, has been replaced. Today, authority has been given to a class of super-wealthy aristocrats to sexually assault neighbors and to covet and disappear things like ordinary people’s access to private health care and public health protections. They want these privileges and immunities for themselves but not for others. Their goal is to live in healthy comfort while everybody else lives in abject misery and unhealthy poverty in the grip of epidemics and lonely social, emotional, mental and physical unwellness.

Robert Kimball Shinkoskey is the author of books and editorials on the history of democracy, religion and the American presidency.