The demon, or man, or whatever he be.. you know, the irredeemably wicked sociopath that pollutes and blackens America’s White House… yea, that one recently referred to America and the American economy as “a giant, beautiful store” where “everybody [the international community] wants to go shopping.” Then, he added, “And on behalf of the American people, I own the store, and I set prices, and I’ll say if you want to shop here, this is what you have to pay.” 
 
As all authoritarian autocrats do, the man whose name I refuse to utter or right is treating America and the American economy as if it belongs to him; as if the American economy is his own personal business to do with as he wishes to enrich himself, his family, and his cronies. He acts as if he is the American economy. Indeed, he governs, if  the chaos he brings can be called “governing,” as if the entire world and world economy are his own personal business enterprise to manipulate however he sees fit (and why not, since, he has decreed according to his own twisted and mad logic, that he rules the world). 
 
And, of course, a dysfunctional, corrupt, and cowardly congress has done nothing to daunt his madness, thus aiding in his authoritarian kleptomania.
 
Now, never mind his incessant and shameless lies by which he has deceived tens of millions of willfully ignorant and idolatrous voters, convincing them that he is some kind of gifted businessman. Never mind that he didn’t earn his wealth, but had it handed to him on a golden platter. Never mind that in his own right he is a failed businessman, with multiple failed and bankrupt businesses—this, even though he has cheated in every way imaginable. 
 
None of that matters. It wouldn’t matter if he really was the messiah of business. The simple fact is, the American economy, let alone the world economy, does not belong to him. It is not his to do whatever enters his crazed head.
 
He has no moral or constitutional authority to unilaterally impose universal tariffs or to dictate the rules of national or international trade without congressional authorization and oversight. It is certain that the framers of the constitution never envisioned giving one, lone individual carte blanche authority to impose the sort of universal tariffs that the serial bankruptee is currently pursuing.
 
As to the constitutional authority to impose tariffs, that belongs to congress. Under certain conditions, congress may delegate limited and specific authority to the president. In the present circumstances and in regard to the current dictator want-a-be, no such congressional delegation has been sought or granted. I say that “no such congressional delegation has been granted.” But this is only true if one ignores the passive cowardice of the present congress in fulfilling its constitutional duty to exercise oversight in relation to tariffs and to act as a check and balance against the tyranny of the one. I guess the “inspired framers of the constitution” should have included an article that granted the president authority to unilaterally and universally impose tariffs when congress was too dysfunctional to do its duty or too timid and cowardly to resist the tyranny of one.
 
If the vile man’s constitutional authority to unilaterally impose universal tariffs is questionable, his moral authority to do so is even more so, especially when his tactics are so clearly coercive and satanic. This brings us to Revelation 13 and the mark of the beast.
 
Revelation 13 confronts the reader with two beasts. Here, as throughout the Book of Revelation, we are dealing with a highly imaginative, symbolic, and fluid world. We should be careful about rigidly separating and compartmentalizing the two beasts. They are of the same spirit. They are archetypes.
 
The two beasts, along with the dragon who is the power behind the throne, can be viewed as forming an “unholy trinity” that stands in opposition to the holy trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Like the holy trinity, this unholy trinity acts in concert, the motivations and actions of one being the motivations and actions of all three. The two beasts, then, like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, need not be seen as separate “individuals,” or as proceeding in some kind historical chronological order, but, rather, as an escalating spiral of wickedness.
 
Now, I have in the past, likened America’s sociopathic president to the first beast of Revelation 13. The two have much in common. Note that I “liken” the vile man to the apocalyptic beast. I do not say he is “the” beast. I do not believe that John the Revelator looked into the future and saw the man whose name I refuse to utter or write. But John did look into the future and see individuals who fit the beast’s character--it is possible that the beast was patterned after Nero, with whom there have been many leaders of similar perverted character.
 
Anyway, we are informed that “the dragon [The devil] gave him [the beast] his power, and his seat, and great authority.” In the case of America’s beastly president, I maintain that the man and his election is the work of evil, the evil of people and the evil of the devil. It is not God but “the dragon [that] gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority.” 
 
Like Revelation’s beast, America’s beastly president has both literally and figuratively received a “deadly wound” to the head and been “healed. 
 
Just as “all the world wondered after the beast,” the entire world lives in fascination of America’s sociopath-in-Chief, captivated by his every action and word as evidenced by every daily news feed and TV news program saturated with reports of his bottomless wickedness.
 
Just as many deemed the beast irresistible, “saying, ‘Who is like unto the beast? Who is able to make war with him?’” many fear to challenge America’s beastly president and his unprecedented wickedness. Here, we note especially but not exclusively the admitted fear of him that members of congress have displayed and verbally admitted to, and their unwillingness to challenge, check, or balance him in his satanic authoritarianism.
 
Just as many “worshipped the beast,” the man whose name I refuse to utter or write is worshipped by what can only be called a cult of personality. In doing so, his cult members not only honor and worship the beast, they “worship the dragon which gave power unto the beast.” 
 
Like Revelation’s beast, much of the fascination and worship that surrounds the man who blackens America’s White House stems from his own exaggerated and deceptive self-promotion, the dragon having “given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies.” Indeed, America’s sociopathic president is incapable of opening his mouth without lying.
 
 Now, with that in mind, we come to the character and actions of Revelation’s second beast and the tariffs of America’s beastly president. Speaking of the second beast, we read,
 
“And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: and that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.”
 
A few points. 
 
Although we may be inclined to read this in terms of individuals and their ability/ permission to “buy or sell,” we can also understand the buying and selling at the institutional and global level, buying and selling referring to the ability to engage in trade. Indeed, the more expansive understanding of the beast’s control over buying and selling, i.e. economy and international trade is far more likely.
 
What do we make of the mark? In revelation, the mark is a sign of approval, acceptance, and protected status. Even of ownership. In Revelation 7, 144,000 have a seal placed on the foreheads. This seal signifies their approved, accepted, and protected status with God. They are God’s people. Those so sealed/ marked are protected during the looming apocalyptic plagues.
 
The beast’s mark also signifies approval, acceptance, protected status, and ownership. This time those marked by the beast/ dragon receive approval and protection to buy and sell/ trade. They are given favored status.
 
Those who would buy and sell/ trade must meet with the beast’s approval and acceptance. If they do not do as he wishes and thus receive his protected/ favored status, they are not granted the right to buy and sell/ trade.
 
We should note, too, the coercive and authoritarian nature of this beast.
 
With these things in mind, we return to America’s beastly president and his shocking, authoritarian, and treasonous statement mentioned at the beginning of this post.
 
“But I am this giant store. It’s a giant, beautiful store, and everybody wants to go shopping there. And on behalf of the American people, I own the store, and I set prices, and I’ll say, if you want to shop here, this is what you have to pay.”
 
The current wicked and corrupt American administration’s unauthorized, unchecked, unbalanced, autocratic, and coercive tariffs and trade policies can be seen in light of the beast’s coercive control of the right to buy and sell. Seen in this light, the current trading policies and the accompanying tariffs are yet one more clue as to the inspiration and power that supports and sustains the most wicked man to ever hold public office in America.
 
Behold, then, the 47th president of the United States. Behold the beast, inspired and empowered by Lucifer, the seven headed dragon. Behold the beast, encouraged and empowered by a cowardly and sycophantic congress. Behold the beast, fed and empowered by his willfully ignorant acolytes. Behold the beast, emboldened and empowered by the abomination that is modern American Christianity.
 
Behold the beast that, if there is a God in heaven, will be thrust down to hell and suffer its eternal flames.
 
Even so, come, Lord Jesus!

While we know more about the character and personal life of Jeremiah than any other Hebrew prophet whose words are recorded in the Hebrew Bible, we cannot always be sure of the chronology of his words and actions as found in the Book that bears his name. So, we cannot be sure when exactly he decided to become mute and stop preaching.
 
“Then I said, ‘I will not make mention of him,
nor speak any more in his name.’”
 
We do not know how long his mutism lasted. But we do know that it came to an end.
 
“But his word was in mine heart as a burning fire
shut up in my bones
and I was weary with forbearing,
and I could not stay.”
 
I do not pretend to be a Jeremiah, but I can relate to his frustration with God and his passionate disgust at the behavior of his fellow citizens. I do not pretend to be a prophet, but am pained and angered by the stupefied and cowardly silence of those who claim to be prophets. As I have repeatedly written of them, in the face of the harms that the wealthy and powerful--including the beast that currently defiles America’s White House-- inflict today upon individuals and society, these modern prophets, like those of Jeremiah’s day, “heal my people’s brokenness inadequately.”
 
In the immediate aftermath of the horrific American election of 2024 when a wicked electorate coronated an irredeemably wicked sociopath as dictator, I announced that I would, like Jeremiah, go mute. I would stick my head in the sand, remain silent, and wait four years for the madness to pass--not out of fear of the beast before whose madness the whole world trembles (the same beast whose vile name I refuse to utter or write), but out of concern for my own physical and mental health. The demon sickens my stomach, frays my nerves and raises my blood pressure among other ills. It is physically exhausting and mentally taxing work to track and fight a dragon.
 
But, fight the dragon we must. Try as I might, I can’t quench the fire in my bones any more than could Jeremiah so many millennia ago.
 
I apologize to the present and future generations for my four-month silence. I can only remind them that I had for the previous eight years been passionately warning through the “foolishness of preaching” about the irredeemable wickedness of the man whose name I refuse to utter or write, and the danger he posed to all that is good and right and holy. As I have written, there are innumerable and irrefutable proofs that he is guilty of having broken nearly every single one of the Ten commandments (and, perhaps, every single one of them), that he does not possess a single virtue extolled by Paul and recommended in the LDS 13th Article of Faith, or possess a single fruit of God’s Holy Spirit. 
 
The misanthropic sociopath and liar extraordinaire possesses not one single virtue or even the tiniest piece of any single virtue. He is utterly devoid of goodness. He is, as I have called him before, a black whole. He possesses no light, no truth, no goodness, no virtue in himself and sucks light and truth and goodness and virtue out of everyone and everything that comes within his orbit.
 
So count me as back in the game, tracking and reporting on the rapacious beast that pollutes America with his bottomless wickedness, defiles all that is good and right with his irredeemable wickedness, and blasphemes all that is godly with his blasphemous lies.
 
Every day brings some new transgression of decency, some new breach of established norms. Nay, not “some new,” but many new transgressions and breaches. One hundred days has seen a deluge of many, many hundreds of them. Each one deserves the illumination of a huge spot light. We will see what we can do in the deluge. But, one indecent transgression over arches the rest and deserves special attention.
 
American Presidents don’t “rule.” They may govern, but they do not “rule.” They do not “rule” America, and they most certainly do not “rule” the world.  Indeed, not only does America reject one man “rule,” it rejects the idea of “ruling” entirely. Not only do individuals not “rule” in America, collections of individuals do not “rule” in America. “Ruling” is not the language of America, its constitution, or its institutions.
 
Yet, reflective of his Satan-like lust for power, this is precisely what the vile man who currently sits in the American White House, polluting it with his very presence, recently declared: “I rule America and I rule the world.”
 
This is not semantics: rule or govern, govern or rule. However ignorant and mad the most wicked man to ever hold public office in America might be, he doesn’t joke around. His choice of words is purposeful and reflective of his nature and intentions. He means what he says. He intends to be a ruler. He intends to be a dictator. He is certainly acting like one. And, unfortunately, like the ancient Roman Senate at the end of the republic and like Germany’s Reichstag of the 1930s, America’s House of Representatives and Senate are too cowardly or corrupt to fulfill the role assigned to them by the constitution to act as a check and balance against the antichrist’s maniacal power grab. And, as I have complained over and over again, those who want to be prophets are delinquently, unforgivably, and accountably mute in the face of his bottomless wickedness.
 
But each day the sociopath defiling America looks and acts more and more like that proverbial “iniquitous king” who “has his friends in iniquity, and keepeth his guards about him; and he teareth up the laws of those who have reigned… before him; and he trampleth under his feet the commandments of God; and he enacteth laws, and sendeth them forth among his people, yea, laws after the manner of his own wickedness; and whosoever doth not obey his laws he causeth to be destroyed.” 
 
He must not be allow to “rule.” Not here. Not anywhere. The budding dictatorship that he expands by the day must be stopped. Crushed. Destroyed. We have already witnessed enough of his wickedness to be sickened. We have witnessed “how much iniquity… one wicked king cause[s] to be committed.” Hopefully we will not, like those before us, have to find out how very, very difficult, often violent, it is to “dethrone an iniquitous king.”
 
Wake up, America, from your slumber; from the sleep of hell. Its time for its senators, its congressmen, and those who be be prophets to stand up and do their duty, a duty they owe to America, a duty they owe to the world, a duty they owe of God.
 
And to God, we say,
 
“LORD! How Long shall the wicked,
how long shall the wicked triumph?
 
Even so, come, Lord Jesus!