Trump, The Wannabe King, Is Usurping America’s Congressional Powers
By Robert Kimball Shinkoskey Photos: Wikimedia Commons People who lived a couple thousand years ago were not as backward as we think. They didn’t have modern day high-tech, but they had the best low-tech the planet has ever offered: republican government in place of materialistic kingship. The precious metal “molten” sculptures made by ancient tyrants and kings and kept in their palaces reminded the people of their liberties lost. Israel’s prophets complained loudly about the idols made by Aaron, Jeroboam, and Micah. In neighboring cultures like Greece, the people’s humanitarian teachers and leaders railed against the molten bull cast by the tyrant Phalaris of Acragas. Alexander of Pherae expropriated the production of precious metal mines for himself, minted coins to pay his mercenary soldiers, and paid bribes to stay in power. The dictator Antiochus Epiphanes IV put an image of his own head on the front of a coin, and one of the god Zeus on the back of it. In Rome, the emperor Caligula had this message emblazoned on a sculpture: “Gaius Julius . . . High Priest and Absolute Ruler . . . the shared Savior of human life.” In Egypt, idolatry was carried to ridiculous lengths. Divine Pharaohs were buried in pyramids that took decades to build and impoverished people like the poor, lowly twelve tribes of Israel who were forced to make bricks for Pharaoh. All of this was not lost on the American founders who groaned under the oppressions of King George III in colonial America. They deplored the great concentration of wealth invested in the King and his palaces and in his aristocratic buddies in the Parliament. American revolutionary pamphleteers understood politics the way ancient Israelite republicans did. John Leacock, for example, wrote, “Cast off the idol god! Kings are but vain. Let justice rule and independence reign.” The Israelite idea that people should worship the law rather than rulers was expressed by John Adams: “In Republican Governments the Majesty is all in the Laws. They only are to be adored.” Benjamin Rush viewed worship of kings in Britain in stark terms. He saw Britons as “animals in the shape of men cringing at the feet of an animal called a king.” Richard Henry Lee wrote, “North America is not fallen nor likely to fall down before the images that the king has set up.” Samuel West wrote, “The worst princes have been most flattered and adored . . . This idolatrous reverence has ever been the inseparable concomitant of arbitrary power, and tyrannical government.” These revolutionary era writers clearly understood ancient Israel’s political character. Samuel Cooper wrote, “The Hebrew nation . . . a free republic . . . consisted of three parts: a chief magistrate who was called judge or leader . . . a council of seventy . . . and the general assemblies of the people.” Peter Whitney wrote, “Kingly government is not agreeable to the divine will . . . (Israel) was a kind of republic . . . (it disapproved of) the idolatrous homage which is paid to the persons of kings.” Contrast all this condemnation of luxury concentrated in the hands of a single ruler with the policies and lifestyle of our 47th President. President Trump has usurped virtually all of the constitutional powers of Congress (law-making; revenue-raising; budgeting; appropriations; government reorganization; war-making; and the treaty power). He has turned the White House into a gold-gilt palace. He has placed his image on coins and paper money. He has given cultural and historical landmarks his own name. He is building or proposing huge and luxury-loaded new landmarks like the Arc de Trump. He is renovating his personal palace with a billion-dollar renovation of the East Wing and has refurbished the famous Reflecting Pool on the National Mall. He has accepted gifts from foreign kings like a half-billion-dollar jet from the King of Qatar. He has turned the nation’s classless society into a two-class society featuring at the top a new aristocratic oligarchy of billionaires and centi-millionaires. Everybody must serve their interests rather than the other way around. He has promoted America’s own golden-calf style economic system featuring rampant monopoly in the economy, the piling up of luxury estates by a budding aristocratic class, and interest rate gouging of poor and middle-class people. He has announced America’s Golden Age (of Monarchy). He has instituted in law the medieval legal basis of hereditary monarchy—“The King can do no wrong”—by making himself immune from prosecution for criminal conduct. Robert Kimball Shinkoskey is the author of books and editorials on democracy, religion, and the American presidency.
Black News 
By Robert Kimball Shinkoskey
Photos: Wikimedia Commons
People who lived a couple thousand years ago were not as backward as we think. They didn’t have modern day high-tech, but they had the best low-tech the planet has ever offered: republican government in place of materialistic kingship.
The precious metal “molten” sculptures made by ancient tyrants and kings and kept in their palaces reminded the people of their liberties lost. Israel’s prophets complained loudly about the idols made by Aaron, Jeroboam, and Micah.
In neighboring cultures like Greece, the people’s humanitarian teachers and leaders railed against the molten bull cast by the tyrant Phalaris of Acragas. Alexander of Pherae expropriated the production of precious metal mines for himself, minted coins to pay his mercenary soldiers, and paid bribes to stay in power. The dictator Antiochus Epiphanes IV put an image of his own head on the front of a coin, and one of the god Zeus on the back of it.
In Rome, the emperor Caligula had this message emblazoned on a sculpture: “Gaius Julius . . . High Priest and Absolute Ruler . . . the shared Savior of human life.”
In Egypt, idolatry was carried to ridiculous lengths. Divine Pharaohs were buried in pyramids that took decades to build and impoverished people like the poor, lowly twelve tribes of Israel who were forced to make bricks for Pharaoh.
All of this was not lost on the American founders who groaned under the oppressions of King George III in colonial America. They deplored the great concentration of wealth invested in the King and his palaces and in his aristocratic buddies in the Parliament. American revolutionary pamphleteers understood politics the way ancient Israelite republicans did.
John Leacock, for example, wrote, “Cast off the idol god! Kings are but vain. Let justice rule and independence reign.” The Israelite idea that people should worship the law rather than rulers was expressed by John Adams: “In Republican Governments the Majesty is all in the Laws. They only are to be adored.” Benjamin Rush viewed worship of kings in Britain in stark terms. He saw Britons as “animals in the shape of men cringing at the feet of an animal called a king.”
Richard Henry Lee wrote, “North America is not fallen nor likely to fall down before the images that the king has set up.” Samuel West wrote, “The worst princes have been most flattered and adored . . . This idolatrous reverence has ever been the inseparable concomitant of arbitrary power, and tyrannical government.”
These revolutionary era writers clearly understood ancient Israel’s political character. Samuel Cooper wrote, “The Hebrew nation . . . a free republic . . . consisted of three parts: a chief magistrate who was called judge or leader . . . a council of seventy . . . and the general assemblies of the people.” Peter Whitney wrote, “Kingly government is not agreeable to the divine will . . . (Israel) was a kind of republic . . . (it disapproved of) the idolatrous homage which is paid to the persons of kings.”
Contrast all this condemnation of luxury concentrated in the hands of a single ruler with the policies and lifestyle of our 47th President. President Trump has usurped virtually all of the constitutional powers of Congress (law-making; revenue-raising; budgeting; appropriations; government reorganization; war-making; and the treaty power). He has turned the White House into a gold-gilt palace. He has placed his image on coins and paper money. He has given cultural and historical landmarks his own name. He is building or proposing huge and luxury-loaded new landmarks like the Arc de Trump. He is renovating his personal palace with a billion-dollar renovation of the East Wing and has refurbished the famous Reflecting Pool on the National Mall. He has accepted gifts from foreign kings like a half-billion-dollar jet from the King of Qatar.
He has turned the nation’s classless society into a two-class society featuring at the top a new aristocratic oligarchy of billionaires and centi-millionaires. Everybody must serve their interests rather than the other way around. He has promoted America’s own golden-calf style economic system featuring rampant monopoly in the economy, the piling up of luxury estates by a budding aristocratic class, and interest rate gouging of poor and middle-class people. He has announced America’s Golden Age (of Monarchy). He has instituted in law the medieval legal basis of hereditary monarchy—“The King can do no wrong”—by making himself immune from prosecution for criminal conduct.
Robert Kimball Shinkoskey is the author of books and editorials on democracy, religion, and the American presidency.
