"If we are going to have one nation under God, which we must, we have to have one religion…One nation under God, and one religion under God."
General Michael Flynn at ReAwaken America, San Antonio, Texas, November 13, 2021
It’s one more of Gen. Mike Flynn’s rampages—
His epaulettes shake with his rages!
The case of his fury,
His judge, cop and jury?
We sing from our own hymnal pages.
“We all should profess the same creed”
Saith the Generalissimo, teed.
Or, faith we shall flunk,
Like a thick-headed monk,
And our heresy have to concede
To Mike, we all stand under God
A stance that Old Ben would find odd
“Why I stand, by and by,
Neath a cerulean sky.
Tho lecherous Zeus gets a nod!”
But Mike, no deep student of his’try
He tend to gloss over it’s tristery,
He skips over the parts
That make decent folk start:
Fraud, genocide, slaves are a mystery.
The Founders, to Mike were anointed
By angels, not men were appointed
Their heartfelt aversion
To their fellows’ conversion
Would leave Flynnsey sore disappointed
For Tom, George and Ben well remembered
How sectarian strife left dismembered,
and burnt, hanged and racked
Those with courage to act
On consciences frank and well-tempered.
When launching their own country’s ship
To credos they all gave the slip
“Don’t look here to perch
An all-encompassing Church.
The Establishment Clause do not skip!”
For women and men love no cause
As one veiled in doctrinal gauze.
They’ll fight to the grave —
Yours, that is, bloody knave! —
To win their own Godhead’s applause.
Dear Michael would do well to study
The wars that turned Europe’s soil ruddy.
‘Twas Christian folks all
That occasioned the fall
of their neighbors and left their hands bloody.
If Jesus was Lord of this land
With Muslims, Jews, Buddhists all banned
Would Cath’lics or Prots
Be the ones calling the shots
Which sect would enjoy the upper hand?
Would we fight where to end the Lord’s Prayer
Here, yonder, perhaps over there?
Debts or trespasses?
Worship service or Masses?
Organ? Or phonograph player?
Baptism or birth from on high?
Mormons kicked out or sneak by?
Would Greeks get their way
On the filioque*
Though I’ll bet they agreer on “the gay.”
Bartholemew’s Day, seven two
(Put a 15 before it, thank you!)
Would, given the price,
Make one think once or twice
Before it to our nation subdue.
On that day, the Catholic mob
Took on a most odious job
Of murdering Huguenots
Guys, gals and little tots,
Each raising a desperate sob.
Sure, politics, faction and greed
Were factors as well as their creed.
The results weren’t perty
Five thousand (or thirty!)
Were slain in that unholy deed.
The Framers, acquainted with that,
When it was their own turn at bat
Said, “Sorry, religion,
Of you, not a smidgen!”
So knocked it into a cocked hat
But Flynn would sail full steam ahead
Where angels have horror to tread
“One soil and one blut**
Under God, tell you what!”
In effect, what the general said
Inevitable wars would break out
Each sect with its own martial shout
“All glory to God!”
“No, the Father we laud!”
As they clashed and the dead lay about.
And after, when victor and vanquished
Lay mixed — who is who? Oh what anguish!
Too hard to decipher
The high from low lifer:
Slay all, let God figure it out.
And that’s what Mike wants, the sly plotter:
A weekly Bartholomew’s slaughter.
And Tuesdays at four
Six beheadings or more
Then thumb-screw some heretic’s daughter.
In heaven God’s shaking his melon
“Who gave kingdom’s keys to this felon?
Yet best to refrain
til sense returns to their brain
And they tire of what he is sellin’.
Mike’s wish for our nation’s extreme
Yet he keeps coming back to his theme
Yet derangement repeated
Wisdom’s sometimes defeated—
Will it fade? Or infect the mainstream?
Footnotes:
*The 11th-century debate over the Filioque — whether, in the Trinity, the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father alone (the Eastern Church’s view) or from the Father and from the Son (latin: filioque) as the Rome-based western branch of the Church believed. The two branches of Christianity split over this in 1054 and have formally stayed separate to this day.
** Blut, from “Blut und Boden,” Nazi Germany’s cry for a race-purified blood and soil.