Friday
Yesterday, in my comparing January 6 with Satan’s rebellion in Paradise Lost, I concluded by contending that Satan adopts an “own the libs” approach to fighting God. I elaborate on that today.
Right now, the GOP (with the exception of a few governors and local officials) has basically relinquished the responsibility of governing to the Democrats. The logical follow-up is that, once one does that, one basically devolves to a teenager taking shots at one’s parents. One scores points if one gets them angry. They may think they’re superior but, if one unhinges them, then one shows who is boss.
That’s the strategy that Satan comes up with in Book II. Banished to hell, his angels debate on what to do next, the three proposals being (1) fight God again, (2) lie low and hope God forgets about them and (3) build their own counter kingdom in Hell. The first of the options is hopeless, however, and the second and third fail to satisfy Satan’s thirst for revenge. He therefore has second-in-command Beelzebub provide a fourth option: Satan will seek out God’s new creation (humans) and corrupt them. The satisfaction he and his fellow devil will get from this is (wait for it!) God’s joy will be interrupted and the fallen angels can rejoice at having disturbed Him. That’ll teach Him!
Beelzebub explains the effects as follows:
This would surpass
Common revenge, and interrupt his joy
In our confusion, and our joy upraise
In his disturbance…
For perspective, let’s remind ourselves what the angels have given up by rebelling against God. First, they no longer experience “beatitude past utterance”:
About [God] all the sanctities [holy beings] of Heaven
Stood thick as stars, and from his sight receiv’d
Beatitude past utterance…
Later, we see the good angels experiencing a deep joy as their beings are filled with God’s “ambrosial fragrance.” And then there’s the singing:
their gold’n harps they took,
Harps ever tun’d, that glittering by their side
Like Quivers hung, and with preamble sweet
Of charming symphony they introduce
Their sacred Song, and waken raptures high;
No voice exempt, no voice but well could join
Melodious part, such concord is in Heav’n.
Satan, by contrast, offers his followers a different kind of intoxication: they get to feel wronged and then to salve their wounds by hurting someone else. Sadism provides its own kind of satisfaction, as Satan reveals in a later book:
For only in destroying I find ease
To my relentless thoughts.
For Satan’s forces to repent and return to God, they would have to admit that they were wrong to follow him in the first place—and to admit having made a mistake is a blow to the ego. They’d rather suffer and then assuage their suffering with the pain of another rather that give themselves over to goodness.
In our case, goodness would be committing oneself to the Constitution. I suspect that Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, the two Republicans who have joined with Democrats to investigate January 6 and who have consequently been exiled by the GOP, are more at peace than those who continue to grovel at Trump’s feet.
As a reward for their groveling, however, the ex-president provides them various sadistic thrills. So there’s that.