Friday
As we watch the GOP evolve into a pro-Covid party, I find myself thinking about how Satan unleashes Sin and Death upon the world in Paradise Lost. Think of the pair as the Delta and Omicron viruses, encouraged to journey to Earth to make humankind’s lives miserable.
Satan in the scenario would be the GOP, interested only in tearing down, not in building up. “For only in destroying I find ease to my relentless thoughts,” is how Satan puts it at one point. Once Adam and Eve disobey God, he sets Sin and Death upon humankind to do their worst.
Lest you think calling the GOP a pro-Covid party is overblown, consider what is going on. Hoping that voters in the next election will reward them if they sow enough chaos, vaccinated Fox News commentators persuade their viewers not to get vaccinated; former White House physician and now Congressman Ronny Jackson claims that the omicron virus is a hoax; Florida Governor Ron DeSantis punishes school systems for requiring masks; Texas Governor Greg Abbott tries to forbid businesses from requiring masks; red states give money to workers who are fired because they refuse to be vaccinated; a Fox commentator compares Dr. Fauci to Nazi doctor and “angel of death” Josef Mengele; and the GOP as a whole links up with crazies in the anti-vax movement. As a result, Covid deaths in red states are five times higher than those in blue states while 140,000 children find themselves bereft of parents or primary caregivers. By any objective measurement, Republicans have become a party of death.
Early in Paradise Lost, Sin and Death can be found in Hell. (Sin is Satan’s daughter, whom he raped after conceiving her so that Death is simultaneously his son and grandson.) Sin senses that their time has come the moment the humans bite into the apple and tells Death to get ready to travel. He says he’ll follow her anywhere:
Go whither Fate and inclination strong
Leads thee, I shall not lag behind, nor err
The way, thou leading, such a scent I draw
Of carnage, prey innumerable, and taste
The savor of death from all things there that live…
Milton compares Death to a vulture anticipating an upcoming battle. Think of him as sniffing out all the unvaccinated:
So saying, with delight he snuffed the smell
Of mortal change on Earth. As when a flock
Of ravenous fowl, though many a league remote,
Against the day of battle, to a field,
Where armies lie encamped, come flying, lured
With scent of living Carcasses designed
For death, the following day, in bloody fight.
So scented the grim feature, and upturned
His nostril wide into the murky air,
Sagacious of his quarry from so far.
On their way to Earth, Sin and Death encounter Satan, who is returning to Hell, mission accomplished. Sin thanks him for all he has accomplished:
O Parent, these are thy magnific deeds,
Thy trophies, which thou view’st as not thine own,
Thou art their author and prime architect…
To which Satan essentially replies, “Have at it”:
[O]n your joint vigor now
My hold of this new kingdom all depends,
Through Sin to Death exposed by my exploit.
If your joint power prevails, th’ affairs of Hell
No detriment need fear, go and be strong.
So Sin and Death—or as I’m calling them today, Delta and Omicron—travel on to Earth to go and become strong. “What thinkst thou of our empire now,” Sin asks upon arriving, to which Death replies,
To me, who with eternal famine pine,
Alike is Hell, or Paradise, or Heaven,
There best, where most with ravine I may meet…
God, looking down upon this s—show, remarks,
See with what heat these dogs of Hell advance
To waste and havoc yonder world, which I
So fair and good created…
Our own fair and good country could be Covid-free if everyone got vaccinated. Unfortunately, Covid has friends that are prepared to keep that from happening.