Beware the "Angel of Light"

In his classic, prophetic "A Short Tale of the Anti-Christ"of 1900, the great Russian Soloviev imagines the emergence of a remarkable world leader, a unifer of all races and religions, a man of peace, a vegetarian,an eco-activist, an icon of all that is liberal and enlightened. One problem: he has no use for Christ as Savior. He is an "angel of light." He becomes an agent of peace and harmony around the globe. Eventually, the consensus of support and approval for him is resisted only by a very small contingent of eccentric, marginal "true believers" who face off in an apocalyptic confrontation. The tale recalls the traditional warning of the saints: beware the "angel of light." To the altruistic, idealistic, more virtuous among us Satan appears, not in his moral decadence, but as an angel of light, as an image of the ideal and the perfect. He appeals at once to what is enlightened and aspirational even as he sureptitiously awakens pride and eventually a refusal to receive the Crucified as Savior.. This tale throws light on our current politics. Donald Trump NEVER presented as an angel of light: he was breathtakingly transparent in his decadence, shameless and uninhibited in his self-centeredness, disrespect for women, ethnophobia, absolute regard for truth, crudeness and verbal violence to whoever offended him. In this he was refreshing: disarmingly candid, utterly free of hypocricy or pretentiousness. He was unequivocally, as a person, an angel of darkness. I could NEVER vote for him because I considered him a horrific role model for my grandchildren. Paradoxically, however, he exercised an inverted influence on them: so vile was he that our young recoiled from him in disgust and became vulnerable to deeper, darker moral toxins, but ones supernaturally camouflaged by appearance of the Good: angels of light. The liberal over-culture is currently euphoric and intoxicated with the agenda of Joe Biden. He is so appealing by contrast to Trump: warm, working-class, Catholic in a histrionic manner, anti-racist, pro-reproductive-rights-of-women, ecologically concerned, caring for the marginalized and immigrants and poor. He is, clearly, an angel of light. At a closer look: he advocates the genocide of the unborn, and coerces Catholics and others to support it with taxes. He advocates contraception and forces everyone to support it through the Obamacare mandate. He has utter contempt for the consciences of Catholics and others and for their religious liberty regarding the meaning of marriage and family. He supports the deconstruction of gender and the mutiliation of the young who suffer from gender dyphoria. He is spending money recklessly and inflicting a huge debt upon our young who will pay for it. He disparages those with different political views as racists, homophobes, yada yada yada. He does all this with a warmth, a pat on the back, a joke and a smile. The hypocricy is unbearable! He seems even to have deluded himself in a kind of moral senility. Biden is not along: our elite culture is replete with such influencers. Consider Michele Obama: wholesome, beautiful, articulate, intelligent, confident,idealistic. Ruth Bader Ginsberg, especially as played by Felicity Jones: charming, delightful, feminine and yet aggressive, idealistic. Consider almost all our movie celebrities: georgeous, confident, sexy! Our culture is populated mostly by angels of light, seductive and appealing but interiorly dedicated to the works of darkness.