Heaven’s Too Woke

Is Donald Trump barred from heaven? The US president has, more than once, lamented that he thinks that there’s nothing he can do that will get him into heaven. Although Trump has, more recently, tried to claim that he was merely joking when he made these comments, others in the MAGA movement believe that the sentiment is heartfelt. “It’s like the Nobel Peace Prize – no matter how many wars that President Trump stops, they simply aren’t going to give it to him because he’s Donald Trump,” opines Harley Cockwinn, a Republican state representative from Tennessee. “It’s just pure prejudice – you have to be seen as ‘worthy’, ‘politically correct’, ‘woke’ even, to be considered for these sorts of accolades. A plain-speaking deal maker from New York is never going to be seen as the ‘right sort’ to be awarded them. It’s the same with heaven – it’s just an exclusive club for do-gooding, bleeding heart liberals.” Others, however, have been less charitable with regard to Trump’s sentiments. “It’s no wonder that he’s trying to walk back his whining about his prospects of getting into heaven and trying to say that they were a joke,” declares Daniel DeSpikle, political correspondent for the Democrat-supporting Seattle Fruit Pickers Fortnightly. “His original comments sounded all too much like his laments over not being given the Nobel Peace Prize and you half expected him to follow up with a litany of all the good things he’s done to improve people’s lives, so as to shame God, the Pope or whoever to give him a blanket pre-emptive pardon so as to get through those pearly gates when the time comes.  But that would have been an even taller order than coming up with a convincing list of fake wars he’d supposedly ended in order to justify that Nobel prize.”

DeSpikle further points out Trump is the man that Jeffery Epstein – the world’s most reviled sex offender – described as having ‘not one decent cell in his body, so the chances of him getting into heaven, if it exists, would, indeed, seem to be very slim.  The President’s supporters, nonetheless, remain undeterred in their determination to right a perceived injustice and try to secure Trump a place in paradise. “As ever, the liberals and those holier-than-thou religious types are simply approaching this from the wrong perspective,” says Cockwinn. “So, let’s turn things around and try to see them from Trump’s perspective: maybe the real problem is that heaven is just too woke.  Because that’s the problem with modern religions – they’re all so obsessed with setting impossibly high standards of morality that no normal person could hope to meet.  They just discriminate against regular guys.  Like Trump.  Like I said before, they turn heaven into an exclusive club for the ‘wokerati’!” By setting their standards too high, modern religions are in danger of alienating the very people they claim to represent. “Let’s be honest, does anybody really think that the average ordinary Joe is interested in spending eternity in a hereafter where you have to be relentlessly nice all the time, never swear, never ogle women or have lewd thoughts. there’s no guns, no booze and they have to observe a strict vegetarian diet? I mean, if you like that sort of thing, I’m sure it’s a ball, but I think that I can guarantee that a heck of lot of souls are declining their invites from St Peter at those pearly gates and voluntarily opting to go to hell, instead!”

DeSpikle is more than mildly perturbed by Cockwinn’s views. “I hardly think that Trump counts as a ‘regular guy’ and that his list of crimes and transgression – over which he is utterly unrepentant – can be compared to the sort of minor sins the rest of us might commit,” he says scornfully. “But hey, who hasn’t sexually assaulted a woman or two, been friends with a sex trafficker specialising in teenaged girls, instigated an attempted insurrection or illegally ordered boats to be sunk in international waters?  It could happen to anyone and the odd lapse surely shouldn’t be taken as evidence of being an irredeemable sinner, should it?” But Cockwinn is determined to get Trump – and his like-mined supporters – past the pearly gates. “To be frank, I think that we need to do to the major religions what the President did to that hotbed of leftist propaganda the Kennedy Centre: kick out those crazed commies currently in control and institute a whole new board of governors. Chaired by Donald Trump himself, of course,” he says. “Then we can start setting the agenda ourselves and remodelling heaven for the common man!”

For DeSpikle, Cockwinn’s campaign has less to do with a desire to guarantee Trump and his ilk a place in heaven, as it does with subjugating the Christian faith to the ends of MAGA. “Let’s face it, the right have never been too keen on religions – they always tend toward do-goodery, watering plants, being kind to furry animals, not raping your sister and such stuff.  Bloody kill-joys intent upon taking all the fun out of life as far as the right are concerned,” he muses. “Even worse, they say that you can’t be rich and righteous.  To get your place in heaven, you have to give all your money away to help the sick and the poor!  Well, fuck that, they say!” Consequently, he contends, the right tends to prefer those ‘other’ versions of religion, particularly Christianity, which hark back to good old values like subjugating women, wealth being the mark of God’s chosen, enslaving people of colour and basically saying that the poor and indolent should know their place.   “You know, the sort of stuff that the likes of Charlie Kirk peddled,” the journalist points out. “ ‘Thou Shalt Not!’ is their moral mantra – unless you are rich, of course, in which case it’s ‘Thou Can Do Whatever the Hell You Like’, as you get a free pass in exchange for a generous donation to the church roof fund.”

Ironically, most of this hardline stuff actually comes from the Old Testament, which has very little to do with the Christian faith – the basic tenets of that are all laid out in the woke New Testament, notes DeSpikle.  “The Old Testament is actually a Jewish text – something all those anti-semites in the Nazi wing of the right don’t like to mention,” he says.  “It has always fascinated me that so many on the right claim to be religious, in particular Christian, yet don’t seem to have a clue as to what the values they supposedly encompass actually are.  I mean, if there really is a hereafter and it’s Christian, then they’re surely going to have a very rude awakening – they’re all going to burn. Still, Charlie Kirk and Rush Limbaugh will be thee to welcome them, so they should feel right at home.”