Unlike You-Know-Who, The Satan Has Style - Umberto Tosi
Except for a few years in parochial school, I've never been very religious. Up until now, that is.
Even Presidente Trumpy and his corrupt MAGA cultists haven't gotten me to church -- much as I would find it comforting to believe. But the Mr. Incontinent, Orange Diaper Man, has succeeded in getting me to believe in Satan.
I don't think Satan has a Faustian deal with the Rump. That would give Dump too much credit. The devil has too much style for the phony likes of Fatso Wiggo.
Rump does get away with all manner of crimes and corruption at the moment. But his house of Fool's Gold is crumbling and will soon fall.
Meanwhile, America's Orange Fascist provides the devil a handy tool to bamboozle the greedy and ignorant, pry civilization open and steal its vital organs, all the while lying and whining the our days away. Fools that he and his minions are, they must think this obnoxious abuser's uncanny good fortune will last forever.
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| Kierkegaard |
Meanwhile, I realize that we're meeting the devil on two-way street, one way leading to the Inferno, the other to heaven knows where. As Søren Kierkegaard, father of Christian Existentialism, observed, if you believe in anything supernatural, good or bad, you're on the road to believing in God as well. There's no escaping it.
God doesn't run from the Satans or Trump's of this world. God, whoever He or She is, won't save us from Trumpismo. That's our job. And it will take some effort -- more that praying or throwing up of hands. His inevitable downfall will begin - not end - the hard part - reforms that will not make it so easy for the next Don to con America.
The Dude Abides and God awaits.
Satan is tireless and has style. Trump is another bully way over his ludicrous hairpiece fooling no one. He's slipping. Before long he'll wake up on the devil's dumpster fire with the toxic ashes of his kind.
My latest short story features our society's latest bugaboo, not T-Rump; artificial intellence.
It's not an entirely new subject, but one of recent concern among social observers. AI also is Wall Street's flavor of the month, investment bait for all kinds of enterprises of varying merit.
AIs are tools, neither our bane nor our salvation. The are powerful machines that can solve complex problems while creating ones of their own -- namely they consume energy on a planetary scale.
Nothing new, but with twists that entertain and make us think, I hope. AI beings have become the dominant sentiant form of life on planets featured in my scifi story.
But not exclusively, and not without existential questions asked my worlds' controller, asking questions about their existence we all find familiar.
And for a few, stepping out of line and seeking organic (i.e. "real" animal-like lives.) Falling in love with artists evolved from whales, for example. You'll have to read it in my next collection for the rest.
So have a variety of organically evolved sentient beings in worlds of their own. The story, entitled "A Necessary Qualia" examines love and rivalry among intelligent societies, evolved and/or designed.
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Umberto Tosi is the author of Sometimes Ridiculous, Ophelia Rising, Milagro on 34th Street and Our Own Kind. His stories have been published in Catamaran Literary Reader and Chicago Quarterly Review where he is a contributing editor. He was a staff writing for Forbes magazine, covering the Silicon Valley 1995-2004. Prior to that, he was a section editor and staff writer for the Los Angeles Times and Sunday magazine, West. He was also the editor of San Francisco Magazine and Diablo Magzine and a contributing writer for the San Francisco Examiner. He has written more than 500 articles and stories for newspapers and magazines, online and in print. He joined Authors Electric in May 2015 and has contributed to several of its anthologies, including Another Flash in the Pen and One More Flash in the Pen. He has four adult children. He resides in Chicago. (Umberto3000@gmail.com)
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