The President Is Right

Some may confess to the need for smelling salts subsequent to discovering thatDonald Trump has spoken the plain, unvarnished truth about the Las Vegasmassacre.

The truth he spoke is one the world needs to receive with gratitude, in spite of the engrained disposition to treat Trumpian declarations as stink bombs.

"It was an act of pure evil," Trump said of the massacre. Bull's-eye, Mr. President!

The E-word, then -- "evil." We are not unacquainted with it in our rancorous age. We rarely, nonetheless, hear it applied in the context to which it properly belongs: wherein man is a great deal less than the measure of all things; and worthy aspirations crash, while bad ones flourish; and hatred tries to stamp out love; and the talking snake of Eden blinks a satisfied eye.

Not to see the world as a place of contention between evil on the one hand and good on the other hand is not to see the world. Our ancestors saw it so, but that was a while back -- three centuries or more, before theology lost its hold on the intellect and humanity began claiming for itself the right, as well as the ability, to redefine the terms of human life. Evil, once a lively presence in human affairs, became a handicap certain to vanish as soon as everyone could vote and enjoy three square meals a day.

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