A Little Child Shall Lead Them
After fifty years of viewing my father's art work, I am still regularly stunned by the prescience of of his images. One series of his artwork called "Advertisements for an Apocalypse" was particular dark in its nature. This work was my father's look into humanity's most base expressions. The pieces were cautionary tales to remind us not to forget history lest we repeat it.
There was a phrase from the Bible Elias Friedensohn used to title a work: A Little Child Shall Lead Them. Originally this phrase referred to the necessity of having a pure and innocent heart if one wanted to gain entry into heaven. Instead, in this painting, Elias showed what happens when a young boy is allowed to let an experiment in narcissism run amok without any disciplinary action. The orange haired young chubby boy in the foreground (perhaps a young Donald Trump), rips the wings off of an innocent bird. He leads the way for a debauched crowd that falsely advertises health and well-being while trampling over a corpse and bones of others, the collateral damage resulting from our unchecked selfish behavior. The main figure is an overweight tyrant that again looks to me like an older version of Trump.
I feel there is a paradox brewing here. On the one hand, we have come to a point when we can be thrown in jail for spanking our bratty children and teaching them a lesson. One could only assume that Trump would love to abolish any law which protects children from a spanking. On the other hand, we are now being led by a spoiled child who himself badly needs disciplinary action and yet we are powerless to pull out the paddle and use it. We seem only to be able to talk about it. Isn't it none other than compassion when a mother threatens or spanks her child to prevent them from running into the street? Here of course, the stakes are much higher. Trump is not a child, he sports the body of a full grown sociopathic adult left back from 3rd grade who suffers from dementia and is in a position where he can inflict injury on huge numbers of beings. One thing is for sure, whatever the advertisement claims, this person is not leading us to heaven.
I bid you all a happy Caveat Emptor.