“Because there’s no such thing as karma, at least not in this earthly world. Cheating falcons keep cheating. Grifters keep grifting. Evil keeps eviling.” – Mabel Doge Luhan
By Mabel Doge Luhan for Mabel’s Table, Kandit News & Views
It’s great to hear that Angel Demapan has been appointed to the Department of the Interior, that Ralph Torres continues to walk free, and that Kilmar Abrego Garcia is still in a concentration camp!
Not.
In other good news (not), President Shitstain cut off funding for Karidat so that he can have a military parade for his birthday — with not a word of complaint from our devoutly Catholic, devoutly public-minded public servants Kimberlyn King-Hinds and Arnold Palacios. Not a peep out of them. Nor from the morally and grammatically bankrupt Marianas Variety, but that much we could’ve predicted.
The forces of evil are having a field day, aren’t they?
And some of you — including my closest friends, emotional codependents, and enablers — will say, “Karma will come back at them.” The weak, the poor, the innocent will be vindicated, supposedly.
It all reminds me of the 1938 Arroyo Seco falcon derby, to which I’d brought my then-cleverest falcon, Dualipa. As the falcons set off, I focused my lorgnette on one of Dualipa’s competitors, a peregrine owned by my then-nemesis Carlos Trouyet. That bluish-gray sonofabitch (the peregrine, not Carlos) had a rocket pack strapped to his back! I expressed my outrage to my oldest granddaughter (the one who’s now an anal dominatrix), and she just said, “Don’t worry! Karma will get him! He’ll crash.”
He didn’t crash. That dastardly peregrine ended up winning the Arroyo Seco Gold Medal that year, with the help of a strictly disallowed jetpack.
Because there’s no such thing as karma, at least not in this earthly world. Cheating falcons keep cheating. Grifters keep grifting. Evil keeps eviling.
And if you call yourself a Christian and you claim that there’s karmic justice in this life and this world, you’re misunderstanding the fundamental basis of Christianity: the completely unjustified suffering of Jesus, who was (in the Christian telling, anyway) completely free of sin. The fact that evil keeps eviling and the innocent suffer is the very point of Christianity. There may be vindication in the afterlife or at the Second Advent, but not here and now. Here and now, those least deserving of shit sandwiches get shit sandwiches. Eat up!
The Catholic Church knows this full well. Indeed, that’s why they sponsor Karidat and similar programs: because the world is full of undeserved suffering. That’s why Catholic priests are often on the front lines of protests and other social and political movements on behalf of the marginalized. If you call yourself a Christian, you’d better understand that. Christianity is about the inevitability of unjustified suffering: that’s the Paschal Mystery.
No matter what your religious affiliation or non-affiliation, times like these — when Evil seems to be giving Good a big ole fokai — we must remember our free will, and capacity for moral choice.
Here’s looking at you, Arnold and Kimberlyn. Going to another gladhanding meeting with Donald’s band of literal Nazis? Or perhaps enjoying some delicious lechon with the latest gang of “investors?” Never mind reaching into your own pocket ($174K salary for Kimberlyn, $120K + ??? for Arnold) to help Karidat — goodness, I know that’s too much! Never mind expending serious political capital on fighting for the CNMI’s least fortunate. I know you’re too busy going to Washington cocktail parties with people who look like AI-generated villains.
But how about just saying something? Just one word? Something? Anything? About the cutting off of funding for Karidat? About the lack of federal or local prosecution of CNMI government corruption? About the collapse of civil liberties, and the fear echoing through our majority-immigrant community?
Hello? Anybody?
I didn’t think so.
Enjoy your shit sandwiches, people of the CNMI. Leave KKH and AP to their champagne and lechon.
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Mabel Doge Luhan is a woman of loose morals. She resides in Kagman V, where she pursues her passions of crocheting, beatboxing, and falconry.
