By Allan Stevo
March 16, 2026
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.
-William Ernest Henley, "Invictus"
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Invictus is Latin for unconquered. Victus is Latin for conquered, defeated.
I have little negative to say about the work of President Trump. He was a man who heroically came along to rescue his nation from decades of neglect. He stood heroically against the backdrop. He could have ended his life in retirement as a comfortable billionaire in his Mar-a-Lago paradise without a care in the world alongside his beautiful supermodel wife, his family, and golfing his array of private clubs. Instead, he stuck his neck out to lead, and by doing so, he forever changed the course of America.
It was, as if, we were all drugged until Trump came along.
Even those who were awake still had a lot of waking up to do until Trump came along.
And like the pagan priests of too-late Rome, we were being whipped into a frenzy for the plumbum in the water pipes had worked too deep into our systems, and we had in our own lives no true potency.
He shook up America.
And he could be the last President for some time.
(Note to more stable readers: That introduction got rid of some of the least stable people who read these pages. As you read the remainder of these words, be assured that those less stable than you are, at this very moment, shaking, triggered, sending me angry emails. Now that they are gone - unable to survive that introduction with a proper masculine frame - let's have a real discussion among stable adults.)
The idea of Trump - the idea that one man can come as a savior for a country is a flawed notion. At best, he has the bully pulpit of the presidency and the vision that he can deliver from that. But ultimately the bureaucracy that we have handed our nation over to is too great for one man, or for a team of several hundred dedicated public servants that Trump has around him. The resignation of our land to the bureaucracy is too great, as well as the mindset of incompetency that so many of us have onboarded. It is hard to find a man who is competent at anything, other than the several things that his boss and his wife allow him to be competent at.
There is a helplessness to America, because there is a helplessness to American males.
Trump was different.
Trump was the one guy who many thought was different, and he is different in some ways. He is, but the reality is, that no one man, nor a few hundred men will get us there. Government is not the source of all good. Government is not the source of all solutions. I know I probably don't have to say that to you, because, of course, that is common sense. But then, why do your actions show that you seem to think government is the source of all solutions?
Why are you so weak in your life, unwilling to be a barrier for all around you, unwilling to be a covering for all in your vicinity?
It comes down to those day-by-day, moment-by-moment opportunities to assert your will and project your values. To refuse to rise to the occasion in such moments shows you weak, and shows you as one who embraces the government as trustworthy - no matter how much your empty words may claim the contrary position.
Your actions are what reveal so much about you.
Donald Trump is a victorious and undefeated man as far as I'm concerned, with numerous admirable qualities that every man should want of his son. But the idea of Trump - the idea that so many Americans hoped for Trump - the idea that one man can save a lost society, the idea of Trump, is a failed idea, a defeated idea, a conquered idea.
Trump victus.
The reality is that it is just you.
It is just you in this world and when this life comes to an end, it will be just you standing before your Creator.
And He will ask why, after He blessed you with a family, you spent so much time on the television?
He will ask you, after He blessed you with a home, why you spent so much time looking for your next home?
He will ask you why, after He blessed you with a job, why you spent so much time looking for the next job?
After He gave you good foundation to lead from, He will ask you why you did not lead?
He will say that He provided for you, that you seldom had to want for the basic needs of life, that He put you in a place of wealth and values and decency in so many ways, and why you milked from that so much, and contributed to that so little.
He will not even have gotten started with some of your more crude sins. He'll want to know why when you won the lottery ticket of all humanity and were born in the United States, in the modern era, as a man, in a man's world, why you were so crappy at building a community around you ? Why were you so obsessed with grasping for things He didn't give you, rather than building with the building blocks that He put right there in front of you?
Trump victus.
It was never up to the indefatigable Trump to deliver the victory. It was up to you. And it wasn't up to you to change the world. It was only ever up to you to shape the world around as you know it. That's all you have ever been called to do: to be as upright of a presence in the world around you as you can be, every single waking moment of the day, and to get up the next morning and do it again.
Not to watch TV.
Not to game.
Not to doom scroll.
Not to chase tail.
Not to hit the bottle.
Not to look for your next bump.
Not to lose your life in the wanderlust of travel.
Not to smoke yourself silly.
Not to endlessly stuff your fat gut.
Not to endlessly get lost in books, stuffing your fat head.
Not to chase the next libertine adventure.
You damn idiot. Just build something that matters with what He gave you. Build with what is in front of you. Build it better than what you found.
Don't worry about the big picture.
The idea of Trump has been conquered.
We are beyond that.
No man will save us.
Whether that salvation be spiritual or cultural, that salvation is one person at a time. That victory is one person at a time.
Stop thinking bigger than that.
Thinking bigger than that is part of the problem.
He says to love the Lord with all your heart, and to love your neighbor as yourself. That is it. America has lost sight of God. America has lost sight of the individual. So who cares about that big picture right now ? That doesn't concern me as much as you concern me. Have you lost sight of God ? I hope the answer is no. But even if you have, now is a great time to amend. Can you do a better job of being focused on God ? I hope the answer is yes. I hope every person reading this is not so foolish to think that they have arrived, that they have become as good as anyone can ever become. I hope that every person reading this realizes they can do a better job of focusing on God.
And how about your neighbor ? Have you lost sight of the individual human being that you are married to ? Have you lost sight of the individual human being that you were parented by ? Have you lost sight of the individual human being that you parent ? Have you lost sight of the individual human being?
If you spend more time on social media, than you do in the Bible, you have almost certainly lost sight of God and of individuals around you. If you spend more time on social media than you spend looking other human beings in the eye and listening, then you likely have lost sight of the individuals around you. If you spend more time on just about any modern diversion than you do looking other human beings in the eye over the course of the day and just listening, then you likely have lost sight of your fellow man.
You see, the big picture solution does not matter. It promises to lead us further down the path of sociopathy that we are already on, when we focus on the big picture. All you need is to love God, and all you need is to love your fellow man - one, individual, person at a time, one individual encounter at a time. Quit trying to overthink it by thinking far beyond that.
This very thing I am writing is written for one person. That's it. Maybe I will share it beyond one person. And if I do that, and others contact me about this writing, it will be that one person that I interact with at a time. And maybe if someone comes and asks me to talk about this to an audience, what I say will be for one person that I have in mind. And afterwards if someone comes to talk to me, that one person will have all my attention, and all of my love, and perhaps, we may even find ourselves praying together before that conversation is over.
Because when I don't know what to do, I pray. And why do I do that ? Because I believe in the power of prayer. Those aren't just words. That is really how I behave in daily life.
And if my cell phone rings while I am with that one person who has all my attention at that moment, I won't pick it up, because I'm with that one person. And if someone else wants to butt in, I won't let him, because I'm with that one person. And if a thousand different scenarios happen that you might be able to imagine, I will still be with that one person. Because I know that it is the individual that matters and not some grandiose idea. The grandiose idea is illusory, and distracting.
Trump victus.
That grandiose idea that one man will save America is distracting. One man might shake America out of its slumber, but that just means it's time to get out of bed and get to work.
America needs Jesus, not any single politician, and not any single man.
And again, that just means it's time to get out of bed and get to work.
Your work is to love God and to love your neighbor.
It's time to get to work.