By Jill Cotter
Tuesday, August 19, 2025 at 7:44 AM
King John was the only king in English history with that name, and for very good reasons, seeing that he was the worst king England ever had. He was the third Plantagenet king, after his father, Henry II, and his brother Richard I. None of these men spoke English, especially the most revered of all the English kings, Richard I, better known as Lionheart. In fact, Richard spent almost no time on English soil, but in France, and fighting in the Crusades. Their languages were French and Latin. But John was the worst king, in my opinion, followed by Richard II, who, because of his incompetence, ended the Plantagenet dynasty after 331 years in 1399. The third worst was Charles I, the barely 5-foot-tall king, who, with his diminutive stature, thought that his reign was divinely inspired. Well, he got his head chopped off! So much for divine inspiration. He is the only king to die by regicide in English history.
But John was by far the worst. He wanted to be king so badly that he paid Richard’s captor, Henry VI of the German States, who held Richard captive on his return home from the Crusades, to hold him prisoner and maybe even have him killed. He tried to overthrow the elections, in modern terms. Then, after he became king following Richard’s death, after having lost all the vast French territories that his family had controlled for decades, he turned his attention to England, which was all that he had left. There he began to control every aspect of daily life, from the barons down to the serfs. He even attended court proceedings and interfered in the rulings. He was in charge of everything, and was heavy into self-enrichment, until the barons became fed up with his greed and graft and cruelty. The only good thing that came out of his reign was the Magna Carta, that document that is still revered and important today, even in America.
Does any of this sound familiar? King John is alive and well and living in, and is now destroying, America. He changed his name to Donald and made John his middle name. Trying to hide his true self. But the meanness, the pettiness, the greed, the need for revenge, have only increased in the last 700 years. His reincarnation was predicted in the Book of I Don’t Know What I’m Talking About. But if one can’t see the similarities between John and Donald John, then in my opinion, you don’t know history.
This man who wants to be king is involving himself in every aspect of our daily lives. Education, sports, local government, the press, our religion, the arts, in our bedrooms, our history, which, by the way, he’s trying to whitewash. A very appropriate term for what he wants to do to black history, whitewash it. Wat a ting!
While King John had a ruling class comprised of earls and barons to halt his exuberant quest for power and glory – well, not halt, but slow it down, King Donald John has no opposition to his delusions of grandeur. He is the alpha and the omega of everything in his realm, except for some of us who can still think for ourselves, independent minds which he will never be able to control. He answers to no one, the great avenger! His pettiness has surprised even some of his most devoted subjects. His truth is the universal truth according to him, despite the fact that he is the biggest liar the world has ever known. Like John, he has no sense of shame or humility. Like John, I think that his power will be curtailed by the people, after they wake up from this nightmare.
I’m trying to be funny; but if we don’t try, we would just be living in that time of malaise that Jimmy Carter so unwisely suggested we were living in during the late 1970s. Someone suggested that the reason why horror films have become popular again is because of the reign of the Crimson King. How true, and wat a ting!
Glen
