An Easter Celebration

I approve of this Mexican Easter celebration:

Whom would you build, if you had to make a monster of mythical proportions? An evil equal to a biblical scourge? A traitor to be burned in effigy whose fiery demise would cleanse our corrupted souls?

In Mexico, that would be Donald J. Trump. (J for Judas?)

Or at least a 10-foot-tall papier-mache version of him: eyes wide, mouth agape, with a painted-on business suit and golden mane. On Saturday night, just as every year on the day before Easter, Mexicans gathered on street corners and church squares to celebrate the Holy Week and set fire to their Judases, a popular ritual in this heavily Catholic country. Those demons are typically forked-tongue devils and flaming dragons, and often, like this year, reviled politicians.

“For Latinos here and in the U.S., he’s a danger, a real threat,” said Leonardo Linares, a 52-year-old artist who built a Trump effigy over the past week in his Mexico City studio. “He’s a good man to burn as a Judas.”

…

Mexicans take special pleasure in skewering Trump, the Republican presidential front-runner who has threatened to deport millions of Mexicans and claims he will build a giant wall across the United States’s southern border and have Mexico pay for it. Since he launched his campaign last summer calling them “rapists” and “criminals,” Mexicans have fired back with a variety of satires. A pair of comedians put on a play, “The Sons of Trump,” featuring greedy villains bumbling around in blond wigs. Trump’s likeness has been crafted into pinatas and bashed, digitized into a video game character and pegged with tomatoes. His name is the brunt of folk-song jokes.

There has also been more earnest criticism, from former Mexican presidents and current senior government officials, who have warned that Trump’s xenophobic rhetoric is damaging relations between the two countries.

“He’s crazy,” said Alberto Rueda, a 30-year-old shopkeeper who attended the Trump burning in the La Merced neighborhood. “His ideas are not the solution. On the contrary. If he builds a wall, people will build tunnels.”

I’ve always thought Judas got screwed over in Christianity. He’s necessary for the whole thing to go down! He should seen as the best apostle, not a traitor. So really, Trump is the far greater villain. And they don’t mess around in Mexico:

The dolls seemed to stay in character. The Islamic State fighter exploded his payload in one chaotic blast; Obama’s fuse was lighted repeatedly but refused to blow. When it came time for the climax, Trump went slowly, gruesomely, one leg blasting off, then the other, as the by-then boozy crowd chanted “Death! Death!” When his head exploded, there were thunderous cheers.