The Greatest-Hits Shakespeare Guide to Donald Trump

            I started with what to a long-time student of William Shakespeare's plays was pretty obvious: Donald J. Trump was a post-modern version of England's late medieval king, Richard II, and I'll reprint at least one crucial speech on that topic to end this "Guide," but as time went on — as I write, we're already a whole month into Mr. Trump's Presidency — I found other ways in which the man recycled some major Shakespearean characters, and themes.

            In terms of body-type, fiscal irresponsibility, and relationship to facts, the key precursor to Mr. Trump was Sir John Falstaff of Shakespeare's Henry IV plays, except fat, self-interested Sir John really did have the best words, and in Shakespeare's second tetralogy of History Plays he's the most notable philosopher. Falstaff asks, "What is honor?" and concludes that it's a mere word. That's too simple an answer, and Shakespeare's doesn't let it stand uncontested — but at least Falstaff asks the question, which makes him a far more ethically serious character than most of the Machiavellians and romantics that are his respectable social betters.

            Falstaff is a dreamer of sorts: a dreamer of a world centering around Falstaff, and Shakespeare makes it clear that however much we need such dreams — and Falstaff as an energetic Lord of Misrule — those dreams merge seamlessly with Falstaff as a con artist and not just a liar but a shameless, playful liar, for whom truth, like honor, is just a word, and just one option. Playing along a carefully-measured bit, Prince Hal catches Falstaff (temporarily) in contradiction and accuses him with: "These lies are like their father that begets them; gross as a mountain, open, palpable" (1H4 2.4.212-14).

            Sound familiar?

            Falstaff in his tavern, even Falstaff as highway robber, represent(s) a necessary principle — fun, companionship — and are relatively harmless. That's relative, though, to men for whom the theft of crowns doesn't mean the coin called "crowns" but the headgear, and the royal rule such crowns signify. Relative to men who usurp thrones and undermine the whole idea of legitimacy and fight civil wars — relative to such generators of body-counts, Falstaff is harmless; but you don't want him in power, or as a power at a royal court or as a model for dealing with the facts of the world.

            Give Falstaff some power, and you have a character from an earlier play about a later Henry: Jack Cade in Henry VI, Part 2, not a would-be misleader of a royal youth — Falstaff with Prince Hal — but as a corrupt leader of low-born men with legitimate grievances.

*

            Shakespeare was no democrat, and if he were, he'd keep his mouth shut about it (see gory details of "drawing and quartering," the punishment for males for high treason ["For reasons of public decency" — and more direct anatomical considerations — "women […] were instead burned at the stake"]). Moreover, the Clown of Shakespeare's company had to have a comic role, however brief, as some sort of comedian, and a long, difficult play like 2 Henry VI needed occasional laughs; and on esthetic and philosophical grounds a play about rebellion and civil war on the highest level of society could do with a parallel plot among the lower social levels. Anyway, Cade's rebellion is handled comically, but it's not some sort of dumb-ass "comic relief" or a non-serious part of the play, a radical distinction between "comic" and "serious" being a modern perversion.

            Anyway, the rebels are funny, and one of them — Dick, the Butcher — gets the great line, "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers" (4.2.69). Cade is a very common commoner, but claims royal descent; he is for equality and communism but would be king; and when Dick the Butcher suggests to him that "[…] the laws of England" should "come out of your mouth," Cade agrees and soon — after being mocked in stage-whispers by the more wise-ass among his followers — states "I have thought upon it; it shall be so. Away, burn all the records of the realm! My mouth shall be the parliament of England" (4.7.4-14).

            The laws of England were made by the well-to-do mostly for the well-to-do and increasingly enforced by well-to-do or downright rich local big shots. So there is something to be said for Cade's rhetorical question and complaint,

Is not this a lamentable thing, that of the skin of an innocent lamb should be made parchment? that parchment, being scribbled o'er, should undo a man? Some say the bee steings; but I say, 'tis the bee's wax; for I did but seal once to a thing, and I was never mine own man since. (4.2.70-75)

However …. However, immediately after this comment on the misrule of law, there is the dark comedy of Cade's trying a non-lawyer but also a non-laborer.

Enter some, bringing forward the Clerk of Chatham,

 

SMITH

The clerk of Chatham: he can write and read and cast accompt [i.e., handle the arithmetic of simple accounting].

[ * * *]

DICK

Nay, he can make obligations [draw up bonds], and write court-hand.

CADE

I am sorry for't: […] Come hither, sirrah, I must examine thee: [* * *] Dost thou use to write thy name? or hast thou a mark to thyself, like an honest plain-dealing man?

CLERK

Sir, I thank God, I have been so well brought up that I can write my name.

ALL

He hath confessed: away with him! he's a villain and a traitor.

CADE

Away with him, I say! hang him with his pen and ink-horn about his neck.

          [Glosses throughout based on those in The Pelican Shakespeare (1969)]

And soon Cade's followers take a bigger prize, a high official and a Lord, active in both foreign affairs in France and in tax collecting in England. Again, though, Shakespeare's Jack Cade wanders off and on from legitimate complaints of poor Englishmen and significantly-worded promises of reform to what may be deeper concerns.

What canst thou answer to my majesty for giving up of Normandy unto Monsieur Basimecu ["Sir Kiss My Ass"], the dauphin of France? Be it known unto thee by these presence, even the presence of Lord Mortimer [a title Cade claims], that I am the besom [=broom] that must sweep the court clean of such filth as thou art. Thou hast most traitorously corrupted the youth of the realm in erecting a grammar school; and whereas, before, our forefathers had no other books but the score and the tally, thou hast caused printing to be used, and, contrary to the king, his crown and dignity, thou hast built a paper-mill. It will be proved to thy face that thou hast men about thee that usually talk of a noun and a verb, and such abominable words as no Christian ear can endure to hear.

Cade can allude to the time when Adam worked the land and there were no gentlemen (4.2.120-22), but he will accept hierarchy — if he can be at the top. By Shakespeare's time, draining fenland was an issue in England, but Cade wouldn't know or care much about draining swamps and uses an older image: he'll be the royal new broom that will sweep clean the royal court of "such filth" as Lord Say, who has corrupted the young by encouraging education and literacy. The nasty corruption to be cleaned up, in Cade's proto-populist view, is such anti-Christian activity as grammar.

            Cade is a cleverly foul-mouthed, lawless authoritarian who offers hope for redress of genuine grievances of the commons but has no intention of delivering. What he does deliver immediately is an attack on elites, with that attack going down the social scale to the level of clerk — a higher rank than nowadays but still someone who worked for a living: an attack on elites with "elite" associated with filth and with the treasonous corruption of spreading education.

            Donald Trump is similar in his wondering speech, anti-intellectualism, and promise of radical reform under a charismatic leader unbound by not just clerks —think bureaucrats — but tradition and perhaps the law itself. Trump, however, so far has been less violent, more successful in his political project, and a whole lot less funny.

*

            Basically, though, Donald J. Trump is the Celebrity-King and closest to England's King Richard II. As a youngster, the historical Richard courageously met with leaders of the 1381 Peasants' Revolt and lied his royal ass off promising freedom and redress of grievances. He soon suppressed the revolt and sent the serf contingent back to serfdom, promising them they'd be oppressed even more than before. 

            In his Richard II (1597), Shakespeare deals with Richard later in Richard's life, as Richard moves to his fall. Not with disinterest (I'll note with a double negative), Shakespeare acknowledges and even stresses that kings must be actors. Richard, however, comes to live the part and starts to believe what had become by Shakespeare's time pretty standard royalist propaganda on the Divine Right of Kings. King Richard is into his own beautiful words — he really is good at language — and gets lost in those words. He loses out to a man of few words and a relatively early member of "the reality-based community": that man of facts and opportunist action, Henry Bolingbroke, later King Henry IV.

            As king, Henry IV gives good but pretty standard Machiavellian advice to his son, who goes on to become Henry V and outdo his dad in more sophisticated Machiavellian kingship. Henry IV isn't into straightforward speech, but here's his analysis of Richard for his son's benefit, and ours.

HENRY IV TO PRINCE HAL

The hope and expectation of thy time

Is ruin'd, and the soul of every man

Prophetically doth forethink thy fall.

Had I so lavish of my presence been,

So common-hackney'd [banal] in the eyes of men,

So stale and cheap to vulgar company,

Opinion, that did help me to the crown,

Had still kept loyal to possession

And left me in reputeless banishment,

A fellow of no mark nor likelihood.

By being seldom seen, I could not stir

But like a comet I was wonder'd at;

That men would tell their children 'This is he;'

Others would say 'Where, which is Bolingbroke?'

And then I stole all courtesy from heaven,

And dress'd myself in such humility

That I did pluck allegiance from men's hearts,

Loud shouts and salutations from their mouths,

Even in the presence of the crowned king.

Thus did I keep my person fresh and new;

My presence, like a robe pontifical [shown only rarely],

Ne'er seen but wonder'd at: and so my state [formal appearances],

Seldom but sumptuous, showed like a feast

And won by rareness such solemnity.

The skipping king, he ambled up and down

With shallow jesters and rash bavin [literally: twigs] wits,

Soon kindled and soon burnt; carded [= debased] his state,

Mingled his royalty with capering fools,

Had his great name profaned with their scorns

And [* * *] Grew a companion to the common streets,

Enfeoff'd himself to popularity;

That, being daily swallow'd by men's eyes,

They surfeited with honey and began

To loathe the taste of sweetness, whereof a little

More than a little is by much too much.

So when he had occasion to be seen,

He was but as the cuckoo is in June,

Heard, not regarded; seen, but with such eyes

As, sick and blunted with community,

Afford no extraordinary gaze,

Such as is bent on sun-like majesty

When it shines seldom in admiring eyes;

But rather drowsed and hung their eyelids down,

Slept in his face and render'd such aspect

As cloudy men use to their adversaries,

Being with his presence glutted, gorged and full.

(1 Henry IV 3.2.39-84, from MIT Shakespeare on line 1H4)

            Prince Hal in 1 Henry IV, brings down one of Falstaff's brilliant flights of fancy with the weight of evidence, with facts and logic. His father had brought down a king taken up with far more dangerous delusions about royal power and prowess. My expectation as of early 2017 is that Donald Trump will undermine himself as a bad actor — both meanings intended — with delusions of total power, and will be brought down or brought into line by hard facts, and hard-facts people in "the reality-based community." Or he'll become an oddly inarticulate, uncharismatic charismatic leader of a mass movement that will, in Steve Bannon's words, oversee the "deconstruction of the administrative state"; AND/OR he and his inner circle will realize the possibilities of drafting the clerks, so to speak, rather than hanging them, Jack Cade style, and using the apparatus of the administrative state to exert power. Heading off to his downfall, Sir John Falstaff relishes the thought of revenge on those who've failed to admire him and want to keep him within bounds: "The laws of England are at my commandment. Blessed are they that have been my friends, and woe to my lord chief justice!" (2 Henry IV 5.3.131-35). Woe, woe to America's poor and to the next couple generations if the Trump Rebellion does get much of the Federal bureaucracy "deconstructed"; woe to them and far more people if Trump and Bannon coopt the more fearsome parts of the apparatus of the US State and law and absorb them into a Trumpian movement and party that will reshape reality to Mr. Trump's liking.

Little Lies: Trump v. Journalists v. Truth

REFERENCE: Mike Argento, USA Today Network, "Coroner Battles Heroin Epidemic" in "I am an American / We are One Nation" series, Ventura County Star Sunday, 19 Feb. 2017: 17A

            <http://www.ydr.com/story/news/2017/02/16/am-american-pam-gay-fights-heroin-epidemic/97099430/>

An epidemic [… in the medical sense] is the

rapid spread of infectious disease

to a large number of people in a given population

within a short period of time, usually two weeks or less.

For example, in meningococcal infections,

an attack rate in excess of 15 cases

per 100,000 people for two consecutive weeks

is considered an epidemic.

^{<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidemic>}

            Those who complain that Donald Trump offers a "post-truth" administration should consider the possibility that "post-truth" basically pushes to a logical extreme the little lies of journalism and everyday life, and the bigger lies of advertising.

            The USA Today "I am an American" series has a fine piece on Pam Gay, Coroner of York County, PA. In the article, Ms. Gay talks about opiates and opioids, and there is a quotation from 2013 from Gay's chief deputy that heroin overdoses might become a "problem." Overdoses and abuse of opiates and opioids did become a problem, and Ms. Gay has done excellent work combating that problem.

            Ms. Gay in the article does not use the word "epidemic," nor does the article offer statistics from which we can infer a literal epidemic: how many cases per 100,000 people in fairly short periods.

            The writers of the headlines and subheads do use "epidemic," and where the text of the article includes other opiates and also opioids, the heads stress heroin.

            That's hype — HEROIN EPIDEMIC! — and hyperbole not done for artistic effect is always and necessarily at least a little lie.

            So is the selective reporting of "No blood, no news" — a quote from a TV news director during the student strikes of 1970 — and the misleading emphasis of "If it bleeds, / It leads." Such reporting makes America look more dangerous than it is and aids politicians who gain power from fear.

            And commercial journalism depends upon advertising, some of which is informative and useful; much of which is manipulative and misleading, promising buyers increased coolness that few products can deliver.

            Continue to chide the Roves and Trumps of the world, but look to your own practice as well.

Defining "American"

            In a letter to the editor of The Ventura County Star for February 15, 2017, Ray Sobrino Jr. of Newbury Park, CA, ended with the admonishment to "remember we are all Americans in the end." I won't argue with the letter or even the sentiment of this clause, but I will reword it to, "we are all Americans if you pull back and take a long-distance view of ourselves" — because close up we see important differences.

            One set of differences is political, and nowadays that's pretty obvious with continuing support for Donald Trump from most of the 46.1% of voters who votedfor him and continuing opposition from many of the 48.2% who voted for Hillary Clinton — and at least some of the nearly 6% of the electorate who voted for someone else and the large number of people who just didn't vote. 

            More important, there are deep and long-stand differences you can analyze in many ways, but my current favorite is Colin Woodard's American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America (2014) and the idea that there is no single American nation but either none or up to eleven, depending on how you define "nation."

            Most of us on the territory of the United States are citizens of the American Republic, and we mostly agree on loyalty to the Republic. What holds us together is our agreeing to argue over what the Republic should be, who should be members, and what sort of society we should try to build.

            "We are all Americans" — and then we fight over what that should mean.

Don't Talk Sex or Religion! (Coalition Conversations in the Age of Trump)

To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. […]

To those not having the law I became like one not having the law […],

so as to win those not having the law. To the weak I became weak,

to win the weak. I have become all things to all people

so that by all possible means I might save some.

(St. Paul to the Corinthians [9.20-22])

"I had no need of that hypothesis." — Attributed to

Pierre-Simon Laplace, responding to Napoleon I's

question, "But where is God […]?" in Laplace's

discourse on an issue in astronomy

         A While back — 8 October 2014, to be exact (reposted 19  March 2015) — I blogged a short, relatively moderate rant against Leftist allies who declined to play nice with those with whom they had converging political interests but deep-rooted philosophical disagreements. In that piece I quoted from memory a line from Ursula K. Le Guin's great 1969 novel, The Left Hand of Darkness, "You don't have to be kemmerings to haul a sledge" — i.e., you don't have to be bonded lovers to cooperate on a project.

         Indeed! And now in the Age of Trump it is even more the case that we need coalition politics of the responsible Right, Left, and Center to oppose an incipient mass movement of Trump supporters that can move into all the nationalistic authoritarianism threatened by the slogan "America First."

         So I have some unsolicited free advice — worth every cent you pay for it and more — for my potential allies of the atheistic persuasion.

         First, notice that the lines of St. Paul to the Church at Corinth may sound cynical and hypocritical, and from my point of view, they kind-of are. Still, toned down a bit, they are the standard device of rhetorical decorum: fitting one's words to the audience, subject, and general context. And for those of us of the fact-respecting, "reality-based community," there is the relatively simple fact that Paul was an extraordinarily successful propagandist — check the etymology of the word — and Jesus-Movement organizer.

         And to this add such facts as the survey data that religiosity in the US may be decreasing but still remains high and that churches, synagogs, mosques, and such are by definition already organized communities-of-interest that can be used for group action, e.g., sponsoring immigrants or providing highly traditional sanctuary … up to more radical action.

         There's also the fuzzier philosophical "fact" that asking people to give up God sets up a logical chain leading to conclusions such as that the idea of humans' holding any importance in the universe is a product of an infantile "illusion of central position" and that our loves, losses, achievements, wars, and strivings are radically trivial and described more or less accurately as "a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing," as a despairing Macbeth still so poetically puts it.

         Less poetically but more vividly, the mad but philosophically rigorous Marquis de Sade has a pamphlet perused during a pause in the orgy-ing in his Philosophy in the Bedroom (1795) entitled "Yet Another Effort, Frenchmen, If You Would Become [Real] Republicans," wherein he notes that homicide does not destroy life: kill someone, bury the corpse, wait … wait a bit longer, dig it up and weigh what nowadays is called the biomass. If it is not significantly less than the weight of the murder victim, no life has been destroyed. If you argue that human life is more valuable than that of (I'll modernize here) maggots or putrefactive bacteria — on what grounds? Nature alone gives no greater value to human life than any other, and if we humans think otherwise, it is only our conceit.

         So quick conversions to a rigorously materialist view of things are unlikely, not to mention that your average atheist seems open to challenge to being way, way too comfortable in a non-rigorous materialism.

         What agnostics without a lot of time on their hands for theological disputes, or an atheist can do in political organizing is respond to ultimate questions about God with recycling Laplace and saying, "I don't need that hypothesis" — and then shut up about God-stuff and get to immediate political goals.

         Better, of course, effective atheists could imitate St. Paul and work with the literate in the target religious traditions (and that "literate" bit excludes many people who claim the faith) and couch their arguments in religious terms.

         E.g., the opening of the 24^th Psalm says, "The earth is the LORD'S, and all it contains; / The world, and all who live in it. // For he hath founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the floods." That gives a labor theory of property, and lays the groundwork for theories of social justice developed at some length and high intensity by the Hebrew Prophets and their Jewish, Christian, and Muslim successors.

         Get the point?

         Disagreeing on fundamentals means that eventually religious and secular activists will come to serious practical disagreements. But as anyone who's ever been politically active for more than a few months knows, secular political sorts can get into doctrinal controversies without a hint of God-thought and form circular firing squads with almost the alacrity of religious fanatics gathering the wood to burn heretics.

         If devout Catholics can work with you murderers and damn-ers of the unbaptized unborn, you can work with infantile believers in the Great Spaghetti God with 6^th-c. BCE beliefs about sexuality and the sexes.

         Lovers in bonded-relationships, Earthly kemmerings, should acknowledge, talk over, and work through their differences. Two people hauling a goddamn sledge should just shut up when it comes to important differences until they get the sledge where it needs to go.

         "I don't need that hypothesis" can close the argument on God until nobody needs to worry that large hunks of the Americas and Europe are threatened by Fascists.