Where’s Shakespeare When We Need Him?

Lear. Coriolanus. Macbeth. Titus Andronicus. They all have nothing on the epic drama now playing out in the United States as a corrupt, venal, egotistic, proto-dictator crashes around as his enemies encircle and seek to bring him to account. For the first time in its 234 year history, a former President is facing felony indictments, ninety one in all: 34 felony counts in New York; 40 felony accounts in Florida; and 13 felony accounts in Georgia. These in addition to the ongoing criminal investigation into the Trump organization in New York and multiple civil cases, including one where he has already been found to have sexually assaulted a woman in New York. At the same time many of his enablers and henchmen and women are also facing criminal prosecution for, amongst other things, attempting to overthrow the results of the 2020 Presidential election.

If there was ever any doubt this man was appallingly unsuited to be President, it should have vanished by now. But, of course, for many Americans it hasn’t. That, itself, is a tragedy beyond the comprehension of most informed, intelligent adults, one that undermines some of our most basic assumptions about human decency and behaviour, not to mention cognition. It causes us to look at people we thought we knew and understood and ask “how is that possible?”.

Those of us who have grown up and lived next to the United States have become accustomed to the jingoism and delusion of the “American Dream”, the idea it is the greatest nation to have ever existed in the history of mankind; that it is a “shining city” on a hill that the rest of the world looks up to with envy; that success there could only happen there; that it is the most free, most democratic nation on earth; that it is, and always has been, the ultimate defender of freedom and democracy. We are all too familiar with its shortcomings and failures but tend to overlook them, rather like how we treat a noisy, rambunctious, boastful big brother or cousin who, despite those irritating behaviours, we still feel deep affection for.

And now we watch in horror as its most basic democratic and liberal foundations are challenged and shaken in a manner without equal since the Civil War because, whatever its shortcomings, for the democratic world America is now the indispensable nation without which the world becomes a much darker, chaotic and social Darwinian place.

So, how does this all end? Not sure. What I do expect is a period of unprecedented turmoil and danger as the last wall, the judiciary, moves to hold Donald Trump to account for all his illegal and treasonous acts. Like many other people, I suffer from a profound Trump fatigue and wish it would all just go away. In fact, some have suggested perhaps some kind of deal could be reached where he would withdraw from public life in exchange for immunity from all these prosecutions. Even if the very complex layers of charges and suits were amenable to that conclusion, which they most certainly are not, it would be a very bad idea with completely unpredictable future consequences for America. It would also confirm the most paranoid beliefs of his followers that the charges are nothing more than a politically motivated campaign to prevent him from regaining the Presidency. And then there’s the matter of trusting Trump to keep his end of the bargain. After the last eight years does anyone seriously believe he would just go quietly away?

America must demonstrate that nobody is above the law, that everyone from the most powerless to the most powerful must abide by the social, constitutional and legal contract that binds that society together. Otherwise, what? A complete collapse of trust in government and its institutions that would dwarf the current alienation that is so frequently commented upon and is offered as a kind of justification for Donald Trump and his followers. And ultimately, a failed state.

The next couple of years are going test the very foundations of the American nation as nothing has since the Civil War but the country must go through this fire if it is to endure as its founders hoped. Already, a woman has been arrested for threatening the life of the judge presiding over the Washington trial and I have no doubt she is but the first of many. Hopefully the example made by the arrest and prosecution of the January 6 insurrectionists will temper some of the angry responses but there will still be others so indoctrinated by the MAGA lies and so arrogantly believing in their own superiority that there will be further threats and probably violence.

Shakespeare wrote great tragedies that show mankind’s terrible moral failings, that describe the monsters that dwell amongst us in all their banality and ignore the most basic proscriptions that allow us to live together. But that was fiction. The current drama unfolding in America today is anything but.

Those of us who respect and value America can only watch from the sidelines and hope (pray if you’re so inclined) that it will endure, that all the good it contains will rise up and defend it. The alternative is unthinkable.

Just sayin

GH

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