Gogol’s “Dead Souls” shows us two conmen, one who is a lot like our president, the other like various politicians (including Ryan, McConnell and Hillary Clinton). The boisterous and ineffective conman comes off better that the carefully calculating one.
Frank Bruni compares Donald Trump to Miss Havisham, forever fixated on November 8 before the rose lost its bloom. The GOP would do well to break free as Pip does.
Despite brave talk from a number of so-called Republican moderates, only Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins stood up to their party in an attempt to save healthcare. Time to read “The Hollow Men” again.
The Shakespeare-in-the-Park production of “Julius Caesar” has the Right up in arms about the image of Donald Trump being assassinated. The timeliest lesson of the play, however, is the way that Marc Antony slyly slides in to take power. Think of him as Mitch McConnell quietly preparing to repeal Obamacare and deprive millions of healthcare while the nation focuses on Senate hearings.
“The Washington Post” recently found numerous parallels between Lear and our own president, with “his zigzagging proclamations, his grandiose promises, his spasmodic attachments.”
If Paul Ryan refuses to stand up to Donald Trump, it may be because he worships him as a John Galt figure.
House Republicans appear to be using Doublethink to sell their healthcare plan. If it works, there will be no stopping them.
Students crowded into the gym to listen to the publisher of “The Onion.” It is therefore not surprising that they are also responding enthusiastically to Jonathan Swift. I share some of their thoughts on the satirist in today’s post.
Unfortunately centrists and liberals have been endorsing Trump’s bellicosity abroad. Milton’s Jesus in “Paradise Regained” would not approve.
Many wonder whether spite drives many of Donald Trump’s policy decisions. If so, he has good company in Milton’s Satan, who is defined by spite.
Donald Trump has a lot in common with King Lear. I suspect, however, that Lear has the happier ending.
Mitch McConnell is proving himself to be a veritable Moriarty in his ability to weave devious plots to get his way. Trump, by contrast, is more a trickster figure a la Figaro or Mac the Knife.
Posted in Beaumarchais (Caron de), Doyle (Arthur Conan), Gay (John) | Also tagged Arthur Conan Doyle, Beggar's Opera, Caron de Beaumarchais, conspiracy theories, Donald Trump, John Gay, Marriage of Figaro, Mitch McConnell, Moriarty, Sherlock Holmes |
Jonathan Swift would have had a field day with Donald Trump. I suspect I’ll say this often in the upcoming years.
Thanksgiving this year may encounter the strains of the recent election. For a depiction of how bad it can get, check out the Christmas dinner scene in “Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man.” It will show you what to avoid.
In “The Divine Image,” Blake gives us a poem for our time, a call to pray for mercy, pity, peace, and love and to recognize the human form in diversity. In “The Human Abstract” he adds that prayer is not enough. It must be accompanied by human justice.
Posted in Blake (William) | Also tagged "Divine Image", "Human Abstract", Abortion, analysis, Christian Right, classism, homophobia, Islamophobia, Jeff Sessions, Michael Flynn, racism, Steve Bannon, William Blake |
When Donald Trump excited the alt-right with his Wednesday night speech promising to deport all undocumented immigrants, he reminded me of Milton’s Satan inspiring Sin and Death after engineering the Fall.
If Bill Gorton, a positive figure in “The Sun Also Rises,” is politically incorrect, does that mean that Donald Trump is correct in his attacks on PC? Award-winning high school teacher Carl Rosin tackles the issues by contrasting Gorton and Trump.
Anthony Trollope foreshadowed Donald Trump in the figure of Augustus Melmotte in “The Way We Live Now” (1875).
A “Washington Post” article argues that the arts are key in counteracting economic injustice. While this is true, the arts must be accompanied by smart politics to achieve this end.
As a college student at Wellesley in 1969, Hillary Clinton made multiple references to T. E. Eliot’s “East Coker.” Now as we watch her become the presumptive Democratic nominee, we can see how Eliot has helped her along the way.
I’ve compared Donald Trump to Murakami’s villain in “Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.” Today I dig deeper into the comparison.
Donald Trump has an uncanny resemblance to the villain Noboru Wataya in Haruki Murakami’s masterful novel “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle” (1998). Both have a similar hollowness and both have the ability to separate people from the higher instincts and put them in thrall to their lower ones.
Alexander Pope warned, in “Essay on Man” that vice loses its ugliness once it becomes familiar. This is the danger we face with the normalization of Donald Trump.
Hillary Clinton shares certain characteristics with Emma Woodhouse. (And far fewer with Lady Macbeth.)
Donald Trump is making regular use of “the Homeric epithet.” He doesn’t use it as well as Homer, however.
Adam Gopnik of “New Yorker” and Andrew Sullivan of “New York” are very, very frightened by the rise of Trump. As they explain why, they quote Tom Stoppard, Sinclair Lewis, Mark Twain, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Plato.
Posted in Lewis (Sinclair), Stoppard (Tom), Tolkien (J.R.R.), Twain (Mark) | Also tagged Donald Trump, Fascism, GOP, Huckleberry Finn, It Can't Happen Here, J. R. R. Tolkien, Jumpers, Lord of the Rings, Mark Twain, Presidential politics, protofascism, Sinclair Lewis, Tom Stoppard |
Many who vowed NeverTrump are backing away from the word “never.” “Never” is an important word in “King Lear” and Lear, unlike Lear’s opponents, doesn’t back away from it.
As the GOP reels in the wake of Trump’s victory, it might want to model itself on Edgar in “King Lear.”
When traditional institutions like the government or the Supreme Court are undermined, the way is cleared for the rise of liar like Trump.
Czech author Milan Kundera warned about how dictatorships thrive off of our forgetting. In a “Rolling Stone” article, Charlie Pierce argues that forgetting has led to the rise of Donald Trump.
Ted Cruz said that, if Donald Trump is the GOP nominee, we would be gazing into the abyss. For what this would be like, I turn to Milton, an expert on abysses.
