The Democratic Party has been striving to let Bernie Sanders down slowly, even as it separates him from his dream. It is like the way upper crust society in Edith Wharton’s “Age of Innocence” separates the protagonist for the scandalous woman he has fallen in love with.
As the GOP reels in the wake of Trump’s victory, it might want to model itself on Edgar in “King Lear.”
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.
After John Boehner compared Sen. Ted Cruz to Lucifer, I went looking through “Paradise Lost” to find passages that would apply. I found a particularly good one but, if you ask me, Cruz more resembles Blifil, Tom Jones’s nemesis.
Posted in Fielding (Henry), Milton (John), Shakespeare (William), Stoker (Bram) | Also tagged Bram Stoker, Dracula, Henry Fielding, John Boehner, John Milton, Julius Caesar, Lucifer, Paradise Lost, Peter King, politics, Satan, Senate, Ted Cruz, Tom Jones, William Shakespeare |
This Stephen Dunn points out how we see history as a series of narratives. Sometimes our heroes are those “too unhappy to be reasonable.”
Many working class and lower middle class Americans have felt abandoned by the GOP and Democratic establishments. Bertolt Brecht’s “Pirate Jenny” articulates a revenge fantasy that captures some of their anger.
Depressed by all the doom and gloom being voiced in the presidential primaries? Here’s a Scott Bates poem about an apocalytptic antichrist ant to lighten you mood.
If Mitt Romney sells his soul for the nomination, can he get it back? Christopher Marlowe would say that it doesn’t look good.
Thomas Mann has a character in “The Magic Mountain” that casts light on the apocalyptic strain that has taken over the rightwing of the Republican Party.
