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Wednesday
My faculty reading group has just finished discussing the Odyssey, and the voice of Odysseus confronting the suitors is still ringing in my ears. His words could easily be directed towards Donald Trump.
The suitors violate one of the most sacred tenets of ancient Greek society. Like Paris in The Iliad, who abducts his host’s wife and triggers the Trojan War, they abuse the laws of hospitality. Meanwhile Trump and the rest of their crew are determined to violate the Constitution, the rule of law, and America’s expressed commitment (in The Declaration of Independence) to equity and fairness. Among the president’s most egregious actions on his first day was
–pardoning all those who invaded the Capitol and assaulted police on January 6;
–decreeing an end to birthright citizenship;
–halting refugee resettlement, including Afghans who supported us in the war there.
Trump is also withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement and the World Health Organizing, thereby relinquishing American leadership in addressing the most pressing problems facing the world. Joe Biden made important steps in fighting climate change, which is pounding us all, and the United States played a key role in stopping or limiting Ebola and Covid. These threats won’t go away just because Trump decides to ignore them.
We can add to these measures Trump’s determination to turn that United States into Trump, Inc. From crypto to Trump-endorsed products to naked bribery, he’s willing to listen to anyone who directs cash his way. It’s difficult to imagine anything more sordid.
In Book XXII of Homer’s epic, Odysseus, who has returned to his house disguised as a beggar, is appalled at the desecration he witnesses. After first shaming the suitors by being the only man in the room who can bend his great bow, he throws off his beggar’s cloak and reveals himself with the following speech:
You yellow dogs, you thought I’d never make it
home from the land of Troy. You took my house to plunder,
twisted my maids to serve your beds. You dared
bid for my wife while I was still alive.
Contempt was all you had for the gods who rule wide heaven,
contempt for what men say of you hereafter.
Your last hour has come. You die in blood.
America was founded upon certain Enlightenment ideals, and while we haven’t always lived up to them (as any number of minority groups can testify), they have been at the foundation of our greatness as a nation. This administration feels nothing but contempt for these ideals and for what people will say of it hereafter.
We have other ways of settling conflict than bloodshed and there’s no one person that can stride in and restore us. But a reckoning is coming, in one form or another.
