Wednesday
I wrote recently about John Dryden’s magnificent political satire Absalom and Architophel, applying the Earl of Shaftesbury’s 1679 attempt to strongarm Charles II to Donald Trump’s attack on American democracy. I’ve found some more passage from the poem that I just have to share.
Shaftesbury (Architophel in the poem) wants to establish Charles’s illegitimate son, the Duke of Monmouth (Absalom), as Charles’s successor in place of Charles’s Catholic brother James. In the poem he persuades Absalom to go along.
Not that Absalom needs much persuading, just as Trump didn’t need much persuading to pressure a crowd and various election officials to overturn the 2020 election. In the passages I share today, the charismatic Absalom/Monmouth uses his rhetorical powers to persuade the masses to follow him. Think of him forsaking the White House court and, surrounded by 17th century Rudy Giulianis and Steve Bannons, dazzling “the admiring crowd” with his own rally:
Surrounded thus with friends of every sort,
Deluded Absalom forsakes the court;
Impatient of high hopes, urged with renown,
And fired with near possession of a crown.
The admiring crowd are dazzled with surprise,
And on his goodly person feed their eyes.
His joy concealed, he sets himself to show;
On each side bowing popularly low:
His looks, his gestures, and his words he frames,
And with familiar ease repeats their names.
Like Trump, Absalom knows how to glide unfelt into the people’s hearts:
Thus formed by nature, furnished out with arts,
He glides unfelt into their secret hearts.
Then with a kind compassionating look,
And sighs, bespeaking pity ere he spoke,
Few words he said; but easy those and fit,
More slow than Hybla-drops [honey], and far more sweet.
To be sure, Trump doesn’t limit himself to a few words, nor does he look at his crowds with a kind, compassionating look. But, like Absalom/Monmouth, he knows how to play a crowd.
Absalom and Trump also talk about their personal disappointments as a national tragedy. I’m so sorry, Absalom tells his adoring crowds, that you have lost your country, and that “arbitrary laws” (a rigged election, in Trump’s telling) have deprived you of (here he wipes the tears from his eyes) me:
“I mourn, my countrymen, your lost estate;
Though far unable to prevent your fate:
Behold a banished man, for your dear cause
Exposed a prey to arbitrary laws!
And later:
Take then my tears,” — with that he wiped his eyes,—
“’Tis all the aid my present power supplies…
Meanwhile, of course, he is hoping that the people will rise up and establish him as Charles’s heir.
At this point in the poem, Dryden steps in to comment on the action. And while Trump may not have Absalom’s youth, beauty, and grace, but he has his own ways of “mak[ing] the people’s wrongs his own”—which is to say, persuading the people that his grievances are theirs. What results is a gathering march to support Absalom’s claims (“now begins his progress to ordain”):
Youth, beauty, graceful action seldom fail;
But common interest always will prevail;
And pity never ceases to be shown
To him who makes the people’s wrongs his own.
The crowd, that still believe their kings oppress,
With lifted hands their young Messiah bless:
Who now begins his progress to ordain
With chariots, horsemen, and a numerous train…
Like Trump, Absalom has no problem with grandiose comparisons:
From east to west his glories he displays,
And, like the sun, the promised land surveys.Fame runs before him as the morning-star,
And shouts of joy salute him from afar;
Each house receives him as a guardian god,
And consecrates the place of his abode.
Dryden, however, warns us that beneath all the pomp lurks a dark agenda:
This moving court, that caught the people’s eyes,
And seemed but pomp, did other ends disguise…
In our case, the pomp of Trump’s January 6 rally, we now know, was intended to disguise its real end, which was unleash insurrectionists that would stop the vice president from certifying the election. We can therefore think of our Shaftesbury/Architophel as those manipulators behind Trump, Steve Bannon and Trump legal advisor John Eastman.
But in truth, Trump is also his own advisor, Absalom and Architophel combined. The last five years, Trump has been constantly testing the system to see how much he could get away with and testing people to see how loyal they were. Here’s Architophel doing the same, even as he claims he is acting out of love and duty to his prince (in Trump’s case, to America). Religion and justice (“redress of grievances”) are always on lips of scoundrels:
Achitophel had formed it, with intent
To sound the depths, and fathom, where it went,
The people’s hearts, distinguish friends from foes,
And try their strength before they came to blows.
Yet all was colored with a smooth pretense
Of specious love, and duty to their prince.
Religion, and redress of grievances,
(Two names that always cheat, and always please…)
At the end of the poem, Charles has finally had enough and lays down the law. Here’s hoping that the Department of Justice does the same with the insurrectionists.
