Monday
My friend Glenda Funk has tweeted out a Hamlet passage as the Senate’s sham trial of Donald Trump nears its end. The passage is on target in one way and provides a dramatic contrast in another.
Claudius is praying—or trying to pray—for having murdered his brother. His question is whether one can be forgiven if one is still benefitting from the sin. Don’t expect the law to answer the question, he adds, since those in power simply buy out the law:
May one be pardon'd and retain the offence?
In the corrupted currents of this world
Offence's gilded hand may shove by justice,
And oft 'tis seen the wicked prize itself
Buys out the law…
Senate Republicans are making sure that Trump will not have to answer for his crimes in the corrupted currents of this world.
But what about divine justice? For Claudius, “there is no shuffling” when it comes to God, who isn’t impressed with earthly power. With God, we must reveal every part of ourselves, “even to the teeth and forehead of our faults”:
…but 'tis not so above;
There is no shuffling, there the action lies
In his true nature; and we ourselves compell'd,
Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults,
To give in evidence.
Although Claudius ultimately finds himself unable to repent, at least he tries. Furthermore, he recognizes the difference between what is genuine and what is false:
My words fly up, my thoughts remain below:
Words without thoughts never to heaven go.
Trump, by contrast, lives in the realm of pretense, refuses to apologize for anything he has done, and doesn’t feel compelled to admit his faults to God. “I don’t bring God into that picture,” he said during the 2016 campaign.
God is inconvenient for those who want to evade all accountability.