Thursday – Anniversary of Capitol Insurrection
My faculty discussion group is discovering that it’s an eye-popping experience to be discussing Paradise Lost on the anniversary of the Capitol insurrection—which is to say, when Donald Trump sicced rioters on Congress to pressure Vice President Mike Pence and Republican members of Congress to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. I’m writing a two-part essay on the parallels. In today’s post, I look at the ringleaders, in tomorrow’s the followers.
I’ve written in the past about how Milton’s depiction of Satan function is a study of narcissism, which it why Satan-Trump comparisons are so apt. Rereading Books I and II, however, have revealed more comparisons than I had realized. For instance, Satan has the same love of outward show that Trump does. Think of the gold-gilded palace that the fallen angels build in Hell as his version of Trump Tower.
Like Trump, Satan and the angel Mammon have a thing for gold. We learn that there’s plenty of gold in Hell, which Milton informs us is the proper place for it:
[W]ith impious hands [Hell’s angels]
Rifled the bowels of their mother Earth
For Treasures better hid. Soon had his crew
Opened into the Hill a spacious wound
And digged out ribs of gold. Let none admire
That riches grow in Hell; that soil may best
Deserve the precious bane.
Out of these so-called riches of the earth emerges a palace, designed by the angel Mulciber. Think of him as the Satanic version of Albert Speer, Hitler’s architect. Or, for that matter, whoever Trump’s architect is:
Anon out of the earth a fabric huge
Rose like an Exhalation, with the sound
Of Dulcet Symphonies and voices sweet,
Built like a Temple, where pilasters round
Were set, and Doric pillars overlaid
With golden architrave; nor did there want
Cornice or frieze, with bossy sculptures grav’n,
The Roof was fretted gold. Not Babylon fretted gold.
Nor great Alcairo [Cairo] such magnificence
Equal’d in all their glories…
In this hall, Satan presides over what he claims is a parliament but which is democratic in name only since, from the first, the fix is in. Satan knows exactly what result he wants to get from the proceedings.
Sewanee’s very smart Renaissance specialist Ross McDonald, who is leading our discussion of Milton, pointed out the gyrations Satan goes through to retain his leadership position. If he contradicts himself, well, when have autocrats ever been consistent? Their goal is to remain in power, and they will say whatever is necessary to achieve that end.
It is a natural fact, Satan tells the fallen angels, that I am your leader, although he then says that it is a matter of free choice that we should aspire to things higher. Rationalizing the fact that his leadership has ruined their lives, he assures his troops that, though they fell, their defeat will only make their future glory that much greater. Furthermore, he claims that he is to be admired because taking leadership is a heroic sacrifice as he will be the most likely angel to capture God’s attention.
Earlier Satan has come up with an elaborate defense for his defeat. Since there’s no way our magnificent fighting force could have lost, he tells his angels, God must have been hiding his full strength from us. Who could have known God would trick us in this way? So it’s God’s fault, not mine, that we were lured into the hopeless rebellion.
The contorted logic reminds me of a rightwing commentator for Breitbart, John Nolte, who argued that the organized left uses reverse psychology to trick people into refusing the “Trump vaccine,” thereby killing them off. So it’s actually the left’s fault, not that of right’s political and thought leaders, for the covid debacle.
In Milton’s parliamentary session, we hear from various angels who have their equivalents in our own situation. The parallel isn’t exact, of course, since Satan has lost whereas, on January 6, Trump was still in the White House. But just as there was General Michael Flynn, who wanted Trump to invoke the insurrection act, and Steve Bannon, who was consorting with the Proud Boys and wanted outright confrontation, in Paradise Lost we have the angel Moloch. “My sentence,” he thunders, “is for open war: Of wiles, more unexpert, I boast not.”
Apparently one cause of contention amongst Trump coup plotters was whether to be openly confrontational or more subtle. Figures like Peter Navarro and Roger Stone, apparently, thought the attack on the Capitol actually undermined their plan to send election certification back to the state legislatures. Sneaky chicanery, on the other hand, might have worked.
Of course, just as Satan’s rebellion is doomed to fail, so, in the eyes of establishment Republicans, were Trump’s efforts. Rather than break with Trump and stand with the Constitution, however, most in the GOP have behaved like smooth-talking Belial.
Even while he claims to hate God just as much as Moloch does, Belial is a realist. Satan and the angels, he says, would have no chance in another battle. (If he were to say they have a snowball’s chance in Hell, he would be speaking from firsthand experience.) His counsel, therefore, is to lay low and hope that God forgets about them–which is what most Republicans want the public to do about the events of January 6. For that matter, most Republicans hope to escape Trump’s attention as well:
I think of South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham when I see Belial described:
On th’ other side up rose
Belial, in act more graceful and humane;
A fairer person lost not Heav’n; he seemed
For dignity composed and high exploit:
But all was false and hollow; though his tongue
Dropped manna and could make the worse appear
The better reason, to perplex and dash
Maturest counsels: for his thoughts were low;
To vice industrious, but to nobler deeds
Timorous and slothful: yet he pleas’d the ear,
And with persuasive accent thus began.
Most GOP members are not necessarily this persuasive, but they are just as callously pragmatic. If the party can’t win without Trump, Graham said at one point, then Trump it is, whatever one thinks of him. Milton sums up Belial as follows:
Thus Belial with words clothed in reason’s garb
Counseled ignoble ease, and peaceful sloth,
Not peace…
Satan wants neither of these options, however. Knowing that he can’t beat God in open warfare but rejecting inaction because it doesn’t feed his desire for revenge, he chooses instead to irritate God. In other words, to use current parlance, he wants to own the libs. I’ll discuss this further in tomorrow’s post.