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Thursday
It’s not every day that I see a political commentator casually citing a phrase from Paradise Lost, but NeverTrumper Charlie Sykes makes nice use of one. In an Atlantic article about partisanship and how Alexander Hamilton of the Federalists crossed party lines to support Thomas Jefferson, thereby preventing the “cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled” Aaron Burr from becoming president, Sykes writes,
Like Hamilton, we live in an age of fierce loyalties that make crossing party lines extraordinarily difficult. If anything, it is even harder now, especially for Republicans living with social pressures, media echo chambers, and a cult-like party culture compassed round, in the words of John Milton.
The phrase “compassed round” is used by Sin in Book II of Paradise Lost and it packs even more of a punch when one sees what she is referring to. Here’s the passage:
Here in perpetual agony and pain,
With terrors and with clamors compassed round
Of mine own brood, that on my bowels feed…
That’s right, she’s being compassed round by bowel-devouring hellhounds. Sykes has even internalized the Miltonic practice of suspending the verb until after a long prepositional phrase. Here’s the backstory:
Sin, who has sprung like Athena from Satan’s head and, after being raped by him, given birth to Death, has subsequently been set by God to watch over the gates of Hell. Her job is to make sure the rebel angels do not escape. While there, however, she is the victim of a second incestuous rape, this time by her son Death, after which she gives birth to hellhounds. These in turn start interbreeding while sheltering in her womb and feeding on her bowels. Here’s Milton’s grotesque description:
About her middle round
A cry of Hell-hounds never-ceasing barked
With wide Cerberean mouths full loud, and rung
A hideous peal; yet, when they list, would creep,
If aught disturbed their noise, into her womb,
And kennel there; yet there still barked and howled
Within unseen.
And here’s her account of the incestuous rape that has brought it about:
I fled; but he [Death] pursued (though more, it seems,
Inflamed with lust than rage), and, swifter far,
Me overtook, his mother, all dismayed,
And, in embraces forcible and foul
Engendering with me, of that rape begot
These yelling monsters, that with ceaseless cry
Surround me, as thou saw’st—hourly conceived
And hourly born, with sorrow infinite
To me; for, when they list, into the womb
That bred them they return, and howl, and gnaw
My bowels, their repast…
Through his allegory, which has been influenced by Dante’s Inferno and Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene, Milton makes the point that sin traps us, ravages our being, and breeds ever more sin. When Sykes says that the current GOP is “compassed round” with “social pressures, media echo chambers, and a cult-like party culture,” he captures how it has been caught in a never-ending downward spiral. The image of hell-hounds ceaselessly barking “with wide Cerberean mouths full loud” captures well the rightwing echo chamber. (Cerberus, as you probably know, is the three-headed hound who guards the mouth of Hades.)
Two examples Sykes mentions of people caught up in this hellish spiral are New Hampshire governor Chris Sununu and former Trump Attorney General Bill Bar. Even though they have both criticized Trump, have acknowledged that he attempted to overthrow the government, and admit that he committed multiple felonies, they now are prepared to vote for him in November. In thinking they can steer what they regard as a middle course, they fail to realize that one either breaks altogether with Trump or becomes tarred by him. As long-time Republican consultant and now NeverTrumper Rick Wilson puts it, “Everything Trump touches dies.”
There are a few former Republicans—like Sykes and Wilson—who are actively trying to reestablish a moral compass within the GOP. Since he is familiar with Paradise Lost, I wonder if Sykes finds comfort in its ending, where the Archangel Michael assures Adam that evil will, in the end, be defeated. As Adam puts it after their conversation,
Henceforth I learn, that to obey is best,
And love with fear the only God, to walk
As in his presence, ever to observe
His providence, and on him sole depend,
Merciful over all his works, with good
Still overcoming evil, and by small
Accomplishing great things, by things deemed weak
Subverting worldly strong, and worldly wise
By simply meek; that suffering for Truth’s sake
Is fortitude to highest victory…
To which Michael replies, “This having learnt, thou hast attained the sum of wisdom,” and then,
[O]nly add
Deeds to thy knowledge answerable, add Faith,
Add virtue, Patience, Temperance, add Love,
By name to come call’d Charity, the soul
Of all the rest: then wilt thou not be loath
To leave this Paradise, but shalt possess
A Paradise within thee, happier far…
Think how much better off our country would be if the GOP started putting Truth first. Think how conditions would improve if its leaders made good deeds, faith, virtue, patience, temperance, and charity their guiding watchwords. That’s how one breaks free of the horrors that compass us round.
Oh well, one can dream.