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Wednesday
Of the many, many court decisions that have gone against Donald Trump in recent years, Monday’s ruling by Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney may have been the first to mention a Grimm Brothers fairy tale. Trump, fearing indictment for pressuring Georgia officials to change vote totals in the 2020 election, had asked that McBurney bring the grand jury proceeding to a halt. The judge cited “Rumpelstiltskin” in turning down the application. (Thanks to Jay Kuo for alerting me to the allusion. )
After first observing that Trump’s “rather overwrought allegations of prosecutorial overreach and judicial error do not suffice to show that there is significant risk of ‘wrongful’ indictment,” McBurney then added, in a sarcastic footnote, his Grimm Brothers allusion. Rather than being damaged by indictments, he noted, Trump has been making money and building up fan support from them:
And for some, being the subject of a criminal investigation can, à la Rumpelstiltskin, be turned into golden political capital, making it seem more providential than problematic.”
In the story, a miller’s daughter is victimized when her narcissistic father boasts to the king that his beautiful daughter can weave straw into gold. The king threatens her with death unless she delivers. In fact, he threatens her three times, although he adds a promise of marriage to the third threat. The first two times she gets Rumpelstiltskin to help in exchange for a necklace and a ring, but the third time he demands her first-born child.
Deaf to her pleas after the child is born, he agrees to relent only if, within three days, she can guess his name. Fortunately for the queen, a messenger overhears the dwarf, leading to a happy ending (at least for the her):
And then she said”: “Then perhaps your name is Rumpelstiltskin?”
“The devil told you that! the devil told you that!” cried the little man, and in his anger he stamped with his right foot so hard that it went into the ground above his knee; then he seized his left foot with both his hands in such a fury that he split in two, and there was an end of him.
Judge McBurney’s use of the tale is smart since it shows how Trump takes advantage of those in distress. Because MAGA Republicans are convinced that Trump can save them—they full believe that he can create golden threads out of nothing—they give him the money and the support he demands.
To push the connections even further, I turn to Anne Sexton’s version of the fairy tale. It appears in Transformations, a thoroughly entertaining collection in which the poet tells the great fairy tales through her own lens. As Sexton sees it, Rumpelstiltskin is our shadow side or Doppelganger—which is to say, the darkness within that “wants to get out”:
Inside many of us
is a small old man
who wants to get out.
…
He is a monster of despair.
He is all decay.
He speaks up as tiny as an earphone
with Truman’s asexual voice:
I am your dwarf.
I am the enemy within.
I am the boss of your dreams.
And further on:
I am the law of your members,
the kindred of blackness and impulse.
See. Your hand shakes.
It is not palsy or booze.
It is your Doppelganger
trying to get out.
Beware . . . Beware . . .
A good case can be made that Trump is the GOP’s Doppelganger, the dark side that contradicts the respectable exterior the party has (at least in the past) tried to cultivate: fiscally responsible, committed to law and order, concerned about national defense, upholder of family values. When Trump began to grow in power, establishment Republicans, hoping for their version of a room full of golden thread (money, power), thought they could control this dwarf. They did not realize that he would commandeer their future:
Without a reward the dwarf would not spin.
He was on the scent of something bigger.
He was a regular bird dog.
Give me your first-born
and I will spin.
She thought: Piffle!
He is a silly little man.
And so she agreed.
So he did the trick.
Gold as good as Fort Knox.
Yes, Trump spun his web of power out of bullshit straw and now has become the GOP godfather. Or “papa,” to use Sexton’s word:
And then the dwarf appeared
to claim his prize.
Indeed! I have become a papa!
cried the little man.
She offered him all the kingdom
but he wanted only this –
a living thing
to call his own.
And being mortal
who can blame him?
In the story, this dark force can be defeated only if it is named. It’s like saying that the establishment GOP can only be saved if enough of its members call out the cancer that is eating away at them—which is to say, if they recognize and acknowledge that their narcissist, racist, money-grubbing , power obsessed leader has been born from their own darkness. The GOP has in recent decades–which is to say, before Donald Trump–danced an ugly dance with racists (in the tale, a narcissist father and a tyrant king). They have been not only a beautiful woman weaving gold but also an “ugly as a wart” dwarf.
When Rumpelstiltskin’s essence/name comes out into the open, he splits in two and we can see both sides for what they are. As Sexton puts it,
Then he tore himself in two.
Somewhat like a split broiler.
He laid his two sides down on the floor,
one part soft as a woman,
one part a barbed hook,
one part papa,
one part Doppelganger.
Until this happens, he will continue to demand that we give away what is most precious.
Here’s the poem in its entirety:
Rumpelstiltskin
By Anne Sexton
Inside many of us
is a small old man
who wants to get out.
No bigger than a two-year-old
whom you’d call lamb chop
yet this one is old and malformed.
His head is okay
but the rest of him wasn’t Sanforized?
He is a monster of despair.
He is all decay.
He speaks up as tiny as an earphone
with Truman’s asexual voice:
I am your dwarf.
I am the enemy within.
I am the boss of your dreams.
No. I am not the law in your mind,
the grandfather of watchfulness.
I am the law of your members,
the kindred of blackness and impulse.
See. Your hand shakes.
It is not palsy or booze.
It is your Doppelganger
trying to get out.
Beware . . . Beware . . .
There once was a miller
with a daughter as lovely as a grape.
He told the king that she could
spin gold out of common straw.
The king summoned the girl
and locked her in a room full of straw
and told her to spin it into gold
or she would die like a criminal.
Poor grape with no one to pick.
Luscious and round and sleek.
Poor thing.
To die and never see Brooklyn.
She wept,
of course, huge aquamarine tears.
The door opened and in popped a dwarf.
He was as ugly as a wart.
Little thing, what are you? she cried.
With his tiny no-sex voice he replied:
I am a dwarf.
I have been exhibited on Bond Street
and no child will ever call me Papa.
I have no private life.
If I’m in my cups the whole town knows by breakfast
and no child will ever call me Papa
I am eighteen inches high.
I am no bigger than a partridge.
I am your evil eye
and no child will ever call me Papa.
Stop this Papa foolishness,
she cried. Can you perhaps
spin straw into gold?
Yes indeed, he said,
that I can do.
He spun the straw into gold
and she gave him her necklace
as a small reward.
When the king saw what she had done
he put her in a bigger room of straw
and threatened death once more.
Again she cried.
Again the dwarf came.
Again he spun the straw into gold.
She gave him her ring
as a small reward.
The king put her in an even bigger room
but this time he promised
to marry her if she succeeded.
Again she cried.
Again the dwarf came.
But she had nothing to give him.
Without a reward the dwarf would not spin.
He was on the scent of something bigger.
He was a regular bird dog.
Give me your first-born
and I will spin.
She thought: Piffle!
He is a silly little man.
And so she agreed.
So he did the trick.
Gold as good as Fort Knox.
The king married her
and within a year
a son was born.
He was like most new babies,
as ugly as an artichoke
but the queen thought him in pearl.
She gave him her dumb lactation,
delicate, trembling, hidden,
warm, etc.
And then the dwarf appeared
to claim his prize.
Indeed! I have become a papa!
cried the little man.
She offered him all the kingdom
but he wanted only this –
a living thing
to call his own.
And being mortal
who can blame him?
The queen cried two pails of sea water.
She was as persistent
as a Jehovah’s Witness.
And the dwarf took pity.
He said: I will give you
three days to guess my name
and if you cannot do it
I will collect your child.
The queen sent messengers
throughout the land to find names
of the most unusual sort.
When he appeared the next day
she asked: Melchior?
Balthazar?
But each time the dwarf replied:
No! No! That’s not my name.
The next day she asked:
Spindleshanks? Spiderlegs?
But it was still no-no.
On the third day the messenger
came back with a strange story.
He told her:
As I came around the corner of the wood
where the fox says good night to the hare
I saw a little house with a fire
burning in front of it.
Around that fire a ridiculous little man
was leaping on one leg and singing:
Today I bake.
Tomorrow I brew my beer.
The next day the queen’s only child will be mine.
Not even the census taker knows
that Rumpelstiltskin is my name . . .
The queen was delighted.
She had the name!
Her breath blew bubbles.
When the dwarf returned
she called out:
Is your name by any chance Rumpelstiltskin?
He cried: The devil told you that!
He stamped his right foot into the ground
and sank in up to his waist.
Then he tore himself in two.
Somewhat like a split broiler.
He laid his two sides down on the floor,
one part soft as a woman,
one part a barbed hook,
one part papa,
one part Doppelganger.