Friday
Twice in the past I’ve applied A.E. Housman’s poem “Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries” to Mike Pence’s actions on January 6. In yesterday’s hearings on Donald Trump’s attempted coup, we learned even more about the pressure that Trump, his lawyer John Eastman, and others put on Pence. It has become increasingly clear that the storming of the Capitol (and the cries to “hang Mike Pence”) was the final attempt to persuade Pence to either (1) refuse to certify Joe Biden’s victory or (2) leave the Capitol so that another Republican (perhaps Chuck Grassley, perhaps Republican state legislatures, perhaps our conservative Supreme Court) could do Trump’s dirty work.
One can’t call Mike Pence a hero for simply following through on his mandated Constitutional duties—just as one can’t praise the mercenaries in Housman’s poem for doing what they are paid to do. The poet’s surprise is that the soldiers doing the right thing comes as such a shock, just as it was a shock for the sycophantic Pence to buck Trump.
And let there be no doubt: the heavens of American democracy would indeed have fallen if Pence had refused to certify Biden’s victory. With Trump still in command of the military and popular unrest uncertain if the will of the people had been overturned, anything could have happened.
Instead, Pence’s shoulders held the sky suspended; he stood, and the earth’s foundations stay.
Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries
These, in the days when heaven was falling,
The hour when earth’s foundations fled,
Followed their mercenary calling
And took their wages and are dead.
Their shoulders held the sky suspended;
They stood, and the earth’s foundations stay;
What God abandoned, these defended,
And saved the sum of things for pay.