Tag Archives: Donald Trump

To Resist Trump, Be Like Odysseus

By Robin Bates | Published: March 24, 2025

The Trump resistance started off like Telemachus overwhelmed by the suitors but, like Odysseus upon his return, it is starting to get strategic.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Elon Musk, Homer, Odyssey, Trump resistance | Comments closed

Trump’s Viking-Like Threats

By Robin Bates | Published: March 23, 2025

The Weiss law firm has caved to Trump’s threats, in effect (this according to the Bulwark’s Krystol) paying the Dane-geld. This is reference to a Kipling poem.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Dane-Geld", pressure on law firms, Rudyard Kipling, Trump's threats | Comments closed

Trumps Wants to “Kill All the Lawyers”

By Robin Bates | Published: March 18, 2025

Trump wants, at least metaphorically, to “kill all the lawyers.” The line is delivered by an insurrectionist and bad man in “Henry VI, Part II.”

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Henry VI Part 2, lawyers, rule of law, William Shakespeare | Comments closed

On the Leopards Eating Faces Party

By Robin Bates | Published: March 17, 2025

Some liberals are finding solace in remorseful Trumpists wondering how the “Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party” could have turned on THEM. Kipling’s story about the leopard’s spots is worth revisiting here.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "At Kenneth Burke's Place", "Epistle from Mrs. Younge to Her Husband", FAFO, How the Leopard Got His Spots, Just So Stories, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Leopards Eating People's Faces Party, MAGA remorse, William Carlos Williams | Comments closed

Trump Christians and Child Abuse

By Robin Bates | Published: March 13, 2025

Another MAGA pastor has been indicted for sexual abuse. Goldsmith’s comic poem “Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog” puts the sanctimonious in their place.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Snake", Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog, Oliver Goldsmith, Robert Morris, sexually abusive pastors | Comments closed

Percy Shelley’s Cry for Freedom

By Robin Bates | Published: March 9, 2025

“England in 1819,” written to protest George III and the Peterloo Massacre, sounds all too relevant today.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "England in 1819", cry for freedom, Elon Musk, Percy Shelley, public corruption, Trumpism | Comments closed

Trump as Putin’s Luca Brasi

By Robin Bates | Published: March 2, 2025

The GOP’s switch from anti- to pro-Russia is like switching from Eurasia to Eastasia in “1984.” But rather than resembling mob boss Don Corleone in the scenario, Trump is more like Putin’s Luca Brasi.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Godfather, J.D. Vance, Lindsey Graham, Mario Puzo, mob boss politics, Russo-Ukraine War, Vladimir Putin, Volodymyr Zelensky | Comments closed

Trump vs. Zelensky, Harpy vs. Eagle

By Robin Bates | Published: February 28, 2025

Trump and Vance attacking Zelensky is like the harpies of the shore plucking the eagle of the sea in Holmes’s “Old Ironsides.”

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged J.D. Vance, Old Ironsides, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky | Comments closed

Singing the Song of Angry Men

By Robin Bates | Published: February 25, 2025

Suddenly Victor Hugo’s revolutionary energies apply to the United States after years of our being complacent about our democracy.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Fascism, fight for freedom, Freedom, Les Misérables, Revolution, Victor Hugo | Comments closed