Monday
I have a new literary image to replace Frankenstein’s monster, the now overused allusion that has been used time and again to describe the GOP’s embrace of rightwing extremism. In Madeline Miller’s delicious novel Circe (2018), the island enchantress creates a horror she cannot control in Scylla, the six-headed monster that devours mariners. Then, like Dr. Frankenstein, she does everything she can to undo the damage.
The analogy breaks down here, however, since GOP leaders have shown little inclination to distance themselves from their monster. Trump lawyer Sidney Power recently threatened to “release the Kraken” upon Democrats, and while Powell is so nutty that even the president has distanced himself from her, we’re still seeing many Republicans go along with Trump’s lies about voter fraud. The more they enable the monster they have created, the more they threaten our democracy.
In the novel, Scylla is a beautiful but cruel nymph whom Circe turns into a monster for stealing her man, an act of jealousy that haunts her for the rest of her life. At one point she hopes to make personal connection with Scylla, only to discover she is beyond human reach. An id-driven beast with insatiable appetites is not a bad way to describe the self-absorbed Trump:
She was gray as the air, as the cliff itself. I had always imagined she would look like something: a snake or an octopus, a shark. But the truth of her was overwhelming, an immensity that my mind fought to take in. Her necks were longer than ship masts. Her six heads gaped, hideously lumpen, like melted lava stone. Black tongues licked her sword-length teeth.
Her eyes were fixed on the men, oblivious in their sweating fear. She crept closer, slipping over the rocks. A reptilian stench struck me, foul as squirming nests underground. Her necks wove a little in the air, and from one of her mouths I saw a gleaming strand of saliva stretch and fall.
After barely managing to save the ship and its crew, Circe reflects upon her creation:
Before me [in my imagination] was Scylla, her ravening mouths and those dead, empty eyes. She had not known me, I thought…Only the novelty of my being a god had momentarily checked her. Her mind was gone.
Many Republican NeverTrumpers, seeing their party’s corruption, have concluded that the GOP must be destroyed in order to be born again, which is why they argued for voting a straight Democratic ticket. Circe similarly concludes that destroying Scylla is the only remedy and returns with the world’s deadliest poison:
”Scylla!” I lifted the spear. “It is I, Circe, daughter of Helios, witch of Aiaia.”
She shrieked, that old baying cacophony, clawing at my ears, but there was no recognition in it.
“Long ago I changed you to this form from the nymph you were. I come now with Trygon’s power to make an end of what I began.”
Trygon is an underwater creature from whose tail Circe has obtained the poison, and she has packed it into one of the decoy rams that Scylla swallows. Because it doesn’t take effect right away, Circe fears that her poison-coated spear will prove equally harmless:
She screamed again. Her breath washed over me, stink and searing heat. The heads were weaving faster in her excitement. They snapped the air, long strands of drool swing from their jowls. She was afraid of the spear, but that would not hold her for long. She had come to like the taste of mortal flesh. She craved it. Stark, black terror rolled through me. I would have sworn I had felt the spell take hold. Had I been wrong? Panic drenched my shoulders. I would have to fight her six ravening heads at once.
Fortunately, at this point the poison kicks in and Scylla falls into the sea. Having made the straits safe for future mariners, Circe sets off to start life anew.
Will we be as lucky? Unfortunately, while Trump himself may have been defeated, Trumpism has multiple heads, with figures like Texas’ Ted Cruz, Arkansas’ Tom Cotton, Missouri’s Josh Hawley, and Florida’s Marco Rubio vying to take his place. The “taste of mortal flesh”—in their case, Trumpists’ crazed hatred of anyone who doesn’t agree with them—is insatiable.