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Tuesday
Political blogger Robert Hubbell recently observed that Trump’s second term resembles a medieval morality play, a genre in which the characters “personify abstract virtues and vices, such as good and evil, avarice and generosity, malice and charity.” By exaggerating human traits, Hubbell explains, the playwrights ensured that the moral would not be lost on their audiences.
At present, he observes, we are emotional hostages in such a play, performed daily, as we watch Trump and his GOP enablers engage “in conduct of such grotesque and exaggerated vice that it surpasses caricature.” The purpose of their play is to dispirit and frighten us.
Fortunately, in morality plays good triumphs over evil. “Everyone can see the ultimate resolution from a mile away,” Hubbell points out. That’s certainly the case with Everyman (1530), the best known of England’s morality plays.
Observing that Everyman is drowned in sin and obsessed with earthly riches, God instructs Death to meet with him. While Death won’t grant Everyman a life extension, he does give him time to find a friend who will accompany him. To Everyman’s sorrow, he discovers he must walk that lonesome valley by himself as Fellowship, Kindred, and Cousin all abandon him once they find out where he is going, as do Goods, Beauty, Strength, Discretion, and Five Wits. Only Good Deeds and Knowledge join him on the road to death, although Knowledge can’t go with him once he leaves his physical body. In the end, he and Good Deeds ascend to heaven together, where they are welcomed by an angel.
The play was a major influence on John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress (1678), where Christian, carrying a burdensome pack of sins, must brave the Slough of Despond, Vanity Fair, the Doubting Castle of the Giant Despair, and various other obstacles on his journey to the Celestial City. Along the way he also encounters various false friends, such as Worldly Wiseman, Formality, Hypocrisy, and others, whom he must learn to reject.
Everyman opens with a dissatisfied God wondering how to get people to turn away from evil, something which many of us are wondering about the supporters of our billionaire conman:
God: I perceive here in my majesty,
How that all creatures be to me unkind,
Living without dread in worldly prosperity:
Of ghostly sight the people be so blind,
Drowned in sin, they know me not for their God;
In worldly riches is all their mind…
God goes on to observe that people are on their way to becoming “much worse than beasts; for now one would by envy another up eat.” Sadly, “charity they all do clean forget.”
Because Everyman repents and embraces Good Deeds, however, his ending is happy. It’s worth noting, however, that, before Good Deeds can come to his aid, he must be aided by Knowledge and Confession. In other words, he must undergo a personal transformation. Once he does, things brighten up:
Knowledge. Now hath he suffered that we all shall endure;
The Good-Deeds shall make all sure.
Now hath he made ending;
Methinketh that I hear angels sing
And make great joy and melody,
Where Everyman’s soul received shall be.Angel. Come, excellent elect spouse to Jesu:
Hereabove thou shalt go
Because of thy singular virtue:
Now the soul is taken the body fro;
Thy reckoning is crystal-clear.
Now shalt thou into the heavenly sphere,
Unto the which all ye shall come
That liveth well before the day of doom.
So what comparable ending, I hear you ask, is Robert Hubbell promising us? What is that happy ending that we should see from a mile away? Hubbell points to how the Trump administration is losing case after case in the courts. These include:
–the case involving the law firm Perkins Coie, in which a court ruled that
using the powers of the federal government to target lawyers for their representation of clients and avowed progressive employment policies in an overt attempt to suppress and punish certain viewpoints, however, is contrary to the Constitution…
“By personifying injustice,” Hubbell writes, “Trump has ensured that justice will prevail.”
[I note in passing that Judge Beryl Howell correctly applied a passage from Shakespeare’s Henry VI, Part II—“Kill all the lawyers”—in her ruling:
This action draws from a playbook as old as Shakespeare, who penned the phrase: “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, HENRY VI, PART 2, act 4, sc. 2, l. 75. When Shakespeare’s character, a rebel leader intent on becoming king, see id. l. 74, hears this suggestion, he promptly incorporates this tactic as part of his plan to assume power, leading in the same scene to the rebel leader demanding “[a]way with him,” referring to an educated clerk, who “can make obligations and write court hand,” id. l. 90, 106. Eliminating lawyers as the guardians of the rule of law removes a major impediment to the path to more power. See Walters v. Nat’l Ass’n of Radiation Survivors, 473 U.S. 305, 371 n.24 (1985) (Stevens, J., dissenting) (explaining the import of the same Shakespearean statement to be “that disposing of lawyers is a step in the direction of a totalitarian form of government”).
Check out Judge Thomas Thrash’s in-depth exploration of the passage, which I recently shared here.
–Maine has just gotten the Trump administration to drop its lawsuit threatening to withhold food program funding for not acceding to Trump’s discrimination against transgender athletes under Title IX.
–Trump will lose in his plainly illegal attempts to order the IRS to strip Harvard of its tax exempt status;
–Also dead on arrival is a lawsuit filed by a Trump-affiliated advocacy group designed to take over control of judicial operations. Hubbell explains that, by taking charge of operations and funding, “Trump could force the judiciary to bend to his will by threatening to withhold funds for judges or circuits that he perceives as hostile to his agenda.” However right-leaning the Supreme Court may be, it will never give up its own power.
–Also DOA is DOGE’s attempt to gain access to Social Security data that is protected from disclosure by privacy laws.
–Hubbell could also have mentioned a recent ruling by Trump-appointed judge Fernando Rodriguez, Jr. prohibiting Trump from using the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 (AEA) to deport Venezuelans from South Texas. Chris Geidner quotes from the ruling to tell us what happened:
“[T]he historical record renders clear that the President’s invocation of the AEA through the Proclamation exceeds the scope of the statute and is contrary to the plain, ordinary meaning of the statute’s terms,” Rodriguez wrote in his opinion, finding that the 1798 law’s use of “invasion” and “predatory incursion” do not sweep as broadly as the Trump administration argued.
–Hubbell should also include Reagan-appointed Judge Royce Lamberth ruling that the Trump administration must restore $12 million in funding taken from Radio Free Europe.
–And then there’s the 9-0 Supreme Court decision supporting a lower court order that the deported Kilmar Ábrego García had a right to a due process before any action could be taken.
Although the Supreme Court has acted badly in the past—especially in granting broad immunity to Trump—Hubbell says that it is starting to push back after realizing it has created a monster. Pushing back as well are the lower courts, including Trump-appointed judges, leading Hubbell to conclude that this morality play will conclude as all such plays do:
We won’t win every battle. But over time, rationality and the rule of law will prevail. Our efforts to defend democracy hasten the day when reckoning will arrive!
Of course, both Everyman and John Bunyan’s Christian undergo a lot of suffering and experience much doubt on their way to the Celestial City. Sometimes they lose sight of the prize as they are distracted by side concerns. “The only thing is, it has never been easy,” says that Pueblo grandmother at the end of Leslie Marmon Silko’s novel Ceremony. But the narrative arc bends towards truth and justice.
At least, that’s what morality plays assure us.
