Note: If you wish to receive, via e-mail, (1) my weekly newsletter or (2) daily copies of these posts, write to me at [email protected]. Comments may also be sent to this address. I promise not to share your e-mail with anyone. To unsubscribe, write here as well.
Tuesday
“F**k it: Release ’em all,” Donald Trump reportedly said about the insurrectionists who, at his instigation, stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, battling with police in a conflict that led to many injuries and several deaths. He has, to borrow from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, cried “havoc” and let slip the dogs of war.
America’s militant right was, needless to say, jubilant at Trump’s decision. Proud Boys’ leader Enrique Tarrio, sentenced to 22 years for seditious conspiracy, declared, “The people who did this, they need to feel the heat, they need to be put behind bars, and they need to be prosecuted.” Oath Keepers leader Stuart Rhodes, sentenced to 18 years for the same, said the prosecutors should be tried for their “crimes.” And the so-called QAnon shaman crowed, “”I got a pardon baby! Thank you President Trump! Now I am gonna buy some motha f***in guns!”
The judge who sentenced Rhodes in 2023 said at the time, “You are smart, you are charismatic and compelling and frankly that’s what makes you dangerous. The moment you are released, whenever that may be, you will be ready to take up arms against your government.” In other words, Trump is well on his way to inspiring a paramilitary to supplement his other powers.
Antony delivers his famous line immediately after Julius Caesar has been assassinated. Seething with feelings of revenge and resentment, he vows that “domestic fury and fierce civil strife shall cumber all the parts of Italy” and that all pity will be “choked with custom of fell deeds.” Caesar’s spirit, he promises, will come “ranging for revenge” from hot hell and will be accompanied by Átē, the Greek god of moral blindness and ruin:
Over thy wounds now do I prophesy
(Which like dumb mouths do ope their ruby lips
To beg the voice and utterance of my tongue)
A curse shall light upon the limbs of men;
Domestic fury and fierce civil strife
Shall cumber all the parts of Italy;
Blood and destruction shall be so in use
And dreadful objects so familiar
That mothers shall but smile when they behold
Their infants quartered with the hands of war,
All pity choked with custom of fell deeds;
And Caesar’s spirit, ranging for revenge,
With Ate by his side come hot from hell,
Shall in these confines with a monarch’s voice
Cry “Havoc!” and let slip the dogs of war,
That this foul deed shall smell above the earth
With carrion men groaning for burial.
Trump is no less unhinged than Antony in his desire for retribution against those who tried to hold him accountable. His pardons are one way of expressing this.
And as for the results, we can say—shifting to another Shakespeare play—”Hell is empty and all the devils are here.”
