Tuesday
Yesterday I analyzed the “strange love” that the GOP has for Donald Trump. Continuing that line of thought, today I share a couple of legendary love poems, one that describes a state of denial, the other a crazed and irrational affection. Trump Love has elements of both.
Denial is definitely at work as the GOP goes to unprecedented lengths to defend a man caught red-handed in acts of extortion, bribery, abuse of power, and obstruction of justice and of Congress. In Shakespeare’s Sonnet 138, written to a mysterious dark lady, the lover is so smitten that he pretends not to know she has a “false-speaking tongue.” “When my love swears that she is made of truth,” he says, “I do believe her, though I know she lies.”
I’ve adapted Sonnet 138 to apply to Trump worship. As you can see if you compare it to the original, I’ve kept four of the lines, including the final two. The devastating pun that runs through the sonnet captures how Trump and the GOP have become inseparable bedfellows. One partner calls the shots while the other allows him/herself to be abused:
Sonnet 138 (adapted)
When my love swears the call was perfect,
I do believe him, though I know he lies,
That he might think that I am loyal,
Gullible as to how he bends the truth.
Thus vainly thinking that he’s on my side,
Though knowing that betrayal is never far:
Simply I credit his false-speaking tongue:
On both sides thus is simple truth suppressed.
Why doesn’t he say he cares but for himself?
Why not admit that I am just the same?
Oh, politics’ best habit is in seeming trust
And hacks love not to have the truth revealed.
Therefore I lie with him and he with me,
And in our faults by lies we flattered be.
Once one’s mind starts running in this direction, one no longer needs to adapt. Sonnet 147 can be applied with no changes since Trump love “is a fever” and his followers’ thoughts “as madmen’s are.” If forced to tell the truth, like Shakespeare’s lover they might acknowledge, “My reason…hath left me.” They might even say secretly (and perhaps one day will publicly),
For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,
Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.
At the moment, however, Trump supporters seem “past cure” and “frantic-mad with evermore unrest.” They indulge their Trump obsession to please their “uncertain sickly appetite,” only to discover that, in so doing, they but “preserve the ill.”
The physician Reason has long since thrown up his hands and left the building.
Sonnet 147
My love is as a fever, longing still
For that which longer nurseth the disease,
Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,
Th’ uncertain sickly appetite to please.
My reason, the physician to my love,
Angry that his prescriptions are not kept,
Hath left me, and I desperate now approve
Desire is death, which physic did except.
Past cure I am, now reason is past care,
And frantic-mad with evermore unrest;
My thoughts and my discourse as madmen’s are,
At random from the truth vainly expressed:
For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,
Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.