We could use her about now.
JB’s defenders argue that the pardon of his son is
legitimized by the fact that Trump had pardoned many of his minions who had
been convicted of worse crimes than those of HB. Did Trump do that? Yes, of course, he did. Is that a defense for JB’s actions? Not in Curmie’s books. It’s difficult to say what was going in in
JB’s mind when he made the vow—did he really believe that he would keep his
word, or was that just another lie told by a politician looking to appear
objective and above the fray of partisan squabbling?
Did he think he would win re-election and could then “change
his mind”? Was this a strategic move
intended to suggest that the prosecutions of Trump were other than politically
motivated? Curmie can’t answer those
questions with authority, but let’s just say he has his suspicions.
That said, two things: 1). Trump is indeed a convicted
felon. However much those charges may
have been motivated by something other than a concern for justice, the guy who
crows incessantly about hiring only the best people had a legal team that
really screwed the pooch if he really was innocent. They were present for the trial, including
the voir dire of prospective jurors.
All they needed was one juror who wasn’t convinced beyond
reasonable doubt that the actions were not only criminal but felonious,
that it was reasonable to have 34 indictments, and that Trump was guilty
on all counts. That… erm… didn’t happen.
2). JB’s announcement was ill-timed politically because it
became the lead story across a compliant and lazy media who might otherwise
have been noting that Trump’s nominees for important government posts are the
greatest collection of rogues, scoundrels, and scalawags since Catwoman, the
Joker, the Riddler, and the Penguin joined forces to form the United
Underworld. Trump also threw in a couple
of idiots and wackadoodles: his version of an inclusion initiative, apparently. (Can Vivek Ramaswamy really be so stupid that
he misses the irony of his disparagement of “unelected bureaucrats”?)
The problem is that the majority of the allegations on both
sides are, well, true. Both candidates
for the Presidency (well, all three if we count Biden along with the two
finalists) babbled incoherently on the campaign trail, lied about themselves
and their opponent, and generally proved to be unfit for office. Both are intentionally divisive; both significantly
threaten First Amendment freedoms.
Curmie has already noted that he voted for NotTrump in three
consecutive elections, not because he was particularly impressed with any of the
Democratic candidates, but because he believes that Donald Trump is indeed an
existential threat to democracy. (Note
to any right-leaning readers: the fact that Biden and Kamala Harris may also qualify
for this description does not mean the Trump does not: not all situations are
either/or; some are both/and.)
Over the years, Curmie has collected more than a few posters
of shows, museums, and the like: far too many to be able to display them all,
although virtually none have actually been discarded. One that always finds its way onto a wall
somewhere in the house or apartment we’ve lived in is from the London
production of Aeschylus’s trilogy The Oresteia, directed by Sir Peter
Hall.
The principal reason it has a place of honor at Chez Curmie
is that the play was the standout production (against some pretty solid
competition) that he and Beloved Spouse saw on their honeymoon
<mumblemumble> years ago. But for
the purposes of this essay, it’s more than that: the poster declares The
Oresteia to be “the world’s first dramatic masterpiece,” and Curmie has no
argument with that description.
What is remarkable about the trilogy is that the cycle of
violence and retribution perpetuates itself until it is finally resolved by
divine intervention. King Agamemnon of
Argos had sacrificed his daughter, Iphigenia, believing it to be the only way
to get to Troy and thereby to return Helen to her husband, Menelaus. In the first play of the trilogy, Agamemnon,
the title character returns victorious, only to be killed, along with his
concubine Cassandra, by his wife Clytemnestra and her consort, Aegisthus.
In the middle play, The Libation Bearers, Agamemnon’s
other children, Orestes and Electra, egged on at least indirectly by the god
Apollo, conspire to kill Clytemnestra and Aegisthus. They succeed, but Orestes ends the play
hounded by the Furies, the chthonic goddesses who believe no crime to be worse
than matricide. The fact that only he
can see them may be a practical dramatic necessity, but it also renders the
moment all the more terrifying: a tactic later employed by the likes of Alfred
Hitchcock, who knew that the unknown can conjure a level of dread that no
literal representation can match.
Finally, in the Eumenides, Orestes is brought to
trial. The judge is Athena, the goddess
of wisdom. The immortals—Apollo and the
Furies—state their respective cases, with the ultimate issue being trying to
rank the evils of filicide, regicide/mariticide, and regicide/matricide. Athena has appointed a jury of the leading
men of Athens, the Areopagus, to decide the case. Their vote ends in a tie; Athena casts the
deciding vote for mercy, but assures the Furies (now re-named the Eumenides,
the Kindly Ones) that they will henceforth be appropriately honored in exchange
for their benevolence.
Athena thus effectively ends the spiral of retribution and
whataboutism. As we prepare for a
radical change in government in January, we desperately need an Athena. The chances that Joe Biden will morph into
such a figure in his last days in office: one in a million. The chances Donald Trump will ever do so:
zero.
Alas.
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