A Coward Dies A Thousand Deaths…
Even as MAGA rally-goers got stabbed this past weekend amid chants of “Destroy the GOP” the actions of 126 Republican Members of Congress marinate in the minds of the citizenry they sought to disenfranchise. Voters have notoriously short memories so those feckless collaborators will probably get re-elected in 2022. But in Georgia, where a special runoff election will decide the fate of two Republican Senators and the over-all balance of power in the upper house of the legislative branch, the residents only have to hang onto the truth until they cast ballots. Starting now.
Will the anti-republican message take root? Will Georgia republicans stay home? Will they, like their conspiratorial counterparts from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, keep stabbing each other until they finish off their once noble pachyderm?
The collective sins of republicans — starting with Reagan’s lies about the poor — and culminating with the seditious intent of the Texas Attorney General’s attempt to nullify the elections in four swing states have yet to destroy the party of Lincoln, Roosevelt and Eisenhower.
Perhaps the republicans will go down in Georgia. If so, then the analogy ends with the party because Donald Trump is no Julius Caesar and Melania is no Calpurnia. (Although leaked stories alleging she’s packing up the White House and moving things to New York and Mara Lago hint that the first lady foresees the inevitable final blow).
It’s unlikely that the President of the United States reads much Shakespeare. Perhaps that’s why he’s taking the coward’s way out of office.
Unfortunately for those Americans anxious to a move forward to the next incarnation of the nation’s government, Trump’s refusal to accept the truth is — at best — exhausting. The United States has real problems. Severe want resulting in starvation and death are real while the nations wealthiest citizens and government officials make untold fortunes on current calamities.
International aid organizations have turned their focus on the world’s wealthiest nation while agencies such as CARE and Doctors Without Borders struggle to mitigate the most unnecessary suffering on earth. Those working to address the systemic issues plaguing our nation face distraction and derailment because there is no more space in the news cycle (or the human psyche) to get past the commander-in-chief’s insistence on dying another day — and another and another.
Having lost scores of law suits, and two bids to argue before the U.S. Supreme court — for remedy from non-existent harm — the usurper in chief repeatedly tries to cheat fate. Perhaps he believes that in the end he will win. Trump may believe that because he’s skated the natural consequences of his actions all his life that the will of 80 million Americans can be ignored as well.
Because he admires the world’s strong men, it’s just possible he feels he too is invincible. Like Napoléon who refused to be crowned by the pope because no power was greater than his own, Trump seeks to install himself as president. Even though, unlike Napoléon, the U.S. president has no standing army at his back.
Of course, he does have a rag tag rabble scattered across the nation willing to draw blood in their thirst to preserve the supremacy of white ignorance to the last. These heavily armed thugs hope their cruelty is confused for strength by those who guard the halls justice. Bullies expect others to cower and back down. Isn’t this why Trump is bringing back executions, the gas chamber, the firing squad?
No doubt it stings a little that he can’t employ rocket launchers or starving dogs the way his pen pal, Kim Jung Un, has executed enemies.
In Shakespeare’s classic, when Calpurnia tells Caesar that her dreams portend his death, Caesar replies that everything frightening behind his back vanishes when he turns to face it. Thus the infamous quote translated often to read, “A Coward Dies a Thousand Deaths, A Hero Dies but One.” Donald Trump is incapable of turning and facing the debt, corruption, and political disaster that follow behind him. Instead of facing the truth head on, he has committed himself to a multitude of successive fatal blows. The only question remains, will the cowards dying with him mortally wound the republicans in Georgia before they’re done?
