Moody and by accounts of his advisers sometimes depressed, the president barely shows up to work… “If there are these analogies between classic literature and society as it’s operating right now, then that should give us some big cause for concern this December,” said [a literature] scholar. “We’re approaching the end of the play here and that’s where catastrophe always comes.”
Okay, so what’s the catastrophe? Certainly we’ve all allowed ourselves to think of geopolitical disaster as a paranoid depressive conjuring revenge pads about the White House … But – to alter one of George’s famous remarks to Martha – “In reality it usually works out that the nature of the calamity is more private.”
Which is to say, we’re back at UD‘s Trump-may-commit-suicide theory.
I mean, if you want to talk about Shakespeare as a Trump template, which the NYT writer does, suicide is all over the place, ain’t it? There’s a serious effort at suicide in Lear; Hamlet famously goes on and on about whether he should bother existing, and of course Ophelia does the deed; Lady Macbeth apparently offs herself. Ditto Othello…. Go here for the full, long, list. Why offer an analysis of the Last Days of Trump featuring Shakespearean tragedy and unnamed “catastrophe” and not go there? THE Shakespearean catastrophe is suicide.
*******************
Yes, UD still puts the likelihood of Trump doing (or attempting) it at maybe ten percent.
But if he does do it, it will be – in line with his whole life as a showman – a lollapalooza.
Rumor has it he plans to “leave the White House on January 20 in Marine One, then take Air Force One to Florida, where he would address supporters at a rally timed to coincide with Biden’s socially distanced inauguration outside the US Capitol.“
At this rally, he will ascend a massive golden escalator — larger and more glittering than the one he descended on the day he announced his presidential run. As he gradually rises, flames will begin to shoot out from the sides of the moving stairway, and the crowd will go wild as screaming fireworks also appear. But instead of the national anthem they expect to hear, it’s… the Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde?
And here at the very top of the escalator appears La Pasionaria, Trump’s true spiritual mate all along, Lara Trump, halo’d in gold. She sings:
In the wafting universe of the World-Breath
Drown, be engulfed…
As they clasp, they expire.
December 7th, 2020 at 4:34PM
power mad guy with contractor, contractual, fidelity, and family problems? there’s an opera for that but it isn’t tristan
https://sfopera.com/ring/story/dasrheingold/wotan/
December 7th, 2020 at 4:38PM
LOL. You’re right, factcheck. I just really wanted that liebestod. Though Alex Ross says I got that wrong too.
December 7th, 2020 at 4:57PM
it’s only air force one when the president is on it so i wonder if it will be that on the flight to valhallalago or if biden takes office before the formal swearing in
kill the wabbit either way
December 7th, 2020 at 5:50PM
I had no idea about this! You are broadening my horizons.
December 7th, 2020 at 8:47PM
context and a real liebstod
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x35sg3h
December 8th, 2020 at 2:25PM
There is a Liebestod in Tristan, that music was pretty scandalous when it first came out (those swelling erotic crescendos.)
But yes, having the whole works catch fire and then the Rhinemaidens show up as Valhalla is submerged, out of Götterdammerung is the more compelling theater,
December 8th, 2020 at 2:42PM
Stephen: You’re right.