With so many wondering, puzzled, confused about the character tyrant Trump who managed to have himself made president of the USA, despite the obvious prior to his election, that he was a type of personality wholly unfit for the position, not only due to his glaring moral failings, but to the fact that he had no political experience. What is Donald Trump? I think this reblog from Longreads answers many questions. It’s a long read, no pun intended, but well worth the few minutes on the page and the long minutes of pondering that should follow.
Stephen Greenblatt | Excerpt adapted from Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics | W. W. Norton & Company | May 2018 | 14 minutes (3,827 words)
From the early 1590s, at the beginning of his career, all the way through to its end, Shakespeare grappled again and again with a deeply unsettling question: how is it possible for a whole country to fall into the hands of a tyrant?
“A king rules over willing subjects,” wrote the influential sixteenth-century Scottish scholar George Buchanan, “a tyrant over unwilling.” The institutions of a free society are designed to ward off those who would govern, as Buchanan put it, “not for their country but for themselves, who take account not of the public interest but of their own pleasure.” Under what circumstances, Shakespeare asked himself, do such cherished institutions, seemingly deep-rooted and impregnable, suddenly prove fragile? Why do large numbers of people knowingly accept being…
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I am not one to quote the bible, but in this case, an exception taken out of its biblical context is very much to the point here:
“Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear, neither do they understand.”
And that about sums up the phenomenon that is Donald Trump.
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Quote: “And that about sums up the phenomenon that is Donald Trump.” Indeed, and the phenomenon that is those who are blinded by his ignorant rhetoric! Thanks for the comment!
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An extraordinary break down of Shakespeare’s Richard the Third and we’ll worth reading. I did notice there was no mention of the fact he was a crippled hunchback which Shakespeare uses to show the reasons behind his decision to be evil.
‘ He capers nimbly in a lady’s chamber. To the lascivious pleasing of a lute. But I, that am not shaped for supportive tricks , nor made to court an amorous looking glass.’
It’s interesting to speculate he could not have been a psychopath since he deliberately chose evil and was not evil by nature. Perhaps we should feel sorry for him that he had such a burden to bear.
Donald Trump is in a different league and could well be a sociopath , and it’s difficult to feel any sorrow for him.
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Yes, it is difficult to feel any sorrow for someone who so enjoys expressing his sociopathy.
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