Not Just Plucky Underdogs

Most of us are suckers for “plucky underdog” stories. I say “most,” because I assume bullies aren’t into them. I notice that the grifter’s administration referred to itself as “Goliath” in one of its communications to Canada, which gives me some indication that whoever wrote that line was not paying attention in Sunday School.

But the rest of us love them. The first three Star Wars movies were colossal hits because the resistance fighters were plucky underdogs who eventually won.

For me, part of what makes the original Star Wars movies so satisfying is that the plucky underdogs are the good guys and they win.

The winning is important. It’s not just that they’re plucky and right; they succeed.

When The Force Awakens, the first of the last Star Wars trilogy, came out (We will draw a veil over the second trilogy), my first reaction was “Wait a minute. The good guys won in Return of the Jedi. Why are they the plucky rebels again?”

Now don’t get me wrong. I enjoyed the movie, even enjoyed the complexity of the good guys that got worked into that whole series. But my question stands.

Why weren’t the good guys fighting from a position of power? The implication is that even if the right people end up in charge, they can’t hold onto it.

Now there are certainly plenty of historical examples of the good guys winning only to be overthrown soon after. It happens. It happened here in the United States in November 2024 when the January 6, 2021, insurrection, which we all thought had failed, succeeded.

You can argue that we needed better good guys and that the United States needs some changes and I won’t disagree with you, but we are dealing with the destruction of our country right now, including a lot of the best parts of it. I come down on the side of clean air, equal opportunity, safety, antitrust enforcement, and retirement protection every time.

You can also tell me there was an election, but I will counter that the 14th Amendment bars insurrectionists from office. The failure of our institutions to protect us from this debacle will keep me angry forever.

Anyway, the plucky underdog story is a classic, whether the underdog wins or loses, and we the people of the United States do seem to be in the underdog spot right now. (I assume some of the people who voted for the grifter are still under the illusion that the leopards aren’t going to eat their faces, but they need their social security checks and their highway repairs, too.)

But unless the underdog wins and holds onto the win, it is so not the story I need right now! I need stories where the good people not only succeed, but figure out how to keep things going well. I want stories in which people develop a good society – if not a utopia, at least something on the path to one – and keep it going.

Continue reading “Not Just Plucky Underdogs”

In Times of War: A Flood of Horrific News

This was originally posted in April, 2022, as the Russian invasion of Ukraine was getting underway. It seems just as urgent now.

After the 2016 Presidential election, I wrote a series of blog posts, “In Troubled Times.” In them I explored my evolving feelings of disbelief, shock, horror, despair, fury, and rising determination. “Nevertheless, She Persisted” became our mantra. I hoped that my words provided solace and inspiration to others, and the process of putting them down did for me.

Now we face new, often overwhelming challenges to sanity. I find myself reacting to the news of the war in Ukraine, and yet being unable to look away. Then my friend, Jaym Gates, wrote this on her Facebook page, posted here with her permission.

Be really careful on social media for the next few days, friends. A lot of footage of Russian Federation war crimes, torture, rape, and murder just came out from Mariupol and other occupied cities. It is *horrific.* While it needs to be seen, shared, and remembered, it is going to be extremely traumatic to engage with.

If you’re a survivor of abuse or trauma, in particular, please be especially careful.

And send support to Ukraine if you can. What’s happening there is awful beyond words.

 My daughter, a psychology student, spotted this article by Heather Kelly in the Washington PostHow to stay up-to-date on terrible news without burning out.

It can be hard to look away from your phone and live your life while terrible events are unfolding, Kelly writes. There’s an unrelenting flow of images, videos and graphic updates out of Ukraine, filling social media, messaging apps and news sites.

It’s important to stay informed, engaged and even outraged. But it’s also important to pay attention to our own limits and mental health by taking breaks, looking for signs of burnout and consuming news in the smartest way possible.

That means setting some ground rules for the main portal connecting us to nonstop tragedy: our phones [or computers]. Here are some suggestions:

  1. Give yourself permission to take a break

It is okay to hit pause on the doom and go live your life, whether that means going outside with the kids or just losing yourself on the silly side of TikTok. It’s necessary for everyone’s mental health.

  1. Take time for self-care

A break is not a few minutes away from Twitter. Start with real breaks of at least 30 minutes to an hour so that your brain has time to come down from what you were last watching or reading. Ideally, you’ll put your phone down and take a technology break … or do some activities known to help with stress reduction, including exercise, mindfulness and meditation, journaling, engaging in hobbies and other activities you enjoy, spending time with family and friends, and doing faith-based activities if you practice.

  1. Change your news habits

Disinformation like propaganda is designed to capture your attention and elicit strong emotions, which can contribute to any anxiety you’re already feeling. Instead, stick with reputable sources. If you can wait, opt for deeply reported stories at the end of the day over constant smaller updates. Avoid using social media for news, but if you do, follow sources and people that contribute to your understanding of an issue rather than those that just generate more outrage.

  1. View your phone in black and white

In your smartphone’s accessibility settings there is an option to make the screen black and white instead of color. Some studies have indicated that turning this on leads to less screen time.

  1. Know when to ask for help

Look for signs that you are burned out or experiencing serious anxiety. First, consider whether you’re predisposed to reacting strongly to a particular issue. Anyone who has personally dealt with similar trauma or war in the past might find constant vivid social media posts about Ukraine to be triggering. [Italics mine.]

In conclusion: be kind to yourself, friends. Practice healthy boundaries and filters, and good self-care. Ask for help, whether it’s a friend or family member screening news for triggers, or a companion on a hike through the redwoods. Find safe people to reach out to. I’ll be writing more about our journey together.

 

Summer and Eggs

My little bit of Australia has a heat wave. This is not unexpected, given it’s summer. It does, however, mean my brain is fried. It didn’t reach 100 degrees (using US temperatures) today, so, in the measurements of my childhood, it was hot enough to fry an egg on a car bonnet, but not hot enough for the pavement to melt. In my childhood, I would have said that this is a day when I can’t go running, but I can still play and read. Alas, I am no longer a child. Also, alas, this week is full of work that has unchangeable deadlines. If I had the energy, I would sing you (badly), “Too darn hot.” I do not. Also I have 3,000 words of deathless academic prose to write before I can sleep tonight.

I had better start writing.

Maybe next week will be cooler. Maybe the week after. We’re in our last month of summer. Schools have gone back, and universities will begin again soon and life will pick up pace. Maybe then I’ll have the inner-oomph to write those answers to the serious and interesting questions my readers sent me. I hope so. Then I can complain about storms and blowsy autumn leaves. I’ll have more energy for complaint and far less interest in dreaming of frying eggs on car bonnets.

One last note to leave you with: if it were ten degrees hotter, then I could fry an egg on the pavement. I tested this when I was a child. My parents did not let me eat the egg, alas, which is why the car bonnet is now my theoretical place of choice. It’s still only theoretical because none of my friends are willing to let me destroy their car enamel. Which is just as well, because my US friends have egg problems and if I had wasted eggs in testing the heat outdoors it would be rather rude.

American Exceptionalism

cover of It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair LewisOver lunch this week, Madeleine Robins and I discussed a book we’ve both read more than once: Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here.

We have not re-read it recently, and neither of us is willing to do so right now, but as we know the story pretty well, we see the parallels all around us.

The title says a lot about American Exceptionalism, in that we in the United States really believe all kinds of its can’t happen here.

For those of you who haven’t read it, here’s a brief summary. In 1936, U.S. voters, apparently dissatisfied with Roosevelt’s reforms, elect a so-called populist (modeled on Huey Long of Louisiana) as president. The government is handed over without a fuss (sound familiar?) and the new president, Buzz Windrip, quickly establishes a fascist government.

Our hero is Doremus Jessup, editor and publisher of a small town paper, a man who ends up an active part of the resistance.

If you don’t know how strong fascism was in the United States in the 1930s and how much the oligarchs of the time hated Roosevelt, this might seem like fantasy to you, but there were good reasons for Lewis to write this book when he did. Lewis is not the most elegant writer and his satire was always a little heavy handed, but he really understood this country, or at least the white people of it.

I recommend it, though I’m not doing a re-read right now because I know the end of the book and the themes of many other resistance stories. I want stories about how we win, not just how we persevere.

As we cope with real life, there are two pieces of advice that I keep seeing over and over in the wake of the new presidential administration.

One is a reminder that the firehouse of nonsense from the grifter is intended to freak us all out and we should stay calm and not let it get to us.

And the other is we need to support institutions. History professor Timothy Snyder, whose studies focus on authoritarianism, included that in his latest newsletter of things to do and Marc Elias, who has been suing over voting rights in particular, included in his list of things to do “Help Democrats.”

While I certainly think it’s important not to let all these assaults on our fellow citizens and our democracy overwhelm us, I will point out that there needs to be a response to each of them. I don’t mean an individual response – that’s not even practical in most cases – but rather a response by an organization that knows how to deal with that problem.

A lot of that response will be litigation, though some of it – particularly when it comes to their attacks on immigrants – might be more focused on protecting people and holding demonstrations. Regardless, it needs to be led by groups that know what they’re doing, but the rest of us need to know that such work is happening and to get some idea of how we can support it.

In the case of those groups – those institutions – I think support (volunteering and financial) is very critical indeed. I have noticed that the ACLU, Public Citizen, and the Quakers have all filed relevant suits, and so have state attorneys general.

One of the actions over the executive order that is intended to nullify the 14th Amendment to the Constitution has already had success in the courts. But there will need to be a lot more of that just to hold a little ground.

In general, when I hear the word “protect institutions,” it’s those groups I have in mind, because they’re the ones that have been doing the work.

Continue reading “American Exceptionalism”

Elements, Man

Last week my husband and I drove from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Excitingly, when we were not quite half way there several friends who knew that we were driving down pinged us to let us know that a new wildfire had broken out near I-5 on our route. During the minutes when Danny and I were discussing whether this would impact our drive the fire grew so fast that we decided to head west at Paso Robles and take the coastal route the rest of the way. Thus our tidy six hour drive became a squalid 9 hour drive. But we got there and I moved in to the apartment upstairs where I stay when I visit, while Danny continued onward to Anaheim and the trade show he was going to.

By 11pm I was in my jammies and on the edge of sleep when Danny called. I thought this was just a “g’night, I love you” sort of call. Instead he said “you know about the fire, right?”

Um. Did he mean the Hughes fire which had caused our detour through Paso Robles and San Luis Obispo etc.? Or the Palisades fire which was (at that point) still not entirely under control. As it turns out, he meant neither. A brush fire had broken out a couple of miles north of my aunt’s house. Um.

I got hold of my daughter (in another apartment in the building) and my aunt’s caregiver’s daughter (a PhD candidate who also lives in the building) and we were discussing what, if anything, to do, when an alert siren went off on our phones: the area we were in (Bel Air, right next to the San Diego Freeway) was now on Level 2 alert, meaning “get ready to get the hell out.” 

I was, by now, fully dressed. I threw the things I’d taken out of my bag back in, and my daughter and I packed her car with various stuff. Then we went to my aunt’s house. There, things were in motion to move my aunt to her caregiver’s house in Central LA. Since other than standing around making un-useful suggestions (my aunt’s caregivers raise Awesome to a new dimension, and have their act down) and entertaining my aunt (who has lived in this neighborhood for over 50 years and, even with dementia, has a sense of humor about all this shit) there wasn’t much we could do to help, we took off to the valley and my daughter’s beau’s family house, where we spent the night. This meant actually driving past the fire that had rousted us out of our beds. It was, as these things go, small–I don’t think it got bigger than 45 acres (the Palisades fire, in contrast reached 23,448 acres; while it’s still active, it’s 94% contained, thank God). But driving past it, seeing the tongues of flame going from one dark patch to another, and seeing the firetrucks and a helicopter (I think it was a helicopter) dropping water on the area, was terrifying and impressive.

Years ago I was in London, walking up Baker Street toward Marylebone Street, and realized that there was a serious fire two blocks ahead of me on. I stood and watched, riveted, as the London firefighters took after this elemental force, fighting it with water and foam and all the tools they had. Gradually the tide turned; they kept the fire limited to the one six-story building it had started in, then began to quell it, one section of the building at a time. I was left kind of breathless: there are people who go out and face down this force with nothing more than water and the tools that science and experience has given them.

As I’ve said before: fire doesn’t care. Neither does water (if you have ever been caught in an undertow, you know this). Based on my experience with fire and water, I’d go so far as to guess that earth–in the form of earthquakes and mudslides– and air don’t care either. And yes, I realize that calling water, fire, earth and air “elements” harks back to ancient times and isn’t scientific. But these forces are powerful, and they do not yield to persuasion. Given my choice of facing down a guy with a gun or a wall of fire, I’d go for the guy with a gun. Who knows? I might be able to figure a way out, or talk the guy down or something. But Fire Doesn’t Care. Period.

In the end the fire fighters got the Sepulveda fire sufficiently contained that the “get set to go” alert was cancelled, and my aunt got to stay in her own bed. The next morning my daughter and I returned from Tarzana (a 20 minute drive that took almost two hours; thank you, LA traffic) and the rest of the visit went on as planned.

On Sunday Danny and I drove back to San Francisco. We’d had some rain on Saturday evening, and the rain on I-5 turned to snow on the grapevine (a twisty high-elevation bit of the highway above Santa Clarita), and then alternated with torrents and blue skies most of the way north. So we got more of the elements, which was occasionally exciting in the pejorative sense. We Modern Folk tend to discount the elements–it’s only rain. Or snow. It’s only fire. Or an earthquake. Or Santa Ana winds that draw every last iota of moisture out of the air so that a Los Angeles hillside is an easy target for a spark–any spark. 

All I’m saying is that the forces of nature don’t care, so we have to.

Why is there no Jewish Australian culture or art?

I meant to return to answering questions today. Next week. Today I have other things on my mind.

Yesterday, I was caught up in trying to work out why it’s so important to so many people to not let Jews mourn loss. I saw Irish Jews forced to leave a Holocaust Memorial ceremony. I saw people told “What about others who have died?” when they tried to mourn families murdered during the Holocaust. I saw so much more than this that I lost words and avoided writing.

Even political leaders who gave official statements about the Holocaust toned it down this year, left off the dangerous word ‘Jews’ and generally faffed around. Someone on my timeline suggested that we should mourn all lives not focus on specific lives even for one day, and I wondered if it were possible to make all anniversaries about the death of a parent about all parents without hurting those who had lost their parents. We all need time to mourn because we all need to heal when we’re hurt. Each and every one of us at an appropriate time. Not all of us for just one shared minute.

This mood carried over into all kinds of other things. One of them left me incoherent until this morning. Please understand that I am not yet over my incoherence. This may not be the best post I’ve ever done, but my heart is in it.

Someone on social media said, “Think of all the colour, art, theatre, celebration and other cultural value that immigrants and different cultures have brought to Australia. Hmm just remind me what the Jews have brought us, a bit of theatre and film maybe?”

The first Australian opera was written by someone Jewish: Isaac Nathan. The famous story of Fisher’s ghost, the story that led to a Fisher’s ghost festival every single year in the Sydney region… it was written by someone Jewish. The writer who brought English folktales into the international fold and who is still read as the classic purveyor of English folk tales was Jewish and from Australia.

Jewish Australia was such a strong part of Australia’s nineteenth century culture.

We couldn’t stand out and be different very often, because that was not safe. This doesn’t mean that we didn’t contribute. Jews have been part of Australian culture since modern Australia began, just as Jews have lived in Australia since 1788. One of the first free settlers in Australia was a Jewish baby who arrived on the First Fleet, and many of the early arts and early printing in colonial Australia were by Jews or done with Jews.

This particular history shows why some of us create art and celebrate culture that is similar to mainstream culture: religious difference does not imply complete cultural difference.

More than that, though: many Jewish cultural mavens don’t have the same access to the wider community because it’s not safe or because they/we are too Jewish.

Still more, this means is that Jews in Australia are left aside by others who share culture, because of histories past and shameful. Let me give you an example. When I first came to Canberra I met the people in charge at our Polish club and they told me I was welcome to join, since I had ancestors from Bialystock and from around Warsaw and we spoke very similar cultural languages. Then they discovered I was Jewish and they said “We do not accept Jews.” At the cultural festivals in Canberra, there used to be Jewish and Israeli foodstalls and singing and dancing, but these days it’s not safe and very few Jewish culture-bearers from any background are on programs and everyone asks me “Why don’t we have a Jewish food fair any more?” The food fair is a specific thing. It covered many different Jewish food cultures, and was a delight. It was run to make money for children’s education, but the insurance premiums the Jewish community had to pay were so high after the Molotov cocktails 20+ years ago, that the community would not only not raise money with a food fair… it would go into debt.

One of the wonders of modern Australian history is the great change that made us a nation with so many writers and musicians and actors and… an immensely artistic country. This development of the arts into something of international note (including that enviable coffee culture) was spearheaded by Holocaust survivors. And yet there is not Jewish contribution to culture and the arts?

When I was in my teens I asked many Shoah survivors, including writers, “Why Melbourne? What made you choose to come to Melbourne?” I was told they wanted to get as far from Europe as they could. These people were mostly honorary aunties and uncles who went to school, university or shared a social group with one of my parents.

We were the older Australian Jews. They still shared their art with the rest of Australia. Much of Australia simply pretended my branch of Australian Jewish weren’t Jewish at all, or were pretenders, or did not have and specific cultural background they presented. My father’s first cousin, Linda, has had any indication of her Jewishness removed from her Wikipedia page, except for the title of one of her most popular song series.

We are not really permitted to show off the folk culture or the national culture the way other Australians are able.

There is the bigotry, which I’ve mentioned. Add to this the need to be safe, which is related to the bigotry.

There is another related factor. Many non-Jewish Australians pretend we don’t exist. This is why almost no-one in Australia knows who the author is of the first Australian Jewish fantasy novel. How do I know almost no-one knows? Because I am that author.

Another aspect is whether others who share our ancestral cultures are willing to share. The Polish Club fits in here. Just as the Polish club did not want me, few mainstream Australian culture experts see Jewish Australian writers unless we write about the Holocaust, about rebellion against Ultra-Orthodoxy… in other words, unless we create what they feel we ought to create. Our own culture is far less important than their view of it.

Also, for some of us, our culture is Anglo-Australia. My cultural foodways include challah and lamingtons and meat pies. We’re entirely allowed to publicly celebrate the lamingtons and meat pies, but most Australians don’t see how challah fits into the picture.

Add to all this that we can’t appear too different and still be safe. There are days and times I cannot walk in a given place and guarantee my safety. When I’m in Melbourne on a day where pro-Palestinians march, I cannot use the State Library without walking around the long, long way and entering by the back, for instance. I cannot walk that far, so I cannot use the State Library on those days.

Jews in Australia have never been permitted to be too different from majority culture and so we have our own culture, that is similar to that of the majority. This doesn’t mean we bring nothing, because our ancestors were part of that majority culture before we even came to Australia. It means that some people look and don’t see something they think of as distinctive or exotic and so think we have brought nothing. Take Jewish composers out of Australian history and the whole modern development of international level music would be jeopardised. The folk music scene in Melbourne would lose its best violinist.  Dame Edna Everage would not have worn those glasses. Eliot Goblet and John Safran and Elle McFeast would not be part of our world. There is so much culture Australia would not have.

We cannot appear too different in public. I can be publicly Jewish because I have an Anglo-Australian culture, but local bookshops do not stock my books – not even the ones used in universities in the US and Germany – and I am not sufficiently distinctively Jewish  because when anyone assesses Jewish culture in Australia, the whole of the Anglo side of things tends to be ignored. This is why I wrote The Wizardry of Jewish Women – I am trying to redress that balance.

Let me ask that question from social media again:

“Think of all the colour, art, theatre, celebration and other cultural value that immigrants and different cultures have brought to Australia. Hmm just remind me what the Jews have brought us, a bit of theatre and film maybe?”

What does most of Australia bring to understanding and even encouraging Jewish Australian cultures? Not much at all. It’s not a lack of culture. It’s a lack of knowledge and a lack of community.

Update: I always tangle certain writers. There was more than one John Lang. The one who wrote Fisher’s Ghost was Australian-born, and famous for it. He was not the brother of Andrew Lang, of the many-coloured fairy books. The Fisher’s Ghost Lang’s maternal grandfather was one of the Jews who arrived here on the First Fleet, so Lang himself was not actually Jewish.  I always, always get the many Langs confused. I wrote articles to make sure I didn’t, but I still do. John Lang still fits here, but as someone with Jewish heritage, not as a practising Jew.

Birthright

As a White person with an ancestry in the United States that goes back before the country existed, I’ve spent most of my life assuming the truth of American Exceptionalism.

Don’t get me wrong – I’ve been critical of my country most of my life – but there was still this belief in some of our principles and maybe even the Constitution that let me think “we’re different” and “we’ll get around to fixing that.”

One of the things that kept that belief intact was birthright citizenship.

I recall learning at some point that people who were born in Germany to parents who had come from other places to work there were not German citizens and I was appalled. I had always assumed that birthright citizenship was a given everywhere, but instead it appeared it was an exception.

As in exceptional. As in one of the things that makes the United States exceptional.

The grifter – who is back in the White House because no one with the authority chose to enforce another provision of the 14th Amendment that bars insurrectionists from office – wants to take away one of the key elements of American Exceptionalism.

He doesn’t want the country to be exceptional. He just wants to do his performative powerful rich man routine and see how many people he can hurt in the process.

Of the many things that man and his minions – or maybe his handlers, given the financial power of the broligarchs – are doing to destroy our country, this might not be the worst. Even the current Supreme Court might rule it violates the Constitution. It’s certainly not the one that will affect me personally, given my ancestry.

(The only people who have the right to tell me I don’t belong here are those whose ancestors were here before the Europeans invaded, and that certainly doesn’t include people like the grifter.)

But it’s the one that stabs me in the heart. There’s just something about the principle that if you’re born someplace, you belong there.

I mean, where else can you really belong but the place you were born? Continue reading “Birthright”

Shakespeare had a thing or two to say about tyrants

What Shakespeare revealed about the chaotic reign of Richard III – and why the play still resonates in the age of Donald Trump

In this circa 1754 illustration, two women scold Richard III in Shakespeare’s play.
Universal History Archive/Getty Images)

by David Sterling Brown, Trinity College

Written around 1592, William Shakespeare’s play “Richard III” follows the reign of England’s infamous monarch and charts the path of a charismatic, cunning figure.

As Shakespeare depicts the king’s reign from June 1483 to August 1485, Richard III’s kingdom was wrought with chaos, confusion and corruption that fueled civil conflict in England.

As a scholar of Shakespeare, I first thought about Richard III and his similarities with Donald Trump after the latter’s debate with President Joe Biden in June 2024. Those similarities – and Shakespeare’s depictions – became even clearer after Trump’s election in November 2024.

Shakespeare’s play highlights the flawed character of a man who wanted to be, in modern terms, a dictator, someone who could do whatever he pleased without any consequences.

In his 1964 essay, “Why I Stopped Hating Shakespeare,” writer James Baldwin concluded that Shakespeare found poetry “in the lives of people” by knowing “that whatever was happening to anyone was happening to him.”

“It is said that Shakespeare’s time was easier than ours, but I doubt it,” Baldwin wrote. “No time can be easy if one is living through it.”

A black and white drawing of Richard III.
An undated portrait of Richard III.
Universal History Archive/Getty Images

A villain?

In Act 2, Scene 3 of Shakespeare’s play, a common citizen says Richard is “full of danger.”

“Woe to the land that’s govern’d by a child,” the citizen further warned.

Beyond hiring murderers to kill his own brother, Shakespeare’s Richard was keen on belittling and distancing himself from people whom he viewed as being not loyal or being in his way – including his wife, Anne.

To clear the way for him to marry his brother’s daughter – his niece Elizabeth – Richard spread what now would be called fake news. In the play, he tells his loyalists “to rumor it abroad that Anne, my wife, is very grievously sick” and “likely to die.”

Richard then poetically reveals her death: “Anne my wife hath bid this world goodnight.”

Yet, before her death, Anne has a sad realization: “Never yet one hour in Richard’s bed / Did I enjoy the golden dew of sleep.”

That sentiment is echoed by Richard’s mother, the Duchess of York, who regrets not strangling “damned” Richard while he was in her “accursed womb.”

As Shakespeare depicts him, Richard III was a self-centered political figure who first appears alone on stage, determined to prove himself a villain.

In Richard’s opening speech, he even says that in order to become king, he will manipulate his own brothers George, the Duke of Clarence, and King Edward IV, “in deadly hate, the one against the other.”

But as his villainous crimes mount up, Richard shares a rare moment of self-awareness: “But I am in / So far in blood that sin will pluck on sin.”

Shakespeare’s Richard III and Trump

While the details of Trump’s and Richard’s lives differ in many ways, there are some similarities.

Much like Trump during his first term, Shakespeare’s Richard did not lead with morals, ethics or integrity.

Richard lied compulsively to everyone, as his soliloquys that contain his innermost thoughts make clear.

A black and white illustration of William Shakespeare.
An illustration of English writer William Shakespeare (circa 1600).
Rischgitz/Getty Images

Like Trump, Richard used empty rhetoric to persuade people with “sugared words” – he was not interested in speaking or promoting truth.

Moreover, Shakespeare’s Richard was a sexist and misogynist who verbally and physically disrespected women, including his wife and mother.

In the play, for example, Richard calls Queen Margaret, widow of King Henry VI, a “foul wrinkled witch” and a “hateful withered hag,” thus disparaging her older age.

He refers to Queen Elizabeth, wife of Edward IV, as a “damned strumpet” or prostitute, which she wasn’t.

Additionally, in order to cast doubts on his nephews’ legitimate claims to the throne, Richard spread false rumors about his mother, claiming that she was unfaithful.

A white man and a Black woman shake hands.
Kamala Harris shakes hands with Donald Trump before their debate.
AP Photo/Alex Brandon

For his part, Trump has no shortage of disparaging remarks about women. He once called his Democratic presidential rival Hillary Clinton “the devil” and characterized former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as “crazy.”

Trump repeatedly peppered Vice President Kamala Harris during the presidential campaign with sexist and racists attacks.

He initially refused to pronounce her name correctly and openly mocked her racial identity as a Black woman, even questioning her “Blackness.”

A new day?

Like Trump, Richard III used religion to manipulate and confuse public perception of his amoral image.

In the play, Richard stages the equivalent of a modern-day photo op, standing between two “churchmen” with a “prayer-book” in his hands.

Much like Richard, Trump has courted evangelicals and used organized religion to his political advantage, most publicly by selling a “God Bless the USA Bible.”

Trump’s 2020 photo op in front of St. John’s Church in Washington is another example. It occurred during protests over the murder of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man killed by a white police officer. Police in riot gear used tear gas to force protesters away from the White House; then Trump was escorted to the nearby church along with several administration officials.

As a political leader, Richard III left a legacy in English history as one of England’s worst monarchs.

That legacy includes his decisive defeat in the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485 that led to his death and to a new era for England under King Henry VII.

After winning the throne, the new king offered a message of hope that suggested England would one day emerge from its time of civil discord:

Let them not live to taste this land’s increase
That would with treason wound this fair land’s peace!
Now civil wounds are stopped, peace lives again.
That she may long live here, God say amen.The Conversation

David Sterling Brown, Associate Professor of English, Trinity College

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Continue reading “Shakespeare had a thing or two to say about tyrants”

Quiet moments

Today is a good day for reflecting. I was going to write a wildly sympathetic post to everyone in the US because you’re in such a difficult position. Bushfires and a new president and… so many things. But then I read the Australian news and we have turned into bigot-central and I belong to one of the groups that the bigots enjoy attacking.

I sometimes get angry. I sometimes rant. I often analyse what’s going on. But today… today I think we all deserve a break.

I’m going to find you a couples of poems to give us all that moment of peace in a difficult world.

The first is one of my favourites. I am Australian. No number of people telling me that Jews cannot be Australian can convince me otherwise. Modern Australian, but Australian. This is our iconic poem expressing this, read by the author: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86TKK81EwJ4 Dorothea MacKellar lived from 1885 to 1968 . Her accent is very close to that of my father’s first cousin, who was born in the late nineteenth century and died in the twenty-first. This is one of the reasons it’s one of my heart-poems. I loved Linda very much, and still miss her, twenty years on.

If you read the last paragraph without due thought, you might think that I myself am nearing one hundred years of age. I am not. However, Australia has a particular sense of humour and… I am Australian. I am sorely tempted to give you a link to our latest lamb ad to justify everything I’ve written in this paragraph. This is not the moment of quiet contemplation I had intended, nor a statement of national identity… but it is the annual lamb ad, which is of significant cultural importance. Each and every year I say this to someone. Here is the new advertisement, so that you can decide for yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75BAUXZyWw0

Clearly I am not going in the direction of quiet contemplation. It appears that what I really meant, was that we should take a break from bleakness in whatever way we need. I would love anyone reading this to share your favourite poems and your favourite advertisements (the funny ones). If you don’t, I might have to find lamb ads from other years. I need more poetry and I need more silly ads. I’d rather learn the ones you love than revisit ones I already know.

PS The lamb ads are an annual thing. And they’re always, always funny and just a little thoughtful.

PPS Normally I share Paul Verlaine poems, because I love his work so very much. The thing is that Jewish Australians are being told that we don’t belong here, so another type of beloved poem was appropriate. I am facing hate with poetry this week.

Appropriate Reading for January 20

Alternative Liberties book coverIf you’re in the United States and looking for something to do besides watch the political shenanigans going on right now, check out Alternative Liberties from B Cubed Press. Both the Kindle edition  and the print version are now available.

According to the book description, “Alternative Liberties gathers together some of the finest minds in speculative fiction to address the implications of politics in 2025 and beyond.” You can see a complete list of authors in this blog post introducing the book.

Treehouse resident Nancy Jane Moore has a poem in this anthology called “Not Civilized Yet.”

B Cubed is doing an online event featuring readings by a number of the authors on Facebook beginning at 3 PM Pacific Time (4 PM Mountain, 5 PM Central, 6 PM Eastern).