‘Paradise Lost?’ No, Pennsylvania regained!
On Dec. 8, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a oneline judgment to a brazen attempt to overturn the collective will of Pennsylvania’s voters: “The application for injunctive relief presented to Justice Alito and by him referred to the Court is denied.”
With that one line, the frivolous case of Kelly, Mike, Et Al. v. Pennsylvania, Et Al. crashed and burned with 50 or so other attempts by Republican apparatchiks across the country to relitigate the presidential election in a judicial phantom zone where the democratic will holds no sway.
Denizens of Donald Trump’s fever swamps had hoped that Justice Samuel Alito — that black-robed tease — was secretly on their side when he ordered Pennsylvania to move up the date of its response to the emergency application by the Republicans for injunctive relief from Pennsylvania’s voters.
But there was no relief from the Trump-appointed faction of the Supreme Court. Even Justice Alito joined the mockery of Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Butler, and his deluded Republican allies by refusing to dignify the request with a more substantive answer beyond the one-sentence denial and the deafening silence that followed it.
Not since Gettysburg have advocates of a Lost Cause in Pennsylvania been so thoroughly repudiated and left for dead. By refusing to pretend there was even a scintilla of reason in the filing, the U.S. Supreme Court joined lower courts at every level in denying a serious hearing to Mr. Trump and his sycophants, fellow nihilists and brown-nosers across the country.
On Monday, Pennsylvania will finalize its delegates for the Electoral College, a process that continues the irrevocable countdown to the Biden presidency on Jan. 20.
In his rage and desperation, Mr. Trump is throwing up every dark prophecy his imagination can muster in a spray of apocalyptic tweets. He sees “dangerous moments” ahead for a country that has rejected his offer to trample American democracy for another four years.
Mr. Trump’s most prominent culture war apologist, Rush Limbaugh, wondered aloud on his radio program this week whether America is headed for a secessionist moment caused by “two completely different theories of life, theories of government, theories of how we manage our affairs.”
To many observers, the political tumult of these times feels like what many imagine the years before the Civil War must have felt like. Having gone through such a cataclysm before, this nation is in no position to assume it couldn’t happen again.
The current estimates of Civil War dead now top 750,000, a numbing figure to lose in any war — whether civil or foreign. We could easily lose that many Americans to COVID-19 if the incoming Biden administration is not able to reverse the criminal negligence of the Trump administration’s response to the virus.
This is such a strange moment in our politics that pundits are forced to reach to ancient history, Shakespeare, mythology and classical literature for parallels that can do justice to the president’s spastic embrace of unreality, self-delusion and infernal incompetence.
Is he King Lear, Richard III or Orwell’s Big Brother? Closer to home, is Mr. Trump the personification of Melville’s Confidence Man, Captain Ahab or the Antichrist of Anglo-American folk religion? Does any cultural archetype truly fit him?
These days, Mr. Trump’s rages remind me of John Milton’s depictions of Satan/Lucifer’s epic tweets and speeches in “Paradise Lost,” a sprawling poetic masterpiece that chronicles the rise and precipitous fall of an angel after he has sparked a populist rebellion in heaven that didn’t exactly go according to plan. “The mind is its own place, and in itself/ Can make a heav’n of hell, a hell of heav’n,” Lucifer assures his demonic cohort who’ve just been evicted from office.
Milton makes it a persuasive enough speech to captivate the rebels — and some readers — and convince them that it truly is better to “rule in hell” with him than “serve in heav’n” as they prepared to launch a literal scorchedearth campaign against humanity.
Comparing Mr. Trump to Milton’s Lucifer is probably hackneyed at this point, but, damn, it’s an allusion that still fits. As a thought experiment, I looked for parallels to the devils who constitute the Infernal Parliament that surrounds Lucifer, according to Milton. They were easy to assign.
Sen. Mitch McConnell has Beelzebub covered, while Rudy Giuliani is the spitting image of
Belial the Lying Spirit. Mammon is a stand-in for the entire GOP caucus. Mulciber, the architect of Pandemonium, is a roman a clef of Mr. Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and the producers of “The Apprentice.” Moloch is Donald Trump Jr., and Sin is played by various members of the Trump family depending on the infernal needs of the hour.
I was still thinking about parallels to “Paradise Lost” when the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania threw out yet another lawsuit on Wednesday by a Trump troll seeking to decertify last month’s election results.
To my delight, it was Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, R-Cranberry, who was being humiliated this time. Somehow, Mr. Metcalfe had remained in Rep. Mike Kelly’s shadow throughout the craziness but managed to raise his profile to file a complaint on Dec. 4. Unfortunately for him, it was weeks after the deadline he needed to meet in asking for a judicial remedy to democracy.
Now, who would a showboating nobody like Daryl Metcalfe, the Daryl Metcalfe of Daryl Metcalfes, correspond to in Milton’s epic poem? There’s really no one like him — loud of mouth, but so unimpressive in deviltry or political accomplishment. He doesn’t rise to the level of a Belial or Beelzebub or even Moloch. A quick Google search does turn up a nonentity who shows up for a few pages named Asmodeus, the embodiment of the “fishy-fume” smell that permeates all of Pandemonium, a smell so wretched that even Lucifer can’t escape it.
Asmodeus doesn’t get any of the great lines Milton doles out to Lucifer, Beelzebub, Belial and the various fallen angels, but he’s always there — stinking up the background, sweating, raving and trying to be noticed in his own pipsqueak way.
Yeah, that’s our Daryl Metcalfe — the “Kraken of Cranberry” and the unofficial mascot of Pennsyltucky, forever peddling debunked conspiracy theories and pledging support to lost causes from Pennsylvania to Texas — just as long as you spell his name right and ignore the fishy smell of his latest antics.