The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
The Bard saw this coming
Shakespeare had our times and this election pegged when he penned “Romeo and Juliet,” which opens with a riot scene between feuding clans known as the Montagues and the Capulets. Their leaders were more interested in keeping their conflict on the front burner than in working together toward calm, so they kept their society divided and fractious.
We all know it didn’t end well for the title characters, whose dreams of a marriage union were dashed by the tribal differences between their Montague and Capulet families. Their double suicides, spurred by what today might be called a lack of transparency or perhaps reality TV, were all the sacrifice it took to achieve peace.
So, past being prologue, riots in city streets aren’t new, Democrats and Republicans are the proteges of the Montagues and Capulets, and while I’m not sure which of our parties derived from either Shakespearean family, I think the Proud Boys are in the mold of Lord Capulet’s militia leader, Tybalt.
Verona, where Romeo and Juliet hung out, was an open carry jurisdiction, like Michigan or Arizona today, so folks walked around town wearing their swords. It was easy, in such a potentially violent street environment, for Tybalt, a mean-spirited dude, to pick a fight with Romeo’s friend Mercutio, who prized his sword more as a fashion statement than a weapon. He never stood a chance.
“No, ’tis not so deep as a well nor so wide as a church-door, but ’tis enough, ’twill serve,” gasped Mercutio, acknowledging the fatal impact of the wound inflicted by Tybalt’s sword. Put simply, Tybalt didn’t carve Mercutio up; he just plain killed him. Just enough, like what Kennedy did to Nixon in 1960.
Maybe Shakespeare foresaw that Donald Trump would someday read those words and realize that his presidential demise need not be caused by a wide electoral margin. Losing by a lot or a little is losing. As Mercutio suggested, death is not a matter of degree. You’re just dead. As Trump has probably not read “Romeo and Juliet” recently, he might dismiss my analogy by claiming not to have talked with either Mercutio or Tybalt in many months or that “Romeo and Juliet” is fake news because he is hearing from many people that Shakespeare didn’t write his own plays. At the end of the day, Mercutio is still fictionally dead and Trump is still factually a loser.
Maybe Shakespeare’s crystal ball told him this year’s predicted Blue Wave would not be a surge, but only a tidal change. OK, Montague, maybe Lord Capulet will still preside over obstruction in the Senate, but he no longer has to humor the loser of this election. The new tide will still bring change at the top. For purposes of cooling the flames of division and hate in this country and of restoring civility in our national discourse, standing among our allies and maybe even a sense that as Americans all of us are in it together, not just some of us, Election 2020 fits the bill: “’tis enough, ’twill serve.”
The new occupant of the White House, come Jan. 20, will not be someone whose personal boorishness and massively deficient character must be embarrassingly excused in the name of overriding policy objectives, whose manifest self-interest manipulates our national security, or for whom truth to the American people is a shifting and inconsistent matter of optional convenience.
Change begins at the top. It need not be seismic, especially when relief will suffice. “’ Twill serve.”
Our democratic tradition calls for a cooperative transition of power based on fair elections, not continuing resistance to an incoming administration. A historic number of votes has determined our national will, and Trump’s one- act play is over. As the curtain descends, please leave. “’ Tis enough.”