Shakespeare Might Have To Change A Few Words Of Macbeth If He Was Writing It Today-- Just A Few

Allen Weisselberg is supposed to know everything there is to know about Trump's business dealings, which are-- and you know it-- the very definition of a swamp. He seems to have abandoned his liege last week, although Trump hasn't tweeted anything about him being a rat yet. The way he has answered questions from New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood seems to demonstrate that he's not trying-- not even a little-- to protect Trump at all. Last week, writing for The Atlantic, Eliot Cohen, compared Trump to Macbeth who became king of Scotland after killing King Duncan. It's worth mentioning that Shakespeare's play about the historical figure is classically paranoid, disabled by fear and a perfect example of how seeking power illegitimately will bring on intense suffering, in this case one driven into the arms of tyranny. Cohen's point, though is that sooner or later all tyrants are abandoned by their followers, a fate probably awaiting Trump, now that the rats are deserting the sinking ship.

"To really get the feel for the Trump administration’s end," wrote Cohen, "we must turn to the finest political psychologist of them all, William Shakespeare. The text is in the final act of what superstitious actors only refer to as the 'Scottish play.' One of the nobles who has turned on their murderous usurper king describes Macbeth’s predicament:

Those he commands move only in command,
Nothing in love. Now does he feel his title
Hang loose about him, like a giant’s robe
Upon a dwarfish thief.

Cohen asks us to imagine this as Trump's fate, although he acknowledges-- with some glee-- that Trump was in some ways very different from Macbeth. He explained that "Macbeth is an utterly absorbing, troubling, tragic, and compelling figure. Unlike America’s germaphobic president, who copped five draft deferments and has yet to visit the thousands of American soldiers on the front lines in Afghanistan or Iraq, he is physically brave. In fact, the first thing we hear about him is that in the heat of battle with a rebel against King Duncan (whom he later murders) Macbeth 'unseamed him from the nave to th’ chops.' He is apparently faithful to his wife, has a conscience (that he overcomes), knows guilt and remorse, and has self-knowledge. He also has a pretty good command of the English language. In all these respects he is as unlike Trump as one can be."

But in the moment of losing power, the two will be alike. A tyrant is unloved, and although the laws and institutions of the United States have proven a brake on Trump, his spirit remains tyrannical-- that is, utterly self-absorbed and self-concerned, indifferent to the suffering of others, knowing no moral restraint. He expects fealty and gives none. Such people can exert power for a long time, by playing on the fear and cupidity, the gullibility and the hatreds of those around them. Ideological fervor can substitute for personal affection and attachment for a time, and so too can blind terror and sheer stupidity, but in the end, these fall away as well.

And thus their courtiers abandon even monumental tyrants like Mussolini-- who at least had his mistress, Claretta Petacci, with him at his ignominious end. (Melania’s affections are considerably less certain.) The normal course of events is sudden, epic desertion, in which an all-powerful political figure who loomed over everything is suddenly left shrunken and pitiful, a wretched little figure in gaudy robes absurdly too big for him, a figure of ridicule as much as, and even more than, hatred.

This is going to happen to Trump at some point. Of the Republicans in Congress it may be said of most of them: Those he commands move only in command, nothing in love. For now, admittedly, there are those who still court his favor-- Senator Lindsey Graham, for example, once the trusty vassal of Senator John McCain, the bravest of warriors and noblest of dukes, seems to have switched his allegiance from his dying lord to the swaggering upstart aged prince. But that is about ambition, not affection.

For the moment, the Republicans will not turn on Trump. They fear a peasant revolt, many of them; they still crave favors; they may think his castle impregnable, although less so if they believe what the polls tell them about some of its tottering walls. But if they suffer a medieval-style slaughter on Election Day, the remnants of the knights of the GOP will know a greater fear than that of being primaried. And at the moment when they no longer fear being swept away in 2020, when the economy may be in recession and Robert Mueller’s probe is complete with revelations whose ghastliness would delight the three witches of the Scottish play, they will suddenly turn on Trump. Act V of this play will also have a nonlinear finish.

And what of Trump himself? In this respect he will be like Macbeth. Where Nixon, who was a statesman, saw the inevitable and resigned, this president is more likely to go down spitting defiance. As for the rest of us, Macduff says to the cornered king just before their final death grapple:

Live to be the show and gaze o’ th’ time.
We’ll have thee, as our rarer monsters are,
Painted upon a pole, and underwrit
“Here may you see the tyrant”

And so it will likely be, as Americans gaze back and wonder how on earth this rare monster, now deposed, ended up as their president.

Let's just hope he brings the GOP down with him-- and not the rest of us, not America.