Our Tempestuous Day

 For at least two months now, the conspiracy theories have circulated on the Left that Trump is suffering from some hidden disease. Maybe he's experienced a stroke, causing part of his face to sag. Maybe—the rumor went at one point—he's already died and been replaced with an AI avatar. 

There's obviously no actual evidence to support these rumors. But I will say, the man does not look well. And Trump himself has repeatedly felt the need to address speculation as to his health. As recently as yesterday, he was harping on his good health to a group of journalists. 

Seeing his puffy, sick-looking face, and listening to his meandering, repetitive, demented rants on various subjects, I thought of the line from Shelley: "An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying King." That sounds about like him—although the "king" part is merely self-appointed, at this stage. 

I went back to re-read the rest of Shelley's sonnet in which this line appears, "England in 1819." And I was rather appalled by how much else in the poem suddenly seemed to be describing our era. 

Shelley wrote the sonnet the same year that British troops opened fire on a group of nonviolent protesters in a field in Manchester (the "Peterloo" massacre that was also the subject of Shelley's great poem of social protest, "The Masque of Anarchy"). Shelley also gestures toward this event in the sonnet: 

A people starved and stabbed in th' untilled field;

This made me think not only of how Trump has deployed federal agents against his own people and tried to target nonviolent dissent—but also of our own "untilled fields" (Trump's tariffs, after all, are destroying the U.S. agricultural sector and impoverishing our farmers, by increasing the costs of equipment and inviting retaliation against U.S. crops). 

An army, whom liberticide and prey

Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield;

Uh oh. After all, has Trump not spent months at this point deploying U.S. military troops to cities across the country? Has he not openly invited U.S. soldiers to treat Democratic-run cities as "training grounds" for military occupation? 

Religion Christless, Godless—a book sealed;

How about the time Trump got up in front of a rally audience and openly disavowed Christ's message of forgiveness—saying that he "hated" his enemies and wished evil upon their heads? 

A senate, Time’s worst statute, unrepealed—

Is not our entire federal government shut down right now because the GOP-led Senate cannot agree to fund health care and respect the appropriations process sufficiently to insulate it from Trump's attempts to renege on spending agreements and impound congressionally-mandated funds? 

Are graves from which a glorious Phantom may

Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day.

Let us hope so!