Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for April 11, 2021

Parolles was a character from All’s Well That Ends Well, one of Shakespeare’s comedies. From 2016 to January 2021 we had a tragedy.

Referring to the last panel words I’d add that Nostrdamus was an amateur compared to Willie and other geniuses of the past.

What a piece of work is Don Tяump! How feeble in reason, how limited in faculty! In form and moving how loathsome and execrable! In action how like a Devil! In apprehension how like a dud! The grotesque of the world! The worst among the animals! And yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Tяump delights not me; no, nor Woman neither… ~ Apologies to Wm. S.

It’s only taken Boopsie about 50 years to show any real age.

It’s why he was, and is, great.

“The first thing we do, let’s kill all lawyers.” Henry VI, Part 1.

Looks like the one still obsessed is B.D.

Out damned spot!

The real danger of our political system is that instead of having a spectrum of liberal to conservative ideas in each party — able to work with each other for the common good — the power-seekers are instead pitting these basic ideologies against each other to their personal advantage and the public’s disadvantage. No successful thriving organization functions that way.

You know, Trudeau, we could ask you the same thing.

I take it BD isn’t as enthralled with conservatism as he was decades ago.

The last guy’s trials haven’t even begun.

He hired a criminal defense lawyer t’other day.

My favorite Doonesbury compilation was/is “GUILT, GUILTY, GUILTY!” which summed up the pleasure of “wallowing in Watergate”.

He was a crusty botch of nature!

Okay, there really is nothing "new: under the sun. Just a bunch of fresh stuff.

Obsessed? Again with the lack of self awareness

Yes, the Trump era was truly a Shakespearean tragedy. However, crimes were committed and we can’t just move on. On January 6, lives were lost, people were brutally injured. Our capitol was desecrated. It must never happen again. Other crimes were also committed at other times during this era which shouldn’t be swept under the rug, such as the shenanigans of Elaine Chao, among others, but let’s deal with the insurrection first.

“I never see him, yet I am heartburned an hour after.”

Early in Glorious Leader’s presidency, a New York theater company caused some controversy by mounting a production of “Julius Caesar” in modern dress with the title character portrayed as Trump. Some of the Donald’s supporters were irate at this, because they remembered that Caesar does not come out well in this play, and accused liberals of glorying in the repeated stabbing of Our First Citizen. But you could argue just as easily that Brutus and Cassius are clueless liberals suffering from “Caesar Derangement Syndrome”, and their assassination plot does nothing but bring disaster down upon Rome and upon themselves. If there’s any villain in “Julius Caesar”, it’s the fickle mob, easily riled up to tear everything down. So perhaps Trump should have been Marc Anthony.

But there are other Trump analogies in Shakespeare. In one of Trump’s Cabinet meetings, he started off by going around the table and having each man present introduce himself by telling everybody what a swell guy he thought Glorious Leader was. I couldn’t help but think of the beginning of “King Lear”

Then again, maybe Donald was most like Richard II, the oblivious autocrat who made enemies when he didn’t have to and mishandled the ones he already had.

Or like Falstaff, the larger-than-life braggart; or Bottom, from “Midsummer Night’s Dream”, who was not content with being cast as the leading man in a play his friends were performing, but wanted to play all the other roles too; or Dogberry, from “Much Ado About Nothing”, who had he lived 500 years later could have been the Master of the Tweet.

A pity Shakespeare isn’t writing the history of this administration. A little blank verse might make it more palatable.

Let us now meditate on virginity.

Well, so sooorry for you, Bard, but I could swear it was… you know, that other guy… :D

That still doesn’t answer the question. Why is he still living in your heads? Could it be your guilty consciences?

Concerning minions and henchmen… Whenever the My Pillow guy pops up in the news this pops up…

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.

Because there were people in Shakespeare’s day. Wherever there are people, eventually a T-hole will show up.

Sadly, Trump is NOT gone. He’s still fleecing people with automatic “donations”, still attending speaking events, still spreading his lies, and we’re still exposing all the horrible things he’s done. The extent of the damage he’s done to the USA, and the world at large, may never be truly uncovered.

Which play I wonder? Richard III?

Shakespeare’s most prescient take on Trump & his base ( from HAMLET): “Oh it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who for the most part are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb-shows and noise.”

Trump is terrible, but he’s not terrible in any unique way, as this shows. Which is why it worries me that he is so easily forgotten. The systemic issues that he exploited to gain power aren’t gone; they’re just waiting for the next truly terrible person to make use of them.

Judging by old plays and old radio programs, history repeats itself.

If we’ve learned anything from history, it’s that people don’t seem to learn from history.

Reminds me of when NPR tweeted out the entire Declaration of Independence on July 4th, and supporters of the former president (what was his name again? Blimp? Flumph?) got angry at lines like “He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good” because they thought they were referring to the orange guy, not King George.

Nobody (who was able to tie his own shoes) ever CLAIMED members of the Trump cult had any intelligence! (Or decency, or patriotism………)

And, being in a literary mood (and knowing even Shakespeare was at times……….), here’s a tired old poem parody of mine that was written WAY back last summer, about one Traitor Trump:

Donnie the Dotard, child we scorn

Grows fat as season turns to season

We weep that he was ever born

‘Cause he can’t reason

The Dotard loves the tyrant class

With soldiers and their tanks parading

He is, like them, a horse’s ass

And flunks when adults do the grading

The Dotard fumes for rallies not

And always rests, and never labors

And never ever gives a thought

For non-rich neighbors

The Dotard loves the gold he steals

Or gets by bribes, or blackmail sinful

He claps his hands with happy squeals

And drives us all to drink a skinful

The Dotard born? Calamity!

And though I wish he were a fiction

He ruins things from sea to sea

With just his Adderal addiction

There aren’t any good analogues of disgraced former president Trump in Shakespeare (that I can think of), because Shakespeare usually gave his villains some relatable quality. Richard III, Iago, Claudius, Aaron the Moor (for example) were malignant but self-aware. Falstaff (it’s a stretch to call Falstaff a “villain”) was a lying, gluttonous, lecherous coward, but he was loyal and good-humored and never really in any position to do serious harm (also unlike Falstaff, DFTP is not a drunkard, but I’ll leave it to you which is more relatable).

Disgraced former president Trump is as honest as Iago, as heroic as Falstaff, as warm as Coriolanus, as modest as Malvolio, as generous as Shylock, as familial as Richard III, as politically astute as Lear, and as cultured as Caliban.

To quote David Byrne and Brian Eno, “Same as it ever was”

Will all you Ahabs get over your obsession! When Trump runs in ’24 you can get your harpoons again.

Poor Trumpers… feeling guilty and persecuted…

Donald Judas TRump, the Anti-Christ.

It’s so much Funnier when it is 400 Years away.

Yes, but even Shakespeare’s comedies had elements of tragedy in them.

I read “Animal Farm” by George Orwell. Part of that book could have the same reaction!!

“Some traitors are more equal than other traitors”…..

boopsie is showing her age.

I guess he was pretty Shakespearean, wasn’t he… Not missing all the drama.

Attributed by both Reps and Dems to the leader of the other party.

“When a man unprincipled in private life, desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper, known to have scoffed in private [and public] at the principles of liberty — when such a man is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity — to join in the cry of danger to liberty — to take every opportunity of embarrassing the General Government & bringing it under suspicion — to flatter and fall in with all the nonsense of the zealots of the day — It may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion that he may ride the storm and direct the whirlwind.”— Alexander Hamilton

O for me it’s Richard lll all the way: “My Kingdom for a horse!”

So good ol’ William was a Prophet too? Well, I wouldn’t object to a certain person’s being cast in Julius Caesar as well.