Hoist with our own petard… the election that becomes our outrageous misfortune.
Waking to the news this morning, the worst of all the scenarios, I found myself at a loss for words. How to describe my disappointment? In times like these, we can find some wisdom — if not answers — for our sadness in the literature of our ancestors. Humanity has been through every twist and turn imaginable and has survived, albeit somewhat ill-prepared for our turn in the barrel. I find some similarities of our present condition with Shakespeare’s Hamlet, who found himself mired in trauma. You know the story, his evil stepfather illegitimately took the throne by killing his father and marrying his mother. Shakespeare has concocted a Denmark in disarray. One speech struck me as most relevant to our feelings today. It is when Hamlet learns of his friends’ duplicity and decides to turn the tables — to hoist with their own petards schoolboy friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern ultimately leading to their deaths.
I have used the phrase before, but never has it seemed more relevant than to my thoughts here. For those who believe that Trump’s victory threatens our democracy, the phrase suggests a bitter irony. For those of us who view Trump’s election to a second term as an American tragedy, the vote raises questions about ourselves and the future of our nation. How could an overqualified woman of color, whose resume includes all the ingredients of what we thought was “ the American Dream” lose a national election to a felon is not a mystery. We have done it to ourselves — hoist with our own petard.
Race and gender have been at the heart of our internal dysfunction in America from birth. That dream is far more difficult to achieve for women, blacks, and others who the white majority in this nation has determined are different. There is a differentiation in America between the white, privileged majority and others. Kamala Harris, like Geraldine Ferraro and Hillary Clinton before her, has confronted the challenge with dignity and great effort. Even though her candidacy came on the heels of Joe Biden’s poor debate and a sense that the old warrior was not up to his second term, her campaign was waged almost flawlessly. Her message was pitch-perfect and generated great national interest, especially among women. It wasn’t enough. Looking back on the election of Barack Obama and our belief at the time that his election ushered in a post-racial nation, we are focused even more clearly on the enormous power of prejudice toward women that exists at the core of our national DNA. Kamala Harris’s loss is a testament to the powerful forces faced by a black woman — the combination was insurmountable.
Many of us thought we were beyond this, that America was ready to shed its chauvinist past. Certainly, her opponent might have been the best opportunity for us to break that spell. Donald Trump should have been disqualified by age, temperament, and character. As a convicted felon, a rapist, and a practicing racist dating from his days as a young landlord working with his father, Trump is a uniquely imperfect man. This election proved that none of it mattered. He closed his final rally glorying in his whiteness in a none-too-subtle racist rant :
[Trump] also expressed regret that his presidential campaign has prevented him from spending time at his beaches and getting a tan.
Addressing the crowd, Trump said, “That white, beautiful white skin that I have would be nice and tan. I got the whitest skin ’cause I never have time to go out in the sun.”
That white skin on his old male body meant more to enough voters to deny Harris even a close election.
In addition to our nation’s inability to overcome our prejudices to elect a far better-qualified candidate — and a better human being — it is hard not to see how our justice system was manipulated to work in Trump’s favor. Misused by our own Attorney General to benefit a felon his crimes should have been brought to court as soon as he left office. Merrick Garland extended grace to a traitorous felon whose rejection of the rule of law demanded that he be tried so that his crimes could be known and his punishment could be meted out if convicted. We were hoist with our own petard by his failure to apply justice fairly and with dispatch. Garland proved to be the undoing of the rule of law in the case of Donald Trump. America deserved and the former president who stole secrets and inspired an insurrection deserved equal justice. Garland ensured that justice would be denied.
In Act II, Hamlet is reeling from the knowledge that an illegitimate king has stolen the throne — a man of poor character who murdered his father and married his mother. In his “What a piece of work is a man…” soliloquy, the prince shares feelings I know that I have today:
I have of late, (but wherefore I know not) lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition; that this goodly frame the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy the air, look you, this brave o’er hanging firmament, this majestical roof, fretted with golden fire: why, it appeareth no other thing to me, than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.
What a piece of work is a man, How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty, In form and moving how express and admirable, In action how like an Angel, In apprehension how like a god, The beauty of the world, The paragon of animals. And yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me; no, nor Woman neither; though by your smiling you seem to say so.[1]
— Hamlet, Act II, sc.2
For those who revere the MAGA president, his return to power is a sign that this election was just as they liked it…
For the rest of us, all is not well… and it won’t be for a long, long time.
