Shakespeare's Demons on Pennsylvania Avenue

It’s a defining time, a prostrate regurgitation of fear, hatred, and greed not seen since the days of Rome. Shakespeare must have known he would die violently after facing the crowds at each performance but he didn’t. Neither will George Bush. Like a dolphin running through the propellers of a large sea going vessel it will only be slightly scared and swim away to feast on all those smaller then itself. If forensics can teach the world of politics anything it would be that depravity when worn close to the soul could reduce the number of dead with the slightest miscalculation, the biggest lie and the narrowest exchange of data.
A large anvil shaped heart-pouring blood situated in the middle of the stars on the American flag shows the weight of despair in our nation, however, when flown upside down as it should be in a time of crisis it ponders the feeling of listlessness and the gravity of our situation. Forced servitude by reserve troops and its affect on local economies is dwindling what is left of the job market. Unemployed workers everywhere looked forward to troops being deployed in Iraq for the hope of being hired as replacements for companies but as the Wal-Marts of the world will do, they operate without replacing those that are missing and make it harder on those who are left behind.
Shakespeare must have foreseen the oncoming disaster of the America’s when he wrote his play King Lear. No longer a world power but a desperate thug looking for yet another score, our form of democracy has fallen under the spell of a regime so harsh as to kill and eat their own when the need of the greater whole is compromised. The whole being the select few who have their pick of the animals, the shearing of the flock.


- Chris Mansel


O, reason not the need! Our basest beggars
Are in the poorest thing superfluous.
Allow not nature more than nature needs,
Man’s life’s as cheap as beast’s . . .

You heavens, give me that patience, patience I need!
…
If it be you that stir these daughters’ hearts
Against their father, fool me not so much
To bear it tamely; touch me with noble anger,
And let not women’s weapons, water-drops,
Stain my man’s cheeks! No, you unnatural hags,
…
No, I’ll not weep.
I have full cause of weeping, but this heart
Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws,
Or ere I’ll weep. O fool, I shall go mad!


- William Shakespeare, King Lear