One of the devices frequently used by Shakespeare was the “play within the play” where the characters in Shakespeare’s play would stage a play as part of the plot. In “Hamlet”, a play is developed by Hamlet in order to smoke out his father’s murderers. The quote, “The lady doth protest too much, methinks” is said by Queen Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother, in reference to the actress playing the Queen’s role in the staged play who had just declared her love for her husband.
The quote has come to mean that there exists doubt in the speaker’s sincerity.
If you follow politics, it is all a play. Have you ever witnessed a more insincere group of SOBs than politicians? For a very long time, and especially since the advent of television, much of the American public has believed these media plays to be reality. This started to break apart with great momentum when citizen journalists began to expose the poseurs by using personal video devices to record contradictions and, most importantly, distribute them via social media. The phonies and frauds became much easier to expose.
So now, we have a very skeptical public who, understandably, trust almost nothing they see on television with respect to news coverage. Protests are not organic which bubble up due to some emerging catalyst. The protests we see today are plotted out like a script with heavily financed hats, shirts, signs, transportation and lodging. In many cases, it is a profession. Who the hell has time to march from town to town and act outraged? Complicit in these events are the media who play along to push the outrage which supports their bias. The media uses camera angles and distance to distort the size of events and edits the message for the viewers.
However, the jig is up. Enough of the population has caught on and there is no trust in the press which had formerly held a position as objective arbiter.
Why was candidate Trump not diminished by saying, "I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose voters"? His voters know that he is playing a part just like the rest of the clowns who appear on your television. With each new outrageous tweet or over-the-top pronouncement, his base is laughing at the reaction. It is a bombastic show.
So far, the over reach by the Democrats on the Left in reaction to President Trump has been stupendous. The pussy hat wearing marches, the Russian collusion saga, the constant Nazi references and the denial of speech for anyone with whom they disagree has been great theater. There are plenty who do not realize they are in the show, but I equate it to “The Truman Show” starring what Stalin referred to as “useful idiots”. The NFL decided it was time for their close-up last week and today we have the San Juan, Puerto Rico mayor who has been so busy dealing with an emergency that she has had no time to sit in meetings with FEMA, but had time to throw on a lovely lettered tee shirt and hold an “outrageous” press conference. It’s like an ABC Afternoon Special from the 1970’s. “The lady doth protest too much, methinks”
What does President Trump do in response to this faux outrage? Moe hits Curly on the head with a crow bar. Yuk, yuk, yuk!
On the other side, we have the entrenched GOP pols who have earned the “Lifetime Achievement in Fecklessness” award. They are flabbergasted that President Trump has triumphed with his act and, simultaneously, ashamed they had not been shrewd enough to pull it off themselves. Timid of their own shadows, they try to resume their Robert Young “Father Knows Best” role. They pretend to be the “grown-ups” in the room while the house is burning down all around them. We have useful idiots on one side and just ordinary idiots on the other.
Whereas, I can definitely identify the comedy and satire in all of this, we will have to wait to determine if we are watching a tragedy or not. As Max Schumacher (played by William Holden) famously says towards the end of the movie “Network”:
“Music up with a swell; final commercial. And here are a few scenes from next week's show”.
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