“What are we? Humans? Or animals? Or savages? What's grownups going to think? . . . He can’t hurt you: but if you stand out of the way he’d hurt the next thing.”
Piggy, in The Lord of the Flies
GOP voters support a bold, swashbuckling man of action who breaks rules.
Trump has been open about his plans for a second term. His Agenda47 will replace the roadblocks to presidential initiative. Republican officeholders and people of influence are falling into line in support of a Trump second term. He announced he will go after political enemies, including the lawyers and military leaders who put up roadblocks to his effort to overturn the 2020 election. He will replace them with people loyal to him.
In my 30-year career as a Financial Advisor, clients would sometimes ask me to help them buy gold bars and gold coins. I asked why? They said that if civilization collapsed they wanted gold so they would remain rich enough to buy things. I responded that if civilization collapsed, grocery stores, pharmacies, and gasoline stations wouldn't be open. You won't need gold, I said. In a world without rules you would need a gun, ammunition, and a place to hide. The moment you would reveal that you had gold to shop with, armed gangs would shoot you and take whatever they want.
Walt is armed with explosives when he confronts a meth gang in Breaking Bad
Gerald Murphy is a playwright, composer, and musician. He taught high school English in Yreka, California for 35 years. He currently teaches various film and radio classes at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Southern Oregon University.
Guest Post by Gerald Murphy
I first fell in love with “The Lord of the Flies” when I was twelve. Probably too young to understand what I was reading, but William Golding’s novel excited me more than anything I had read until then. I think what interested me most was the whole idea of young kids totally free from the adult world. No adult rules, no adult sermons on how to behave, and no adult punishments. You could do what you want! No restrictions, no bedtimes, and no plates filled with “healthy” inedible food. It sounded like heaven.
I read the story again recently. Obviously, my feelings about the story had changed since childhood. I learned to see Jack for what he was – a homicidal bully. I now saw Ralph as a “nice guy,” but far too indecisive to be an effective leader. And Piggy, poor intellectual Piggy, and the spiritual and artistic Simon, were both doomed to die in the savage society erected by Jack and his hunters.
Poor kids! If only they had listened to the wisdom of Piggy instead of the vengeful rantings of Jack. If only they had Simon’s insight that the true “beasts” on the island were the boys themselves. If only.
Are there any lessons from this story that can be applied to us today? I might be overly simplistic here, but I see more than a few parallels. When I think of Jack, Donald Trump and his manipulation of fear and prejudice for political gain come to mind. MAGA can be seen in the complicity of evil shown by Jack’s tribe. And although Joe Biden is not nearly as indecisive as Ralph, he seems to lack that killer instinct for hatred, anger, and mockery that has evidently become a necessary asset to win American elections.
Piggy and Simon, those unwilling scapegoats of Jack’s ferocious tribe, are like the “vermin” in Trump’s world view - the poor, the “inferior,” the immigrant, the pointed-headed intellectuals, and the LGTBQ community.
At the end of the novel, Ralph, now alone, runs through the jungle to escape Jack’s angry tribe. And although Jack has become the lone leader of the island, it is not enough. He now uses his power to hunt down and destroy all vestiges of virtue on the island. If Jack is caught, he will face certain torture and death.
Could anything like this happen if Donald Trump pulls off a victory in the 2024 election? Seems unlikely. We are too civilized to allow something like this to occur. After all, we have the U.S. Constitution. We have a system of laws. Trump’s escalation into openly fascistic rhetoric is probably just a new ploy for attention. He can’t be serious in what he says.
It can’t happen here.
If we are truly civilized we won't vote for Donald Trump.