Love, anarchy, Trump
To the editor:
Anyone who ever read or saw on stage “A Midsummer Nights’ Dream” knows that love is anarchic. Shakespeare allows that a little wild playfulness is good for love, but running totally wild risks abandonment of all restraints, of reason, of law, after all, off in the woods, Demetrius threatened to rape Helena. Just look at the chances people have taken for love – forbidden affairs with colleagues and both parities are fired; adulterous affairs and marriages and families are torn asunder. The consequences of yielding to the force of anarchic love are mighty.
The American president’s love for Vladimir Putin may seem absurdly childish, may feel to the president like a playful flirtation, but that local follows the dangerous pattern of anarchy, the president has thrown out reasonable, lawful attachments to the winds and blindly embraced a man who, with his new nuclear-powered cruise missiles is right now forcing us and our NATO allies into a new arms race, the original of which Ronald Reagan so beautifully negotiated away during his summit with Gorbachev in Reykjavik, Iceland, in 1986. Kim and Xi, two other of the president’s love interests are regularly making threatening forays against South Korea, against Japan, against Europe, against us.
Anarchy is dangerous business. Unfortunately, anarchy marks the president’s approach to love, to life, to the government. We do well to remember what Shakespeare showed us: We need good, stable relationships; we need reason; we need law; we need government.
Heidi DaWidoff
Francestown