Has Yeats’ “Rough Beast” Come “Round at Last”?
In his philosophical treatise, A Vision, W.B. Yeats argued that civilizations wax and wane in two-thousand-year cycles, like the twenty-eight phases of the moon, waxing from “new moon darkness” to “full moon light” before waning back to “new moon darkness.” However, each new civilization, in Yeats’ paradigm, waxes from the darkness of the old, but in contradistinction to the values and forms of the old civilization.
Yeats’ apocalyptic poem, “The Second Coming,”[1] imagines a world whose two-thousand-year Christian cycle is in its final phase -- a darkening place where “the ceremony of innocence is drowned,” where “the best lack all conviction, while the worst, / Are full of passionate intensity.”
Yeats writes that “some revelation is at hand.” Egyptian civilization (symbolized by that “shape with a lion body and the head of a man”) was “vexed to nightmare” for “twenty centuries” by the birth of a Christian civilization (“the rocking cradle”). Yeats believes this civilization is now in its final phase, nearing its “new moon,” about to be vexed into its own nightmare. Yeats wonders, “What rough beast,” antithetical to the Christian epoch, “slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”
The values of the Christian civilization Yeats references are articulated in the New Testament, most concisely in the “Sermon on the Mount” (Matthew 5). They include humility, piety, respect for others (especially for the poor, the weak, the infirm, the outcast, and the indigent), kindness and decency, moral and physical courage, seeking grace, seeking redemption for wrongs, seeking peace, rejecting violence, showing loyalty to spouses and friends, and being honest — yes, telling the truth. . .all these Yeats saw being “vexed to nightmare.”
As they are in MAGAmerica, where they are the stuff of suckers and losers, useful primarily as ploys to manipulate a “low information” citizenry. The word “Christian” itself has been devalued, used frequently as an adjective rather than a noun, especially by right-wing extremists — a linguistic smokescreen for hate, lies, and intolerance.
Frighteningly, a man facing ninety-one criminal counts has convinced a large percentage of Americans that he is the right person to return to the presidency, an office he abused and befouled, most notably in his traitorous attempt to steal the 2020 election. This same man has promised retribution and revenge on his enemies if re-elected. He has threatened to abridge rights protected by the U.S. Constitution, to become a dictator, to weaponize the judiciary, the military, and the attorney general’s office to enrich himself and punish his enemies. He promises a “bloodbath” if he loses the election.
He has promised to fire thousands of dedicated civil service workers, remove our country from NATO, betray our allies, expose one vulnerable ally to the superior army of a murderous dictator. Like the tyrants he admires, he promises to shut down unflattering media, fill his cabinet and judicial positions with loyalist cronies. He threatens to cut Medicare and Social Security while expanding lavish tax cuts to the rich, especially those who support his campaigns.
On a personal level, the man is a full-blooded narcissistic sociopath (see link below).[2] He has cheated friends, wives, business partners. He is a pathological liar. He is a crook, a con man. He selfishly delayed meaningful action during the pandemic, while tens of thousands of Americans died from COVID. He mocks people with disabilities, refuses to be seen with wounded soldiers. He is incapable of having a true friend because every human interaction for him is a transaction: “What can he get out of it?” He was a draft dodger, because he thinks anyone who serves in the military is a sucker. “What do they get out of it,” he asked former Marine General, John Kelly, his one-time Chief of Staff whose son died in Vietnam. He sexually abuses women because he can, because he’s famous.
None of this, however, discouraged the delusional producers of the video, God Made Trump.
Voiceover: “God looked down on his planned paradise and said, ‘I need a caretaker,’ so God gave us Trump” -- “a shepherd to mankind who won’t ever leave nor forsake them.” In starkly religious tones, the video depicts Trump as “the vessel of a higher power sent to save the nation.”[3]
One unctuous gaggle of Evangelical pastors dreamily laid hands on him during a White House visit, declaring him their “savior.” Trump, apparently amused by this serio-comic quackery, later spoke the truth — this one time — calling them a pack of “hustlers,” opining further that “they’re all full of shit.”[4]
Robert P. Jones, founder of the Public Religion Research Institute, said:
“Trump has given us adequate evidence that he has little religious sensibility or theological acuity. He has scant knowledge of the Bible, he has said that he has never sought forgiveness for his sins, and he has no substantive connection to a church or denomination. He’s not only one of the least religious but also likely one of the most theologically ignorant presidents the country has ever had.”[5]
In an earlier century, artists would have envisioned the immoral and amoral Trump as the “Anti-Christ” and portrayed him as a beast.
The phrase “anti-Christ” has receded from common parlance. Still, the notion that Trump is a religious man, let alone a practicing Christian, is laughable. He is rather a symbol of Yeats’ antithesis to the civilization set in motion by the “rocking cradle,” closer to the “rough beasts” “waxing” in their early lunar phases, successfully spreading anarchy upon the world.
[2] https://www.choosingtherapy.com/narcissistic-sociopath/
[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/11/us/politics/trump-god-video-pastors-iowa.html
[4] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/09/trump-secretly-mocks-his-christian-supporters/616522/
[5] Robert P. Jones, founder and chief executive of P.R.R.I. (formerly the Public Religion Research Institute). As quoted in Thomas Edsall’s “The Deification of Donald Trump Poses Some Interesting Questions,” The New York Times, January 17, 2024. See: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/17/opinion/trump-god-evangelicals-anointed.html
True, Ben. I was focusing on his immoral nature here. Hope you are well and enjoying pickle ball.
Right on,where have all the moral dedicated Republicans gone? Let us take a lap around the res.