Trump as Denethor: "Flee For Your Lives!"

The election is over; the US Senate is at stake... and today is the 129th birthday of J.R.R. Tolkien.

For those of you who have read J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, the scene is both desperate and banal. Denethor II, son of Ecthilion, the Steward of Gondor, watches his nation crumble in front of the Orc raids from Mordor as he callously clings to self-preservation — even to the pursuit of the One Ring of Power.

Having lost his eldest son, Denethor flings his youngest and sole surviving heir into a suicide mission, where he returns badly wounded.

Even this reality does not break Denethor’s obstinacy, and peering from the White Tower, he sees the tens of thousands of Orcs arrayed in battle and succumbs to despair.

Trump likewise has lost the presidential election. In a jointly signed op-ed, every living Secretary of Defense — including Rumsfeld, Cheney and Mattis — have instructed Trump not to consider military force as an option for remaining in office. Yuval Levin — no slouch — writes in National Review:

"To knowingly pretend a lie is true is, simply put, to lie. Doing that carefully enough to let you claim you’re only raising questions only makes it even clearer that you know you’re lying. Lying to people is no way to speak for them or represent them. It is a way of showing contempt for them, and of using them rather than being useful to them."

The election is over. Trump has lost and the constitutional options for challenging the election are slim to non-existent.

Moreover, these options are not worth losing the U.S. Senate over. Which is precisely what the audiotapes with the Georgia Secretary of State make a very real possibility.

The full audio of this exchange is readily available to all.

In short, Mark Meadows (White House Chief of Staff) practically warns Trump that there are a lot of people on this call and not to say anything outrageous…

…and then Trump did exactly that.

This whole idea that the U.S. Senate — whose two Georgia seats are quite literally the last bulwark against Democratic-control of both the Congress and the White House — is somehow expendable in the face of this slim-to-non-existent effort to keep Trump in the presidency is precisely what Denethor does in LOTR.

My sons are spent. My line has ended. Rohan has deserted us. Theoden's betrayed me. Abandon your posts! Flee, flee for your lives!

Flee you fools.

Of course, Gandalf the White arrives at just this precise moment to knock Denethor down (at least in the film) and rally the defenders of Minas Tirith to resistance. In the books, Denethor simply succumbs to despair and allows the city to burn, while Gandalf rallies the men of Numenor, reminding them that they are the descendants of noble blood and honorable men — and they fight on.

For those of you familiar with Tolkien, Gandalf represents St. Michael — who is also the patron saint of police officers and first responders:

St. Michael the Archangel,
Defend us in battle.
Be our protection against the wickenness and snares of the devil.
May God rebuke him,
We humbly pray.
And do thou, O Prince of the Heavenly Host,
Cast into hell, Satan, and all of the evil spirits,
Who prowl about the world,
Seeking the ruin of souls.

Amen.

Trump as Denethor — who knows his stewardship is over — throwing the U.S. Senate on the bonfire as what he perceives as an inevitable loss is a mind-numbing and confounding act.

Here’s the problem.

In politics, it is never about personalities. Personalities might galvanize us for a time, and loyalty in politics — earned and not owed — is a prized possession precisely because those of us who know loyalty know that the conservative movement is greater than ourselves.

Shakespeare writes of Richard III just before his defeat at the Battle of Bosworth Field, that he rallied his men with the words:

Don’t let babbling dreams frighten us.
Conscience is but a word that cowards use,
Devised at first to keep the strong in awe.
Our strong arms be our conscience, swords our law.
March on. Join bravely. Let us to it pell mell
If not to heaven, then hand in hand to hell.

It would be Henry Tudor, 2nd Earl of Richmond and future King Henry VII that presaged the right end of the conflict:

God and our good cause fight upon our side.
The prayers of holy saints and wrongèd souls,|
Like high-reared bulwarks, stand before our faces.

Of course, not many people read Shakespeare in classrooms today for the crime of being insufficiently woke. Even Homer’s Odyssey seems to have ingloriously fallen upon the butcher block.

Yet argue for a moment that Trump has been wronged by the system.

Argue for a moment that there is a “motte and bailey” argument to be made where the weaker and easier argument — that voter fraud exists to some degree (the motte) —permits the harder and more difficult argument — that there was sufficient voter fraud to overturn the election (the bailey) — possible.

This is where we can turn to yet another writer that has been omitted from our education by the charge towards the liberal arts: PLATO.

In Plato’s Crito, you have Socrates unjustly punished and condemned to die by the Athenian demos. Crito — a wealthy but not terribly intelligent man — comes in the early moments of dawn to beg Socrates to flee Athens and avoid the penalty of death.

After a brief discourse of preferring the praise of wise men to the multitude, and experts rather than the mob, Socrates asks the vital question:

Ought we in no way to do wrong intentionally, or should we do wrong in some ways but not in others? Or, as we have often agree in former times, is it never right or honorable to do wrong?

…is it right to requite evil with evil, as the world says it is, or not right?

Be careful, Crito, that you do not, in agreeing with this, agree to something you do not believe; for I know that there are few who believe or ever will believe this. Now those who believe this, and those who do not, have no common ground of discussion, but they must necessarily, in view of their opinions, despise one another.

Most of the new right will argue that we have to play by the rules of the leftists if we are going to win. In order to beat Antifa, you have to become Antifa?

What’s the virtue that folks praise in the new right? They fight…

Socrates would tell you otherwise. That we don’t fight injustice with injustice; we don’t upend the constitution in order to save it; we behave like the leftists in order to beat the leftists.

Socrates continues by explaining that because he has consented to the laws of the city (Athens) that he consents to their justice. By escaping the decrees of the law, Socrates would be consenting an injustice against the laws and the constitution, whereas by accepting the decree of the laws, Socrates would consent to being wronged by men.

This is what we don’t learn in public schools anymore, folks.

The difference between them and us, between injustice and justice, is our open consent to the laws and the Constitution.

Perhaps one does believe the election was stolen? Better to be wronged by men than to commit an injustice against our constitutional processes, argues Socrates.

Perhaps Socrates could have fled? What then would have happened to his friends by committing an injustice against the laws? They would have been punished by the state. Yet by accepting the unjust punishment of the laws, Socrates lives with the knowledge that his wife and children (and memory) will be cared for by his friends, thus surpassing the injustice of the laws by the degree of the injustice inflicted upon him.

Perhaps likewise Trump can go to the ultimate extremes of his authority? What then would happen to his friend and his movement? They will be punished as Republicans remember that it was Trump who cost them the U.S. Senate. Yet by accepting the outcome of the election, Trump could have arrived on stage in Georgia as a defender of the public against the machinations of the left — and Georgia would have voted Republican and the U.S. Senate remained in debt to Trump.

Back to our old protagonist, Denethor.

Denethor could have accepted events as they were and prepared for the survival of the city. Instead, Denethor chose exile (and in The Return of the King, that involved suicide by self-immolation). Instead, his son Faramir did indeed survive him, and despite Denethor’s despair? The riders of Rohan did arrive…

Which, if you’re like me? You’re going to want to crank this all the way up and ride with King Theoden to the relief of Gondor.

Also, today is Tolkien’s 129th birthday, which at 9pm you should pour yourself your favorite beverage and toast simply: “To The Professor!”