The Second Coming

by W.D. Ehrhart

I woke up this morning thinking of the Irish poet William Butler Yeats and his unsettling poem ‘The Second Coming.” Yeats wrote it over 100 years ago, and I’m pretty sure that his title is a reference to the long awaited second coming of Jesus Christ; the poem itself, however, is an utter dismissal of whatever positive implications that concept might suggest.

Certainly, Yeats could not possibly have imagined the situation here in the United States of America a century after he wrote his poem, and much of the poem bears little resemblance to what we are experiencing with the Second Coming to the White House of Donald J. Trump.

Yeats describes “somewhere in the desert / A shape with lion body and the head of a man,” a vision that would never be mistaken for this shape with a walrus body and the orange-haired bottle-tanned head of this particular man. And I don’t imagine the Trumpster has ever been anywhere near a desert unless he thought he could put a hotel or a golf course on it.

But Yeats also writes:

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

So much of this applies so directly to what we are facing that it makes me shudder at the prescience of the poet. We don’t even have a political “center” in this country anymore; just two irreconcilable extremes. And surely a man who defies with impunity any law that gets in his way, who sneers at the Constitution, instigates the January 6th insurrection, and makes a mockery of decency, honesty, compassion, and tolerance certainly embodies what most thoughtful people would consider anarchy. And the blood-dimmed tide is surely loosed by his naming to positions of power a succession of people who have absolutely no qualifications for their appointments except for a sycophantic loyalty to the man who has appointed them.

I’m not sure about a “ceremony of innocence” being drowned, but I am sure that whatever quaint notions we once had of the arc of the moral universe bending toward justice are dead in the water. And if “the best” do not actually “lack all conviction,” many of the best find themselves demoralized, defeated, hopeless, and struggling to find the strength to re-engage and continue to work for a better future.

As for “the worst being full of passionate intensity,” here are some claims made by Trump supporters: “He’s real. He speaks his mind, and he’s not a politician.” “He has a plan. I like that.” “Trump will never lie to us.”

According to the Pew Research Center, his supporters believe that Trump will change Washington for the better, deal effectively with illegal immigration, and reduce aid to the poor (which they believe does more harm than good). They think it is okay for him to use the Justice Department to go after his political opponents and use his power to pardon friends and allies convicted of crimes.

Very few Trumpsters will speak openly about their homophobia, or their fear of immigrants—legal and illegal—or their belief that straight white men are the real victims in contemporary America, or their hatred of anything and anyone different from themselves. But if you want to get some sense of their “passionate intensity,” just Google a few of Jordan Klepper’s visits to pre-election Trump rallies.

And so, “the darkness drops again,” and “vexed to nightmare,” we have just had the Second Coming of that “rough beast, its hour come round at last, / Slouch[ing] towards Bethlehem to be born,” ironically on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.

I have a friend who recently sent me this list of nicknames people in Scotland came up with after Trumpasaurus mistakenly tweeted that they’d voted to leave the European Union: “Utter Cockwomble, Rug Wearing Thunder Nugget, Mangled Apricot Hellbeast, Witless Fucking Cocksplat, Rotten Orange Fucknut, Degenerate Corned Beef Face Syrup Wearing Wankstain, and Gerbil-headed Woodstained Haunted Spunktrumpet.”

Fortunately for the Scots, they don’t have to live in a country that will be governed by him and his ass-kissing minions. Aside from a few golf courses and luxury hotels he owns there, he’s not likely to bother much with Scotland.

We should be so lucky, but we’re not. So what now? I find myself thinking of yet another Yeats poem, ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree”:

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,

And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;

Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,

And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,

Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;

There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,

And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;

While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,

I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

I don’t think Yeats ever did go to Innisfree and build a cabin there, and few of us have that option either. Most of us, like me, are stuck here with that “rough beast” for as long as he occupies the White House or until we expire (and at my age, I may not see the end of his term, especially if he eliminates all future elections, which he has threatened to do, and given everything else he’s gotten away with, I wouldn’t bet against this one, especially with his lickspittle pals in Congress and the Supreme Court).

A few days ago, I went back to the school I taught at for many years to watch a wrestling match. The new coach is a kid—now a young man—I taught some years ago. His two assistants, one his older brother, I also taught. The young man doing the live streaming was another former student. And I got to see a handful of former colleagues. It was a very enjoyable afternoon.

A few paragraphs ago, I asked, “So what now?” How I spent that afternoon watching wrestling is “what now.” Cliché though it is, life really does go on. This past Saturday, I joined with other members of my local Veterans for Peace chapter, and participated in the Philadelphia Women’s March. That, too, is “what now.” “Rough beasts” with “slow thighs” slouching toward Washington to be reborn or not, it was good to find myself in the company of people who have not yet given up.

–=≈=–

W.D. Ehrhart is a retired Master Teacher of History & English, and author of a Vietnam War memoir trilogy published by McFarland.

He will be reading at Dartmouth College, Carson Hall L01 (lower-level lecture hall 1), 27 N. Main St., Hanover, N.H., on Tuesday, January 28th, at 4:30 p.m. The reading is free and open to the public.