Right Becomes Left

What I’m about to say won’t be popular, but I’ve never been one to chase acclaim or write anything for the sake of people agreeing with me. I’ve said this more than once: I don’t write for anyone but myself, and this time is no exception. I had to consider my reaction to the news that two right-wing activists rushed the stage in New York City during a performance of Julius Caesar.

The play has drawn controversy, because the title character apparently resembles President Trump.

At first, I thought it was a non-story.

There was a small part of me that even laughed a bit, because I admire the refusal to allow the left to normalize violence against the right – especially after the terrorist assassination attempt from a few days ago, the call for the murder of the President from a frothing, sub-cretinous zealot writing for the HuffPost, and the pasty, fat Twitter bitch proudly launching the #HuntRepublicanCongressmen hashtag after Hodgkinson’s rampage.

But then I walked myself back a bit. What was I thinking?

I was reacting in little more than revenge, stroking a quick schadenboner at the idea of fighting back. But this isn’t fighting back. This isn’t even close.

This is Julius Caesar. The play existed long before Trump.

A few years ago, the same play was performed in a modern vein, with the title character resembling then-President Obama.

This isn’t anything new and different. Shakespeare’s plays are constantly being adapted to modern times. Coriolanus with modern weapons and Serbian landscape, O with Julia Stiles and Mekhi Phifer, modern dialogue enacting Othello at an elite private high school, The Lion King (if you can’t see Hamlet in that one, I can’t help you), the modern version of The Taming of the Shrew with the late Heath Ledger and Julia Stiles (directors love her for these types of roles, I guess), and the numerous times Romeo and Juliet been redone with a modern flavor, including West Side Story and the odd, but interesting Leonardo di Caprio/Clare Danes film from the 1990s,

This is art. It’s what art does. It reflects modern life, it adapts, it recreates classics for modern audiences, it constructs unique interpretations.

This wasn’t a leftist attempt to somehow normalize violence against the right. Julius Caesar is an inherently political play, and lest we forget, Caesar is assassinated in the middle of the production, the conspirators are forced to flee, and Brutus is filled with doubt and remorse at betraying Caesar until the very end and his suicide. The play does not advocate political assassination. It shows the aftermath of betrayal.

But that didn’t matter to Laura Loomer and Jack Posobiec, who decided it was their right to interrupt others’ work and artistic efforts to spew their froth flecked rhetoric.