The January 6 Commission appears to be dead on arrival in the U.S. Senate, which is good news for anyone who knows what an actual storming of a Capitol would look like. As always, Shakespeare was there first, describing the real thing (twice) in Hamlet. We’ll focus on the first insurrection, led by Laertes, son of the royal counselor Polonius. Laertes has learned that his father was murdered, though he doesn’t yet know by whom (it was Hamlet, but Polonius was spying on him from behind an arras). The usurping King Biden, I mean Claudius, and Queen Gertrude are alarmed:
Gertrude: “Alack, what noise is this?”
Claudius: “Where are my Switzers? Let them guard the door.”
[Enter a Messenger.]
“What is the matter?”
Messenger: “Save Yourself, my lord:…”
Laertes has returned in a fury from France, where he had been studying, and he now finds himself leading a Danish mob. Not the pastries, but the people, who have lost confidence in the illegitimate Claudius regime. Illegitimate because Biden stole the election; that is, Claudius murdered his own brother, King Hamlet, to claim the throne, and married King Hamlet’s widow Gertrude in the process.
A mob that has lost confidence in an illegitimate regime. Where have we heard that before? The messenger goes on:
Messenger: “Save Yourself, my lord:
The ocean, overpeering of his list,
Eats not the flats with more impetuous haste
Than Young Laertes, in a riotous head,
O’erbears Your offices. The rabble call him lord;
And, as the world were now but to begin,
Antiquity forgot, custom not known,
The ratifiers and props of every word,
They cry ‘Choose we! Laertes shall be king!’
Caps, hands, and tongues applaud it to the clouds,
‘Laertes shall be king! Laertes king!'”
Is that what happened on January 6? If it were, then-President Trump would have been at the head of the mob, like Laertes. Instead, he was calmly calling for calm, and two hours later, the uninvited visitors responded to his call and voluntarily dispersed. There was not one firearm among them, and the only violent death was one of their own, Ashli Babbitt.
Laertes next shows up in the castle. He’s not wearing Viking horns and face paint, even though the play is actually based on a Latin text written in 1200, describing Danish Viking legends.
Laertes: “Keep the door. [Exeunt his Followers.]
O thou vile king, give me my father!”…
Claudius. What is the cause, Laertes,
That thy rebellion looks so giantlike?
Let him go, Gertrude. Do not fear our person.
There’s such divinity doth hedge a king
That treason can but peep to what it would,
Acts little of his will.”
Even an illegitimate king could claim the divinity that doth hedge a king as an invisible nimbus of security in the face of deadly threat. Biden’s cabal, the true insurrectionists, are not nearly so confident as Claudius, as the 20,000 national guardsmen and barbed wire fencing attest.
