I read this the first part of the tweet (above) from Trump this morning and thought “no way is Trump familiar with Ralph Waldo Emerson “ and able to quote this famous phrase the original of which is explained here:
In the early 1860s, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., then a brash Harvard undergraduate, wrote an essay criticizing Plato, whose classifications of ideas he found “loose and unscientific.” Holmes sent a copy of the essay to Emerson, whose books, he later said, had “set me on fire.” He soon received in return a nugget of stern wisdom. “I have read your piece,” Emerson replied. “When you strike at a king you must kill him.”
In any event, this old maxim was proved in Bulgaria where a gunman attempted to assassinate the leader of a party, Ahmed Dogan. The would-be-assassin jumped up on the stage, drew a gun, pulled the trigger, but it jammed. It looks like a tiny subcompact from the picture.
Dogan knocked the gun out of his hand, and fled. Then security forces proceeded to kick (literally) the crap out of the gunman for several minutes. So if you are going to shoot the king, don’t jam.
Reference
I had to look this up, so not to even dare suggest I am more intelligent that the president, I rather doubt he was familiar with this phrase. Here’s part one of the tweet:
“Ralph Waldo Emerson seemed to foresee the lesson of the Senate Impeachment Trial of President Trump. ‘When you strike at the King, Emerson famously said, “you must kill him.’ Mr. Trump’s foes struck at him but did not take him down. A triumphant Mr.Trump emerges from the.....
but then I read the second part of the tweet which said
....biggest test of his presidency emboldened, ready to claim exoneration, and take his case of grievance, persecution and resentment to the campaign trail.” Peter Baker @nytimes The Greatest Witch Hunt In American History!
and saw it came from NY Times reporter Peter Baker:
Fortunately this has not gone unnoticed. For example in Mediate: Trump Proudly Quotes NY Times Article That Called Him ‘Stained in History’
This goes back to this Feb. 1 article which as you see even says he is stained in history in the headline. The subtitle is no less flattering.
I rather doubt that Trump remembered this from two weeks ago, though who knows, maybe he did. I suspect someone suggested he selectively use it in a tweet this morning. Perhaps they showed him just the paragraphs excerpted in the Mediate article.
My hunch is they left out this part from Peter Baker’s piece, which is not in the Mediate article:
“I don’t think in any way Trump is willing to move on,” said Mickey Edwards, a former Republican congressman who teaches at Princeton University. “I think he will just have been given a green light and he will claim not just acquittal but vindication and he can do those things and they can’t impeach him again. I think this is going to empower him to be much bolder. I would expect to see him even more let loose.”
Impeachment will always be a stain on Mr. Trump’s historical record, a reality that has stung him in private, according to some close to him. But he will be the first president in American history to face voters after an impeachment trial and that will give him the chance to argue for the next nine months that his enemies have spent his entire presidency plotting against him to undo the 2016 election.
So, bottom line (literally) is that Trump thinks, and behaves, like he is a king.
Recommended supplementary reading by Lucian K Truscott, IV:
- The man who stands before those rallies and encourages such idolatry isn't merely running for president. He is calling, directly and without apology, for the kind of obedience and loyalty demanded by dictators. He is commanding worship and submission. It must be why he attracts so completely the support of evangelical Christians. He truly is the false idol their Bible warned them against. They have fallen for him in the same way the most conspicuously devout worshipers commit sins. The inevitability of Trump and his evangelical masses is jaw-dropping, and yes, biblical.
- Donald Trump is an existential threat to the virtues of the democracy we have enjoyed for more than two centuries. He is a real threat to the things we have thought we shared as Americans: the love of variety and dissent, and a belief in the consent of the governed. The capacity of all citizens to respect each other's opposing positions, even amid vigorous disagreement. A respect for the disadvantaged and a scorn for the absolutism of the strong. A universal contempt for the public lie. Trump stands in outright opposition to all of this, and he is a threat to us all.
- We're there again. It's time for another Moratorium march (i.e. Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam), this time against Donald Trump. It's not enough to vote against him in November. We're sliding into a fascist dictatorship. The time to act is now.