Many, many years ago when I was the editorial advisor for my college’s student newspaper, I had the opportunity to interview Mark Perrineau. He had just played Mercutio in Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Dane’s movie Romeo and Juliet. Along with another actor from the movie whose name escapes me and with one of my students, we four gentlemen from Verona spent an hour talking. We spoke in a spacious enclosed porch at a villa about the movie, acting in general, the imminent Hollywood strike (Writers? Actors? I don’t recall that detail either), and we passed a volleyball around as we sat and talked. I was struck by how the strike would affect these two actors. One of them mentioned being broke–more than once–and then running down to the mailbox, only to find a check for $1,800 in residuals, which is a sort of commission actors get whenever their movie is played somewhere. At that point and with that check, it is P-A-R-T-Y time!!! I was impressed that these guys lived a life much like I was living at the time (paycheck-to-paycheck.) And they were pretty cool guys as actors go. Totally real, what people in New Jersey would call “just a cupla guys.”
I was reading some of the viciousness in the last few days leading up to Tuesday’s election. Mature grandmotherly women serving as volunteers at a polling places being viciously beaten by voters who refused to doff their MAGA caps. Or, the persons setting fire to ballot boxes in three states that I am aware of. Then, there is the yahoo who unloaded his rifle into a Democrat Party storefront in Arizona. Yesterday, there was a parody for a Halloween parade of a guy in a golf cart wearing a Donald Trump mask puling a chained and/or tied up woman carefully made up to look like Kamala Harris behind the cart. This charade was sponsored by a Volunteer Fire Department which quickly disavowed responsibility. You’ll recall recent remarks by Mr. Trump about how Ms. Harris might feel if there were guns pointed at her face. ENOUGH!
I know that Republicans don’t have the market cornered on brutality. A photo of Kathy Griffin back from 2017 was recently circulated showing her holding a bloody object that was said to be President Trump’s head. Then, there was the assassination attempt in Butler, PA though I’m not sure what can be said about that person’s politics. Bad taste affects crazy people from either party.
I read some letters to the editor from rural newspapers today and I saw how deep the depravity and enmity runs, whether from the left or from the right. I wondered how violent things might get if Donald Trump loses? Of course, there might be leftists who riot if he wins, but they are not being primed to do so as far as I can tell. There are very few, if any, organized militia groups in this country who are Marxist. None of my liberal friends pack heat or carry AK’s. I have no reason to believe that Ms. Harris would not graciously concede the election if she exhausted all her judicial and constitutional remedies. I do have well-founded doubts about Mr. Trump doing the same, however.
Then, I thought of Shakespeare’s Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet, who, in his dying breath yells “A pox on both your houses!” Mercutio is sick of the bickering and curses equally both the Montagues and Capulets. By “pox” he might have meant syphilus, though he might have intended smallpox instead. You may recall that Romeo and Juliet came from different houses in Italy which feuded each with the other, as our Republicans and Democrats are apt to do today. Mercutio was what we might call a “Shroom.” A mushroom. As in the video game Centipede, where the player from one side tries to destroy a centipede representing his “enemy” on the other side. The “shrooms” usually get their butts kicked by what might be called friendly fire. The shrooms today are ordinary citizens volunteering to work at polls out of their patriotic duty. Or, they may be the family members of a “RINO” serving in Congress. I’m sure even judges and prosecutors are fair game anymore for crazies and get their share of threats as well. So are retired military generals, television personalities, and so on.
I can identify with Mercutio. I am registered not as a Democrat but as an Independent. I would not dare be a Republican as Republicans define themselves at the moment. But I am not so blind as to hold the Democrats harmless, either. Both sides much pull together, and control their ranks. Unless they do, then let there be a pox on both of their houses.
Exiting Constitution Hall in Philadelphia on the last day of the Constitutional Convention, Ben Franklin was asked in September 1787 what form of government the United States was to have. He replied “A republic if you can keep it.” That caveat is being sorely put to the test at the moment.
