The play Oedipus Rex by Sophocles, which is the quintessential Greek tragedy showing the bad results of hubris, reminds of the current drama starring Donald Trump.
King Oedipus’s arrogance and refusal to accept warnings led to his downfall, Trump’s own self-blinding will destroy him.
Trump, like Oedipus, believes he can outsmart all the people and completely ignore warnings from both his “low IQ” advisers and critics. He displays arrogant confidence in his own mental power, constantly claiming to ace a test in which he can tell the difference between a camel and a bear.
The actual meaning of this test, which measures the advancement toward dementia, points to his undeniable ruin.
The mythical gods punished individuals for overstepping their boundaries. Trump’s own actions, driven by his pride and ego, will lead to ruin. Unfortunately he has the power to take us all down with him in his unhinged chaos.
The Supreme Court of the United States has kissed both his ring and his posterior. SCOTUS has issued a very high volume of shadow docket decisions favoring the Trump administration, with reports indicating nearly two dozen such favorable decisions in the first year of his second term.
The SCOTUS “shadow docket” refers to emergency orders and summary decisions that lack full briefing or public oral arguments.
Historically, this docket has been used for mundane procedural orders or rare, urgent stays of execution. The 2016 West Virginia v. EPA case marked a dramatic shift, for the first time the court stayed a major federal regulation before a lower appellate court ruled on it. The use of emergency applications exploded, with 41 requests during the first Trump administration.
Over 30 requests for emergency relief were filed in the first year of the second Trump administration, Recent unsigned decisions by the Roberts’ court often lack detailed explanations, causing public and scholarly debate regarding the legitimacy and transparency of these decisions.
The Mike Johnson-led 119th Congress has acted mainly to support the second Trump administration’s agenda, prioritizing tax cuts and deregulation over bipartisan legislation. Congressional Republicans advanced one of the most radically regressive policy agendas in our nation’s history during the first year of President Trump’s second term, accomplishing over 50% of the goals of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025.
The political division of both the judiciary and the legislative branch has led to inaction by both. This has allowed the apparently unfettered power of the executive to grow. Donald Trump has reason to believe he can be our King.
Abraham Lincoln said that the people of the United States are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who would pervert the Constitution.
A greater part of people of the United States must rise up and demand an actual stop of the sale of this country’s power and future. Otherwise nonsensical wars at the whim of a demented ‘king’ will be the continual future of our country.
Larry Kerschner
Centralia
