Mojo, The Bard, & Me

 

Today’s Totally Random Lines 

                                       

Your spirits shine through you. Within this hour at most,

I will advise you where to plant yourselves;

Acquaint you with the perfect spy o’th’time,

The moment on’t; for’t must be done to-night,

And something from the palace; always thought 

That I require a clearness: and with him-

To leave no rubs or botches in the work-

Fleance his son, that keeps him company,

Whose absence is no less material to me

Than is his father’s, must embrace the fate

Of that dark hour.

 

Macbeth    

Macbeth                           Act III, Scene i, Line 129                                   

This is Macbeth giving instructions to the two murderers that he is sending to kill Banquo and Banquo’s son Fleance.

I listened to this scene this morning. Today’s Lines come at the end of the scene. Before this Macbeth spends some time getting the murderers pumped up with a desire to kill Banquo. He does this with lie after lie about Banquo. I’m sorry (and no, I’m not going to immediately pull up) but the comparison to 2025 is screaming at me. I just finished reading the email I get from Kareem regarding his substack post and today a lot of it was about freedom of speech and the abuse of that freedom taking place today. It all brings to mind the words of Toni Morrison from her Nobel acceptance speech,

The systematic looting of language can be recognized by the tendency of its users to forgo its nuanced, complex, mid-wifery properties for menace and subjugation. Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge. Whether it is obscuring state language or the faux-language of mindless media; whether it is the proud but calcified language of the academy or the commodity driven language of science; whether it is the malign language of law-without-ethics, or language designed for the estrangement of minorities, hiding its racist plunder in its literary cheek – it must be rejected, altered and exposed. It is the language that drinks blood, laps vulnerabilities, tucks its fascist boots under crinolines of respectability and patriotism as it moves relentlessly toward the bottom line and the bottomed-out mind. Sexist language, racist language, theistic language – all are typical of the policing languages of mastery, and cannot, do not permit new knowledge or encourage the mutual exchange of ideas.

Yeah, what she said. And Macbeth’s language in this scene, and yes, Trump’s language every day (there, I said it), is doing what Ms. Morrison talked about.

Is there an answer to this?

Pull up? That's it?

Yes, Mojo, you're right: that bell pepper that your mother grew is almost as big as you. And yes, you're also right: I should be concentrating on you and bell peppers, not on he-who-shall-not-be-named. Sometimes I just can't help it.