The Allure of a Despot

The real fascination of a character like Henry VIII is that we all know him. We've all had a parent like him or a spouse or a boss. Someone who rules by terror, who likes to watch people hop, {who loves the freedom to grab women by the pussy} and who doesn't care whom he beheads.

The parallels reflect more than a liking for sumptuous decor and the habit of multiple wives. Like Henry VIII, Trump was raised with an abusive father who coupled rage, emotional neglect, and velvet gloves. Like Henry, Trump was the younger son, his older brother supposed to be the heir. As the darling of his father's empire, Henry VIII had a whipping boy, someone who was punished in his place whenever he misbehaved. Trump had a teacher who he punched in the face when he was only twelve--with no real consequences afterwards. 

Like Henry VII, Trump's father was a man so crooked it was probably hard for him to walk straight and he passed onto his son an empire where his word was law.  Roy Cohn was Trump's Cardinal Wolsey, a man behind the scenes who turned the scion of an empire into a unrepentantly immoral fighting bastard. With Cohn as his teacher, Trump, like Henry VIII, learned that it was perfectly acceptable to cheat the commoners who work for him, rage at them, cut their pay or stiff them completely--with everything based on a whim. 

I have always thought that watching the Tudors was a lot more fun than living among them must have been. And it wasn't just people at court whose heads rolled. Millions of commoners had their lives uprooted, destroyed or brutally ended simply because Henry wanted to divorce his wife and couldn't do it, and nobody--but nobody--could say no to the man. 

Now, with a Republican Congress and Senate willing to ignore all evidence of wrong-doing, and a Conservative Republican Supreme Court, Donald Trump is set to rule our Land. 

May God Save America.