From King James to King Donald

 As most of my friends know, I used to be a teacher.  I’ve corrected so many papers that it’s become second nature to me!  I’ve done so much proofreading in my time I can do it in my sleep.  Even when I read a real book by a real author, my mind never stops whirring about how the prose could be improved. 

Lately, of course, I’ve been writing about our president with the pen of criticism.  Sometimes it gets hard; it gets tiring; it gets demoralizing to try and find enough words to describe the president’s self-centered ineptitude and mean-spirited imbecility. 

Luckily, occasionally I come across another writer who has already done a good job of describing him.  Now, with the usual caution about avoiding plagiarism and such, I’d like to borrow three paragraphs from this fellow’s description of King James I and see if I can’t apply it to our own day and time. 

You will see these three paragraphs twice, the first version being the actual words from J. A. Williamson’s book and the second is my own reworking of his writing.  The words in red indicate the changes made; the rest remains the same! 

As regards James I (reigned 1603-1625):

“The tragedy was that he thought he had nothing to learn.  He had grown from infancy as King of Scotland and had acquired a sound knowledge of the politics of that country.  But Scotland was utterly different from England . . . . At the same time he had watched Elizabeth from afar enjoying power and respect such as he had never attained; and he had totally misinterpreted the conditions of her success.

“Thwarted in practice, he had formed a grand theory of the rightful status of a king, and he came prepared to apply it in a country of whose political habits he knew nothing— not even that it had any.  His theory was that a monarch was free, unbound by any human restraints.  He was accountable to God alone, and the dictates of his own thought and conscience were his sole guides.

“Before ever he reached London there occurred an act symbolic of Stuart kingship.  A pickpocket was caught in the crowd that thronged to greet the king, and was instantly hanged without trial on the royal command—five centuries of English law wiped out by the wave of a hand.  James probably thought he had made a good impression as a lion of justice.”

-J. A. Williamson, The Evolution of England (1931, 1946), p. 211.

And now to apply the same writing to our current president:

As regards Donald I (reigned 2016- ____ )

“The tragedy was that he thought he had nothing to learn.  He had grown from infancy as King of Money and had acquired a sound knowledge of the dollar sign of that country.  But Trump Tower was utterly different from America . . . . At the same time he had watched Obama from afar enjoying power and respect such as he had never attained; and he had totally misinterpreted the conditions of his success.

“Thwarted in practice, he had formed a grand theory of the rightful status of a president, and he came prepared to apply it in a country of whose political habits he knew nothing— not even that it had any.  His theory was that a president was free, unbound by any human restraints.  He was accountable to Money alone, and the dictates of his own narcissism and greed were his sole guides.

“Before ever he reached the White House there occurred an act symbolic of Trumpian kingship.  An honest man was caught in the crowd that thronged to greet the president, and was instantly hanged without trial on the royal command—two centuries of American law wiped out by the wave of a hand.  King Donald probably thought he had made a good impression as a jackass of justice.”

-R. E. Rosenberg, The Evolution of America (2018), p. 1

Based on Williamson’s description of King James I (at least I didn’t have to come up with any original writing of my own; it’s good to take a break once in a while!)