At the end of Shakespeare\u2019s Richard II, the new king, Henry IV, already faces rebellion hatched in the name of Richard, the legitimate king whom Henry deposed. Richard still lives, albeit in a prison cell in Pomfret Castle in northern England; and alive, he remains a figurehead for rebels. But Henry won\u2019t have him killed. The deposition of a legitimate monarch was seen as a grievous enough sin (and in 1595 a dangerous thing for the Lord Chamberlain\u2019s Men to risk depicting on the stage); Henry is not about to aggravate his offense by having Richard murdered.<\/p>\n
But Henry is heard thinking aloud his wish that Richard were gone: \u201cHave I no friend will rid me of this living fear?\u201d\u2014a line that Shakespeare seems to have borrowed from Henry II\u2019s famous complaint 400 years earlier about Thomas \u00e0 Becket: \u201c\u2018Will no man rid me of this meddlesome priest?\u201d<\/p>\n
Both Henrys are overheard by ambitious young courtiers eager to show themselves friends to their respective kings. In Shakespeare, a courtier named Exton decides to prove his worth to Henry IV by putting the king\u2019s words into action. He travels north to Pomfret and murders Richard in his cell.<\/p>\n
Henry is appalled when he learns of the murder and banishes the killer. But Henry has learned an important lesson: that his followers will take his words quite seriously. In the mouths of leaders, inadvertent words have unintended consequences.<\/p>\n
Or maybe not. Maybe Henry knew what he was doing, \u201cthinking aloud\u201d and thus putting this idea into someone else\u2019s head. Maybe he was counting on it, counting on some courtier like Exton eager to suck up to the new king and take that sin on himself. Henry thus gets to eat his cake and have it too. I\u2019m sorry that Richard is dead, but I never ordered him killed. You can\u2019t blame me. I can\u2019t be responsible for how others misinterpret my words.<\/p>\n
Plausible deniability. That\u2019s our modern idiom for such ploys. The phrase seems to have first emerged in the Kennedy administration\u2019s design to isolate higher-ups from the CIA\u2019s plots to assassinate Fidel Castro.<\/p>\n
And that\u2019s how Donald Trump seems to think of his own more notorious remarks, such as his comment about \u201cSecond Amendment people.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIf she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks,\u201d Trump said of a Hillary administration. \u201cAlthough the Second Amendment people \u2014 maybe there is, I don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n
Speaker of the House Paul Ryan took it as a bad joke. It would be irresponsible to joke about such a thing in any season. But in such a violence-charged political season as this, and in a nation staggering under its inability to pass gun-control legislation that would keep guns out of the hands of fanatics? It\u2019s the dictionary definition of facetious: deliberately inappropriate humor.<\/p>\n
But Ryan\u2019s explanation is the charitable one, and anyway, it\u2019s one that Trump himself denies. Trump says that he was not joking, but simply referring to the solidarity of Second Amendment supporters to vote as a united bloc.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere can be no other interpretation,\u201d Trump insisted. \u201cI mean, give me a break.\u201d<\/p>\n
No one believes this. We all recognize the purpose of Trump\u2019s implausible denial: to insulate himself from the not-unintended potential of his words to inspire some nut with a gun to take a shot at Hillary or her Supreme Court nominees.<\/p>\n
Public words have public impacts. As I have written in previous columns, when we write, we are putting our words in our readers\u2019 heads and in their hands; if in my writing I am sticking my neck out, I\u2019m sticking your neck out too. That\u2019s why dictators and totalitarian regimes hate the free press. And indeed, it\u2019s the great utopian hope inherent in language: that by communicating we can work together more effectively and make ourselves better, more equitable neighbors and more conscientious stewards of our communities and our planet.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the great hope in words. But Trump exposes another, less edifying edge of that sword. Our words can just as easily threaten to shut down communication, to incite the kind of violence and fear that, one way or another, will shut us up.<\/p>\n
Because that\u2019s what Trump wants to do: shut us up. The vicious irony of Trump\u2019s comment about \u201cSecond-Amendment people\u201d is that it threatens to subvert the liberty guaranteed by the Second Amendment and the First Amendment too\u2014both of which are meant to protect our individual freedoms. Trump\u2019s words threaten those freedoms by intentionally disregarding that lovely responsibility put on us by the Bill of Rights that we care for the freedom of others as much as for our own.<\/p>\n
As the French say: my freedom ends where another\u2019s freedom begins. Trump obviously missed that lesson, that most important lesson, that all American schoolkids learn when we\u2019re first taught about the First Amendment and freedom of speech. Trump is free to say what he wants, but he can\u2019t yell \u201cYou\u2019re fired!\u201d in a crowded theater.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Jim Hale can be contacted at jimhale821@gmail.com or through his website, jimhalewriting.com. The Alaska Press Club in 2016 awarded him the Suzan Nightingale Award for Best Columnist.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" At the end of Shakespeare\u2019s Richard II, the new king, Henry IV, already faces rebellion hatched in the name of Richard, the legitimate king whom Henry deposed. Richard still lives, albeit in a prison cell in Pomfret Castle in northern England; and alive, he remains a figurehead for rebels. But Henry won\u2019t have him killed. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":7,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[74],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-10064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","tag-arts-and-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10064"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10064\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10064"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=10064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}