Threats

I’m interrupting my brief survey of card games considered to be poker’s “precursors” to share something else today. Back at it tomorrow.

This past weekend, just by chance, I happened to reread Julius Caesar. Took Shakespeare courses in college and taught him here and there amid some lit surveys (usually just the sonnets), but it had been a while since I’d meaningfully spent time with the Bard.

The 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death is coming up next month, and with that in mind I decided to download the Complete Works on my Kindle. Without much forethought at all I randomly decided to begin with Caesar. It’s the first step in a plan to read through all 37 plays over the course of the coming year, kind of a belated reprise of my earlier Shakespeare studies.

I say I chose Caesar “randomly,” although it only took a scene or two for me to doubt whether or not there might have been some subconscious motive to the selection. To put it another way, that I might have been fated to make such a choice.

Shakespeare is timeless, which is why four centuries later his plays and poems continue to resonate and provide consistent insight regarding the human condition. That said, the echoes with current events were so loud they threatened to overwhelm what Caesar, Cassius, Brutus, Antony, and others were saying.

Julius Caesar tells the story of a political assassination, based on the actual slaying of Caesar in 44 B.C. that signaled the end of the Roman Republic and subsequent dawning of the Roman Empire first led by Augustus. The play follows a familiar narrative trajectory starting with the conspirators’ plotting Caesar’s murder, the killing itself (coming at the start of the third of five acts), then concluding with the seemingly inevitable battle between Caesar’s killers and those seeking revenge for his murder.

Over the last couple of years I’ve spent probably more time than is healthy studying the Kennedy assassination, reading about and watching coverage of the event while constantly sorting through all of the many theories regarding what actually happened. I even read through the Warren Commission Report not long ago, or at least the summary prefacing the 26 volumes of so-called supporting documents. It began as an innocent digression from my “Nixon studies,” but the JFK rabbit hole can be a hard one to dig out of sometimes.

One of the more complicated conspiracy theories entertained by some regarding Kennedy’s killing describes it as an “inside job” involving many individuals and agencies within his administration, a scenario somewhat resembling what happens in Caesar where those closest to the dictator decide it to be in the public’s interest that he be eliminated. “We shall be called purgers, not murderers,” goes the rationalizing line.

Early on we hear Cassius lamenting how “this man is now become a god” despite being “of such a feeble temper” and unworthy of his power. Brutus agrees he’d “rather be a villager than to repute himself a son of Rome under these hard conditions.” Indeed, at the end of the play, after Brutus has died, Antony credits him somewhat as the only one of the conspirators who acted not out of envy (like Cassius) but out of “a general honest thought and common good to all.”

Such is the perspective assigned to JFK’s killers, or so argue those favoring such a theory. There are several other moments, too, that evoke JFK’s assassination, or at least they do for those of us who find themselves occupied by some of its details.

For example, during the celebration over the defeat of Pompey, Caesar’s repeatedly refuses to accept the crown of Rome from Antony, a scene that gets replicated in a superficial though uncanny way on the morning of November 22, 1963 at the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce breakfast shortly after Kennedy delivered what would turn out to be his last speech. I refer to the moment when the Chamber’s president Raymond Buck gave JFK the gift of a cowboy hat for “some protection against the rain” and Kennedy’s refusal to wear it despite the crowd’s insistent urging.

As I say above, though, the play’s parallels with the contemporary political situation and in particular the increasingly antagonistic presidential race were the most conspicuous for me on this reading. I’m thinking in particular about the current G.O.P. frontrunner and the increasing “alarum” being raised both by the party he represents and by the opposing one, too, over the prospects of his continuing to accumulate delegates and momentum and perhaps even the nomination.

All campaigns consist largely of promises, with each promise falling somewhere on a spectrum between vague and specific, as well as between fantastical and realistic. Candidates gauge voters’ reactions in the form of polls and votes and nudge themselves accordingly up and down each axis to find what seems a favorable position from which to stump. This year, though, one candidate has instead consistently favored threats over promises -- some vague and fantastical, some specific and real -- which in turn has caused others to remark upon the threat he represents by doing so.

Threats are a constant theme in Julius Caesar. The conspirators begin by describing to each other the threat posed by Caesar’s rule, from which come their own threat of violence against him. Caesar meanwhile expresses trepidation to Antony, recognizing Cassius as a threat primarily because “he thinks too much” and “such men are dangerous.” “Such men as he be never at heart’s ease whiles they behold a greater than themselves,” Caesar continues. “And therefore are they very dangerous.”

A little after Casca is talking to Brutus about how fervently Caesar’s supporters are, noting how he seemingly can do no wrong in their eyes. Despite his refusing of the crown, they still showered love on him, Casca explains. “If Caesar had stabbed their mothers, they would have done no less,” says Casca, causing today’s reader to think of other, similar statements regarding supporters of a certain candidate.

There’s talk, too, about how power might change Caesar, discussion that resembles somewhat speculation about how a candidate making promises (or threats) while campaigning might act differently while in office. For Brutus, the worry is that once he reaches the top of the ladder Caesar will turn his back on those down below. He’s like a “serpent’s egg” concludes Brutus -- better to “kill him in the shell.”

Back at Caesar’s, he speaks a little more boldly to his wife, Calpurnia, about those who might oppose him. “The things that threaten’d me ne’er look’d but on my back,” he says to her, “when they shall see the face of Caesar, they are vanished.” Calpurnia isn’t convinced, beckoning him not to attend a meeting at the senate-house, but Caesar won’t hear it, saying he’d be “a beast without a heart if he should stay home to-day for fear.”

He goes to the senate-house and is killed, the threat against him having been realized. Thereafter come further threats between the anti- and pro-Caesar camps, as well as Caesar’s ghost coming to visit Brutus and threaten his well being. The play then ends in bloodshed with Caesar’s death being avenged and, interestingly, most of the deaths shown on stage resulting from suicides.

Today is yet another “Super Tuesday,” with both parties’ primaries happening in a few more states, including my own. I voted this morning, in fact, a relatively easy process as my polling station is only just a couple of miles up the road from the farm.

Hard not to feel a certain foreboding, though, what with all of the threats being bandied about, including threats of violence (from candidates and from their supporters). The results of today’s doling of delegates will affect what happens next, which will seem a promise for some and a threat to others. I look up at the calendar and realize another coincidence suggesting my choice of Caesar to read having been unsettlingly appropriate.

I refer, of course, to the soothsayer’s threatening line from early in the play.

“Beware the ides of March.”

Photos: Julius Caesar (dir. Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1953) (top); still from JFK Fort Worth Breakfast November 22 1963 TV coverage, KRLD-TV (middle).

Going Negative

We’re less than a week away from midterm elections here in the U.S. Of course, anyone in this country who has turned on a television set, been near a computer, or receives mail knows that already thanks to the relentless campaign ads greeting us at every turn.

Was reading today over at Slate how this year the total number of ads concerning the 36 races for U.S. Senate seats is approaching 1 million. Here in North Carolina the race between incumbent Kay Hagan (D) and her opponent Thom Tillis (R) has produced more ads than any other in the country, currently coming at a clip of about 11,000 ads per week or about one ad per minute, they say.

The Slate article further notes how the great majority of campaign ads this year have been negative, something about which I found myself commenting out loud to Vera just a few days ago. I’d noticed that practically none of the ads for Tillis featured him at all, only Hagan, while the Hagan ads all seemed only to be showing Tillis.

The article notes how the week before last “all but two-dozen” of the nearly 11,000 Hagan/Tillis ads “contained at least some negative content.” That ratio changed a bit this week with more than 500 non-negative ads -- “roughly 5 percent” of the nearly 11,000.

It’s clear that in the current political climate “going negative” is the preferred approach. The rise of social media -- even more prominent and integral to Americans’ lives today than even two years ago -- might well be a primary factor here, as is current news media and the constant (and influential) efforts of many to voice and inspire outrage wherever possible, legitimate or otherwise.

The approach is hardly new, though perhaps more popular today than ever, and affirms how in politics any effort that is antagonistic to your opponent is considered equivalent to (or perhaps even better than) promoting yourself. I was trying to imagine an analogy from poker -- a “zero sum” game in which one can only benefit to the detriment of others -- and I think I came up with one.

Say each candidate has a certain amount of chips with which to play, with each chip representing one campaign ad. In poker when you make a bet, it is often either because you like the strength of your hand or you doubt the strength of your opponent’s hand. There are times, of course, when you aren’t sure and so your bet may not be so easily categorized, but let’s just focus on those two reasons for betting here.

The former bet would be a “positive ad” bet, made as a way of “supporting” your good hand. The latter bet would be a “negative ad” bet, made as a way of “attacking” what you perceive to be your opponent’s weak hand. In the latter case, your cards aren’t really that important -- you could hold anything, with your action primarily motivated by your perception of an opponent’s weakness.

Which I guess would mean in these races overwhelmed by both sides almost exclusively going with negative ads, the actual strength of each candidate is mostly irrelevant.

In any case, I’ll be glad when next week comes and all the chippiness finally ends.