Medea, Donald Trump and a Deadly Calm

Hell hath no music like a woman playing second fiddle. 

No one learned this lesson at a higher price than the mythological Greek hero, Jason.  Jason is usually known by both his name and his band of merry men: Jason and the Argonauts.  They were explorers, adventurers and principles in more than one exciting myth.  Jason cashed in on his fame by marrying a beauty and then casting her aside for a better offer.  Jason was married to Medea, follower of the goddess Hecate (the witch) with as fine an Hellenic pedigree as you get.  She was both the daughter of a king and granddaughter of Helios, Greek god of the sun.  I am sure that mythology would paint such a woman as beautiful.  Surely Jason thought so.  Unfortunately, Jason was also a power grubber. 

When Jason is offered the daughter of Creon, King of Corinth, as a bride, he feels that he simply can’t pass up a rich, youthful princess with an outrageously rich father.  Medea is divorced, sight unseen, and Jason is married.  Well, news like this is bound to reach home and Medea learns that she has been kicked to the curb about the time Jason informs her that he is coming home just long enough to pick up the kids.  These two boys will now be raised by Jason and the new wife in a much better estate than the one he had shared with Medea, but no hard feelings, right? 

Wrong!

In my opinion, the best of dozens of renditions of this ancient love triangle is the Greek tragedy by Euripides.  [Yes, yes, I know, but I was very unattractive in high school, couldn’t get a date and had way too much time on my hands which I spent at the local library.]  In the play Medea decides that pain and suffering are worth more than money, they are worth living for.  She infuses a beautiful gown and coronet with poison and sends them to Jason’s new love, Glauce.  The silly girl promptly puts them on, runs to show her father the finery and promptly dies.  Creon, clutching his daughter to his breast is similarly afflicted and dies as well.  Jason then hurries to Medea, to seek both his sons and vengeance on his first wife, only to find that she has killed their children as well. 

In almost speechless sorrow, Jason asks Medea how she could have killed their boys—her children as well as his.  Her answer is haunting in both its simplicity and its depth:  I killed them because I hated you more than I loved them.  This line is almost universally delivered in an icy, slow, deadly calm voice.  The words speak for themselves.

The reason Greek drama, like Shakespearean plays, live on and on is because they deal with universal themes and common humanity.  If they can deliver such themes with words that stick in the mind, phrases that say what we all feel but cannot always express, with an efficiency and beauty of expression that we are grateful to hear, then those works become classics. 

When I have good friends who, like me, have been life-long Republicans,  and who ask me why I will be voting for so manipulative and despicable a person as Hillary Clinton I think of Medea.  I am not voting for Hillary, she is no more than the sword in my hand.  I am sacrificing my party to ensure the elimination of Donald Trump as a Presidential candidate.  It is both simple and deep: I hate him, more than I love the them. 

You can’t spin some things and keep the faith.