The Stranger's Case

An excerpt from William Shakespeare's Sir Thomas More: Act II Scene 4

Imagine that you see the wretched strangers,

Their babies at their backs and their poor luggage,

Plodding to the ports and coasts for transportation ...

Refugees reach land in an inflatable raft. A young child in the foreground crouches on some rocks, crying.

And that you sit as kings in your desires …

Elon Musk and Donald Trump walk side by side.

Authority quite silent by your brawl ...

The crowd on January 6 attacks the Capitol, whose dome can be seen in the background. American flags and Trump flags proliferate.

And you, in ruff of your opinions clothed …

Two male FOX News anchors stand on a modern news bluescreen space. Projected on the background is a photograph of chief border fascist Tom Homan and the legend COLD AS ICE. The two men are laughing.

… what had you got?

I'll tell you:

Donald Trump stands at a lectern in the foreground and looks off to the right. His urine-colored hand flaps atop his head. Fascist "blue line" American flag flaps in the background. Crisp blue sky.

You had taught

How insolence and strong hand should prevail …

Two right wing extremist militia members, armed with massacre weapons and tactical gear, stand at the base of the stairs fronting the Michigan State Capitol, which they and their group have captured in order to demonstrate their exclusive right to not obey health ordinances during a pandemic.

… how order should be quelled; and by this pattern

Not one of you should live an aged man …

A row of militarized police holding clubs and wearing riot gear line the width of a city street, looking exactly like the fascist stormtroopers they are.

... for other ruffians, as their fancies wrought,

With self same hand, self reasons, and self right,

Would shark on you ...

Turbo dork and open Nazi Elon Musk on stage at CPAC with his big dumb chainsaw to celebrate the way he is unlawfully demolishing the federal government and laying off 10s of thousands of people. He's wearing a baseball cap and shades and an expression that suggests he has never given a woman pleasure. He's flanked by two white guys who appear to be having a wonderful time.

... and men like ravenous fishes

Would feed on one another.

Police clear out Kalamazoo homeless camp

Say now the king, if he is clement

Should so much come too short of your great trespass

As but to banish you …

… whither would you go?

Donald Trump stands dwarfed in the middle of his grotesque golden New York apartment.

Why, *you* must needs be strangers.

bluetoned monochromatic shot of European refugees to the United States circa late 1800s/early 1900s

Would you be pleased

To find a nation of such barbarous temper,

That, breaking out in hideous violence,

Would not afford you an abode on earth?

Soldiers on ladders maintain a portion of the U.S. Mexico border fence, which is approximately 20 feet high and is covered with a truly extrordinary amount of razer wire, four huge coils of it, running lengthwise along the span of the fence and covering the entire surface of it.

Whet their detested knives against your throats ...

With an axe, an ICE Agent shock trooper breaks the window of an immigrants' car to unlawfully kidnap them in broad light.

Spurn you like dogs ...

Masked El Salvadorian death camp guards lead white-clad U.S. prisoners in a line, one guard to a prisoner. The shaved heads of the prisoners are being held down by the guard leading them.

... and like as if that God

Owned not nor made not you.

Line after line of prisoners, heads-shaved in an El Salvadorian death camp. They are sitting so close to one anther that each man is sitting on the lap of the man behind him. The lines stretch off to a vanishing point, creating an effect of an almost undifferentiated mass of human flesh.

What would you think

To be thus used?

Homeland Security Secretary and dog killer Christie Noem stands in front of prisoners behind bars for a photo op.

Let me set up before your thoughts, good friends,

On supposition; which if you will mark,

You shall perceive how horrible a shape

Your innovation bears.

In this photo provided by the U.S. Army, inmates of the German KZ Buchenwald are seen inside their barracks a few days after U.S. troops liberated the concentration camp near Weimar, Germany on April 16, 1945. It looks eerily like photographs of El Salvador's prison camps.

O, desperate as you are,

Wash your foul minds with tears,

And your unreverent knees,

Make them your feet to kneel to be forgiven.

A bunch of christians lay hands on their golden calf of a president in the Oval Office and pray.

You'll put down strangers

kill them

cut their throats ...

A mother flees tear gas with her children at the U.S. border

...and lead the majesty of law in line,

To slip in like a hound.

This is the strangers’ case ...

A boat filled from stem to stern with refugees, shot from above, cuts through a deep blue sea.

And this

your mountainish

inhumanity.

At a Trump rally, a smiling white lady in her sixties or seventies, who looks like a figure in a painting celebrating Protestantism, happily holds up an official Trump 2024 sign reading "MASS DEPORTATION NOW!"

A.R. Moxon is the author of The Revisionaries, which is available in most of the usual places, and some of the unusual places, and the essay collection Very Fine People. You can get his books right here for example. He is also co-writer of Sugar Maple, a musical fiction podcast from Osiris Media which goes in your ears. He is full of sound and fury.

William Shakespeare is the author of several poems and plays. You should check him out.

Comments ( )

Comments ()