Hamlet’s Madness And The Perturbation Of Chief Justice Roberts

Hamlet’s Conflict And Roberts’ Moral Breakdown–

It is accepted among those who are honest with themselves, Chief Justice Roberts sold out the American people and the Constitution, while cowering from implied presidential threats to the Supreme Court and an anticipated rage of the Left’s propaganda bureaus. Whether he is familiar with the madness of Hamlet or his lack of conviction is but indecision and the wavering of ideas, matters little, for his perturbation will be a matter of conjecture until the untimely end of the Republic; undoubtably, his decision and indecision will hasten that end. Yet sadly, his actions and logic seem to be drawn and written from the tragic Hamlet script, some four hundred years old.

Bear with me for a few minutes and see if these ancient lines don’t take on modern meaning and expression.

Hamlet’s madness is metaphysical, linked closely with the culture of the era, the madness of Roberts is allowed to become metaphysical when a presumed loyalty and love of the integrity of the Supreme Court and his first love, the Constitution become conflicted with his desire to avoid acrimony and derision from the Left. Hamlet has love for his family; yet, his father has been murdered by his uncle, so that he may marry his sister in law, Hamlet’s mother. Hamlet learns of the treachery from the visitation of the ghost of his father. To catch the murderer, Hamlet feigns madness, but falls into a pit of psychosis that leads to the insanity of all the main characters, including Hamlet’s beautiful and virtuous fiancé Ophelia. In the end, death claims them all.

It is for us the observers to note the erratic actions of Roberts, actions that portend unseemly and circumspect reasons for doubt. We reasonably suspect the president has a direct line to the deliberations, after a justice who helped form arguments to support the law refuses to recuse herself from the court; thereby compromising the deliberations from the beginning. Soon the president announces veiled threats to the court, directed toward the court but delivered to the public. We learn of a delay, and later we learn Roberts has changed his vote.

Roberts is a news junkie and knows the capability of the president’s propaganda bureaus to malign and impugn his enemies, did he compromise his values in lieu of the withering fire that would be directed toward him for being loyal to the Constitution?

Oh, there is drama and madness lurking beneath the surface of this modern day drama and more than enough to draw parallels to Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

Let the Constitution be the beautiful and virtuous Ophelia, Hamlet’s fiancé, and we can see how Roberts like Hamlet destroys his true love while succumbing to the drama and his own madness.

If we analyze Hamlet’s most well-known soliloquy, we can see the self-pity and absorption that many say indicates madness and the need for Roberts to retire:

To be or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? — To die, to sleep, —
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, — ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep; —
To sleep, perchance to dream: — ay, there’s the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of despis’d love, the law’s delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would these fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death, —
The undiscover’d country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, — puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know naught of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought;
And enterprises of great pith and moment,
With this regard, their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.

The first lines of this soliloquy tell us of the self embroiled in torment: with Hamlet, it involves a dream of murder, with Roberts, it is the conflict with the desire to sell out the Constitution in order to gain respite from the vitriol of the Left’s propaganda presses and their exaggerated self-righteous indignation.

Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,

Roberts is not up to the fight and the threats of character assassination that will be directed toward him if he strikes down the president’s signature accomplishment.

to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles

Roberts chooses the way of the coward, hoping to avoid conflict, but manages to lose the support of his base and encourages his protagonists to laugh at his weakness.

Thus his double ended failure, failure of principle and his failure of fealty to the object of his love, the Constitution, is the double ended sword by which he contemplates his mortality and ultimate disgrace, for now the Left mocks his weakness of spirit.

No traveller returns, — puzzles the will,

And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know naught of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought;
And enterprises of great pith and moment,
With this regard, their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.

Though Roberts has great knowledge, his moral compass is forever compromised and no, conscience does not necessarily make cowards of us all; too many have been willing to sacrifice their very lives to uphold the Constitution, Roberts was overwhelmed at the thought of being humiliated by the minions of propaganda.

O! what a rogue and peasant slave am I!

Once he realizes the depth of his capitulation and moral failure, he will try to cast his shortcomings on the failures of man the beast.

What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form, in moving, how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? man delights not me; no, nor woman neither, though, by your smiling, you seem to say so.
Hamlet, Act II, scene ii

But Roberts is the ultimate weakling and coward, in a class by himself; he is condemned forever as a turncoat, outcast, and moral weakling.

Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of me. You would play upon me; you would seem to know my stops; you would pluck out the heart of my mystery; you would sound me from my lowest note to the top of my compass; and there is much music, excellent voice, in this little organ, yet cannot you make it speak. ‘Sblood, do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe? Call me what instrument you will, though you can fret me, you cannot play upon me.
Hamlet, Act III, scene ii

In the finality of his despair, madness consumes him for he has sold his integrity, not for pieces of silver, but for unreal reasons and fear of verbal persecution. He has become an island, alone in his sea of madness to both pity his fate and to contemplate his loss of respect, not just from the Right, but the Left as well, for no one respects the coward.

Tis now the very witching time of night,
When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out
Contagion to this world: now could I drink hot blood,
And do such bitter business, as the day
Would quake to look on.
Hamlet, Act III, scene ii

He has eternity to contemplate his loss of dignity. There is no amount of self-pity that can salve these wounds. Leave Roberts to his misery, he is lost to the country and the Constitution he has so flagrantly compromised.

The Dictum of Aristotle:

“There are no ideas in our intellect which we have not derived from sense perception,”

Roberts knows of his disgrace, for it is when we betray our very essence, that we are lost to all the world and ourselves. In the absurdity of the resolutions he embraced, his weakness is all too apparent, he has become a hypocrite to himself. His scruples have been destroyed on the breakers of public opinion, he has become a presumptuous parody and pretext of the man he was supposed to be.

As Hamlet so aptly described, he is:

—-but one part wisdom
And ever three parts coward.

Both Hamlet and Roberts are condemned for their repulsion of their virtuous and trues loves, Ophelia and the Constitution, but each is overwhelmed with his own pity and sorrow to have feeling and compassion for their true loves, those they have so wantonly destroyed.

The insensibility and lack of comprehension of the damage done is true of both men. Hamlet’s realization of failure and utter devastation was complete by the end of the play: Roberts is left to contemplate the depth of his internal perturbation for the rest of his life.

Oscar Wilde wrote the best epilogue to this essay:

And all men kill the thing they love,
By all let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The Coward with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword.