Camuccini, “Death of Julius Caesar”
Ideologues rush to judgment after every terrorist act where the criminal is unknown, and they are doing so again following the Boston Marathon bombing. In Julius Caesar Shakespeare has a powerful warning about the injustice we risk perpetrating when we do so. In the same play, he offers us a model for how we should behave.
One thinks we would have learned our lesson following the Oklahoma City bombing when a number of news organizations reported that the perpetrators were Islamic fundamentalists. (The act proved to be the work of a white American man sympathetic with rightwing militia movements.) Nevertheless, over the past couple of days The New York Post and Fox News both pointed at a Saudi spectator before retracting, and a number of Senators and Representatives have speculated irresponsibly and with no evidence. As Steven Benen notes,
Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) wants to use Boston as an excuse to kill immigration reform, while Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) is arguing with a straight face, “We have people that are trained to act Hispanic when they are radical Islamists.”
Even Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, who as Benen points out is “supposed to know better,” has said,
“Whenever we have an attack like this it’s difficult not to think that it’s somehow involved in Islamic extremism. I don’t have evidence to back that up. That’s just based on previous attacks.”
Actually, more terrorist attacks in the United States have been perpetrated by Christians than by Muslims, but put that aside. Shakespeare warned us about such jumping to conclusions and targeting false suspects in Julius Caesar through the heartbreaking death of the poet Cinna.
In the mob riots that follow Caesar’s death, “Cinna the Poet” pays a price for sharing a name with “Cinna the conspirator”:
Third Citizen:
Your name, sir, truly.
Cinna the Poet:
Truly, my name is Cinna.
First Citizen:
Tear him to pieces; he’s a conspirator.
Cinna the Poet:
I am Cinna the poet, I am Cinna the poet.
Fourth Citizen
Tear him for his bad verses, tear him for his bad verses.
Cinna the Poet:
I am not Cinna the conspirator.
Fourth Citizen: It is no matter, his name’s Cinna; pluck but his
name out of his heart, and turn him going.
Third Citizen: Tear him, tear him! Come, brands ho! fire-brands:
to Brutus’, to Cassius’; burn all: some to Decius’
house, and some to Casca’s; some to Ligarius’: away, go!
Against such mob behavior by ideological politicians and sensationalist media, it is our responsibility to stay principled and act with integrity. It is our responsibility to do what, to our best understanding, appears to be right:
This was the noblest Roman of them all:
All the conspirators save only he
Did that they did in envy of great Caesar;
He only, in a general honest thought
And common good to all, made one of them.
His life was gentle, and the elements
So mix’d in him that Nature might stand up
And say to all the world ‘This was a man!’
To put one’s country over one’s ego and selfish ambition. Think of the possibilities.