Maureen Dowd quotes Shakespeare and everyone swoons

An earthquake. An eclipse. A bridge collapse. A freak blizzard. A biblical flood. Donald Trump leading in battleground states.

Apocalyptic vibes are stirred by Trump’s violent rhetoric and talk of blood baths.

No, Mo, that’s you. Look what you literally just did there: cite recent news events — some of them pure acts of God — which Trump had absolutely nothing to do with, and you finish the list with Trump “leading” in the polls, like tectonic plates shifting are even remotely analogous to humans campaigning for elected office.

Somebody is living rent-free, God-like, in somebody’s head, and it ain’t us.

And somebody has “blood” on her mind, and it also ain’t us. Points, I suppose, for plucking Macbeth off the shelf, but really?

‘Blood will have blood,’ as Macbeth says. One of the witches, the weird sisters, urges him, ‘Be bloody, bold and resolute.’

Another weird sister, Marjorie Taylor Greene, is predicting end times. ‘God is sending America strong signs to tell us to repent,’ she tweeted on Friday. ‘Earthquakes and eclipses and many more things to come. I pray that our country listens.’

Literally just nine paragraphs before she tagged Congresswoman Greene as “weird” for rhetorically linking acts of God to Trump’s election, Miss Mo D., Prophetess of Erudite Doom did just that. In her opening paragraph.

Did she forget?

So it’s weird when Congresswoman Greene does it, but if you sprinkle in a Shakespeare quote somewhere, we should all nod knowingly? What kind of clenched-jaw, Acela Corridor tripe is this?

Oh, right: Miss Maureen Dowd’s. (Everybody nod. Good. You’re a cool kid.)

Look, I hesitated to even give this oxygen; it’s so patently ridiculous.  The first president in not just my lifetime, but in at least two lifetimes, to not start a new war, and we’re all supposed to believe that because Macbeth mentioned blood, and Mo noticed that Trump did too, these things, combined with earthquakes and eclipses, are portentous?

Pardon me while I nibble my crustless cucumber sandwich and contemplate. Deeply.

(Thinking… thinking… nibbling… nibbling…)

Yeah, I hate crustless cucumber sandwiches. So here’s what I say over a plate of bacon and eggs, girlfriend: take your uptown pearl-clutching elsewhere. I’ll take my peace president over any single one in the last century. Maybe take a little walk around Walter Reed and talk to our men and women without arms and legs before you get all high and mighty. Stop at Barnes & Noble on your way, pick up a dozen copies of Macbeth, and see if you can make that sale to them. If nothing else, they’d, unlike you, truly appreciate the gift of Shakespeare.

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