By Peter Siedlecki
Buffalo, NY – In Euripides timeless tragedy "Medea," there is a moment when, after having been abandoned by her husband Jason for a woman who might enhance his political stature, Medea presents her case for revenge to the chorus of Corinthian women. Having garnered their sympathy, she proceeds to extract from them an agreement that they will not impede any attempt on her part to get even with her husband. Little did the women imagine that they were giving Medea license to viciously murder her husband's new bride and employ her children as unwitting accomplices in the act. Later, she even murders those children, ostensibly to spare them the consequences of the murder, but actually to further punish their father.
I think of Medea's speech often as I contemplate the situation in which the US finds itself today, and how similar it is in substance to the speech George W. Bush delivered just after the events of 9/11, when we women of Corinth, including the congress, so filled with emotion, gave license to the president to declare a most preposterous war, a war that can never be won and which can never end, a war on an idea, a war on "terrorism," a war in which the enemy can be anyone and everyone.
What followed our having provided this administration with license to pursue abusive activities one might expect to find in some outrageous political satire. One could easily imagine a comic situation in which all of the faces associated with the villainous idea we oppose remain too well-hidden to exact proper justice, so, instead, we turn to a more accessible object of scorn, a more easily located face, the face of Saddam Hussein not because he had anything to do with our declaration of war upon an idea in the first place but because we have stumbled upon some arcane information that makes us absolutely certain he is concealing weapons of mass destruction; and, besides, he is much easier to find than our real enemies.
Any vestige of comedy, of course, ends there, as we experience the consequences of our entrance into this action in the deaths of thousands of our own children, and the deaths of untold numbers of innocent Iraqis. One would expect that such a string of events would lead to our withdrawing support of such behavior; but withdrawal is not easy once license has been granted. And those who advocate for such withdrawal are effectively labeled unpatriotic by those who have made abuse of their licensed power: the so-called Patriot Act lest there be any doubt of who stands where in the eyes of the well-licensed administration has the potential to root out the critics. They will probably have their phones tapped and emails read legal? Illegal? What difference does it make to anyone having been granted a license to abuse? And once these unpatriotic Americans are identified, it would do them little good to go to the patriotically manipulated courts to plead for their rights.
Jason was a monster, but another's monstrous behavior is no excuse for evading responsibility for our own monstrosity. Medea had magical powers that made it possible for her to escape punishment for her acts by summoning a chariot from the skies and flying beyond Corinth's frustration.
Euripides wrote an unusual kind of tragedy, even Aristotle, in his Poetics, couldn't quite grasp it. Euripides' plays had no tragic hero, no Oedipus, no Hamlet, only these frustrating monstrous characters. According to Euripides, that is the tragedy: humanity suffers because of its inability to cope with its monstrous frustrations. In a democracy, we have the opportunity to demand accountability and can effect the change will alleviate our frustrations. Or, if we prefer being abused, we can simply issue another license, perhaps a chariot license.
Listener-Commentator Peter Siedlecki is dean of the Division of Arts and Sciences at Daemen College.
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