Trying to make sense of the Trump presidency, a quotation from Shakespeare’s Macbeth keeps popping into my head: “A tale/Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury/ Signifying nothing.” Might that one day serve as a suitable epitaph for Donald Trump’s time in the White House? There is certainly a deep longing among the US’s traditional power brokers — Republicans and Democrats alike — to believe that the Trump era is a temporary aberration that may ultimately “signify nothing”.
在嘗試理解唐納•川普(Donald Trump)的總統任期時,莎士比亞(Shakespeare)戲劇作品《麥克白》(Macbeth)中的一句話不停地閃現在我的腦海中:「人生如癡人說夢,充滿著喧譁與騷動,卻沒有任何意義。」這句話有一天有可能成爲川普白宮歲月再合適不過的悼文嗎?在美國傳統權力掮客(共和黨人、民主黨人都包括在內)之中,一定存在一種深切的渴望,即相信川普時代只是一段最終可能「毫無意義」的暫時失常。