Shelley wrote Ozymandias 200 years ago about a fallen tyrant's hubris. Trump's 'King of Kings' act follows the exact same pattern. Nemesis is coming. 

'Percy Bysshe Shelley’s sonnet “Ozymandias”, written over two hundred years ago, is a description of hubris that sounds remarkably familiar. 

Shelley describes what remains of a fallen statue to the “King of Kings”, lying alone and forgotten in a barren wasteland beside a pair of “vast and trunkless legs of stone.” The expression on what remains of the statue’s face is set in that somehow familiar “wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command”.  It is a clear depiction of the nemesis that inevitably follows hubris. 

According to the Oxford English dictionary, “hubris” is defined as ‘excessive pride, insolence or overweening self-confidence’. The word’s origin is in ancient Greece, where hubris was part of a fundamental moral cycle. A self-defined hero, driven by the grandeur of achievement, developed a tendency to overreach. Nemesis was the Goddess of retribution and vengeance, personifying the Gods’ indignation at displays of hubris that defied them. She was the arbiter of cosmic justice and ensured that mortals did not experience unearned good fortune. And acts of arrogance were punished.  

What price, then, the endless vanities and embellishments trumpeted by the current “King of Kings”? Peace in eight wars, overturning a dictatorship in Venezuela, correcting Europe over NATO, rectifying global trade by means of tariffs, solving the problem of immigration in the US. Not to mention his Greenland bullying, his thinly veiled support for Russia in Ukraine, the extraordinary “Board of Peace” for Gaza (if not the world) and his evident plans for Iran. The President is convinced that he is the very best president America – and certainly the world – has ever had. A sentiment repeated by the sycophants in his immediate circle. 

The president’s hubris is no surprise. He has escaped unaffected from 34 felony counts and one official conviction, six bankruptcies, an alleged involvement in the Epstein affair, innumerable allegations of sexual impropriety and a pair of impeachments. An exhausted public is so inured to the President’s apparent efforts to enrich his family in ways that raise constitutional questions that they no longer warrant mention in the media. The Supreme Court – packed with justices of his own selection – has rewarded him with absolute immunity for the actions he commits as president.  

The increasing list of his egregious actions must surely be goading the Gods beyond the point of no return. At some point the tide will turn. The American people will wake to the crass disrespect paid by their President to the values and standards they hold dear. The world’s right-thinking nations will have understood that appeasement achieves nothing.  

Perhaps the Supreme Court’s ruling that the President’s tariff “strategy” was unlawful marks the beginning of Nemesis’ wrath. We can only hope that that she has some sympathy with the rest of us mere mortals when she is calculating the exact scale of the downfall the President’s monumental hubris deserves.