Bonfire Election Night! Guy Fawkes, MAGA Nation, and V is For Vendetta

Remember, remember, the 5th of November,

Gunpowder, treason and plot.

I see no reason

Why gunpowder treason

Should ever be forgot.

Today marks a not infrequent coincidence of the first Tuesday in November, the American election day, and ‘Guy Fawkes Night‘ or ‘Bonfire Night’ in the UK.

This year’s simultaneous observation of civic duty to vote in one country with the public observance of fidelity to the Crown (and derision of treason) in another, though, seems laden with meaning, a trope I suspect that many others have written about ‘Over There’ (as few here in the States know about Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot).

Those that do know about it here may have first heard about it in the opening chapters of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, in which a teevee weatherman assumes that the fireworks the Wizarding World are setting off to celebrate the disappearance and seeming death of the Dark Lord are actually Muggles who have confused the date of Bonfire Night. My bet is that those who know about Guy Fawkes and the Fifth of November remember it from the 2005 dystopian film V is for Vendetta.

An anonymous writer, ‘A Midwestern Doctor,’ who posts his (or her) thoughts on ‘The Forgotten Side of Medicine,’ connected the three dots of the Presidential election, Guy Fawkes Night, and V is for Vendetta today in a post titled, ‘I Would Like to Take This Day to Honor a Masterpiece.’ Her (or his) understanding of the film as a kind of prophetic warning about the Covid years and the totalitarian over-reach we are experiencing today under the present oligarchy, not to mention the idea that Donald Trump’s campaign and his ardent followers represent the last best hope to subvert this oligarchy, make the piece well worth your time.

Enjoy this Fifth of November, be it in the UK or US, and let us hope that those committing treason or who are guilty of that crime for a generation will be held accountable to a popular revolt at the ballot boxes rather than fire in the capital and violence elsewhere. Lord, have mercy.