During an appearance on Morning Joe Wednesday, retired four-star Navy Admiral James Stavridis warned of the direction Donald Trump ‘s administration is pushing the country, Newsweek reports. The retired military leader made the comment while discussing the president and Attorney General William Barr’s criticism of the Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on the FBI’s investigation into Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
“This is really a collision between order and rule of law and increasing anarchy,” Stavridis said, noting that the attorney general, secretary of defense, and head of the CIA are integral to the institutions of the United States.
“And when we have to worry about whether an inspector general is going to be overridden in one of those three positions, you start to feel that needle moving from the Federalist Papers to the island in Lord of the Flies.”
Stavridis’ references to the Federalist Papers used to promote the ratification of the United States Constitution and William Golding’s iconic novel suggests that Trump’s administration is pushing the country from an ordered society into one governed by coercion and violence — like the governing that takes place in the 1954 title.
This isn’t the first time the Trump administration has been compared to Lord of the Flies . Writing for the Los Angeles Times , author Liesl Schillinger suggested in 2017 that the book is the “most relevant dystopian novel for our time.”
“As the disordered days and weeks of the Trump administration lengthen and grow more tumultuous, the characters in Lord of the Flies seem to me to appear on our television screens every day,” she writes, adding that such characters wear “long pants” instead of “schoolboy shorts.”
Schillinger continued to link characters to real-life Washington figures — former White House Press Secretary and White House Communications Director Sean Spicer to Piggy; former White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon to Jack; and senior advisor Stephen Miller to the talking head in the jungle.
Per The Wrap , actor and artist Jim Carrey — who often creates art taking aim at Trump’s administration — posted a piece that channeled Lord of the Flies back in April. The artwork depicts the president bloated and wearing sunglasses and a red cap as his minions pour a Kool-Aid-like drink into the mouths of the crowd.
As The Inquisitr reported, Joe Lockhart, the former White House press secretary under President Bill Clinton, echoed Stavridis’ warning of anarchy but within the context of the impeachment process. In particular, Lockhart suggested that Trump’s recent hire of Mark Penn, a former Clinton pollster, will make the process even more chaotic.
