ARCHAEOLOGISTS FROM NICOLAUS COPERNICUS UNIVERSITY EXCAVATED an interesting grave near the village of Pień in southern Poland last August. A woman had been buried there in the 17th century, laid in the grave faceup with the blade of a sickle across her throat, sharp side down, and a padlock fastened to her toe. The woman, archaeologists surmised, had been killed for being a vampire, and the elaborate interment was devised to keep her from rising again. If she sat up, the blade would instantly behead her. The padlock was largely symbolic, representing the efforts taken by the villagers to avoid a return engagement.
If only politics were so easy.
It’s now almost five decades since the Republican party was first bedeviled by its own Undead: an Undead appetite for cruelty in public policy; an Undead attraction to the political use of fear
