Ben D’Andrea
Trump and the Nefarious Gods
Like an out-of-control god of the ancient pantheons, Donald Trump gets away with reprehensible deeds. Bountiful wealth bestows on its most self-indulgent heirs the supernatural gift of living like the gods of polytheistic religions: beyond the reach of human norms only chumps fret over.
According to the myths, the immortals of Greco-Roman paganism often acted out of cruelty, lust, hatred, avarice, jealousy. In their riotous heyday, barely restricted in freedom and power, these divine egotists carried on as outrageously as they pleased, unburdened by the ethical standards devised, like the ancient myths themselves, by mere wretched mortals.
Insofar as heathen mythmakers invented the proud, dishonorable gods by the dozens, they also hatched the biggest of all double standards: a code of conduct for divine beings, like those of Mount Olympus, far less exacting than the ethics imposed on dead-ordinary humans. To cite just one gruesome example, the ancient god Cronus castrated his papa with a sword to become king of the Titans. Cronus later went down to defeat in battle against his son Zeus, who then promoted himself to absolute bossman. The tales of these classical gods emphasize the struggle between rival powers — not accountability for divine crimes and moral lapses. As the playground of the self-sufficient gods, Mount Olympus was sealed off from petty human judgment.
The bold new doctrine of monotheism eventually put an end to the pagan gods’ outrages against common decency. Before a single all-powerful deity took out the barbarous gods, however, the pious commoners of ancient times probably didn’t complicate their devotional rituals or religious festivals with second thoughts about worshipping scoundrels and cutthroats alongside more kindly deities.
Or if the ordinary folks of antiquity did harbor misgivings about their gods’ evildoings, they may have done so with the same resignation that they shrugged off skulduggery by privileged and powerful mortals. For the mass of forbearing people, there were two subjugating powers. The first and greatest emanated from the gods. In the ancient Homeric epic, the Iliad, Greek warrior Achilles bemoans divine heartlessness:
Such is the way the gods spun life for unfortunate mortals,
that we live in unhappiness, but the gods themselves have no sorrows.
The unprivileged of polytheistic antiquity, notably slaves with no political voice, also faced a second, though no less fierce, power, that of the well-off and well-connected. In pursuit of their nefarious interests, elites divine and mortal had this in common: they kept regular folks under their thumbs.
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Trump has enjoyed exceptional latitude to be as vulgar, contemptuous, deceitful, and petty as his nature dictates — not of course by virtue of that divine supremacy once granted to the gods of ancient times, but by dint of sheer audacity and superabundant wealth. Born to his father’s money — bestowed a lavish lifestyle and dubious privileges — he says and does what he damn well pleases. It’s impossible to imagine Trump as a young man in the countercultural 1960s opting out of the rat race to live off the land as did many in his hippie cohort, long-haired, nomadic, inspired to help their fellows and save the planet.
One of the most notorious among the panoply of his trespasses came to light during the 2016 presidential campaign. In the 2005 “Access Hollywood” video, he boasts about being able to “do anything” as a TV star, grabbing women’s genitals included. In spite of that video, Trump won the White House in 2016. And now, despite having been found liable for sexually abusing journalist E. Jean Carroll, he still reigns over the Republican party in his bid for a second term. Among his millions of diehard supporters, Trump benefits from a double standard as jarring as the one that exempted the ancient gods from the moral norms of everyday folks. Zeus, one-time supreme ruler of the universe, didn’t have to atone for his erotic abuses either.
Even as he approaches his eighties, Trump will forever carry on as a fils de famille, a moneyed youngster whose transgressions his indulgent family failed to censure. Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset argues in The Revolt of the Masses that adults from such wealthy, permissive backgrounds as Trump’s act as irresponsibly in society as they do on their home turf where they evade any fallout from their escapades. Their bumptious adolescent egos never decisively challenged, they’re susceptible to the hallucination that for them “nothing is fatal, irremediable, irrevocable.”
At a 2016 campaign rally in Iowa, Trump famously boasted that he wouldn’t “lose any voters” even if he shot someone “in the middle of Fifth Avenue.” For the obvious reason that shooting someone with impunity on a busy upscale-shopping street is unthinkable, he pretends — as Ortega’s “self-satisfied man” does — “to be convinced of the opposite.” The interests of the exceptionally wealthy tend to misalign with the rule of law.
Trump was amusing himself with a self-glorifying “joke” typical of heirs apparent who, believing themselves entitled to unlimited rights, answer to no one. Typical, too, is Trump’s conviction that his opinion is better than anyone’s — for no one is smarter than The Donald. Self-appointed as White House immunologist early in the coronavirus pandemic, he suggested that injecting people with disinfectants, such as bleach, could fight the virus. Nothing can force the self-satisfied fils de famille, wrote Ortega, to listen to “those superior to himself.” Like a present-day Epicurus, the fourth-century BC Greek philosopher, Trump is sure he knows everything. He proved his populist bona fides by sidelining the experts during the worst pandemic in a century.
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Soon after a Manhattan jury found him guilty of falsifying business records to cover up a sexual encounter with an adult-film actress, he proclaimed himself “a very innocent man” — the victim of a “rigged trial” by a “corrupt” judge. Since the dawn of speech, narcissists have exploited the rhetoric of persecution to shield themselves from the consequences of their misconduct. That a convicted felon of ironclad ego would pose as a blameless victim was predictable. That Trump’s credulous fans continue to support him in spite of his felony conviction is trickier to decode.
Like the polytheistic devotees of the ancient world who exempted their immoral gods from basic human dictates, Trump’s supporters downplay but also revere his kleptocratic tendencies. Reverence for audacity appears to be a timeless human impulse, a social force as powerful today as it was in the days of paganism. The first assumption to discard about their unwavering approval is that it’s based on their candidate’s exemplary judgment, self-discipline, or any other trait befitting a statesman. At the centre of the Make-America-Great-Again Republican party, moral character barely factors in as relevant for weighing up presidential candidates. To repurpose a remark from philosopher Ortega: “the jungle springs up everywhere anew.” Deep moral confusion — or degradation — lurks in the thick underbrush of Trump-inspired fanaticism.
A YouGov poll conducted after Trump’s felony convictions revealed that 74 per cent of Republicans think that Trump should still be allowed to serve as president. It isn’t just that Trump’s conviction fails to rise to the level of scandal among his die-hard defenders: two-thirds of Republicans believe he’s innocent. By contrast, the vast majority of Democrats believe Trump did indeed commit the crimes for which the New York jury found him guilty. Moreover, 80 per cent of Republicans think that the criminal justice system treats Trump, who has used every delay tactic at his legal disposal, more harshly than it does others.
The crisis in American democracy is a crisis of morals. A warehouse worker in northwestern Pennsylvania said that, yes, she was going to vote for a felon as president in the November 2024 election: “If he [Trump] is going to have to run the country from a jail cell, I guess that’s the way it has to be.” As in an ancient cult whose devotees once shrugged off tales of their god’s malfeasance, this true believer, by means of an opaque inner logic evidently as operative today as in antiquity, has committed herself unreservedly to an authoritarian charlatan. “It is startling to realize,” wrote American philosopher Eric Hoffer in The True Believer, “how much unbelief is necessary to make belief possible.”
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Idols endure at the behest of their faithful who must sometimes step up to the higher duty of turning a blind eye. A 2020 campaign photo shows evangelical Christians, a large segment of Trump’s base, praying together for him in Miami. Perhaps they did so in the belief that Trump, who lives on a 17-acre gated Florida estate with 33 bathrooms, is a workable inspiration for a life in the faith. “The human mind,” wrote French philosopher Michel de Montaigne, “is a great worker of miracles.” In America, religious zeal merges with an equal obsession with money and power.
The moneyed rapscallion of Trump’s youth has matured into an unhindered power seeker ideally positioned to assume the role of authoritarian kingpin for an embittered constituency, mostly working-class white people without bachelor’s degrees, who long for reassurance that they matter. The Trump of today is the same entitled fils de famille of decades ago, tweaked with a veneer of tell-it-like-it-is virtue but as ready as ever to say whatever it takes to get what he wants. In his speech accepting the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, the Hoodwinker-in-Chief played directly to the resentments of America’s struggling lower and middle classes: “To all of the forgotten men and women who have been neglected, abandoned and left behind, you will be forgotten no longer.”
Populist clichés read from a teleprompter in a hollow tone strike a chord even when incongruously delivered by someone born to extreme privilege and a family fortune. To secure votes, a soothing message may count more than the messenger. But to pin one’s economic hopes on Trump who lacks all sense of service or obligation is to be hornswoggled or in thrall to the power of money that he represents. Trump projects the “defiance and grandeur of power” that, according to philosopher Hoffer, are essential characteristics for the successful leader of a mass movement.
At the cynical heart of humankind, today as in ancient times, lies the sad unshakeable conviction that virtue doesn’t pay the same dividends as great power and wealth. The pagan gods got away with ignoring common scruples. Ditto the mega-rich, then and now, who, like Trump, have the financial means to keep scandalous stories and allegations buried. A cult may elevate power above, say, honesty and compassion. Millions of everyday folks have chosen Trump from among the audacious and well-connected as their bossman, willingly exempting him from codes of social conduct which they themselves likely follow. Like a pagan inheritance, the double standard holds up with their consent.
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An ordinary family dynamic might shed some additional light on Trump’s amoral hold over his collaborators, which includes Republicans in both houses of Congress. “In the family circle,” wrote Ortega, “everything, even the greatest faults, are in the long run left unpunished.” Trump’s champions embrace him as if he were a favourite son in their own enormous family unit, with shared interests and opinions. So strong is their zeal that like indulgent members of a dysfunctional family, they fail to hold their supposedly blameless fils de famille to account. And they betray not the slightest suspicion of the catastrophe their spoiled brat presages. Trump’s guilty verdict has only reinforced their enthusiastic defence. So faithful was King Lysimachus’s dog that it leapt onto the pyre with its master.
The polytheistic cults of antiquity, centred on power, fell into disuse as believers turned to new creeds. Without worshippers to keep them alive, the proud, powerful, and dishonorable gods disappeared below the horizon of myth. A new generation of American voters will understand: all cults have their day. “New beginnings cannot be ruled out,” wrote political philosopher Hannah Arendt, “even when society seems locked in stagnation or set on an inexorable course.”
