What is Donald Trump?

BY ADAM M. SCHENCK

No figure in our politics has so confounded pundits and pollsters like Donald John Trump, current Republican nominee for President of the United States. How does one interpret the ascent of a man thoroughly lacking the qualities of statesmanship toward our country’s highest office? How can he be stopped? Few approaches have seen success, not least in the mainstream media, which seem unable to do anything but give Trump free air time.
Partisan approaches likewise fail. Even the bully pulpit from which President Obama speaks has little effect on the Trump phenomenon. On June 14 Obama denounced Trump’s reaction to our nation’s latest act of massive gun violence, this time in Orlando, Florida. The Donald’s own party distanced itself from its nominee, and with little success.
Trump creates a character of exaggerated absurdity, and therefore the cultural critic holds the key, along with a return to the essential questions of which journalism is comprised. Ask not, Who is Trump? but instead, What is Trump?
The Donald is many things: demagogue, carnival barker, entertainer, media manipulator, fraud, liar, salesman, misogynist, opportunist, son of privilege, racist and nativist. In all of these things, one trait comes to the fore: narcissist. In all things, Trump is a shameless narcissist. Note the basics: look at his hair and skin. No one honest with himself could look like that. Put Trump on a vaudeville stage and he would challenge believability. Yet there he is on our televisions and in the flesh.
Trump’s rhetoric puts him in the center of all things; thus his campaign. Real people died in Orlando, but Trump reacted in an “I told you so” style reminiscent of the elementary school playground. He used the “Brexit” event to promote his (or “his”) golf course in Scotland.
Which brings us to How. Trump came to the heart of our national politics because of a great decadence in our economy and our culture. Polling shows that few among us look to the future with optimism. Our system seems like the problem.
History shows that no empire is permanent, but look closer: No organization of people really lasts that long, because the traits that brought success to the organization (hard work, diligence, motivation, opportunity) get forgotten in only a few generations.
New traits replace the founders’ generation: rent-seeking, greed, and charisma without substance. Could we describe Trump’s business style any differently? Even the greatest family fortunes fall under the weight of the prodigal son. Although Donald Trump claims personal wealth of “TEN BILLION DOLLARS” (his capitalization), tax returns for the state of New York have him getting a subsidy available only to taxpayers who make less than $500,000 a year.
Since Trump refuses to release his financial disclosures (as is customary for presidential candidates), we won’t know if he is fibbing on his billionaire boast.
Psychology offers insight, though. In 1943 psychologist Charles Murray co-wrote a groundbreaking work of analytical profiling (Analysis of the Personality… available in the National Archives, see footnote 1.), which offers a definition for the archetypal demagogue: “…never to admit a fault or wrong; never to accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time; blame that enemy for everything that goes wrong; take advantage of every opportunity to raise a political whirlwind.”
Trump has not so much rhetorical strategies as he has psychological tendencies which match the above profile. The Washington Post published an article (“23 Things Donald Trump Has Said That Would Have Doomed Another Candidate,” see footnote 2.) that reads like a list of bits from a disgraced insult comic.
We see Trump claim that “Mexican immigrants are rapists”; mock a disabled person; claim that Muslims should be banned from immigrating to the United States; encourage violence at his own campaign rally; call the Pope “disgraceful”; refuse to disavow the KKK; boast of the size of his genitals during a GOP primary debate; and recently, call Judge Gonzalo Curiel motivated by race. Why is Curiel biased? “Because I’m gonna build a wall,” Trump said.
It seems everything that comes in contact with Trump becomes cheapened, debased, coarsened. His catch phrase as host of NBC’s The Apprentice was, “You’re fired!” Trump is a vulgar narcissist. But judging him does little, because we must account for what caused him to become leader of the Grand Old Party, the Republicans.
One commonality brings together all 23 of the Washington Post’s list: Trump unapologetically defies political norms. He says what people are thinking but won’t say because they know it’s taboo; this is macho-style, dominance politics. Not coincidentally Trump has appeared at professional wrestling spectacles. National candidates can’t be openly racist, yet there Trump is again on TV, defying the elite media gatekeepers.
How did this ridiculous man shoot to popularity? He promised to “build a wall” on the southern border and “make Mexico pay for the wall” (as his official campaign website puts it). Trump has assailed “political correctness,” picking up an old hobgoblin from right-wing media. (If one knows obscenity when one sees it, then political correctness must be political speech with which one happens to disagree.)
It’s easy to call something decadent, but what does it mean? Decadence is a perceived decay in the morals of the elite class in society. Think Caligula in the Roman Empire. Better yet, picture the scheming hive of politicians, lobbyists and yes-men in our capital of Washington, D.C.
Herein lies Trump’s appeal: He is not a politician and he doesn’t talk like one, nor does he have the faintest ideas on public policy. If one didn’t know any better, his ideas might make sense in some bizarro world.
Trump has the demagogue’s formula down pat: present a problem, focus on it, then propose a solution that sounds good but upon second thought makes no sense, or the implications of which would overshadow the original problem.
For example, Trump has ideas that are patently unconstitutional: He wants to ban the fact that people born in the U.S. automatically become citizens, which would defy the 14th Amendment meant to give citizenship to former slaves. He wants to ban Muslim immigration to the U.S., which defies Article VI of the Constitution banning a “religious Test.”
If you’re an uninformed voter living in a hollowed-out Rust Belt city and you see more and more immigrants who don’t look like you or your family, then “get rid of the foreigners” must have appeal. But our system of government is designed to protect us from government, because unjust government is a bigger threat than the problems of today, which come and go. Our freedom, such as it is, lies in the fact that the government can’t do certain things—the things Trump thinks are good ideas.
The Muslim, the disabled person, the child of Mexican immigrants, the sick person—basically, all the people Jesus spoke about—deserve only mistreatment and scorn according to Donald Trump. A decent litmus test for ignorance might be the realization that my rights intertwine with the weakest among us.
If the government comes for them, then it comes for you and me. Conveniently, the Founding Fathers wrote down what the government couldn’t abridge in the First Amendment. Trump ought to read those 45 words. Better yet, his supporters.
A rapidly-appearing element of cultural decadence is the way in which an economy gives undue influence to a select group of wealthy elites, who act without shame or consequence. But don’t look at Caligula; look at the people who thought a system that would create a Caligula was a good idea.
Cultural decadence comes not from the elites, but from the common, everyday people who convince themselves that people like Donald J. Trump would make good leaders. These people choose to not see the true character in front of them: prideful, greedy, lustful, angry and envious, in both his words and actions.
What is Donald Trump? Trouble—for me and you.