The following article from the Los Angeles Times this morning absolutely nails explaining President Donald J. Trump -- and those mindless twits who support him.
It may be a jolt to start -- Melville-ian monologues can have that effect. But the parallels drawn by the author offer some spot-on, articulate, literary analysis, transposed over politics -- with a little Kurt Vonnegut and Toni Morrison thrown in for added context.
And -- considering how precious little regard the present Administration holds for grammar and spelling, let alone forethought -- I loved being reminded and compelled to smarten up, rather than be benumbed and dumbed down! (Excuse me, but could somebody please impose some adult literacy classes on 45?!!? Thank you . . . )
NOTE: I took the editorial liberty of adding links within the article, for easy reference.
With great thanks to the Times for permitting this reprint, here t'is:
Want to Better Understand the Trump Presidency? Give 'Moby-Dick' Another Read
By Steven Almond
Apr 22, 2018 | 4:05 AM Los Angeles Times
I have spent many anguished
hours pondering how it is that a man of such low character and dubious
qualifications occupies the Oval Office. I've spent even longer trying to understand
his presidency. I've pored over polls
and research papers, absorbed an ocean of think pieces. None has solved the
mystery.
In fact, I've gleaned the most
insight not from the realms of journalism or academia, but from literature. Only by rereading certain American classics
have I been able to make sense of Trump's chaotic reign.
My quest began, fittingly
enough, with "Moby-Dick," specifically the scene in which Ahab
appears on deck to announce the true nature of his mission: revenge against the whale that unmanned him. He exhorts his crew with a soliloquy Trumpian
in pitch if not diction.
"All visible objects are
but pasteboard masks," the captain roars. "If man will strike, strike through the
mask! How can the prisoner reach outside
except by thrusting through the wall? To
me, the white whale is that wall, shoved near to me." He goes on: "That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I
hate; and be the white whale agent, or be the white whale principal, I will
wreak that hate upon him. Talk not to me
of blasphemy, man; I'd strike the sun if it insulted me."
It is this volcanic grievance
that fuels Melville's saga, that binds the crew of the Pequod to their leader. "Ahab's quenchless feud seemed
mine," Ishmael tells us.
Melville is offering a mythic account of how one man’s
virile bombast ensnares everyone and everything it encounters.
Melville is offering a mythic
account of how one man's virile bombast ensnares everyone and everything it
encounters. The setting is nautical, the
language epic. But the tale, stripped to
its ribs, is about the seductive power of the wounded male ego, how naturally a
ship steered by men might tack to its vengeful course.
Trump's presidency has been, in
its way, a retelling of this epic. Whether
we cast him as agent or principal hardly matters. What matters is that Americans have joined the
quest. In rapture or disgust, we've
turned away from the compass of self-governance and toward the mesmerizing
drama of aggression on display, the masculine id unchained and all that it
unchains within us. With every vitriolic
tweet storm and demeaning comment, Trump strikes through the mask.
A similar sense of revelation
accompanied my rereading of Ray Bradbury's 1953 dystopian classic,
"Fahrenheit 451." The book is
generally misunderstood as a tale about censorship, but Bradbury's central
concern wasn't the tyranny of the State. It was the self-induced triviality of the
people.
The scene most vital to
understanding the novel is triggered not by a book burning but a failed book
group. Guy Montag, a fireman charged
with burning the possessions of those caught reading, secretly becomes
enthralled by books. He returns home one
evening to find his wife Mildred and her friends sitting before the ParlorWalls, huge screens that provide insipid, round-the-clock entertainment.
Montag unplugs the Walls and
tries to talk with them about their lives: an impending war, the death of friends, even
(gasp) politics. The women are horrified
when Montag fetches a hidden book of poetry and reads Matthew Arnold's lyric
poem "Dover Beach," which ends with an image of
"ignorant armies" clashing by night. Mildred is so shaken that she locks herself in
the bathroom and downs sleeping pills.
This scene rattled me. I so often feel a mild version of this dynamic
when I try to talk with friends and relatives about the manifest cruelty of
Trump's policies. It's nearly impossible
to have a serious discussion about the crises facing our country, such as
climate change or income inequality, when all we focus on are his lies and
insults.
Americans have become
habituated to consuming the presidency as a kind of freewheeling entertainment
product beamed onto our own Parlor Walls — half reality TV show, half cage
match — while the executives of our vaunted Fourth Estate collect checks from
the sponsors.
Eighteen months after the
election, Trump is still holding campaign-style rallies in his strongholds. My literary hero, Kurt Vonnegut, didn't live
long enough to witness these orgies of self-congratulation. But Vonnegut was exquisitely attuned to the
class dynamics that prevail when plutocrats preach populism.
"It is in fact a crime for
an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor,"
he observed in "Slaughterhouse Five." "This inward blame has been a treasure
for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and
privately, than any other ruling class since, say, Napoleonic times."
Toni Morrison's 1977 novel
"Song of Solomon" helped me understand why so many white Americans
continue to embrace a politics of racial resentment over one of economic
uplift. As one character observes,
"the cards are stacked against us and just trying to stay in the game,
stay alive and in the game, makes us do funny things. Things we can't help. Things that make us hurt one another. We don't even know why."
Trump sows doubt and discord
because he profits by a loss of faith in our democratic institutions. He tells a fraudulent story about America — that
we are a nation under siege by the dark other — to distract his base from the
sad truth that he's imperiled their healthcare and mortgaged their future for
massive corporate tax cuts.
"It was all very careless
and confused," as Gatsby's pal Nick Carraway might say. As any student of literature can tell you, it
won't end well.
Steven Almond is the
author, most recently, of Bad Stories: What the Hell Just Happened to Our Country
