One of Victor Davis Hanson’s best
And that’s saying a lot.
You can find it here. Please read the whole thing.
Excerpt:
The billionaire Trump was able to connect with red- and purple-state voters in a way past Republican candidates had not—and not just in terms of his signature and unorthodox focus on issues such as trade, globalization, and illegal immigration. Trump, the person, mattered just as much. Throughout Trump’s invectives a number of messages were implicit.
One, Trump, by his manner of speaking, his temperament, and his vulgarity, was not embedded in the existing establishment or Washington power structure, and thus in theory he was not beholden to it in either the way he spoke or acted.
In other words, what the Republican establishment saw as a bug, the Trump voter saw as both a feature and a signal of his likelihood of being a straight-talking, no-nonsense, Washington-outsider figure.
Hanson the classics professor continues:
Two, like Homer’s Achilles, or Sam Peckinpah’s Wild Bunch, he was a disruptive force who could end a common threat (in the mythological fashion of “man-slaughtering” Hector or General Mapache’s federales) by the use of skill sets unavailable to, or felt to be unattractive by, his benefactors. Whether concerning the missiles of Kim Jong-un or the overreach of the federal government, Trump supporters wanted someone to try something different.
For me, the comparison this immediately brings to mind is the mythological and popular figure of the trickster:
Tricksters are archetypal characters who appear in the myths of many different cultures. Lewis Hyde describes the trickster as a “boundary-crosser”. The trickster crosses and often breaks both physical and societal rules. Tricksters “…violate principles of social and natural order, playfully disrupting normal life and then re-establishing it on a new basis.”
Often, the bending/breaking of rules takes the form of tricks or thievery. Tricksters can be cunning or foolish or both. The trickster openly questions and mocks authority. They are usually male characters, and are fond of breaking rules, boasting, and playing tricks on both humans and gods.
All cultures have tales of the trickster, a crafty creature who uses cunning to get food, steal precious possessions, or simply cause mischief. In some Greek myths Hermes plays the trickster. He is the patron of thieves and the inventor of lying, a gift he passed on to Autolycus, who in turn passed it on to Odysseus. In Slavic folktales, the trickster and the culture hero are often combined…
In later folklore, the trickster/clown is incarnated as a clever, mischievous man or creature, who tries to survive the dangers and challenges of the world using trickery and deceit as a defense. He also is known for entertaining people as a clown does.
I will add something else. Long before Trump ever declared his candidacy, I had written one and only one post about him (one or two earlier ones had briefly mentioned his name, but they weren’t about him). Here’s an excerpt; it was written in April of 2011 (note the classical references here, too):
[“Gadfly” is] a word I’ve thought of often in connection with [Trump] and the Obama presidency, one that was originally used by Socrates to describe himself.
Here’s an explanation of what Socrates meant when he used the term [punctuation and spelling corrected]:
Socrates liken[ed] himself to a GADFLY (a horsefly). Just as a gadfly constantly agitates a horse, preventing it from becoming sluggish and going to sleep, so too Socrates, by moving through the city stirring up conversations in the marketplace, prevents the city from becoming sluggish and careless and intolerant.
It fits pretty well, although Trump’s most assuredly no Socrates. More and more, he also reminds me of a jester, although not one directly in the employ of the Obama court.
Why a jester? Well, he combs his hair funny. But mostly it’s because he fulfills this function of the traditional jester:
In Renaissance times, aristocratic households in Britain employed licensed fools or jesters, who sometimes dressed as other servants were dressed, but generally wore a motley (i.e. parti-coloured) coat, hood with ass’s (i.e. donkey) ears or a red-flannel coxcomb and bells. Regarded as pets or mascots, they served not simply to amuse but to criticise their master or mistress and their guests.
Jester/fools could say things no one else could say, ask questions no one else could ask, because they had little to lose and were given license to tweak. Trump has already voiced the unspeakable birther concerns, and now he gets into the very un-PC question of how Obama gained admittance to the two Ivies, Columbia and Harvard.
Interesting, no? That was Trump’s function then, as a popular and somewhat-outrageous outsider. Now he’s an insider of sorts—the president of the US, after all. But at least sometimes he still functions as an outsider to the usual norms of the presidency, as a gadfly, trickster, and jester. None of those terms are strictly pejorative, either; all have very positive aspects.
Back to Hanson:
Three, Trump’s own history and brand ensured he would not be able to partake fully of, or be accepted by, the restored society he sought to salvage, given his own distance from those he championed. Certainly, Trump’s own randy past, excessive appetites, and high-stakes financial dealings made him somewhat unappealing to those in York or Merced. But, ironically, his constituents thought he was nevertheless a champion who at a distance could be turned loose on their behalf against those they had grown to despise.
Very insightful, I think.
I first saw candidate Trump in Sioux City, Iowa. I was astounded at how blue collar people loved him. It was not the country club GOP; and it does exist in Sioux City.
I was back in Sioux City this month and I was again reminded how blue collar and industrial it is.
That rally was my first clue.
Again and again, I have been repelled by Trump’s style, his vulgarity, and his egoism. BUt…I have learned to separate the way he GOVERNS (by what he does) from the negative things about him. I can’t find a thing I don’t like about the things he has actually done.
After all, if we hadn’t been able to separate their personal lives from the way they governed, we wouldn’t have had many presidents in the last few decades.
And I grateful that we now have a businessman as President instead of some damned lawyer.
The Left and RINOs are wrong… about virtually everything.
Finally, someone stood up and said so. Then promised convincingly to do something about it if elected.
And, then did so. Using the Presidency as a fulcrum with which to leverage needed reforms.
The man’s actions have earned my respect.
Shamans as cosmic tricksters date to the Mesolithic Age.
One might also note the tricks played by Jacob, laid forth in Genesis.
Jacob was shameless; he did have a great press agent.
Dr. Hanson is always worth reading. One phrase in that piece that I particularly liked: “…the current paradigm of the tribal salad bowl.” Dead on.
It’s always such a pleasure to partake of VDH’s thoughts. He’s an intellectual, but he has never forgotten his rural roots and the role of those who produce the wealth we enjoy.
He rightly recognizes the unthinking moves by the coastal elites toward becoming a “service society.” To deindustrialize and restrict traditional wealth building industries (farming, mining, logging, oil/gas drilling, fishing, construction etc.) is to kill the goose that laid the golden eggs of our national wealth. Those who bore the brunt of that are Trump’s most enthusiastic supporters. Few intellectuals or elites recognized what was happening, and still don’t. VDH is one of the few.
He also sees Trump more clearly than most. So many in the GOPe cannot abide Trump’s personality and plain spoken ways. Forgetting, if they ever knew, that many heroes have been flawed men. And overlooking, conveniently, their own flaws.
Has anyone noticed the pace of change since Trump was inaugurated? The man is a work horse. Younger men and women can barely keep up with him. I would prefer a saintly man of great virtue and perfect manners, but I’ll take a man who has courage, vision, energy, a willingness to make changes, and a love of the U.S.
Interesting that VDH mentioned The Wild Bunch. I told my wife early in his campaign the he reminded my of one of the Magnificent Seven: Some guy with the skills and temperament who can do what needs doing. But he doesn’t belong among the people he goes to help.
And the NeverTrumpers and such can’t understand how people who are nothing like Trump, who could never stand to have Hurricane Trump in their homes for too long, and definitely wouldn’t want him around their marriageable daughters still want to vote for him and love him for what he does.
He’s a wolf among sheep. Or maybe a more precise but less colorful way of putting it is, he’s a wolf among domesticated dogs.
But he’s Our Wolf.
J.J.,
I’m doubtful that “a saintly man of great virtue and perfect manners” could do what must be done.
Were the Left composed of reasonable people willing to engage in courteous debate… then such a man would be welcome. But alas, as we all know, the left is exactly the opposite.
Geoffrey Britain:
Were the Left composed of reasonable people willing to engage in courteous debate… then such a man would be welcome. But alas, as we all know, the left is exactly the opposite.
After decades of of Democrats trashing Republican Presidents and Presidential Candidates, we finally got one who throws the trash back in the Democrats’ faces. Which drives the Democrats to fury.
BTW, by all reports I’ve seen, V.P. Mike Pence is “a saintly man of great virtue and perfect manners”.
Does anyone think that as President he would govern differently than did George W. Bush?
Geoffrey Britain:
Somewhat differently, yes. The reason I say that is that Bush was never a conservative, and Pence is very much a conservative.
Trump is the Schumpeter candidate. Creative destruction. Capitalism is what he knows best but he also knows how to deal with the Mafia, which is what most of the US bureaucracy most resembles
Lots of people genuinely like Trump. But you don’t have to like someone or something which is “turned loose” against your enemies.
Between those two categories, you come up with a substantial number.
Neo, you’re having some fun, right?
Just watched a recent YouTube of Jordan Peterson on Trump in an interview in the UK.
https://youtu.be/O7EaCVnw5n4
JP agreed with interviewer that the worst thing about Trump was his trolling, and JP went on to say that he hoped for a return of moderately incompetent and moderately corrupt politicians of the centre left or centre right. Although, as usual, he went on to say some thing I agree with strongly, It made me realise that I didn’t feel that way at all. As someone who #walk(ed)away in the in the late 80s, early 90s I feel like I have been being trolled by the MSM and the race, class and gender Marxists intelligentsia for 30 years. While I agree he is trolling them I have to admit that I enjoy every minute of it. I also do not long for any return to ‘business as usual’ governance by the elites. As a Jungian who is familiar as Peterson with the cultural role of the trickster I see Hanson’s money quote as “Tricksters …violate principles of social and natural order, playfully disrupting normal life and then re-establishing it on a new basis.” While it is probably quite sinful of me to so enjoy Trump trolling the sanctimonious insufferables, I can always feel his playfulness. What is more important to me is that he is breaking up the old – in my view badly failing order – and working to establish a new one. JJ above put his finger on Trump’s great secret that is utterly invisible to his opponents right and left – he loves his country and his civilisation as he said clearly in Warsaw. I think he is a paradigm change president just as FDR was in my father’s time. Of course it is not at all clear that he will prevail in his attempt to end the rule of the Uniparty, but his is, like Harry Truman, “giving them Hell”.
There is a fascinating interview by Rush Limbaugh with Conrad Black in the Limbaugh Letter this month, subject President Trump. Mr. Black, a very accomplished man, has known Trump personally for 20 years, and has done business with him. He says Pres. Trump is actually NOT ‘vulgar’ in private conversation at all….
Black also says he noticed years ago that Trump was quite serious about, and interested in, politics. And has been doing polling for many years as well. This presidency is the culmination of a serious, long-thought-out strategy.
A couple of quotes:
RUSH: “You’ve taken him seriously from the moment you met him, correct?”
BLACK: “Yes. I have to say part of that was the job he did with us in Chicago. My american directors said, ‘Be careful. this guy is a bit of a scoundrel.’ He was the best business partner I ever had. He came in right on time, right on budget, produced a very fine 98-story building …. He had it filled with the highest quality people, retail and residential and office, six months before it opened. It was a very professional job he did. So I knew he wasn’t a caricature, and i knew there was a method to his antics….
“[re Kissinger]: He did not at first know waht to make of Mr. Trump, but Donald Trump did consult him from time to time when he was seeking the nomination and since then. Henry said very early on, ‘This man is very astute. He’s not particularly knowledgeable about history and geography, which is the backbone of foreign policy, but he detects right away where the national interests of the different countries that he’s going to have to deal with or is dealing with are. And his assessment of the personalities, in my opinion,’ this is Dr. Kissinger speaking, ‘are very accurate. He’s very insightful.'”
[cont. below]
More from Conrad Black on Donald Trump:
BLACK: “… most of Donald Trump’s socioeconomic peers … take him for being a somewhat vulgar man. And there is that aspect to him, ‘vulgar’ in the traditional senses, not vulgar language, but being slightly garish. That’s all tactical. Those who actually know him, know he is indeed a very charming, intelligent person. I had the privilege of knowing him, so I knew that the public personality was at some variance with the individual. I’ve always thought there’s a certain method to it.
“I saw how unprecedented his achievement was, in never having sought or held any public office, elected or otherwise, never having held a military command,…. then to go from there to the Presidency is without any precedent at all. … Donald Trump, prior to becoming president, accomplished more than any other previous president had done before becoming president except Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Grant, and Eisenhower. That’s not the way one would normally look at Donald Trump, but it’s true. And when you look at it that way, what has happened is not so surprising.”
Mr. Black did the interview with RL to promote his new book, Donald Trump–A President Like No Other, and it promises to be interesting.
He talks in the interview about the NeverTrumpers, the internecine party battles, DT’s bond with his supporters, the special counsel investigation, DT’s negotiating style, how he’s dealing with NATO, and more.
One more quote from Mr. Black: “I think he’s a man of very high intelligence, and very high determination and ingenuity. His record in various fields shows that. …I find he has a formidable array of talents.” [This echoes Scott Adams’s assessment of Pres. Trump’s “talent stack.”]
I’ve met three people in NYC who knew Donald Trump personally. They all said the same thing — the man is genuinely patriotic, and is determined to make America shine, shine, shine. He’s working literally pro bono, he’s lost ~$600 million of personal wealth, he takes the slings, arrows, and boiling oil of the Enemedia every day, and he works like a navvy. He really is serious about this.
OH, and I do think he’s having the time of his life. He Relishes the combat, and he loves finally being able to get in there and get his hands on the steering wheel, wresting it out of the grasping clutches of the incompetents and America-haters, and putting the pedal to the metal, baby.
The joker? The trickster? The fool?
As you wish, but I think we’re in “You can’t kid a kidder” territory.
And the Democrats, believing they have the present and the future all wrapped up, have been “kidding” (to put it charitably) the American people for generations.
(That being said, there have been—and continue to be—individual Democratic senators and representatives who are decent, competent, helpful and patriotic; but they’re party has, unfortunately, been taken over and for the most part hollowed out; e.g., Dershowitz.)
—————–
“…he did have a great press agent.”
And was a great cook…. (No doubt, learned it from his mother.)
I am surprised Conrad Black hasn’t gotten more attention here. He came to my attention when he got in trouble at the same time as Martha Stewart. It was pretty obvious to me at the time they were both stitched up by the justice department. I have followed him since so I read what he had to say about Trump during the primaries. He predicted Trump’s success with far more confidence that I could believe, and continues to do so. His column in Canada’s National Post is well worth following.
I find the entire Trickster hypothesis distasteful and unseemly. The Wiki link provided by Neo is pompous and inflated in tone and thin in documentation, which are always bad signs. Its apparent sole purpose is to assert the universality of tricksters as tricksters and nothing more, a claim that requires much more diligent citations than given by the Wiki piece.
Trump as Trickster is an artful claim, but far from valid. Tricksters do not run the show; they tweak and nibble at the edges only, lest they overreach.
No trickster ever ruled in medieval Europe, the place that matters on this topic. Jesters were for amusement; they played to the audience. They were associated with the secular side only; the Church had no jesters.
Conrad Black makes a telling observation : “Donald Trump, prior to becoming president, accomplished more than any other previous president had done before becoming president except Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Grant, and Eisenhower. That’s not the way one would normally look at Donald Trump, but it’s true.”
Think about that! Three were military men. He omitted Hoover, though.
Cicero:
I don’t think you understood my point.
That “jester” quote was from 2011, when Trump was indeed a sort of sideshow. But he retains some of those jester characteristics even now that he’s powerful and in charge, in terms of the way he uses Twitter and humor, teasing and mockery, to tweak the political establishment, the MSM, the left, and his critics in general.
As far as the trickster goes, I quoted Wiki because Wiki has good summaries, but in mythology around the world the trickster has a very hallowed and important place. Sometimes tricksters are mostly negative, but often they are quite positive and even admired, as well as powerful in terms of the results they get. Trump fits the bill here: “The trickster openly questions and mocks authority. They are usually male characters, and are fond of breaking rules, boasting, and playing tricks on both humans and gods.” And in myths, tricksters sometimes are quite powerful and/or heroes, although not conventional heroes; even certain gods may be tricksters.
Igude:
Actually, Hanson’s essay compared Trump to “Homer’s Achilles, or Sam Peckinpah’s Wild Bunch.” But that trickster quote (and the entire trickster analogy) was offered by me, not Hanson. The trickster quote was from Wiki.
Robert Pirsig wrote “Lila” as the only successor to his better-known, “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.” In “Lila” Pirsig goes more deeply into questions of Quality and Culture.
Pirsig makes the fascinating claim that the differences between the US and Europe largely boil down to white America’s absorption of various Native American traits.
I first read of the Trickster from the strong Native American tradition of Coyote.
Anyway. Pirsig’s thesis, very briefly and crudely, is the Universe evolves towards Quality and the patterns which support Quality become Static and are eventually refined or overthrown by Dynamic Quality, which happens in the present.
So, when a culture’s static patterns are strangling it, Trickster characters emerge who confound the old rules and loosen things up with Dynamic Quality. If that succeeds then Dynamic becomes Static.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
Pirsig offers the interesting story of Southwestern native rebel who fell afoul of his tribe and white law, served time in prison, then ended up, as I recall, a mayor. In his Trickster way he served an important purpose in the two cultures’ evolution.
he is always good…
here is someone else for your youtube addiction
Heather Mac Donald Warns about the Long-Term Effects of #MeToo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=97&v=sYSqBDywWn8
I’m a longtime follower and fan of Professor Hanson. Due to his general praise for Trump’s achievements as president, Dr. Hanson has been enduring some “abuse” from colleagues at the great Hoover Institution. But, he’s held his ground. Good on you as well, Neo!!
artfldgr: Did you catch the great Condi Rice’s recent message to the #MeToo bunch??
Condoleezza simply declared: “Let’s not turn women into Snowflakes!”
Amen. Heather is All Aboard with Condi.
I finally got around to reading Hanson’s defense of Trump by way of Burke. It would be laughable if it wasn’t so pathetic. The New Criterion gave him an award for this?
The Other Chuck: I’d be curious to know your specific criticisms of Hanson’s talk.
In any event he didn’t receive an award for this speech. Those were just Hanson’s remarks upon receiving the award, which was titled, the “Edmund Burke Award for Service to Culture and Society.”
O. Chuck: In the words of the verbally nimble, Mark O’Meara:
“Really…..? Seriously….?”
Some red tribes called him a Trickster awhile ago and they were right.
That is why he gets the reaction. But the danger is not whoever is the US president. If the DS doesn’t like a President, they can replace him or her even if it costs.
No, the problem is all the people who didn’t care and wanted a Hero King anyways. That’s not going to go anywhere good, because Red vs Blue is meaningless when both Red and Blue learn from tricksters and deceivers. The very foundation of the country becomes one of conflict, which is sort of the point.
Cicero Says:
July 15th, 2018 at 10:57 am
The cult of personality is strong and getting stronger. That is not a due to Trum making people look bad. It is due to Trum followers making Trum look bad. That’s because the US President will not always be with the US people. But the US people will still be there, even when the next civil war blows up. When the people are corrupt, weak, and in a panic over “we got to win at all costs in Red vs Blue”, it is already over for their Freedom experiment. There is little freedom in a war or national struggle for existence.
huxley:
Where to begin. I’ve followed Victor Davis Hanson for many years, going back to his days posting at midnight on Free Republic in the 1990s (where we anonymously exchanged views in Latin a couple of times) up through his blog Works and Days, and have read several of his books. He’s an interesting guy, extremely well versed in the classics of course, but definitely not a conservative despite his support of Bush II and the Iraq War. He’s no more a conservative than was his one time house guest, Christopher Hitchens. He remains a registered Democrat to this day.
He’s a populist Democrat who supports infrastructure projects like the TVA, national health care, and any other government run welfare project for the “common man.” He would feel right at home with a modern day FDR as president. That is where his support for Trump originates. It has absolutely nothing to do with Burke’s ideas.
Key quote from his speech:
Yet somehow the contemporary conservative movement and the Republican Party have confused a traditionally destabilizing populism with the ancient restorative populism, or clumsily feared both equally.
He cleverly divides mob rule, that is populism, into the good and bad versions. He knows very well what the Enlightenment produced in this country and it had nothing to do with mob rule. His argument is disingenuous and as far from Burke as you can get.
When he calls Trump a fixer, loudmouth, nationalist populist he is accurately describing the man, as he did in his earlier article comparing him to Napoleon. There is nothing even mildly Burkean in Trump, his methods, his playing to the crowds, his rabble rousing, and most especially in his admiration for strong men who poison their political opponents and arrange accidents for reporters.
Um, OK.
But where might Burke stand on the subject of “fundamental transformation” (so called) and the means deployed to effect it?
And what might be his views regarding those who oppose “fundamental transformation” (so called)?
Barry Meislin:
I’m no expert on Burke, but he was a believer in natural, God given rights, in the orderly achievement of those rights, and that those rights should be defended. Obama acted through subterfuge. I imagine he would have thought that regulations repealed, judges appointed, and tax cuts enacted by Trump were a proper answer. I doubt if he would have approved of the undermining of alliances with friends, goading domestic opposition to the point of violence, the single handed destruction of trade agreements, and the extremely erratic behavior exhibited by someone like Trump.