Christopher Lasch died in 1994, long before Trump began his political ascent. But a posthumous work isolates a final element in the combustible compound that has now produced the explosion of Trumpery. The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy (1995), as its title suggests, pays homage to Ortega, but is also an inversion of his thesis. For Lasch, the new elites had turned the tables on the masses and thereby fatally undermined democracy in America. The “spoiled child of human history” was no longer, as Ortega had thought, a plebeian, but a patrician. It was not the mainly conservative working and lower middle classes who had abandoned limits, duties and obligations, but the wealthy, cultivated upper-middle-class liberals. The narcissists had taken over.
Lasch noticed, too, a growing divergence in expectations and opportunities, in way of life as well as politics, between the classes. In “The soul of man under secularism”, Lasch painted a bleak portrait of a disillusioned society that had fallen back on nostalgia as a substitute for hope. Not only had the new elites betrayed democracy: they had also substituted “the religion of culture” for the genuine article, while sneering at the plebs for “clinging to guns or religion”.
It is time to sum up. Trumpery is the answer to a question that modern America has tried to evade for many years. How did the land of liberty and democracy come to be dominated by a self-satisfied yet censorious oligarchy, while the masses sank into a slough of despondent resentment? The sudden emergence of Trumpery has the character of an American mutiny. One aim of the uprising is vicarious gratification at the spectacle of the apotheosis of narcissism presented by Trump himself. Another is revenge on the Establishment, whose evident discomfiture and even panic evokes a schadenfreude among the “rednecks” that is all the more exquisite because it is so rare. But the underlying motive behind the embrace of Trumpery is sheer bloody-mindedness. That phrase, too, comes from Shakespeare: in Henry VI Part 3, King Edward IV speaks of the “bloody-minded” French Queen Margaret. In 2016, ordinary Americans, too, are feeling bloody-minded: towards immigrants and Muslims, towards Washington and Wall Street, towards all who do not share their values. In such a mood, they are turning — perhaps only temporarily, but certainly enthusiastically — to a megalomaniac whose contempt for his fellow men is naked. This is a man who aspires to leadership, but who knows no restraint. He threatens to build a great wall across America, but he disdains all boundaries in his behaviour. His morality, his mentality and his oratory are all infantile, yet his appeal is all the wider for that. He seems just what T.W. Adorno meant by “the authoritarian personality”; yet he could only have arisen in a society that has long since abolished all authority. Once, Americans lived in fear of divine retribution. Now that they have abandoned such fear, they seem ready to adore an idol with feet of clay. They also seem eager to help him to build his grandiose projects. Have they forgotten their Bible stories?
In chapter 2 of the Book of Daniel, the prophet interprets King Nebuchadnezzar’s dream: “This great image, whose brightness was excellent, stood before thee, and the form thereof was terrible.” But his feet were partly of miry clay, and a stone smote them and smashed the image to pieces. In chapter 11 of the Book of Genesis, the story is told of how the children of men built a tower called Babel, intended to reach unto heaven. “And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.” We know what happened next.
Lasch noticed, too, a growing divergence in expectations and opportunities, in way of life as well as politics, between the classes. In “The soul of man under secularism”, Lasch painted a bleak portrait of a disillusioned society that had fallen back on nostalgia as a substitute for hope. Not only had the new elites betrayed democracy: they had also substituted “the religion of culture” for the genuine article, while sneering at the plebs for “clinging to guns or religion”.
It is time to sum up. Trumpery is the answer to a question that modern America has tried to evade for many years. How did the land of liberty and democracy come to be dominated by a self-satisfied yet censorious oligarchy, while the masses sank into a slough of despondent resentment? The sudden emergence of Trumpery has the character of an American mutiny. One aim of the uprising is vicarious gratification at the spectacle of the apotheosis of narcissism presented by Trump himself. Another is revenge on the Establishment, whose evident discomfiture and even panic evokes a schadenfreude among the “rednecks” that is all the more exquisite because it is so rare. But the underlying motive behind the embrace of Trumpery is sheer bloody-mindedness. That phrase, too, comes from Shakespeare: in Henry VI Part 3, King Edward IV speaks of the “bloody-minded” French Queen Margaret. In 2016, ordinary Americans, too, are feeling bloody-minded: towards immigrants and Muslims, towards Washington and Wall Street, towards all who do not share their values. In such a mood, they are turning — perhaps only temporarily, but certainly enthusiastically — to a megalomaniac whose contempt for his fellow men is naked. This is a man who aspires to leadership, but who knows no restraint. He threatens to build a great wall across America, but he disdains all boundaries in his behaviour. His morality, his mentality and his oratory are all infantile, yet his appeal is all the wider for that. He seems just what T.W. Adorno meant by “the authoritarian personality”; yet he could only have arisen in a society that has long since abolished all authority. Once, Americans lived in fear of divine retribution. Now that they have abandoned such fear, they seem ready to adore an idol with feet of clay. They also seem eager to help him to build his grandiose projects. Have they forgotten their Bible stories?
In chapter 2 of the Book of Daniel, the prophet interprets King Nebuchadnezzar’s dream: “This great image, whose brightness was excellent, stood before thee, and the form thereof was terrible.” But his feet were partly of miry clay, and a stone smote them and smashed the image to pieces. In chapter 11 of the Book of Genesis, the story is told of how the children of men built a tower called Babel, intended to reach unto heaven. “And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.” We know what happened next.
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