Who Is Trump?

He is the son of a potentate and a potentate himself, hardly a public servant. He is the political son of Roy Cohn and biological son of the slum lord, Fred Trump, who Woody Guthrie called "old man Trump." He is the emperor of a real estate empire which he gold plates. He is an unabashed racist according to the Brookings Institute's 2019 research and report. He is a "strong man" who former FBI director James Comey has likened to a "mob boss."

Pope Francis made this indirect but nonetheless pointed criticism of Trump in 2019: "A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian."  

Trump is trumping American democracy and everything beatific about the most basic tenets of the American Constitution with bellicose rhetoric that's reminiscent of his historical mentor, Adolf Hitler, whose book, Mein Kampf, he used to keep on his bedside table according to Ivanka Trump.

But he is not just a modern caricature of a tyrant. He is archetypal, a recrudescent reincarnation of every tyrant from history and, therefore, a very sad example of America's present-day failure to recognize him as such in his unabashed, systematic efforts to dismantle human rights, health insurance and policy, social security, and higher education… with king-like hutzpah and libertine glee.

But he is not a present-day political phenomenon, but rather an archetypal resurrection of every dictator from history with a new face that's only a mask of all the others. He's yet another tragic example of just how vulnerable a supposedly enlightened demos can still be to the same despot who has terrorized people before in other historical settings with other names.

But now we live in a time that's far more fragile and dangerous than any other time in history, given the multitude of nuclear trip wires around the world; given the surfeit of over-population, environmental crisis, unprecedented global poverty, and "rogue" nations' reliance on terror. Are we entering an "eschatological" ager?

Trump does bear similar features to "the first beast" from Revelations, which is a haunting enduring image. But why has America's democracy fallen victim to this "beast"? Why has democracy failed? This is the question that the Congress needs to take seriously and immediately before it's trammeled any further by American democracy's most dangerous, imposer to date.

-Chard DeNiord