God Bless C-SPAN. Once a week they offer up After Words, in which “an influential public intellectual interviews a best-selling nonfiction author for a wide-ranging, hour- long conversation.” Featured this week, New York University Professor of History and Italian, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, author of Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present. Professor Ben-Ghiat offers up what has become the conventional (perhaps even hackneyed) understanding of Trump as Hitler—but with more style, historical understanding, and charm than we have come to expect. If you are looking for an intelligent summary of this ubiquitous conviction among academics and media elites, this provocative podcast is worth a listen.
Victor Davis Hanson, Andrew Klavan, and other astute observers have likened Donald Trump to a classic tragic hero in the style of Shane or Ethan Edwards in the Searchers. In this understanding, Donald Trump appears not as an archetypal leader for all times but as an unlikely and unpalpable man singularly suited for a particular time. Played by John Wayne in John Ford’s masterpiece, Ethan Edwards, relentless in pursuit of his Comanche nemesis to avenge his family and reclaim a captive kinswoman, represents a force of nature generally mismatched with society but essential for a civilization when engaged in an existential fight for survival on the edge of a hostile frontier. Like the gunfighter Shane, once the smoke clears, after serving a specific purpose with his unique skills that make him indispensable in the emergency, uncivilized and unreconstructed Ethan must walk away (by mutual agreement), no longer welcome—unfit for the long process that awaits a community evolving toward safe and polite society.
“What makes a man to wander? What makes a man to roam? What makes a man leave bed and board [a]nd turn his back on home? Ride away, ride away, ride away…”
But, wait, one stubborn point, even if you are inclined to accept Donald J. Trump as John Wayne, Trump seems disinclined to ride off into the sunset.
What about Trump as Rodney Dangerfield? The great Titus Techera and Pete Spiliakos detected a precursor of the Trump phenomenon in three Harold Ramis films of the 1980s: Caddyshack, Back to School, and Ghostbusters. In this insightful podcast from two years ago, Titus and Pete identify Ramis as a prophet of Trumpism. Al Czervik, the uncouth and profane interloper at the Bushwood Country Club in Caddyshack, challenges the authority and the hypocrisy of a corrupt and sanctimonious ruling class. Representing populism, democracy, and the triumph of the working class, Dangerfield’s Czervik clowns his way through the esoteric rules and protocols of the upper crust to expose their superior airs as not only false but fiendishly camouflaging their actual ineptitude and the emptiness of their inherited prestige. In Back to School, another self-made Dangerfield character, Thornton Melon, takes on and defeats the fatuous denizens of the academy with his madcap, Borscht-Belt antics, his common sense, and his real-world experiences. And, also the Bill Murray character in Ghostbusters, Peter Venkman, the unserious scientist, trickster, huckster, and conman, demonstrates his great value in cynically exposing the authorities as equally insincere. Titus and Pete do not declare themselves MAGA proponents; rather, they remain quite skeptical of the flawed character of the Real Donald Trump and also the potential payoff to this Harold Ramis moment. Would we really want Peter Venkman as president? On the other hand, the fellows offer up an insightful window into why we could not help but smile when the President comically exposed instances of “fake news” or hypocrisy on the part of our supremely confident “betters.” Fascinating. As we navigate a presidential transition, and a larger ongoing crisis of authority, I recommend this particular podcast as a must-listen.
Give it a shot and we can meet back later this week as we track down a couple of ideas exploring the pursuit of truth in our contemporary political age. See you then.