Trump: The Readers Guide
By Bret Stephens
(snip)
Start with literature. What character from fiction does Mr. Trump most resemble? I’ve seen comparisons to Robert Penn Warren’s Willie Stark, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Jay Gatsby and Bret Easton Ellis’s Patrick Bateman, a k a “American Psycho.” But Mr. Trump’s closest literary doppelgänger will be more familiar to Ms. Merkel: Mynheer Peeperkorn, from Thomas Mann’s “Magic Mountain.” Forceful, magnetic and “filthy rich,” he speaks in “robustly prepared but incomprehensible phrases . . . a forefinger bent to form a circle with a thumb.”
Read Mann’s description of one of Peeperkorn’s diatribes and ask yourself whether it reminds you of someone.
“He had said nothing. But his head had looked so incontrovertibly imposing, the play of features and gestures had been so definitive, compelling, and expressive that all of them . . . believed they had heard something very important or, to the extent that they were aware of the lack of anything communicated, and of any thought completed, they simply did not miss it.”
Later in the novel, two of Mann’s characters debate whether Peeperkorn is a genius or an idiot. “ ‘The issue of “stupidity” and “cleverness” is at times a complete mystery,’ ” observes Hans Castorp, the story’s hero. “ ‘Let me ask you this question: Can you deny that he has us all in his pocket?’ ” Mann’s final, impenetrable judgment of Peeperkorn: He’s “a personality.” He dies by suicide.
What about the Trump administration? .. It is not an administration in the usual sense. It’s a royal court. The family rules. Bloodlines count. Princes and princesses wield real political power and guard the king’s treasures. Proofs of loyalty are delivered in the coin of conspicuous flattery and aggressive denunciation of critics. A suspicious, prickly and capricious ruler relies on confidants, not ministers, and treats his parliament with disdain. Queens from foreign lands come and go.
(snip)
A better comparison might be to Napoleon III, an ostentatious real-estate developer trapped in the body of an overmatched statesman. “He is not an idiot,” Victor Hugo wrote in “Napoleon the Little,” his biography of Bonaparte’s nephew. “He seems absurd and mad, because he is out of his place and time. Transport him to Spain in the 16th century, and Philip II would recognize him; to England, and Henry VIII would smile on him; to Italy, and Caesar Borgia would jump on his neck.”
(snip)
And then there is Hannah Arendt’s “Origins of Totalitarianism,” with its clear-eyed analysis of how public cynicism toward flawed political institutions can be transformed by a wily regime into an assault on foundational concepts of truth—the substitution of facts with Kellyanne Conway’s “alternative facts.”
More..
http://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-the-readers-guide-1485216078
(one can read the whole story by googling the title)
