Thursday
One of humanity’s enduring political questions is why leaders who have made people’s lives worse escape accountability. Donald Trump still rules over the GOP, even though any of those he beat out in the 2016 primaries would have handled the Covid pandemic better than he did. In the figure of the pharmacist in Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary we get some insight into Trump’s enduring popularity.
Homais, who claims to be Charles Bovary’s friend, decides it will be to the village’s glory if the town’s mediocre doctor can operate successfully on the club foot of Hippolyte, the local porter. Forget the fact that Bovary lacks the surgical skills to pull off such a feat. Homais, acting like a Trump publicist (which is to say, like Trump himself), cares only about the newspaper article he will be able to write:
[A]s he was a partisan of progress, he conceived the patriotic idea that Yonville, in order to keep to the fore, ought to have some operations for strephopody or club-foot.
“For,” said he to Emma, “what risk is there? See—” (and he enumerated on his fingers the advantages of the attempt), “success, almost certain relief and beautifying of the patient, celebrity acquired by the operator. Why, for example, should not your husband relieve poor Hippolyte of the ‘Lion d’Or’? Note that he would not fail to tell about his cure to all the travellers, and then” (Homais lowered his voice and looked round him) “who is to prevent me from sending a short paragraph on the subject to the paper? Eh! goodness me! an article gets about; it is talked of; it ends by making a snowball! And who knows? who knows?”
Weak-willed Charles is pressured into go along while Homais persuades Hippolyte to vote for Trump undergo the operation. “You will scarcely feel, probably, a slight pain,” he tells him, adding, “it is a simple prick, like a little blood-letting, less than the extraction of certain corns.”
How Bovary botches the operation is indescribably painful to read. Then, before seeing the results, we get Homais’s press release announcing success. It’s like Trump awarding his administration an A+ for its handling of the pandemic while demanding the Nobel Prize:
Monsieur Bovary, one of our most distinguished practitioners, performed an operation on a club-footed man called Hippolyte Tautain, stableman for the last twenty-five years at the hotel of the “Lion d’Or,” kept by Widow Lefrancois, at the Place d’Armes. The novelty of the attempt, and the interest incident to the subject, had attracted such a concourse of persons that there was a veritable obstruction on the threshold of the establishment. The operation, moreover, was performed as if by magic, and barely a few drops of blood appeared on the skin, as though to say that the rebellious tendon had at last given way beneath the efforts of art. The patient, strangely enough—we affirm it as an eye-witness—complained of no pain. His condition up to the present time leaves nothing to be desired. Everything tends to show that his convalescence will be brief; and who knows even if at our next village festivity we shall not see our good Hippolyte figuring in the bacchic dance in the midst of a chorus of joyous boon-companions, and thus proving to all eyes by his verve and his capers his complete cure? Honour, then, to the generous savants! Honour to those indefatigable spirits who consecrate their vigils to the amelioration or to the alleviation of their kind! Honour, thrice honour! Is it not time to cry that the blind shall see, the deaf hear, the lame walk? But that which fanaticism formerly promised to its elect, science now accomplishes for all men. We shall keep our readers informed as to the successive phases of this remarkable cure.’”
Now for the reality:
The strephopode was writhing in hideous convulsions, so that the machine in which his leg was enclosed was knocked against the wall enough to break it…With many precautions, in order not to disturb the position of the limb, the box was removed, and an awful sight presented itself. The outlines of the foot disappeared in such a swelling that the entire skin seemed about to burst, and it was covered with ecchymosis, caused by the famous machine.
And further on:
At last, three days after, Hippolyte being unable to endure it any longer, they once more removed the machine, and were much surprised at the result they saw. The livid tumefaction spread over the leg, with blisters here and there, whence there oozed a black liquid…
Gangrene, in fact, was spreading more and more. Bovary himself turned sick at it. He came every hour, every moment. Hippolyte looked at him with eyes full of terror, sobbing—
Hippolyte loses his leg and is lucky not to lose his life. Yet despite all that has happened, he does not bring charges against Charles. He even protests that his new artificial leg—which is covered with cork, has spring joints, and ends in a patent-leather boot—is too fancy for everyday use. His faith in authority is such that he looks past what has happened to him. As Emma observes later, “He doesn’t even remember any more about it.”
Trump is the smooth talking Homais and the incompetent Charles rolled into one. Perhaps Charles too would prescribe bleach for Covid. On second thought, however, Charles at least reads medical journals prior to surgery, and he also feels guilty for what he has done. Nor does he toot his own horn. So it’s actually Homais we should focus on.
We realize that the pharmacist has has been undercutting Charles just as Trump undercuts former allies. (“Everything that Trump touches dies” is how former Republican consultant Rick Wilson memorably phrased it.) Charles is more the Mike Pence in this set of parallels. Homais, on the other hand, suffers no consequences, despite his hand in the debacle, and the book ends with the following announcement:
Since Bovary’s death three doctors have followed one another at Yonville without any success, so severely did Homais attack them. He has an enormous practice; the authorities treat him with consideration, and public opinion protects him.
He has just received the cross of the Legion of Honour.
It’s as if people are making pilgrimages to a Florida resort to pay homage to him. For the moment, the bullshit artist has won.