Tuesday
For the second day in a row, I offer up an 18th century poem that has Trump’s number. I thought of William Cowper’s line “great princes have great playthings” after reading an Atlantic article by Jonathan Rauch where he talks about Trump’s “effort to make the government his personal plaything.”
Rauch is responding to an observation, by former National Security Advisor John Bolton, that the president
listens to Putin, he listens to Xi, he listens to how they talk about governing unburdened by uncooperative legislatures, unconcerned with what the judiciary may do, and he thinks to himself, Why can’t I do that? This doesn’t amount to being a fascist, in my view, [or] having a theory of how you want to govern. It’s just Why can’t I have the same fun they have?”
Rauch cites Bolton only to disagree with him, however. Whereas he too once worried about applying “fascist” to Trump—after all, leftwing activists have often proved too facile in their use of the word—not to use apply it when it is clearly appropriate is perverse. Here’s his account of what has changed:
Over Trump’s past year, what originally looked like an effort to make the government his personal plaything has drifted distinctly toward doctrinal and operational fascism. Trump’s appetite for lebensraum, his claim of unlimited power, his support for the global far right, his politicization of the justice system, his deployment of performative brutality, his ostentatious violation of rights, his creation of a national paramilitary police—all of those developments bespeak something more purposeful and sinister than run-of-the-mill greed or gangsterism.
Cowper’s own concern about self-indulgent monarchs appears in The Task, a long and brilliant poem taking up six books. As one reads the passage in 2026, one can’t help but think of Trump. For instance, DJT’s White House ballroom and his slapping his name on the Kennedy Center come to mind when Cowper mentions kings’ attempts “t’immortalize their bones”:
Great princes have great playthings. Some have play’d
At hewing mountains into men, and some
At building human wonders mountain-high.
Some have amus’d the dull, sad years of life
(Life spent in indolence, and therefore sad)
With schemes of monumental fame; and sought
By pyramids and mausoleum pomp,
Short-lived themselves, t’ immortalize their bones.
More concerning, however, is when the plaything is one’s armed forces, which Cowper turns to next. One thinks here how Trump has enjoyed ordering bombing raids in Yemen, Iran, and Nigeria and how he saw the kidnapping of Venezuelan head Nicolás Marduro as a made-for-tv spectacle. He relished how possessing the world’s most powerful military allowed him to swagger before the heads of Europe about seizing Greenland, and sending ICE agents to terrorize Democratic cities has its own particular satisfaction. Cowper’s reference to “puny hands” reminds us of Trump’s insecurity about his own small hands:
Some seek diversion in the tented field,
And make the sorrows of mankind their sport.
But war’s a game, which, were their subjects wise,
Kings would not play at. Nations would do well
T’ extort their truncheons from the puny hands
Of heroes, whose infirm and baby minds
Are gratified with mischief; and who spoil,
Because men suffer it, their toy the world.
An infirm and baby mind that is gratified with mischief? One who spoils for confrontation just because he can get away with it? Whether or not one calls it fascist, it fits.
Yes, nations would do well “t’extort their truncheons.” Congress, it’s within your power.
