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Thursday
After having watched Trump’s debate performances in the past, I’m wondering how he will manage without a live audience and with his mic cut off when it’s Biden’s turn to speak. So much of his energy comes from feeding off his fans and from interrupting his opponents that he might find it hard to perform. I think of what Charlie says about Willie Loman in Death of a Salesman:
Willy was a salesman. And for a salesman, there is no rock bottom to the life. He don’t put a bolt to a nut, he don’t tell you the law or give you medicine. He’s a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a Shoeshine. And when they start not smiling back — that’s an earthquake.
I grant that the parallels quickly break down. While Loman is a flawed character, he is not the conman that Trump is. And he’s simply looking for smiles, not worshipful adulation. Nor is he calling for retribution against people he doesn’t like.
But that being acknowledged, there’s some merit to pushing the comparison, starting with the fact that Trump too is a salesman. Nothing more and nothing less. He too has no rock bottom to his life since, despite his claims, he doesn’t build anything. He just slaps his name on things, being no more than a brand. If people ever stopped buying his schtick, he would be finished.
Unfortunately they keep on buying it, allowing him to escape Willie Loman’s earthquake. He’s one salesman who hasn’t died but who is still going strong, even at 78.
Perhaps a better parallel is with Milton’s Satan, with whom I’ve compared Trump in the past (for instance, here). Satan is the quintessential narcissist and in his last appearance in Paradise Lost, he is thrown when he gets a different audience response than the one he is expecting.
Here’s the situation: Satan has promised the fallen angels that, in revenge for their defeat at God’s hands, he will corrupt God’s special creation. This he succeeds in doing, and he returns to Hell to receive the applause of his troops.
In doing so, he demonstrates that he has Trump’s flair for the theatrical. Just as Trump descended his golden escalator when he first announced he would be running for president, so Satan has his own surprise: he sneaks unnoticed onto his throne and then allows his light to shine forth:
All amazed
At that so sudden blaze the Stygian throng
Bent their aspect, and whom they wished beheld,
Their mighty Chief returned: loud was th’ acclaim:
Forth rushed in haste the great consulting Peer…
At this point, Satan imperiously raises his hand for silence and delivers a self-congratulatory speech. Having returned “successful beyond hope,” he tells the angels, he will now “lead ye forth triumphant out of this infernal pit.” He also mocks God as he recounts how he has seduced Adam and Eve with an apple. God is “worth your laughter,” Satan concludes, and then goes silent in order to bask in the anticipated congratulations.
He gets a very different response, however:
So having said, a while he stood, expecting
Their universal shout and high applause
To fill his ear, when contrary he hears
On all sides, from innumerable tongues
A dismal universal hiss, the sound
Of public scorn…
It so happens that God has turned everyone into a snake, which explains the hisses. Now, Trump won’t be receiving hisses for his own performance tonight—there will be no audience to give him any kind of response—but for a man who lives to be applauded, the silence could well throw him off balance. I think it’s even possible that he stalks out of the room midway through the debate.
Not being much of a political prognosticator, I shouldn’t be making predictions. Let’s just say that the former president will not be in his comfort zone, and when he’s uncomfortable, anything is possible.