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Tuesday
Six years ago, when Donald Trump was in the first year of his presidency, I turned to Nikolai Gogol’s Dead Souls to better understand why America had fallen for his con. After all, Gogol’s 1842 novel features two con men, the villainous protagonist Chichikov and the comically crazy and fascinating liar Nozdrev. As I watched a New York judge call out Trump’s real estate company for outrageously inflating the value of its holdings, I thought again of Gogol’s work.
The New York case, as The Washington Post reports, involves “statements of financial condition,” dating back to 2011, that have manipulated “the value of Trump’s property and other real estate assets by up to $2.2 billion annually.” Because of the fraud, “the real estate, hospitality and golf resort company received better interest and policy rates than it otherwise would have.”
The judge in that case has already ruled that certain aspects of Trump’s real estate fraud have been so egregious that, for the first count against him, a trial is unnecessary. When Trump’s lawyers argued that square footage estimates were subjective—30,000 square feet as opposed to actual 10,000 square feet—the judge declared, “A discrepancy of this order of magnitude, by a real estate developer sizing up his own living space of decades, can only be considered fraud.”
Elsewhere he summed up Trump’s business practices as follows:
In defendants’ world: rent regulated apartments are worth the same as unregulated apartments; restricted land is worth the same as unrestricted land; restrictions can evaporate into thin air; a disclaimer by one party casting responsibility on another party exonerates the other party’s lies. That is a fantasy world, not the real world.”
In Gogol’s novel, meanwhile, Chichikov is seeking to buy “dead souls”—which is to say, serfs who have died but who are still on the landowner’s tax rolls. Once he has acquired enough dead souls, he will take out a loan against them and pocket the money. In the course of buying, he comes up against another conman, Nozdrev, who is so transparent (unlike Chichikov) that one can only gape in wonder. When I wrote my two posts on the novel, I was trying to figure out which kind of con man Trump was, the vicious Chichikov or the relatively harmless Nozdrev. At the time, I associated Trump with the latter.
That’s because Nosdrev is mercurial and “a lover of fast living.” At one moment he seems to be your friend, at the next he is quarreling with you. Overall, he is “loquacious, dissipated, high-spirited, over-showy.”
Like Trump, Nosdrev must be constantly in the public eye and, like Trump, he thrives on conflict. Chaos appears to energize him:
Never at any time could he remain at home for more than a single day, for his keen scent could range over scores and scores of verses, and detect any fair which promised balls and crowds. Consequently in a trice he would be there—quarreling, and creating disturbances over the gaming-table…
Nozdrez, it turns out, has the same regard for the truth that Trump has:
Moreover, the man lied without reason. For instance, he would begin telling a story to the effect that he possessed a blue-coated or a red-coated horse; until, in the end, his listeners would be forced to leave him with the remark, “You are giving us some fine stuff, old fellow!”
Had social media existed in Nozdrev’s time, one could imagine him wielding it as effectively as the former president:
Also, men like Nozdrev have a passion for insulting their neighbors without the least excuse afforded…The more he became friendly with a man, the sooner would he insult him, and be ready to spread calumnies as to his reputation. Yet all the while he would consider himself the insulted one’s friend, and, should he meet him again, would greet him in the most amicable style possible, and say, “You rascal, why have you given up coming to see me.” Thus, taken all round, Nozdrev was a person of many aspects and numerous potentialities.
Also like Trump, Nozdrev promotes everything he’s connected with, refusing to let facts stand in his way. Here’s only one instance from the many where he makes extravagant claims while refusing to yield to rational assessment:
The tour began with a view of the stables, where the party saw two mares (the one a grey, and the other a roan) and a colt; which latter animal, though far from showy, Nozdrev declared to have cost him ten thousand rubles.
“You NEVER paid ten thousand rubles for the brute!” exclaimed the brother-in-law. “He isn’t worth even a thousand.”
“By God, I DID pay ten thousand!” asserted Nozdrev.
“You can swear that as much as you like,” retorted the other.
“Will you bet that I did not?” asked Nozdrev, but the brother-in-law declined the offer.
Nozdrev trying to make deals is like Trump selling “Trump steaks” that have someone else’s sticker on them. Both men are so transparently fraudulent that sometimes you just want to sit back and enjoy the show, as the media did with Trump in 2016. Here is Nosdrev trying to sell some worthless dogs and then a worthless barrel organ to Chichikov:
“Then buy a few dogs,” said Nozdrev. “I can sell you a couple of hides a-quiver, ears well pricked, coats like quills, ribs barrel-shaped, and paws so tucked up as scarcely to graze the ground when they run.”
“Of what use would those dogs be to me? I am not a sportsman.”
“But I WANT you to have the dogs. Listen. If you won’t have the dogs, then buy my barrel-organ. ‘Tis a splendid instrument. As a man of honour I can tell you that, when new, it cost me fifteen hundred rubles. Well, you shall have it for nine hundred.”
“Come, come! What should I want with a barrel-organ? I am not a German, to go hauling it about the roads and begging for coppers.”
“But this is quite a different kind of organ from the one which Germans take about with them. You see, it is a REAL organ. Look at it for yourself. It is made of the best wood. I will take you to have another view of it.”
And seizing Chichikov by the hand, Nozdrev drew him towards the other room, where, in spite of the fact that Chichikov, with his feet planted firmly on the floor, assured his host, again and again, that he knew exactly what the organ was like, he was forced once more to hear how Marlborough went to the war.
“Then, since you don’t care to give me any money for it,” persisted Nozdrev, “listen to the following proposal. I will give you the barrel-organ and all the dead souls which I possess, and in return you shall give me your britchka, and another three hundred rubles into the bargain.”
For Nozdrev, deal making is a form of play. He is a bad dealmaker, as apparently Trump is as well, but one can’t help but admire his enthusiasm.
Chichikov, by contrast, is cold-blooded and calculating. When he figures that one can make millions by working in customs, he first figures out the lay of the land before cashing in. His initial step is to establish himself as an exemplary employee. His instincts are keen, and he knows the perfect moment when to elicit bribes from smugglers.
The result is that Chichikov grows rich whereas Nozdrev bankrupts himself and his estate—just as Trump would be bankrupt were it not for, first, a wealthy father and, second, Russian oligarchs and Arab shieks willing to launder money through his holdings. Oh, and millions of fans who send in money. Nozdrev’s problem is that he lacks a GoFundMe platform.
When I wrote about Gogol’s two conmen in 2017, I reflected that it made sense why rightwing voters would go for the flamboyant liar over the Chichikov-like politicians that he ran against. If many of Trump supporters despised the Paul Ryans and the Mitch McConnells almost as much as they did the Hillary Clintons, it’s because, like Chichikov, they carefully take the measure of every person in the system, add up their strengths and weaknesses, and act accordingly. If such types are assuring you that you will keep your healthcare in the very act of taking it away, I noted, why not just vote in Trump to blow everything up?
And because I didn’t know what to expect over the rest Trump’s presidency, I asked myself, who would I rather have running things: a blowhard that everyone knows to be a blowhard or a secretive conman who says all the right things but, as a result, is able to fleece us all the more effectively? At least when you get taken in by a Nozdrev or a Trump, I rationalized, we can’t say we weren’t warned.
What I failed to factor in is how a Nozdrev with presidential power would behave. Perhaps he would evolve from Gogol’s light-hearted bungler to something far more insidious. Not that Trump was ever as harmless as Nozdrev, as his assault victims will testify. Still, becoming president elevated his threat level to red.
People once laughed at Trump as they laugh at Nozdrev. They’re not laughing now.