Monday
As part of my weekly series (delayed from Friday) on how literature can help us understand and defeat Trumpism, I look today at various literary conmen. What useful insights can they provide into the president?
Combing through past essays, I see I’ve compared him to Twain’s King and Duke, John Gay’s Mac the Knife, Melville’s Confidence Man, Milton’s Satan, and Shakespeare’s Iago.
The Twain comparison occurred early when I was first learning about Trump University and Trump steaks, about Trump’s bankruptcies and how he defrauded contractors. Like Twain’s conmen, Trump seemed to take as much pleasure in the con as in the money he got from it. He could sound like the Duke and the King boasting to each other about what they’ve done:
The Duke:
Well, I’d been selling an article to take the tartar off the teeth—and it does take it off, too, and generly the enamel along with it—but I stayed about one night longer than I ought to, and was just in the act of sliding out when I ran across you on the trail this side of town, and you told me they were coming, and begged me to help you to get off.
The Dauphin:
Well, I’d ben a-running’ a little temperance revival thar ’bout a week, and was the pet of the women folks, big and little, for I was makin’ it mighty warm for the rummies, I tell you, and takin’ as much as five or six dollars a night—ten cents a head, children and niggers free—and business a-growin’ all the time, when somehow or another a little report got around last night that I had a way of puttin’ in my time with a private jug on the sly.
Of course, things get more serious when they defraud Mary Jane and her sisters and when they sell Jim. Things got more serious with Trump as well, with his con about invading rapists and murderers resulting in kids torn from their parents and dying in detention. Now that we see hurricane victims kept from entering the country and young people on life-saving medication ordered out of it, the con has taken a darker cast.
Only many of Trump supporters still see him as audiences once saw Gay’s Mac the Knife. Although Mac is a highwayman and a bigamist, he enchants viewers with his effrontery, his way with women, and his ability to slip out of trouble at a moment’s notice. Twice when he is about to be hanged, Mac miraculously escapes, the second time thanks to a reprieve arranged by the beggar playwright.
Similarly, while Trump appeared toast following the Hollywood Access tape, in a very Mac-like move, he (or friends) arranged a distraction, releasing stolen Democratic Committee e-mails and sending everyone scrambling in another direction. Scandals that would have ended anyone else’s career are just opportunities for Trump to thumb his nose at authorities. If he is defeated in 2020, don’t be surprised if he pardons himself to escape pending indictments. (That is, if he actually steps down.)
Melville vies with Twain as an astute observer of American conmen, and in The Confidence Man he answers a question that puzzled many of us during the 2016 election: How did so many people trust an outright liar like Trump over a careful truth teller like Hillary Clinton? And yes, Politifact reported in 2016 that, of all presidential candidates since 2007, Clinton was second in truthfulness only to Barack Obama, finishing ahead of Jeb Bush and Bernie Sanders. Trump, of course, was dead last.
Melville’s novel is about a flimflam artist who boards a steamboat and dons a series of disguises to bamboozle the passengers. At one point he goes to work on the ship’s barber, who has put a “No Trust” sign—meaning no credit—in his window. The confidence man convinces him to start trusting people, after which he wriggles out of paying for his shave.
The barber helps us understand how Trump makes his lies compelling, even getting at the way that Trump’s flamboyant hair gives him confidence. (The barber also gets at Trump’s underlying insecurity–without such hair, the barber says, a man is shamefaced and fearful.) We also learn why the Democrats’ careful use of language (say, around impeachment) damage them more than Trump’s “pants on fire” “four Pinocchios” fabrications. Responding to the question, “How does the mere handling of the outside of men’s heads lead you to distrust the inside of their hearts?”, the barber replies,
[C]an one be forever dealing in macassar oil, hair dyes, cosmetics, false moustaches, wigs, and toupees, and still believe that men are wholly what they look to be? What think you, sir, are a thoughtful barber’s reflections, when, behind a careful curtain, he shaves the thin, dead stubble off a head, and then dismisses it to the world, radiant in curling auburn? To contrast the shamefaced air behind the curtain, the fearful looking forward to being possibly discovered there by a prying acquaintance, with the cheerful assurance and challenging pride with which the same man steps forth again, a gay deception, into the street, while some honest, shock-headed fellow humbly gives him the wall!
Then he explains what is the Democrats’ problem:
Ah, sir, they may talk of the courage of truth, but my trade teaches me that truth sometimes is sheepish. Lies, lies, sir, brave lies are the lions!”
So there you have it: Trump tells brave lies whereas his opponents parse their language.
So far I have focused on colorful conmen, but a closer fit might be Milton’s Satan, who adds spite to his con. Comparing him to the president, we begin to see a depth of malevolence we might previously have missed.
That Satan is a conman is fairly evident. He convinces a third of Heaven’s angels that they should resent God for holding them in thrall. While Satan employs the language of freedom, however, he is really out only for himself. Like the fallen angels, Trump’s followers may soon discover they elevated someone who leaves them worse off than they were originally.
Satan’s narcissistic mission is suicidal from the first. It is also driven by spite.
New York Magazine’s Eric Levitz saw spite at work in Trump’s attacks on the Affordable Care Act. The 24 million newly insured were to pay for the fact that they were helped by Obama. Similarly, the earth will have to pay for Obama’s focus on renewables, regulation, and conservation.
Milton’s narcissistic villain believes that everything is about him. God made Adam and Eve, he is convinced, just to spite him:
[T]o spite us more,
[God] Determin’d to advance into our room
A Creature formed of Earth, and him endow,
Exalted from so base original,
With Heavenly spoils, our spoils…
If spite motivated God, Satan says, then his own spite is justified:
Whom us the more to spite his Maker raised
From dust: spite then with spite is best repaid.
Satan, like Trump, brings his followers on board. In their council of war, the fallen angels approve Satan’s plan to stick it to God:
But from the Author of all ill could Spring
So deep a malice, to confound the race
Of mankind in one root, and Earth with Hell
To mingle and involve, done all to spite
The great Creator? But their spite still serves
His glory to augment. The bold design
Pleased highly those infernal States, and joy
Sparkled in all their eyes; with full assent
They vote…
Satan takes a sadistic relish in imagining the suffering that Adam and Eve will undergo, even while pretending to be sympathetic. Gazing at them, he purrs,
Ah gentle pair, ye little think how nigh
Your change approaches, when all these delights
Will vanish and deliver ye to woe,
More woe, the more your taste is now of joy…
They will have God to thank for this suffering, he tells them:
Hell shall unfold,
To entertain you two, her widest Gates,
And send forth all her Kings; there will be room,
Not like these narrow limits, to receive
Your numerous offspring; if no better place,
Thank him who puts me loath to this revenge
On you who wrong me not for him who wronged…
Milton notes that Satan’s is utilizing “the tyrant’s plea” here, pretending that Adam and Eve will be victims of political necessity rather than pure spite. But don’t be fooled. Like Trump with his enemies, Satan wants to make others suffer.
My final conman is one who is also driven by spite but who plays a subtler game than Satan. In Iago’s case, the resentment is racially driven.
In this comparison, Othello would be Obama, the high-minded and competent leader whose fatal flaw is his credulity. Obama, who went high when others went low, got played by two conniving racists in the 2016 election (Trump and Putin), believing that it was enough to be on the side of right. As noted above, at times Trump appears to see his life’s mission as undoing Obama’s legacy. Iago has a similar mission.
As to the reasons for Obama’s and Othello’s credulity, it stands to reason they would believe in a system that recognizes their qualities and elevates them accordingly. Each is officially accepted within the club, with even Desdemona’s father eventually opening his arms to the Moor. Their faith that merit will rise to the top, even in a racist society, seems borne out. Perhaps because reality has matched up with their dreams, both Obama and Othello underestimate the extreme lengths to which racial animosity drives their enemies.
We the audience are given access to Iago’s thinking and thus can watch the hatred at work. It’s as though we’re watching Fox News rather than living in an MSNBC bubble. We see Iago’s rage in his early conversations with Roderigo, who has his own bone to pick with Othello over Desdemona.
I think we can dismiss, as the reason for Iago’s hatred, Othello’s choice of Cassio as his lieutenant. After all, Iago’s rage doesn’t diminish once he himself gets the post. I’ve written in the past about how we see similar racial resentment, driven by threatened white entitlement, amongst the young Venetian men who taunt Shylock in The Merchant of Venice.
To use today’s terms, Iago is driven by fear of losing status, not by economic anxiety.
Note, for instance, how Iago talks about Othello’s marriage to Desdemona. “Even now, now, very now, an old black ram/Is topping your white ewe,” he tells her father. This is how racists often experience miscegenation: it is they themselves who feel desecrated, with the white woman symbolizing their own sense of violation.
Iago, like Trump, gets his way by saying one thing and acting another. Arguing that loyalty is for suckers, Iago mimics the “forms and visages of duty” while actually attending only on himself:
Others there are
Who, trimm’d in forms and visages of duty,
Keep yet their hearts attending on themselves,
And, throwing but shows of service on their lords,
Do well thrive by them and when they have lined their coats
Do themselves homage: these fellows have some soul;
And such a one do I profess myself….
In following him, I follow but myself;
Heaven is my judge, not I for love and duty,
But seeming so, for my peculiar end…
I think of Trump promising that he would work only for the American people, even as he does himself homage by lining his own coat. “I want to be greedy for our country,” he told us during the campaign, but it’s clear that he has only ever been greedy for himself. Every day we see new instances of the Trumps monetizing the presidency.
Greed is one thing but, like Trump, Iago also thrives on the chaos he creates. He’s a consummate liar who riles people up with fake news, the major instance being Desdemona’s supposed love for Cassio. Like Trump, he is plagued by “the green-eyed monster which doth mock/The Meat it feeds on.” In the end, again like Trump, he succeeds beyond his wildest dreams.
These literary characters remind us just how much chaos conmen can create. While we may find ourselves at times enjoying how they upend the established order, good people get hurt. Sometimes the damage is irreparable.
