He doesn’t look like it, but Trump’s a classic Greek tragic “hero.” I am forced to put that word in quotes since in today’s language-debased world, we can only think of a hero as someone ‘good.’ It’s like thinking that a tyrant is someone bad.
At any rate, Aristotle says in the first part of his Poetics that plot is most important in drama, and that tragic drama elicits fear and pity. More on those in a moment.
Aristotle says that to have what he calls a perfect tragedy, you can’t have a hero who is too good or too bad; either extreme will not produce fear and pity in us. It takes someone whose fall is not brought about by depravity, but by some error or frailty. And he has to fall, going from prosperous to debased.
So what’s Trump’s tragedy? In terms of plot, Aristotle says that having some surprise is essential, and what’s been more surprising to the entire planet this year than the virus? It was such a shock to the system that we’re stunned trying to figure it out. The rabble responds as it always does, by denial or a feckless hope that the evil is gone and it’s time to have a party. Wiser heads are more willing to sit with the mess.
The time is so frankly historical that it calls for people of character—in all of us, from the local baker distributing free bread to the leaders of the world. This virus was practically a god-given event for Trump, a kind of test of the Gods. Rise to the occasion and you will prosper; blow it and you will fall. All Trump had to do was speak calmly and reassuringly to us, then step aside and let the scientists tell us how to get out of the mess. But Trump never steps aside for anyone.
Why doesn’t Trump see that he would have been elected in a landslide, had he done even the barest minimum of leading? And why even now when all his denials and blaming have only produced a drop in the polls, does he still not get it? His tragic flaw is his narcissism, of course. In order to lead intelligently, instead of engaging in denial and blame, he would have had to accept that the virus is real and is really bigger than he is. But nothing in his mind is bigger than he is.
So he was forced to shoot himself in the foot, doing precisely what would ensure his demise: fail to lead. We feel the fear of him taking down our entire country, but we can only pity Trump if we accept that he has been, like any of us can be, blinded by his narcissism. We pity Oedipus because he didn’t know what he was doing. Neither does Trump.
If Trump actually gets reelected in the fall, it will be because voting has been suppressed, whereby he may squeak by. But that doesn’t matter; history will judge him as the worst possible leader at this most historical moment, because history is the way we tell our tragedies. He has already lost, and what we are witnessing is the blind Oedipus stumbling around the stage. Next comes exile.