Trump’s hubris

Recently across the globe, political observers have likened the foibles and subsequent downfalls of presidents of the United States to hubris, the ancient Greek concept of destructive arrogance. Whether through excessive self-confidence or failure to correctly judge America’s power, excessive self-confidence seems to be a trend. The latest example is President Donald Trump. His hubris has been on full display during his inability to recognize his failures.Tuesday’s national elections, voters roundly rejected him and his Republican Party. Hubris was put on vivid display than when Trump, on the eve of the vote, implored voters to ignore their concrete concerns about, say, inflation, and instead remember how wonderful he is. “Pretend I am on the ballot,” he implored the voters. Across the country, voters took up his challenge, though with no small measure of irony. They gave the opposition Democratic Party surprisingly large victories inthe legislative House of Representatives and Senate elections, in several state governorships and even for seats in city halls. Thus, Trump became a kind of elderly, political version of Achilles, the ancient Greek hero in Homer’s epic “The Iliad.” Achilles considered himself above the demands of god-given chivalry that rule Greek warfare. The gods took such rules, and their authority, seriously and killed Achilles by directing a fatal arrow into his only vulnerable body party – his heel. In the midterm elections, voters voiced their concerns about the economy – the issue that had become Trump’s Achilles heel. Or, as a Democratic Party Cassandra once warned politicians, “It’s the economy, stupid. ”To the bitter end, Trump seemed oblivious of the effects of his policies on workaday people. From September until election eve the third of November, Trump spoke to rallies in 50 towns across the country with barely a mention of the “affordability crisis” that had driven the price of everything from fuel, to food to housing to record highs. He dismissed as “fake news” surveys that indicated voter distress. Instead of focussig on the present, Trump inhabited a world in which long-past slights were of utmost importance. He repeatedly railed about his 2020 presidential campaign loss to Democratic candidate Joe Biden, calling the election “stolen.” He dwelled on Congressional efforts to throw him out of office during his 2017-2021 first term in office, declaring them a “witch hunt” and a “hoax.” And he described the unwillingness of the Norwegian committee to award him the Nobel Peace Prize as an “indelible stain” on the honor. Irritatingly, Trump echoed Achilles’s childish insult to the Greek warrior’s top rival, whom he dubbed a “fawning dog.” Trump’s insults were rather more sophomoric: He referred to James Talarico, the Democratic candidate for Senator in Texas, as “Tala-Freako,” and to Jon Ossoff, the Georgia incumbent Senator running for re-election, as “Pee-Wee Herman,” borrowing the name of a a former comic on children’s TV. Both candidates won their races. In Greek lore, hubris is only the first step on the road to perdition. The next stop is a visit from Ate (pronounced AH-tuh), the goddess of self-delusion. Trump moved happily into a delusional state with, Louis XlV abandon. (“L’Etat, c’est moi,” said the Sun King. “The State is I.”) Trump, in a dictum delivered online, declared, “I run the country and the world. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.” He all but likened himself to a Colossus bestriding the globe. “We’ve never been more respected, more feared. I don’t need international law,” he said. In France, retribution for monarchical excesses came not for Louis XIV but for his great, great, great grandson, Louis XVI, who was guillotined during the French Revolution. The Greeks put a divine name on retribution: Nemesis, the goddess of reckoning. In the Trump Administration, retribution will be political decapitations. Democrats, in the same breath in which they plead for national unity, also demand punishment for Trump’s alleged abuses of power. For instance, business dealings that enriched family and friends, or the initiation and mismanagement of the war on Iran or misuse of federal institutions to persecute political foes. Or all of them. The day after the election debacle Trump, in tune with his fanciful disregard of reality, hosted a press briefing to discuss the progress of the construction of an ornate giant ballroom next to the White House. He declared the structure “not only one of the biggest, but it’ll be the most beautiful ballroom, I think, anywhere in the world.” A reporter interrupted the lecture to ask about the election losses. It was not his fault, Trump answered. “Voters didn’t like the candidates,” he said. He later added online that, if he had somehow run, “We would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!” (Capital letters as printed.) He recalls the words of the Greek sage Euripides, a 5th Century BCE playwright who said prophetically, “Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.”