Alan Zendell, September 12, 2024

Like most people who slogged through tortuous university educations, I endured several courses in literature and philosophy. It wasn’t apparent back then, but with the perspective of time, I realized that the school of thought that made the greatest impression on me was the German fascination with the contrast between the basic natures of the powerful and the weak.

The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche believed that there are two distinctly different moralities which he called Master Morality and Slave Morality. The former describes the values of “aristocrats,” the latter of everyone else. Together, they offer insight into Donald Trump and his MAGA movement.

Nietzsche’s aristocrats, people we would today describe as autocrats and dictators, believe they possess a God-given right to rule over others. They believe themselves to be noble and inherently superior to the masses they govern, almost as if they were a different species. They value power and freedom, but that freedom extends only to those who possess the wealth and power to attain what they desire.

The oppressed, the subjects of the aristocrats, value charity, sympathy, and compassion. To Nietzsche, this was a double-edged sword. On one hand, it enabled slaves and other downtrodden groups to maintain sanity and dignity, because in their powerless, poverty-stricken state, they needed to believe these were good things. But it also defined the aristocrats’ values as evil, kept the masses completely separate from the masters who despised them, and often gave the oppressed the energy they needed to revolt.

According to Nietzsche, these two moralities have driven western civilization for thousands of years. Keeping in mind that Nietzsche’s use of “master” and “slave” are simply surrogates for the powerful and the masses, we can make the case that the current struggle for American democracy between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris is an example of that struggle. Trump exhibits all the attributes of the aristocratic morality while Harris champions the tenets of the morality of the governed or the oppressed, depending who’s speaking.

The traditional view of history is that culture drives morality, but Nietzsche believed the opposite, that morality drives culture. That’s a very powerful concept, and it is a principal foundation of Nazism. Nietzsche, like Karl Marx before him, would describe the ebb and flow of the last century and a half of history as the struggle between the master class attempting to impose its will and the desires of the governed to live freely.

An article titled The Master and Slave Moralities: What He Really Meant offers insight into how this applies to Trump: “Masters are strong, creative, wealthy, and powerful. They can do whatever they like. They love themselves and see themselves as good. They name the opposites of themselves, the weak and feeble, as bad.” In an almost ironic nod toward Trump, the article notes that a system based on Master Morality “isn’t a blank check for sociopathy, but it [acknowledges that] some people might need to step on others to actualize themselves. Nietzsche compares the problem to hawks having it in their nature to eat lambs, [because it is] what the hawk needs to do to fully be a hawk.”

Having no regard for lambs may be natural for a hawk, but in humans, sociopathy and the inability to feel compassion are mental illnesses. They are not characteristics we seek in leaders; they are anathema to basic American values. Nietzsche went on to describe how the attitude of the aristocrats invariably resulted in a revolt of the masses, either physically or by revising attitudes. This occurs when divisiveness and resentment caused by constant overreach of the ruling class reach a boiling point that cannot be sustained.

Today, we see all of this playing out in an attempt by a minority of far-right extremists beholden to Donald Trump to impose their will on everyone else. Such a movement can only succeed in an environment of chaos and confusion that obscures truth, and one that plays on the fears and insecurities of people, especially those who struggle to make ends meet. It also depends on having a leader so psychotically intent on power and believing in the delusion of his own greatness that he appears fearless and indomitable.

Trump wants his opponents to interpret that as strength, but the more we learn about him the clearer it is that it’s just an artificial construct to hide his insecurity and weakness. It’s frightening that the United States could have come to such a pass. If there’s any comfort to be found, it’s in recognizing that if Nietzsche was right, all this has happened before, hundreds of times.

It’s simply the latest struggle between the forces of oppression and those of good will. It’s America’s turn to prove that we’re worth saving.