Alan Zendell, October 6, 2024

Donald Trump has shown the world that he has no leadership skills, unless you confuse leadership with a dizzyingly effective combination of bullying and pandering. His ramblings and idiotic statements often make him seem ignorant and incompetent. His growing anger and frustration and his worsening incoherence make him look irrational, as if he’s losing contact with reality and slowly sinking into delusional dementia. His narcissism, particularly his susceptibility to flattery makes him dangerously manipulable. Sometimes the nonsense that comes out of his mouth tempts us to conclude that he’s not very smart, but that’s a dangerous error. He simply lacks any sense of shame or self-awareness.

All of the above is true. Even his supporters don’t deny these things – they just don’t seem to care. Those of us who do care, when we’re not desperately worrying about the future of our country should Trump win, scratch our heads trying to understand why he’s even remotely competitive. When I talk to people about this, more and more I hear that it’s about our seriously flawed human nature. Many smart, well-educated people believe our basic natures compel us to repeat cycles of violence and self-destruction. They believe we’re helpless to break out of that pattern as if failure and devastation were our destiny, and we lack the free will to escape it.

I’m not a historian, theologian, or sociologist, but I wonder about the same things. A hundred years ago, people described the first world war as the “war to end wars.” The death and devastation, the wanton destruction of Europe, the introduction of horrors like poison gas and aerial bombardment were so terrible, surely we’d never be that foolish again. Yet, the only two things that were consistent in the aftermath of the Great War were economic devastation and laying the seeds for a second world war that was orders of magnitude worse. We’re about to find out if the subsequent eighty years were nothing but a setup for a third that destroys civilization, or if we avoid blowing each other up, wrecking the world’s economy and allowing fascism and autocracy to flourish everywhere.

There’s enough compelling evidence to concern us. In the entirety of human history, every civilization, every empire, every “enlightened” nation has ultimately failed. Success and advances in our ability to control our environment have invariably led to decay and decadence, which ultimately destroyed most of what had been gained and built, and each crash was followed by generations dark ages.

Yesterday, Donald Trump and Elon Musk, who has spent tens of millions of dollars supporting Trump and the Project 2025 agenda, warned us that if Trump doesn’t win this election it will be the last presidential election ever held in the United States. Of course, that’s just an example of the Trump chaos machine continually projecting his failings and unsavory behavior onto everyone else. No serious person imagines that a Kamala Harris presidency would spell the end of democracy, but a Trump presidency shows every sign of having that intention. It’s Orwellian Doublespeak at its worst, and it’s typical of everything the Trump campaign does.

One of my favorite novels, which I re-read whenever it seems relevant, is Walter M. Miller’s A Canticle For Liebowitz. Published in 1959, as the Cold War was ramping up and the fear of nuclear war gripped most of the country, Miller created a haunting vision of humanity as doomed to destroy itself every time it developed the capacity to do so. He did so with such skill, such ironic dark humor, the reader doesn’t realize they’re being sucked down the rabbit hole of pre-destined cycles of destruction until the chilling conclusion. It’s about human nature and the question of whether knowledge, enlightenment, and spiritual growth give us the tools to exercise free will and end the awful cycle.

After nine years of watching the Trump saga play out with ever increasing violence and threats to the foundations of our Constitution, one might conclude that Miller was right. Why would a country as rich as ours, that in many ways has shown itself to be the most enlightened, generous nation that ever existed, be tearing itself apart the way we are? The answer isn’t complicated.

Trump is a charismatic demigod with a unique ability to tap into the worst, darkest instincts of human nature, and his extreme narcissism, lack of concern for anything but his own wealth and power, and inability to feel shame have brought us to the brink. That his running mate, a highly intelligent, Yale-educated man who decried Trump as an abomination could have been corrupted by him is clear testimony to the destructive power of one man. Trump is the embodiment of the Old Testament serpent that enabled the destruction of humanity’s innocence. If you believe the words in Genesis, you might conclude that Miller was right, that we’re flawed and lack the free will to break out of this cyclical trap.

I refuse to believe that. I refuse to believe that rational, decent Americans will allow this agent of Satan to destroy our country. No, I don’t believe in either Satan or the snake in the garden, but the metaphor is too apt to ignore. We must, we can, we will exile the Trump demon back to where he belongs, either a prison cell or the snake pit of his own mind.