Trump as Faust?
I cannot claim to be an authority on Thomas Mann, or the long and varied history of various incarnations of Faust. Nor have I read the many, many subsequent books and papers which followed Mann's 1947 novel.
When reading it this month, the story felt eerily familiar; as if I had heard it before; like something in it set off alarm bells in my mind.
And then it struck me: in so many, many ways, the story and trajectory of Donald Trump matches that of the (fictitious) composer Adrian Leverkühn.
In Doktor Faustus we learn the history, from childhood to death, of a composer of 20th century classical music. Central to the story though (and to all of the many variants and retellings of Faust) is Leverkühn's "deal with the devil."
The novel is set in the early 20th century, and through to the collapse of the Nazi regime at the end of World War Two. It is in that period of significant change, warfare, and the redefining of what it meant to be "German", that Leverkühn, after contacting syphilis, is visited by Mephistopheles, agrees to renounce love, and bargains his soul in exchange for twenty-four years of genius.
If I was to say who played the role of Mephistopheles in the Trump saga, I think I would choose Jeffrey Epstein. They met, reportedly, in the mid-1980s, when Trump would have been around 40 years old. If we were to follow the pattern of Dr Faustus, he would have then granted Trump an equal number of years of success, bringing us roughly up to today.
The parallels don't end there. The thing that makes Adrian Leverkühn vulnerable to the Devil, and which eventually leads to his madness and death, is syphilis. Given Trump's history as a sexual predator, it seems more than likely that he has also contracted the disease, and possibly is now in the throes of a syphilis caused mental decline.
The presumption on the part of Adrian Leverkühn is that he would never have succeeded as a composer without having the immense powers of the Devil on his side. I think it's agreed that Donald Trump is by most measures a failure at business - he is surely the only person who has managed to lose money while running a casino. Over and over he has launched new businesses, only to have almost every one of them come crashing down, often followed by lawsuits and recriminations.
So how does such an abject failure become President of the United States, not once, but twice? And why do all the rich and powerful politicians, courts, and other bodies, who surely see what he's doing, and understand incredibly well how destructive he is, refuse to stop him?
Like many people, I've looked long and hard, trying to understand why Trump seems unstoppable, and have found no explanation. Maybe it really is true that Satan is guiding and protecting him?
(As someone who has from childhood been entirely atheistic, and who lacks any sort of belief in God, or any deity, this is of course an entirely new way of examining the world. I offer no explanation.)
Right now it seems to be agreed, though often not spoken of, that Trump is in decline. Physically, he is the poster-child for unhealthy American lifestyles: junk food, a near complete lack of exercise, overweight. Beyond that though is the question of his mental state.
His speeches and his postings on Truth Social all suggest a man that has been losing mental capacity for a long while. Where once it was assumed that his outrageous claims and threats were signs of bravado and an attempt to appeal to his right wing base, I think that most people now see him as incoherent, openly racist, and, to be blunt, the rantings of someone with severe mental illness.
In both the physical and the mental, the picture of Trump feels far too close to what is described during the final days and months of Adrian Leverkühn's life, during the time when Mephistopheles claims his debt and takes Leverkühn and his soul to the place of fire.
Is this far-fetched? Of course. I still don't really believe in either God or Satan, but today at least I'll admit that it feels as if the story told by Thomas Mann (and those before him who repeated and embellished the myth of Faust) feels far too close to what is happening in the US today.
I suppose that if nothing, at least this offers some explanation how such a horrid and destructive person could yield so much power. Surely it is Satan behind this evil being?
What then baffles me is how the American voting public, who by 21st century standards are still strong believers in pretty fundamental religious doctrines, can also support a leader who, to my eye, can arguably be seen as controlled by Satan? How can an individual who literally reads the Bible on a daily basis, and can quote scripture with ease, be blind to the many, many decidedly evil actions perpetrated by Donald Trump?
