Ross Douthat: Trump as Hegelian Man of Destiny

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Donald Trump, Man of Destiny

… The scene on Saturday night in Pennsylvania was the ultimate confirmation of [Trump’s]  status as a man of destiny, a character out of Hegel or Thomas Carlyle or some other verbose 19th-century philosopher of history, a figure touched by the gods of fortune in a way that transcends the normal rules of politics.

In Hegel’s work, the great man of history is understood as a figure “whose own particular aims involve those large issues which are the will of the World Spirit.” Hegel’s paradigm was Napoleon, the Corsican adventurer whose quest for personal power and military glory spread the ideas of the French Revolution, shattered the old regimes of Europe and ushered in the modern age,

For Hegel the great man’s role is a fundamentally progressive one. He is developing or revealing some heretofore hidden truth, pushing civilization toward its next stage of development, sometimes committing crimes or trampling sacred things but always in service to a higher aim, the unfolding intentions of a divine process.

In different ways in my own lifetime, American conservatism and liberalism placed Hegelian hopes in Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama, both figures who seemed to embody a grand optimistic vision of how the global future would unfold.

But what if progress isn’t linear, and the World Spirit’s purposes are a bit more complicated than an optimistic form of liberal Protestantism expects? What if an era is decadent rather than vital? What if there is no obvious next political stage for a civilization’s development? What if stagnation and repetition rule the day? What does a man of destiny look like then?

I think we have to say it looks like Donald Trump: a man of notable charisma, limited ideological conviction and naked appetite, motivated as much by wounded vanity as by Napoleonic ambition, who has become the avatar of the rebellious populism that has remade his era’s politics and overthrown or undermined its establishments.

And not just an avatar but a perfect one, more perfect than all the other leading populists — because from Viktor Orban to Javier Milei to his own newly chosen running mate, they tend to have specific ideologies and relatively worked-out worldviews, whereas actual populist sentiment is more protean, more flexible and opportunistic, more certain of its enemies than its policy commitments. More Trumpian, in other words: He’s the archetype of a global phenomenon precisely because he offers something less coherent and predictable, more inchoate and vibes-based, than other figures in the right-wing International.

But that archetypal status extends beyond the substance of the populist age. Trump is a “chaos candidate,” as the extremely non-Hegelian Jeb Bush once said, for whom chaos is a ladder and conventional political opposition a relatively easy obstacle to overcome. He is a man of negligible intellectual curiosity who dominates all of his epoch’s popular media forms: gossip columns, cable news, reality television, social media. He’s a man who represents the shadow side of the American character — not the Lincolnian statesman but the hustler, the mountebank, the self-promoter, the tabloid celebrity — at a time when American power and American corruption are intermingled. And he’s a man graced, this past weekend especially but always, with incredible, preternatural good luck.

That last quality is understood by some of Trump’s religious supporters as proof of divine favor and a reason to support him absolutely. But this is a presumptuous interpretation. (Some notably sinister historical figures have enjoyed miraculous-seeming escapes from assassination.) The man of destiny might represent a test for his society, a form of chastisement, an exposure of weakness and decay — in which case your obligation is not to support him without question, but to try to recognize the historical role he’s playing and match your response to what’s being unsettled or unveiled.

But that recognition is essential. Why talk about Trump in these sweeping terms, the anti-Trump reader might say, bringing in God and history and building him up to be something more than just a charlatan and demagogue? Because otherwise you’re just not dealing in reality. The man has survived self-disgrace and countless political near-death experiences, he’s poised for the greatest comeback in American political history, he just turned an attempted assassination into a Renaissance painting of bloodied defiance … you either see him as the defining figure of the age or you don’t see him at all.

I’m as guilty of this as anyone, not for underestimating Trump at the start (almost everyone did that) but for constantly trying to look beyond him, imagining a world where his political appeal somehow diminished organically and politics regained a more normal-seeming shape — in a Joe Biden versus Ron DeSantis presidential tilt, let’s say. Even my essay on his potential second term, appearing the morning of the assassination attempt, ended with a wistful vision of Trump the lame duck, fading from the spotlight through his second term.

I don’t think that’s how this goes. Trump can be defeated; Hegel’s man Napoleon was defeated, after all, and Hegel assumed that world-historical figures were destined to “fall off like empty hulls from the kernel” when their purpose had been served.

But to beat him — memo to the Biden Democrats — you have to do more, go further, risk much, become something you yourself did not expect. Because in a struggle with a man of destiny, there is no normalcy to be restored.

17 replies
  1. Barkingmad
    Barkingmad says:

    I enjoyed reading this, in a manner of speaking.

    “… a wistful vision of Trump the lame duck, fading from the spotlight through his second term.”

    Well, not exactly. His function after he gets elected would be to finalize the total ruin and dissolution of Amerika and then be blamed for it. Not only Trump, of course, but the chumps who voted for him as well. There won’t be any “fading from the spotlight”, I don’t think: Lee H. Oswald’s name has not been forgotten by a long shot. Talk about a patsy.

    Upward & onward. It’s not over yet.

  2. Dr. Doom
    Dr. Doom says:

    Donnie already served his purpose. He awakened White Men to the AntiWhite system. ZOG needs Donnie more than we do. Donnie is a zionist through and through. Only Donnie can save ZOG from its imminent destruction. I predict a global intifada. Hymie has brought many muzzies to his house. Both here and in Europe. I doubt they will live to rue that mistake. The petrodollars are about to go to zero. Russia and China are dumping their dollars. Other countries are signing up for BRICS. ZOG has screwed themselves. They need Donnie to get White people to cooperate. Fortunately, these retards will stop Donnie from helping them. The hatred of White Men will compel them to stop Donnie. Hymie has made many enemies. Who are their friends? That delusion of living in a world of enemies has been made true by their own stupidity.

  3. Pierre de Craon
    Pierre de Craon says:

    I would not have thought yesterday that anyone alive could say or write anything that would make me feel that Trump’s survival of the Biden bunch’s obvious attempt to kill him (however clumsy it might have been in execution) mattered much one way or the other. Then comes Ross Douthat, a stuffed shirt who can outdo Thomas Friedman in pretention to wisdom and sophistication and lie with more self-importance and fluency than David Brooks.

    Thanks to Douthat, suddenly a Trump on the vertical man’s side of the soil once again has a certain appeal—if only that it drives this repellent, unprincipled opportunist to fits of Hegelian name-dropping.

    C’mon, Donnie, do something tomorrow that will rebalance my perspectives. A photo op with you kissing Netanyahu’s buttocks should work wonders.

  5. Tim
    Tim says:

    Out of gratitude for Vance calling Donald Dumb “America’s next Hitler”, the latter has made him his deputy. Presumably because he is “a great friend of Israel” (to put it mildly).

    • Barkingmad
      Barkingmad says:

      “…to support mRNA therapeutic developers.” Et tu, JD.

      They just won’t quit.

      Re Jane Ruby. Her main (and only) concern is that the children of Israel will be negatively affected when their DNA is changed permanently. Further, she implies that regular vaccines are good things because they “confer immunity”. FU, dear. Aluminum straight from the blood into the brain of babies is just great, bien sur.

      https://odysee.com/@TheZionistInspector:0/YouCut_20220808_014353624:4

      • Tim
        Tim says:

        OMFG, couldn’t have known that, I took it
        unchecked from the Telegram channel of
        one of these conspiracy clowns (Janich,
        Sellner, Wisnewski). Your research is to
        be thanked. But the fact about this Vance
        guy as such isn’t completely worthless.

        • Barkingmad
          Barkingmad says:

          @Tim.

          “But the fact about this Vance
          guy as such isn’t completely worthless.”

          Of course it is not worthless! I’m glad you pointed this out now.

          It is necessary for us to be aware of these kinds of things, in this case the connection between JDV and AmplifyBio & RNAV8Bio. That it comes from Jane Ruby doesn’t matter.

          I wonder if he “believes in” what those companies do, or if he just thought it was a good investment so what the hell. Prolly the former.

          PS. I don’t even know what the Telegram channel is, never heard of it before.

  7. Tim
    Tim says:

    Donald Dumb has thus wasted a unique historic opportunity to die a martyr and go down in the annals of American heroic history. This would certainly have had a far healthier effect on American politics than his now very likely re-election.

  8. James Bowery
    James Bowery says:

    Although this may come off as self-promotion it does puzzle me that 2 weeks after I posted the below-linked parable to Facebook, an author, under the pseudonym of “Publius Decius Mus”, wrote an essay titled “The Flight 93 Election” that disrupted the national conversation about candidate Trump in the weeks leading up to his electoral upset. Indeed, a google search for “The Flight 93 Election” produces nearly 40,000 results, featuring the big names in mass media — reacting to that essay.

    https://www.google.com/search?q=“The+Flight+93+Election”

    The 3 explanations I’ve seen for this “coincidence” are:
    1) Sheer coincidence.
    2) My posts on Facebook are being watched by some influential people.
    3) A rare mass psychic phenomenon of a kind that emerges only in times of crisis. Maybe I precipitated something that was “in the air” in some sense — and through some paranormal channel — it fell on “Publius Decius Mus” to reduce to praxis.

    James Bowery
    August 22, 2016
    Shared with Public

    You want a stark picture of what’s going on with “all these stupid crazy Trump supporters”? Here’s a little parable, having interacted with public policy think tanks connected to the Ivy League in the process of getting NASA to stop competing with private launch services before it was popular, being accused of being a “kook” for doing it, succeeding and then proposing further policy changes to enhance private investment in advanced technology and being accused of being a “kook” for that too:
    A 747 is flying over the Rockies. The captain is more than a little arrogant. He doesn’t like what his instruments have been telling him. He instructs a flight engineer to adjust the instruments. This goes on for a while.
    Meanwhile, many of the passengers are looking out the window. They see Pikes Peak rising up in front of them at an ever increasing angle and speed. Others have their headsets on watching the in-flight movie. Most of them have seen it before but it relieves the boredom. The ones looking out the window start getting nervous. Most aren’t “jet set” types, which is why they’re looking out the window. They don’t want to appear to be rubes to the jaded sophisticates who are completely calm, let alone cause a panic that might get them in trouble, so they keep quiet. Several make some noise but are quieted down by the flight attendants. A reassuring voice of authority comes over the intercom from a flight attendant admonishing everyone to calm down — the pilot knows what he’s doing. Some with their headphones on roll their eyes, wishing they’d paid the extra money for first class so they could be away from the hoi polloi.
    A minute passes…
    Then two passengers get up and run for the cabin. They’re physically restrained by flight attendants with the help of some passengers. The captain’s voice comes over the intercom, more authoritative and a bit disdainful about people who don’t know anything about instrument flight putting other passengers in danger.
    Chortles about the “rubes” start echoing down the rows.
    Another minute passes..
    Finally, an older man who knows a little bit about flying has been looking out the window through all this. He has a private pilot’s license. Like the captain, he is arrogant. He decides he _knows_ something’s wrong with the pilot. He gets up and knowing a confrontation is imminent, he rallies the “rubes” to him by confirming their fears. He says he’s flown his own plane and that it’s time to storm the cabin and take control of the 747 before it craters in the Rockies.
    All Hell breaks loose as he’s shouted down as not knowing anything about instrument flying a 747 and that his arrogant “demagoguery” is putting everyone on the flight in grave danger. Many of the less sophisticated passengers are wannabe sophisticates. They have been sharing in the chortles at those from whom they wish to distance themselves. Emboldened by their contempt of the “stupid crazy rubes”, they decide to preemptively attack them. Visions of Flight 93 to the tune of Neil Young’s “Let’s Roll” inspire them as they get into fist fights.
    A mutiny of the passengers is imminent. The Air Marshal and pilot, a Federal Flight Deck Officer himself, draw their firearms and prepare for the worst.
    Tune in next time for the exciting conclusion to this parable.
    PS: This monkeying with the “instruments” of public policy think tanks and academic social sciences, not to mention government data gathering and analysis, has been going on for decades.

  9. Joe Blunt
    Joe Blunt says:

    POTUS Donald was spared and glorified to end Biden’s appeasement of Iran and to switch US arms supplies, funding and support from Ukraine to Little Ol’ Israel. Zechariah 12.6.

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