So God Made a Dictator
The latest Lincoln Project advertisement is a real eye-opener. Its a play off of Donald Trump’s allusions to the notion that God made Trump and that this evangelically appealing narrative is that Trump is doing God’s work by standing up for issues like tighter abortion standards and tighter immigration standards. Of course, as one might expect, Trump is simply too much of a pragmatist and transactional operator to stand by pure dogma, so he has already walked back his stand on abortion, presumably under intense political campaign strategist pressure, by saying quite bluntly that “you still have to win elections”, which is his concession to the reality that abortion access is a fervent wish of a large majority of the population. But as most of us who have watched the world turn a few times know, dictators are nothing if not pragmatic and Trump has boldly declared his intentions to be nothing short of a dictator. Getting on the cover of the New Yorker as a rotund, goose-stepping, medal-clad imitation of Benito Mussolini was not such an editorial reach for this clearly liberal publication. But using Trump’s own words, we can easily cobble together an airtight case for calling him out as having strong dictatorial ambitions. So, someone creative at the Lincoln Project came up with an elegant and yet very scary ad called “So God Made a Dictator”.
The ad runs through a mix of historical images of well-known dictators and their affectations and symbols. Interspersed among them are the occasional images from Trump’s campaign portfolio and one cannot ignore the similarity. The narrative that washes over the images and marching music reads like a well-crafted poem, repeating the refrain that “So God Made a Dictator” for this reason and that reason where the cause and effect was that the world was falling into disarray without such strong-handed guidance. Stop for a moment and imagine a world made up of people who functioned in Trump’s image or with him as a role model. They would have to invent a stronger word than chaos to describe what would ensue as everyone jockeyed for self-interested positioning at the front of the line for whatever scarce resources were available. No one would put themselves out by an inch for another least they be deemed a chump. The truth is that narcissism really only works if it is relatively unique. Everyone simultaneously pursuing self-interest is almost the definition of bedlam, and that is what would ensue.
The ad narrative ends with the logical conclusion that dictatorship leads to so much dysfunction that clearly God as its enabler has created the dictator for only one logical reason and that is as a test of the human race to decide if it wants to continue to exist or is prepared to devolve into the abyss that dictators inevitably lead them to. The message is starkly set forth as an existential choice for every voter. Do you want to vote with the entertainment value of Donald Trump, the Charlie Chaplin-esque Great Dictator character who is amusing to watch and listen to, but who also brings about decay and devastation to society as we have come to expect it over our evolutionary development cycle? Your alternative is some semblance of normalcy that may seem momentarily boring, but which is quick and easy to recognize as life as we know and like it.
Do you remember Woody Allen’s early movie called Bananas? Fielding Mellish (Woody) finds himself in a banana republic as a rebel fighting for the cause against the local dictator. The policy platform of the dictator includes the mandate that henceforth everyone must wear their underwear on the outside. I think of that often when I listen to Trump pontificate about what is best for America. In the same way that GeneralVargas has no idea how to govern his tiny tropical nation, Trump is equally at a loss, so he just makes shit up that he thinks in the moment might work. When it fails to work or even make sense, Trump thinks nothing of changing things up and telling his rapt audience that it only makes sense to adjust because its the sensible thing to do after all. It never occurs to him that it was not at all sensible to make his initial suggestion or that just throwing things at the wall to see what sticks is too arbitrary in the arena of national policy.
It is generally understood that man does not like change and yet we all know that the world is always changing and advancing for better or worse. The pendulum has swung in public sentiment that the recent advancement, whether economic, social or political, is for the worse, and this negativity has broadened to feelings of nihilism. Nothing works, nothing helps, there is no hope and life has become meaningless. That sentiment is relatively easy to get to for many people right up until they actually arrive at the endpoint and look around. Nothing about nihilism is attractive in the reality, but only in the aspiration (or should I say false imagery). There are certain people that are so earnestly despondent about the world and their place in it that they are willing to have it all end. These people have always existed and found themselves candidates for early suicide. It is not hard to imagine that they do not find nihilism so unfavorable as an end state. But the vast majority of people want nothing to do with the abyss once they get a look at it. Some are simply too myopic to see or imagine it until they are on the brink and then they are usually also the most adamant in thinking that life is not fair in dealing them those cards and circumstances. In fact, I suspect that the people that push back from the abyss the hardest are the very people who were quick to run towards it in the first place. Their sudden change of heart tends to look a lot like a 180 degree swivel from the embracement for change to the desperate avoidance of change. What does the old saying tell us? You don’t know what you’ve got till its gone.
What I love most about the Lincoln Project ad is that it reminds the viewers that what Trump is up to may be bold, but is hardly unprecedented. Every century has its madmen. The last were the likes of Hitler and Mussolini. The century before that there was Napoleon and well before that Genghis Kahn and even Attila the Hun. I will go out on a limb and say that while Trump was a joke to us in 2015, he is as serious as a heart attack now, after eight years of his brand of crazy getting so much attention and influencing all of our lives as it has. There is little doubt in my mind that Trump has secured a place in history as one of the great crazy men leaders that have gained power. There is equally no doubt that 2024 is the moment of truth for the American electorate and that the ramifications of that choice will reverberate around the world for many years to come.
So, God is putting a choice before us. God created us all and that includes Trump, no matter what you may think of him. It is impossible to disagree that he has been put before us by God, and that he is here to test us. There is nothing that Trump has said or done that is unnatural, everything has been seen before, but it hasn’t always been acceptable. We have collectively made it acceptable through our embrace of democracy. It is now incumbent on us to decide once and for all if we collectively affirm our acceptance or reject him. So, God has made a dictator so that we can choose our path forward.