Foto: © Evan Vucci / AP
With the attempt to assassinate him, Trump steps up from history to myth. More than thirty years ago we gave him space in these pages, in line with the publication of The Art of the Deal, part memoir and part property developer’s manual, and his arrival at the White House in 2017 triggered us to reprint some of his statements then: “The point is that if you are a little different, or a little outrageous, of if you do things that are bold or controverial, the press is going to write about you… The final key to the way I promote is bravado. I play to people’s fantasies. People may not always think big themselves, but they can get very excited by those who do. That is why a little hyperbole never hurts.”
That Trump was already a Ulysses, “the man of many strategems and tricks,” but what marks his definitive induction into the domain of mythology is the escape from the assassin’s bullet and the bravery of his reaction, with fist raised and the call to “fight, fight, fight,” which dresses him with the anger of Achilles, ultimately interweaving his biographic journey with two classical epics of the Trojan cycle, the Odyssey of the hero’s return voyage – so ridden with dangers, judicial snares in the latest leg of this king’s itinerary – and the Iliad of the warrior facing the walls of the besieged city, which in his case is the country he seeks to get back and make great again.
Both Ulysses and Achilles, Donald Trump has dotted his route with indelible images. The con-man adventurer who flaunts his wealth and seduces women from faraway lands – he married a Czech, and later a Slovenian – poses in the gilded setting of his Manhattan tower with a trophy wife and a gold-maned lion but, crownless and surrounded by enemies, he gave the unforgettable picture of his detention, a mug shot with the ferocious face of a wild beast.
The smug winner and the irate man under arrest are two facets of a mythical itinerary of climbing Olympus and dropping to hell, but the lights and shadows of the trajectory are in the end redeemed by the epic photograph by Evan Vucci, with men and women of the Secret Service forming a protective pyramid around a bloodstained Trump who pumps his fist in defiance under the Stars and Stripes. Similar in composition to the iconic Iwo Jima but unorchestrated, the image captures a moment whose mythical quality was well expressed by Senator Tim Scott at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee: “The devil came to Pennsylvania holding a rifle, but the American lion got back up on his feet and he roared!”
The human being is a narrative animal, and in our stories, mythos tends to prevail over logos: in principio erat fabula. Trump sneaks into the American mythology of superheroes mixing it up with classical tradition, but his seemingly unstoppable rise worries those who do not share his views, whether in international affairs, world business, or immigration. A second Trump mandate can be a tragedy for American democracy, for European security, and for the stability of a planet threatened by too many crises. After Joe Biden’s decision to step down, the Democratic candidate will have to face up to the myth and the misery of a man and his phantom.
