Theatre of the absurd

Narain D Batra

| 19 June, 2016

Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has created a mesmerising political “theatre of the absurd” that has produced a mass following and further polarised a deeply divided America. A paranoid American President with racist animus and religious bigotry can be more dangerous to the world than Islamic State militants. You can drone a militant to oblivion, whether he is in the badlands of Pakistan, Yemen, or Syria. But neither the US Congress nor the Judiciary, co-equals in power, can do much to control an unprincipled, whimsical man, who, once into the White House, becomes the commander-in-chief of the most powerful military in the world. The checks-and-balances system does not always work

Trump’s irrational rhetorical exuberance, outrageous stage performance, aggravating “truthiness” and the use of personal insults as a political weapon about his myriad fallen Republican opponents have made them look silly.

Big donors include the super rich such as New York Jets owner Woody Johnson, Florida shopping magnate Mel Sembler, Wisconsin billionaire Diane Hendricks and casino billionaire Sheldon Anderson, among others. This is an amazing metamorphosis of public opinion in favour of Trump, the man who claims to be the only person who can save America.

For some Americans, “Make America Great Again” is a powerful call for nation rebuilding, as has been the Islamic militants cry of “Allahu Akbar” for returning to the glory of the Prophet Mohammed.

From the very beginning, Trump barged onto television screens like the rhinoceros in Eugene Ionesco’s play; and, gradually, even the most conservative thinker of the Reagan Republican tradition, almost everyone, is becoming a Trump believer.

 Governor Nikki Haley (of Indian origin), Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, Senator John McCain (whom Trump called a non-heroic Vietnam Prisoner of War hero), and Peter King of Long Island, who called Trump an ignoramus, have found enough rationale to support the nominee. Senator Marco Rubio, who roared like a lion and belittled everything about Trump, is scampering like a mouse to be on the man’s right side, while House speaker Paul Ryan held back from his support of Trump. In the play Rhinoceros, the protagonist, Berenger, is the sole person left who refuses to join the mass conversion to Rhinoceroses (the Nazis). But Ryan is no Berenger and has bowed and succumbed to the rising power of Trump. Politics before principles!

The herding of the people into a Trump mass following, as happened in Ionesco’s play, is almost complete. It is not something unprecedented. It happened during the Bolshevik Revolution when Lenin ruled the Russian mind; and the rise of Nazism in Europe; and not long ago, when we were told that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. We wanted to believe in the “truthiness” of the moment as persuasively presented by General Colin Powell, US Secretary of State under President George W Bush.

Today, some Americans want to believe that the Trump Wall, for which Mexico will be forced to pay if Trump becomes President, will save them from the Mexican hordes, rapists, and drug dealer; China will be rolled back and jobs will return to America; and Islamic militants will be obliterated.

Trump’s misogyny and indulgence for women (he owned Miss Universe and Miss USA Pageants, which he sold in 2015) have been no different from Arnold Schwarzenegger’s. The body-builder movie actor, “Kaalifornia Terminator Governator”, in a budget session in the California legislature on 17 July 2014, derided his opponents, “If they don’t have the guts to come up here in front of you and say, ‘I don’t want to represent you, I want to represent those special interests, the unions, the trial lawyers...’ if they don’t have the guts, I call them girlie men.” Despite being married to a celebrity Kennedy woman, Maria Shriver, it took him years before the non-girlie man had the guts to admit that he had fathered a child with Mildred Patricia Baena, his Mexican-American housekeeper. In 2005 he suggested that California seal its borders with Mexico. Trump’s Mexican Wall is the rebirth of Schwarzenegger’s bizarre idea.

Donald Trump is the latter-day version of Arnold Schwarzenegger and is much more seductive and dangerous. Few politicians have used the English language as a weapon for the total destruction of enemies as Trump has done. Like a master propagandist, he uses language that is memorable and subversive. Like a negative adman, he keeps up the jingle of insults: crooked Hillary; little Marco Rubio; Cruz, “the worst liar, crazy or very dishonest. Perhaps all three”.

He addresses his audience in a conversational tone; and, then suddenly bursts into a thunderclap, rebuking his opponents. His condemnation of Muslims has been so intense and effective that many Americans are rattled by the proposed resettlement of Syrian refugees in their towns. And CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, who rushed to air the documentary, “Why do they hate us?” did not help much to reduce the prevailing negative sentiments against Muslims, whom Trump wants to bar from entering the USA.

Like Schwarzenegger, Trump, despite his transgressions, is a charming public man. But Schwarzenegger’s shenanigans were limited to California. Trump will occupy the world stage if he becomes President. Can Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, annihilate Trump’s theatre of the absurd that has become so meaningful to so many Americans? Can the world afford a maverick in the White House?

The writer, author of the First Freedoms And America’s Culture Of Innovation, is a professor at Norwich University.

 http://www.thestatesman.com/news/supplements/theatre-of-the-absurd/149211.html#IkSKT4Fbd0KdqpjH.99