Trump's Dionysian Moment

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I have been pondering the Donald Trump phenomenon. A man who has declared bankruptcy multiple times and whose inheritance has underperformed index funds, many regard him as a business genius. Under indictment on 91 counts, many see him as the law-and-order candidate who will finally secure the nation’s borders. A philanderer who has paid hush money to sexual partners, he is embraced by many evangelical Christians. And although many see in his words of January 6, 2021 a call to insurrection, he is now the presumptive Republican nominee for president. He leads the incumbent President Joe Biden in many polls.

Just when you think Trump is down for the count, he comes roaring back. I have friends and colleagues who find in Trump evidence that the world, or at least a good portion of it, has gone completely mad. Yet those perplexed and maddened need to reexamine the American political landscape from a different perspective. The key categories are no longer Republican and Democrat, liberal and conservative, or big-government progressives and small-government libertarians. Instead, the essential tropes are the Apollonian and the Dionysian. They do not explain everything, but they clarify a lot.

Derived from Greek mythology, Apollo and Dionysus were gods who represented contrasting aspects of the human psyche. As developed in Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy, Apollo is the god of the sun, who stands for reason, order, and logic. Of course, the NASA Apollo program landed a man on the moon and brought him back safely to Earth.

Dionysus, by contrast, is the god of wine and represents emotion, irrationality, and even chaos. In Greek culture, his symbol was the satyr, a bestial figure often depicted as a drunken dancer with an erect phallus.

At least, Biden plays an Apollonian role compared to Trump. Having spent his entire adult life in politics, he represents the political establishment, with its venerable traditions concerning how politicians should comport themselves and what they should and should not say.

In contrast with Trump, Biden is often characterized as controlled, measured, and responsible. He is often referred to as the adult in the room who plays by the rules and sticks to the script.

To glimpse the essence of Trump, it is helpful to revisit the first 2020 presidential debate, in which he repeatedly interrupted and assailed his opponent. Said one Democratic congressman at its conclusion, “He is outrageous. It is like debating a drunk gorilla that is just going crazy.”

So chaotic was the debate that at one point, even the Apollonian Biden asked in exasperation, “Will you shut up, man?” As a Dionysian figure, Trump’s strength derives not from following rules, respecting traditions, and preserving order but from overstepping bounds and inciting outrage.

In a political environment of contentment, a Dionysian figure does not stand a chance. But when many feel that the nation is moving in the wrong direction and the federal government and other august institutions fail to right its course, a disrupter has real traction.

Trump promises not to follow the established rules but to flout them. Instead of sticking to the script, he tears it up. He speaks not from his head but from his heart, or perhaps more accurately, from his gut. He is loose, spontaneous, and unpredictable. He speaks in attention-grabbing sound bites.

His opponents keep supposing they have laid him to rest. “Surely he can never recover from this,” they can say to themselves. But back he bounces.

Dionysus was widely known as the twice-born, in part because his father, Zeus, who had inadvertently killed his pregnant mother, saved their son by sewing him up in his thigh until he was mature enough for birth. In fact, as god of the vine, Dionysus is associated with death in the winter and resurrection each spring. In one myth, he is torn to pieces every three years by the Titans but always reborn. In short, efforts to kill him inevitably result in his resurrection.

A Trump rally bears some striking resemblances to ancient bacchanalia, Dionysian festivals that bore the god’s Roman name. To be sure, Trump, a notorious teetotaler, does not freely dispense the fruit of the vine, but he frequently whips the attendees into a frenzy by vilifying his opponents and reveling in self-adoration. Trump is not on the path of Apollo, calling on reason, evidence, and balanced judgment. Instead, he is engaged in a kind of Dionysian free association, doing everything he can to fan the fires of the crowd’s sense of betrayal, outrage, and grievance.

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And legions of the aggrieved identify with Trump, whom they see as a victim of persecution. They, too, feel that someone is out to get them; in him, they see a hero who refuses to bend. They are awed by the fact that he never apologizes, concedes, or admits he is wrong. In the words of Winston Churchill, he “never, never, never” gives in.

More than any other candidate in recent memory, Trump feeds on attention, and it does not matter whether it takes the form of adulation or fury. He is a contemporary Dionysus, and borrowing from Nietzsche’s memorable words, what does not kill him only makes him stronger.