By Eric LeRoy
Content 18+ I have always wondered why some people make a powerful impression on us and others don’t. Of course the effect can vary from person to person, and that’s a good thing: for example, it would be a real mess if every man fell in love with the same woman – to the exclusion of all others.
Just imagine it: the longed-for Wench-Princess-Nymphette standing on the balcony singing her siren song while in the streets below the men are cutting each other’s throats, ramming Bowie knives into miscellaneous guts, and shooting military assault rifles at random into the horny crowd. Meanwhile, on the balcony the nightingale lady sings and sings, combing her long Rapunzel-like hair. Waiting for her default hero to prevail.
And all because every guy in the world was fixated on a single woman. It’s worth a ‘Hallelujah’ or two just to celebrate the fact that life is not this way.
But putting that aside, there is no question that some women – and some men – are blessed with a kind of charisma which others can’t match. It is also true that certain people have leadership qualities which others don’t. Same with teachers: some inspire their students, most just cram the curriculum into roomfuls of heads containing brains nimble or dull; a few succeed in nothing more than causing their pupils to despise the subject matter and vow never to come near it again.
In sports, there are coaches who lead their charges to the championship; in the military, there are commanders who can inspire men to brave almost certain death.
As a teacher myself, I have very often thought about and brought to the attention of my teaching peers and students the following question: What is creativity? Can it be taught? And my conclusion has always been that it can be to an extent. That doors may be unlocked, psychological barriers which have blocked the untapped perceptions may be cracked open. Moreover, I now understand that there are many forms of ‘creativity’. A multitasking mother of four children needs to be as creative as someone else writing a poem. Understood. Nevertheless, genius level creativity – I believe – can not be taught.
The same is true of charisma and leadership qualities. It is also the case that while such gifted people inspire awe, cooperation, obedience (if necessary), and love – they also cause envy, confusion, opposition, and…hate.
You may have caught on by now that this essay is moving in the direction of Donald Trump. Artem rather brilliantly suggested in his recent essay “A Leader For the Ages (and Possibly Beyond”) that comparing Trump to Hitler ( which the Left does like a nervous facial tic) is patently absurd; on the contrary, Artem attests, Trump is more of a Napoleonic figure, or possibly even comparable to Alexander the Great – although I wouldn’t go quite that far because I don’t believe that Trump is the least bit interested in military conquest. He is at heart more of an isolationist. That’s why he says, “Make America Great Again” instead of “Make the World Great Again.”
But let’s go back to the subject of ‘charisma’. Those who have it (and it has been called simply ‘It’ in some of the very limited ‘glamour’ stuff I’ve read. i.e. “He/She has IT” ), well, they just seem to be naturally suffused with a bit of hypnotic vapour that nobody can clearly define. Thus, charisma enters the field as one of those things like ‘pornography’ and ‘common sense’ that people ‘don’t know exactly what it is, but they know it when they see it!’ – as an American Supreme Court Justice once said of naughty films and salacious books.
One thing is for certain: charisma is not tied directly to conventional beauty. Very often, it is an anomaly, like with the famous Anne Boleyn. Few thought Anne was beautiful, but nobody could resist her. Cleopatra is now believed to have been ordinary in appearance, but Caesar and Antony couldn’t leave her alone. Also there have been very famous, heart-wrenching singers such as Judy Garland, Nina Simone, and Edith Piaf whose voices were far more revered than their looks.
You may notice that all my examples above refer to women. But, as we know all too well, there have been many men who were charismatic. Jesus Christ, if he ever truly existed, must have been among the pick of the litter. Guys like Steve Jobs were famous for it. Martin Luther King was the very incarnation of charisma. Bob Dylan was very much a charismatic figure back in the 60s. Jim Morrison. Jimmy Hendrix. Diego Maradona. The list goes on and on.
Indeed, as a teacher of world history (among other things), I see clearly what much of history amounts to: charismatic strongmen taking over (often with great brutality) and running things their way until they finally die and leave the empire for their sons to completely fuck up. The reasons? Who knows? Daddy had IT, and Junior didn’t. You would follow Daddy into savage battle and blood gushing carnage; Junior, you wouldn’t follow into a whorehouse if he had paid the tab in advance.
Therefore, it is easy to appreciate the fact that charisma has little to do with Virtue either. So goodbye Beauty and Virtue. So…maybe it is about Power. Men always worry about whether women will love them. They ask themselves: “Am I handsome? Am I fun to be with? Am I intelligent in a way she likes? Am I a good provider? Am I a good father? Is my dick big enough? Do I keep it going long enough to satisfy her?”
That’s what they ask themselves. But the greatest aphrodisiac under the sun is Power. And the terrible thing is that such power can be used to destroy as well as to build. Start with Hitler and work your way through the phone book. Successful religious and cult leaders drink from the same goblet. Psychologists often wield more power over their clients’ minds than they should.
So which will Trump turn out to be: great Hero or great Villain? Johnny Appleseed or Jack the Ripper? Indeed, if we may use the Wizard of Oz analogy that I suggested on my cover, is Trump really like Dorothy – a brave pioneer that everyone who knows the story is bound to love? Or is Trump the pathetic ‘Wizard’ himself – nothing but an empty array of pulleys and levers? Will Donald Trump lead us down the Yellow Brick Road to a wonderful vista somewhere over the rainbow? Or a dead end street covered with a sheet of Fool’s Gold?
Napoleon was ultimately a victim of his own narcissism, and the fear is that Trump may follow suit. We all hope not. But Bonaparte was many more things than Alexander ever dreamed of being. Alexander had a ‘pharaoh’ mentality; he wanted cities named after him, and there were more than a few, between 20 and 70, according to which historian you believe. Napoleon, on the other hand, left sustainable institutions that formed the legal basis of modern France , including the Napoleonic Code, the judicial system, the central bank and the country’s financial organization, military academies, and a centralized university. Napoleon changed the history of both France and the world and was a shaper of French institutional principles and laws that still stand. Moreover, Napoleon was dealing with a far more complex world than Alexander.
The rise of Napoleon supports my own thesis that Trump also is a combination of highly combustible elements: he is a maker of history, a somewhat fortunate ‘right man in the right place’ beneficiary of history, and a perceptive analyst of current trends, that is to say a reader of likely historical outcomes based on certain strategies. The whole profile is similar to Napoleon himself, but what we don’t know in/is Trump’s endgame. We know that Napoleon’s judgment deserted him and his own vanity consumed him – the downfall of many, including Julius Caesar. Napoleon inherited, amid all the blood and chaos, a ripe corn field for the right farmer, and he was sharp enough to see it. But he was never satisfied to have a golden cornfield as far as the horizon; he wanted a glittering cornfield beyond the horizon.
And Napoleon’s chance came as a result of the same failed idealism of ‘Liberté, ‘Egalité, ‘Fraternité’. Now does that sound familiar? Where have we heard that one before? Let me check my memory. Oh yes, DEI : ‘Diversity. Equality, Inclusion.” And I ask you, who wouldn’t be in favor of that? But what always seems to happen with these bubble bath utopias like the one Lennon and Yoko imagined, if indeed they seriously envisioned such a thing at all – which I doubt? (What greedier capitalists ever existed?) I posit that what happens when you ‘Imagine all the people/ I wonder if you can” – is something you wind up wishing you hadn’t . Pure Hell is what everything morphs into when you give ‘Power to the People,’ and that is because the ‘people’ are not capable of handling the power.
So dictators, micromanaging freaks, and authoritative monsters of all tones and flavors subvert freedom of choice for their own ends, but are able to make sudden, game-changing or deal-breaking decisions. Democracies tend to stalemate themselves, quibble and vacillate, and often end up angling for the wrong choice anyway. No matter what the Constitution says, real power is always going to remain in the hands of the few, although it must be shared to a degree; it must held on the end of a leash just long enough to let everyone smell the air and sniff the grass while making clear markers to hold the worst impulses at bay. Sort of like bouncers at a nightclub: don’t fuck with them and they won’t fuck with you.
It is a shame to say it, and I know smacks of elitism, but history tells us two things: Dictatorship defines dystopia because society buckles under the weight of the tyrant; Democracy dissolves into dystopia unless it is built around carefully formed specifics: whom to trust and whom to be wary of, and the trick there is not to exclude due to petty prejudices and biases, but rather because of the recognition that some standards must exist, just as universities decide who will be admitted and who won’t based on agonizingly tight exam results; just as lusty men and women select or reject each other according to some sort of beauty-recognition standard or template, including posting pics of their genitalia to aid in the selection process.
In this world, metro train doors close and buses pull away, leaving others on the platform or street no matter what might be their deadline or emergency. In this world, Olympic ‘gold’ often comes down to a split second, separating the culture ‘icons’ from the also-rans (re: losers and ‘bums’) by a slender hair. That’s how it shakes out on this planet of frenzied desire and broken dreams.
So this is the world we have: a screaming, illogical, vindictive, divided hub (some would call it a rat’s nest) which has nothing whatsoever to do with real, I mean REAL,’diversity, equality, and inclusion’.
Enter Donald Trump. This is a man who strikes fear into many hearts, swells the brain-rage of hatred in many others, but who many people see as a window to the future. He is hated in the same way that Martin Luther King was hated. And LOVED.
Is that an impossible, far-fetched analogy? Those who HATE this comparison have all their arguments lined up like so many junkies standing in line in front of a methadone clinic.. King, they cry, was for freedom; Trump is for slavery!! That this is crazy should be obvious. But apparently it isn’t so clear to those who cannot see beyond their own customized agendas.
Trump didn’t have to protest in front of a lunch counter in the racist South; King did. And he did it like the one-of-a-kind guy he was. After his death, many others, such as Ralph Abernathy and Jesse Jackson, tried to replace him. Abernathy was a truly dedicated man; he suffered the fate of not being Martin Luther King. Jackson proved himself like a typical BLM hustler: in fact, a grifter wearing the clothing of an idealist; a publicity hound who would defend a rich and famous black person but never a poor unknown: a symbol of everything that King despised.
Trump’s mission is different: clean up the mess, the corruption, the opportunism of those who have perverted the ideals of great people with great dreams. Last time I checked, this means he doesn’t qualify as a racist. But he is also a titanic force on the international stage. Therefore, Trump is more than King ever had to be in order to survive as long as he did, and also more than Napoleon envisioned – a vision that ended in the streets of Moscow and the Russian frost. Trump must inspire change maintaining law and order and reason and justice on all sides.
The very idea that he could win an election so unexpectedly, then lose (due to Covid more than Biden), then win again, and spring forth like a tiger, makes Trump one of the most charismatic people in American history. And this is precisely why he inspires such violent emotion.
Trump is a born leader, like it or not. There is no other such person in our times; all pale before him. He is a man among men. And so, Donald Trump, as of now: today and tonight – and barring assassination – holds both domestic and world history in his hands. We ought to root for him. Our own future depends so much on what Trump does while he is alive and in office as President.
No one is indispensable. Trump’s time will pass into history as all others have. That is what History (Time’s handmaiden) has shown us again and again. But right now we have a man who is changing things. Is he an egotist? Yes, he is. Is he a narcissist? Yes, he is. A male chauvinist? Damn right.
Does he have a clear and coherent vision for America? Yes, he does. Does he care about the rest of the world? I think he does.
Right now, Donald Trump is the best hope the world has, if not for peace, then for ceasefire and time to think; he possesses fresh ideas for Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. So who are you? Someone who wants to give the guy a fair chance – since you have no one else – or muck up the way until you get a great big ‘YOU’RE FIRED’ sign hung around your neck?
Blaming Trump for all your petty problems and calling him a fascist, rapist, and felonious nazi is going to have about as much impact over the next four years as a fart in a hurricane. The answer to this is plain and simple: the Left, while they may blame Trump for everything, have failed, and now must turn to him. Or just sit and bitch about it.
Whatever happens, these losers will never call Trump a hero. But future generations might – long after we are all dead and headed for that Trump Tower in the Sky. Or an Atlantic City Casino in Hell, if it finally plays out that way. Let’s try to keep an open mind, shall we? In recent years, America has changed from a place of reasonable discourse into a hotbed of hatred. That’s you, Social Media. Thanks a bunch. Democracy has become a distortion, a form of mental breakdown and a slagheap for the disintegration of reason.
Can Donald Trump fix that? He is the best we have. I am rooting for him, and you should be too.
