'The man who totally exemplifies his moment, no matter how shallow or disgusting, will get everything he wants.' (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
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Until a couple of weeks ago, the American electorate faced a choice between a presidential candidate probably suffering from early dementia and one afflicted by advanced narcissism. Should the finger hovering over the nuclear button belong to a senile Commander-in-Chief or a megalomaniac one?
Both men have been touched by death, but both have been in denial about it. Old age is deathās way of creeping up on you discreetly, diplomatically, getting to know you bit by bit rather than confronting you eyeball to eyeball, but Joe Biden refused to acknowledge this fact. He seemed not to recognise that breaking into a pathetic little trot every time he spotted a camera isnāt the same as being fit for office. Instead, we were treated to the indecent spectacle of an elderly man clinging to power with his fingernails until his colleagues intimated that they would break his fingers if he refused to let go. At least Shakespeareās Lear knew when to call it a day. Like money, power is a substitute for mortality. It insulates you against incapacity, which is why Elton John once asked an assistant to stop the wind from blowing.
Trump has also had his encounter with death, which may still break upon him like a divine epiphany and pierce him to his core. As they say in Ireland, however, one wouldnāt bet the farm on it. The bleeding from his ear wasnāt staged, though as Agatha Christie was aware, to nick yourself in the ear lobe is the best way of feigning an attack, since you bleed profusely but from a part of the body that doesnāt have much of a function. As far as bringing Trump any spiritual insight, however, the incident might as well have been faked. The former President shows all the hubris of a man who is a stranger to death, and who is therefore deeply dangerous. Only by being mindful of oneās own mortality can one feel solidarity with the frailty of those around you, and thus protect them from the aggression of others and oneself.
If this isnāt quite the way Trump thinks, it is partly because sickness and death are even more un-American than Marxism. They mark the limits of human existence in a nation for which the will is boundless. āI can be anything I wantā is the kind of mindless cant one hears rather more of in California than inĀ Cambodia. Peter Thiel, another American coffin-dodger, has compared what he calls āthe ideology of the inevitability of the death of every individual” to āconfiscatory taxesā and ātotalitarian collectivesā, suggesting that death is as much an affront to individual freedom as a Stalinist state. Itās the metaphysical equivalent of a wealth tax or public ownership.
Likewise, Madonna said recently that she doesnāt think about her age. She may be in for a nasty surprise in 20 or so yearsā time. Capital is accumulated for a whole range of reasons, but one of them is as a defence against the absolute loss which death signifies. Because there is no end to amassing the stuff, it is a secular version of eternity. Freedom is infinite and indomitable, whereas death shows us up as fragile and finite. Trying to cheat it may soon become as familiar among the superrich as trying to cheat the tax collector.
One Silicon Valley mogul has spent a colossal slice of his $125 billion fortune on various technological stratagems for defeating death. Itās a logical enough project, given that death threatens to strike meaningless a lifetime of piling up wealth. The wealthy are like unlucky gamblers who stack up a fabulous fortune and then lose it in a split second. The members of Joe Bidenās church wear ashes on their forehead on Ash Wednesday as a sardonic comment on those who unconsciously believe that they are immortal, and who thus pose a Trump-like threat to the rest of us. āIgnorance of death is destroying us,ā complains a character in Saul Bellowās novel Humboltās Gift. Those in hell are those who are unable to die.
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SubscribeI honestly donāt get the gratuitous Trump bashing. Whatās the point, especially in an essay of this nature? Maybe the author hasnāt noticed, but people have fully formed opinions about Trump. Has he been living in a cave for the last decade? The totally irrelevant Trump critiques do nothing but compromise the argument youāre making in the essay.
On the other hand, the Trump bashing does make sense because it diverts attention away from the banality of the essay itself. Iāll save people time by summing up the essay in 11 words – peopleās perspective on life changes with the looming prospect of death. I wish I could get paid for such groundbreaking insights.
Thanks!
Trump bashing makes sense because it is fun, and everyone is entitled to a hobby.
Yes, the banal Trump observations weaken any regard for the wordy maunderings about death.
Death is an everyday prospect. The author is mistaken to align death solely with two elderly men.
We never know the hour or the day. One day, will will dress to meet the funeral director, and when we are dressing we will not know. In every year of life we pass the anniversary of our future death.
I owe you 6 minutes of my life. Thanks.
Have some compassion.
Trump has an airliner with his name on the side in big gold letters and a vast estate in paradise. Terry has a semi in a damp, grey part of the UK. And Trump hasn’t even got a degree. But at least Terry can console himself with the thought that he and Trump are both going to die. How sad is that.
The Hagakure (the Book of the Samurai) exhorts us to contemplate death every day.
Enjoy!
I learned that from the movie “Ghost Dog”.
Exactly.
‘Remember the abundance of who you are ā belonging to greater life and learn to die. Learning how to die is the real art of living. A skull in the room of a monastery – very lugubrious at the wrong level.’
‘…. the lesson of tragedy is that something will only come of nothing ā that only by being stripped of oneās grandiose illusions and being hauled through hell will you be able to live with any degree of authenticity.’
If you were to strip yourself of your own grandiose illusions, Mr Eagleton, we might be spared the pompous drivel you churn out with tedious regularity.
Well, thatās a great illustration of the old adage – āIf you havenāt got anything nice to say, say it in the internet.ā
Assuming that the author is correct in his musings about mortality, where do they leave the ‘as long as it takes’ support for Ukraine? There’s plenty of mortality there. Along with the fascination with weapons of death. Some put their trust in chariots and others in horses…(Psalm xx.7).
One of the few girl children who survived the sinking of the City of Benares in 1940 felt that she had become invincible, becoming a teacher in adult life.
Hitler refused to be conveyed in bullet-proofed limousines. Instead, he stood upright in open topped vehicles.
āThe bleeding from his ear wasnāt stagedā
āonly by being stripped of oneās grandiose illusions and being hauled through hell will you be able to live with any degree of authenticityā
All the worldās a stage, my friend. Youāve just got to learn to let go and let it be.
āWhat will survive of us is loveā – the last line of one of greatest English poems of 20th century immediately came to mind on reading this.
And the Author essentially poses the question- when do we finally realise that?
The added canvas for the article is the gerontology element to election of most powerful leader in the western world and whether candidates can contemplate their own mortality. Biden has been forced to. Trump too. But their responses and those of their support differs
Preposterous to say Trump doesn’t or can’t love. The smiling little grand daughter jumping on his knee at the Republican convention, her evident joy at being with Grandad, his warm appreciative smile, how is that fake? His sons and daughter are evidently very close to him too.
Then the swipe at the rich. Yet thanks largely to US capitalism funding research and innovation world poverty decreases and lifespan increases year after year after year. You extol who, the Catholic Church? an institution that exploits the poor and disenfranchised to cling to power? that kept e.g Ireland a poor, second rate EU nation until it broke free of the shackles and is now a modern prosperous nation where children- for the first time in generations – can stay on the island and not emigrate?
Buddhism and Hinduism don’t see wealth as an impediment to anything either. It is all to do with attitude not possessions.
As for the evils of narcissism maybe start with one Eamon Casey, Bishop of Galway in Ireland if you want a real shudder sent down your spine.
The distaste that the middle class clerisy feel toward Trump is mostly driven by snobbery. ‘But, but he’s so vulgar ….’
More mortalist nonsense. Thiel is more right than wrong when he suggests that death is as much an affront to individual freedom as a Stalinist state.” Wanting to live longer, even much longer, does not mean that you do not acknowledge death. We enjoy (mostly) living decades longer on average than people of the path. Is that bad? Of course not. The goal is to live longer in good health and function (not as a Biden-Struldbrugg).
I have dealt with the death of my father, my mother, my best friend, several other friends and others. I have almost died a couple of times. I think about death frequently — largely because I’m focused on ways to delay it, preferably indefinitely.
Notice how many stories about long-lived or immortal persons are stories of people who live but continue to age. That’s cheating! That is not the goal of those who seek to extend human lives.
Yawn
Peter Thiel is 56. “Coffin dodger”?