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Trump and Biden shouldn't fear death Mortality is the key to solidarity

'The man who totally exemplifies his moment, no matter how shallow or disgusting, will get everything he wants.' (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

'The man who totally exemplifies his moment, no matter how shallow or disgusting, will get everything he wants.' (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)


July 26, 2024   6 mins

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 deathā€™s 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 isnā€™t 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 Shakespeareā€™s 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 wouldnā€™t bet the farm on it. The bleeding from his ear wasnā€™t 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 doesnā€™t 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 oneā€™s 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 isnā€™t 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. ā€œI 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 ā€œthe ideology of the inevitability of the death of every individual” to ā€œconfiscatory taxesā€ and ā€œtotalitarian collectivesā€, suggesting that death is as much an affront to individual freedom as a Stalinist state. Itā€™s the metaphysical equivalent of a wealth tax or public ownership.

Likewise, Madonna said recently that she doesnā€™t 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. Itā€™s 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 Bidenā€™s 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. ā€œIgnorance of death is destroying us,ā€ complains a character in Saul Bellowā€™s novel Humboltā€™s Gift. Those in hell are those who are unable to die.

From Oedipus to Lear, tragedy is the art form in which those who overreach themselves have to be broken in order to experience their mortal limits. Only by confronting the nothingness of death and destitution, in however symbolic a form, can they turn from fantasies of omnipotence to the constraints of reality, which includes their fleshly bonds with others. If there is a guardedly affirmative quality about the tragic, itā€™s because being broken can lead to a rebirth and remaking, though without any guarantees up oneā€™s sleeve.

“Those in hell are those who are unable to die.”

Some of the survivors of the attack on the World Trade Center seem to have undergone such a transformation. Having passed through death as through a flame and emerged somewhere on the other side, they found that their sense of the brevity and fragility of life was enhanced, and along with it the need to explore it in all its depth and richness. Trumpā€™s life, by contrast, is neither rich nor deep; he just hopes that it will never end, insofar as he considers the matter at all. Everything else ā€” capitalism, cheeseburgers, trophy wives ā€” must remain exactly the same, while he himself lives on to infinity. Since the religious idea of eternity no longer has as many takers as it once had, infinity can plug the gap.

People like Trump find it almost impossible to die because death demands that you give up absolutely everything, and those who are too deeply invested in the status quo canā€™t extricate themselves from it in order to do this. This is why the Christian Gospel sees the rich as having a problem in getting to heaven. We are accustomed to giving up this or that ā€” steak, smoking, sex six times a day ā€” but to yield the very self which gives these things up seems inconceivable.

Paradoxically, that self is present in the very act of thinking of abandoning it. Itā€™s easier to face oblivion if you have known love, which also requires a certain self-surrender in the name of an enhanced existence. Those who can love can die. Trump seems to find difficulty with the former, which may well prove a problem when he comes to confront the latter.

Love is one of the ultimate forms of realism, recognising that the other who seems part of oneā€™s very being is actually autonomous, and acknowledging that one will die is the other major form that realism assumes. It means living ironically, in the sense of being bound up with human affairs while keeping one eye on the fact that in the long run none of this will really matter. This isnā€™t quite the same attitude as that of the schoolboy in the Woody Allen film who refuses to do his homework on the grounds that the universe will eventually collapse. The ironic shouldnā€™t be confused with the nihilistic.

There is, however, a nucleus of truth to be rescued even from nihilism. ā€œNothing will come of nothing,ā€ Lear warns Cordelia, but as usual he is mistaken. On the contrary, the lesson of tragedy is that something will only come of nothing ā€” that only by being stripped of oneā€™s grandiose illusions and being hauled through hell will you be able to live with any degree of authenticity. To add an extra touch of gloom, there is no assurance that one will survive this radical deconstruction of the self. Lear doesnā€™t, and nor do most tragic protagonists.

It is a viewpoint which most liberals and conservatives find too bleak to be believable. Surely things arenā€™t so dire that they need to be remade from the ground up? In the end, what distinguishes radicals from their political opponents is exactly this claim. The human situation is a great deal worse than the bright-eyed liberal will concede, but at the same time more open to improvement than the sceptical conservative will acknowledge. Is radicalism more optimistic than liberalism and conservatism? The answer is an emphatic yes and no.

Both Trump and Biden should read Jonathan Swiftā€™s Gulliverā€™s Travels, despite the fact that the only books Trump is said to possess are ones he is colouring in. Swiftā€™s novel contains an account of a race of creatures known as Struldbruggs, whose hell is the fact that they have been granted the gift of eternal life but not of eternal youth. Their first three decades are cheerful enough, but around the age of 30 they fall into a depression that lasts until they reach the age of 80. At this point, they are afflicted not only with the usual follies and infirmities of the elderly, but with an extra dose of vices which arise from the appalling prospect of living forever. They are peevish, opinionated, covetous, envious, morose, vain, garrulous, incapable of friendship and dead to all natural affection. At the age of 90, they lose their teeth, hair, ability to taste and most of their memory. Reading becomes impossible because, by the time they have arrived at the end of a line of print, they have forgotten how it began. These wretched creatures linger on for all eternity, deformed, diseased and demented.

There is, in short, one thing worse than death, and that is not dying. Itā€™s a lesson which not only Biden and Trump, but the nation to which they belong, need urgently to learn.


Terry EagletonĀ is a critic, literary theorist, and UnHerd columnist.


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Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
3 months ago

I honestly donā€™t get the gratuitous Trump bashing. Whatā€™s the point, especially in an essay of this nature? Maybe the author hasnā€™t 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 youā€™re 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. Iā€™ll save people time by summing up the essay in 11 words – peopleā€™s perspective on life changes with the looming prospect of death. I wish I could get paid for such groundbreaking insights.

Allan Meats
Allan Meats
3 months ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

Thanks!

Martin M
Martin M
3 months ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

Trump bashing makes sense because it is fun, and everyone is entitled to a hobby.

Jeremy Bray
Jeremy Bray
3 months ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

Yes, the banal Trump observations weaken any regard for the wordy maunderings about death.

Citizen Diversity
Citizen Diversity
3 months ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

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.

Andrew Dalton
Andrew Dalton
3 months ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

I owe you 6 minutes of my life. Thanks.

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
3 months ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

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.

Martin M
Martin M
3 months ago

The Hagakure (the Book of the Samurai) exhorts us to contemplate death every day.

Lancashire Lad
Lancashire Lad
3 months ago
Reply to  Martin M

Enjoy!

Martin M
Martin M
3 months ago
Reply to  Lancashire Lad

I learned that from the movie “Ghost Dog”.

Michael McElwee
Michael McElwee
3 months ago
Reply to  Lancashire Lad

Exactly.

Dermot O'Sullivan
Dermot O'Sullivan
3 months ago
Reply to  Martin M

‘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.’

Richard 0
Richard 0
3 months ago

‘…. the lesson of tragedy is that something will only come of nothing ā€” that only by being stripped of oneā€™s 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.

Andrew McDonald
Andrew McDonald
3 months ago
Reply to  Richard 0

Well, thatā€™s a great illustration of the old adage – ā€˜If you havenā€™t got anything nice to say, say it in the internet.ā€™

Citizen Diversity
Citizen Diversity
3 months ago

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.

Andrew Horsman
Andrew Horsman
3 months ago

ā€œThe bleeding from his ear wasnā€™t stagedā€

ā€œonly by being stripped of oneā€™s grandiose illusions and being hauled through hell will you be able to live with any degree of authenticityā€

All the worldā€™s a stage, my friend. Youā€™ve just got to learn to let go and let it be.

j watson
j watson
3 months ago

ā€˜What 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

Martin Dunford
Martin Dunford
3 months ago

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.

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
3 months ago
Reply to  Martin Dunford

The distaste that the middle class clerisy feel toward Trump is mostly driven by snobbery. ‘But, but he’s so vulgar ….’

Max More
Max More
3 months ago

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.

General Store
General Store
3 months ago

Yawn

Michael Askew
Michael Askew
3 months ago

Peter Thiel is 56. “Coffin dodger”?