Trump as the Great Destroyer
A new essay uses Hegel to suggest the 47th president might be our Caesar or Napoleon
On one level, coming up with something to say about politics in the Trump era is extremely easy: There’s always some new story, outrage, bad decision, sign of corruption, or debasement of our institutions to make note of and explain.
But on another level, finding something fresh or newly illuminating to say about all of it is extremely challenging. After more than ten years, we’ve seen it all already: the bullshit, the bluster, the maliciousness, the incompetence, and on and on and on. What more is there to say or understand?
That’s what made me sit up and take notice of a new essay by John B. Judis in a digital journal called Notus that uses G. W. F. Hegel’s philosophy of history to try and understand Trump in the broadest possible way. Provocatively titled “Trump as Alexander the Great: A Theory That Explains Iran (And Everything Else),” the piece helps us to gain much-needed perspective on the destabilizing whirlwind of the present.
