Donald Trump has an Achilles heel that sticks out like a sore thumb.
Yes, I may be flirting with cuteness by using a mixed metaphor. But think about it. This man who so desperately wants to be seen as tough, even invincible, has created his own massive psychological disability through his willful inability to admit that he was ever wrong or made a mistake. His problem has been well documented by, among others, his own niece, Mary L. Trump, in her book, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man.
From Wikipedia: Officer Daniel Hodges crushed during attack on Capitol.
Now, if Trump were merely one more pompous fool walking the streets whose ego outran his accomplishments, which it does, he might simply be, well, foolish. But unlike most of us, he inherited wealth on a scale that enabled him to fail upward, allowed him to hire lawyers to rescue him from any meaningful accountability, and made him a con artist skilled enough to make admirers believe he had hit a triple merely because he was born on third base. Talented at making reality TV seem real, at fashioning an image for himself that appealed to those susceptible to his mythology, he stumbled into the presidency on razor-thin vote margins in a few states that tilted the Electoral College in his favor despite losing the popular vote (by almost three million) to Hillary Clinton in 2016. Unlike President George W. Bush, who achieved a similar political feat in 2000 in a much closer election in 2000 but at least conceded the facts of the case, Trump continued to maintain the popular vote had been “stolen,” a harbinger of his dangerous contentions four years later that led to the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the nation’s Capitol.
From Wikipedia: Oil painting (c. 1625) by Peter Paul Rubens of the goddess Thetis dipping her son Achilles in the River Styx, which runs through Hades. In the background, the ferryman Charon rows the dead across the river in his boat.
In short, Trump’s psychological Achilles heel—his incapacity for admitting loss or error—makes him not only vulnerable but a dangerous man with unmistakable authoritarian leanings. Such men begin to flail when thrust into unfamiliar circumstances where the old magic is failing them. It was fascinating to watch his reaction to the Democratic National Convention. He had expected to run against President Biden and was completely caught off balance by Biden’s departure from the race, followed by the genuine burst of enthusiasm that greeted the candidacy of Vice President Kamala Harris, followed by her choice of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate. He began to resort to a variety of insults—his old stock in trade—none of which stuck.
Trump also experimented with the ridiculous claim that Biden, who remains president for the remainder of his term, had been removed in a “coup.” The only coup ever attempted in U.S. history occurred with his own insurrection, of course, but his use of that term—and his insistence that Biden’s withdrawal from the race was somehow “unconstitutional”—served to expose his Achilles heel. Biden was always free to stay in the race or withdraw, and the idea that withdrawing would violate the Constitution is absurd. Candidates throughout U.S. history have withdrawn in all sorts of races, and no one can force them to stay in. The only consequence, if they withdraw too late, is that their name stays on the ballot, but that was not the case here. No one chose to challenge Harris because no one wanted to undermine the momentum she quickly accumulated for gaining the nomination. In other words, other potential candidates made rational calculations in a difficult situation.
The real problem for Trump, the one that exposed his Achilles heel, is that he could never imagine Biden voluntarily stepping away from the limelight and ceding political power. Biden made a rational calculation that he wanted to prevent Trump’s election for the sake of the country and that he himself was unlikely to win. Better to let Harris have a crack at it, and Democrats seized the opportunity with not only an audible sigh of relief but a remarkable burst of enthusiasm. Harris herself proved very adept in mobilizing that enthusiasm. Suddenly, Trump was on his heels because he was psychologically incapable of preparing himself for such a turn of events. The idea of selfless patriotism is beyond his understanding: How could Biden do such a thing? Never mind that the very first American example of ceding power voluntarily came from George Washington.
In nations across the world, it is people with precisely this type of inability to accept defeat or to cede power, and insistence that they are always right, who are most likely to preside over dictatorial regimes. For such arrogant but still frail and often paranoid humans, democracy is at best inconvenient and at worst a categorical obstacle to their ambitions. Democracy means you might not get what you want even when you are certain you should have it. Their solution is to get rid of democracy itself.
That brings me to another book. It is short, it is pithy, and it makes all of its salient points in only 126 pages. On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century is one of the most politically useful books I have ever seen from a historian. Timothy Snyder, Levin Professor of History at Yale University, dispenses with academic gobbledygook to reach a mass audience at a time when the lessons he offers need to be shared, learned, and acted upon. He tells us, based on historical research and our collective lived experience, what we need to know about the world we face because, as he notes, “History does not repeat, but it does instruct.”
Snyder’s first lesson on tyranny is an implied indictment of the collapse of moral backbone of most leaders in the Republican party in failing to confront the rise of Trump’s dominance in their party. For each lesson, Snyder states the lesson in one sentence, followed by a short synopsis, before offering explanations of a few pages and moving on. Lesson 1 is “Do not obey in advance.” Consider this synopsis in light of the current Republican party:
“Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.”
The Republican party did not need to oust from its ranks numerous figures of courage like former U.S. Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger. The cowards in the party did this to offer human sacrifices to their leader. They obeyed Trump in advance in order to curry favor. It is small wonder that so many fugitives from Trump’s party are aligning themselves with the Harris campaign, anticipating some future day when either the Republican party collapses or a new party arises. Unlike those who have surrendered, the Dorothys of the Republican party can imagine a better world ahead.
The question that confronts Americans is whether they too have a politically dangerous Achilles heel. How many Americans, particularly men, respond to a kind of machismo that refuses to admit mistakes and cannot accept responsibility for unethical and unlawful actions that harm others? And why, for Heaven’s sake, would anyone claiming the label of Christian promote such a person for leadership? Christianity offers grace from a loving God who accepts our frailties and errors, but to be meaningful, such grace requires the humility of confessing our own imperfections. It is appropriate to talk about God using an imperfect vessel, but it is critical to remember that the vessel must recognize his or her own imperfections and acknowledge them.
Without that, we have the makings of the very credulity, intellectual sloth, and lack of commitment to truth and ethics that are at the core of Snyder’s twenty lessons about how tyranny can subvert democracy, and how it has done so elsewhere in the past. In the U.S., at least historically, much of this has been rooted in racism, nativism, so-called Christian nationalism, and other ethnic and religious prejudices that have sabotaged our better angels and ideals. It would behoove many people to read insightful analyses of the American past such as Rachel Maddow’s Prequel, Arlie Russell Hochschild’s Strangers in Their Own Land, or check out the Harvard reading list on issues of race. Meet and talk to people of different racial and religious backgrounds. The predispositions that lead people to authoritarian solutions will often melt under the influence of open and diverse conversations and common sense. Isolation from truth is not just an Achilles heel for the nation’s future, but the Devil’s playground. For now, let us be grateful if we can preserve democracy, so that we can still enjoy the privilege of engaging in civil, respectful, and reality-based conversations.
Jim Schwab