Kierkegaard Trumping Trump

Divinity Resurrecting Democracy

Curtis L. Thompson

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9781532686863
  9781532686870
• eBook ISBN:
  9781532686887
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

We are now becoming numbed by the outrageous events taking place within the political arena of our country. Throughout our nation, the division between factions continues to hold firm. The issue of how movement toward reconciliation can occur has become ever more pressing. Nothing short of our democracy is at stake. This book looks to the writings of the nineteenth-century Danish religious philosopher Soren Kierkegaard as a resource for thinking in fresh ways about how the divine power of creative transformation is at work in the world. Through divinity's empowering of our practices in relating to others, democracy can be resurrected to a new, healthy life. Six important themes from Kierkegaard's thought are used to do a comparative examination of Donald Trump together with his world and Kierkegaard and his world. The story of this standoff--between one of the world's most famous and well-publicized figures and one of the world's greatest thinkers--constitutes a compelling investigation and presents quite a contrast. Uncovered in the storytelling process of Kierkegaard trumping Trump are the "Sweet 16": sixteen ways in which resurrection can be practiced in people's lives and help to restore our democracy to a fuller and more vibrant version of itself.

1

Narrativity or Story

Trump and Trump-World

We ask initially, why might it seem as if divinity, which implants in the human the desire for the divine or God, is not readily discernable in relation to Trump and Trump-world on narrativity or story?

Trump’s narrative is informed by a dark vision. That vision presents images of caravans of immigrants invading the country, of America’s streets filled with MS-13 gang members, of police officers being gunned down, of Islamic radicals entering our nation, of other countries that have been ripping us off for years, and of federal regulations that have been inhibiting our economic growth. The narrative, putting forth “a right-wing, nativist, protectionist, anti-immigration populism,”12 is a story giving expression to a politics of fear. As Trump famously responded to Bob Woodward’s question, “What is power?”: “Real power,” he said, “is fear.”13 For Trump, real power gives rise to fear.

At a deeper level, though, Trump’s story is all about Trump. He himself proudly proclaims, “There is nobody in the world who is a better self-promoter than Donald Trump.”14 Bringing coherence to Trump’s narrative and offering a quick explanation as to why our democracy stands in peril is a simple fact pointed out by Seth Abramson, which is “that this presidency is not an American presidency but a Trump presidency: a course of ill governance that is for Trump, about Trump, and inextricably tethered to the interests of Trump.”15

To understand Trump’s story, Craig Unger contends that it needs to include an account of his long relationship with the Russian Mafia and the assistance he received from a Russian intelligence operation to make it into the White House.16 I too think Trump’s connection to Russia is an important part of his story, and in the pages ahead, we will make some queries into that part of the story. Robert Mueller’s “Report on the Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election,” according to Attorney General William Barr’s four-page letter detailing its main findings, stated that the “investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”17 While the investigation did not establish such conspiracy or coordination to meet Mueller’s standard, there is room for further inquiry into this issue, and in the coming months intense scrutiny into the matter will likely continue in order to shed more light on this aspect of the Trump story.

We will see that Kierkegaard utilized pseudonyms or pen names in telling his narrative. In communicating his story, Donald also has not hesitated to make use of pseudonyms, which for him are false names. In his case, though, the primary purpose in doing so has been to protect his anonymity. In the 1980s and 1990s, Trump would use different names in calling in to the media and representing himself as a spokesperson for the Trump organization. This was focused on the media outlets of New York City. Favorite pseudonyms in that setting were “John Barron” (or “John Baron”) and “John Miller.” It’s interesting that Donald gave his favorite name of Barron to his youngest son who was born in 2006. More recently, in legal documents, especially non-disclosure agreements with various women, Trump’s frequently-used name was “David Dennison.” Kierkegaard’s relation to pseudonyms was of quite a different nature.

Trump’s favorite platform for communicating his narrative is Twitter. He prefers that direct way of delivering his story to his followers, without any censoring. He believes he’s great at it. When Twitter extended the length of a tweet from 140 to 280 characters, Donald was sad, as he put it, “because I was the Ernest Hemingway of 140 characters.”18 These tweets cover a broad range of topics, but they have a coherence to them: they serve the single purpose of lifting up Donald J. Trump before the public.

In telling his story to promote himself, he finds helpful “truthful hyperbole,” as he explains in his The Art of the Deal:

The final key to the way I promote is bravado. I play to people’s fantasies. People may not always think big themselves, but they can still get very excited by those who do. That’s why a little hyperbole never hurts. People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular.

I call it truthful hyperbole. It’s an innocent form of exaggeration—and a very effective form of promotion.19

Many rightly contend that Trump’s truthful hyperbole is not always so truthful.

In fact, in Trump’s telling of his narrative, that usually involves not telling the truth. Donald lies. As Seth Abramson clearly declares: “Never has a presidential campaign birthed so many lies from so many different mouths: lies of indifference, lies of carelessness, lies of callousness, lies of pique [resentment], lies of strategic advantage, lies of ignorance, lies of malicious intent, lies of ulterior motive.”20 He normalizes lying, and when the press criticizes him, he charges them with setting forth “fake news” and functioning as “the enemy of the people.” In the fall of 2018, he even removed the “hard pass” press credential of CNN’s chief White House correspondent Jim Acosta, accusing Acosta of being a “grandstander” and “bad for the country”: this action was met with legal action by CNN, backed by CBS News and other outlets including, somewhat surprisingly, Fox News, and fortunately Acosta’s journalistic privileges were restored after a federal judge ruled in his favor.

The press that Trump constantly runs down has always mattered deeply to him; daughter Ivanka witnessed growing up how her father “lit up or blew up depending on how the press depicted him.”21 For Donald, a free press is “fake news,” unless it is Fox.22 Fox News does sponsor a steady flow of what Kellyanne Conway dubbed “alternative facts” as core viewers have their prejudices ratified by “a news network that distorts, misrepresents, and oftentimes outright ignores the country’s most exciting domestic news story.”23 Michael Hayden, former Director of the National Security Council and CIA, thinks we are in “uncharted waters” in our Republic, where we’re not arguing “over the values to be applied to objective reality, or occasionally over what constituted objective reality,” but rather over the very “existence or the relevance of objective reality itself.”24

The narrative of Trump is tied intimately to the story of Trump’s close relation to the Fox News operation. Sean Hannity, who admits he is not a journalist but rather a talk show host, Ann Coulter, and Tucker Carlson have done much to promote Trump’s message. Because of that, they possess much power over him. This became blatantly apparent when Trump did an about-face on the issue of closing down the government at the end of 2018, when these media icons along with Rush Limbaugh harshly criticized him for not demanding that money for buildi...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Narrativity or Story
• Chapter 2: Interiority or Earnestness
• Chapter 3: Normativity or Measure
• Chapter 4: Eternality or the Moment
• Chapter 5: Subjectivity or Freedom
• Chapter 6: Possibility or the Future
• Conclusion
• Appendix
• Bibliography