Trump and The Magic Mountain

Trump's racist tweets aimed at members of the House of Representatives may be the most inciteful and accurate thing he has said during his first 2.5 years as president. Trump's comments telling the four women congressional representatives to go back to their countries and fix them because they are broken is correct. And they are doing just that. They have been elected to help a fix a broken government, one broken by the Republican attempt to hold on to the power though illegal and non-democratic methods.

The Republican have found in Trump Thomas Mann's perfect representative of the faith based, irrational approach to life. In The Magic Mountain, Naptha, the Jewish convert to Catholicism and a  Jesuit says:
Whatever profits man, that is the truth. In him all nature is comprehended, in all nature only he is created, and all nature only for him. He is the measure of all things, and his welfare is the sole and single criterion of truth. Any theoretic science which is without practical application to man's salvation is as such as without significance, and we are commanded to reject it.
Substitute 'Trump' for 'man' or the appropriate pronoun 'he' and see what you get. It describes Trump's character and his complete lack of understanding or belief in science. And it explains his constant lying. Trump's world only exists as he sees it, regardless of contradictory facts. "Trump is the measure of all things, and Trump's welfare is the sole and single criterion of truth." See how smoothly Mann's words fit the Trump World.

Then Settembrini, Thomas Mann's rational humanist, responds to Naptha with:
Your pragmatism, Settembrini responded, needs only to be translated into terms of politics for it to display its pernicious character in full force.
Settembrini knows that when a narcissist has political power, it is a dangerous situation. Trump is the representative of the world before Science, before World Wars 1 and 2, and before nuclear weapons. He knows nothing about the forces that have shaped the 20th and 21st centuries. He would take us back to the time of the Inquisition. He can't take us back to a time before immigration to America because there has never been a time when America was not the arrival point for the worlds people looking for a better life, a life under democracy and law. The Statue of Liberty is our symbol.

Thomas Mann used the setting of the tuberculosis sanatorium as the place where idle time recovering from illness gave his main character, Hans Castorp, time to reflect on the nature of life and death. Castorp listened and learned. All Americans are living in a Trumposis sanatorium. Many are suffering from a failure of their lives to give them access to the American dream. Will they listen and learn from the facts, from history, from science? Or will they fall back on the Bible, the Torah and the Koran for guidance in our modern world? Will Americans give power to people based on skin color and gender or to people because of their ability to explain and hopefully correct our problems?

The battle lines are now drawn and they are clear.  Ironically Trump's most recent tweets have clarified the issues. Any American who supports Trump supports white supremacy, the suppression of women, and greed. I would love to have Thomas Mann's thoughts on this American crossroad.


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