The Height of Hypocrisy
Michael Meade
All the world is but a stage
and at times the drama of life involves more than the constant battles for
power between political parties. There are times when the basic human struggle
for meaning takes center stage and demands that people see the value of life
more clearly. The root meaning of the word theater suggests a “place for
seeing,” as in seeing into and seeing through. The theater was originally a
place for people to learn to see the deeper truths about life, both the agonies
of the soul and the follies of society.
On the stage of life the inner
character of each player eventually comes out, revealing those who are intended
to play the lead and those who simply pretend to do so. In the case of Donald
Trump playing the role of president, the first hundred days have proven to be
enough time to reveal his true character. There is a need to be outspoken about
these issues, for as others have said, there are things in this world that
deserve no mercy and the top three may just be hypocrisy, fraud, and tyranny.
The issue is not that he is
simply unprepared to lead, although that is already demonstrably true. It is
not a matter of the time it takes for any new president to acclimate to the
complexities of the office. The greater issue develops when a second rate actor
pretends to be a first rate player and somehow lands a leading role on the
world stage at a crucial time in human history.
Originally, taking the leading
role was not a reference to popularity or top billing, but an indication of a
genuine ability to suffer the heart of the human drama and help reveal the
agonies and ecstasies of life on earth. Protagonist was the title for
those who took center stage in acting out the tragic-comic human drama. Proto
refers to “original and exemplary;” but protagonist also has “agony” at its
roots, as the lead actors exemplified the battle between light and dark and the
struggle between truth and falsity in the human heart.
In Greek theater the name for
those who played minor roles was “hypocrites.” Hypo refers to “under or
lesser,” as in hypothermia, meaning too little heat in the body or a hypochondriac
who has few symptoms, but pretends to have the full disease. Pretending and
being pretentious are keys to recognizing when hypocrisy has become the main dynamic
in a person’s life. Thus, a dyed in the wool hypocrite cannot help but say one
thing and do another or promise things that cannot be delivered. As the
playwright Somerset Maugham put it: Hypocrisy cannot, like adultery or
gluttony, be practiced at spare moments; it is a whole-time job.
Donald Trump has been playing
pretentious roles for most of his life and it was while playing the role of
successful businessman on Celebrity Apprentice that he became a national
celebrity. Where most people look to develop character, he simply seeks to
advertise a trumped up and false sense of himself. Since most people feel
constrained by the need to tell the truth, Trump’s indifference to it can give
him a strange advantage in many situations.
Having been a faux author, a
faux philanthropist and a faux populist, Donald Trump has also become the world
leader of making faux pas and peddling outright false statements. The French
word faux translates as “false, fake, counterfeit, fabricated or
imitation,” all words commonly used to describe Trump’s statements, claims and
now policies. A faux-pas is a comment that reveals to others that you
are ignorant about a subject or have no idea what you are talking about.
Lacking any true center, Trump
becomes more of a brand than a genuine person. Trump as huge winner, as
successful businessman, as cagey politician, and now as commander in chief
presents a remarkable case of an arch hypocrite winding up with a leading role
in an actual drama which has life and death consequences and this may be the
new height of hypocrisy.
Hypocritical has “crisis” in it as if to
warn that those who pretend to be something they are not will become revealed
to be deeply flawed characters in moments of crisis. Anyone with but a bit of
common sense already fears what disasters might happen to all of us should
Donald Trump actually have to face a genuine crisis of leadership. Disaster
means “to follow the wrong star;” in this case it means following a reality TV
star all the way to the White House where he assumes the power and position to
create world-wide disasters even as he builds his personal brand. Pride may go
before a fall; but hubris at this level could bring the whole house down.
The idea of a review after the
first hundred days might provide a turning point in how people understand the
topsy-turvy drama that has become the state of play at the Trump White House.
Just as the failed Trump University has been declared a fraud by most after
being a tragedy for some; there is a great danger that the entire country could
find itself defrauded and entangled in greater and greater tragedies.
"The key moment in many
dramas comes when a main actor makes a critical discovery that moves him or her
from a condition of ignorance to a new state of knowledge. This radical change
in the plot can take the form of a sudden realization of one’s own inner nature
or else the revelation of someone else's true character. By now it should be
clear that “the Donald” will not change, that there will never be a pivot to
being truly presidential or even to being simply humble and genuinely
human."
It’s not that people over
seventy can’t change, for many can. Rather, the problem is that for Trump to
change would mean that he would have to drop all the pretensions and admit to
many failures, fraudulent schemes and a parade of false claims. He would have
to eschew all the conspiracy theories and stop laying all the blame on others.
Such a genuine moment of change is very unlikely to happen; there is no “other
Trump.” As the writer William Hazlitt put it, “The only vice which cannot be
forgiven is hypocrisy. The repentance of a hypocrite is itself hypocrisy.”
At this stage, the change from
ignorance to a new state of knowledge must happen to other players in this
crucial drama of the republic. Those who need to acknowledge this great and
growing state of hypocrisy of course includes the Republican leaders, many of
whom seek to gain something political or personal by participating in the
public charade; but also others of any political persuasion who allow
themselves to be persuaded that this too shall pass.
In many ways, Trump is the
symptom not the cure. When there is lack of genuine leadership and a loss of
meaning at the heart of culture hypocrisy can become a collective illness. An
old idea suggests that hypocrisy on the part of powerful people is more
dangerous than other crimes; but self-deception on the part of common people is
more dangerous than hypocrisy. There is some hope in the fact that recent polls
show that a growing majority of people, including Independents and Republicans,
feel that Trump is both untruthful and untrustworthy.
Continued self-deception can
lead to tragedy on a wide scale; especially as the stakes on the world stage
have become so great when it comes to climate change and cultural healing. The
word stage comes from roots meaning “to stand” and there are times when
it is important that we each stand up for something genuine, truthful and
valuable. We are each intended to become a genuine protagonist in the drama of
our own lives and learn to see more clearly what diminishes the human spirit
and what helps to sustain the politics of inclusion and a culture of
imagination and creativity.
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