Many pundits are puzzled why Trump received over 70,000,000 votes when he is so clearly a disaster as a President. Of course many voted for him because they give him credit for a robust economy. Evangelical Christians supported him because of his agreeing with their anti-abortion stance and his support for other conservative measures. And many corporations supported him because of his removing climate change regulations and his action lowering the taxes of the rich.
But I think many people have admired him because he embodies a very important personage in Western, especially American, culture: the powerful, aggressive , seemingly heroic loner. His whirlwind rallies around the country so soon after leaving the hospital after having contracted and been treated for Covid must have been an embodiment to his followers of a powerful man. Those on the left saw him as recklessly endangering the staff accompanying him and the large crowds at his rallies. But he was probably a heroic sight to his ecstatic audience. Not for him the cautious approach of “Sleepy Joe Biden”, who also had many rallies in the last days before the election, but did so low-key and safely.
I see Trump occupying the long-standing Western cultural myth of the solo, heroic male figure who fights evil. There are many, many examples of this mythic figure, going back to the Greeks: Odysseus, Achilles, Alexander the Great. Other examples I think of: Julius Caesar in Rome. Christopher Columbus in Spain. Even Don Quixote, who, while a ridiculous figure, is heroic in his attempts to save his country by his chivalric actions.
(Of course, Don Quixote has Sancho Panza, who is more realistic than the Don, and a source of humor in the novel, but that in itself makes him unheroic.)
In more recent times, we have the radio show starring the Lone Ranger, riding into a town in trouble, killing all the bad guys, then riding back out at the end to the strains of the William Tell Overture. Of course he has Tonto as a sidekick, but that Native American figure was originally created just so the Lone Ranger would have someone to talk to. But the Lone Ranger is clearly the boss.
Other examples of the solo hero are Superman, Batman, Dick Tracy, Ironman and many other very powerful fictional heroes who fight for the weak, ineffective masses, but don’t have the same needs as ordinary people: for close relationships, love, being part of a group; and even such mundane necessities as sleep, elimination, cleanliness, even eating! Does Superman ever eat? If so, what?
George Washington, Winston Churchill, Martin Luther King, even Gandhi are seen as heroic, solo figures. And recipients of the Medal of Honor are usually servicemen who have single-handedly saved many men or carried out heroic actions in battle alone. I have never heard of honorees who skillfully organized a number of men to go into danger with them and rescued fellow soldiers.
Hitler was idealized by the German public as the powerful leader of Nazi Germany and very few other Germans were mentioned as leaders in the West until he achieved power and was well into WW II.
This myth of the single heroic male figure has existed all through Western culture, but has been especially relevant in American culture. Ayn Rand idealized that mythic figure, mythic because it’s very unrealistic and, in my opinion, not balanced by other essential human needs. I think that, in sum, it is a very destructive, ubiquitous stereotype. One even sees it in very popular video games where solo figures are moving through imaginary landscapes killing everyone in their way.
All of these currents, in my opinion, have helped to create events like the Trump Presidency, which negates Americans’ actual needs for connection, relationship and growth. It is especially appealing to people who lack a sense of power and efficacy in their lives. Which, I think, is the case for many Trump supporters, who have lost well-paying industrial jobs and a feeling of control in their lives to globalism, automation, the increasing diversity of the American public, and the hollowing-out of the rural areas in which they live. Here in Oregon, the timber industry used to be a very important part of the state’s economy. Partially because of the greed of the large lumber companies and the complicity of many state legislators and the state agency that is supposed to control the industry, the forests were decimated and the communities that depended on timber are struggling. Yet most of them still supported Trump!
The idealization of people like Trump results in a vicious circle. For a psychological understanding of this issue, I turn to Heinz Kohut the famous psychoanalyst. He pointed out that in addition to needs to be responded to with love and appreciation, children have idealization needs invested in their caretakers. These people, most often parents, provide a sense of safety and and comfort when they are distressed. An example is the upset baby who is picked up by her caretaker and soothed. She feels comforted by the big, powerful- feeling body of the parent. Kohut says that the need to feel connected to the caretaker when agitated is more essential to the baby than food. Later on during childhood, the child must put their caretakers on a pedestal. This has traditionally been the father, but can just as easily be the mother. Children need to do this at a primitive, factually unrealistic level during their early years, seeing the caregiver as beautiful, strong, wise and supportive. They can then feel safe and secure and able to identify with their caregivers as they grow and gradually feel their own power. With good-enough parents in their lives, they are able to come to see their parents as imperfect human beings whom hopefully, they can still love and admire, but not at the primitive, global level they needed to when they were very young. As adults, they are now more capable themselves of dealing with a difficult world. But even the normal adult needs to feel part of something bigger, strong and more important than themselves: for example, their profession, the company they work for, their religion, their family, posterity.
Kohut also pointed to what he termed “mirroring needs,” to be seen in infancy and childhood as the apple of the parent’s eye, to feel unconditionally loved. As the child grows, they gradually learn to meet these needs with other people and in a variety of ways, e.g., by getting good grades in school, feeling loved by relatives other than the parents, doing well in sports, etc.
If, however, their parents have lost the good-paying jobs they once had and are irritable, depressed and perhaps drinking or using drugs to soothe themselves, their children lose their needed idealistic vision of their caregivers much too soon. Their self-esteem is affected because the parent can’t meet their mirroring needs. The essential requirement however, for a powerful figure to identify with still exists. And then it’s easy to see someone like Trump, who appears powerful to be that figure. He himself obviously has very intense mirroring needs!
(But we must face the fact that a majority of white males who do not fit into the category of missing a sense of efficacy and power also voted for Trump and I think that’s an indication of something missing for men in general in our country.)
How Can We Deal With This Problem?
Our tendency to idealize people who lead us astray is an issue that must be dealt with if we are to continue as a democracy. Here are some ideas.
1. Teaching young people to admire those people who lead by being cooperative, rather than only competitive. These are leaders who can identify, firstly, with what should be their primary goal, which is to enhance the well-being of the organization they are leading, whether it’s a business, a charity, a sports team or a political constituency. And teaching young people to deny power to those, such as Trump, who are clearly only striving for positions of leadership to gratify intense narcissistic needs. These people are really the leaders of cults who are not interested in having their followers grow to the point where they are not needed, but to continue to almost literally possess them.
2. Culturally admiring leaders who recognize their own limitations and find those to support them who have the skills and vision and flexibility to know what is needed to deal with problems as they arise. I think of a number of people who were able to do that: Obama, FDR, Jack Welch, the ex CEO of General Electric, and Terry Stotts, the coach of the Portland Trailblazers. It is not generally known now that Dwight Eisenhower was that kind of general during WW II. He was an excellent administrator, rather than a skillful battlefield tactician and was recognized by the people who had the factual knowledge of the war as the real hero of WW II. George Patton was better known and admired because he was the kind of narcissistic, reckless but seemingly heroic general who was very aggressive in leading his tank corps. He was actually a precursor to Trump! He was also openly racist.
3. Finally, getting more women into political power. As more of them become elected to political office, we will see that the female tendency to cooperate rather than compete will be regarded as much the better way to lead, for men and women. As a current example, the countries who have done the best to deal with Covid have female leaders. Those who are doing worse, are leaders much like Trump, narcissistic, unable or unwilling to admit to their mistakes and change course when they see that what they have been doing is ineffective, even destructive. .