What Montaigne Said about Donald Trump and His Administration
Credited with virtually inventing the personal essay, Michel de Montaigne wrote about anything and everything that concerned him as a human being: physical ailments, ethics, religion, animals, soldiers, rulers, wine, crops, books, O so many books, politics, food, digestion . . . all the things that concern us all the time, but had not really been admitted to the ranks of literature as a legitimate subject matter in 16th century. Here is Montaigne on our current problem occupying the Oval Office:
Dionysius used to make fun of the grammarians who are at pains to inquire about the troubles of Ulysses and are ignorant of their own; the musicians who tune their flutes and do not tune their morals; the orators who study to talk justice, not to do it. If our soul does not go at a better gait, if we do not have sounder judgment for all our learning, I had just as well my student had spent his time playing tennis: at least his body would be the fitter. See him come back from there, after fifteen or sixteen years put in: there is nothing so unfit for use. All the advantage you recognize is that his Latin and Greek have made him more conceited and arrogant than when he left home. He should have brought back his soul full; he brings it back only swollen; he has only inflated it instead of enlarging it. (From “On Pedantry”)
And so we currently have a President attempting to lead our country who has had in his life all of the so-called advantages: a wealthy inheritance, a reputable schooling, a family, social visibility, and now a measure of political power rarely given to one individual.
And yet there he sits on his golf cart as the country wilts under the pandemic. His soul is not full; it is empty. His government is swollen with corruption and incompetence; his judgment is inflated with self-regard and a dangerous diffidence that leads him to overreact to the slightest provocation.
The Presidency should have enlarged the man, as it has done many other Presidents. Instead, it has only inflated him, and our country is suffering under his claustrophobic inflation.
