Abstract

Donald Trump’s election to the Presidency of the United States has thrown the country, and much of the world, into turmoil. He is not only an untraditional American political figure. He is a source of continuing chaos and uncertainty on the international stage that has had profound repercussions. Yet, despite intense controversy, charges of corruption and ethical and moral lapses, he maintains dedicated support among his base, and inspires intense loathing from his critics by tapping into a deep archetypal well of existential dread that resonates with the enduring mythic powers of the Minotaur of Greek mythology. This paper will trace the mythic and archaeological history of the Minotaur and demonstrate how Trump has awakened and embodied this ancient archetype.

Author’s Note

A recent article entitled, “The Trump Voters Whose ‘Need for Chaos’ Obliterates Everything Else” significantly substantiates much of this paper. President Trump, a massive generator of change in modern politics, has induced and inflamed chaos-causing issues on a daily basis and thereby solidified his electoral base behind their common desire to “create havoc” (Edsall, 2019). The urge to political nihilism stems from a variety of sources of disaffection such as, but certainly not limited to, distrust in established political parties, both left and right, fear of migrants, and belief in white replacement theory, all discussed elsewhere in this paper. Trump, with a weird genius for detecting these fractures, has encouraged massive fault lines to open up in the American landscape. Another paper, drawing on theories of evolutionary psychology (McDermott & Hatemi, 2019), takes this a step further and explains the rise of populism in general and Trump in particular, as a reversion to a primal human need to be part of the group, but with a twist. With the rise of social media, the group is no longer defined by overarching elite structures such as the media or political process, but rather has become a multitude of groups, each united by its own common grievances (gun control, a woman’s right to choose, economic inequality and so on), but different from each other, all of them highly influenced and cohering around the cheap and far reach of social media, with no particular concern for provable facts. Facts, in fact, get in the way of the hostile political rumors that feed their shared need for chaos. The various elements of the populist movement fanned by Trump’s daily outrages has in common the tribal “us versus them” mentality. Reverting to this evolutionary circling of the wagons is what has awakened the fear of and desire for the chaos-inducing Minotaur archetype: the desire to destroy at any cost because people need to start over, “society should be burned to the ground,” we should let the political and social institutions “all burn,” and the desire “to destroy beautiful things” (Edsall, 2019). As the authors say, “Symbols, images, and words now represent the greatest threats most peoples in democracies ever face (McDermott & Hatemi, 2019)… as an element of psychological protection.” Simply an image of “The Other” is enough to trigger a threat response. This is the very basis of the shadow archetype, the symbolic monster arising as the omen that life is out of balance, embodied by the Minotaur and currently inhabited by President Trump.

The story of the Minotaur is one of the most familiar Greek myths and one of the most frequently re-imagined in our modern era. The Minotaur, the “bull of Minos,” originated in an enduring tale of crazed, god-induced chaos, lust, and betrayal and , yet is never mentioned in any other surviving Greek myth. King Minos of Crete, in order to cement his status as the indisputable king, begged of the god Poseidon to send a perfect, white bull from the sea so that he could sacrifice it back to the god, thus establishing his power base and demonstrating his relationship with the god. However, greed overcame Minos, and he kept the god’s bull, sacrificing a lesser animal. Poseidon chose not to punish Minos directly, but rather struck his wife, Pasiphaë, fixing her with the curse of madness and an unnatural lust for the white bull. She later bore the Minotaur. The eerie strangeness of this creature, who lives his life lurking in a prison awaiting a captive tribute of Athenian youths on which to feed, makes for a compelling tale. This, combined with the romantic tragedy of his half-sister, Ariadne’s love for the Minotaur’s murderer, and the intricate metaphor of the labyrinth, stir dark fantasies and fears. It has sparked imaginations across millennia as the source for endless interpretations. In our age, the myth and the Minotaur have been mined thematically in many novels: Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, Jorge Luis Borges’s Labyrinths, Mark Z. Danielewski’s The House of Leaves, and retold in Mary Renault’s Bull From the Sea. It has also informed video games such as “Labyrinth of the Minotaur,” and numerous paintings by Picasso, to name only a few artistic adaptations of the tale’s disturbing themes.

The reverberant echoes of this ancient story of deceit has also surfaced in commentary on the Trump White House. In January of 2019, at the height of President Donald Trump’s government shutdown to force Congressional funding for a wall on the southern border of the US, New Yorker magazine’s cover (January 28, 2019) depicted Trump in the oval office building a brick wall on the Resolute desk. The Minotaur metaphor was subtle, the labyrinth implied, yet was unnervingly resonant.

In 2016, the Electoral College and Russian meddling aside, the American voters elevated this billionaire real estate mogul and reality television personality, with no political experience, to the most powerful office in the country, if not the world, in a tragi-comic repudiation of our governmental norms. The response was instantaneous and passionate. His base saw it as a prophetic miracle and his critics as their worst apocalyptic nightmare. Very few voters were in the middle and those who were, sat out the election. While the new administration, which did not expect to win the election, attempted to get organized, the Resistance began forming literally overnight.

The universal descriptors of Donald Trump and his administration are chaotic, disorderly, malicious, misogynistic, narcissistic, bullying, and particularly prone to betrayal. Common terms to describe the political atmosphere include “unprecedented,” “in uncharted territory,” and “not normal.” (Robinson, 2018; Nazaryan, 2019; Dowd, 2019). His base is invigorated and emboldened by his behavior, celebrating or rationalizing it. Republicans with an eye to reelection are reluctant to cross him and others are willing to overlook his louche behavior if it results in political changes they want enacted such as overturning Roe vs. Wade.

Trump’s choices for Cabinet positions appeared to be put in their offices specifically to dismantle them, actively or through incompetence. Michael Flynn, only days after being appointed National Security Advisor, was fired for having possibly been compromised by Russia (McCarthy, 2018), our most malevolent enemy, and it has been revealed that many more in Trump’s circle have had questionable connections with Russia (Crowley, 2017). Trump’s unabashed affection for Putin and other autocrats sparks uneasy suspicion. Many administration officials face investigations and congressional hearings or are serving jail time (O’Donnell, 2019). The President has undercut, insulted and demonized his Judiciary, his Generals, the CIA, the FBI, the physically challenged, members of his administration, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, the French, the Canadians, African countries, and POW Senator John McCain in his grave, to name but a few. He insulted his senior intelligence officials, all experts in their respective fields, suggesting they “go back to school” when they unanimously disagreed with his foreign policy decisions (Oprysko, 2019). His attacks on the press have created alternative facts, fake news, and undermined the credibility of the news media. The Washington Post’s tally of his provable lies is in the thousands. Personnel in the White House have come and gone at a head-snapping pace (BBC, 2019), important positions remain unfilled, or filled by “acting” officials not vetted by Congress, and national security is at risk on a number of fronts as a result (Cordero and Geltzer, 2019). Jared Kushner and others have been awarded top-level security clearances at Trump’s insistence, despite refusal by the FBI and CIA to grant them based on questionable business practices with foreign governments (Vanity Fair, 2019).

The list of “not normal” grows longer every day. We are saturated with his toxic tweets, such as telling four congressional women of color to “go back where they came from” and referring to Senator Elijah Cumming’s district of Baltimore as a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess” (USA Today, 2019). The President continually subverts his administration’s policy decisions. The blizzard of controversial legal, moral, and ethical disparities coming out of the White House is relentless, each surpassed by another before the daily news cycle is over. The President of the United States in his past, bragged about grabbing women by the genitals (Fahrenthold, 2016) and has subsequently been accused by almost two dozen women of sexual assault, the details of which are startlingly similar (Desjardins, 2019). That the President could be tried as a serial rapist is certainly unprecedented. This prompted an opinion piece by Paul Waldman asking if we have become numb to Trump’s loathsomeness (Waldman, 2019). How can we make sense of this, as participants in an allegedly representative democracy, party affiliation aside, and how are we to move through it? Why does he still maintain a dedicated following, despite personally representing many of the moral failings long repudiated by the conservative Republican party.

George Frederic Watts [Public domain]

The Minotaur has been a shadowy part of human consciousness from the earliest humans, passing through many mythic incarnations. To understand the complexity and enduring power of the archetype, and how it can still exert such influence today, we must follow the ceremonial breadcrumbs that inform his character and meaning.

When life is “not normal” and we find ourselves in labyrinthine, uncharted territory without an Ariadne’s thread, a mythic understanding provides a guide. Rollo May stated that “a myth is a way of making sense in a senseless world. Myths are narrative patterns that give significance to our existence” (May, 1992). At the moment, we find ourselves in a world that is not making much sense to many of us and finding a narrative pattern would go a long way toward lending significance to what appears to be a baffling daily trip down the political rabbit hole. One’s understanding of someone as hero or monster is relative to one’s point of view, which certainly appears applicable to the intense love-or-hate attitudes toward Mr. Trump. Unassailable hero to some and narcissistic monster to others, he has attained an inscrutable mythic status. Is he a brilliant tactician with a diabolical plan or a bumbling fool who has no plan at all? In some quarters, he has risen to the level of a manifest messenger of God in what is considered by some to be modern biblical times.

Joseph Campbell ascribed four functions to myths: a mystical function revealing the wonder of the universe, the revelation of a cosmological structure to make known that wonder, the performance of a sociological function validating a certain social order, and providing a pedagogical function of how to live a human lifetime under any circumstances. (Campbell, 2004) It is the fourth of these that is most appropriate to our situation, that of living in a time of difficult circumstances. Mooring our chaotic thoughts to the mythic will help us find order amidst the prevailing chaos and lend context to confusion. An archetypal pattern engendering intense emotions is rising into consciousness. This monster/hero is buried deeply in our human past and takes the form of a very ancient composite creature, half man and half bull; an embodiment of the existential threat of chaos to established order (Campbell, 1971).

Roberto Calasso in his book The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony addresses the history of transformation, the liminal threshold by which something can undergo metamorphosis and forms can shape-shift. He refers to this as the veil of epiphany (Calasso, 1993). In ancient traditions, metamorphosis was mythically axiomatic. Yet there came a time when humans separated further and further from nature and lost access to metamorphosis. The veil of epiphany was torn. In earlier times, Pasiphaë would have been able to transform into a cow and have the bull she desired. However, Daedalus needed to build a wooden cow in which Pasiphaë would be able to mate with the white bull. The power of metamorphosis was maintained, as Calasso says, “only by inventing objects and generating monsters” (Calasso, 1993). The monstrous Minotaur, however, cannot pass through worlds or metamorphose into anything but what he is. He is stuck in his labyrinthine prison, half one thing and half another, a perverse creation of his parentage; a cursed Queen and a sacred bull, both tools of Poseidon, implemented to teach King Minos lessons in loyalty and sacrifice.

Asterius, the Minotaur of Greek legend, has a man’s body with a bull’s head. He is a manifestation of the archetypal Jungian Shadow, symbolizing desires, instincts, and repressed ideas, forming out of the attempt to adapt to cultural norms and expectations that run counter to our desires (Cherry, 2019). The Shadow is often metaphorically revealed as a monster, such as a snake or dragon, an element of wildness and chaos not fitting easily into an accepted pattern of behavior. In conflict with the Self, the unified psyche as a whole, it becomes a creature of nightmare that threatens the hero’s existence and so, the balance of life. As Jung states, “It is quite within the bounds of possibility for a man to recognize the relative evil of his nature, but it is a rare and shattering experience for him to gaze into the face of absolute evil” (Jung, 1971).

The Minotaur, as Shadow, represents a potent challenge to our moral ego-personality that must be engaged, if not overcome, to integrate psycho/spiritual balance (Jung, 1971). The price of failure is the victory of chaos, nothing less than the dissolution of order on a grand scale, or soul death on a personal one. What happens, then, when the cultural norms and expectations become undesirable, obsolete, or oppressive? At this time in our history when Americans are profoundly divided and Trump’s administration is actively dismantling our governmental structure, the challenge for us is to reestablish our identity, to rediscover our national soul. Collectively, America asked for Trump and we got what we asked for: someone to “shake things up” in a country that had become self-enriching, unresponsive, and unfair to millions of underrepresented people.

Prior to the election, the character of the Minotaur appeared in multiple programs on television: “Legion”, “Dexter”, “Westworld”, “DaVinci’s Demons” and “True Detective.” The archetype was rising into national consciousness – a menacing, brutal beast wielding a double-bladed axe was roaming the country’s subconscious. The Minotaur’s recurring appearance as omen was a warning of the chaos to come, a cumulative repository of fears and repressed ideas. His symbolic weight resides in his embodiment of male instinctual chaotic power and his potential for destruction. Beyond this, he incarnates the most grievous of sins: he is a cannibal. The Greek Minotaur came into being as the first agent and mythical representative in a cascade of socio-political transformations: the ascendancy of Mycenae over Minoan Crete (Graves, 1988, Curry, 2019). Poseidon’s vengeance in response to Minos’ greed and disrespect indicated a world out of spiritual balance that gave rise to the monstrum, created to unleash fear and chaos that could not go unaddressed. He has no consciousness of his situation or his purpose, he simply is: a raw, instinctual being. He appears in no other myths of the time and has no purpose but to await his human food, a tribute of innocent children from Athens, or his killer.

Trump neither knew of nor cared about the demands of the office of President, nor did he expected to become president, making his actually succeeding all the more inexplicable. One could argue that his motive in running was less a conscious decision made to enact legislative change, and more a raw desire for power. His erratic behavior has fueled consternation, fear, and divisions in the U.S. and abroad. As Calasso states, “When you begin to see affinity in opposites, you are entering the realm of the mythic…Paradox is the circulating blood of myth…” (Calasso, 1993). Although the citizenry is keenly aware of the divergent sides of the philosophical chasm that divides us as a people, we struggle to appreciate the affinity between the opposites, let alone the need for it, and question whether or not we can agree to civil discourse. Stepping into the liminal mythic world is a step too far for many, which tribalism, via social media, encourages. We cling to our camps with ideological fervor.

Zde [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)]

Coterminous with dark menace, bulls provided abundant life. A successful communal hunt of this large animal not only fed the tribe but also provided blood, horn, bone, sinew, a hide and the incorporeal numinous potency bestowed by a significant sacrifice. The central mystery of life, emerging inextricably from death, an affinity between the ultimate opposites, continues to endure at the heart of mystical traditions (Cartmill, 1996; Burkert, 1986).

These two attributes, abundance and danger were literally illustrated seventeen thousand years ago. Following years of study in the famous painted cave of Lascaux, archaeologist and rock art specialist, Norbert Aujoulet, determined that the art had been planned and created within a short period of time, perhaps a generation (Aujoulat, 2005). There is a cohesive narrative to some of the art. The Rotunda, also known as The Hall of the Bulls, is surrounded by gigantic images of peaceful bull aurochs and their families. This space is large enough to accommodate many people and the feel is one of communal gathering.

Two huge bulls, and their smaller cows and calves, flank a keyhole-shaped passageway leading off the Rotunda named the Axial Gallery.^[2] The bulls appear as guardians to this inner sanctum, a role they continued to play in later incarnations in Mediterranean mythology (Kramer, 1961). Sculptures of Babylonian and Assyrian bull guardians were often stationed at the palace gates, though it must be noted they have benign human faces and strong bull bodies and are not Minotaurs. In another part of Lascaux called the Shaft is another painting illustrating a man’s confrontation with a powerful bison bull. ^[3] Confronting a sacred bull as a spiritual test is a very ancient metaphor which is continued in Theseus’ slaying of the Minotaur for the glory of Mycenae. He returns to Athens to become a legendary king. Horses are, by far, the most frequently painted animals in Paleolithic caves. Yet, of all the composite animals in the caves there are more combining men and bulls than any other, suggesting a strong shamanic identification with the power of bulls. They are almost all dancing, one foot raised, tail swinging behind.

Because aurochs weighed up to three thousand pounds, stood six feet high, were extremely agile, dangerous and tasty, hunting them was reserved for the most sacred of occasions, ritual feasting usually associated with a funeral, that brought kinship groups together and set the tribe ceremonially on a route to reinvigoration after the loss of an important member. ^[4] 

As high civilizations developed around the Mediterranean world, sacred bulls and their identification with kingship, power and fertility was virtually universal. Baal of Canaan, Teshub of the Hittites, the Babylonian Marduk, Mycenaean Zeus and millennia of Egyptian Pharaohs were all associated with bulls, generally sky bulls personifying the power of thunder and the storm, which could bring welcome rain or destructive floods and hail.

In the Epic of Gilgamesh (Foster, 2001), the Bull of Heaven, Gugulana, was also the consort of Ereshkigal, Queen of the Underworld. Sent by Ishtar to kill the heroes in retribution for her having been spurned by Gilgamesh, the Bull of Heaven instead was slain by Gilgamesh and Enkidu as the first mythological ritual sacrifice. The practice of bull sacrifice endured as a spiritual motif to ensure fertility (Rice, 1998; Burkert, 1986). Gilgamesh’s challenge to the great goddess, Ishtar, also reflected humanity’s changing view of its sense of power in relation to the gods.

The story of the labyrinth and the creature known as the Minotaur enters our Western mythological tradition with the Minoans of Crete, a graceful Bronze Age culture possessing an elegant aesthetic, vast wealth, and a Brigadoon-like character. A successful trading culture of the time, evidence of their influence is found from Egypt to the western Mediterranean. The later era of this highly sophisticated culture was administered from palatial buildings, the most famous of them being Knossos. ^[5]

Crete revered a bull god, or at the very least, the power of the bull was a sigil of the powerful palace of Knossos, based on the ubiquitous presence of bull frescoes, representations of bull leaping ceremonies, iconic figurines and seal stones. There was also a goddess of the labyrinth, part of a larger pantheon, who was probably named Ariadne. Robert Graves, suggested that surrogates of the bull god and the goddess had engaged in ritual intercourse, central to the sacred fertility of the island (Graves, 1988). ^[6]

bull leaping Heraklion Archaeological Museum [CC0]

…and the renowned smith of the strong arms made elaborate on it a dancing floor, like that which once in the wide spaces of Knossos Daidalos built for Ariadne of the lovely tresses. And there were young men on it and young girls, sought for their beauty with gifts of oxen, dancing, and holding hands at the wrist… At whiles on their understanding feet they would run very lightly, as when a potter crouching makes trial of his wheel, holding it close in his hands, to see if it will run smooth. At another time they would form rows, and run, rows crossing each other. And around the lovely chorus of dancers stood a great multitude happily watching…” (Homer, 2019)

Dancing floors have been found in Crete, one unusually large one very near Knossos (Warren, 1984). Most commonly they lay at the entrance of tombs, indicating that ritual dancing was an important part of funeral ceremonies. Inside the tombs were left funeral offerings, animal bones, and disposable clay wine cups from feasting. The dance described by Homer was apparently complicated and images on ceramic ware show dancers holding a rope to possibly aid them in the proper route of the dance.

Here we have the elements of the Minotaur myth that have come down to us from the Greeks; a coupling of gods, one being a bull, the idea of a labyrinthine space, a group of beautiful, pubescent youths, and Ariadne of the lovely tresses. Probably the earliest mention of a labyrinth appears in a text of Mycenaean Greek Linear B script found at Knossos, dated ca.1400 BC, which reads, “One jar of honey to all the gods, one jar of honey to the Mistress of the Labyrinth.” (Kern, 1995).

The Minoan civilization ended after a series of natural catastrophes. Earthquakes caused buildings to fall and oil lamps to start massive fires. The staggeringly powerful eruption of Thera caused major devastation around the Mediterranean. The Mycenaeans, then a minor warrior culture, had lived and traded on Crete for many years. When the palaces on the north coast of the island fell, all except Knossos, which is uphill and inland. The Greeks gradually took control and eventually, the Minoan civilization was erased from memory until Evan’s excavation unearthed it. ^[7] The elements of what may have been a Minoan myth or myth complex, were rearranged by the Mycenaeans into a new, dark story validating their conquest, one with a conquered Minoan bull-god, the Athenian Theseus as hero, the goddess Ariadne demoted to a love-sick girl, and a brilliant culture subsumed. The potency of the Greek story swirling around the shadowy presence of the Minotaur sent deep roots into Western culture and art that are still vital today.

Edward Burne-Jones [Public domain]

The victorious Mycenaeans took the flower-strewn, sunny, celebratory, outdoor dancing floor of Ariadne where young, beautiful boys and girls danced on crisscrossing feet, and turned it into a dark, enclosed, terrifying trap for innocent youths sent as both political tribute to Minos and gruesome food for the Minotaur. This was mytho-political propaganda justifying the demise of the Minoan kingdom and made for a ripping good story. The old shamanic bull god, formerly a god of undifferentiated power, had his personality sundered by the Mycenaean conquerors, becoming both Zeus, the potent bull of the sky, and the Minotaur, a shadowy monster that needed killing by an Athenian who would be king. They unleashed the Minotaur with his double-bladed axe to roam the unconscious mind and devour souls.

How does studying the development of the ancient Minotaur archetype help us in the modern world to understand Donald Trump and his influence? We are currently treading a very present mythic landscape, where deep, unexplored emotions have emerged, at times with extreme violence. A man with white supremacist leanings ran his car into a crowd of protesters in Charlottesville killing a woman. White supremacists have become emboldened to rally and raise the Nazi salute. Angry men, predominantly white, have massacred random citizens or targeted Hispanics (Eligon 2019; Remnick, 2019). Marianne Williamson’s comment about the “underbelly of America” emerging as a result of bigoted Presidential rhetoric appears to be increasingly valid. The question has been asked a multitude of ways; why is there such stubborn support for President Trump? His list of moral and ethical infractions is too long to mention and well known; grabbing women, buying off prostitutes, insulting allies, elevating enemies, separating migrant families, caging their children, making blatantly racist comments, and lying continually about almost everything. Any one of these would have sunk another politician’s career, yet he consistently rides them out. Could he actually, as he claimed, shoot someone on 5th Avenue and not lose any supporters? Why?

What we are witnessing is what in Anthropology is referred to as the rise of a revitalization or deprivation cult among his base: similar to the Ghost Dance that swept Native American tribes in the late 1800s, or the Cargo Cults of Melanesia that grew up after World War II (Harkin, 2004). A people, under the pressure of losing their traditional way of life through conquest or other major trauma, develop ritualized ways to bring about a future world where their idealized way of life is restored through miraculous means. For Native Americans, this vision included dancing the Ghost Dance, wearing magical shirts that would stop bullets, and bringing back the buffalo decimated by white hunters. In the Pacific islands, native people made miniature ritual airplanes and runways to deliver magical cargo from a heavenly source, as they had witnessed appearing during the war, that would bring them wealth and status (Harkin, 2004). Legends told of an ancestor-god who had gone to the west, the land of the dead, and promised to return. Their vision, of course, was independent of white men.

In today’s America, millions of people, particularly white males, are suffering the trauma of powerlessness, loss of identity, integrity of self, a sense of coherent existence and a deep-seated fear of the replacement of whites by people of color (Levin & Guenther 2017; Eligon, 2019). The fear of the “great replacement,” of white genocide, is an old idea that has gained new currency in modern white supremacist ideology, particularly since the gunman who massacred twenty-two people in El Paso cited it in a screed he put on social media just shortly before he opened fire. Trump is not only attuned to their sense of loss, but he exploits it to galvanize his political base. Demonization of “the other” is a proven tactic to solidify power, whether Rohingya in Myanmar (Blakemore, 2019), Guatemalans at the border, Jews in WWII Germany, or Minoans. The “invasion” of Latinos, promoted tirelessly by Trump, has become a nightmare of cruelty for migrant families and prompted the El Paso shootings. One comment from an El Pasoan was that it felt like being hunted (Eligon, 2019). Perhaps hunted by a shadowy Minotaur.

Trump has become the savior of disaffected whites’ revitalization: the potent bull in the “bully pulpit”. “Make America Great Again” has become a badge of commitment to the larger cause of defending white America against those who would destroy it. Doing whatever it takes to prevent the extinction of your people seems rational, even noble. Trump has the force of personality who, as President, has the power to bring about change to reinstate the identity of those who feel disenfranchised. He verifies his male base’s worst aspects. While his promises to bring back coal, create wealth, remove abortion rights, roll back corporate environmental restrictions despite conclusive evidence of devastating climate change, and build a big, beautiful wall on the border were mere dog whistles to his base, his rhetoric has become increasingly racist, inciting white supremacists to respond with violence.

The chaos sown by this administration is challenging all of our vaunted American ideals. Rationality, scientific fact and truth are under siege. Reality is relative and currently subject to unprecedented manipulation through social media. For years, the expansion of large corporations and manipulation of campaign financing has imposed a super-structure of wealth and privilege to the detriment of traditional familial and kinship values: empathy, collegiality, trust, compassion, mutual support, and egalitarianism (Maus, 2016). These traditional values are undermined consistently and brazenly by this administration. His coffers are filled by Republican party members and foreign visitors who patronize his hotels and golf courses in patently obvious ploys to curry favor. The Trump family’s power and presence in the administration only reifies its priorities of wealth, exclusivity, selfishness and privilege. Comparisons have been made suggesting that Trump has taken a page, literally, from Hitler’s political playbook, a man deemed a monster of the first order except by his most devoted followers (Rosenfeld, 2019). The promise of wealth and abundance from the Trump sacred bull is a sham for the majority, despite his alleged tax breaks, tariff wars, vaunted billions and gold plating, while the shadow side of chaos is ever-present.

In his modern day version of the Ghost Dance, Mr. Trump, a famously secular, if not irreligious man, has religious counterparts who help validate his actions. Many conservative Christians make a Faustian bargain by being willing to look the other way as long as the current administration stocks the courts with pro-life judges (Tackett, 2019). Large numbers of Southern Baptist pastor and conservative activist, Jerry Fallwell’s evangelistic Christian followers embraced Trump after Fallwell’s son and heir endorsed him over Texas Senator Ted Cruz, helping Trump to win the nomination (Robels & Rutenberg, 2019). A revelatory article about how this astonishing flip came about is untangled in a piece involving a questionable real estate deal, TV actor and Trump foe Tom Arnold, a former pool boy, a Trump investment, and a deal with former Trump “fixer,” Michael Cohen, to make embarrassing photos of the younger Falwell and his wife disappear (Robels & Rutenberg, 2019). All very labyrinthine, to be sure.

Pastor Jonathan Cahn of Beth Israel is a more complicated Trump supporter. He is a Jewish convert to a brand of doomsday evangelical Christianity, a controversial and flourishing offshoot of American religion, where business, supernatural belief and patriotism mingle – an updated version of “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism” (Weber, 2009). In Max Weber’s book, ascetic Protestantism accepted a concept of the worldly “calling” which was superseded by Calvinism, which espoused predestination: that God had predetermined who was saved and who was damned (Weber, 2009). Success in worldly activities provided justification and proof of God’s favor. It also contributed greatly to the success of modern capitalism.

Alluding to an apocalyptic form of theology, Pastor Cahn implies that, as a religious figure, he has received inspired information and can explain to his flock what is happening in the world. Also implicated is that the judgement of God is ever-present, which can be interpreted as God working through humanity to achieve His ends (Kestenbaum, 2019). The anxiety of everyday chaos is then transformed into purpose and direction. Cahn’s followers firmly believe that God wanted Trump to be president in order to enact His divine will. Pastor Cahn teaches that Trump, like his ancient Biblical predecessor, Jehu, was a “flawed vessel” being used by God and was destined to become the new ruler of the land (Kestenbaum, 2019). That Donald Trump, a man who has been described as toxic, splenetic, obsessed, morally horrifying, and ignorant should be an ordained tool of God to bring about a window for spiritual revival strikes many as absurd in the extreme. Yet for those who believe in Pastor Cahn’s charismatic movement, it makes sense of the personal chaos in their lives as part of God’s plan, and incidentally, also promises wealth. The Minotaur, too, was a tool of Poseidon’s which served to lift up the Mycenaean conquest of Crete and make them a great people. Wealth and power flourished.

We are conflicted by our own democratic, American mythology. We pretend to support one another through an institutionalized idea of equality enshrined in the Constitution. Plus, we labor under the misconception that if you work hard enough and play by the rules you, the individual, can succeed. This idea of equality has been clearly discredited as income inequality grows into an undeniable chasm of separation, we are demonstrably not living in a post-racial America, and women continue to suffer income inequality and pound fists on the glass ceiling. Playing by the rules often no longer applies as the college admissions scandal has proven. If you have enough wealth, you can buy your way into privilege and out of trouble (McNew, 2019; Washington Center for Equitable Growth, 2018). These antagonistic convictions of equality and false work ethic dissociate the self from the community, one community from another, and encourage denial and finger pointing as to whom is responsible. Life is out of balance and monsters arise.

 Athena, Theseus and the Minotaur

The underpinning of the Minotaur legend was betrayal of one against another. Originating with betrayal between king and god, all the major players betrayed someone or something. Ariadne ultimately betrayed her entire country by fleeing with Theseus after he stove in the ships of Minos’ navy to prevent their being followed. All except for the Minotaur; he was the only one who remained true to what his nature dictated because he existed for one reason only, as an omen that permitted no transformation (Calasso, 1993). Trump is Trump who does and says everything in plain sight. Then changes his mind and undermines everything previously established. This is his nature and it does not change. No one talks any more about Ivanka, Mattis and anyone else “reigning him in” (Morgan, 2018). All of those on his staff who spoke truth to power have left or been replaced by loyalists (Fabian, 2019). He is on full display all the time, telling lies, defaming our institutions, slandering allied world leaders and other people in positions of power. He cannot be trusted to do what he says he will do from one day to the next. Policy changes with a tweet (Jackson, 2018). A strike on Iran that could provoke war in the Middle East is turned back at the last moment (Reuters, 2019). The cumulative result is fear, confusion, insecurity, and lack of trust, all of which result in anxiety and chaos as second-guessing becomes the norm (Boot, 2018). Stability has been jettisoned in preference for narcissistic, quixotic, mood shifts thinly veiled with the threat of a temper tantrum: an enraged aurochs turning on a dime to attack (Satow, 2018). It has led us all to fight among ourselves, to betray each other.

What do we do to right the ship of state? Is it even possible, aside from the appearance of a latter-day Theseus to deliver us – and what would that look like? Catharsis, meaning ‘cleansing’, according to Aristotle, explains the effect of tragedy and is attained through collective experiencing of pity and fear and the purgation of these emotions (Aristotle, 2018). Is catharsis possible, post-Trump, for we are certainly experiencing the agonizing unreeling of tragedy on a daily basis.

Returning to the ancient idea of the sacred bull as simply a source of potency, which may be understood as neither good nor evil, we may begin to see the zeitgeist of our era in a different light. In some ways, we should thank President Trump for being the controversial bloviator that he is. In the tumultuous wake of his election and subjected daily to the quirks of his personality, we have been forced to have conversations we may not have had otherwise. Among these are #MeToo, the Women’s March, wealth inequality, increased awareness of migrants, the cruelty of family separation, gun violence, hate rhetoric as an inciter of violence, the rise of nationalism around the world, and Black Lives Matter. The list goes on. More women have been elected to Congress and local offices than ever before. Powerful men have been brought to justice for sexual crimes disregarded in the past and women’s voices are raised and, mostly, believed. Discussions about racism, LGBTQ rights and migrants have sundered some families and brought others to new levels of honesty as challenges are faced. The fate of our planet, as climate change becomes undeniable, is finally being addressed, although not by the administration and we all have received, like it or not, comprehensive civics lessons in the last two years.

Are the daily outrages overwhelming? Yes. Looking away from the political train wreck orchestrated by a narcissistic reality star requires discipline. Seeking calm and safe harbor amidst the relentless haboob of social media has become one of the great challenges of our era. Is it impossible to survive it? That depends. Trump’s presidency, as unlikely as it first appeared, has tested our democracy, our constitution and the courts and so far, they have met the challenge. We are far from finished with the Mueller report’s reverberations and, given the number of suits against him, Trump may well spend the rest of his life in court (Fredrickson, 2019). If ultimately found guilty of crimes, he may, like his mythic counterpart, live out his days in a labyrinthine prison. Those in his orbit who have been discovered have been indicted (Sherman, 2019) and, all but Paul Manafort have testified against him (Lach, 2018). Michael Cohen has been reborn from thug to songbird (Hayes & Johnson, 2019). As an agent of transformation, Trump has pushed us to meet our darkest selves as Americans, the very darkest being a lack of moral courage to confront the Minotaur in the White House. Whether we will survive and emerge a better nation, or succumb to the bitterness and division remains to be seen. Where do we look for hope?

Betrayal is a moral injury that creates trauma. When traumatized, one looks to a moral authority for guidance. Yet if that authority itself becomes abusive, where then does one turn for support and comfort? In the wake of back-to-back massacres of innocent people incited by Trump’s rhetoric, his attempts at “comforting” those affected were rebuffed (Romero & Rojas, 2019). When the trauma has affected a nation of multiple divergent ethnicities, beliefs and lifeways, where do we begin? Immediately following the election, organizations began to form as national political resistance movements such as Indivisible, Sister District Project and many others. Planned Parenthood, the ACLU and environmental groups were flooded with donations and activated in ways unseen before. Others believed the solution to lie in building communities on a neighborhood level, to bring together people in intimate ways that would encourage civil discussion, seemingly a lost art in this polarized era. These grassroots groups seek to cultivate our withered sense of humanity by encouraging empathy, the ability to understand and share the feelings of others, rather than simply submit to the howling sectionalism of social media.

Columnist David Brooks, for example, gives us one very hopeful direction (Brooks, 2018; Aspen Institute, 2019). He sees support coming from community resources: smaller, local groups that can reach out to each other.

Wherever there is trauma, there has been betrayal, an abuse of authority, a moral injury…When you privatize morality and denude the public square of spiritual content, you’ve robbed people of the community resources they need to process moral pain together (Brooks, 2018).

Brooks has been giving speeches about social isolation and fragmentation. He is often approached by audience members who share their pain, of children overdosing, of suicide, of social injustice and sexual assault. Pain and fear is endemic in our society and a future world suffering the horrors of a warming planet leaves little room for hope. While the President fans those flames for personal and political advantage, Brooks sees a common thread: our lack of healthy connection to each other, our inability to see the full dignity of each other, and the resulting culture of fear, distrust, and tribalism obviates the ability to work together toward common goals (Brooks, 2018; Aspen Institute, 2019). After sixty years of hyper-individualism, basic norms of decency, civility and truthfulness are under threat, and, according to Brooks, these demand that we all do something extra. His solution is an organization called Weave: The Social Fabric Project. He sees social isolation underlying the majority of our problems. His solution? Building communities. Those who have not abandoned sketchy neighborhoods but work to strengthen them. People who look out for kids in the neighborhood. Groups like the Baltimore Ceasefire program whose motto is “Nobody kill anybody.” Members of the Republican and Democratic parties who meet over dinner to discuss issues, to learn from each other, and discover common ground.

Weave, which is an organization designed to repair our country’s social fabric, is promoting a revolution that replaces a culture of hyper-individualism with a culture of relationalism, a way of living that puts our connections with one another at the center of our lives, rather than our differences: community building as opposed to individualism. Weave seeks to learn from those who are building communities across the nation, building relationships, offering care and creating intimacy and trust. It’s a movement as Brooks says, that doesn’t know it’s a movement. Weave is a way to acknowledge and celebrate these small, local support communities, to encourage their success through recognition of the whole person, to “revive a moral language and develop a moral curriculum” (Brooks, 2019). In short, to restore trust.

The corruption, cruelty and self-serving at the highest levels of the current government have had a pervasive and corrosive effect on the body politic. As in the Greek myth of the labyrinth, we have all been betrayed, traumatized and made to feel we are at the mercy of the cannibalistic Minotaur in our midst, consuming each other with our fear and anger. As Brooks commented, “…people who are recovering from trauma often embrace the language of myth, which offers us templates of moral progress…” (Brooks, 2018).

He was referring to veterans who had suffered trauma in war but who learned to understand their lives as a hero’s journey, suffering separation, enduring initiation and heroic return. We must each become our own shamanic Theseus to overcome the national trauma by which we are currently afflicted, confront the Minotaur and all he represents, and emerge morally, ethically, and spiritually intact. By forcing us to truly look at one another, to learn empathy, to rely on one another, to help one another, we can overcome the fear and move into compassion.

References

Endnotes