There is something in Trump's character that invites a certain two-facedness on the part of his allies. After all, he demands of his various camp followers and toadies that they display constant uncritical devotion. No matter how terrible his behavior, the slightest sign of opposition from his various lackeys can transform one in an instant from trusted minion to arch-nemesis. Even Bill Barr, who did his best for years to enable Trump's excesses, nevertheless ended up on Trump's enemies list, purely because he refused to invent bogus reasons to overturn the 2020 election results, or to say that there was evidence of widespread voter fraud when there wasn't any.
This constant need to cringe and bow before Trump, no matter the moral toll he exacts, surely wears people down over time. Whatever dignity remains inside them therefore starts to kick against the humiliation. People try to salvage their inner self-respect by rebelling, if only inwardly and silently. Thus, many of the same people who have appeared in public to be Trump's closest political allies, have also expressed to friends in private that they utterly loathe the man.
J.D. Vance, for instance, now a Trump henchman-in-training competing for the spot of his top lieutenant in the Senate, once reportedly texted a friend to speculate whether Trump might not become "America's Hitler." Tucker Carlson, the biggest engine of pro-Trump and pro-Putin propaganda on American social media today, has reportedly written in private messages that Trump is a "destroyer" and a "demonic force" in American politics. Kevin McCarthy, who sought to position himself as a Trump ally in order to hold the House speakership that was ultimately wrested from him, was famously caught on tape in 2016 "joking" that Trump was one of two figures in American politics who are probably on Vladimir Putin's payroll.
It may seem confusing that the very people apparently most devoted to Trump all fear and detest him behind his back. But perhaps this is an ancient and long-standing dynamic in politics. It is the very people who have to smile and applaud over the emperor's new clothes, even when they can see he is actually stark naked, who build up the most resentment against him. It is so exhausting to have to keep up the public performance of flattery, that it is no wonder they nurse in private a secret loathing.
I was thinking about this the last few days because I've been reading Procopius's classic work of late antique invective, The Secret History. The enduring fascination of this sixth-century book stems in part from the fact that Procopius was himself the official court historian of the Emperor Justinian and the Empress Theodora. He was very much a part of the Byzantine ruler's inner circle, therefore, and openly published works recording their achievements in the arts of military leadership and statecraft. Yet, nevertheless, he also left behind The Secret History to posterity, which skewers and excoriates Justinian and Theodora, portraying them both as greedy reprobates and monsters of every conceivable vice.
The paradox of these two very different authorial personas has led to much speculation as to Procopius's real motives and opinions. Which of the works—the official histories or the unofficial Secret History—reflects Procopius's actual views? In the latter work, Procopius tells us himself that it reflects what he really thinks, it's just that, he couldn't publish the Secret History openly during his lifetime because he feared for his life. To tell the truth about Justinian and Theodora, while they still lived, he writes, would mean "detection by swarms of spies" for him and, "if caught[, ...] death in its most agonizing form." (Williamson/Sarris trans. throughout).
Yet, for someone who professedly hated his rulers and employers so much, Procopius certainly worked very well for them. This has apparently led some scholars to speculate that the official histories may actually come closer to reflecting his real views, and that perhaps he only prepared the Secret History as a way to hedge his political bets. So long as Justinian and Theodora's reigns lasted, he could continue to serve their regime. But also, if they were ever overthrown and replaced by a rival faction—so this theory goes—then Procopius could pull the Secret History out of its desk drawer as a way to prove that he had never truly supported their government. He could even wield it as propaganda for the new regime and a way to endear himself to the new overlords.
I think our experience in today's politics with Trump's flatterers suggests that there is less of a mystery, though, behind Procopius's conflicting political stances than may at first appear. Maybe it happens a great deal in politics that people will attach themselves to someone in power, and develop a loathing of them in private from witnessing their behavior up close, and nonetheless find that it is too late by that point to extricate themselves from the situation. This seems to be what has happened to the Trump toadies. Even when they realize full well how awful he is, they also find they cannot escape his influence, if they want to retain any future role in Republican politics or conservative media. So they go along; they toe the line in public; even as they nurse in private a deep resentment.
It proves possible to maintain the deception—to keep up an outward public appearance of devotion while holding a seething cauldron of mutinous hatred within—because Trump is so distinctly amendable to flattery. Even though the slightest criticism from a former ally is enough to make Trump despise that person with unbounded vindictiveness, by the same token, the first sign of flattery and groveling from former foes is enough to sway Trump's opinion back in the other direction.
And this, tellingly, was also a characteristic of the Emperor Justinian, in Procopius's telling. Is there not something rather Trumpian in the court historian's description of the latter's character?:
[H]e was both prone to evil-doing and easily led astray—'both knave and fool' as they say. Nor did he ever speak the truth to those he happened to be with[;] yet to anyone who wanted to deceive him he was easy prey. He was by nature an extraordinary mixture of folly and wickedness [....] For in his judgment he was extraordinarily inclined to vacillate, at the mercy of those who at any moment wished to lead him in whatever direction they thought fit [...] and he perpetually exposed himself to gusts of flattery. His fawning courtiers could with the utmost ease convince him that he was soaring aloft and 'walking on air.'
Is it not likewise said of Trump's character that the only thing he remembers is whatever was said to him by the last person to leave the room? And has not every major autocrat on the planet's surface—from Putin to Xi to Kim Jong Un—managed to win Trump's praise and approval simply by mouthing at him a few flattering words? Seldom if ever has there been a U.S. president so "easily led astray" by the latest groveler. And this, surely, is what accounts for the fact that, even as his enemies list keeps growing with the names of erstwhile allies, so too, some of his former enemies—such as Vance and Carlson and McCarthy—find it easy to worm their way back into his good graces, simply by the use of silken words.
And while we're on the subject, I also can't refrain from pointing out that Procopius's rhetorical denunciations of Justinian often closely parallel the ones that Carlson et al. have heaped upon Trump. Recall that Tucker once called Trump a "demonic force." Well, Procopius has multiple extended passages in the Secret History in which he entertains at length the possibility that Justinian is a literal "demon," even calling him the "head of the demons." He says that no mortal being could go for as long periods without food or rest as Justinian could manage; he recounts bizarre second-hand anecdotes in which people reported seeing Justinian's head disappear in mid-stride or his face become featureless and distorted. Justinian too, in Procopius's telling, was a "demonic force."
The two-facedness of the sixth century court historian is therefore highly reminiscent of the duplicitousness of our contemporary Trump acolytes, even down to the words they use for their supposed masters. Yet, Procopius is infinitely more sympathetic than our contemporary lackeys are, because he was a man genuinely trapped. He lived in a society where, as he tells us, he literally faced death and torture if his true opinions of the reigning monarchs even became known. He therefore had very good and relatable human motives for keeping his true opinions of the governing regime to himself, rather than publicizing them to the world.
Our current Trump toadies, however, do not have even that excuse. They are not forced under penalty of death to toe the Trump line. They are merely choosing to do so, out of sheer perversity and lust for power. They are choosing to put themselves under the ideological yoke of subservience to MAGA and Putin, simply because they think it will advance their careers in conservative politics and media, not because they need to shoulder it, as Procopius did, in order to survive. They are choosing mental servitude, when the path of honest freedom all the time lay open to them. Even though they don't live in Putin's Russia, they are choosing to mimic Putin's talking points as if the Russian dictator had a polonium-tipped knife to their throats.
Vance is perhaps the worst example of them all, for he is clearly smart enough to know better. He saw through Trump's racist demagoguery from the start, saying that he might become "America's Hitler." Yet here we are now: just this past week, Trump's comments describing immigrants as "poison" in the "blood" of the nation, drew comparisons to Hitler's rhetoric. And yet, there was J.D. Vance, pretending to have forgotten everything he once knew about Trump, now endorsing the former president's vilest words. He has chosen to characterize Trump's "poisoning the blood" comments as "objectively and obviously true."
Of course, though, Vance is not alone in abetting Trump, even while knowing full well what a "knave and fool" he is. And maybe, by knowing the truth in private, and even uttering it to their friends in private messages, these supposed Trump allies manage to preserve their inward self-respect and sense of intellectual freedom. But because they never translate this private displeasure with Trump into open and public opposition, they serve to enable all of his abuses. And this in turn, Procopius tells us, is why Justinian and Theodora managed to operate a reign of terror and iniquity without ever being stopped.
Nor indeed did even one member of the Senate, Procopius writes, seeing the state saddling itself with this disgrace, see fit to protest and to oppose such proceedings[....] All of them, I imagine, were subdued by the thought that this was the fate assigned to them and accordingly lifted no finger to prevent this revolting state of affairs, as though Fortune had given a demonstration of her powers.
Indeed, it is the same sort of fatalism that makes it so hard for any American politicians—especially on the right—to intervene to stop Trump. They may regard him, as Tucker apparently does, as a "demonic force." But for that very reason, they feel they can do nothing to resist him. He is a kind of supernatural power that sweeps through our nation's political destiny and cannot be fought; merely submitted to. But, as Procopius points out, it is this very attitude of defeat and powerlessness before this man—whom, apparently, none of us can stand, not even his closest would-be allies—that makes him so powerful and unstoppable in the first place.
Whereas if everyone who detested him just admitted it, and were willing to work together, our society might not be subject after all to this great "destroyer" of our institutions.
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