Elba

 He just... won't... go... away. After Trump was hit with the civil damages claim in the New York AG's case against his businesses, we all thought that his bad behavior had finally caught up with him. Here, at last, was an actual negative consequence for his actions; and there seemed no obvious way around it. I even made the mistake of feeling sorry for him. Half a billion dollars in damages seemed exorbitant to me, no matter what he'd done, and I didn't see how the court could have arrived at such a figure. 

Never was pity so wasted. A friend of mine always accuses me of taking my favorite Robert Lowell line about "pity[ing] the monsters" a little too far; and surely it turns out I need not have wasted those tears over Trump's civil damages order. Because here he is, just a handful of days later, and he has become a multibillionaire overnight, thanks to the cult-like willingness of his followers to sacrifice their financial security to boost the stock price of his intrinsically valueless social media company. 

And the worst thing of all, about this, which hadn't even occurred to me until the Wall Street Journal pointed it out today, is that this newfound wealth might not only rescue Trump from his looming court-ordered liabilities—it might also infuse mountains of new cash into his campaign. In short, he might have saved himself from bankruptcy and won the election in one go. All within days of what had appeared to be the financial low point of his life. Just when people thought he was finally against the ropes...

Trump's ludicrous ability to recover from precisely the types of setbacks that would have doomed any other political career can only be likened to Napoleon's return from his first exile on Elba. Admittedly, this is the only field in which the two men may be likened to one another. Napoleon, whatever his sins, was at least a more interesting, humanly complex, and ultimately competent historical figure than Trump. Yet, in this one regard, the two stand comparison. Both keep inexplicably bouncing back from defeat. 

Napoleon, recall, had been let off rather lightly (more so than was good for the ultimate safety of Europe) during the period of his first exile. The victorious Allies allowed him to live in relative luxury, opting not to confine him to the rude walls of a physical prison—still less to execute him, as other powers in that era might have done, for making war on the rest of Europe. No doubt, they assumed that by defeating him and then granting him this lenient treatment, they had managed to tame the threat he posed. 

One can only imagine their feelings, then, when he suddenly burst back onto the European stage, at the head of another army. In his classic of military history, The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World, Sir Edward Creasy notes, citing Scott's account of the era, that the delegates at a meeting of the victorious powers actually laughed aloud when they heard the news. Napoleon, in spite of all their precautions, had somehow managed to escape from Elba and return to power. What could they do but laugh? 

That is about where we all are right now, as we contemplate the spectacle of Trump somehow pulling several billion dollars out of a hat at the last possible moment—just when he was staring down a half-billion dollar civil fraud judgment and had failed to secure a bond to pay it. Somehow, he escaped. Somehow, he's back again. And we are all breathing the same kind of uncomfortable laughter that the Allies must have given at that conference—the laughter of sheer disbelief and consternation. 

Trump is back from his Elba of the New York courts. And so, I suppose, the question for the rest of us now is whether we have strength enough in us for an electoral Waterloo. Right now, we aren't feeling up to it. We're tired; we're just so very tired and sick of him. I'm sure the Allies felt the same thing at the time of Napoleon. But, nevertheless, they did their duty. They stood firm, and stopped him again. And I guess that's what we'll have to do—except at the ballot box, rather than on the fields of Belgium. 

And so, let's gird our loins for the challenge. He's back again. We failed to stop him. We can laugh or cry all we want about that, but it won't change the fact. And so, we have to campaign against him. We have to vote to ensure he never sets foot in the White House again. Napoleon proves that even someone who bounces back from Elba can eventually be defeated. Napoleon didn't leave Saint Helena, after all, and maybe Trump will finally be out of the running if we can manage to defeat him in another election. 

And in case we doubt whether it is necessary to do so, let us remember what Shelley said of Napoleon after his downfall. (Shelley nursed a special resentment toward Napoleon, since the latter was not only an autocrat, but an autocrat in the guise of a democrat, laying false claim to the mantle of liberalism.) Shelley's words could well be said of Trump: "I hated thee, fallen tyrant! I did groan/ To think that a most unambitious slave/ Like thou, shouldst dance and revel on the grave/ Of Liberty."