God and King and Law

 Trump took another dramatic step forward in his normalization of authoritarian rhetoric yesterday. As the New York Times reports: he specifically shared a picture of himself wearing a crown, accompanied by the slogan "Long Live the King." 

In reality, of course, Trump is not a king. He is the elected president of a republic that was formed through a revolution that overthrew a king, and which guarantees in its constitution a republican form of government to all its member states. 

But Trump's increasing arrogation of quasi-dictatorial powers has led some critics to accuse him of acting like a would-be monarch. One of the slogans of people who gathered to protest his policies on Monday (President's Day) was: "No King, No Crown." 

As so often, Trump then seemed to take his cue from his critics' worst suspicions. No sooner had protesters started warning that Trump was trying to appoint himself king, than Trump starts openly referring to himself by that royal title. 

Nor was Trump's recent declaration of his own "kingly" status a one-off. Over the weekend, he had also made headlines by repeating a quote ostensibly attributed to Napoleon, which appeared to mean that Trump saw himself as above the law. 

It so happens I had just been re-reading Percy Shelley's classic political poem, "The Masque of Anarchy"—about the British government's crackdown on protesters in the "Peterloo massacre" of 1819. Shelley in the poem depicts various embodiments of the British government. 

One of these figures is described as follows: 

Last came Anarchy: he rode
On a white horse, splashed with blood;
He was pale even to the lips,
Like Death in the Apocalypse.

And he wore a kingly crown;
And in his grasp a sceptre shone;
On his brow this mark I saw—
'I AM GOD, AND KING, AND LAW!'

That would seem to be Trump, riding in to put down the U.S. public's lawful protests, declaring himself the embodiment of the law ("He who saves his country violates no Law," as Trump recently declared on social media), and appointing himself king over the unwilling multitude. 

But of course, an autocrat who declares himself to be the sole source of law and divine right is actually lawless. As Joseph Conrad once wrote, "The ferocity and imbecility of an autocratic rule rejecting all legality" is itself a kind of "anarchism," even if it appears under the guise of a state. 

And so Shelley would appear to be correct in his denomination of the figure riding in on the horse. He may govern through elected office. He may have declared himself God and King and Law. But his true name—Trump's true name—is really "Anarchy."