American Cyclops

The Gods Are Not Happy

The US Men’s National Team went with a whimper last night—a rather confused, amateurish effort against elegant Belgium—but they left with a piece of my heart and my sympathy. They would have lost even if they’d won. How’s that?

Donald Trump would have taken credit for it.. You know he would have. Especially if Folarin Bolugun had scored the winning goal. Or any goal. Or no goal. Trump would have claimed credit for rescuing the American striker from red-card suspension. Well, the not entirely American striker:

As a kid who grew up in London and came through the Arsenal youth academy, [Bolugun] could have chosen to represent England. But he qualified to play for the U.S. because his mother happened to be in Brooklyn when she gave birth. And in 2023, he opted for the Stars and Stripes.

An anchor baby. By Trumpian logic, Bolugun—a furriner unfairly protected by the 14th Amendment—would have been ineligible to play for the United States. He would have been on one of Stephen Miller’s deportation lists.

But, of course, there is no such thing as Trumpian Logic. There is no consistency. There is only What He Wants. The slapdash nature of Trumpery is self-evident—to coin a phrase—on almost every page of Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan’s excellent and essential book Regime Change. Policies—tariff levels, pardons for the January 6 felons, war with Iran—emerge from the thin air of his frontal cortex. His lizard brain—fight or flight—carries the weight of most of his cognition.

He taints every thing he touches or comments on. His Midas touch is gilt applied with superglue. Unpatriotic as ever, he tried to make July 4 a partisan affair—and was abetted by foolish members of the anti-patriotic left. But it didn’t quite work. Why? I have a theory:

The Gods have turned against him. The Greek Gods, that is. Trump is a mythic figure—you can’t gainsay his enormity—and his fate seems destined to be mythological. The Gods get peevish when mere mortals pretend immortality. Every Achilles has a heel. Trump is a blind Cyclops; his one eye sees only himself.

In this case, I suspect it was the Truth Social post portraying Trump as Jesus healing the ill. The Gods set a classic, clever Olympian trap. They gave him Venezuela—a delusional, Narcissist vision of his supreme power—in order to give him Iran, a disastrous loss that has cratered respect for America in the region and the world. Our feudal Emirati allies will soon have to pay Hormuz tolls to get their petroleum into the rest of athe world. Look at their cities—Doha, Dubai, Abu Dhabi—they are splendid in mythological way, their skylines not quite real. Yahweh might have conspired with Zeus to render them Sodomized by drones.

In the past weeks, the Gods have been mocking Trump. They turned his reflecting pool green with algae, they crushed his Great American Fair on the Mall with stupendous heat and rain, they removed his camouflage to reveal $1.4 billion in ill-gotten gains, snatched from the followers he fleeced into hoarding Trump Meme Coin. These are truly mythy events. I wonder if this all-too-obvious grift will make an impact on “working families” who admire his business acumen. (which is actually show business folderol). Even the not very reliable Rasmussen Poll has Trump cratering in recent days.

There is a lesson for Democrats here and his name is Graham Platner. He was celebrated by morally-compromised Dems because he seemed mythologically working class. He farmed oysters (with only one customer: his mother). He spoke the rough, angry, careless talk of Bernie Sanders and the DSA. Here’s the ever-progressive Michelle Goldberg in the New York Times:

If there’s a lesson here, it might be about the importance of listening hard to the people telling you what you don’t want to hear. Many Democrats, disgusted by their party’s failure to contain Donald Trump, want representatives as furious as they are, and they no longer trust their leaders to tell them who is electable. That opens space up for outsider candidates who wouldn’t have had a chance a few years ago. It also makes it easier for unfit characters to escape proper vetting.

Tru dat. The opposite of right-wing populism isn’t left-wing populism. It is humility, respect for traditional liberal values—free enterprise, the rule of law, the physical vulnerability of women. (You can’t rape them or play on their teams.) Charlatans like Zohran Mamdani should pay heed: the hubris police in the Olympian majesty of our souls are taking notes. They have the receipts.