Donald Trump and Carll Tucker were born to prosperous gentile parents in the same city five years apart. Both attended Ivy League colleges and entered the family business; spent a portion of their career in media (TV for Trump, magazines and newspapers for Tucker); dabbled in politics prior to age 65, focusing on them more intently thereafter. Both claim to have passed a basic cognition test, though one can spell jackanapes and name the fifteenth President of the United States, and the other can’t.
Peas in a pod? Antipodes, rather, moral opposites who view one another with loathing and contempt. Trump doesn’t know Tucker; everybody knows Trump. Tucker excoriates Trump as a villain as abominable as Hitler, the scourge of civilization if he isn’t stopped. Trump would sneer at Tucker as a loser, subhuman, unable to afford even a membership at Mar-a-Lago. If Trump noticed Tucker, he’d smear him with a puerile nickname.
From comparable starts one might expect comparable outcomes. What happened?
Tucker, who emits theories as readily as Trump lobs whoppers, has a theory. Yes, these two are more alike than one might suppose, natural and perhaps inevitable products of their Weltanschauung. (Weltanschauung is another word Trump can’t spell – those doubled u’s make it tricky. Trump, hearing the word, might remark “Loser,” mistaking the concept for a competitor.)
Alike? Tucker gulps. Get off it! How alike?!
Trump and Tucker breathed the same ethical atmosphere growing up and it affected them. Theirs came to be called the Woodstock generation or baby-boomers, by whom the old parental constraints were dismissed as scaredy-cat, fuddy-duddy, dumb as shit. Long hair, free love, live and let live, anything goes, a permissive non-judgmental moral relativism characterized this chronological cadre. The very idea of right and wrong was laughable, left over from “the greatest generation” – greatest, hah! Prosperity proved their point. “Greed is good.”
Trump adopted this devil-may-care amorality to his business and personal affairs. He reveled in the role of rule-breaker, toothy winner, whether he won or lost. Truth, justice, decency, law, ideals were stupid fetters; the winner was the one who got the most, period. Whoever didn’t win was a loser.
Tucker liked to win but he had qualms. He’d observed the effect of wealth on personalities, families, relations, and it wasn’t good. More did not make for better; most looked like a curse. Tucker also read and wrote. Words and, we suspect, his nature led him to admire forebears like Thoreau, Montaigne, Dr. Johnson, Jesus, Santayana, and (of course – always) Shakespeare, who taught that life meant more than material gain. Tucker came to wonder, What did winning mean?
Without morality, Tucker concluded, sounding suspiciously like his stodgy parents, life was hardly worth living and self-government unsustainable. Without goodness, society deteriorated into a ceaseless loveless fracas, eventuating in anarchy, chaos, and strong-man rule to recover order. Ruthless Trump, President by now, ruled without goodness. Gleeful greed goaded him. More for him meant less for you, hah-hah-hah.
Trump’s misrule galvanized Tucker like electroshock, transforming him into a fulminous Jeremiah, rousing his neighbors to their risk. Tucker (you’ll smile at this) came to see his mission as saving the world from Trump and the calamitous narcissism he embodied. Greed was not good. Winning did not mean trampling your opponent. Truth, justice, decency, love, grace, kindness were not encumbrances but perhaps the only sane reasons to be!
Action is reaction. For Trump, tolerance meant unlimited license. For Tucker, it came to mean responsibility. Tucker framed his war as Good versus Evil; Trump his as Winner versus Loser.
No armistice has yet been signed or victor crowned.