The Ritual Sacrifice of Donald J. Trump

Civilization is only a thin veneer no matter how many mobile phones, superhero movies, and GMO crops humankind can produce. When society turns in against itself, we still revert to the most ancient cure for clan strife: ritual sacrifice. Scapegoating after all is just designating a substitute of no value to stand for the king or ruling class, anointing it, treating it for a while as if it did indeed represent the people, and then publicly slaughtering it. The symbolic king becomes the symbol of everything gone wrong and its death cures the evils without anyone else taking blame or needing absolution. The king must die for the people to live.

So Donald Trump is actually a sacrificial goat, a buffoon who’s downfall will reset the balance of American culture. The primitive mind in all of us, whichever side of the Trump charade we fin ourselves cheering, we are all stranded in Aulis. Once Trump reaches the pinnacle of absolute rogue power, the mob will turn on him and he will fall like Lear, like Nero, like Hitler, his name forever associated with blind ambition. His shame will be all the more complete because he won’t understand what is happening any more than his hardiness predecessors. And the rest of us will be freed of the poisonous hatred of citizen for citizen that he and he alone engendered.