Trump: Apollo's Avatar

First things first: Apollo is not a god of order and reason. This idea first began to take root in the Renaissance, when artists and thinkers were re-exposed to ancient texts, particularly Plato with his emphasis on harmony, order, and reason, and began to conflate that with the aesthetics that predated and, often times, repudiated the philosopher.

The idea cemented itself in the Western psyche by the 19th century. The Classical revival of that time flattered itself by donning the garb of reason, discipline, and beauty, and justified its ethos by drawing from the well of ancient Greece and Rome—particularly a narrow band of philosophical texts from men like Plato, Cicero, and Aristotle—that confirmed their own modern inclinations. The memed misreadings of Nietzsche and the poor scholarship of late psychologists ossified this misunderstanding in cultural memory.

The strongest repudiation of this correlary is the fact that Apollo was the god of the koryos, the frenzied youths who raided cattle and enjoyed, during the flower of their youth, a life beyond the surveillance and strictures of the state. The koryos, like Apollo himself, were long associated with wolves—beasts who dwelled in the wilds outside of society, who stole from farmers for their sustenance, who dismissed law and the finger-wagging commands of fathers and mothers, and who were an incessant threat against the expansion of civilization.

Is the wolf, then, an icon of reason, of restraint, of harmonious beauty? No. It is a creature of ferocity, of disruption, of frenzy, of ecstasy, of the unrestrained impulses and excesses of youth. The wolf is the beast in man unleashed—and that is what Apollo is, and the koryos was.

Apollo is not a god of order and reason. He is the god of wolves, a god of youthful excess and violence. An agent of chaos garbed in golden curls, articulated abs, and the lustful swagger of a young man approaching his prime. And he is, among many other functions, a healer and a dealer of plagues.

Apollo’s schizophrenic nature captures the frenzied energies of the teenager—enthusiastic and diving into the depths of despair, driven by dauntless energy yet as torpid as a slug, overflowing with lust and yet sickened with love. This is Apollo—not some preened god composing geometric harmonies as he strums his harp and an entourage of radiant angels dances about him preaching the virtues of chastity.

With that out of the way, Trump. The corollaries are obvious. Despite Trump’s age (he’ll be turning 80 tomorrow), he is an Apollonian force—and thus inspires the vitriol and scorn from a political class that has spent the last 80 years muzzling the youth and its savage impulses.

Trump, like an amorous 16-year-old, cannot (apparently) keep his hands to himself. By his own admission, “when you’re that famous, they just let you grab ‘em by the pussy.” He (apparently) forced himself on the cooky E. Jean Carroll. Dozens of other women have accused him of inappropriate behavior, from awkward, forced kisses to flat-out rape.

For the purposes of this discussion, the veracity of these claims is irrelevant. Just as questions of whether Jesus really traveled to India or if the Buddha really stepped foot in Sri Lanka or Rumi was really born in Turkey, the questions pertaining to Trump have little bearing in the world of myth. Myth is truth-retardant, which is why when Carroll lodged her case, so many had immediately made up their minds irrespective of the evidence. So much political commentary around the case has been a lesson in post-facto reasoning.

This is fine. Myth is never a matter of facts but of the symbols and stories that accrete over time, justified by its coherence with established intuitions. Trump is a rapist because it feels necessary for him to be one. Carroll’s case, built upon some of the flimsiest testimony to pass in a courtroom, is the mirror, affirming what everyone already believes and extending it in new, organic directions. No matter which side someone is on the political aisle, these tales inform his myth as either a REAL man or as another caustic man caught up in worn-out, anachronistic tropes. Either way, very Apollonian (remember: Apollo attempted a frenzied rape of the nymph Daphne, who only escaped her fate thanks to Poseidon turning her into a juniper).

Next: youth. Trump is not young. He is not fit. In fact, for the last 15 years or so, he’s been a pumpkin in a suit. Ozempic has helped him drop weight rapidly, but Adonis he is not. What Trump does maintain, though, is the vigor and reckless confidence of youth. Prior to the election, Trump’s long-time friend Dana White called him up to discuss the mountain of lawsuits threatening to ruin him and his family.

“How are you dealing with all this, man?”

“You can’t care about stuff like this, Dana. None of it matters to me. You just have to keep going and going. You can’t live your life in fear. You can never let them get to you.”

Trump’s response is a distillation of youthful cockiness—careless, fearless, and a tad too comfortable in their own invincibility. I uttered similar things at 17 when I was hustling with Vietnam gangs  and getting shot at at raves by wiggers.

But that conversation between Dana & Tump is just that—talk. The moment that crystallized his status as a man of unvanquished confidence was the attempted assassination in Butler. Thomas Crooks took eight shots at the President, with the first grazing his ear. Rather than shitting his pants and crawling off the stage like a worm, he leaped up, pumped his fist in the air, and shouted “Fight! Fight! Fight!” as Secret Service ushered him to safety. This is Apollo.

What he did was objectively stupid. Even if an agent whispered that they had already split the gunman’s head in half, that does not rule out accomplices. Reason and the visceral terror of having been shot at would urge caution—a hurried but composed exit from the stage. Instead, he thrust himself upwards and into danger as a giant fuck you to his enemies and haters. Rather than fear, he responded with defiance.

The months that followed kept that same energy. Trump ran his campaign at full speed, working non-stop as he struggled to secure his second term in the Oval Office, and canceling few of his appearances in the name of safety. If he was going to go out, he would go out standing and fighting rather than cowering behind a man in a bulletproof vest.

Apollonian exuberance, however, suffers from excess and flightiness. Trump is a man who changes his mind a thousand times a day and bears his weight behind every fleeting conviction. It is an exhausting way to live, and something I’m incapable of.

For years, Marjorie Taylor Greene was his stalwart ally and hailed as an American patriot. After multiple clashes over the war in Gaza, the Epstein files, and healthcare subsidies, she became enemy #1. He quickly drove her out of office with his venom and pressure, aided by a horde of devotees sending her hourly death threats. They still hate each other, but, knowing Trump, he might turn around one day and vomit into a microphone, “Yea, that Marjorie, she’s great. She’s really something, isn’t she. I always liked her. Great woman. Patriot. Real patriot.”
Domestically, Trump was all-in on flooding the US with “top-shelf talent” through the H1-B visa program and student visas. After push-back from his base, he pivoted, squashing the H1-B with an executive order that required all new visa holders to make a minimum of $100,000 per year and throttling foreign student enrollment.

Trump’s schizophrenia has been playing out on the global stage. Between Venezuela, Greenland, Iran, and tariffs, the don’t-give-a-shit teenage willfulness has overturned all expectations in pursuit of what he feels like that day. Cue international chaos and his staff racing to align his talking points.

The US remains on the verge of leaving NATO. The unexpected move would be a sucker-punch to long-time European allies now unsure of where to seek security and solidarity. His aggressive use of tariffs, sanctions, and the might of the US financial system to bully other countries into doing his bidding has turned more and more countries away from the dollar and from viewing the US as a legitimate arbiter in international affairs.

Whether the US leaves NATO and how far the dollar will fall from its place as the unrivaled global currency remains to be seen. What is apparent is that the rashness and irreverence of Trump, bent on much more concrete ends and his impulses rather than satisfying ideological check-boxes or gaining the approval of mommy and daddy, has called into question all major institutions and relations on the world stage. This is Apollonian. This is the wolf. This is the unleashing of youth, passion, vigor, and the swagger of delusional immortality upon the rule-based international order.

I could go on, but I trust that this is sufficient not so much as to make the case as to direct the gaze. Trump is Apollo, his efulgent form brought down into our filthy, beautiful world, wrecking the place so that oaks and nymphs may arise from the rubble. Trump is the repudiation of decades of suppression and muzzling by the moralists on both sides—the shrill, pearl-clutching progressives who want to distribute enough fentanyl and estrogen to make everyone able to go comatose while sprouting breasts in the name of equity and the sclerotic, serious men of the right who moan about the degredation of virtue and the need to be a GOOD MAN while their civilization is shredded apart because they’re too busy jerking themselves off on how good they are rather than winning.

Why, after all, win when you can just feel good about being a good person?

The result of the war in Iran, global oil prices, America’s relationship with Israel, the fate of Venezuela, whether mass deportations are on their way or not—these are secondary concerns. The degraded, ugly, suffocating open-air prison I have been born into is the product of the forces that array themselves against Trump, and I stand by him in his rejection and dismantling of them.

The architects and enforcers of my prison are my enemy. Not Israel. Not Iran. Not globalism. Not these abstractions do not track the actual battle lines. Those architects are the shrill, scolding, joyless hags and flaccid old men, and their enforcers are the wholesome chungus and chuds who are “just trying to be a decent human being.” They have created our society of over-surveillance, of stagnation, our society deprived of adventure, exploration, curiosity, glory. They have installed foam cushions on every edge and cameras in every alley. They have replaced bullets and sabers with mean words and midwit HR harridans. They have battered, muzzled, and emasculated youth, beauty, excess, exuberance, joy, excess, ambition, the violence and lust and might of the human beast unleashed, of Apollo. It is this that I wish to see restrained, butchered, and burnt to ash—and Trump is one of the few vehicles bearing this torch, swinging the axe, and scorching these cretins.

For that, I praise him as I praise the sun. For that, I admire and adore him.
May he inspire ten thousand more Apollos to spring forth from the drab gray sprawls of concrete, bringing with them plagues and flames upon this cursed world!