My hunch is that the term Kafkaesque was trending on Miriam-Websters since it was used in an Ashley Parker and Phillip Rucker Washington Post title and story and covered on MSNBC: ‘You’re a prop in the back’: Advisers struggle to obey Trump’s Kafkaesque rules (Paywall). Ashley Parker (below, right) was interviewed about the article on Brian Williams’ show last night (video).
Literary types and political semantacists may quibble about whether the term actually applies to the atmosphere Trump has created in the White House. There’s a good five minute Ted Talk, What Makes Something Kafkaesque, about this. It doesn’t mention Donald Trump.
In fact, Kafka wrote about ordinary workers stuck in mundane jobs with insane rules (except for Poseidon whose job became so overwhelming with paperwork he never visited the sea over which he ruled). Wiki describes Kafka’s themes as being about protagonists who face bizarre or surrealistic predicaments and incomprehensible bureaucratic powers. They have been interpreted as exploring themes of alienation, existential anxiety, guilt, and absurdity.
The jobs of those working in the White House are hardly mundane. However the word is evocative and the dictionary definition fits:
Here are some choice quotes by people who should know from The Washington Post article:
- Anthony Scaramucci: “You’re there more as an annoyance to him because he has to fill some of these jobs, but you’re not there to do anything other than be backlighting. He wants, like, a catatonic loyalty, and he wants you to be behind the backlights. There’s one spotlight on the stage, it’s shining on Trump, and you’re a prop in the back with dim lights. The president doesn’t like people to get good press. He doesn’t like people to get bad press. Yet he expects everyone to be relevant and important and supportive at all times. Even if a person could do all those things, the president would grow tired of anyone in his immediate orbit.”
- Tony Schwartz: “He has become more convinced than ever that he is the ‘chosen one’ “The blend of the megalomania and the insecurity make him ultimately dismissive of anybody’s opinion that doesn’t match his own…. When you use people like Kleenex, eventually the Kleenex is filled with snot, and you throw it out. That’s the way Trump treats everyone.”
- Rex Tillerson: “So often, the president would say, ‘Here’s what I want to do and here’s how I want to do it,’ and I would have to say to him, ‘Mr. President, I understand what you want to do, but you can’t do it that way. It violates the law.’ ”
Parker and Rucker write: “Current and former White House officials stress that Trump brokers and even encourages disagreement, but only to a point and only on his terms. The president enjoys gladiator fights — pitting his aides against one another like so many ancient Romans — but only if he can play emperor, presiding over the melee and crowning the victor.”
They explain that according to a senior advisor Trump’s advisors fall into one of four categories:
- Aides whose demise — often via tweet — is all but foregone, the result of the president’s coming to suspect that an adviser thinks he or she is smarter than he is or is trying to undermine him in some way. Example: Rex Tillerson
- The adviser who simply doesn’t gel with the president, ultimately failing to build the personal rapport necessary to survive. Example: H.R. McMaster
- There is the politically expedient adviser, who brings Trump utility in the short term. Example: Stephen K. Bannon
- The shiny new toy — an adviser Trump has recently hired and is excited about, whether because of a tough nickname (James “Mad Dog” Mattis) or because he or she has vigorously defended Trump on television or elsewhere. My examples would be John Bolton William Barr.
Getting back to Franz Kafka, this opens up the question of what he would make of Trump. This was addressed recently in this Foreign Policy article by Robert Zaretsky: Kafka Would Impeach Trump: Everything about the Mueller report is ambiguous—except its ultimate moral meaning. The author concludes:
For Josef K., the sad result, and the novel’s (The Trial) unspeakably sad and unsettling climax, takes place in a darkened stone quarry. In effect, the parable makes the darkness visible. Like the man from the country, Josef K. failed to walk through a door. By heeding the doorkeeper’s warning, and thus ceding his claim on his humanity, the man from the country anticipates Josef K.’s own failure to walk through open doors (or, for that matter, demand that closed doors be opened). It may well be that the Mueller report is an open door. No doubt other doors will follow, but if U.S. democracy sits and waits at the first door, the fault will lie with us, not the teller of the parable.
In his blog legal crime writer Peter Morin wrote “On Donald Trump and Franz Kafka” on Jan. 28, 2016.
Here’s an excerpt:
I found myself musing on this recently, thinking what was appropriate to Trumps continually massive crowds and polling data (which he will only be so happy to tell you about, whether you want to hear it or not!), and it came to me. I found that I had been using the adjective “absurd” a lot, and that brought me to thinking about A Hunger Artist, a brilliant allegory written by the great absurdist, Franz Kafka.
And with that discovery, I began to feel some sense of hope that he would eventually go away. Or more accurately, that the crowds would go away. That he would be ignored. Like the hunger artist, people would eventually tire of his performance and move on to the other attractions.
I mused for a while about the prospect that on the morning of the next debate Trump boycotts, he wakes up to discover that he is a giant beetle. I wondered how his outsized ego would deal with that.
Add Franz Kafka to other great writers of his who created surreal worlds like Lewis Carroll and Jonathan Swift who would be incorporating Donald Trump and the world he has created into their novels and stories.
I also wonder what Albert Camus, who also wrote about absurdism and who wrote a play about Caligula would write about him?