In response to George H. Jensen’s “The ‘Truly Shakespearean’ Trump: Reading Fascism in Project 2025”
James S. Baumlin | Missouri State University
Publication: Volume 6 Issue 2
In response to George H. Jensen’s “The ‘Truly Shakespearean’ Trump: Reading Fascism in Project 2025”
Excerpt | I appreciate Dr. Jensen’s exploration of the ways that we seek to interpret and respond to (in effect, “to read”) our times through the patterns of narrative (call them mythoi) expressed in literature. In Attitudes Toward History (1937), Kenneth Burke interpreted his own historic moment—one marked by the rise of Hitlerian fascism—through contrasting lenses of comedy and tragedy. As Burke writes, “the progress of human enlightenment can go no further than in picturing people not as vicious, but as mistaken” (41; emphasis in original). To read American politics today through the mythos of comedy is to assume that its “players” have good will and are capable of correction; in which case, laughter might offer a curative to an opposing side’s “mistaken” beliefs. One might mention satire here as a more militant version of comedy, wherein mockery and caricature replace laughter as antidotes to an opposing side’s folly. In comedy, both sides learn to laugh together, reconciling; in satire, one side seeks to shame the other into submission. (In this respect, the satiric “correction” is cruel, but not deadly.) In contrast, to read politics through the mythos of tragedy is to see viciousness only: The crime of an opposing viewpoint demands scapegoat-punishment ranging from banishment to death. There’s one further mythos to mention: that of epic, which celebrates the violent victory of one side over an enemy. In this fourth mythos, the ultimate act of heroism rests in that enemy’s destruction.
Key words | Shakespearean, Mythos, Fascism, Project 2025, Christian Nationalism, American Political Culture
James S. Baumlin (jbaumlin@missouristate.edu) is a Distinguished Professor of English at Missouri State University, USA, where he teaches coursework in early-modern English literature (Shakespeare, Donne, and Milton), critical theories, and the history of rhetoric, having published extensively in these fields. He has also widely published on rhetorical theory and composition pedagogy. His current research focuses on the history of Western ethos from antiquity to the present day.
MLA Citation for this Article:
Baumlin, James S. “In response to George H. Jensen’s ‘The “Truly Shakespearean” Trump: Reading Fascism in Project 2025.'” Language, Literature, and Interdisciplinary Studies, vol. 6, no. 2, 10 Oct. 2024, pp. 2.6–2.10, https://ellids.com/archives/2024/10/6.2-Response-Baumlin.pdf.