The “Truly Shakespearean” Trump: Reading Fascism in Project 2025
George H. Jensen | University of Arkansas at Little Rock
Publication: Volume 6 Issue 2
In response to James S. Baumlin’s “‘The Shakespearean Moment’ in American Popular/Political Culture: Editorializing in an Age of Trump”
Excerpt | As they struggle to report on our abnormal times, American news reporters and television newscasters have regularly invoked the name of Shakespeare, declaring this or that MAGA-Trumpian act “almost Shakespearean,” “Shakespearean,” or “truly Shakespearean.” In “‘The Shakespearean Moment’ in American Popular/Political Culture,” James S. Baumlin explores the underlying rhetoric. As Baumlin writes, there’s something “vague yet somehow apt” in the term:
When, for example, some public figure does something monumentally stupid or mean and that act then redounds upon the person’s own head: Is that what the TV host intend[s] by the term, “Shakespearean”? When some politician leads a crowd chanting “Lock her up!” and then gets locked up himself, can we call that “Shakespearean”? Surely there’s some “cosmic irony” in such a moment […]. There’s something incredulous, as well. We find it hard to believe that anyone could be so stupid or so mean as to do or to say … that. “I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it”: Words to that effect invite us to call a moment “Shakespearean.” So I assume. But there’s something more lurking in this usage. (2.29)
The “something more,” as Baumlin describes it, focuses less on actions of the age’s political “players” and more on the cultural/political role of their citizen-audiences. As Baumlin notes, “the term ‘Shakespearean’ serves to identify or, more saliently, ‘to make visible’ our own historical moment, when we become aware of ourselves as witness/audience within that moment” (2.32).
Key words | Shakespearean, Fascism, Project 2025, Donald J. Trump, MAGA, American Political Culture
George H. Jensen (ghjensen@ualr.edu) is retired from the Department of Rhetoric and Writing at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, USA, where he served as Professor and Department Chair. A pioneer in the development of personality theories of writing, he has written extensively on the application of Jungian personality types to the teaching of composition. A published memoirist, his most recent publications explore the genres and ethics of nonfiction.
MLA Citation for this Article:
Jensen, George H. “The ‘Truly Shakespearean’ Trump: Reading Fascism in Project 2025.” Language, Literature, and Interdisciplinary Studies, vol. 6, no. 2, 25 Sep. 2024, pp. 2.1-2.5, https://ellids.com/archives/2024/09/6.2-Response-Jensen.pdf
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