Savonarola, 15th Century FlorenceTrump, 21st Century AmericaMoses, 12th Century B.C., SinaiSee the resemblance?
The U.S. Constitution makes an unarmed prophet of a charismatic president.
What?
Since when have presidents been prophets? and how is the commander-in-chief of the world’s highest-priced military unarmed?
To make sense of this claim, I’m going to have to widen your conception of prophets and arms, and draw upon a key chapter of Machiavelli’s Prince.
Defining the Problem
Viewed through the lens of politics, prophets are leaders who build mass followings by promising great things in a future world that can only come about through their leadership.
This easily encompasses secular prophets ranging from Lenin and Hitler to the Founding Fathers, FDR, or Reagan.
While some such, like FDR and Reagan, worked within the political system, moving gradually up within established political parties, the more radical ones were pure outsiders, barely taken seriously by the establishment figures of their times.
And, as Machiavelli describes them in Chapter VI of The Prince, for such radical outsiders to come to power, they must bypass existing norms and institutions. They start, in political terms, with nothing, achieving power solely through their “own arms and virtue”.
Virtue, as used by Machiavelli, means whatever natural power proves effective in gaining and keeping power.
Arms, likewise, means whatever further resources (followers, contributors, enablers, military or paramilitary enforcers) fuel this would-be leader’s insurgent conquest of power.
Such men lack the political resources usually required for leadership, in Machiavelli’s words “one does not see that they had anything else from fortune than the opportunity”.
They must overcome daunting obstacles: “the difficulties they have in acquiring their principality arise in part from the new orders and modes that they are forced to introduce so as to found their state and their security,’ than which “nothing is more difficult to handle, more doubtful of success, and more dangerous to manage”.
The crux of the problem: “whether these innovators stand by themselves or depend upon others; that is, whether to carry out their deed they must beg or indeed can use force.”
Here is where the difference between armed and unarmed prophets comes into play.
The Problem Solved
Machiavelli continues: “In the first case, they will always come to ill and never accomplish anything, but when they depend on their own and are able to use force, then it is that they are rarely in peril.”
“From this it arises that all the armed prophets conquered and the unarmed ones were ruined. For… the nature of peoples is variable; and it is easy to persuade them of something, but difficult to keep them in that persuasion.”
In modern lingo, populist politics rouses the people by promising things beyond their previous imagining.
But there’s a catch, at least for those who don’t have a plan beyond building a personality cult around themselves (versus, say, the Founding Fathers). The promises of populist demagogues are hollow promises, and cannot be delivered.
“And thus things must be ordered in such a mode that when [their followers] no longer believe, one can make them believe by force.”
In modern lingo, if a charismatic populist depends on the belief of his followers, but cannot use force outside the existing laws when that belief stretches to breaking, then all those with any stake in the existing order, when they see that he means to annihilate that order, will combine against him.
Unless, of course, the prophet has the armed force and ruthless will to make the people believe when their belief begins to waver. You know how it’s done. Just study the masters: Lenin, Stalin, Mao.
Savonarola — a 15th Century Florentine forerunner of Luther who condemned the luxury and corruption of Pope Alexander VI (Alexander being a prime model in The Prince of ruthless slyness, a cunning fox with few equals, posing as a man of God) — is Machiavelli’s prime example of an unarmed prophet.
Savonarola ended his days, after causing all kinds of headaches for the reigning Pope, by being burned at the stake in the central piazza of Florence, the very city he had so captivated. And at the instigation of Alexander VI, the very pope in whose side he’d been such a thorn.
Preparing for blast-off!Telling it like it isCandela!Burn now to be nicely bronzed later.
The Crucial Difference between Moses and Trump
Now Machiavelli is a masterful fox himself, and seldom says all he has to say directly.
Do you love a puzzle? Machiavelli is full of them!
If Savonarola is the ultimate bad example, who should we look to for a positive example?
Wait for it… Moses!
Machiavelli gives a short list of four great examples: Moses, Cyrus, Theseus, Romulus — the founders, respectively of the ancient empires of Israel, Persia, Athens, and Rome. The last two are probably not even real, glorious legends rather than real men. The other two are shrouded in legend and adoring devotion.
Our fox is quick to disavow that he’s so impious as to propose Moses as a model of his self-made, subversive, and ruthless prince.
After all, God was on his side: how could he lose? And why should we credit him with what was really accomplished by God?
Nevertheless, our fox keeps bringing up Moses.
So, how is Moses an armed prophet? Machiavelli never says. And when Machiavelli goes on the Down Low, that’s usually a clue.
Time for a little Bible study, in a style more chilling than you’re used to. Go forth, and read Exodus 32:26-28.
Machiavelli never says this out loud.
Prudent of him, given how Brother Savonarola ended his days.
He does however give one final “lesser example”, Hiero of Syracuse. Google him, if you wish. Or just know that a good modern analogue for him would be the late, unlamented, Saddam Hussein. Cruel, corrupt, ruthless, craving power, and bound by no limits. Saddam and Hiero did what they had to do. As Outback restaurant beer coasters say “No rules, just right!”
How far, then, would or could Trump go?
TheCourt: Think how Chief Justice Roberts has been making it clear that his Court is a conservative Court, but not a lackey Court.
ThePentagon: Think how his administration started with 5 generals, but shed all of them.
TheSenate: Think how, Mitch McConnell, his most crucial enabler, responded to his recent tweet about delaying the upcoming election. Not gonna happen.
The Court: And that tweet brought Steven Calabresi (co-founder of the Federalist Society) to cite that very tweet as grounds for Trump’s immediate impeachment.
Calabresi’s Federalist Society has been the most forceful and effective proponent of the Court’s swing to conservatism. Its current members include Chief Justice John Roberts, and the most conservative associate justices: Samuel Alito , Clarence Thomas, and (until his death) Antonio Scalia.
Finally, a little checks and balances action!
In short, there are places Trump might want to go, where none will follow him — without an independent coercive power, answerable only to him –that he does not have.
Savonarola looked strong too, until he crossed a line where the rest of the power players turned on him.
Before……and after.
All citations from Machiavelli, Niccolo, The Prince, Chapter VI, trans. by Harvey C. Mansfield.
When All Is Said and Dunn 