Le Mythe de Donald Trump
Donald J. Trump, former CEO and reality TV star, is slated to be inaugurated as the 45th President of the United States after his November 8th victory over Hillary Clinton. He is coincidentally, the absurd hero that was described by Camus in 1942’s The Myth of Sisyphus. While the irony of having the hero central to the philosophy of Camus, a man who flirted with communism and syndicalism, be a capitalistic businessman, Donald Trump displays every characteristic inherent in the absurd hero. Compare him with Sisyphus. Sisyphus has been doomed for all eternity for his pride against the gods, cursed forever to roll his boulder up a behemoth of a mountain, only to watch his rock roll back down at the end of every day, and to have to roll it up once again at the beginning of the next day. For Sisyphus, the archetypical absurd hero upon which all others are judged, the thrill is in the ascent, the harsh, life defining struggle to the top of the mountain every day, the harsh reality of the struggle itself. Sisyphus rolls his boulder to the top every day, in full knowledge of the conclusion of the day’s struggle, yet he does it anyway, pushing his boulder, his ball and chain, his shackles to the struggle, up to the top, only to watch it fall down again at the conclusion of every day. See, his struggle is each of our struggles, in their own way. Each of us is doomed to this absurd life, doomed to live on this earth without purpose, doomed to a life whose purpose is unknowable by the human mind. We struggle for purpose, as we are creatures of order, but day in and day out we are eluded by this oft-sought conclusion. However, we must rise above despair in the face of this harrowing revelation of an illusive purpose; we have to continue to fight it, we have to continue to rebel against the purposelessness inherent to the life we are currently living, we have to be in complete opposition to the purposelessness of life, but we must accept it; we must never let nihilism take over and erode our morale. We must accept our condition. It is imperative, necessary, that we accept our circumstances, in order to achieve the clarity of mind that we must attain to transcend over our earthly struggle, our earthly doom. We mustn’t live a deluded life, holding out hope for some sort of reconciliation when we may never actually get it (it may come, but we can’t know, so holding on to hope is folly); in the same vein, we mustn’t sulk over our impending death and the smallness with which all existentialisms evoke. We must ascend. We must ascend over this despair with a clearheadedness that living in knowledge of and in rebellion against the absurd brings. In this way, Sisyphus transcends his struggle against his rock. In the ascent, Sisyphus can find meaning in the suffering, in the rebellion against the rock, in the sweat on his brow and in the strain in his arms pushing up the rock, and on his way down achieves the clearness of mind and of the spirit required to find true peacefulness with the absurd. He becomes, in his struggle, more than his rock, more than his struggle, and more than the absurdity of his existence. And so, Camus left Sisyphus on the foot of that mountain. In his clearness of mind, the Universe without a master seems to him neither futile nor sterile; the opposite is true, as Sisyphus can now enjoy his struggle. The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart, explains Camus. One must, in the end, imagine Sisyphus happy.

​In much the same way, Donald Trump has come to the same conclusions and is pursuing the same action as Noble Sisyphus, King of Corinth. For President Trump, the thrill is in the ascent in everything he does. In business, he built up his business from the ground up for no reason other than that he enjoyed it, that he took pleasure in the business building and the fortune making. Many would say that his ceaseless climb to the top was executed not for love of the act itself, but for the love of the end goal, namely money, a decidedly un-Sisyphean thing to do. However, I reject this notion, purely because of his run for president. Trump took up the task of running for president, not because he wanted the power of the office, not because of the summit to this great mountain, but purely for the race itself, purely for the thrill in the ascent itself. Anyone could tell just from watching the modern Sisyphus himself. He was clearly enjoying the race, the campaigning, the pomp and circumstance and the fun of being in a race, it all came naturally to Trump and filled his heart against his absurd nature that he no doubt has acknowledged. He is a man driven by the passions of his heart, as is clear to see, a true sign of a man living in full knowledge of his absurd existence and of a man who has truly come to terms and is actively trying to conquer the absurdity of it all. For Trump, the fun, the meaning, in life is in swaying the masses to his side, in having crowds of people show up and cheer uproariously whenever he said one of his carefully crafted lines that he knew would get the people excited for President Trump. And in this state, he was happy, as good Sisyphus is when he rolls his boulder up that mountain. He had rebelled against his state, against the absurdity of existence and the absurdity of his time on this earth. The struggle for Trump became his life, as it always had. He is a man, much like Sisyphus, who takes no breaks from the struggle, hoping to better enjoy the aspects of the thing in itself. He took no breaks from the campaign, and was always up at the earliest hour possible to tweet some kind of accusative statement at this week’s adversary or some kind of political commentary suffixed with some kind of interjection, notably “Sad!”.

​And then the unthinkable happened: Donald Trump won the election, against all odds, against all of the data that showed he would lose and all of the media’s concentrated efforts to extinguish his fire, he won. He had reached his mountaintop, much like Sisyphus does each and every day, only as a result of his rebellion, his struggle, against life and against the system. But something happened, that will forever cement his Sisyphean nature in the annals of absurd heroes: Trump looked clear headed, truly in mastery of the situation he was in. Much like noble Sisyphus, the clearheadedness for the Don was on the way down, the descent, when he was free of his struggle, where he was free of the struggle that defined his life day in and day out and would continue to define his struggle. He looked tired, like a man who had just rolled a boulder up a hill only to watch it roll back down, and like a man who had to descend said monolith to begin his task again. In the tiredness and the lack of energy on the night of his victory, while the unenlightened around him were celebrating in ignorance of the absurdity of their existence and their goals, one could see the realization of the absurd in the eyes of the President-Elect, one could see the realization of the absurdity of the task he had embarked on. But, the next day, he had returned to the struggle, he was ready to take on his boulder once again, he was able to take on the absurd task once more. See, dear reader, for President Trump, the struggle is not for anything, because in these moments of clarity, when he is walking down the mountain, he realizes the absurdity of his task, he is able to abandon all hope of deliverance and abandon all hope of some kind of transubstantiation, metaphorically speaking, some kind of end goal. Trump does not live for the end goals in life; he lives for the struggle. The struggle of business, the struggle of the campaign and now, the struggle of the presidency. In a purely Camusian sense, he is a man who has totally realized the faultiness of trying to live for tomorrow, of trying to live for something else than what he truly is, he has realized the crushing absurdity of the life he has been doomed to live, and instead of becoming depressed by it, he has instead rebelled against it. He often talks of “winning” and success, but these things do not mean the same thing to him that they might mean to a crowd of people he has said them to. For Trump, the winning is the struggle. Every gain he made in the race, and every setback he will suffer as president is the winning that he is obsessed with, because it gives his life and all of our lives the purpose, the true purpose that we all crave, in the face of the absurd. For Trump, winning is about being able to push the boulder up the mountain, being able to struggle against it. He wants to win, but the act itself if what he is after, not the reward. One might assert some pseudo-truism that he is promising people an endgoal, promising them a summit, and if he is doing such a thing cannot have fully grasped the absurdity of his existence. They might say that the act of presenting an endgoal itself would hint to us that he is not an absurdist, let alone an absurd hero; these also are pseudo-truisms. For Trump, the endgoal is not something that will free us of our rock, not something that will break the Sisyphean chains that bind us to this world and to this plane and to this life, but merely a summit from which we can derive meaning in the ascent towards, and a summit from which we may walk away with pure clearmindedness and purity of thought about the absurd. When he says he wants to build a wall and make Mexico pay for it, the wall itself is not the deliverance, although less educated and slower people may think of the wall as our deliverer. For Trump, the wall is a summit that we can derive meaning from in the struggle towards, not the end all be all itself. For Trump, the summit is not an end, his goals are not an end: they are merely a platform to which he can continue the eternal struggle against the absurd. Everything the man does, from the speeches to the campaign, and even the presidency itself, everything that Trump does is engineered to attain a higher form of struggle against an unknowable and absurd world.
​And so, I leave Donald Trump in the Oval Office, ready to take on the first day of presidency’s business! One always finds one’s burdens again. But Trump teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each moment of that presidency, each briefing of those long and arduous days, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Trump happy.