Some 2,500 years ago, the Greek philosopher Heraclitus of Ephesus penned a line, “Ethos anthropoi daimon,” which most translators and the popular world of pithy, poetic phrasemakers have settled on meaning, “Character is destiny.” It’s a compact framing of what may be the most important truism applied to human beings and the struggles they endure to lead a meaningful and worthy life.
To wit: Above all and in the end, a person’s character will hold sway in how they conduct themselves and how they affect other people through the course of their lives.
Recently it occurred to me that the phrase may be key to understanding both Donald Trump, who in his every increasingly deranged word and action is no longer even pretending to be a person of decent character, and his followers. Clearly, millions of them are, at heart, of good character while somehow finding it in themselves to excuse behavior that their own moral structure and historical norms across most every culture in the world have always found reprehensible.
The question looming for Abiders, which both the Lovers and the Haters have already answered for themselves, is this: ‘Should character be determinative in choosing the leader of the free world’?
How this can be so represents one of the great riddles of our age, does it not? It has vexed our political class, strained friendships, created “No talk zones” among family members, neighbors and colleagues, and led to the kind of cultural discord that threatens the very survival of our country as the world’s leading democracy.
Its axis, I have come to think, rests on one key difference between the Trump-positive and Trump-negative halves of our population. It’s a simple distinction that requires no great Heraclitean grasp of philosophy but explains, I trust, how those two halves are taking such different views into the voting booth with them through November 5.
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Actually, there’s a third grouping in addition to the two who will vote either for or against Trump with great enthusiasm. We might call the first group Trump Lovers, the second group Trump Haters, and the third group Trump Abiders. The Abider group is comprised of those who are uncomfortable with various aspects of Trump and his MAGA brand, but who may wind up holding their noses and voting for him anyway for one key reason I will reference below.
As you likely know, it is the Abiders who will ultimately determine the election. If enough of them join with the Lovers who dismiss Trump’s bad character as of little consequence, or who even revere him as a savior figure, perhaps slightly flawed but guided by the very hand of God, Trump will win.
The question looming for Abiders, which both the Lovers and the Haters have already answered for themselves, is: “Should character be determinative in choosing the leader of the free world?”
For Lovers, definitely not.
Oh sure, they generally admit to wishing he would scale back on the “mean tweets” and “childish name-calling,” but for them, their decision in the voting booth is mostly about the “policies” they are convinced Trump pursued on their behalf during his presidency. In most cases, those boil down to either his successful vow to appoint anti-abortion Supreme Court justices, and/or to the economic argument: “I was better off then.”
The Abiders are far more conflicted on the character issue, as one still purportedly “undecided” voter told the “New York Times” the other day: “I like what he says most of the time, but then sometimes it’s embarrassing. And you’re like, ‘What did he say?’”
The Haters, on the other hand, are less concerned (and terrified of) specific Trumpian policies (tax breaks for the wealthy, mass deportations, playing footsie with dictators), because they see them as a direct outgrowth of a deeply immoral and corrupt man. To the question of “What did he say?” they offer nine years worth of unrelenting vitriol, aggression, spite, vindictiveness and the clear lack of a moral compass that will ever restrain his lust for power at all costs.
And they conclude: A person like this should never be in any position of leadership, much less the leader of a nation the entire world depends on as history’s prime exemplar of freedom.
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So here’s the fault line that has become a seeming chasm in the fractious cultural/political wars roiling our nation as nothing has since at least the late 1960s (if not the 1860s…).
For Trump Haters, his lack of character is a Feature, not a Bug, of his personhood and the office he is asking us to grant him yet again—and it is absolutely disqualifying.
For Trump Lovers and those Abiders who finally pull the lever for him, his character defects are a Bug, not a Feature—a relatively minor point when framed against the far more important point (in their estimation) that his policies are good for them and the country.
So: back to Heraclitus. Is he right or wrong that “Character is destiny?”
Of course he’s right, and that’s why the country should never let Trump set foot anywhere near the Oval Office again.
Why? Because a person of bad character will always betray whomever and whatever he comes across in his life if they no longer serve his ends.
A person who habitually lies to further his goals or escape accountability will never, short of a Damascus Road conversion experience, stop lying. An NPR fact check of a Trump news conference in August caught him in 162 lies or exaggerations in 64 minutes, an astonishing, depressing average of 2.53 lies per minute. If only that were extraordinary, instead of just another day of getting by as Donald Trump.
Indeed, when the going gets tough as it always will, inveterate liars will double and quadruple down on both the quantity and severity of their lies, to a degree that “nobody has ever seen before,” to quote Trump’s own favorite, go-to-hyperbole that he wears out with the sheer frequency he employs it.
And we are not talking here about the little white lies and sleights-of-hand that most politicians occasionally permit themselves in the sometimes ugly heave-ho of campaigning and legislating.
We are instead talking about lies like the recent “they’re eating the dogs and cats of Springfield” claim that no amount of evidence and testimony from on-site officials in his own party were able to get him to stop repeating. This despite the fact of bomb threats to schools and public facilities and direct threats against innocent Haitian immigrants in the area causing havoc for weeks in its aftermath.
Or more recently, the heinous claim that President Biden and Democratic Governor Roy Cooper were intentionally withholding relief funds and services for Republican areas of North Carolina in the wake of Hurricane Helene. Just one result of that was relief officials soon having to pause their tireless work to restore water, electricity and food supplies to the area because armed assailants were threatening violence in direct response to Trump’s lies.
Nothing about these and the thousands of other lies and abysmal character revelations pouring forth about and from him over the last decade are minor “Bugs.” No one should ever overlook them in their assessment of a potential leader, whether that be president of a country, a school board, or a Little League.
They are instead fundamental to who this person is and what he will inevitably do—and they always have devastating consequences. Such lies bespeak an irredeemable moral monstrosity of the kind that could have him say, “So what?” upon being informed of the possibility that his own doggedly loyal vice-president might be killed, perhaps by hanging from gallows pre-constructed on the U.S. Capitol grounds by rioters whom Trump had clearly inspired and approved of on January 6.
In the end, Trump Lovers and Abiders are making a pact with the devil, either overlooking or simply deaf to the screamingly loud danger signals of his candidacy in order to secure favor for their hoped-for improved economic circumstance or federal abortion ban, or because of the personal vitriol and vehemence that they mistake for the “decisiveness” of a strong leader.
And as we know, the devil will never relent from extracting his maximum due.
Heaven help us if that devil is peering over the shoulder of Donald Trump in the Oval Office come January.
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