Trump and the Art of Medieval Storytelling

By jettisoning science and reason in favor of superstition and medieval storytelling, Donald Trump is leading the West, like a combination ransacking American Visigoth and Christian monk, into a new dark age. And many Americans, especially the MAGA crowd, either are oblivious to it or willingly embrace the descending veil of ignorance.

During the early Middle Ages, as the decline in knowledge of Greek cut off the western world from Classical knowledge and science, theology was elevated to the status of 'queen of the sciences', and science as we now understand it was demoted to theology’s servant or handmaiden.

Contemplations on and investigations into nature and the world in general were less concerned with applying observation and the scientific method to understanding it, than uncovering the mysterious Christian truths and symbolism embedded like a cryptographic message within world around them.

One of my favorite examples revolves around medieval contemplations on the rose. A rose's primary importance among most medieval thinkers was not as a biological organism that converts light energy to chemical energy through photosynthesis, but as a reflection of biblical truths.

In one interpretation, the thorns of a rose were added by God after the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden as a reminder of the pain of separation from God's grace and, additionally, to presage the crown of thorns on Christ's head and suffering during the Passion and crucifixion which reinstated God's grace. The red of the rose was added by God to represent Christ's blood spilled on Calvary, and the green of the stem represented resurrection and everlasting life.

This makes for a beautiful story and an understanding of the world that had a comforting internal logic and wholeness to it that was true within a Biblical context and Christian world view. But although it was internally logical, from the standpoint of science, the scientific method, and direct observation, it had no objective truth or demonstrable validity.

Which brings us back to Trump and the danger I see in today's political and social discourse that he currently dominates. Trump's storytelling is steeped in medieval mysticism, anti-science, and creative and is moving us, as occurred with the fall of the classical world, away from the light of objectivity into the medieval darkness of faith, internal logic, and subjectivity.

This is not solely a cautionary tale of the growing Christian myopathy that has invaded our civic discourse, and that hedonist Trump has cynically adopted, but as a broader indictment of our tendency, with Trump's encouragement, to detach our world views from reason.

Enabling this detachment, without most Americans noticing it, is the art and seductive power of creative storytelling, similar to that used by medieval thinkers.

A solid, narrative arc closely, and deceptively, emulates the scientific method. It begins with a current state of affairs (current scientific understanding), in which a hero (scientist) finds the current state called into question by a villain (new observations that don't fit with current scientific understanding). The hero finds a possible solution (hypothesis), which is tested through rising action (repeatable experiments), climaxing in the hero triumphing over the villain (the hypothesis becomes a scientific law) resulting in a happily ever after (new scientific stasis).

The danger is that a clever story can emulate scientific logic without the underpinnings of an actual scientific validation or even direct observation, thereby deceiving its audience.

Trump has done a brilliant job building a powerful, easily understood story around 'Make America Great Again!' It is his story of the rose, and is a master stroke that Democrats have been unable to match.

The use of the word 'again' is the key, as it is in subtext that we find his cryptographic message, descipherable only by his acolytes-that we we have lost, but can and must reclaim, a golden age of wholesome Christian American values and prosperity where the father ruled the family and every white man had an honored seat at the table with first dibs on the American bounty.

For the Trump acolytes it is a beautiful, internally logical story that confirms their fears, hopes, and biases and requires no effort or sacrifice on their part. But like the medieval interpretation of a rose's symbolism and methods of scientific inquiry, is completely divorced from objective truth. Not only can we never go back in time to the 1950, as history tells us, but the current demographic, economic, and scientific realities make the circumstances that made 1950s possible impossible to replicate with the same success.

The danger for the West is that for many, Trump's storytelling is seen as more true than the Democrat's greater ability to govern, even though that is objectively provable. It is time for the Democrats to create their own powerful story, but one that is underpinned by science and reason. It is a tremendous challenge, as such a story exposes our failures and weaknesses as a people, and forces us to confront them. But no one ever said that positive change was easy or didn't require sacrifice.