Hubris: (noun) Excessive pride. In Greek tragedy, defiance of the gods, leading to nemesis. Please, the sooner the better. We can only hope.
Of all the things I could use to illustrate the hubris of the current white house resident, and there are many, the one that is uppermost in my mind is purely personal. Last week, he posted a picture of himself, clad in a dark, winter topcoat, walking on a stark, rain-damp city pavement, marked with trolley tracks. He is facing directly toward us, and above his head, it says “He’s on a mission from God.” Below, it adds, “& nothing can stop what is coming.” It’s a classic QAnon message and even includes the little froggy figure (or toadie, as I call it, thinking of everyone who surrounds him) used often, for some reason, by far-right conspiracy theorists.
Perhaps he was trying to up the ante from posting images of himself dressed as King and Pope, and meant to now suggest that he is, actually, Jesus? Likely not, I thought, else he would have chosen one of the many alt-right, worshipful portraits portraying himself signing holy executive orders designed to destroy the lives of millions of poor and ailing people while, above him, a ghostly Jesus places his hands softly on the president’s shoulders, seemingly in approval.
Rather, he chose a picture that looked naggingly familiar and, once I made the connection, I was even more disgusted. The picture he mimics, copied in every detail from the wet city street and the trolley tracks, to the overcoat and the walk toward the camera, has had a place of honor in every one of my homes, since I was in my early twenties.
It’s an iconic and famous poster, labeled The Boulevard of Broken Dreams, featuring the most important hero of my youth, the rebel, the BS decrier, the keeper of a new kind of personal 1950s code, James Dean. Does Donald, indeed, aspire to paint himself as that hero, that status quo-buster, that rebel, that heartthrob, that bi-sexual experimenter, a charismatic change-maker, a self-styled protector of everyone who needed it and an enemy of all things BS? Ha! All the things he is decidedly not?
Donald, I knew James Dean, and you are no James Dean. Although, admittedly, Boulevard of Broken Dreams is the perfect description of the path of destruction you are leaving in your wake.
Why is this so personal? In 1955, I was 14 years old. I had just seen East of Eden and left the theatre feeling that I had finally found someone who spoke for me, who felt the pain of our times and embodied the inarticulate confusion of my generation. I couldn’t wait to see more of him. I didn’t have to wait long, as Jimmy’s next film, Rebel Without A Cause, came out unusually quickly, in the same year, but not for a happy reason.
The studio had made the decision to release Rebel early because, on September 30, 1955, Dean was killed in a one-car crash (in his Porsche) at the age of 24. I was inconsolable. My parents were baffled. Who was this guy?
I saw Rebel Without A Cause sixteen times and came to know it so well that I typed my own version of the script from memory, with stage directions and expressions. I have that script, still. I was utterly changed by the film. James Dean taught us to question and critique the conformist generation before our own, to call out the BS, to have compassion and concern for others as a way of fighting against the tide of banality and greed. To be authentic and to dig deep.
And, though we were called “The Silent Generation” I think, in beginning to disobey and rebel, to question and to sneer at everything, in small ways we cracked open the door a bit for the real Sixties kids who took it all the way and changed everything.
Years later, watching a rerun of one of the Stu Erwin shows from the first TV series I did, as a kid, I was blown away to see that James Dean had a small role in one of them and suddenly remembered him, withdrawn, moody and completely magnetic, on the set. He was in Hollywood to do tests for East of Eden and doing some TV work to keep body and soul together. For a moment, we had occupied the same space.
Just before I turned 24, I surprised no one and bought a red Porsche Cabriolet that I drove for sixty years and a total of over 560,000 miles. How I loved that car. And how I loved the way I felt driving it: free and a bit of an outlaw, unstoppable, part of a dangerous and headstrong generation, fast and flashy.
I know. I know. To get back to hubris: there are likely many better examples of the white house resident’s cruel and excessive pride. Tariffs. Immigrants. Illegal incarcerations. Thinking his signature is the only thing needed to amend the United States Constitution. Choosing wolves for his Cabinet to oversee the vulnerable chicks. Pushing the “on” button for that crazy clown who calls it government efficiency when he fires good workers wholesale and then lies about what was saved. Please, gods, bring on that nemesis NOW! We can help. This is the time for the rebel boiling in all of us to say Enough! Stop the BS. Show some compassion. Or we will sweep you out of the way. Let’s do it for James Dean!
The Mid-ass Touch
In case you have forgotten the details, King Midas was a somewhat foolish ruler of Phrygia (now located somewhere in modern-day Turkey) who was granted the “gift” of turning everything he touched into gold. The god Dionysus, who already loved the Phryges for their invention of the flute and the cymbal, did this to reward Midas for the hospitality he had shown to a wise, visiting, satyr. Unfortunately, the gift was more of a curse. For one thing, every time Midas tried to grasp something in order to eat, his food turned to gold and he almost starved. Eventually, he begged to have the gift reversed.
Is it just me or is there some kind of parallel here to Elon Musk? Of course, with Musk, it was the gift of endless wealth, combined with a super-sized dose of hubris, that brought him onto the “you get coal in your holiday stocking” list for all of us. I’m certain he had no idea he would be remembered as the second or maybe third most hated person on the planet, in these modern times. Money can’t buy you love, as they say.
In fact, it is likely that the insatiable thirst for more and more wealth, regard, worship and, well, wealth, will do them all in. Their greed is so public, their corruption so blatant, you don’t even have to look very far each day to find a new and outrageous example.
Take, for example, the crowd sipping champagne in the Executive Branch, a club created by the president’s fevered brain, in order to ease access for corporate leaders to all members of the Cabinet for as little as a $500,000 contribution to the Trump Library (or whatever personal use the president wants to make of it). And what do these Clubbers seek? The unraveling of protections like those pesky rules requiring poultry companies to keep salmonella bacteria levels beneath a certain number in commercially-sold poultry. Done! Never mind that the numbers of those suffering from food poisoning goes up. Any other regulations you want relaxed?
“Well, what about me?” says the president’s biggest donor. And poof! Elon got all the investigations of his commercial wrongdoing, in Tesla, in Starlink, in SpaceX, abandoned. No problemo! And can we give you more and more billion-dollar contracts? Please? How about a slightly used plane from Qatar, Donnie? Hey, it’s just a gift, what do you mean it’s unconstitutional? Or you could buy the president’s meme crypto and the more you buy the more you might just “win” an invitation to have dinner with himself. Or pile on the cash and miraculously get a full presidential pardon, even if you are a gang boss from Chicago convicted of overseeing several murders and other crimes.
These are the true Mid-asses. The more they convert their power and access to gold, the more they lose in everything else. “For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul” (Mark 8:36). Or, as Mephistopheles put it, “Just wait and see.”
The Midas Touch, as applied, is toxic brass.
