Art, Political Philosophy, and the Present Moment

art is the becoming and happening of truth

-- Heidegger

We must begin with a style, an aesthetic, a fashion which is the only way some have known politics the last ten years. If you are 18 and voting in the U.S. midterm election in 2026, your primary exposure to the majesty of government consists of things like this:

In general, Trump's "humor" is, to steal from Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, a "world-historical problem." One is tempted to say there is nothing remotely related to art in what he does. At best, you could call it camp and consider it an extension of professional wrestling. Trump knows how to play the heel; the heel is intuitively understood by crowds to be integral to the show. You can hate them, but never too much. Hence, a genuinely genocidal heel is not limited in grotesqueness, but the audience has limits on how it can react to them.

While I hold this is true in one sense, it fails in another, because professional wrestling can be great art. It routinely gets people to suspend their disbelief, to cheer on those who do ridiculous stunts and sell every move. Wrestling doesn't lack profundity, either. Many grow up with heroes who are wrestlers, constantly relating to their feuds, wins, and losses. No one exactly wants to be Stone Cold Steve Austin, but they do want to fight the company the way he did. More is at stake than a little bit of frustration at a job. What is it like to deal with self-aggrandizing, incompetent bosses at every turn? How do you gather and use the scraps of dignity which fall your way?

OK, you say. You're now convinced that we're not going to call Trump's performances or anything MAGA-related art no matter what I say. You want to argue that this is simply a direct, populist appeal. The crudity breaks down an audience's defenses; they are more trusting as they shed shame. They have permission to indulge their worst instincts. As they do so, sometimes thinking and doing violence, they bond more closely to him, compromising themselves, limiting themselves to one and only one friend.

Again, I think this is true and not true enough. What Trump does much of the time as part of the performance are crimes. He incites violence against other politicians, the media, and vulnerable populations. Amanda Marcotte has pointed out his history of sexual harassment, a history of humiliating and dominating others. Yet there is a broader aesthetic to the cruelty, a logic underlying the tantrums and mockeries and garish displays. I don't desire to call it "art"–it is certainly not art to me–but it furnishes the tastes of many. People like what they see and hear, immerse themselves in it, and build their thinking from it.

You ask what the features of the aesthetic are. They are simultaneously grabs for power, attempts to demonize others, and at least one other third thing which is weirder. Consider John McNaughton's paintings. In Legacy of Hope, he depicts an imaginary scene where the following figures pray over and with Trump as he sits in the Oval Office: "Andrew Breitbart, James Madison, the Artist [McNaughton], Jefferson, Reagan, Washington, JFK, Coolidge, Trump, Eisenhower, MLK, Frederick Douglass, Lincoln, Robert E. Lee, Clara Barton, Billy Graham, Harriet Tubman, John Adams." Inasmuch as this is propaganda, it is absolutely deranged: Frederick Douglass, Robert E. Lee, and Harriet Tubman all peacefully together with Donald Trump?

I don't think it is worth talking about this painting being stupid, trolling slop. We know it is. It is part of a broader aesthetic of incoherence. You can also see that on display in the use of the White House lawn for a UFC fight. A car constantly revving, Charlie Kirk speechifying on a giant screen, energy drink promotions, a "Vodka Jalapeno Slam" for purchase. On the one hand, this is a grab bag of things for fight fans that may vote Republican. On the other, the grab bag makes no sense. It's a bunch of random stuff thrown together. At the time, I said this was because "[Trump] has to guess at what they [his fans] like because he does not know any better." I stand by that and want to expand on it: there's something about MAGA which is purposefully incoherent.

That purposeful incoherence promises to outlast Trump. John Ganz pointed out that conservative intellectuals, especially nowadays, serve a specific function. IIRC–I don't remember his argument exactly–they don't birth reactionary ideas themselves as much as push the Overton window and make them acceptable in the "marketplace of ideas." They set the stage for the next assault on decency; they get the base riled up and launder the discussion of the unacceptable so others can report on it with a neutral-enough tone.

If the intellectuals are merely grasping at what the mob gives them, there is no hope of coherence for MAGA. And indeed, MAGA allows its adherents to indulge any number of fantasies. For example, if you don't want to get injected ever again, the federal government is now in the business of telling you that all medical professionals are quacks. This incoherence isn't only childishness taking over policy. It is how Trump rallies can play YMCA by the Village People right after Nessun dorma and how angry online mobs threaten their favorite content creators with death if they don't tell the story they demand.

The question of aesthetics, in this case, is the question of an intentionally unreasonable movement. I should say that for a long while I've wondered about how to tie different phases of my work together. I started with Plato's and Xenophon's Socrates and now I study Heidegger. With the classics, I spent plenty of time attending to how one would even conceive a philosopher in Ancient Greece. There were concepts of nobility and ignobility, and it would be all too easy to categorize the philosopher as ignoble and shameless and be done with it. It's much harder to argue that one can have a rational critique of law and norms which isn't hopelessly abstract. With Heidegger, I'm interested in authenticity. I don't think we value this as much as we say we do, and there is a severe price to be paid for either calling people free when they are simply acting out, or not recognizing when they are acting on deeply held principles that will free us all. When I'm reflecting now on how Trump and MAGA lead us to the theme of aesthetics–there is crass trolling, humiliation of others, a lust for dominance, to be sure–I can see how political philosophy connects to theories about art, as well as how my more recent concern about authenticity echoes what I studied before. To what degree would we call a lover of wisdom authentic?