{"id":11144,"date":"2018-04-16T13:33:26","date_gmt":"2018-04-16T20:33:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=11144"},"modified":"2018-04-16T13:33:26","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T20:33:26","slug":"donald-trump-tragic-hero","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/donald-trump-tragic-hero\/","title":{"rendered":"Donald Trump, Tragic Hero"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"article-header__subtitle\">His very flaws may be his strengths<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><span class=\"drop\">T<\/span>he very idea that Donald Trump could, even in a perverse way, be heroic may appall half the country. Nonetheless, one way of understanding both Trump\u2019s personal excesses and his accomplishments is that his not being traditionally presidential may have been valuable in bringing long-overdue changes in foreign and domestic policy.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">Tragic heroes, as they have been portrayed from Sophocles\u2019 plays (e.g<i>.<\/i>,<i>\u00a0Ajax<\/i>,\u00a0<i>Antigone<\/i>,\u00a0<i>Oedipus Rex<\/i>,\u00a0<i>Philoctetes<\/i>) to the modern western film, are not intrinsically noble. Much less are they likeable. Certainly, they can often be obnoxious and petty, if not dangerous, especially to those around them. These mercurial sorts never end well \u2014 and on occasion neither do those in their vicinity. Oedipus was rudely narcissistic,\u00a0<i>Hombre<\/i>\u2019s John Russell (Paul Newman) arrogant and off-putting.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/magazine\/2018\/04\/30\/donald-trump-tragic-hero\/?utm_source=Hoover+Daily+Report&amp;utm_campaign=c5a1821968-HDR&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_term=0_21b1edff3c-c5a1821968-73437989\">Read the full article here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review His very flaws may be his strengths The very idea that Donald Trump could, even in a perverse way, be heroic may appall half the country. Nonetheless, one way of understanding both Trump\u2019s personal excesses and his accomplishments is that his not being traditionally presidential may have been valuable [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1161,1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-2TK","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":12401,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/donald-trump-in-twitters-lilliput\/","url_meta":{"origin":11144,"position":0},"title":"Donald Trump in Twitter&#8217;s Lilliput","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 5, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ American Greatness Donald Trump has slumped badly in the polls over the last weeks. There are the usual suspects for his periodic dips: his\u00a0cul de sac\u00a0Twitter wars over Joe Biden, obsessing over the utter dreariness of Joe Scarborough\u2019s past irrelevant life, the constant effects of a\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12721,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/will-trump-ride-off-into-the-sunset\/","url_meta":{"origin":11144,"position":1},"title":"Will Trump Ride Off Into the Sunset?","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 13, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ The Patriot Post I once wrote that whenever Donald Trump exits office, he will likely leave as a \u201ctragic hero.\u201d Over two millennia ago, the Athenian tragedian Sophocles first described the archetype in his portraits of an angry and old but still fearsome Ajax, and heroic\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11654,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/progressives-bearing-gifts\/","url_meta":{"origin":11144,"position":2},"title":"Progressives Bearing Gifts","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 11, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ American Greatness Donald Trump in 2016 did not only run against the planted rumors of the fake Steele dossier, 90 percent negative media coverage, his own boisterous past, and the \u201cAccess Hollywood\u201d tape. He also was campaigning against Hillary Clinton\u2014and the nation\u2019s quarter-century weariness with the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Donald Trump&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Donald Trump","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/donald-trump\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":13097,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/donald-j-trump-joe-bidens-best-friend\/","url_meta":{"origin":11144,"position":3},"title":"Donald J. Trump: Joe Biden&#8217;s Best Friend","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 5, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ American Greatness The Pavlovian \u201cTrump did it!\u201d sums up Joe Biden\u2019s fallback excuse when faced with any embarrassment.\u00a0\u00a0 His own completely optional, self-created, illegal immigration disaster? Trump somehow caused it, despite leaving office with a stable and secure border.\u00a0\u00a0 Vaccination rates soaring? There would be even\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 3 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 3 comments","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/donald-j-trump-joe-bidens-best-friend\/#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/bidentrump.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/bidentrump.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/bidentrump.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/bidentrump.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/bidentrump.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/bidentrump.jpg?resize=1400%2C800&ssl=1 4x"},"classes":[]},{"id":8600,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/how-long-will-trumps-cathartic-candidacy-for-fed-up-conservatives-last\/","url_meta":{"origin":11144,"position":4},"title":"How Long Will Trump\u2019s Cathartic Candidacy for Fed-Up Conservatives Last?","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 14, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson\u00a0\/\/ National Review Online The coarser and cruder Donald Trump becomes, and the more ill-informed on the issues he sounds, the more he coasts in the polls. Apparently, a few of his targets must be regarded as unsympathetically as their defamer. Trump is rightly mocked for cynically\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;America's Future&quot;","block_context":{"text":"America's Future","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/americas-future\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Photo via NRO","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/donald-trump-cathartic-candidacy-500x292.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":11537,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/how-did-shane-end-up\/","url_meta":{"origin":11144,"position":5},"title":"How Did Shane End Up?","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 27, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review In director George Stevens\u2019s classic 1953 Western, Shane, a mysterious stranger and gunfighter in buckskin with a violent past, rides into the middle of the late-1880s Wyoming range wars between cattle barons and homestead farmers. 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