Trump, Trumpism, and the Three Poisons

We human beings need guides to assess behavior; some form of the Golden Rule is necessary if we are to lead moral lives.  This is how we should judge our actions as we move along the path of a humane life.  Masters of self-deception, we need criteria to assess whether we are really moving forward.  Are we following the Golden Rule or a leaden one covered with dross?  In Buddhism there are principles by which we can judge our negative behaviors as well as those that indicate that we are on the right path. Those that assess the degree of our backtracking are the three kleshas, or three poisons, greed, hate, and delusion.  They permeate and complicate the life of virtually everyone.

Do they ever complicate political life!  Buddhism demands that we begin with ourselves as we simultaneously strive to improve society.  This article, however, is not about individual introspection.

The old adage that political power corrupts has become a cliche because it is so true.  Another adage is just as true: citizens get the government they deserve.  Both of these maxims help us understand the current nadir of political life in America.  Powerful special interests have turned many current politicians into "mouth heroes"--they say things many voters want to hear, but their hearts lie elsewhere.  Corrupt politicians are one matter; a more important question, however, is why do representatives who only represent a minority get elected?  Good government demands educated citizens; the average political sophistication in America is quite low.  Education is undervalued and underfunded; entertainments keep us bemused;  That toxic combination didn't work out well for Rome, and it's not working out well for us.

Is the current level of greed, hate, and delusion in today's political arena unprecedented ?  It definitely feels that way.  It is the subject of this essay. 

Greed

Trump is the president of his base, not the president of the nation as a whole.  His base, however, is so ill-informed that they imagine that he is for the little guy while the Republicans, with his support, continue to make inequality worse.  

There is perhaps no better example of this than the so=called Tax Cuts and Jobs Act; a reconciliation of both House and Senate versions will surely pass and be signed into law by Trump, most likely by the end of the year.  The new tax structure is without a doubt a net transfer from the poor and middle class to the wealthy, especially to the very wealthy.  The irresponsibility of this bill is staggering; since the mid-seventies wages have been stagnant, while the proportion of national income received by the top 1% has doubled form 10% to 20%.

A major blot on the Republican Party is that it only represents the rich.  The vast majority of Americans are considered "other"--in much the same way that nationalists deem foreigners to be categorically different from themselves.  This attitude has been clearly expressed by the Republican senator Chuck Grassley who recently said, in regard to the tax bill, that it is a good thing that the rich are given the breaks because they are responsible; the rest, if they get more money, will spend it on "booze, women and drugs."

This is not the place for a detailed analysis of the tax bill, but I will provide a brief list of how this inequality engine will chug along from poor neighborhoods to the secluded mansions of the rich.  Cutting the corporate tax, eliminating the federal inheritance tax, reducing the tax on pass-through income, etc. will benefit the wealthy and increase the burden on nearly everyone else; the elimination of the mandate for the Affordable Care Act will increase the number of those without health insurance by thirteen million, resulting in 42 million people without heath insurance--Criminal! Elimination of the income tax deductions of state and local taxes, which will hit blue states especially hard, will almost surely result in program cuts that benefit the poor.

What is perhaps most distressing is that the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the proposed tax legislation will balloon the deficit by 1.3 trillion dollars by the end of the next decade.  Once the Republicans, (who now apparently now have no desire to lower the deficit), get their tax bill, they will metamorphose from deficit doves into deficit hawks.  Their aim is to "starve the beast" of government in order to cut popular and progressive programs such as Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare.  

Greed, Greed, Greed!

I will end this section with an analogy.  I am a retired pediatrician. One day, a young man came into my office and presented with weight loss, increased hunger, and increased urination, all clinical signs of diabetes.  I performed a blood sugar level in the office; the diagnosis was confirmed.  I thereupon had him admitted to a hospital for diabetic education and to determine the proper insulin dosage, since he was now insulin-dependent.  He did well.

Let us suppose that his high sugar level was analogous to the high income inequality in the United States.  What if I hadn't sent him to the hospital and, instead, told his mother that from now on he would have to have candy and lollipops for breakfast, cotton candy for lunch, and cake and soda for dinner?  The patient, already ill, would have become much worse.  The Republican tax bill is cotton candy for the poor.  Let hard candies dissolve in unfortunate mouths while their eyes stare into a fine restaurant where the rich feast on Peking Duck--According to the Grassleys and the Hatches of the world, this is how it should be.

Greed, Greed, Greed!

2. Hate

Trump is an explicit racist, many Republicans are implicit racists; no doubt about that.  I will provide only a few examples of Trump's racism, there are far too many to include here.

In 2015, before he was elected, Trump tweeted the following racist tweet.

This was Trump's Willie Horton moment.  It is wildly inaccurate as well.  For instance, whites killed by blacks account for 15% of murdered whites, not 81%.  The chart makes no correction for class and education level. It almost sinks to the level of anti-Semitic diatribes during the Nazi era. Disgusting.

Another example: before he was elected, Trump published a full-page ad in the Daily News, claiming that the five people of color, (four blacks and one Hispanic), accused of a brutal attack on a jogger in Central Park in 1989 should be "made to suffer."  He referred to them as criminal misfits.  When it was later proven that the men, boys at the time of the attack, were coerced by the police into making false confession and that DNA evidence indicated that they were innocent, Trump still insisted that they were guilty and should not have been released from prison. 

Since he's been elected, there have been numerous examples of racism as well.  For instance, his hesitation to condemn the racist march on Charlottesville and his assertion that there were "good and bad on both sides."  Other examples include his severe condemnation of black athletes who have knelt during the National Anthem in protest of police brutality, and his false assertion that immigrants are "pouring across the border" and increasing the crime rate, etc, etc.

A recent especially egregious example of his racism is his tweeting of vicious anti-Muslim videos.

Trump's base is overwhelmingly white.  Why ?



Delusion

Trump, a malignant narcissist, cannot accept criticism, only praise.  If facts don't gratify him, they are not facts but "fake news."  Hillary Clinton won the popular vote; oh, no she didn't--it only appears that way, since five million illegal aliens voted for her.  The largest crowds at a inauguration occurred when Trump assumed office; never mind proof to the contrary.  Now he has been telling others in private that Obama was born in Kenya after all, and that the voice on the Access Hollywood tape might not have been his.  His lies and delusions have increased to the extent that many believe he is mentally ill.  I never doubted that, and do believe that the stress of office and the looming corruption investigation are making his instabilities worse.  (The fact hat a stiff opposition is troubling the waters in which Trump sees his great reflection is obviously bothering him--Fatter and sadder and madder, Narcissus is suffering--and, since he is still our president, so are we).

The assertion by a member of his own party that the White House has become "an adult day care center" is truly unprecented.

Conclusion

The Three Poisons of Buddhism have been poisoning us all.  It has seeped down into the groundwaters of democracy.  Will true patriotism be able to filter out much of the poisons and return them to acceptable levels?

This isn't Putin's Russia; ours is till a system of checks and balances. I am therefore cautiously optimistic that the pendulum will soon swing in a more progressive direction. I recall a line from Schiller's William Tell, regarding a prison being built, in which political prisoners are to be confined: "What hands build, hands can take down."  Trump's little hands have been smudging our democracy since they assumed power; if the working class, black and white, join hands, the mess could be cleaned up in no time.

If not now, when?

Macbeth, a Buddhist Interpretation

1.

Recently, my wife and I attended a performance of Macbeth at the Shakespeare Theatre in Washington, D.C.  The South African director stated, as I read in the program, that she, before “tackling a classic," had to find ways to make it relevant to a 21^st century audience.  Her attempt to update Shakespeare's Macbeth for a modern audience included, among other things, re-imagining the three witches as two white men and a white woman in contemporary dress  They were cast as members of the C.I.A.—Hecate, the queen of the witches,  directed them by cellphone while speaking in a Russian accent, a rather obvious contemporary reference.  The director emphasized the play's chaotic political situation, which reminded her of the effects Western imperialism had on her country.

This version of Macbeth didn’t work for me.  Shakespeare is widely acknowledged as the greatest poet in the English language; I think that his foremost achievement, however, was the creation of characters that are truly remarkable for their vividness and psychological complexity.  Shakespeare’s best dramas are studies in the complexity of human personality; the political background, though important, is just that, the background, before which characters reveal their inner nature and conflicts to the audience.

I am much more interested in which aspects of Macbeth’s desires drove him to ruin, rather than in “the personal cost of political chaos or instability” which the director at the Shakespeare Theatre views as central to the play. To aid my psychological analysis of Macbeth, I turn to concepts of that quintessential religion of psychology, Buddhism.

2. Buddhist Terminology of Import for Our Interpretation

Our analysis is Buddhist in a very broad sense.  We will make use of several Buddhist terms, which are quite significant for the understanding of human nature.  

The first concept, perhaps the most important of all, is what Buddhists call dukkha.  It is often translated as “suffering,” but this is misleading.  The basic concept is that of insufficiency, namely that life isn't there to satisfy our desires, especially our inordinate desires.  Egotistical strivings eventually end in disappointment, and, as in the case of Macbeth, often wreak havoc as one attempts to fulfill them. One needs to gain insight and to transcend egotism.  Buddha called for the complete elimination of striving, referred to as tanha.  This is as hard to achieve as always turning the other cheek. One may be unable to reach the summit; however, one can, with the help of a guide, come closer to it.  In this article, the elimination of inordinate desire, not all desire, is viewed as our  best chance at self-transcendence and the resultant happiness which follows, as surely as ripples trail from a boat traveling across a lake.

The second concept is called the Three Poisons, three of the main things responsible for a good deal of the suffering in the world.  This destructive trinity is composed of greed, hate, and delusion.

3. The Summary of Our Interpretation

Macbeth is a great warrior and a good man  at the beginning of the play.  He does, however, have a fatal flaw: he wants everything, he wants immortality.  He has an active imagination, and fantasizes about becoming king and founding a dynasty—the closest thing to immortality he can imagine.  Macbeth is therefore very much bothered by the fact that he has no heirs. He resists realizing his ambition at first, since it would necessitate murder.  Lady Macbeth convinces him to kill Duncan.  Once this is done, Macbeth loses whatever peace of mind he has; one murder leads to another.  The result of Macbeth’s inordinate desire is his having become a murderous tyrant.

4.  The Buddhist Interpretation

Shakespeare begins the play with a masterly exposition; it reveals the greatness of Macbeth, before he is corrupted by evil.  Macbeth has proved himself to be a fearless hero in battle:

For brave Macbeth—well he deserves that name—

Disclaiming Fortune with his brandished steel,

Which smoked with bloody execution,

Like valor’s minion carved out his passage

Till he faced the slave, (This is a reference to the rebel, Macdonald)

Which ne’er shook hands nor bade farewell to him,

Till he unseamed him from the nave to th’ chops,

And fixed his head upon our battlements.

                                                   

                                    1.2 Lines 16-24

The horrible end of the rebel foreshadows the death of the future rebel, Macbeth, who will share the same fate at the end of the play.  It reminds one of the medieval concept of The Wheel of Fortune.  However, in this case it isn’t fate which is driving the wheel; the flaw in Macbeth’s character is what leads him to ruin.  The above speech is related by a captain to King Duncan; the latter now greatly admires Macbeth, and intends to reward him for his bravery.  Thus, Macbeth’s impending betrayal is all the more heinous.

In the next scene, Macbeth and Banquo encounter the “weird sisters,” the three witches.  They are like the Delphic Oracle—they tell the truth, but tell it slant.  They inform Macbeth that he will soon be King.  Macbeth is terrified:

Banquo:  Good sir, why do you start and seem to fear

Things that do sound so fair?

                          1.3 lines 52-53

Macbeth, in our interpretation, has been fantasizing about becoming king for a long time.  He even imagines himself murdering Duncan.  His ambition has been relegated to the realm of daydreams; no one gets hurt.  Now he realizes that he will become king, and recoils at having to murder his benefactor in order to achieve that goal.  His basic nature, that of a good man, objects; Macbeth is full of terror as he realizes that he will have to kill Duncan in reality, not merely in fantasy:

My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical,

Shakes so my single state of man

That function is smothered in surmise,

And nothing is but what is not.  

        1.4 lines 141-144

The witches also prophesy that Banquo, not Macbeth, will be the father of many generations of kings.  This rankles the childless Macbeth, as we shall see.

Macbeth has reached an equilibrium by achieving his inordinate desire in his imagination.  Now, however, imagination is on the verge of becoming reality, to be achieved not by an imaginary murder but by a real one.  He has been a good man, and decides to keep it that way.  He replies to Lady Macbeth, who goads him to kill Duncan:

We will proceed no further in this business.

He hath honored me of late, and I have bought (won)

Golden opinions from all sorts of people,

Which would be worn now in their newest gloss,

Nor cast aside so soon.

2.1 lines 31-34

Lady Macbeth convinces him to murder by attacking his manhood—Macbeth, a great worrier who has the fantasy of becoming an immortal god, is acutely sensitive to the cowardice implied by Lady Macbeth’s attack.  He now admires her steely, manly resolve.  She has helped him overcome what now appears to him to be a weakness.  He feels the joy that one feels when an inner conflict is resolved.  His reply to her at this point is very important to our interpretation:

Bring forth men-children only,

For thy undaunted mettle should compose

Nothing but males.

2.1 lines 72-74

He is delighted since the last hindrance to immortality has been overcome—in his mind.  He will produce male heirs and found a dynasty after all.  He will have no reason to be murderously jealous of Banquo, who is already a father.  Greed, hate, delusion and dukkha are all illustrated here.

Macbeth apparently has had occasional hallucinations all this life.  Is this a seizure disorder or an overactive imagination that occasionally “sees” what Macbeth is thinking?  Shakespeare informs us about this infirmity with two lines, spoken in defense of his odd behavior at the banquet.  Macbeth confesses, “I have a strange infirmity” in attempt to reassure the guests.  Lady Macbeth attempts to do the same by saying, “My lord is oft like this…” These lines are easily glossed over, but provide much insight into Macbeth’s character.

Before he kills Duncan, Macbeth has a hallucination, one of several to come: he “sees” what he has hitherto only fantasized: the dagger with which he will kill Duncan:

Is this a dagger which I see before me,

The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee.

Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible

To feeling as to sight? Or art thous but

A dagger of the mind, a false creation,

Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain?

I see thee yet in form as palpable

As this which now I draw.

2.1 lines 32-41

A dagger of the mind—what a wonderfully profound image!  Macbeth is still in touch enough with reality to doubt whether he actually sees the imagined dagger or not.  Later, after his conscience uses this dagger of the mind to wound him into madness, he will believe that Banquo’s ghost is as real as the food on the banquet table.  The good qualities of Macbeth, bravery and loyalty, once betrayed by Macbeth’s deed, are transformed into furies wielding the daggers of a guilty conscience.  Once the murder is accomplished, Macbeth’s first words are in reference to a more ominous hallucination:

Methought I heard a voice cry, Sleep no more!

Macbeth does murder sleep.

2.3 39-40

Now that Macbeth has given into his basest desires, he loses all restraint; one murder follows another.  His immortality was secure as long as he merely daydreamed about it; now it is threatened by reality.  He has no heirs; Banquo has a son.  The witches have predicted that Banquo’s son will eventually become a king.  No longer restrained by morality, Macbeth attempts to relieve his insecurity by murdering Banquo.  (He will indeed murder Banquo; the latter's son, however, will escape).  Planning Banquo’s murder, Machbeth says the following:

He (Banquo) chid the sisters

When first they put the name of king upon me,

And bade them speak to him; then, prophet-like,

They hailed him father to a line of kings.

Upon my head they placed a fruitless crown,

And put a barren scepter in my grip,

Thence to be wrenched with an unlineal hand,

For Banquo’s issue have I (de)filed my mind,

For them the gracious Duncan have I murdered.

3.1 57-66

After the murder of Banquo comes the famous banquet scene, the third act climax of the play.  Macbeth sees the ghost of Banquo sitting in his chair, and is terrified.  He is the only one who sees it.  This is the point when Macbeth’s madness spills over from inner thoughts to behavior that is apparent to all.  He regains his composure, but much damage is done.

Macbeth then makes the worst possible decision—he wants to visit the three witches once more to get a clearer picture of what lies in store for him.  As before, they give some encouragement, and follow it with devastating prophecy.  Macbeth is delighted to learn that he has nothing to fear until Burnam Woods approach and he is confronted by one who was not of woman born—we all know how that turns out. 

Macbeth insists that the weird sisters answer this question: “Shall Banquo’s issue ever/Reign in this kingdom?”

The witches’ reply is just one more illustration of Shakespeare’s supreme genius:

All Witches: Show his eyes, and grieve his heart;

Come like shadows and depart.

(A show of eight kings, and Banquo last; the eighth king with a glass (mirror) in his hand)

While observing this spectacle, the shattered Macbeth says the following:

Thou are too like the spirit of Banquo.  Down!

Thy crown does sear mine eyeballs!  And thy heir,

Thou other gold-bound brow, is like the first.

A third is like the former. –Filthy hags,

Why do you show me this?—A fourth! Start, eyes!

What, will the line stretch out to th’ crack of doom?

Another yet? A seventh! I’ll see no more.

And yet the eighth appears, who bears a glass

Which shows me many more; and some I see

That two-fold balls and treble scepters carry.

Horrible sight!  Now, I see ’tis true,

For the blood-boltered Banquo smiles upon me,

And points at them for his.

4.1. lines 109-123

What a marvelous moment of theater as the royal apparitions proceed across the stage! It also proves that our interpretation is correct: Macbeth’s quest for immortality has been crushed. Banquo and his infinite heirs— virtually infinite, for the eighth holds a mirror indicating that many more will follow. What Macbeth desires inordinately for himself will not come to pass; the immortality will be Banquo’s and not Macbeth’s. This is Macbeth's worst nightmare.  A lesser author might have shown one or two kings—Shakespeare gives us eight with indications of an endless progression.  Macbeth wanted one thing, immortality, anything less would be completely unsatisfactory.  (The production I saw projected a few shadows of future king onto the wall of the stage, no procession.  This to me indicates a gross misunderstanding of Shakespeare’s intentions.)  Macbeth’s ambitions have been reduced to ash; from this point on, he is in despair.

An important scene soon follows.  Macduff, who will soon defeat Macbeth, had fled to England.  In the meanwhile, the monster Macbeth has killed his wife and all his children. When Macduff is informed of this, a poignant scene follows:

Macduff: My children too?

Ross: Wife, children, servants—

All that could be found.

Macduff: My wife killed too?

Ross: As I have said.  Be comforted.

Malcolm: Let’s make us med’cines of our great revenge

To cure this deadly grief.

Macduff: He has no children. All my pretty ones?

Did you say all?  Oh, hell-kite!  All?

What, all my pretty chickens and their dam

At one fell swoop?

4:3 211-219

This scene, which depicts a father’s grief at the death of his family, is quite moving.  But as so often in Shakespeare, it is more than that.  One character’s behavior is often used to illustrate a flaw in the tragic hero.  In Shakespeare’s tragedies, the flaw of the principal character becomes all the more apparent when contrasted with the behavior of others.  Notice that Macduff, when informed of his loss, mentions his children first.  He is obviously a very loving father. Macbeth, in contrast, has no interest in children, except for the fact that he imagines them as necessary to achieve his inordinate desire for immortality.  Viewing children merely as a means to an end all but ensures one's failure as a father. Macduff apparently loves his wife deeply as well.  There is very little love expressed between Lady Macbeth and Macbeth; they strive for power to replace the hole in their lives due to lack of love.

When Macbeth discovers that Burnam Wood is indeed approaching his castle, all hope is lost. When he is informed that his wife is dead, he hardly reacts, since he already has lost everything.  He then proceeds to say the following lines, among the best in all of Shakespeare’s plays:

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day

To the last syllable of recorded time,

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death.  Out, out, brief candle.

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage

And then is heard no more.  It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

5.519-28

This is perhaps the best poem of despair in the English language.

Now that his ambitions have been destroyed, he automatically resumes his old virtue of being a brave soldier. Although all is lost, he doesn’t retreat, but faces death while fighting valiantly.  Macduff kills him, takes his body offstage and soon returns with his severed head.

The Wheel of Fortune has turned a full circle: Macbeth had killed the traitor, Macdonald, as reported at the very beginning of the play.  This thrust Macbeth into good fortune.  But it didn’t last; the wheel continued to turn and brought the same fate to Macbeth, who had become a traitor as well.

One might view the Wheel of Fortune as fate, but for Shakespeare the fate of his tragic heroes is not inevitable.  Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies are personal tragedies.  In this case, the tragic hero is destroyed by demanding something from life which life is unable to give.  This, combined with the three Buddhist poisons of greed, hate, and delusion, assure the downfall of a once great man.  Emphasizing chaos from without—in the production I saw the villain was none other than Western imperialism—doesn’t work.  The source of the chaos in this play comes from the dagger in Macbeth’s mind.  The catharsis occurs as the audience realizes that inordinate desire leads to ruin.  

Both Shakespeare and Buddha concerned themselves first and foremost with the greatest mystery of the universe of which we are aware, namely, consciousness, the ineffable mystery of personality. Why do people do what they do?  Shakespeare's tragedies are aesthetic illustrations of what happens when one is guided by delusion. What Shakespeare  teaches is very similar to what Buddha taught.  With their help, we can be inspired to examine our own motivations, our own delusions, and with their help discover ways to return to a happier path. The lesson is simple: in order to prevent personal tragedy, stop being selfish; accept your limitations, and, despite flaws, love, and be wise.