gracchusdixit

Every language is endowed with certain expressions that simply can’t be translated without a significant loss of meaning.  That’s because each of humankind’s more than 6,000 languages is bound up with its own particular history and culture.  When you pluck its most evocative expressions from that context and transplant them into another language, they fall flat.

It is difficult to think of any language richer in such expressions than French.  Amour propre, bête noire, c’est la vie, de rigueur, faux pas, idée fixe, laissez-faire, mot juste, nouveau riche, objet d‘art, petit bourgeoise, pièce de résistance, portmanteau, sans pareil, soi-disant…the list of uniquely expressive French words and phrases is so long that most have simply been adopted by other languages, tout court, without any attempt at translation.  Such expressions can translated, of course, at least in theory, and there are those who never tire of trying.  But their attempts never quite satisfy, because they inevitably fail to capture nuances that cannot be hoisted from one culture to another, like so many containers on a cargo ship.

No French phrase illustrates this more clearly than nostalgie de la boue.  The literal translation of these words is “nostalgia for the mud,” which makes no sense to anyone who hasn’t grow up French, not to mention sounding vaguely ridiculous.  And yet, nostalgie de la boue has a richness of meaning that is particularly apt for the era we live in, because it describes the pathology of those who have deliberately turned their backs on the “better angels” of human nature by supporting Donald Trump and have chosen, instead, to revel in depravity as if it were some kind of liberation.  

The Roman Emperor, Nero, may have been the earliest exemplar of this pathology.  All the while he sat on the throne of the world’s most powerful empire, he was wont to abandon his palace, sneak out at night, and prowl the streets of Rome, cavorting with prostitutes and thugs, waylaying, even murdering, innocent citizens as they stumbled their way home in the dark.  At least that is the tale we are told by the uniformly hostile and salacious historians of Nero’s reign. 

In any case, it would seem we have been condemned to suffer our own Nero, Donald John Trump, and the nostalgie de la boue of his slavering followers.   Thanks to reporting by the New York Times and to a source thus far unrevealed, we finally have the details of Trump’s long-hidden tax returns.  They confirm what has been widely suspected for years, that he is a liar,  a tax cheat, and a financial fraud.  Far from being the fabulously successful billionaire he pretends to be, he is deeply in debt, with much of that debt coming due in the next four years.   The people to whom Trump owes all this money remain mysterious.  What isn’t mysterious, however, is the fact that he has been lying to the American public from day one.

There are those who think that this revelation will prove to be a game changer, the straw that finally breaks the camel’s back, the leaden anchor that drags Donald Trump down into the murky depths of electoral defeat.   Pick whichever cliché suits your fancy.  But don’t count on any of them coming true.

Since the day Trump stole his way into the White House, the pundit class has been wondering how low the man could go before his devoted followers would desert him.  The unpalatable but inescapable answer is that no “low” has thus far been low enough to bring Donald Trump down.  That’s because Trump’s supporters, like the man himself, love to go low, and the lower the better.

Tell Trump’s supporters that he is a tax cheat, and they clap their hands in glee, because they wish they were shrewd enough to get away with cheating on their taxes, too.  

Tell them that Trump boasts about his ability to grab women by the you-know-what, and they grin in prurient envy, because they’ve spent their pitiful, impotent lives hoping for precisely such a chance.  

Tell them that Trump is a sexist pig, and they snort their approval, because they believe the only role for women is to know their place, do what they are told, and pleasure the men in their lives.

Tell them that Trump is a cowardly bully, and they nod their heads like bobble dolls, because they are cowards and bullies too.

Tell them that Trump is a racist, and they erupt in satanic joy, because they believe “those people” don’t deserve a penny paid out by “hard-working Americans” like themselves.

The fact that Donald Trump is a financial fraud, lives on credit, and is more deeply in debt than most nations on the planet, matters little to his most perfervid admirers, because their lives and his are one and the same.  Just as he lives far beyond his means, subsidizing a lavish lifestyle by defrauding one lender after another, they live paycheck to paycheck, piling up credit card debt to pay for things they cannot afford but feel entitled to nonetheless.  Trump’s followers adore him, because he is precisely the person they wish they were.  His callousness and cruelty, his corruption and utter disregard for common decency, his enthusiastic embrace of lies and intimidation—that all this has failed to dent the ardor of Trump’s followers can only be explained by the nostalgie de la boue they share with the man their idolize.

If we hope to combat this pathology, we must stop pretending that it is something other than what it actually is.  Those who support Donald Trump aren’t innocent victims “left behind” by the global economic system.  They aren’t “hard-working Americans” misled but fundamentally virtuous.  And they aren’t the underserving targets of disdain on the part of condescending cultural elites.  

The nostalgie de la boue of Donald Trump’s followers is a choice which they have made.  They have chosen to revel in the gutter, like pigs wallowing in muck.  It’s about time we treated them that way, with the contempt they deserve.