The Return of Absolutism
In a recent photograph of President Trump and his family in their New York penthouse, I was struck by its similarity to a representation of the French king Louis XIV, painted by Jean Nocret in 1670. Not only has Trump chosen the same sort of ostentatious gilt style of the Baroque period for the decoration of his home, in which every chair and every molding is dripping in gold filigree, but he has surrounded himself with all the members of his family, who look out, beaming with satisfaction, at the camera. Trump opens his hands wide, as if conferring the papal blessing onto the viewer, so that we, too, might share in the blessings of his world. This is, after all, the promise that he has made to his followers: vote for me, and you can be a billionaire, too.
What I have always found so intriguing about the painting by Nocret is something that James D. Herbert, one of my professors at University of California, Irvine, pointed out in lecture: all of the members of Louis XIV’s family, whether male or female, adult or child, look exactly like Louis XIV. They are all a manifestation of the monarch. Recall that Louis XIV styled himself as the “sun king.” In this painting, he is represented as Apollo, the Greek sun god. At the palace of Versailles, he ensured that the entire life of the palace revolved around him, just as the planets revolved around the sun. In Nocret’s painting, although the king is slightly off-center, he sits beneath a red honorific canopy, just as Trump, although sitting off-center, wears a red tie – the only bit of red in the entire portrait, so that if the viewer squints at the image, all we really see is him.
Louis XIV ruled according to divine right monarchy. He was king because God decreed it so. When the American colonies revolted against Great Britain, they also shed the connection between church and state. If we compare the ways in which Louis XIV and President Trump present themselves, we understand that America has now embraced what it once rejected so vehemently: the rule of kings. In deceiving ourselves into believing that we can be a part of Trump’s family, we have fallen under his sway. Our only consolation is the knowledge that, in a little over sixty years after Louis XIV’s death, the French Revolution erupted. If you can call that “consolation.” After all, who wants to go through a bloody revolution?
But in the meantime, children are stolen from their families at the border, another mass shooting erupts, and more toxic waste is dumped into our water.
