With trembling hands outstretched in prayer, a middle-aged white man feverishly repeats the line “Please save me, Donald Trump” as authorities shatter the windows of his car and detain him in a now infamous livestream clip that heavily circulated X, formerly Twitter, and Instagram in late 2020. Driving around in my home state of Florida during late October and early November of that tumultuous year, I saw massive flags grouping “God, Guns and Trump” into a horrific holy trinity, and Trump worship songs like Natasha Owens’ “The Chosen One” could be found blasting from parades of old F-150s and off-the-lot Wranglers on every corner. Four years later, as the election cycle grinds to its ragged conclusion and former President Donald Trump’s name reappears on the ballot, swaths of Americans arrive at the same conclusion as Natasha Owens and “Unidentified White Man Futilely Praying Through Tears”: Donald J. Trump is a god amongst men.
Though it may be easy to think of Trump’s deification as a disheartening topic and critique of contemporary U.S. society, this tradition of deifying political leaders is not the invention of 21st century right-wing conservatives. To get to the root of this ongoing phenomenon, we must look back in time to antiquity. Public figures have achieved immortality through “apotheosis”—or the “elevation of someone to a divine status” according to Oxford Languages—since before the first recorded story was written. Gilgamesh, likely a real-world Sumerian king, was worshiped after his rule. The Egyptian Pharaohs were considered mortal incarnations of various gods during their lifetimes, and in Ancient Rome, especially awesome emperors were made into gods upon their deaths, gaining cults of worshippers and religious icons devoted to them in their super-powered afterlives.
In modern America, the transmutation of political powers into divine ones is much more subtle than widespread proclamations of a popular figure’s ascension to the pantheon of the gods. Instead of building an altar out of gold and marble, MAGA enthusiasts have taken up X posts and alt-right news headlines as their church. After the July 13 assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump’s life while at a Pennsylvania rally, the dynamic shot of a wounded yet defiant Trump raising his fist circulated the internet like wildfire. The photo proliferated across explore pages, stories and blogs like popular religious iconography, accompanied by captions calling the man a living martyr, a survivor of spiritual warfare and a savior of the nation—language commonly reserved in the American zeitgeist for gods and saints. According to “Politico”, Trump’s own campaign manager Brad Parscale claimed that “Only God could deliver such a savior to our nation,” and “There has never been and probably never will be a movement like this again.” Similarly, the verbiage surrounding Trump’s survived assassination attempt sounds eerily similar to that of Christian dogma: divine suffering for the salvation of the people. And with Trump’s supporters showing up to the candidate’s subsequent rallies with bandages taped to their ears, it is not difficult to see the overt connection between the
reverence churchgoers show for their god, wearing the sign of the cross (a symbol of the Christian God’s suffering for the salvation of “his” people) as a public declaration of faith, and the blind faith those in the MAGA movement place in Trump. Unfortunately, this rhetoric surrounding Trump’s divinity has spread to his followers, casting them as soldiers in Trump’s holy war, with the man himself serving as the messianic figure fighting on the frontlines against the spiritual and political evils opposing him.
For many Americans, this conflation of religion and politics raises several critical questions about the implications of such a belief system in a modern, secular society. If Trump is seen as a celestial savior and protector, any criticisms against him can be viewed as heresy, leading to a hostile environment where dissent is stifled and loyalty to the party and the candidate is paramount. On Jan. 6, the nation saw, firsthand, the result of Trump’s apotheosis as his “soldiers” and “QAnon Shamans” stormed the Capitol Building, some even donning Roman-style armor and brandishing signs that read “Cross the Rubicon, President Trump,” connecting the former president to the deified dictator Julius Caesar. These Capitol insurrectionists, fully indoctrinated into the cult of Trump’s personality, demonstrated what happens when a group of people place their faith in one person over the due process of law that the United States was founded upon: the delicate fabric of American democracy unravels.Despite the more-than-spooky implications of the 1,000-year-old precedent for today’s apotheosis, classical literature can offer us a glimmer of hope. Alongside the longstanding tradition of deification, criticism of who is given godhood is just as old as the practice itself. Seneca the Younger’s “Apocolocyntosis,” or “The Pumpkinification of Claudius,” is a biting satire about the wrongful deification of the Roman Emperor Claudius, detailing the tyrannical and incompetent ruler’s humorous attempt at ascension and subsequent delegation to eternal office work. Over 2,000 years later, Seneca’s witty writings teach us an important lesson: the power of art as a form of resistance. Many people may find it difficult to spark change in the indomitable cyclone of empire; How can the individual take action against the collective? This question has been postulated for centuries and garnered a varied array of responses. It is easy enough to become overwhelmed by contemporary politics and completely shut down or escape into fantasy, but the act of creation in spite of god-emperors and fanatic followers is a type of opposition. For as many centuries as humans have been elevating their leaders to god status, there have been just as many artists and authors willing to push back and question the status quo. So whether it be through writing satirical dramas about evil pumpkin-like old men or de-mystifying the divine image of modern political figures through visual art, the most widely accessible weapon for fighting a god turns out to be a pen.