Watching a political news video yesterday, I noticed a well-set-up gentleman walking into camera range. The camera focused briefly on his face and I thought to myself that the man bore a close resemblance to Donald Trump. Suddenly I realized it was Donald Trump, but something about him had demonstrably changed. His gait was slower, more deliberate, and the expression on his face was more solemn, less mobile, altogether less lively and mutable. He did not look quite like himself, but far more serious, more like a chess grandmaster of a sage in contemplation. I’m sure other Trump-spotters have experienced the same sense of disorientation and at least mild bewilderment.
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And why not? One recalls the famous quote from Samuel Johnson: “Depend on it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.” Mutatis mutandis, a bullet intended for a man’s head and providentially slicing off part of an ear, even if he escaped death, will have a profound effect on a man’s perspective on the world and his emotional valence, as well as on his physical demeanor.
The bombast and sarcasm and occasional vulgarities, which many of us found entertaining and down to earth, the flamboyant and boisterous self-presentation, the raucous good humor as well as the incendiary comments, the pointing finger singling out friends in the audience, the up-tempo disco moves, the tics and mannerisms of a man accustomed to performing—all these are pretty well gone, replaced by an attitude of sobriety and somber thoughtfulness. “The Donald J. Trump who took the stage in Milwaukee last night,” writes Stephen Kruiser at PJ Media , “was a reflective, determined elder statesman…Trump’s sotto voce, conversational tone was perfect, and a counter to the angry maniac that the commies in the mainstream media like to portray him as.” The Spectator World, an unfriendly outfit, also alludes to a “new subdued Trump.”
In “The Varieties of Religious Experience,” William James elaborates on a distinction made by classical scholar Francis Newman between the once-born and the twice-born. “God has two families of children on this earth,” said Newman, “the once-born and the twice-born.” The once-born are simple, vigorous, physically assertive, and have faith in a perfectible universe. The twice-born have been somehow transformed, aware of the deeper mysteries of life, the refractory nature of mankind, and the incongruities and absurdities that rule over the political and social theaters. He or she has become painfully aware of the dark realities of existence.
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James considers a personal crisis that transformed the life of Leo Tolstoy, author of “War and Peace,” as follows: “The process is one of redemption, not of mere reversion to natural health, and the sufferer, when saved, is saved by what seems to him a second birth, a deeper kind of conscious being than he could enjoy before.” It is something “haunting, abiding and oppressive,” wrote the Victorian savant and economist Walter Bagehot in “Literary Studies,” “that changes men’s inner lives and makes them receptive to the idea of God.” It is obvious that Trump now belongs to the family of the twice-born. As he confided, “That was an amazing, horrible thing. Amazing thing. And in many ways, it changes your attitude, your viewpoint on life. And I think, honestly, I think you appreciate God even more. I really do.”
The question for many of us is which Trump do we prefer: the once-born gladiator who battled in the octagon of bloody UFC-type politics, dynamic, utterly confident, feisty, unorthodox, often irritating; or the twice-born hero, the quieter, meditative, austere, introspective and dignified champion who no longer fires from the hip but seems rather to be brooding strategically for ultimate victory.
Longtime friend Dana White, president of Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), describes Trump as “a fighter…the legitimate, ultimate, American badass of all time.” I confess I miss the “unfiltered” Donald Trump, once affectionately dubbed “the Donald” as if it were the familiar handle of a neighborhood favorite, but recognize that the stately and pensive survivor of a millimeter-wide attempt on his life is the contemplative and decisive warrior that America—enmeshed in the thickets of identity politics, sexual deviance, feminism, black power and institutional corruption springing from the ideological roots of the Left—now desperately needs.
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