{"id":32258,"date":"2024-08-04T08:56:27","date_gmt":"2024-08-04T12:56:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/?p=32258"},"modified":"2024-08-04T10:23:00","modified_gmt":"2024-08-04T14:23:00","slug":"trump-and-the-trojans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/trump-and-the-trojans\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump and the Trojans"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

<\/g><\/svg><\/i> \"Loading\"<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

\"Helen<\/a>D<\/span>onald Trump \u2014 aging, obese convicted felon with more criminal trials pending, serial liar<\/a>, serial adulterer<\/a>, business fraud, con man, tax cheat, rapist<\/a> who boasted about his sexual assaults<\/a>, misogynist who boasted about it and continually insults women, racist, bankrupted casino and hotel owner<\/a>, scam artist, spray-painted sneaker and printed-in-China bible salesman, thief of classified documents, grifter who stole from a children’s cancer charity<\/a> to line his own pockets, indicted four times, con artist who scammed students at his fake university<\/a>, wannabe dictator<\/a> in serious cognitive decline, helping destabilize democracy to further Putin’s agenda \u2014 reminds me of Paris.<\/p>\n

No, not <\/em>the city: the Trojan<\/em>. You know: the guy who started the Trojan War because he was horny, selfish, narcissistic, irresponsible, immoral, and arrogant. Sound familiar? Yeah, that<\/em> Paris.<\/p>\n

I assume, dear reader, you are at least superficially familiar with the story of the Trojan War, an event that has played a part in our collective cultural consciousness for more than three millennia. Homer, and all that<\/a> classical stuff. And maybe you know something about Greek mythology, assuming you are more educated than the average dimwit MAGA cultist or Talibangelist (like those triggered into frothing rage over the Paris Olympics opening ceremonies because they didn’t recognize cultural allusions outside their own myopic worldview).*<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Just in case your memory of what you learned in school has dimmed with age as mine sometimes does, let me summarize the events that led up to that even and my admittedly eccentric reasoning.<\/p>\n

Paris abducted Helen, the wife of Menelaus, the king of Sparta, and took her to his home city of Troy (Ilium). Paris was already married at the time, and had a son, so he was an adulterer with Helen. Just like Trump and several women he seduced,<\/a> not least of all but possibly most recent was porn star Stormy Daniels<\/a> whom Trump coerced into going into his hotel room where he coerced into sex then paid her $130,000 not to tell anyone<\/a> and tried to cover it up (which got him 34 felony convictions for fraud).<\/p>\n

Paris dumped his wife Oenone for his new mistress. Trump dumped wife number one for his then-mistress who became wife number two, who was subsequently dumped (but not divorced) before Trump was already screwing his next mistress (his now-current wife number three). Trump has continued to have adulterous affairs with other women since marrying Melania<\/a>, including the aforementioned Stormy Daniels. The party of family values thinks this is proper behaviour for husbands, by the way, but thinks women’s sexuality must be rigidly controlled and legislated against.<\/p>\n

In response to Helen’s abduction, the kings of various Greek cities raised armies and joined Agamemnon to attack Troy and get Helen back. That began a decade-long siege that finally ended with Troy’s destruction and the death of thousands of warriors and civilians, including seniors and children. Some of the final months are the focus of Homer’s epic, The Iliad<\/em><\/a>. The whole thing could have ended if Troy had handed Helen over the the Greeks when they landed. But they stood by Paris and, of course, the city was destroyed.<\/p>\n

The Repugnican Party could have held off its collapse into the pro-fascist MAGA cult of personality if they had repudiated Trump, had held onto some of their principles, had not agreed to believe his barefaced lies about the 2020 election, and not supported his attempt at violent insurrection on Jan. 6. The GOP is now a dumpster fire of ignorance, fake religion, racism, and misogyny burning like Troy at its end.<\/p>\n

Paris was a son of Priam, king of Troy. Riches, affluence, arrogance, and a deep sense of entitlement. Just like Trump. Chroniclers described <\/a>Paris as cowardly and a hedonist, just like Trump.<\/p>\n

Paris judged a beauty competition between goddesses Hera, Aphrodite, and Athena, who are often shown nude in later art; according to the Robert Graves version of the story, they disrobed when Paris demanded it. Trump also ran beauty pageants and boasted about walking in on teenage contestants when they were dressing or naked<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Some of the legends say Paris raped Helen<\/a>.\u00a0Then there’s Trump’s close bromance with pedophile Jeffrey Epstein;<\/a>\u00a0Trump was accused of raping a 13-year-old girl in 1994<\/a> at Epstein’s home…King Priam defended adulterer Paris, Trump defended Epstein:<\/p>\n

In 2002, the mogul [Trump] told New York, \u201cI\u2019ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy. He\u2019s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it \u2014 Jeffrey enjoys his social life.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Paris avoided fighting the Greek besiegers outside Troy. When he was eventually embarrassed into a duel with Helen’s husband, he ran away because he was losing<\/a>. In a second duel, Paris wounded Diomedes, a swordsman, from afar with an arrow so he could escape fighting him face to face. Trump claimed he had “bone spurs” so he could get out of the draft (during the Vietnam War). More recently, faced with the tough, savvy, intelligent, and witty Kamala Harris (all attributes in women Trump fears) as his opponent, Trump scurried away from debating her<\/a> as fast as he could. Intellectual bone spurs.<\/p>\n

During the ten-year siege, Paris refused to listen to anyone who suggested he should return Helen to her husband. He never accepted responsibility for the siege, for the hundreds and eventually thousands of deaths on both sides, for the destruction of the towns and villages around Troy, the suffering and starvation. Paris never apologized to anyone for what he did. As one site notes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Like many other figures in Greek mythology, Paris could not escape his fate and he brought doom to his city. He remains one of the most well-known figures of Greek mythology, but he comes across as a selfish, impulsive, and reckless character, whose actions would cause the destruction of his people.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Trump’s inaction, his pseudoscience statements,his mishandling, and his refusal to take expert medical advice caused the death of hundreds of thousands of Americans during the COVID pandemic. Trump never took responsibility or apologized for that. And never will: mere humans are collateral damage. He blamed Dr. Fauci and everyone else around him, instead.<\/p>\n

\"Trump<\/a>Throughout history, men have tried to blame Helen for the destruction<\/a> of Troy and make her<\/em> the scapegoat instead of the real instigator: Paris. Just like MAGA cultists (and Trump himself) have tried to blame others for Trump’s massive election loss in 2020, and to blame others for the Jan. 6 attempted insurrection that Trump incited.<\/p>\n

Nor will Trump take responsibility for the defeat of both his MAGA party and the election loss in November. He’ll likely blame it on his VP choice (the execrable misogynist JD Vance, aka James Bowman and James Hamel<\/a>), on the GOP leadership, on the RNC leadership, on imaginary election fraud, on his handlers, on his loyalists, on the media, on his missing-in-action wife Melania<\/a>, on the DOJ and the justice system, on Hunter Biden, on Obama, on the teleprompters, on immigrants, on the FBI, on his low-wattage children (Don Jr, Eric, Ivanka: the original DEI hires), on Dr. Fauci, on Antifa, on Kamala… on everyone and anyone he can rather than take responsibility for bring his party into ruin.<\/p>\n

Paris brought Troy to ruin. Trump brought the Republican Party to ruin. Neither accepts responsibility. To me, the parallels seem obvious.<\/p>\n

Notes:<\/h5>\n

*<\/strong><\/span> The 2024 Olympic opening ceremonies caused an uproar among the hard-of-thinking MAGA cultists<\/a> who are so ill-educated that they could not imagine an allusion to anything outside their own myopic, pseudo-Christian ideology. The event was a broadly satirical show to express diversity, with a tableau that represented a Dionysian bacchanalia<\/a>, but Talibangelists have low tolerance for anything diverse, equal, or inclusive, much less something they don’t comprehend, so they triggered violently over it. Besides, the event wasn’t all about America, which further offended them. And, as expected, MAGA cultists blamed it on Biden<\/a>. Convicted felon Trump, who did not attend the event<\/a>, took his lead from extremist rightwing Fox Newz bloviators and called the ceremonies “a disgrace” which further encourages the party crickets and dog whistlers to chime in with their own faux outrage.<\/p>\n

Words: 1,363<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

<\/div>\n

<\/g><\/svg><\/i> \"Loading\"<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

Donald Trump \u2014 aging, obese convicted felon with more criminal trials pending, serial liar, serial adulterer, business fraud, con man, tax cheat, rapist who boasted about his sexual assaults, misogynist who boasted about it and continually insults women, racist, bankrupted casino and hotel owner, scam artist, spray-painted sneaker and printed-in-China bible salesman, thief of classified documents, grifter who stole from a children’s cancer charity to line his own pockets, indicted four times, con artist who scammed students at his fake university, wannabe dictator in serious cognitive decline, helping destabilize democracy to further Putin’s agenda \u2014 reminds me of Paris. No, \u2026…… click below for more \u2193<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1973,62,1760,219],"tags":[1986,1987,1985,1984,707],"class_list":["post-32258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-maga-cultists","category-world-politics","category-rightwing-claptrap","category-us-international-politics","tag-illium","tag-parallels","tag-paris","tag-troy","tag-trump"],"a3_pvc":{"activated":true,"total_views":415,"today_views":0},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32258"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32258\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32279,"href":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32258\/revisions\/32279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ianchadwick.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}