Candor, Flattery, & the Unreliable Narrator-in-Chief
Elon Musk, Lindsey Graham, and Dr. Anthony Fauci are three of the most consequential figures of the Trump Era, and each had to find his own way to deal with the President
What I’m Discussing Today
Kareem’s Quote of the Day: When candor costs you and flattery offers a reward, which person do you become?
Elon Takes On The Economist: Better to talk about AI dreams than face hard questions about immigration, crime, and his own popularity.
Lindsey Graham’s Eulogies Tell Only Part of the Story: What happens when proximity to power matters more than principle.
Dr. Fauci is a Hero. Dr. Paul is a Quack: Fauci’s caution before a hostile Senate versus Rand Paul’s anti-scientific ideology mistaken for expertise.
Cool Machine by Colson Whitehead: The Pulitzer Prize winner’s final “Harlem Trilogy” novel delivers good crooks and bad crooks in prose that bounces with rhythm and soul.
“Slippery People”: Mavis Staples turns a Talking Heads song into gospel-funk that moves with both faith and authority.
Kareem’s Quote of the Day
“There is nothing in the world more difficult than candor, and nothing easier than flattery.”
Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821–1881), novelist, Crime and Punishment
If you read Dostoevsky as I first did, in college, it can be an overwhelming experience. The books are long, the themes complex, the prose, translated from Russian to English, more than a little ungainly. Crime and Punishment was the text I was assigned: a dark, almost noirish tale of a student, Raskolnikov, who decides to murder an old woman pawnbroker sitting on a large pile of money, in order to lift himself out of poverty, in the belief that great men such as he are justified in whatever they do if it helps to further their greatness. (How’s that for a self-serving philosophy?) This is one of the first books I read that had a protagonist with an unreliable point of view—seen most clearly in Raskolnikov’s belief that he is great, and Dostoevsky’s obvious portrayal of him as someone who’s not.
Dostoevsky knew a little something about crime and punishment. Early in his career, for joining a literary discussion group that read forbidden works, he was convicted of “anti-government activities” and sentenced to death. As Dostoevsky and his “co-conspirators” faced the firing squad, a cart pulled up with a reprieve from the Tsar. Instead of death, they were sent to Siberia for four years of hard labor. Classified as a dangerous criminal, Dostoevsky’s hands and feet were shackled for the entirety of his imprisonment. He was only allowed to read the New Testament. An epileptic, he suffered frequent seizures and various other maladies. He was eventually released, but he never fully recovered. Still, he went on to write all of his greatest works after he got out, including Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov and The Gambler, with its unreliable narrator.
Nowadays, we know all about unreliable narrators. We have one in President Trump, who narrates our nation’s day-to-day life with the kind of backwards logic of the villain Bizarro in the old Superman comics. When Trump tells you the war is going great, you know it’s time to check the casualty list. When he tells you the economy is doing better than ever, you know you better start selling off whatever assets you’ve got. When he tells you he’s going to build a beautiful new ballroom without harming the East Wing, you immediately feel bad for Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama and the other First Ladies who did consequential work in that doomed suite of rooms. And when he says he’s trying to make the next election the most secure in American history, you can bet he’s doing all he can to turn a losing hand into a jackpot.
Trump is a man who loves flattery and abhors candor. At the beginning of each cabinet meeting, he famously expects each of his department heads to share why they’re so grateful to work for him. He is a man who suffers fools gladly, but can’t stand a person who displays integrity. When faced with candor in the form of a James Comey, a General James Mattis, a Senator John McCain, a Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, or a journalist like CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, he bubbles with outrage. Whereas flattery will get you everywhere, maybe even aboard Air Force One.
Today’s Substack deals with three men who have crossed paths with Donald Trump, and each found his own way to deal with our Unreliable Narrator-in-Chief. Senator Lindsey Graham started with candor but, once it became clear that Trump would be President, chose absolute flattery. It was, as Dostoevsky wrote, the easiest path, and it kept Graham as close as he could ever get to the seat of power. Elon Musk has flitted from flattery to candor as the mood struck him—or perhaps as the various mood-altering substances kicked in. Dr. Anthony Fauci chose candor, seeking to save as many lives as possible, even if it meant facing Trump’s ire and now a Senate investigation.
We all like to think of ourselves as the sorts of people who would choose candor over flattery no matter the consequences. It’s only when candor will cost you something important or flattery will gain you something valuable that you find out which sort of person you really are. But maybe the most fortunate people are the ones who are never faced with those circumstances and never have to make that choice.
