The Donald: A 21st Century Sancho Panza?
The United Kingdom voted to Brexit,
and the United States chose Donald Trump to be president, and both of these
events, as well as other popular uprisings, have been interpreted as a global
rejection of the era of neoliberal politics and economics. The election of
Donald Trump has the added feature of marking the rise of an uncouth outsider, a
hillbilly from Long Island, grandson of a brothel owner on the Yukon gold rush
trail. The shocking event seems to be a sort of cosmic riddle in which a vulgar
buffoon is both wrong about much but right about a little, in ways that have
confounded all observers. Some see his victory as an absolutely repulsive
development, yet millions of people love him, while others have had to
reluctantly admit that he is the broken clock that is correct twice a day, or
there is method in his madness, simultaneously brilliant and dumb, blunt and
sharp, good and evil. And perhaps he is an agent of creative destruction of an
old order that must come to an end.
I propose here that an overlooked
comparison is that he resembles, in some respects, Sancho Panza in the classic
novel by Cervantes, Don Quixote. A
major element of this famous story consists of Sancho’s appeal as a populist in
an age of imperial decline. He traveled as the loyal squire of Don Quixote in constant
hope of being rewarded with a governorship after his long, faithful service to
his deranged master. Throughout the novel, the deluded pair speak about the
dream of having lands to rule over while they engage in many lengthy
discussions about the art of governance.
Don Quixote is the fictional errant
knight created by Miguel de Cervantes in two works of fiction, The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La
Mancha First Part (1605) and Second Part
(1615). Spain had just spent a century plundering the silver of the new world,
but the galleon trade had corrupted the nobility, caused global financial
chaos, and ultimately weakened the Spanish empire. Carlos Fuentes described it
as “a country that has conquered and plundered and built a New World in the
Americas and returns, exhausted.”[1]
Don Quixote is a late middle-aged
estate owner who, having read too many romantic tales of chivalric knights,
seeks greater meaning in life by setting off on a life of adventure and
daring-do with his servant and sidekick, Sancho Panza. As the road story
unfolds, Don Quixote must see every mundane encounter through a lens of
delusion in order to make it meet his expectation of adventure and his need to
do good. Imagination must test reality, or reality must test imagination.
Part
1 was a literary
success that Cervantes added to ten years later with Part 2, and with these he gave the Western canon some of its
earliest meta-fiction before there was a word for it (Shakespeare’s play within
the play appeared in the same decade). In the contemporary era, we know that
real gangsters watch the fictional Silvio from the television drama The Sopranos doing an imitation of Al
Pacino from the fictional movie The
Godfather Part 3. Before all this, in the early seventeenth century,
Cervantes had his hero in Part 2
living in a world in which everyone he meets has read Part 1, and his celebrity as the foolish, errant knight is what
leads him to be invited by real aristocrats to a real castle for their mocking
amusement and his humiliation.
In this castle, Don Quixote is
finally living the dream, but it is here that he eventually becomes aware that
only his previous make-believe at a country inn, which he imagined was a
castle, has lived up to his ideals. Life with true aristocrats has shown him
their treachery. After all, the noble baron turns out to be a greater fake than
the deluded knight. It is revealed by his servants that he is hopelessly in
debt to the rising merchant class. As Don Quixote wakes up from his illusions,
the aristocrats are disillusioned as well, for they have been slow to realize
that they needed Don Quixote more than he needed them. He possessed something
essential that they lacked in themselves. As the reviewer Richard Eder put it,
“Seeking to toy with him, they are toyed with, just as readers have been ever
since.”[2]
As a child who grew up on American television in the 1960s, when I read Don Quixote, I could finally see the
influences behind The Beverly
Hillbillies, a
rags-to-riches tale of mutual satire between country bumpkins and elites.
In a review of the English
translation by Edith Grossman, the Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes wrote:
The illusion comes crashing down. Books are no longer
the grand, imaginative truth that moved Don Quixote through perils without end.
So the windmills were not giants. So the armies were only flocks of sheep. So
reality is shabby, gray, unarmed... What can Don Quixote do but return home,
get into bed, recover his reason and peacefully die? The “impossible dream” is
over. No wonder that Dostoyevsky, in his diary, calls Don Quixote “the saddest book ever written.” For it is, he adds, “the
story of disillusionment.” That Edith Grossman has brought all these levels—and
many more—to contemporary life is a major literary achievement. For to read Don
Quixote, in an increasingly Manichaean world of simplistic Good versus Evil and
inquisitorial dogmas, becomes one of the healthiest experiences a modern,
democratic citizen can undertake.[3]
Sancho Panza is the fool when his
master is wise, and wise when his master is the fool. Throughout the story he
often forgets, or pretends to forget, that his master is mad, and he goes along
with his delusions, imagining that when Don Quixote prevails, he himself will
be rewarded with a fiefdom (an insula,
or island) in Africa that will provide him with an endless bounty of wine, gems
and young maidens. Later in the story, the duke and duchess create an elaborate
prank in which Sancho is told they have made him the governor of one of their
territories. After ten days of living through this prank, which he never
catches onto, he learns that power comes with a price a price too steep to pay,
and he jumps at the chance to return to his humble home. Meanwhile, everyone
who has toyed with him is in awe of the wisdom with which the presumed fool has
governed.
Toward the end of the novel, Don
Quixote and Sancho Panza have grown so psychologically co-dependent and deeply
invested in their fictional self-creations that they show signs of being fully
aware of what they have done and of the need to keep the con going in front of
others. Don Quixote agrees to believe one of Sancho’s
fantastic lies if Sancho will agree to also believe his master’s, saying, “Sancho,
just as you want people to believe what you have seen in the sky, I want you to
believe what I saw in the Cave of Montesinos. And that is all I have to say.” The
exchange is a bizarre revelation of both of them being conscious of their own
self-delusions as well as the importance of maintaining their reputation as
fantasists for the audience they have acquired.
Carlos Fuentes said in his review of
Grossman’s translation, “Don Quixote has on so many levels of significance that
I can set foot on only a couple of them.” I leave it to readers to add their
own ideas about what the great tale means in this age when the American empire
is, like Spain in the 17th century, straining to deal with the disillusionment
that comes after a century of ruling the world.
Although the discussions about the
art of governing are treated lightly by the characters in the novel, they have
been taken seriously by scholars as reflections of political philosophy in the
16th and 17th centuries. In one of the notes in the English translation, Edith
Grossman stated:
Don Quixote’s advice to Sancho is
one of the most famous passages in the novel. Martin de Riquer notes the
difficulty of determining Cervantes’ exact sources, although he states that the
general influence of Erasmus is evident, and he also cites a handful of books
on good government, both classical and Renaissance, available in Spanish at the
time. Whatever the sources, Don Quixote’s remarks to the future governor are
clearly the polar opposite of Machiavelli’s counsel to the prince.[4]
The excerpts below illustrate some
obvious resemblances to the rhetoric, conservative politics, and personality of
Donald Trump, although we might conclude that Sancho comes across in the end as
more humane, thanks to his enduring attachment to his humble roots.
Nonetheless, Sancho's autocratic and conservative tendencies are plain to see.
Beyond these comparisons, the conversations in the story include much sage
advice that we wish Donald Trump would take to heart because they describe, as
Edith Grossman noted above, a humanistic alternative to Machiavelli.
The contemporary situation also
resembles Sancho’s because it seems that the American elites who exhibited such
tragic hubris in 2016 were also cruelly toying with the Donald (and the
American people) and ended up being toyed with themselves, just like the duke
and duchess in Cervantes’ novel. It also seems clear that Donald’s reign will
be made unpleasant by his tormentors. Like Sancho, he may soon tire of his
governorship and long to return to his simple life. There is reason to suspect
that the Donald may have been set up in his station, at first because he was
supposed to lose, but then later perhaps in order to play at being king for a
while so the ruling class could withdraw for a spell to regroup and avoid the
ruinous consequences of their time in power. This presidency is either a
deliberate man-made prank or a cosmic prank for all to contemplate. It could be
that Trump is set to be the fall guy for an overdue economic shock and period
of chaos that would have come with or without him. The similarities end there,
of course, because there is nothing of a pretend kingdom in a situation in
which the man “playing governor” has access to the nuclear codes, but Cervantes’
words nonetheless shed some interesting light on these strange days in
Washington.
Excerpts
from Don Quixote concerning Sancho
Panza’s brief governorship of Insula
Barataria
Don
Quixote’s advice to Sancho upon assuming the duties of his governorship:
You… find yourself rewarded with all
your desires. Others bribe, importune, solicit, are early risers, plead,
persist, and do not achieve what they long for, and another comes along and
without knowing how or why finds himself with the office and position that many
others strove for; and here the saying certainly applies and is appropriate:
aspirations are ruled by good and bad fortune. You, who in my opinion are
undoubtedly a dolt, and who, without rising early or staying up late or making
any effort whatsoever, with nothing more than the breath of knight errantry
that has touched you, without further ado find yourself governor of an insula
as if it were no consequence. I say all this, Sancho, so that you do not
attribute the kindness you have received to your own merits, but give thanks to
heaven for disposing matters so sweetly, and then to the greatness that lies in
the profession of knight errantry.
… offices and great responsibilities
are nothing more than a deep gulf of confusions… you must look at who you are
and make an effort to know yourself, which is the most difficult knowledge one
can imagine. When you know yourself, you will not puff yourself up like the
frog who wanted to be the equal of the ox.
… those who are not of noble origin
should bring to the gravity of the position they hold a gentle-mildness which,
guided by prudence, may save them from the malicious gossip that no station in
life can escape.
If you bring your wife with you
(because it is not a good idea for those who attend to governing for a long
time to be without their own spouses), teach her, instruct her, and smooth away
her natural roughness, because everything a wise governor acquires can be lost
and wasted by a crude and foolish wife.
Never be guided by arbitrariness in
law, which tends to have a good deal of influence on ignorant men who take
pride in being clever. Let the tears of the poor find in you more compassion,
but not more justice, than the briefs of the wealthy. Try to discover the truth
in all the promises and gifts or the rich man, as well as in the poor man’s
sobs and entreaties. When there can and should be a place for impartiality, do
not bring the entire rigor of the law to bear on the offender, for the
reputation of the harsh judge is not better than that of the compassionate one.
If you happen to bend the staff of justice, let it be with the weight not of a
gift but of mercy.
Do not be blinded by your own
passion in another’s trial, for most of the time the mistakes you make cannot
be remedied, and if they can, it will be to the detriment of your good name and
even your fortune. If a beautiful woman comes to you to plead for justice, turn
your eyes from her tears and your ears from her sobs, and consider without
haste the substance of what she is asking if you do not want your reason to be
drowned in her weeping and your goodness in her sighs. If you must punish a man
with deeds, do not abuse him with words, for the pain of punishment is enough
for the unfortunate man without the addition of malicious speech. Consider the
culprit who falls under your jurisdiction as a fallen man subject to the
conditions of our depraved nature, and to the extent that you can, without
doing injury to the opposing party, show him compassion and clemency, because
although all the attributes of God are equal, in our view mercy is more
brilliant and splendid than justice.
If you follow these precepts and
rules, Sancho, your days will be long, your fame eternal, your rewards
overflowing, your joy indescribable. (p. 729)
Sancho
to Don Quixote:
I’ll have no lack of ability to
govern it, and if I do, I’ve heard it said that there are men in the world who
farm the estates of gentlemen, who pay them so much each year to manage
everything, and the gentleman sits with his feet up, enjoying the rent they pay
him and not worrying about anything else, and that’s what I’ll do.
Don
Quixote’s reply:
That’s fine as far as enjoying the
rent is concerned, but the administration of justice has to be tended to by the
owner of the estate, and this is where ability and good judgment come in, and
in particular a real intention to do what is right, for if this is lacking in
the beginning, the middle and the end will always be wrong.
Sancho:
I have as much soul as any other
man, and as much body as the biggest of them, and I’ll be as much king of my
estate as any other is of his; and this being true, I’ll do what I want, and
doing what I want, I’ll do what I like, and doing what I’ll like, I’ll be
happy, and when a man is happy he doesn’t wish for anything else, and not
wishing for anything else, that’ll be the end of it, so bring on my estate, and
God willing we’ll see, as one blind man said to the other. (p. 431)
_____
They [Don Quixote and two friends]
began to discuss what is called reason of state and ways of governing,
correcting this abuse and condemning that one, reforming one custom and
eliminating another, each one of the three becoming a new legislator… and they
so transformed the nation that it seemed as if they had placed it in the forge
and taken out a new one. (p. 460)
_____
A
friend advising Sancho:
those who govern insulas have to
know grammar at the very least… offices can alter behavior, and it might be
that when you are governor you won’t know the mother who bore you. (p. 477, 488)
_____
Don
Quixote:
… at times his [Sancho’s] simpleness
is so clever that deciding if he is simple or clever is a cause of no small
pleasure; his slyness condemns him for a rogue, and his thoughtlessness
confirms him as a simpleton; he doubts everything, and he believes everything;
when I think that he is about to plunge headlong into foolishness, he comes out
with perceptions that raise him to the skies… by dint of long experience we
know that neither great ability nor great learning is needed to be a governor,
for there are in the world at least a hundred who barely know how to read, and
who govern in a grand manner; the essential point is that they have good
intentions and the desire to always do the right thing, for they will never
lack someone to guide and counsel them in what they must do. (674)
_____
Sancho
to the Duchess:
I believe my master, Don Quixote, is
completely crazy, even though sometimes he says things that in my opinion, and
in the opinion of everybody who hears him, are so intelligent and well-reasoned
that Satan himself couldn’t say them better; but even so, truly and without any
scruples, it’s clear to me that he’s a fool.
The
Duchess’ reply:
… Since Don Quixote of La Mancha is
a madman, a fool and a simpleton, and Sancho Panza his squire knows this and
still serves him, and believes his hollow promises, there can be no doubt that
he is more of a madman and a dimwit than his master; and this being the case,
and it is, it will not be to your credit, Senora Duchess [speaking to herself
in the third person], if you give this Sancho Panza an insula to govern,
because if a man cannot govern himself, how will he govern others?
Sancho’s
reply:
… if I were a clever man, I would
have left my master days ago. But this is my fate and this is my misfortune; I
can’t help it; I have to follow him: we’re from the same village, I’ve eaten
his bread, I love him dearly, he’s a grateful man… I’m faithful; and so it’s
impossible for anything to separate us except the man with the pick and shovel.
(678)
_____
Sancho:
As for governing them well, there’s
no need to charge me with it, because I am charitable by nature and have
compassion for the poor; and if he kneads and bakes, you can’t steal his cakes,
by my faith, they won’t throw me any crooked dice; I’m an old dog and
understand every here, boy, and I know how to wake up at the right time, and I
don’t allow cobwebs in front of my eyes, because I know if the shoe fits: I say
this because with me good men will have my hand and a place in my house, and bad
men won’t get a foot or permission to enter. And it seems to me that in this
business of governorships it’s all a matter of starting, and it may be that
after two weeks of being a governor I’ll be licking my lips over work and know
more about it than working in the fields, which is what I’ve grown up doing.
(680)
_____
Sancho:
After I came down from the sky, and
after I looked at the earth from that great height and saw how small it was,
the burning desire I had to be governor cooled a little; where’s the greatness
in ruling a mustard seed, or the dignity and pride in governing half a dozen
men the size of hazel nuts? … Let’s have the insula, and I’ll do my best to be
a good governor that in spite of rogues and rascals I’ll go to heaven; it isn’t
greed that makes me want to leave my hut or rise to better things, but a desire
I have to try it and see what it tastes like to be a governor.
The
Duke:
If you try it once… you’ll long to
eat it again, because it is a very sweet thing to give orders and be obeyed.
Sancho:
I imagine it is good to command,
even if it is only a herd of cattle. (p. 729)
_____
He [Don Quixote] spoke nonsense only
with regard to chivalry, and in other conversations he demonstrated a clear and
confident understanding, so that his actions constantly belied his judgment,
and his judgment belied his actions; but in this matter of the additional
advice he gave to Sancho, he showed that he possessed great cleverness and
revealed to a very high degree both his intelligence and his madness. (p. 732)
_____
Sancho:
Let them make fun of me and speak
ill of me: they’ll come for wool and go home shorn; and when God loves you,
your house knows it; and the rich man’s folly passes for good judgment in the
world; and since that’s what I’ll be, being a governor and a very generous one,
which is what I plan to be, nobody will notice any faults in me. No, just be
like honey and the flies will go after you; you’re only worth as much as you
have, my grandmother used to say; and you can’t get revenge on a well-established
man… Nobody should take on his governor or the person in authority because
he’ll come out of it hurt. (p. 735)
_____
Don
Quixote:
… this plump little body of yours is
nothing but a sack filled with proverbs and guile. (p. 736)
_____
Don
Quixote on how Sancho governed:
… one can deduce that those who
govern, even if they are fools, are occasionally guided by God in their
judgments (p. 750)
… serious offices and
responsibilities either strengthen the mind or make it torpid. (p. 773)
_____
Sancho:
It is my intention to clear this
insula of all kinds of filth, as well as people who are vagrants, idlers and
sluggards, because I want you to know, my friends, that shiftless, lazy people
are to the nation what drones are to the hive: they eat the honey that the
worker bees produce. I intend to favor those who labor, maintain the privileges
of the gentry, reward the virtuous, and, above all, respect religion and honor
the clergy. What do you think of this, my friends? Have I just said something
or am I racking my brains for nothing?
His
advisor’s response:
Your grace has said so much… that I
am amazed to see a man as unlettered as your grace, who, I believe, has no
letters at all, saying so many things full of wisdom and good counsel, far
beyond what was expected of your grace’s intelligence by those who sent us here
and by those who came here with you. Every day we see new things in the world:
deceptions become the truth, and deceivers find themselves deceived. (p. 774)
_____
Don
Quixote’s letter of advice to Sancho Panza during his governorship:
They tell me that you govern as if
you were a man, and that you are a man as if you were an animal, so humbly do
you behave.
Many times it is proper and
necessary, because of the authority of one’s position, to contravene the
humility of one’s heart, because the admirable qualities in the person who
holds high office ought to conform to the demands of the office, not the
measures to which his humble state inclines him.
To win the good will of the people
you govern, you must do two things, among others: one is to be civil to
everyone… and the other is to attempt to provide them with the necessities of
life, for there is nothing that troubles the heart of the poor more than hunger
and need.
Do not issue many edicts, and if you
do, try to make them good ones, and, above all, ones that are carried out and
obeyed; for edicts that are not carried out are as good as non-existent, and
they let it be known that the prince who had the intelligence and authority to
issue them did not have the courage to enforce them; laws that intimidate but
are not enforced become like that log that was king of the frogs; at first it
frightened them, but in time they came to despise it and climbed upon it.
Be a father to virtues and a
step-father to vices. Do not always be severe, or always mild, but choose the
middle way between those two extremes; this is the object of wisdom. Visit the
prisons, the slaughterhouses, and the market squares, for the presence of the
governor in these places is of great importance: it consoles the prisoners, who
can hope for quick release; it frightens the butchers, who then make their
weights honest; it terrifies the market women, and for the same reason. Do not
show yourself to be, even if you are—which I do not believe—a greedy man, a
womanizer, or a glutton, because if people and those you deal with learn your
specific inclination, that is where they will attack until they throw you down
to the depths of perdition.
Look at and examine, consider and review
the advice and precepts I gave you in writing before you left for your
governorship, and you will see that you can find in them, if you follow them,
something to help you bear the trials and difficulties that governors
constantly encounter… The person who is grateful to those who have granted him
benefits indicates that he will also be grateful to God. (p. 793)
Sancho’s
letter of reply to Don Quixote:
I’m dying of despair because I
thought I’d come to this governorship and have hot food and cold drinks, and
please my body with linen sheets and featherbeds, but I’ve come to do penance,
like a hermit, and since I’m not doing it willingly, I think the devil will
take me in the end…. may God free your grace from the evil intentions of
enchanters, and take me from this governorship safe and sound, which I doubt,
because… I don’t think I’ll get away with more than my life. (p. 795)
____
At
the entry to the insula there was a bridge, and each man who crossed was asked
a question. If his answer was found to be a lie, he would be hung on the
gallows on the other side of the bridge. One day a man came and declared, “I
will be hung on those gallows over there.” Sancho was asked to administer
justice in this case and solve the paradox created by the man’s statement. His
answer:
...since the reasons for condemning
him or sparing him are balanced perfectly, they should let him pass freely, for
doing good is always more praiseworthy than doing evil. (p. 792)
He [Sancho] created and appointed a
bailiff for the poor, not to persecute them but to examine them to see if they
really were poor, because in the shadow of feigned cripples and false wounds
come the strong arms of thieves and very healthy drunkards. In short, he
ordained things so good that to this day they are obeyed in that village… (p.
797)
Those who had deceived him [Sancho] regretted
having taken the joke so far. (p. 807)
Sancho:
Let me return to my old liberty; let
me go and find my past life, so that I can come back from this present death. I
was not born to be a governor. (p. 807)
Before the governorship could do
away with me, I decided to do away with the governorship. (822)
Notes
[1] Carlos Fuentes, “‘Tilt,’ a review
Edith Grossman’s English translation of Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes,” New York Times, November 2, 2003.
[2] Richard Eder, “Beholding Windmills
and Wisdom From a New Vantage,” New York
Times, Books of the Times, November 14, 2003.
[3] Fuentes.
[4] Edith Grossman, Don Quixote: A New Translation (Harper
Collins, 2003).
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