Even Julius Caesar knew better.
“You all did see that on the Lupercal, I thrice presented him a kingly crown, which he did thrice refuse,” Mark Antony says in his famous funeral oration in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. Caesar made a show of refusing–when it became clear that the crowd would not support his taking it. Smart politics, maybe, but Caesar was nonetheless put to death for his kingly ambitions—and rightly: Dante was wrong to put Brutus and Cassius at the lowest point in Hell, alongside Judas Iscariot, in the very maw of Satan.
The people of the Commonwealth of Virginia were wiser than Dante. The state seal of Virginia depicts, with mythological stylization, the killing of Caesar: the goddess Virtue standing in for Brutus, the allegorical figure of slain Tyranny standing in for Caesar, robed in purple, his crown knocked off, illuminated by the slogan John Wilkes Booth stole from Brutus: “Sic semper tyrannis.” The seal, probably largely designed by George Wythe, was adopted in 1776 after Virginia’s declaration of independence and was presented to the legislature by George Mason.
A century and some before the American Revolution, the English republican Henry Haggar had argued: “If the God of heaven did in that age take away the Kingdom and Dominion of the whole earth from Nebuchadnezzar, that head of gold, and turn him out a-grazing among the Oxen, and give his kingdom to whomsoever he pleased; then let not men in this generation think it strange, though God Almighty hath taken away the kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland (which are but a small part of the earth) from Charles Stuart, and given them to the honorable Parliament.” That argument appeared in a pamphlet titled No King but Jesus. (It bore the wonderfully cumbrous subtitle: “Or, The Walls of tyrannie razed and the foundations of unjust monarchy discovered to the view of all that desire to see it wherein is undeniably proved that no king is the Lords anointed but Jesus.”) Looking back to such spiritual forebears, Americans have held crowns in contempt since before we were Americans.
Not so Donald Trump, who enjoys portraying himself wearing a crown and encourages others to do the same. He has for years tried to associate himself and his family with the British royal family, and it is not for nothing that his youngest son bears the name “Barron,” a pseudo-title of nobility borrowed from “John Barron,” the imaginary friend Donald Trump invented to lie to the New York Post about his sex life.
Visiting South Korea, Trump was presented with a gold medal announcing him as a newly minted member of the Grand Order of Mugunghwa, which sounds like something out of a half-assed parody but is a real thing. Mugunghwa in English is the common hibiscus, which, like Trump’s parasitic brand of politics, is native to some parts of Asia but considered an invasive species in the United States. He also was presented with a golden crown, which clearly delighted him. I am surprised he is not wearing it, though I suppose it is possible that the scaffolding that keeps his hair in place might create complications.
An American president presented with a golden crown can do one thing and one thing only: Smile, thank his hosts for their spirit of generosity, and then hand the damned thing back, explaining that he is the president of a self-governing republic of free men and women, and that, in that republic, there is no place for a crown.
It is possible to refuse a gift. GQ writer John Jeremiah Sullivan once showed up late for an interview with the designer Rick Owens, who, as the writer relates, was obviously, if quietly, annoyed:
I remembered I’d brought a present for him, a red wooden fountain pen made by a company called Lamy. Owens is married to the famous art- and fashion-world figure Michèle Lamy—the couple have been at the heart of avant-garde Paris for more than a decade, ever since they arrived here from Los Angeles. I figured they’d both be delighted by the coincidence of the name. “Yeah,” he said, not smirking but sort of politely half smiling, “this is the first thing that comes up when you type that name into Google.” He handed the pen back to me. He actually handed it back to me.
Now, it is true that Rick Owens has sources of confidence denied to poor Donald Trump: Owens, for example, is good at his job, and he has had a much better run of it than Trump in the expensive-sneakers business. But Trump, who holds a job once held by Abraham Lincoln, ought to be able to say, “No, thank you.”
The problem is that Trump, perhaps owing to his nouveau riche background and the carefully wrought deformity of his soul, has a taste for the trappings of aristocracy—a princely estate as imagined by a trust-fund dork from Queens. You can see it in his enthusiasm for ghastly imperial furnishings, in his love of monarchical pomp, and even in his sometimes evident desire to pass something of his political position along to the sons he obviously despises. (As a father, Trump is like what Henry II would have been like if he had had three Johns and no Richard the Lionheart in the brood.) But what is most objectionably kingly about Trump is not his Caligula-by-way-of-Liberace bad taste but his personalist posture, e.g., treating the White House as though it were his personal property, to be knocked down and rebuilt at his whim, treating the Department of Justice as though it were his personal goon squad, treating judges as though they were his personal servants and factota, etc. Trump talks about “my generals” and unilaterally raised tariffs on Canadian goods because someone in Ontario hurt his personal feelings.
L’État, c’est moi—it is not only gilt moldings that Trump has taken from Louis XIV.
The king spoke, and said, “Is not this great Babylon, that I have built for the house of the kingdom by the might of my power, and for the honor of my majesty?”
While the word was in the king’s mouth, there fell a voice from heaven, saying, Oh, king Nebuchadnezzar, to thee it is spoken; The kingdom is departed from thee.
Nebuchadnezzar had to learn things the hard way. Julius Caesar, too. Why should Americans be any different?
