Mythology

Steelmanning the case, while noting that laughing at the circus doesn’t mean you want to live in the tent. Trump the trickster: the joke that ran for president Donald J. Trump — property mogul, reality TV star, political wrecking ball — is many things. But viewed through the mythic lens of the trickster, he becomes oddly legible. Like Anansi, Loki, or Hermes after too much Adderall, Trump doesn’t simply break rules — he points at them, mocks them, and sells merch off the wreckage. He is not the fool. He is the dealer of foolishness, and he’s made the world play. ...

The trickster is no ordinary troublemaker. They are the necessary saboteur, the holy vandal, the one who pries open order just enough to let chaos breathe. Found in every corner of the world and across every era, the trickster is an ancient archetype dressed in local clothes — part comedian, part rebel, part divine disruption. They don’t simply play tricks; they expose the trick of the world itself. From the scheming spider Anansi to the gender-bending Loki, from Coyote’s dusty trails to Hermes’ winged heists, the trickster thrives in the cracks of civilisation — those uncomfortable in-between spaces where certainties collapse and new meanings ferment. If priests bless the structure and kings enforce it, the trickster questions the terms of the deal. They aren’t against the rules. They just want to know who wrote them and whether the ink is dry. ...

Long before Freud started pointing at cigars and claiming they were something else, humans had a knack for repeating themselves — in stories, in stone, in superstition. Scratch beneath any civilisation, and you’ll find the same motley cast showing up again and again: the wise elder, the brave fool, the trickster, the tyrant, the lover, the destroyer. Different clothes, same bones. These are archetypes — not characters, but patterns. Not clichés, but deep structure. ...