The Interior of the Human Soul

Plus: Bombing Iran

The Baron and Baroness de Thénard.

I have a new piece up at The Bulwark about Donald Trump’s strange and inexplicable interest in the musical version of Les Misérables, whose new touring production just premiered at the Kennedy Center. I note one of the many ironies.

The musical, based on the epic 1862 novel by Victor Hugo, first produced in French in 1980 and translated masterfully into English in 1985, celebrates the heroism of young revolutionaries manning the barricades in a street uprising against an authoritarian monarchist regime. Yet Trump went to enjoy this show just a few days after ordering the National Guard onto the streets of Los Angeles in an authoritarian effort to crush protests against his immigration police state.

But the irony is not merely political. I point to the earnest idealism of Hugo’s work, and to a theme very specific to Les Mis.

Hugo very deliberately chose to make his hero a fugitive ex-convict. He picked the least, the lowest, the most despised man by the respectable standards of his time and set out to show his potential for greatness. This is the deepest theme of Les Misérables: that the least can become the greatest.

Hard-core Hugo fans—those who have read the giant essay on the Battle of Waterloo that Hugo inserts into the middle of the novel—will recognize this as the significance of Cambronne’s word. This theme is also reflected in the other characters of the novel, particular in Gavroche, a ragged street urchin with the soul of a giant.…

If Hugo were alive today, he undoubtedly would have made at least one of his main characters an illegal immigrant, championing as he always did the cause and the heroic potential of the poor and despised.

The jumping off point for this—the reason I had to write something about this story—was when a reporter at the premiere asked Trump whether he identified more with Jean Valjean or with the story’s main antagonist, Inspector Javert. But it’s obvious to most fans of the show that Trump is neither of these characters.

Trump’s inability even to answer the question—his ignorance and indifference—raises a possibility that fans of Hugo are likely to find far more plausible. Trump is neither Valjean nor Javert, but a third character: the chiseling, dishonest innkeeper Thenardier.

It’s not just that Thenardier is also in the hospitality industry and also has a penchant for, as he sings in the musical, “rooking the guests and cooking the books.” It’s also his profound spiritual blindness, his focus on power and petty gain above everything else. Thenardier is not really Valjean’s antagonist, because he is not a grand enough character; he is more of a nuisance than a threat. But he is the story’s one true villain, because he is a man untouched by any vision of the ideal.

Read the whole thing. It offers an explanation of current events that is perhaps more enlightening than any discussion of political ideology, because it is rooted in questions about our basic outlook on the world, and in Hugo’s terms, “the interior of the human soul”—or its absence.

Trump Loves ‘Les Misérables.’ But Does He Know What It’s About?

The “Two Weeks” War

I had prepared the notice above when the news came in that the US has bombed nuclear facilities in Iran, joining in the so-far successful Israeli air attack. I had been preparing to write about that, and it’s a good thing I didn’t have it quite ready yet, because I was pretty sure Trump would not join in. Why? He told the press he would make a decision in “two weeks,” which is a common verbal tic when he wants to push something off to the indefinite future. It usually translates to “maybe someday, maybe never.” But then he just turned around and did it. How much we’ve actually done remains to be seen.

If you know my history, you know that I think an attack that destroys the military and nuclear capabilities of the Iranian regime is a good thing, no matter who does it. I warned people on social media last night, “not to negatively polarize yourself into any sympathy whatsoever with the Iranian regime. Those guys are horribly regressive, have stayed in power through torture and murder, and deserve to be disarmed down to the level of literally having their arms torn out of their sockets.”

You also know that I don’t trust Donald Trump (and definitely not Pete Hegseth) to do this right. I particularly don’t like that he did this with little attempt at congressional consultation or approval. This is not just a constitutional requirement; it’s a practical necessity for a conflict that may take many weeks or months to resolve.

But I’ll provide an overview of this issue in the next day, as well as getting caught up on Trump’s equally unilateral—and far more ominous—domestic use of the military. Stay tuned.