The Endgame

Newsletter #5 - The Mad King

This occasional newsletter looks at issues and events through the prism of the endgame. The endgame is a chess concept. In the endgame only a handful of pieces are left on the board. Few moves remain. Victory or defeat is close. Player options are limited and diminishing. Zugzwang is a particularly important aspect of the endgame. It is Zugzwang when a player’s only available moves will worsen his position.

Toronto, January 2, 2023

The Mad King

We visited my brother-in-law Sheldon last week with our three young granddaughters in tow. Sheldon lives in Palm Beach, Florida. To get to his place on South Ocean Boulevard from our hotel we had to drive past Mar-a-Lago. Mar-a-Lago is over 60,000 square feet, has more than 100 rooms, sits oceanside on 20 acres, and has a 75 foot tower sticking up for no apparent reason other than to dominate the (very exclusive) neighbourhood. It’s a club (US$200,000 to join) and—as readers will know—Donald Trump lives there in a private wing with gold-plated sinks and presumably gold-plated toilets. “My beautiful home,” he called it in August 2022 when objecting to an FBI raid on the property. Back and forth, to and from my brother-in-law’s place, past Mar-a-Lago, we drove daily. A granddaughter said excitedly on one drive-by, pointing to the house, “There’s Trump, on the balcony!” She has a vivid imagination. Maybe Trump was on the balcony, surveying his estate or looking out to sea, I don’t know, I had my eyes on the road.

Ludwig II, known as Mad King Ludwig, was King of Bavaria from 1864 until 1886 when he was deposed by his ministers who thought he was insane and useless. Ludwig’s main interest was extravagant architectural projects. He had no knack for governing, and didn’t bother with it. He is best known for three confected fantasy castles he commissioned – Neuschwanstein Castle (now one of the biggest tourist attractions in Europe), Linderhof Palace, and Herrenchiemsee. Like Donald Trump, Mad King Ludwig loved ridiculous real estate, had bizarre fantasies, was very proud of his hair, and was detached from reality. Unlike Donald Trump, Ludwig II was shy, introverted, queer (in love with the composer Richard Wagner, so they say), intellectually refined, and—some say—likeable.

It's the endgame now, inside Mar-a-Lago. Few moves remain for Donald Trump. It must be Zugzwang hell in there. Recent moves by the ex-president—political and legal—have worsened his position. The moves that now remain to him will almost certainly worsen his position further. He is caught in an irreversible downward spiral. His November announcement of a 2024 presidential bid, an announcement made at Mar-a-Lago, was a damp squib. It was met with laughs and yawns from all but the Trumpian hard core. A January New York Magazine cover story by Olivia Nuzzi compared Trump’s isolation at Mar-a-Lago to that of Norma Desmond, a faded and forgotten silent movie star played by Gloria Swanson in the movie Sunset Boulevard. Nuzzi wrote of “a washed-up star locked away in a mansion from the 1920s, afraid of the world outside, afraid it will remind him that time has passed.” Trump’s response? As reported by The Guardian, he called Nuzzi “a shaky and unattractive wack job”. The last line in Sunset Boulevard, uttered by Norma Desmond, is famous and apposite:  "You see, this is my life. It always will be! There's nothing else - just us - and the cameras - and those wonderful people out there in the dark.”

The Mad King of Mar-a-Lago’s presence is everywhere in Palm Beach. As we went to the airport to catch a flight back to Toronto we drove past a Boeing 757 with a black fuselage and “TRUMP” emblazoned on the sides in huge gold letters. “Is he inside, is he in that plane?” asked a granddaughter. I don’t know, maybe he was. But here’s something that bothers me. Why would young kids from Canada care about Donald Trump?

P.S. My latest book is Antisemitism: An ancient hatred in the age of identity politics. It will be published on March 7 in Canada and on April 4 in the United States and the United Kingdom. You can pre-order here.