Trump is Iago, without the intelligence

He does a lot of “dumb things” due to a mix of lack of subject matter knowledge and simply having a very different set of goals from most people who work in politics professionally.

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) May 13, 2020

This response to Yglesias gets at what I mean:

I wonder if he sees the media and politicians appear to be at a complete loss for how to deal with him as an indication that he outsmarted them. It's not, he just exposed the inherent weaknesses in a system that relies on voluntary compliance to norms to function as it should

— mark (@TelegramSam100) May 13, 2020

Iago is Shakespeare's most villainous villain.  I know there's a lot of competition for that title among Shakespearean characters, and I'm not trying to establish a hierarchy of villains in the plays.  But Iago tells Roderigo in Act 1 scene 1 "I am not what I am."  It's a direct reversal of God's revelation to Moses, God's great statement of self-identity:  "I am that I am."  Leave the theology lesson of that remark for another day, but Iago is identifying as the negation of that statement, which makes him:  Satan.

Of course, Iago is not a metaphysical demon; but he's as close as a human being can get, and as self-centered as a narcissist like Trump.  Iago means to identify himself as not being what he is taken to be; and therein lies his villainy.  Iago plots against Othello for passing him over for promotion in favor of Cassio.  He plays Roderigo like a fiddle, meaning to betray him when the time is right and it's most convenient (sound familiar?).  He even imagines he will destroy Othello and then take Desdemona for his own (Roderigo's lust for Desdemona is how Iago ropes him into the conspiracy).  Iago is married, and his wife has no illusions about him.  But it that all doesn't sound like Donald Trump, then go no further, we're talking past each other.

But Trump is not Iago, because Iago is a schemer.  He has a scheme to destroy Othello; he has a scheme to destroy Cassio.  He manipulates Roderigo with no plan but to discard him (he murders Roderigo in Act V) when he's served Iago's purpose; and somewhere in Act III, if memory serves, he decides he'll catch Desdemona, too.  It is his scheme that is his evil genius, and the reason I call him Shakespeare's most villainous villain.

Iago's evil works by making everyone he has contact with, including all the characters I've mentioned, think he is trustworthy and dependable.  Iago even tells Roderigo he is neither, but Roderigo trusts Iago anyway.  Iago undermines the very notion of duty and of a system of society which relies on everyone else telling the truth.  Iago never tells the truth and, as I say, even when he does to Roderigo in Act I, Roderigo doesn't believe him, because Iago is shrewd enough to retain the entire truth of his schemes to his soliloquies, when he is the only character onstage.  The real danger of Iago is not to Othello or Cassio or Roderigo; the real danger of Iago is to society.

Consider:  Othello is the military governor of Cyprus, following his victory for the Duke of Venice over the Turks.  But within two days Iago has Othello reduced to a raving madman who kills his own newlywed wife, and expects Iago to dispatch Cassio, his second in command.  The terrible deceitfulness of Iago is destructive to everyone around him, including the whole of Cyprus itself.  Only Iago's wife knows what a liar he is, how he is not to be trusted, but Desdemona (she is Desdemona's maid) doesn't listen to her cryptic warnings.  No on realizes what Iago has been doing until outsiders arrive and find Desdemona dead, Roderigo dead, Othello cursing his wife, and Iago's wife accusing him of all of it.  Her accusation prompts him to stab her to death, which seals his fate without a confession.  But it all came crashing down because everyone trusted Iago to be honest.  Any social system requires the same.  We can't have police at everyone's elbow.  We rely on the goodwill of others simply to be able to go about our daily business.  The people who protests wearing masks in public at stores are the outliers, not the norm.  The rest of us voluntarily comply because we think it best for all of us.  Iago fakes his compliance, and schemes for destruction.  Iago dissolves the very bonds of social orders, undermines any notion of civic duty, actively assaults all who are not Iago; for the promotion of only Iago.

Again, if that doesn't sound like Trump; except Trump is no schemer.  He is a villain, and a criminal, (IMHO), but not because he is playing three dimensional chess.  As one former White House aide reportedly said, more often Trump is just eating the chess pieces.  But our Constitutional system, our legal system, our social order, rests on expecting everyone to voluntarily comply with social norms.  Those who don't usually go to jail, because you can't follow a black man down a street and accost him with a shotgun making a citizen's arrest, and excuse murder.  But those are the extremes; it is in the non-criminal function, before he stabs Roderigo in Act V, or is wife in the final scene, that Iago does the most damage, and it is not criminal damage, and it is not easily seen.  Because without the soliloquies we might watch Iago poison Othello's mind, but until Act V, when all the deaths occur, it might not even occur to the audience what Iago is up to.

Trump will be known for his villainy in retrospect; evil always is.  Stories of Auschwitz and Dachau leaked out during the war; but it was only after their liberation that the stories became true, and the evil of the Nazis was finally known (at least to the outside world).  Trump's villainy is plain, but how much more damage he has done won't be known until his administration ends, and the clean up and restoration begin.  And the central problem is, our system always has this fundamental weakness.  We always expect Presidents to "grow into the job" or at least follow the norms and traditions (anyone else remember stories early on about the White House hiring someone to simply take back together the paper reports Trump shredded by hand, simply because he never wanted to leave a paper trail?  Word was that when those reports got out, the position was terminated.  Trump has never not been Iago.)  It is a weakness we cannot live without, cannot legislate away, cannot amend the Constitution to correct.

The only thing we can do, and this, I think, is the "lesson" of "Othello," is to be more aware of who we trust and why we trust them, especially those we give any power to.  Because without trust, human society is impossible.  Trustworthiness, however, is inherently human.  Iago is not what he is, which makes him inherently and completely evil.  Trump is a malignant narcissist who had no business being in a position of power.  That he is, is on us.  We the people are the only guarantors of our security, and of the soundness of our system.