Trump’s Penal Implant
President Donald Trump is many things. But few realize that among his many other outstanding attributes, our great leader is the second coming of Michel Foucault.
President Donald J. Trump is a man of many parts. He’s a strong and fearless leader, a scourge of liberals, a wise and caring father figure, a deporter of anti-Semitic lunatics, a world-class military analyst, a developer of the Gaza Riviera, a connoisseur of the Battle of Gettysburg, a restorer of McKinley-era economics, a nemesis of the Ivy League, and a fan of the late, great Hannibal Lecter.
But few realize that among his many other outstanding attributes, Donald Trump is the second coming of Michel Foucault.
Michel Foucault, you may recall, is the post-modern French philosopher who opened his 1975 book Discipline and Punish with an excruciatingly detailed description of the public torture and execution in 1757 of the regicide Robert-Francois Damiens, who attempted to murder Louis XV. Foucault lingers on every horrific detail, from how the executioners tore off Damiens’ skin with red-hot pincers and poured boiling oil in the wounds to his eventual drawing and quartering by a team of horses. It’s an utterly nightmarish scene.
And yet, once you read the book you realize, as a critic memorably wrote, “For Foucault, those were the good old days.”
For Foucault goes on to argue that modern, rational punishment, epitomized by Jeremy Bentham’s all-seeing Panopticon, is even more sadistic and cruel than the physical torture society used to mete out as a public spectacle.
Foucault’s theory inspired a few Ph.D. theses, but otherwise languished in the remoter corners of the groves of academe—until President Trump, in a truly visionary move, resurrected it.
I’m referring, of course, to our great president’s brilliant plan to remake Alcatraz Island into a spectacular prison—a Foucault-like symbol of America’s dedication to the timeless ideals of retribution, punishment, and cruelty.
Call it Trump’s Penal Implant.
“Our country needs law and order,” President Trump proclaimed. “[Alcatraz] housed the most violent criminals in the world, and nobody ever escaped. One person almost got there, but they, as you know, the story, they found his clothing rather badly ripped up, and it was a lot of shark bites, a lot of problems. Nobody ever escaped from Alcatraz, and it just represented something strong, having to do with law and order. We need law and order in this country. And so we’re going to look at it…We’ll see if we can bring it back in large form and a lot….It sort of represents something that’s both horrible and beautiful….It’s got a lot of qualities that are interesting, and I think they make a point.”
President Trump’s Foucauldean vision of an enormous penal colony sitting in the middle of San Francisco Bay—right next to a city infamous for its liberal lawlessness—is exactly what our decadent society needs today. Instead of looking out at a popular national park located in one of the most beautiful bays in the world, citizens will behold a dark and ominous symbol of the grim fate that will befall criminals. And if a humble American may make a small suggestion, this renewed Alcatraz Penitentiary could be made even stronger, more exemplary and terrifying. In the statement quoted above, President Trump lingered in loving, Foucault-like fashion on the awful fate suffered by the one prisoner who almost escaped, the one whose clothing was “rather badly ripped up, and it was a lot of shark bites, a lot of problems.” Why not follow the president’s hint and add a large public aquarium filled with voracious sharks to the restored Alcatraz, into which condemned prisoners, illegal immigrants or other miscreants could be thrown from time to time? As with Foucault’s Damiens, the public would be able to watch these evildoers suffer “a lot of problems.” Admission could be charged, and the fees garnered would help offset the cost of building the prison.
It may seem a bit odd that President Trump should embrace the ideas of a French post-structuralist philosopher lionized by the cultural Left. After all, these are precisely the kind of ivory-tower, law-and-order-despising, would-be revolutionaries that President Trump and his cultural commissar, Christopher Rufo, have dedicated themselves to removing. But a wise leader takes a good idea wherever he can find it, and even an S&M-loving gay frog theoretician can point America towards a stronger, more vengeful future. Make America Cruel Again!