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Beware The Apes Of God
In his 1956 treatise on the Trickster figure, anthropologist Paul Radin discusses that character within the psychological context of mythology.
Trickster characters popped up in Western social communities, usually during Medieval festivals; inversions in the cultural order were recognized ritual events. Clowns became King for a day. During Fool’s Holiday (also Feast of Fools) in Medieval France, the town idiot became Bishop. These rites were not confined to Europe or the Middle Ages.
We learn to live with Tricksters and their pranks in modern times as well, either relishing or enduring the accompanying paradox, irony and contradiction.
Modern day tricksters are a thing. Some of today’s leaders who, by definition and tradition, are supposed to exhibit the most aspirational examples of truth, honesty and valor, have been revealed as hoaxsters, falsifiers, and posers.
Tricksters.
George Santos’s “serial fabrications” are a deliberate blasphemous parody of our social order. He didn’t go to Horace Mann, he didn’t go to NYU, he didn’t work on Wall Street. According to court documents as outlined in New York Magazine, the allegations are that…
