Greek philosophy has the answers about the effectiveness of Trump’s rambling and chaotic speeches with the concepts of muthos and episodes.
In recent news cycles, there has been a persistent and growing narrative that Trump’s appearances are undisciplinedwinding and harm their chances in the elections.
Trump’s critics believe he is narcissistic and impulsive, and that there is no consistent strategy or broader plan behind his rhetoric. In fact, in many media outlets, this opinion is ubiquitous and virtually unquestionable.
However, with half the American electorate on his side and a new electoral victory, Trump’s chaotic speaking style is clearly not a barrier to success. If their public appearances are, in fact, so clumsy, why do they continue to excite your supporters and even attracting new ones?
Trump’s critics are obviously forgetting something about how his rhetoric works. They may rationalize that many of their supporters don’t take this literally or assume it’s “just an act,” but if that were the case, why would so many voters follow someone they don’t really believe in?
Of course, explaining Trump’s appeal requires a different kind of tool than analyzing political messages. This is where we can turn to the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, who invented the science of storytelling and it has given us precisely the tools we need to understand Trump’s rhetorical success.
Muthos in a nutshell
Aristotle recognized that any story or narrative contains two types of events: muthos and episodes.
O muthos is a small, limited group of events that are closely linked by cause and effect (Lightning struck the tree, then the tree caught fire). With these events, each of them is necessary or likely to cause the next. They are the core of the story and crucial to its emotional impact.
As every event in the muthos leads directly to the next, none of which can be changed, eliminated or reordered without altering the essence of the story itself. Can you imagine these central events do muthos like pool balls on a table. One person hits the first ball, which in turn hits the second ball, which hits the third ball, and so on until the balls stop. To reach their final disposition, they have to hit each other in a specific way, which means that the number of these events is inherently limited.
“Episodes” are the other events of the narrative, which are just loosely linked by cause and effect (lightning hit the tree, then it started to rain). They are related, casual or tangential events that do not necessarily have to occur as a direct effect of what happened before.
While not as central to the central story and its emotional appeal, the episodes are in no way less important or interesting. In fact, since they do not necessarily follow from previous events nor directly cause subsequent ones, they are often the most sensationalist part and visible from history.
Both muthos how episodic events are crucial to constructing a narrative with maximum impact. But narratives are by no means confined to the realms of fiction.
Trump’s narrative: the episodes feed the muthos
The presidential campaign itself can be seen as a story, with events muthos and episodic events that unfold in the media.
Trump’s candidacy has often been criticized for its chaos and drama, featuring an endless series of sensational or suspenseful distractions: outright lies, incendiary campaign promises and lawsuits, to name just a few. However, for his supporters, these events are not the true story of Trump’s candidacy, It’s just the episodes. Behind all the lurid drama, Trump carefully maintains a muthos very coherent: that of being a outsider that challenges a establishment corrupt.
Trump’s story can be summarized as follows. The United States is run by corrupt people (Democrats and their ilk) who attack a outsider (Trump). By challenging the “insiders”, the “outsider” proves that it cannot be corrupted.
To challenge and defeat the insidersthey have to attack him first, and Trump deliberately provokes these attacks. Much of their erratic and unpredictable behavior serves exactly this purpose. It could be something as serious as refuse to admit that he lost in 2020as offensive as insisting that Haitian immigrants have an appetite for Ohio cats, or as mundane as exaggerating the size of their crowds. These are episodes.
Your reactions to the attacks you provoke form your muthos – although your behavior seems erratic, Trump never changes his behaviordoes not change course, nor does it apologize in the face of attacks from the establishment or criticism of its own attacks. This convinces his followers that he cannot be corruptly manipulated or pressured into acting as others want.
Trump’s consistently defiant actions and statements are the events in his narrative that make it necessary or likely for his followers to believe that he is a outsider anti-establishment. These are the parts mutants that are at the center of your story.
The rally at Madison Square Garden: a case in point
This means that much of a Trump speech – like his recent Madison Square Garden performance – is directed not just at his audience, but also at the establishment.
Since your audience has been following your story, they know when Trump is trying provoke new attacks from establishment (“Kamala has imported criminal migrants from prisons and jails, asylums and mental institutions”), defiantly doubling down on previous attacks (“they are, in fact, the enemy within”), or when she is actually communicating her message directly, like a conventional politician (“are they better now than they were four years ago?”).
What Trump himself calls his “plot” is not just an improvised patchwork of observations, complaints and reflections – it is a narrative that combines muthos and episodes for tell and retell the story of a outsider defiant and uncompromising who fights against a corrupt system.
The media narrative about Trump’s chaotic and impulsive speaking style is therefore actually part of his story. For those who understand and follow his story, the attacks on his speaking style become yet another episode that Trump can use to tell his story. muthos of outsider challenging.
Far from being a liability or an indication that he is incapable of staying on message, Trump’s “plot” may very well be his own. intuitive rhetorical strategya way of taking control of the media narrative.
