The MAGA Myth: Trump's Inaugural Address as a Myth of Eternal Return
President Trump's Inaugural Address masterfully told a powerful narrative that connects us to the foundational myths of America's past.
“I was saved by God to make America great again.”
-President Donald Trump
Anyone who doesn’t think mythology is important in the 21st century should read or watch President Trump’s Inaugural Address.
While to some extent all political speech advances a political myth (ideology in narrative form), Trump’s Inaugural was dense with allusions to American mythology. These foundational American myths were used throughout the speech to reinforce the MAGA myth, the belief that America was great, is now broken, and Trump’s vision can Make America Great Again. Interestingly, as this post will discuss, it is “again” that is perhaps the most powerful word in this phrase—a reference to some better time before that anchors the MAGA myth in our nation’s sacred history.
As is widely known, this MAGA narrative is not original. Reagan used it in 1980 to similar effect. The MAGA myth is, however, markedly different from other “Change” narratives, such as those employed by President Obama in 2008. The Change narrative proposes that things need to be different, but those things could be entirely new. They may or may not be good, but they will be different. The MAGA narrative, alternatively, suggests that things actually need to revert to how they were. Things were great and they can be again. We’re not merely changing, we’re bringing sexy back. The goal is to return to a prior state, to either go back to where we were or bring where we were forward into where we are. “There was a dream that was Rome. It shall be realized.”
Trump is quick to remind listeners that “those who wish to stop our cause” tried to take his life and that he was “saved by God to make America great again,” invoking the Divine Right of Kings that has been used for centuries to legitimize rulers the world over. All of this works to cultivate the religious fervor of the MAGA movement and strengthen the MAGA myth. God has elected Trump, has anointed Trump, has spared his life and returned him to America until his mission is accomplished. “I’ve been sent back until my task is done.”
Trump then rifles through a host of specific policy actions. These measures, he claims, will resurrect the American Dream. “The American dream will soon be back and thriving like never before,” Trump says. If we do these things, America will “reclaim its rightful place as the greatest, most powerful, most respected nation on earth, inspiring the awe and admiration of the entire world.” America was “history’s greatest nation” and it can be so again. A new “golden age” has begun.
How do we know America was history’s greatest nation? Trump tells us, summarily reciting a litany of many of America’s great foundational myths:
“Americans are explorers, builders, innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers. The spirit of the frontier is written into our hearts. The call of the next great adventure resounds from within our souls…Americans pushed thousands of miles through a rugged land of untamed wilderness. They crossed deserts, scaled mountains, braved untold dangers, won the Wild West, ended slavery, rescued millions from tyranny, lifted billions from poverty, harnessed electricity, split the atom, launched mankind into the heavens, and put the universe of human knowledge into the palm of the human hand. If we work together, there is nothing we cannot do and no dream we cannot achieve…our country was forged and built by the generations of patriots who gave everything they had for our rights and for our freedom. They were farmers and soldiers, cowboys and factory workers, steelworkers and coal miners, police officers and pioneers who pushed onward, marched forward, and let no obstacle defeat their spirit or their pride. Together, they laid down the railroads, raised up the skyscrapers, built great highways, won two world wars, defeated fascism and communism, and triumphed over every single challenge that they faced.
There aren’t many presidential speeches that successfully pack this much mythological kitsch into a single speech. Nearly every foundational American identity trope is crammed into a few paragraphs. I cannot think of another piece of prose or poetry that is as dense with Americana, that so flagrantly and unabashedly rehashes and re-presents the American myth.
While Trump’s vocabulary throughout the speech is quite cliché, as if assembled from dozens of different action movie scenes, it’s also quite effective. It strikes an aggressive tone that will resonate with the young men that propelled Trump back to office while simultaneously instilling fear in Trump’s enemies. It also frames the next four years as an epic struggle to reclaim what's rightfully ours, a quest for an Eden long lost, a battle for a Promised Land vaguely remembered.
Trump echoes, in what was likely a deliberate choice by his speechwriter, Herman Melville’s noted line from White-Jacket: “And we Americans are the peculiar, chosen people....We are the pioneers of the world; the advance-guard, sent on through the wilderness of untried things, to break a new path in the New World that is ours.” Indeed, when reminded of all these great deeds, what can one conclude except that ours was the greatest nation and we were the greatest people—a greatness we must rediscover, for it is rightfully ours.
These images of a bold, ambitious, and pioneering nation give our country and its accomplishments significance and meaning. These old American myths, the ones that built this nation, still strike many as impressive. Even in light of all of America’s foibles and failures, our deep myths still project greatness, they still arouse a sense of pride and passion, devotion and determination. Their legitimacy supports, strengthens, and sanctifies the MAGA myth, grounding its vision not in something new and untested but something foundational and proven.
By anchoring the MAGA movement in America’s foundational myths, Trump connects his myth to our nation’s origin stories and makes the greatness of our past present to us today. This isn’t a myth about Change or moving Forward. On the contrary, it’s what University of Chicago historian Mircea Eliade called a “myth of the eternal return.”
In his examination of ancient myths (which is not unproblematic), Eliade proposed that ancients divided existence into sacred time and profane time. Profane time is the ordinary time we know, with all its imperfections and discontents. Conversely, sacred time represents the time of origins when the world was created through the great deeds of gods or heroes, such as those enumerated by Trump. Eliade observed that these sacred origin myths often structure a society’s beliefs and behaviors, giving meaning and value to people's lives.
The significance and gravity of these origin stories motivate constant attempts to return to the sacred time of origins, where people can rediscover a sense of individual and collective value and identity. In profane time, humanity experiences what Eliade called the “terror of history,” the horror of being unable to return to the sacred time of our origins. Societies thus construct new myths and rituals in order to reconnect with their origins, to sanctify profane time and give it meaning by making the past present, to eternally return to that time when our originary purpose and value was bequeathed to us by our gods or ancestors. We aim to make time cyclical, to constantly return to our origins so that we might re-encounter the meaning of life in illo tempore, in those times, when it all began.
Ritual behavior intended to return us to the sacred time of origins can be found in many ancient cultures around the world. Eliade cited aboriginal Australian cultures that retraced ancient rock paintings to reawaken their power as well as ancient Mesopotamian cultures that reenacted their creation myths at the start of every new year to sanctify the coming year by instilling a sense of rebirth and renewal. In Hinduism, time itself is cyclical. At some point, the world always cycles back to the Krita Yuga, the golden age of the gods when truth and purity reign. In Catholicism, the Eucharistic ritual is an anamnesis, a memorial or recollection of Christ’s sacrifice. But this recollection isn’t simply symbolic, it’s efficacious. The act of recollecting makes us participants in the original act itself. It doesn’t just recall the past, but it makes the past present to us today so the power of Christ’s sacrifice can be made accessible to us today.
The MAGA myth espoused in Trump’s Inaugural Address is, in many ways, a myth of eternal return that calls forth America’s origin stories to sanctify and legitimize the MAGA movement’s beliefs and give them deeper historical meaning. For the last four years of Biden, we have been living in profane time. But now, by returning to the foundational ideals that once made America great, we can reinstate sacred time, a golden age of prelapsarian utopia.
Trump, here, bears out Eliade’s thesis. A call to return to the sacred time of our origins proves more compelling than calls for progress. Our greatness is in the past, memorialized in the stories of our nation’s pioneering heroes and their deeds. To make America great again, we must reclaim, recapture, recreate, and return to those times, those values, those stories. This eternal return makes the MAGA myth tremendously primitive and powerful.
Beyond simply being an argument from nostalgia or a form of golden age bias, Trump's message speaks to the very core of the American mythos, evoking the original principles that forged our nation. By re-presenting these originary myths, Trump gives his followers a sense of meaning, purpose, and self-worth grounded in illo tempore, in those times when America and its values were created. In illo tempore, we were bolder. In illo tempore, we were more ambitious. In illo tempore, we were more. In illo tempore, we were greater. We can make those times our time. We can make that world our world. We were great once and we can be great again, if we return to our origins. Our country was founded by pioneers, and you too can be one. You too can participate in the great deeds of the past. You too can help rebuild the world. You too can help restore our former glory. You too can help re-sanctify America. You too can Make America Great Again. God saved Donald Trump. God now calls us back to greatness. Who can say no to such a call?
Regardless of what one thinks of Trump and his policies, the mythological character of his Inaugural Address is remarkable and bears close resemblance to the myths of eternal return that have for millennia been used to provide meaning to people and exert power over them.