The United States Has Always Been a Trickster Land

For thousands of years, people have told stories about morally dubious actors like Trump because there is something inherently intriguing about a character who the audience knows will always ride another day to try yet another trick. It keeps you tuning in wondering what on earth the trickster is going to do next. There is horror, there is entertainment, and after several tricks have come and gone without significant consequences, there is a kind of awe inspired by the trickster’s ability to flout society’s moral laws. I feel this way watching Trump’s contempt of the judiciary. I am shocked to the edge of outright panic, and yet I find myself constantly returning to the news, checking to see how much longer the US legal system will tolerate a lawless president. This is the kind of political question a trickster raises, and it draws people in.

This brings me to my second point, which is that the contradictions and immoralities of the trickster are core to the trickster’s intrigue. Trump is a champion of the religious right who scorns Christian pieties. He ran on promises to “drain the swamp” and yet has used the office of the presidency to enrich himself, his family, his business partners, and any foreign countries willing to cut himself, his family, and his business partners in on their deals. Trump complains about censorship and cancel culture and then he uses the powers of the executive branch to crack down on dissent from law firms, universities, and media companies.

Calling Trump a hypocrite, an authoritarian, and a fascist is accurate—but it misses what Trump’s contradictions do to our political discourse: They drive conversation about our biggest civic and moral issues. In the Trump era, Americans are no longer haggling over the tax code or debating the merits of healthcare proposals as we did in the Obama era. Those things matter, but they seem quaint compared to the discourse that Trump drives every day. If he was following the rules, we would have little reason to talk about, say, the nature of democracy.

As a government shutdown over whether healthcare costs for Americans like me will shoot up enters its second week, there is so much chaos in cities and on the international stage that the federal government closing its doors has somehow become a subplot in our newsfeeds. In Indigenous stories, it is precisely the way that the trickster breaks the rules that forces a conversation about them. And ultimately, it’s big subjects, not wonky ones, that people pay attention to. When the future of the country or planet is on the line, you’re going to keep doomscrolling. Whether or not you’re disgusted by it all, there’s no denying the enthralling qualities of the trickster at the center of it.

It’s also worth pointing out that the amoral qualities of the trickster give him—and yes, he is usually a him—folksy and often funny dimensions. So, while the trickster drives a conversation about big moral issues, he is not described as cerebral. In fact, the trickster is often a fool and a dupe, which tends to mask his menacing intentions and make him surprisingly relatable to many. More like the guy perched on a barstool on a Saturday night than the preacher at the pulpit on Sunday morning. (The late Apache comedian Drew Lacapa used to tell a joke about Coyote where he described him as the guy hanging out at the back bar of the casino.) The trickster figure might be outrageously powerful, but many also feel like they know him. He’s not so different from a misbehaving uncle, the one who’s sometimes funny but also crosses lines and is always going on about something a little bit out there but with bravado and just enough of a kernel of truth that he entertains at family gatherings and maybe even holds some sway. I live in Bremerton, a Navy town in Washington state, where many of my neighbors are Trump supporters or at least sympathizers. I get the sense that they regard the president this way.

The third point in common between the trickster and Trump is that they are powerful. I am terrified by the ways Trump has reshaped culture, politics, and democracy. But there’s no denying that he has done it and that these changes are radical. In the decade since I graduated college, the United States has transformed from a nation that elected our first Black president to one where immigrants are now rounded up and shipped off to countries with prisons that have cut deals with Trump. We went from marriage equality to a nation where each state gets to decide whether women can access abortions. And we went from a social-media environment that was sympathetic and at times even useful to progressive causes like Black Lives Matter and #NoDAPL to one that is overwhelmingly hostile toward them. All because this trickster president is remaking the world in his image.

But of all Coyote’s powers, his hallmark might just be his ability to return from the dead, which Trump has also done time and again: first metaphorically, coming back from countless scandals, impeachments, indictments, the storming of the United States Capitol by his supporters; and then, in the 2024 presidential race, from the bullet of a would-be assassin.

Which brings me to the fourth and perhaps most important point about the trickster. (Four is a sacred number in my peoples’ culture, after all.) The trickster gets tricked just as often as he does the tricking. Think back to the 2022 midterms and the 2018 midterms before that when Trump’s efforts to overturn Roe v. Wade and the Affordable Care Act backfired, as did his decisions to back disastrous candidates like Dr. Oz. Foolish interventions that helped Democrats have stronger showings in those elections than expected. Or consider the world leaders who have tricked and played games with the president, like Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan of the United Arab Emirates who convinced Trump to sell his nation state-of-the-art AI chips even though there is legitimate concern that the technology will end up in Chinese hands. Or Russian President Vladimir Putin who convinced Trump to take his line on Ukraine. Despite the trickster’s powers, he’s also often a laughingstock. Trump has that quality too.

Looking at a nation helmed by Trump, it’s clear that my ancestors and the many other Indigenous peoples who tell trickster stories have been getting at something—deeper truths about the human condition, about change, and about how stories really unfold on this land—that has long been overlooked in favor of foreign and imported myths that have since proven inadequate and false. The United States is not a melting pot, not when immigrants are being rounded up in the streets. It is not a land of opportunity; wealth inequality in the United States is now approaching levels not seen since before the industrial revolution. Nor is it a beacon of democracy, the rule of law, research, and truth.

No, this is and always has been a trickster land. My ancestors were right. And of course, they were. They were here for millennia and witnessed perhaps the greatest trick in human history: the theft of a continent through a series of broken promises, lies, and deceits. Which leads me to my last and most important point: If you know our traditions and our people, you should also know that none of this is new.