Attend the Tale of ...

The parallels between America's worst president and Broadway's most evil villain are uncanny.

In “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street,” Stephen Sondheim’s exceedingly dark but brilliant musical, Sweeney returns to London to seek retribution on the powerful Judge Turpin, who has had him unjustly imprisoned and has taken Sweeney’s daughter as his ward and his intended bride.

Sweeney’s underlying anger is due to very real grave injustices done to him, but his way of dealing with that anger is decidedly less than healthy. Some of what makes the show so compelling is that we, the audience, may be able to point to the source of his desire for revenge but we are simultaneously repulsed by his violence.

Does this have a familiar ring to it? Well, except for the part about the injustices done to him being real, this is also the story of the current resident of the White House.

When Trump was a fame-thirsty man-about-town in New York City, he desperately sought to be welcomed into the inner circles of the wealthy Manhattan elites. Having grown up in Queens, with a shady slumlord for a father, that was not ever likely to happen. No matter how many tabloid front pages he may have accrued, they were not the currency of the people in whose company he wanted to be considered. I sense that his rage initially may have been rooted, at least in part, in his “I’ll show them” impulse.

He has spent most of his life focused on the most ostentatious external trappings of wealth — the over-the-top casinos, his gold-plated condo, the buildings emblazoned with his name as their most prominent architectural feature. But those were hardly the things that would provide him entrée with the Park Avenue and Sutton Place set. Even purchasing the legendary Plaza Hotel — the iconic landmark that has been synonymous with New York City wealth for decades — didn’t legitimize him.

When he entered politics, he did so by leveraging his pop culture notoriety rather than his skills. Instead of focusing on serving constituents, he focused on aggrandizing himself. There was no working his way up the ladder — no local or state office where he might learn the ropes. After years of teasing about running for the highest office in the land, he inserted himself into the campaign, using cutthroat tactics and a “burn it all down” mentality.

He got into office by using the same hucksterism he had used to sell condos and steaks and casinos and vodka. And did achieving the highest office in the land satisfy his desire for legitimacy? Did he have some sort of epiphany that somehow transformed him from being self-serving and greedy to being a benevolent and altruistic leader?

Aw, hell, no. His electoral success only emboldened him to use his power and position to impose his hatred on others. For Trump, a huge component of that power was the ability to exact revenge on those he perceived to have slighted him in any way.

Donald Trump has always been vengeful. He’s often been specifically vengeful. He is notorious for holding grudges over silly things for decades. He focuses his revenge on people who he dislikes, and he is especially vengeful to people who prove him wrong. (Remember his long-standing misogynist vendetta with Rosie O’Donnell?) But in his first term, his revenge was mostly aimed at particular individuals.

But we’ve now entered a new age of Trump vengeance.

Sweeney Todd wouldn’t have been able to exact his revenge and get away with his crimes for as long as he did without help. He finds the perfect accomplice in Mrs. Lovett, a daft pie shop proprietor who is enamored with Sweeney and who also gets her “fresh supplies” for her meat pies from the flesh of his victims. She is simultaneously smitten with Sweeney and eager to benefit financially from her complicity in his crimes.

There is a turning point in the tale when Sweeney’s opportunity to murder Judge Turpin is scuttled and he becomes so enraged that he irrationally seeks to slake his thirst for revenge by taking his rage out on everyone who sits in his barber chair. He sings:

“Not one man, no, nor ten men
Nor a hundred can assuage me.”

Unfazed by Sweeney’s violence, Mrs. Lovett finds pecuniary opportunity in the deaths of Sweeney’s victims.

The turning point of Trump’s second term mirrors that of Sweeney Todd. Donald Trump has surrounded himself with a cabinet full of Mrs. Lovetts — willing accomplices to the destruction he is wreaking, most often with financial benefits for themselves. The only people now in Trump’s orbit are those who have completely set basic human decency and good governance aside and who seem to share, or at least support, Trump’s own lust for revenge.

Trump no longer directs his wrath solely toward those who he perceives have harmed him personally. No. Entire nations — entire continents, in fact — are his targets. His vengeance is undifferentiated.

The U.S. is helping prevent famine and diseases in other countries? Let the people in those “shithole countries” die! People in federal government have devoted their lives and their careers to doing vital jobs that I don’t understand? Fire them! Someone in the press corps asks a question that I don’t like? Banish them from the White House! Impoverished schoolchildren in the U.S. are getting free meals? Let them die! Someone protests against my policies? Send one of my goon squads to imprison them!

Trump may not be literally slashing throats like Sweeney Todd, but he’s destroying far more lives. The cavalier attitude with which Trump swings the razor at the end of the government’s arm is far beyond anything that Sweeney could have imagined. The sole purpose of this second term seems to be to destroy everything without a hint of compunction.

The result is that Trump’s rage, like Sweeney’s, is no longer connected with the slights or grievances that created it. It has taken on a life of its own, and it is spiraling out of control, destroying everything in its path.

If there’s any hope on the horizon, it’s that Sweeney Todd comes to a tormented, miserable, painful end — as does his accomplice. Their actions prove to be unsustainable.

Such is the inevitable fate of dictators and tyrants. For Trump, it’s only a question of how much damage he will do before he meets his demise.