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The allegory of the cave – and the framework of character, temperament, and practice that emerges therein – provides a means to assess contemporary politics and political leaders. It is only right, therefore, with the opportunity before us to examine how the America’s presidential
candidates align with the lessons learned from the allegory of the cave, that we do so.
Aligning Trump to the Allegory of the Cave
Trump clearly was not bound to a particular environment: his father encouraged him to strike his own path, allowing him to take over
his real estate company and loaning him millions of dollars to expand it as he pleased, money which Trump never paid back. Moreover,
he was trained in business by multiple advisors and learned about “big business” through the experiences gained in commercial real estate and licensing, as well as how to use the law to exploit power and defend attacks by his mentor Roy Cohn, a lawyer who helped engineer the conviction of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg as Soviet spies, and who served as chief counsel for Senator Joseph McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee that was created in 1938 to investigate alleged disloyalty and rebel activities on the part of private citizens, public employees, and organizations suspected of having Communist ties.
But it cannot be said that Trump became or has become enlightened over the course of his