Quite reminiscent of “Hitler worship” among Germans, peaking after he easily conquered France, America’s own “Trump worship” among his followers has been noticed by Trump watchers. This phenomenon seemed to have peaked at the GOP convention in Milwaukee when Trump, who had just survived an assassin’s bullet, descended to accept their official nomination. The fervor of Trump worship was so great that the Week magazine (Aug. 2) called it “A Spectacle of Trump Worship: as God’s chosen leader for the party and the country.”

But, not for me. In my demonology, Trump has always been something akin to the devil, the Prince of Darkness who opposes God’s work on earth. To me, Trump’s persona fits the image of a demigod better than God’s chosen leader: With his Hollywood-combed golden hair, his Sodom-and-Gomorrah facial makeup, and his ever-ready mastery of red-meat lies, he cuts a dashing figure for Hollywood’s central casting to consider him perfect to star in a movie about the devil, which hasn’t been easy for me to argue intelligently.

That is, until today (Aug. 12). The help comes from Washington Post columnist Matt Bai who writes why Trump seems “younger than his age.” (Raw Story quotes the column as the “’Fountain of Youth’ story [of] why Trump doesn’t show his age”).

Here is what Bai says about why Trump looks younger than his age: “The strain of the presidency shows itself in pretty much everyone who leaves the office — in worry lines in the face, gauntness from lack of sleep, creaking backs and failing knees.” Bai tells us what happened to Trump’s predecessors: “Ronald Reagan hurtled into Alzheimer’s disease, Lyndon B. Johnson died a frail man at 64, and Bill Clinton developed a serious heart condition soon after.”

Why does the presidency age its occupants? Bai says, “it’s the awesome responsibility for others that sits on their shoulders” that affects all presidents.

Except Trump, who left office totally unscathed by its burden. Per Bai’s description: “Trump is, objectively speaking, old. But, he’s still golfing at 78 — and pretty well at that. He appears to be nourished by a bottomless wellspring of youth.”

We might add that, of all the ill-wills his enemies could wish upon him, a speedy natural death is probably last on their list as it’s least likely to happen, given his robust youthful health. To our amazement, at 78, he is still accused of being a sexual predatory threat to women. Not even Covid could incapacitate him and he has never been sick publicly. He even had his doctor declare him “the healthiest person who ever ran for president,” which includes Barrack Obama who was 32 years younger when he ran for president. That’s not human. It’s super-human.

What is Trump’s secret? What happened to the “awesome responsibility” of the office? What is his fountain of youth?

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Bai explains: “As president, Trump never betrayed remorse or apologized, never seemed to take personally the 800,000 Americans who died from the coronavirus on his watch. Tragedy breeds in him only defiance. Trump’s motto might be: ‘Don’t worry, be angry.’ Empathy and self-doubt — the feeling that we’re failing to meet the critical needs of others — are the things that really take a toll on us [but not him].” Trump’s secret for his eternal youth? Bai answers: “[For Trump, his] clinical callousness may well be a fountain of youth — from which Trump’s been guzzling his entire life.”

The devil, we are told, has many clever disguises and it’s not easy to spot him among humans. The one sure way to tell the devil, according to demonology, is his ability to stay forever young. Indeed, unlike us humans, the devil never gets old or dies. Bai explains that all occupants of the White House aged prematurely because of “their basic capacity to internalize other people’s pain,” which “[Trump] seems to lack for something innately human.” Obviously he is free of sharing anybody else’s pain.

Totally indifferent to other people’s pain and suffering, Trump has shown to lack human “conscience” to feel anything about other human beings, a lack of conscience or “clinical callousness.” Just imagine that you lived next door to a man with a painted face who never got old or sick, and no truth was ever spoken by his mouth. Wouldn’t you get suspicious of his human identity?

Conscience is a unique “human” ability to feel sympathy, compassion, self-doubt and so on about other humans, even strangers, which is absent in non-humans, such as Abominable Snowmen, animals, children not of age of reason, criminals, the insane — and the devil. In his entire biography, young Donald grew into adulthood completely without conscience — only looking “human” enough.

If you have no conscience, you are not human because only in our interactions with other humans do we complete our transformation from an Abominable Snowman to a human member in a human community. Our lives are lived comfortably, securely and meaningfully only by our cooperation and shared emotions and values with other humans in society, in which we all live, get old and die.

Except Trump, who never gets old or even dies as one of us. Without a hint of humanity in him (which mistakenly earned him the sobriquet of “moron” or “idiot”), he will leave us only after completing his mission, that is, to destroy our community, society and humanity in America — and remake it in his image.

Jon Huer, columnist for the Recorder and retired professor, lives in Greenfield.