One of the strangest revelations in Bob Woodward’s latest book on Donald Trump’s presidency, Rage, is that Jared Kushner suggested to Woodward that the way to understand his father-in-law was to meditate on Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. This was, apparently, intended as praise. But groveling flattery is hardly new among Trump’s courtiers. What makes the remark stand out is that it’s also almost entirely true, especially as applied to U.S. foreign policy—though perhaps not in the way that Kushner intended.
Some of the parallels lie on the surface of Carroll’s narrative: Alice’s progress throughout the story, after all, consists largely of negotiations with irascible megalomaniacs (even if the Queen of Hearts has neither Novichok nor chainsaws for the dismemberment of corpses at her disposal). But there is a much deeper connection between this children’s fantasy and foreign policy in the age of Trump.
