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On the aesthetics of Saddam Hussein

On the aesthetics of Saddam Hussein

Last updated on: October 28, 2026 at 5:36 pm by Fred Clark

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On the aesthetics of Saddam Hussein 2026-10-28T17:36:23-04:00 Fred Clark

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Saddam Hussein was a repressive dictator who lived in lavish gilded palaces, surrounded by a gaudy opulence made possible by his plundering of the people of Iraq.

Saddam’s love for gold — for the shiny metal itself — became a symbol of his corruption and oppression and decadence. And also of his horrific taste — of his tawdry tackiness. His palaces were so ornate and overdone that they came across as the opposite — as cheap somehow. The cheesy aesthetics of his gold-everywhere decor became a glaring symbol of Saddam’s isolation — of his total lack of understanding and lack of concern for how he was perceived by others, of his disdain for listening to or caring about what others might think.

Like most authoritarian leaders, Saddam Hussein was a deranged narcissist, whose thin-skinned egomania led to him surrounding himself with obsequious yes-men who — on pain of death — fed him a steady stream of superlative praise. And he praised himself in those same terms. His gilded palaces were an outward symbol of this fawning egomania and this coddling of his fragile, frightened delusion.

But there were also hints that he had moments of lucidity in which he at least dimly glimpsed the reality of other human beings. On some level, Saddam apparently understood that the forced adulation and praise he demanded from his subjects was a counterfeit. Like everyone, he still wanted and needed to be known and to be loved, and having people imitate such love at gunpoint was not sufficient to meet that need. Even he understood that this mimicry was a sham and not the real thing. He feared that no one liked him, and he wanted to be liked.

So Saddam Hussein wrote a novel and published it under a pseudonym. High on his own supply, he was sure that novel would become a best-seller and be hailed as a work of genius and beauty and that its anonymous author would be praised and beloved by the public. Thus he would prove to himself that he was deserving of their praise and affection untainted by any hint of coercion and threats. He would prove to himself that he was loved and not merely feared.

Alas, the book was apparently terrible.

Saddam’s novel was reviewed poorly and failed to sell at all. So the evil dictator abandoned his plan and let it be known that he was the author and that everyone had better buy and praise the book — or else. The critics who had initially reviewed it poorly were detained, disappeared, and tortured. Everyone did as they were told, out of fear and self-preservation, and the book became a best-seller in Iraq. He went on to publish more novels, basking in the artificial praise those books also received even while still knowing — and pretending not to know — that none of it was real.

The authoritarian, narcissist psychology of that is fascinating. Clearly, on some level, Saddam knew and understood the difference between artificial praise and admiration — the feigned affection produced by coercion — and the genuine article. But if he was unable to receive that genuine praise and affection, he would settle for the imitation, and would pretend to himself that it was all the same.

That artificiality — that duplicity and pretense and self-deception and the gnawing awareness that it was only pretense and self-deception — is what the elaborate tackiness of his gilded palaces revealed and represented. It was a flashy symbol of his desperation and his insecurity and misery. It was a golden mask that tried, and failed, to hide his frightened knowledge that he was, ultimately, both unloved and perpetually unwilling to ever act in a way worthy of real love or real praise or real admiration.

In short, it was tacky. But also something far worse and more wretched than that.

The American invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003 meant that America’s military and media spent a lot of time in the following decade inside Saddam’s pitifully hideous gilded palaces. American soldiers and officers and journalists — and the civilians seeing all of this back home — all responded with the same horror and revulsion. They saw in all that gold a reflection of Saddam’s unquenchable greed, his corruption and his grasping need to plunder and pillage and steal. But they also saw in all that desperate gilding a flamboyant symbol of the duplicity and desperation and hollow shallowness of the man.

As Americans, born-and-raised in a culture without kings and royalty and palaces, these settings were exotic. But we did have something similar back home and the tacky ostentation of Saddam’s palaces reminded Americans of something they had seen here, something they were all already familiar with.

Saddam’s palaces looked like the Taj Mahal — Donald Trump’s glittering, failing casino in Atlantic City. And they looked like Trump’s tackily gilded penthouse apartment in Manhattan. It was the same aesthetic — the same plunder and greed and corruption and shining insecurity, duplicity, and artifice. The same too-much-is-never-enough tackiness.

Bruce Fierstein wrote about this for Vanity Fair back in early 2016 — “Donald Trump’s Mansions and Saddam Hussein’s Palaces Are Basically the Same” — but he wasn’t the first to make this connection.

And, of course, he wasn’t the last.

That’s why former President Barack Obama’s zinger last week struck a nerve among the MAGA faithful who have spent the past decade pretending to believe that the tacky shallowness of Saddam Hussein and Donald Trump were a symbol of strength and glory rather than a revelation of corruption, plunder, greed run amok, self-doubt, self-deception, duplicity, and artifice.

At a rally in Cleveland, Obama referred to Donald Trump as “this guy in the White House right now,” and he landed a political punch in the form of a solid bit of stand-up comedy:

I mean, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but he seems very focused on home renovations. He should be on HGTV. The guy’s building a ballroom that’s bigger than the White House. He’s paved over the Rose Garden, put a helicopter pad on the South Lawn, and there’s gold everywhere. What’s up with the gold? Everything, more gold. He’s got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory. Just gold everywhere.

That’s a good joke. It lands because, well, yeah — exactly — “There’s gold everywhere … what’s up with the gold?” The reminder that we’ve seen this exact same look before, from Saddam Hussein, answers that question.

We all know what’s up with the gold because we’ve seen it before. We all know that it’s ugly and we all know why it’s ugly. We all know what it signifies, what it reveals and shows and means.

Trump-worshippers called out for their obvious duplicity and artificiality chose to double-down on that duplicity by seizing on the Cheesecake Factory reference in Obama’s Saddam Hussein joke.

Alas, the far right has never understood or admired the arts, and they’re no better at acting than they are at comedy or interior design. Thus their rituals of feigned indignation — how dare this “elitist” uppity you-know-what insult the common folk of this great nation by besmirching the reputation of our sacred Cheesecake Factory? — have been poorly rehearsed, strained, and unconvincing.

“Don’t let them catch you acting,” Spencer Tracy said, but these folks all look like they’re acting. And they’re not doing it well. It’s a performance that seems like a performance. It’s artifice without art — without honesty, or reality, or truth.

Yes, on one level, this ritual pose of umbrage is just silly. Loudly proclaiming “I am too dim to understand a joke!” is just, well, dumb. And loudly proclaiming, “I will now commence pretending I am too dim to understand a joke and I invite you to participate in pretending that this is convincing!” is even dumber.

Oh, you were so angry at Obama’s supposed “elitism” that you drove to the nearest Cheesecake Factory to make a big show of eating a $20 French dip?

Yeah, OK. Is that restaurant owned by Saddam Hussein? No? Then you’re an obtuse, illiterate clown who doesn’t understand words or language or humor or how to connect with other people.

The fact that you’re pretending to be proud to be such an obtuse clown doesn’t make you any less of one.

The bad-faith pretense here has layers, and all of those layers are hilarious, Elitist “anti-elitism” is, among other things, funny. Transparently duplicitous, pompous gas-bags are — as Shakespeare and Molière and Groucho knew — never not funny.

I mean, they sent Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent out as their champion for the common folk, forcing the billionaire to dine at a Cheesecake Factory in order to defend Saddam Hussein’s populism in contrast to the “elitism” of Barack Obama. Bessent is the Margaret Dumont of the Trump administration. The man doesn’t wear a monocle, but somehow always gives the impression that he’s wearing one. He always looks like he’s about to suddenly cackle, “You’re worth more dead than alive, George Bailey!”

I think they chose Bessent for this because he’s the closest thing they have to the pseudo-respectability of old-money upper-class classiness — the only one in a well-tailored suit who’s not obsequiously clomping around in a pair of ill-fitting Florsheims. That’s the guy they tapped to argue that the gaudily gilded Oval Office is as restrained and tasteful as the old Taj casino or any of Saddam Hussein’s palaces. They were hoping he could convincingly pretend to believe that Mar-a-Lago is an exemplar of refined good taste and not a staggering symbol of the kind of Mondo-a-Go-Go tackiness usually only seen from crazed autocrats like Saddam.

Bessent tried, but he’s not selling it and nobody’s buying it. Everybody caught him acting, even those who are in on the act.

Nobody’s buying any of this. Obama’s joke was funny and Obama’s joke was true and there has not been a single good-faith response to it other than recognizing that it was funny and true.

What’s up with all the gold? We’ve seen it before. We all know the answer.

It’s about greed, corruption, and plunder. And it’s about duplicity, pretense, and the never fully successful self-deception of those who understand they have made themselves unworthy of admiration and love because, given the choice, they will always opt for the greed and plunder.

It’s tacky and tasteless, yes, but it also screams “I wish people liked me, but deep down I know no one really does.”

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