I GREW UP BELIEVING in monsters. Not just the ones that crept out from under my bed or peeked through closet slats in the dead of night. No, mine were everywhere—in fairy tales, in Sunday school, on the evening news, in the hushed conversations of grown-ups too tired to lie. They wore cassocks and cowboy hats, business suits and badges. They bared their fangs in broad daylight, not just in the darkness.
And I don’t think that makes me any different from most Americans.
We live in a country whose cultural bedrock is built on monsters. Not always literal ones, but figures—forces—so much larger than life they defy normal vocabulary. We learn young about good and evil, Cain and Abel, devils and angels, cowboys and Indians, Nazis and Allies. Later it’s communists, terrorists, socialists, "woke mobs," or "MAGA extremists." Take your pick. We’ve never needed much prompting to cast someone in the role of monster. It’s part of our civic religion.
But here's the catch—and it's a deeply American paradox: we need monsters. We rely on them, not just to scare us, but to shape us. They define our boundaries, clarify our values, and—perhaps most importantly—offer us something to push against. Something to say, “That is what I will never become.”
I bring this up now not as a theologian or political analyst, but as someone who's spent the better part of a lifetime observing people—powerful people, broken people, frightened people. And lately, as I talk to folks across the political spectrum, I hear the same refrain echoing from both sides of the divide: “He’s a monster.” They’re talking, of course, about Donald Trump.
Since his election—and even more since his exile and attempted return—Trump has become the central figure in America’s modern monster myth. To some, he’s the fire-breathing dragon guarding the gates of democracy. To others, he’s the misunderstood troll under the bridge, wrongly accused by the woke villagers. Either way, he’s not a man anymore. He’s a symbol. A threat. A hero. A villain. A monster, depending on who’s doing the telling.
And you know what? I’m not disturbed by that.
Not because I think Trump is, in fact, a monster—I’ll let history settle that debate—but because I believe in the utility of monsters. I believe in what they reveal about us, especially the ones we conjure ourselves. Trump, for all his bluster and bravado, didn’t invent American anxiety. He simply embodied it. He became the vessel into which millions poured their hopes, fears, resentments, and vengeance. That makes him powerful. But it also makes him a mirror.
What we see in him says as much about us as it does about him.
So if you see Donald Trump as a monster—good. Don’t shy away from it. Sit with it. Ask yourself: Why? Is it his cruelty? His charisma? His shamelessness? His contempt for rules, facts, or civility? Is it the way he unearths the worst in others, or the fact that so many find that worst... admirable?
Monsters show us where our lines are.
Growing up, the monsters I feared helped me understand my world. They weren’t always supernatural. Sometimes they were teachers, priests, cops, drunks in the family. But each one taught me something essential: who I was, who I wanted to be, and who I never wanted to become.
That’s what we’re being asked to confront again now, as a nation. Whether you believe Donald Trump is a monster—or whether you believe the people who oppose him are the real monsters—the question is still the same: Who are you in this story?
Are you the bystander? The follower? The hero who hesitates? The child peeking through the cracks in the closet, hoping the monster won’t find them tonight?
Or are you brave enough to face the thing directly? To name it. To understand it. To resist it—not with matching fury, but with resolve and clarity?
The trouble, of course, is that monsters change. What starts as a man can become a myth, and what becomes myth is nearly impossible to kill. That’s why it’s not enough to simply oppose a Trump or any other so-called monster. You have to understand why he exists—what wound he speaks to, what anger he fuels, what fear he calms. Monsters don’t rise in a vacuum. We make them. We feed them. And sometimes, we elect them.
I’m not afraid of monsters. I grew up with them. I know their tricks, their voices, the seductive comfort of their certainty. I also know they can’t win unless we let them. Unless we turn off the lights, stop asking questions, and pretend the world is too complicated for choices.
So yes. Believe in monsters.
Not because they’re real, but because what they reveal is.
And in doing so, you might just find something even more powerful:
The courage to be the kind of person no monster can control.
TONY CASTRO, the former award-winning Los Angeles columnist and author, is a writer-at-large and the national political writer for LAMonthly.org. He is the author of nine books, including his new debut novel, THE BOOK OF MARILYN. He can be reached at tony@tonycastro.com.