From "Donald Trump's influence will evaporate once he leaves office. Here's why/Those who believe in the invincibility of Trump’s personality cult hold a view of American democracy that is at once too cynical and too naïve" by Julius Krein (The Guardian).
Here's the context of "the buffoon who got himself taken seriously," from Nietzsche’s "Twilight of the Idols":
With Socrates, Greek taste changes in favor of dialectics. What really happened there? Above all, a noble taste is thus vanquished; with dialectics the plebs come to the top. Before Socrates, dialectic manners were repudiated in good society: they were considered bad manners, they were compromising. The young were warned against them. Furthermore, all such presentations of one's reasons were distrusted. Honest things, like honest men, do not carry their reasons in their hands like that. It is indecent to show all five fingers. What must first be proved is worth little. Wherever authority still forms part of good bearing, where one does not give reasons but commands, the dialectician is a kind of buffoon: one laughs at him, one does not take him seriously. Socrates was the buffoon who got himself taken seriously: what really happened there?
