My thing is bigger than your thing.
The bigger, more powerful button. The Wall. The exclusion of immigrants. Increased defense spending. All of a piece in the vision of “America First.”
Donald Trump’s latest descent into juvenile posturing, the warning to Kim Jong-un of how he, the world’s mightiest leader, has a larger, more powerful nuclear button than “Rocket Man,” is the latest manifestation of not just Trump’s insecurity, but the insecurity of many who elected him. That’s those who see foreigners as jackals circling us, tearing off—or ready to tear off at the first opportunity—the choicest pieces of America, feasting on our nation’s wealth and power in a torment by a thousand bites.
This may remind you of Richard Nixon’s characterizing the U.S. as a “pitiful, helpless giant,” as a justification for launching new military spending programs, which were later expanded under Reagan.
Earlier, Donald Trump led off the New Year by excoriating Pakistan for being an undependable ally, “laughing at us” for taking our money without using it to fight terrorism. Meanwhile his “my button is bigger than your button” must have elicited cackles of laughter from Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, whose countries represent the greatest threat to American interests. I can just picture them looking around at their aides and saying, in Russian or Chinese, the equivalent of “Can you believe this guy?”
Fortress America plays better than ever
I didn’t realize until the “bigger button” moment, that Trump’s insecurities reflect the insecurities of his base through and through. He rode those insecurities into office. No matter how childish, cruel, narcissistic, indecent, and callous he shows himself to be, they give him a pass on account of his promise to put down our enemies.
How could a secure person, knowing that the U.S. dominates the world militarily with defense spending greater than the rest of the countries put together, and knowing our nuclear arsenal is on a parity with Russia’s, how could that person even bother to engage North Korea in an exchange of childish boasts?
And now Trump wants to increase defense spending after passing a tax cut that will jack up the national debt by another trillion-plus dollars.
Trump voters elected the embodiment of their inchoate insecurities in physical form. He voiced their insecurities in every speech—rapists and murderers, and drug kings pouring over our borders, Iran taking advantage of the “worst [international] deal ever made,” China milking us with “terrible, the worst” trade deals—all these have been preying on the minds of a silent, simmering plurality for years.
(The Tea Party was and is an earlier manifestation, although a problem for Tea Partiers is that many of them genuinely do not want a king, which was their warped picture of Barack Obama. Trump has no such democratic scruples; he believes being a king would be good for America (Trump’s conception of America). I’m not sure what the most principled Tea Partiers make of him, but I suspect they have their reservations.)
I believe that most Trump voters think that having a king running the country is not a good idea—a thought in their higher brain. But as always it’s the mid-brain that drives the political engine, and the Trump voter’s mid-brain is a swirl of disappointments, fears, resentments, and grudges.
It helps to explain why the most ardent followers stick to him despite his ceaselessly outrageous behavior. He is the only one, with the promise “I alone can fix it,” who will protect them against the enemies and parasites draining us of our former greatness.
All the while he is punching holes in the American ship of state.