By David K. Shipler
The man who
craves a Nobel Peace Prize is looking for ways to play with his soldiers. He
declares great swaths of the American citizenry the enemy from within and sends
befuddled National Guard troops into cities governed by his political
opposition. He threatens to go "guns-a-blazing" into Nigeria to stop murders
of Christians. He labels occupants of small boats “terrorists” when he imagines,
with no proof, that they they might be transporting drugs. He launches a
military buildup led by the largest US aircraft carrier to waters near
Venezuela in preparation for a possible military assault to overturn the
government of the socialist president, Nicolas Maduro.
This is
Donald Trump the peacemaker who did manage to get a shaky end to Israel’s war
in Gaza, but who blustered ineffectually about ending Russia’s war in Ukraine
and renamed the Department of Defense the Department of War. And this is Donald
Trump the strongman who undermines his military’s combat expertise by letting
his defective “War Secretary,” Pete Hegseth, purge the senior ranks of the most
competent officers, a likely step toward politicizing the armed forces with
right-wing, white Christian nationalists.
If this
array of odd behavior appears contradictory and hypocritical, let’s look again.
It contains significant consistencies of personality and method.
President
Trump thrives on conflict and confrontation, as if his brain chemistry needed
the fix. He enhances his power by tough-guy unpredictability, trying for fear,
flattery, and capitulation in both warmaking and peacemaking scenarios. This
sometimes succeeds, but not always.
If no conflict or crisis exists, he creates or imagines one, then reimagines it as disappearing because of his bold acts. He’s already practices this sleight of hand by thanking himself for restoring order in US cities where no disorder prevailed, and by curtailing drug smuggling via routes where it barely existed. Sadly, his pattern of imagining and reimagining is not just a frivolous magician’s act. It hurts and kills people.
