Does Donald Trump want to be a superhero because he’s an authoritarian or is Donald Trump an authoritarian because he wants to be a superhero?
I typically approach his gambits as fascist strategic ploys aimed at consolidating power under the executive branch. Everything I mentioned above can be analyzed that way. He’s going easy on Putin in Ukraine negotiations because he hopes to re-create Putinism here at home; he’s siccing DOGE on federal agencies because he’s keen to purge the government of rival “liberal” power blocs; he’s flouting due process in deporting gang members because he wants to get the public on his side in delegitimizing the courts; he’s tariff-ing his brains out because he wants the whole world to have to beg him for their livelihoods; he’s menacing Canada because seizing neighboring countries is just kind of what fascists obsessed with “national greatness” do.
His Green Lantern aspirations flow from his illiberalism, one might conclude, which is why Barack Obama was a poor match for the theory. The most distinctive “super power” Trump wields, in fact, is the certainty that if you resist him you’ll be threatened by the White House politically and economically and threatened by the scummiest elements of his base in more visceral ways.
But not every Trump political gambit lends itself so easily to strategic logic.
What’s the strategic logic, for example, of vowing to convert Gaza into a resort? What was the supposed strategic logic of holding a photo op with Kim Jong Un in 2019? Is there really a strategic rationale behind slapping tariffs on Canada and Mexico, then lifting them, then slapping them on and lifting them again?
When the president strong-arms nations like Ukraine and Canada while playing nice with international cancers like Russia and China, is it because of his ideological affinity for the latter? Or is it a simpler matter that smaller powers can be successfully bullied and major ones can’t? A superhero always wins in the end, after all, and it’s a lot easier to “win” over weak allies than hostile enemies.
And yes, Taiwanese readers should find that ominous.
His interest in Gaza and in meeting Kim are more easily explained as efforts to distinguish himself as a singular figure willing to venture where his predecessors didn’t dare. No other president would be so bold (or dumb) as to propose resolving the Israeli-Palestinian with a bit of ethnic cleansing and seaside development. No other president would take the political risk of meeting with a global pariah like Kim. No other president would toy with the American economy by imposing and then un-imposing tariffs on two of the country’s biggest trade partners as a matter of whim.
Only a leader endowed with superhuman courage and willpower is willing to confront and shatter the constitutional and international norms that have governed the world for the last 80 or so years. Trump is accomplishing things no other president could—or would want to. He’s a superhero.
Liberals wanted a Green Lantern behind the Resolute Desk 10 years ago. Now we have one. How do you like it?
The Green Lantern Theory, Revisited
Idiocracy