GELFAND’S WORLD-It takes a little while to figure out Donald Trump's appeal, and it takes a little while longer to understand the group he actually appeals to. An evening spent on the pier next to the battleship USS Iowa, the place where anti-Trump protestors and Trump supporters faced off Tuesday night, was sufficient to provide the needed insight.
Trump's Tuesday evening San Pedro appearance on the deck of the USS Iowa was advertised as a major presentation on national security. It wasn't really a major speech, and it didn't contain much about national security. In fact, the media were quick to point out that Trump spoke for barely 15 minutes and was short on policy details. This is accurate, but I don't think that it is an entirely fair criticism. Trump was only in San Pedro to pick up an endorsement from a barely-known veterans' group, and perhaps to warm up for the big debate at the Reagan Library the next night.
Still, there were clues about both Trump himself and about his following that emerged. To explore this question, we need merely to consider the high point of Trump's speech.
Here is the line that was considered to be significant enough that it was replayed again and again over the local radio and television stations: "We're gonna make our military so big and so strong and so great, it will be so powerful, that I don't think we're ever going to have to use it. Nobody's going to mess with us."
At first sight, this seems like a reasonable enough idea. Who opposes the idea of a capability that would deter aggressors? It is only on closer consideration that the logical underpinnings and geopolitical fallacies emerge.
One implicit assumption in Trump's comment is that the United States is somehow militarily weak. Otherwise, why would we need to build up our forces? But that is a preposterous argument, considering that U.S. defense spending is substantially higher than that of every other country. In fact, U.S. military spending is higher even than the spending of most other major military powers combined. A side-by-side comparison of aircraft carriers shows that our holdings dwarf every other country's. You can do the same comparison for missiles and high performance submarine fleets.
This argument also leaves out the concept of the nuclear deterrent. Some of those submarines and aircraft carriers are thermonuclear-weapons capable.
In other words, it is unlikely that any conventional military attack on the United States is likely, short of the beginnings of what we used to refer to as a nuclear holocaust. My generation worried about this possibility, but building up the conventional military didn't seem like a useful sort of prevention. The doctrine of mutual assured destruction was the protection we had, and it was with us for nearly half a century. We are even now capable of asserting that defense as a national policy should it be necessary.
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So what sort of military buildup could Trump possibly be talking about? Absent the need to protect the mainland U.S. against a conventional military attack, what remains? I think it's obvious that our ability to have our way overseas is all that is left.
Perhaps we are talking about the ability to force Iran to follow our orders, as Wednesday night's Republican presidential debate suggested. Perhaps the argument about having a military so big and so strong and so great, it will be so powerful, that I don't think we're ever going to have to use it -- refers to the ability to issue orders to Iran and Syria and central American countries, with the full assurance that we will be obeyed.
As a policy choice, this is foolhardy. Perhaps you might say it's crazy, although it implicitly follows a lot of the rhetoric of the Cheney faction of the Republican party. But it's more than foolhardy as policy. It also requires a huge increase in the numbers of active duty American soldiers. After all, the successful occupation of even a country as small as Iraq would require several hundred thousand troops. Even if it wasn't painfully obvious in 2003, it is obvious now.
So how would a Trump administration build up our military to this level of power and readiness? Assuming Trump meant anything at all by his remark, the only logical approach would be the return to the military draft.
Consider that thought in the context of modern history. The culmination of the American combat presence in Viet Nam coincided with the dwindling away of the draft. This followed some 68,000 American combat dead, resulting in widespread political opposition. The draft effectively failed to exist by the early 1970s.
It seems extremely unlikely that the U.S. would return to the military draft, at least while anybody who remembers the Viet Nam conflict is still alive.
I bring up these unhappy memories only to put Trump's comments into context. In order to build a U.S. military that is capable of carrying out Republican dreams of empire, a large increase in the number of American soldiers would be necessary. The Republicans do understand the point at some level when they talk about boots on the ground. That means living human beings trained to be soldiers and supported by supply chains, medical care, and officers.
Will this generation of Americans put their own children in jeopardy of being drafted? That is the reality of the Trump pipe dream. The idea is extremely unpopular on both sides of the aisle in congress.
So what could Donald Trump have possibly meant when he made that remark?
We're gonna make our military so big and so strong and so great, it will be so powerful, that I don't think we're ever going to have to use it. Nobody's going to mess with us.
Treated logically, this remark implies a return to the system we had prior to 1972.
I suspect that Donald Trump didn't really mean it that way. I suspect that he didn't really mean much of anything. It was just the sort of bombast you toss off in front of the kind of audience that Trump has come to understand and to expect.
So what is that audience, and what appeals to them? In talking to the Trump supporters on Tuesday and watching the replay of Trump's speech, I came up with a two-word summary.
Toddler logic.
There is no way for a President Trump to build up American military forces to much higher levels than they are now, not if that means drafting or recruiting millions of Americans to play the role of ground troops. But Trump can make the boast, because it won't be evaluated critically. The evidence of the YouTube tape showed that Trump's remark was greeted with polite support.
In short, the Trump supporters failed to evaluate the centerpoint of the speech in terms of whether the proposed military buildup was even possible.
But on the other hand, this fantasy played to a need for feeling important. The crowd seemed to want to be able to look forward to a day when they are all-conquering, all-powerful, and all-respected. They want to be able to feel that they are better than other nationalities.
It reminded me of the way that 3 year-olds think. I'm going to be a princess. I will wear a crown and people will do what I tell them to do.
Toddler logic. As the psychologists describe this way of thinking, wishing makes it so.
Trump appeals to this way of thinking by speaking with absolute certainty. He speaks in a tone of voice that radiates fatherly authority. He even speaks of the mutual love between his audiences and himself. None of this has anything to do with the world of cold reality, or of dictators that can match our nuclear weapons with their own. Trump's stump speech appeals to infantile fantasies of omnipotence. It appeals to a mindset that can simultaneously expect other countries to show us obedience, even as they love and respect us. In short, it imagines the world of our imperial fantasies to be populated by folks who aren't human enough to resent our dictatorship.
Admittedly, this is abstracting quite a lot from part of one speech and the way it was received. But listening to the back-and-forth between the anti-Trump protestors and the relatively few pro-Trump folks on the pier, this is what I took from my observations. There was quite a lot of anger displayed on both sides. The protestors were justifiably angered by Trump calling out their ethnicity. They referred to Trump as a racist (other terms I saw on signs included misogynist and hater), which seemed rational, if not entirely polite. The Trump supporters carried signs saying make America great again, which could be the subject of an equally long discussion on implicit assumptions. The pro-Trump group were offended by the word racist, but some of their remarks to me about the protestors fit the description.
On a side note, Trump also discussed the trade deficit. It's curious that there has been so little discussion on either side about this issue, considering the fact that our balance of trade went negative under President Reagan and has never come back. Trump suggested that the Japanese and the Chinese are sharper negotiators than our leadership. He went on to say that the politicians (presumably his 14 primary opponents) don't have what it takes to reverse the trend.
Trump seems to miss the point that the U.S. knowingly put up with Japanese protectionism starting in the 1950s as part of our strategy of supporting a capitalist bulwark against the mainland communists.
There was one other characteristic of the pro-Trump crowd that became obvious. They obviously don't accept the view that compromise is an element of being an elected official. They want somebody who will just do it, to borrow the Nike slogan.
This is in spite of the fact that the United States is not a shoe, but a country that was designed in a way that forces compromise. That's what the expression checks and balances means. That's why the U.S. Senate gives equal representation to small and large states alike, while the House is apportioned according to population. Even traditional conservatism represented the idea of holding onto traditional values and negotiating small changes, rather than making big changes willy-nilly.
But Trump's followers make clear that they want change and they want it quick. They are looking for what we used to call a strong man. That term was usually used disparagingly about a dictator of a country that lacked our democratic tradition. I don't think that Trump's supporters are looking to create a banana republic in North America. I think they just aren't thinking the whole thing through.
It's toddler logic.
There was one amusing part of Trump's Wednesday evening Reagan Library debate performance. He unapologetically bragged that as a businessman, he bought the services and loyalty of the other politicians standing around him. His argument seems to be that since he was the buyer rather than the one who was bought, he is somehow above it all. The idea that as president, he would have to deal with a House and Senate who are all bought, didn't seem to come up. It's not the sort of argument that the other candidates would want to make.
(Bob Gelfand writes on culture and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected])
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 13 Issue 76
Pub: Sep 18, 2015
