They’re booing us in Canada, which is not an unintended side effect of Donald Trump’s statecraft, but rather, its goal. Over the weekend, when NBA and NHL games were played in Canada between Canadian and U.S.-based teams, the performance of our national anthem was met with a chorus of boos.
Canadians understood that the ostensible reason for Trump’s threat of a tariff on Canadian goods—stopping the flow of fentanyl—was absurd, as the amount of fentanyl our government says crossed the U.S.-Canadian border last year was 43 pounds, which not only could fit in a suitcase, but be under the limit (50 pounds) for heavy bags. Canadians understood that the real reason Trump was threatening tariffs was that he wanted to assert his, and secondarily, America’s, dominance over a nation he thought needed to be disabused of any notions it may have entertained of enjoying some kind of partnership with the U.S., and with him.
Of the many wrenching changes Trump is inflicting on our nation, certainly one of the most fundamental is our position in the world. The very notion of our having allies, of nations that believe they’re in some way aligned with us because we’re both liberal democracies that sometimes help each other out, is rapidly being superseded by a hierarchy of power. There are the adversaries we strive to best—China and Russia, chiefly—but when it comes to nations that have been on our side, with which we have long-standing alliances, well, we strive to best them, too. Alliances link nations, as it were, horizontally; Trump’s view of international relations, by contrast, is vertical, so long as we and he are on top.
America, of course, has been the world’s pre-eminent power since 1945, and at best, though far from always, that power has been wielded in a way that combines self-interest with help to other nations. Well before 1945, many residents of other countries viewed America as not just materially superior but also politically less oppressive. That was certainly the case among the European liberals and socialists who came here in the wake of the failed revolutions of 1848, and the tens of millions of other refugees from Europe’s various empires until the start of World War I.
Starting with the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt, American foreign policy at its best combined smart national interest with aid to other democracies and to peoples facing such crises as mass starvation and fascist subordination. (And yes, of course, American foreign policy not at its best has often savagely abused people in foreign lands with coups [Iran, Guatemala, Chile] and wars [Vietnam, the Iraqi occupation] and so on.)
It’s that “at best” side of America’s interactions with the world that Trump is determined to end. Shuttering USAID and ending those State Department initiatives to promote democracy and human rights are just the beginning of Trump’s efforts to reposition our place among nations not on the basis of our democratic or humanitarian actions, but solely on the calculus of power. Trump’s America is a nation that should inspire fear, not love.
And in this case above all, the personal is political and vice versa. This need for fear, rather than admiration or affection, is a perfect reflection of Trump’s personality. Whole libraries can be filled with accounts of Trump’s transactions, his claims of wins, and his administering humiliations. But have you ever read anything about his longtime friendships based on his own personality rather than his power? Lacking a personality that can inspire even a teensy-weensy amount of love and affability, he knows only relationships based in a power imbalance, making damn sure that that imbalance is tilted toward himself.
Since that’s how he sees the world, so shall it be for America, too. He seems unable to understand that America, for all its flaws, has inspired the world for its positive attributes, for its democracy and its generosity, as he has no regard for either of those. The country that Lincoln termed the last best hope of mankind is, for Trump, incomprehensible.
This explains his high regard for William McKinley, who seized the Philippines and oversaw a brutal war against Filipinos seeking independence, and his corresponding dismissal of, say, Franklin Roosevelt, who believed it was in our enlightened self-interest to retake Europe from Hitler, but who didn’t subject such liberated lands as France or Belgium or the Netherlands or Norway to American colonial rule or repayment of debts incurred by our efforts to defeat the Nazis. In the postwar world, the majority of those nations’ people thought highly of the United States when Roosevelt shaped its policies, which is not how Filipinos regarded the United States when McKinley shaped them.
But this is history, a branch of empirical knowledge in which Trump has no interest or little aptitude, and whose lessons don’t comport with his insecure and narcissistic needs. Relationships based on genuine affection and high regard are alien to him, and now that he’s president again, he’s trying to make them alien to our nation.
This need to inspire fear and inflict pain on others isn’t confined to Trump alone; it’s the emotional basis of the MAGA movement, too. Domestically, it becomes clearer every day that “owning the libs” is what motivates Trump’s legions, more deeply than enacting any policy that would actually benefit them. It’s the deportations, the firings, and Trump’s pardon of the January 6th insurrectionists that have dominated his first fortnight in the White House. “I am your retribution” stands out even more clearly now as his emotional bond with his followers, whose hatred of the libs (based in no small part on right-wing media’s ability to define the libs in ways calculated to engender even more hatred) is now being translated into a whirlwind of policies.
As to the wider world, if we ever sought to be that beacon on the hill, we’re now the bully on the hill. America, Trumpified.
Harold Meyerson is editor at large of The American Prospect.
