The republic will not fall because Vice President J. D. Vance has decided that swearing is edgy, and the juvenility of American public life did not begin with the Trump administration. But the larger danger under all of this nastiness is that President Donald Trump and his courtiers are using crass deflection and gleeful immaturity as means of numbing society and wearing down its resistance to all kinds of depredations, including corruption and violence. When the U.S. military kills people at sea and Vance, responding to a charge that such actions might be war crimes, responds, “I don’t give a shit what you call it,” the goal is not just to boost Vance’s hairy-chest cred; it’s also to grind others down into accepting the idea of extrajudicial executions.
The collapse of a superpower into a regime of bullies and mean girls and comic-book guys explains much about why American democracy is on the ropes, reeling from the attacks of people who in a better time would never have been allowed near the government of the United States.
For years, Trump has attracted acolytes by being the patron saint of the third string, gathering people who seem to feel, for various reasons, that they were iced out of national politics. Some hold opinions too extreme for any but a Trump administration. Stephen Miller’s odious views, including his echoing of Adolf Hitler’s rhetoric and his accusation that the president’s critics are terrorists, would make him a liability not just in any other administration but even at a family dinner, as remarks from some of his own relatives have suggested.
Other Trump appointees, however, have used personal loyalty as the bridge across the chasm that separates their lack of ability from the jobs they occupy. The experiences of prior Trump appointees suggest that many of the current crew know they are in over their head, which could explain much about their churlish and unprofessional behavior.
Consider the candid admissions of Stephanie Grisham, a press secretary in Trump’s first term who later walked away from Trump. In 2021, she explained to New York magazine why she took the job in the first place.
This kind of private insecurity can manifest in public life as childishness and trollishness. Or maybe such behavior is simply a reflection of the man at the top. Like all schoolyard bullies, Trump is crude and surrounds himself with people who will not challenge him. Thus his appointees, instead of rising to their responsibilities as public servants, emulate their boss’s shallow swagger. Instead of advising the president, they seek to placate him. Instead of showing leadership, they replace their own dignity with loyalty to Trump and do whatever it takes to stay out of the Eye of Sauron.
Whatever the reason for their immaturity, the effect is miserable policy and a corroded democracy. The public is poorly served and does not get answers to important questions. Tariffs? Inflation? Immigration? Peace or war? Who’s responsible for these choices?
Your mother, apparently.
The corruption, mendacity, and incompetence of those in charge are perhaps less astonishing than the willingness of Trump’s most loyal supporters to tolerate them all. By now, any other president would have been restrained by Congress or, as happened in 2020, by voters. In Trump’s second term, however, his base seems almost eager to forgive him for anything, with the possible exception of his involvement with the deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. (...)
Perhaps Trump’s voters have become like the members of the administration, delighting in the crassness and obscenity that pours out of the president and his circle whenever they are challenged. (...)
The collapse of a superpower into a regime of bullies and mean girls and comic-book guys explains much about why American democracy is on the ropes, reeling from the attacks of people who in a better time would never have been allowed near the government of the United States.
For years, Trump has attracted acolytes by being the patron saint of the third string, gathering people who seem to feel, for various reasons, that they were iced out of national politics. Some hold opinions too extreme for any but a Trump administration. Stephen Miller’s odious views, including his echoing of Adolf Hitler’s rhetoric and his accusation that the president’s critics are terrorists, would make him a liability not just in any other administration but even at a family dinner, as remarks from some of his own relatives have suggested.
Other Trump appointees, however, have used personal loyalty as the bridge across the chasm that separates their lack of ability from the jobs they occupy. The experiences of prior Trump appointees suggest that many of the current crew know they are in over their head, which could explain much about their churlish and unprofessional behavior.
Consider the candid admissions of Stephanie Grisham, a press secretary in Trump’s first term who later walked away from Trump. In 2021, she explained to New York magazine why she took the job in the first place.
For people like me—and I’m not proud of this—you have a sick sense of pride. All the people who told you how terrible he was? You’re like, Oh? He’s the nominee, buddy! I’m not proud of that. And then he wins, and you get into the White House, and you’re in the White House.To be fair, many reasonable people have the same kind of awestruck moment when they arrive in Washington. (I certainly felt overwhelmed many years ago when I showed up for my first day of work in the Senate.) But Grisham admits to a deeper insecurity: “I thought that they”—the Trump team—“were the only ones who would ever get me there. My lack of confidence in myself as a single mother and someone who has made mistakes in my past, I thought, Well, this is my only shot. Nobody’s gonna ever want me, really, but these people did. So I’ll stick around.”
This kind of private insecurity can manifest in public life as childishness and trollishness. Or maybe such behavior is simply a reflection of the man at the top. Like all schoolyard bullies, Trump is crude and surrounds himself with people who will not challenge him. Thus his appointees, instead of rising to their responsibilities as public servants, emulate their boss’s shallow swagger. Instead of advising the president, they seek to placate him. Instead of showing leadership, they replace their own dignity with loyalty to Trump and do whatever it takes to stay out of the Eye of Sauron.
Whatever the reason for their immaturity, the effect is miserable policy and a corroded democracy. The public is poorly served and does not get answers to important questions. Tariffs? Inflation? Immigration? Peace or war? Who’s responsible for these choices?
Your mother, apparently.
The corruption, mendacity, and incompetence of those in charge are perhaps less astonishing than the willingness of Trump’s most loyal supporters to tolerate them all. By now, any other president would have been restrained by Congress or, as happened in 2020, by voters. In Trump’s second term, however, his base seems almost eager to forgive him for anything, with the possible exception of his involvement with the deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. (...)
Perhaps Trump’s voters have become like the members of the administration, delighting in the crassness and obscenity that pours out of the president and his circle whenever they are challenged. (...)
Friedrich Nietzsche created a concept that can help us understand this political moment. He imported a word from French to describe a kind of deep-seated anger that goes beyond transitory gripes: ressentiment, a feeling that comes from a combination of insecurity, an amorphous envy, and a generalized sense of resentment. Citizens engulfed by this emotion want to bring others down to what they think is their own underappreciated station and identify scapegoats to bear the blame for their misfortunes, real or imagined. They are driven by grievance and a continual, unfocused sense of injury. Accordingly, they see politics as a way to get even with almost everyone outside of their immediate circle. A Trump voter put out of work during the 2019 government shutdown captured this mentality when she exclaimed: “He’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting.”
Sociologists and political scientists have long been aware of the effects of ressentiment on entire nations, not least because it is often a red flag: a marker of a society ripe for decay into authoritarianism. And that is where the danger lies in the juvenility and coarseness among both the Trump elite and its most loyal supporters, some of whom treat grave issues of national and even global importance as little more than raw material for mean-spirited jokes and obscene memes. This shallow behavior leads to a deadening of the moral and civic spirit that undergirds democracy. (...)
What can other American citizens do when faced with a government that offers trolling and obscenity as replacements for governing? How do people who care about democracy and the rule of law deal with fellow voters who keep electing a class of public officials who seem to be all id and no superego?
Perhaps most important, other Americans should model the behavior they hope to foster in their friends and neighbors. Populist ressentiment is not necessarily produced by inequality. It’s driven by a perception of inequality, a sense of being looked down on by others. It is a demand for attention and emotional engagement. But trying to answer that demand is a fool’s errand: On social media, for example, some of Trump’s voters seem especially enraged not by arguments but by indifference. The whole point of their trolling is to gain attention and then intimidate others.
Both online and in daily life, Americans who are part of the pro-democracy coalition should resist such invitations. Responsible citizens must hold themselves to a higher standard than officials who are acting like grade-schoolers. The national figures, from Trump on down, who put out rancid bait may do so because they want others to argue and lower themselves, and thus prove that no one holds the moral high ground. (Perhaps this is why Trump and so many of his supporters resort to whataboutism when confronted with their behavior.) When these leaders and their followers swear or behave rudely, they may hope and expect that others will do likewise.
As tempting as it is to trade punches to the groin, the better approach is to model mature behavior and demand it in return from people being paid to serve the public. When the White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt answered the journalist S. V. Dáte’s text-message question about who chose the location of a possible U.S.-Russia summit with “Your mom did,” Dáte texted back: “Is this funny to you?” Leavitt then went full Regina George, calling him a “far left hack” and refusing to answer his “bullshit questions.” Leavitt later posted the exchange on X, where Dáte responded: “Feel better now? Now can you answer the question? Please and thank you.” That’s the only way to go: Ask the question, and then ask it again, and keep asking.
This is not Michelle Obama’s “When they go low, we go high” argument. (Even she seems to have abandoned that strategy.) Rather, it is a recognition—and a plea—that the voters and candidates who wish to replace this current government must present themselves as stable, responsible, and adult alternatives to a claque of trolls and incompetents.
by Tom Nichols, The Atlantic | Read more:
Image: The Atlantic/bgwalker/Getty[ed. Get in losers, we're going losing. There's also the tendency of many low information voters (and non-voters) to view politics as a zero sum game. A binary choice between good and evil, one team vs. another, so that the qualifications and character of the people they elect are less important than the brands they represent - Team D vs. Team R (while monied elites and corporations spend billions to inflame and keep rivalry going). See also: We Do Not Live in a Society:]
***
Last week a video went viral of a woman at a playground in Rochester, Minnesota calling an autistic 5-year-old boy a n*****. When she was identified, instead of expressing contrition she doubled down, launching a fundraiser on GiveSendGo (a website touted as the “Christian” alternative to Go Fund Me) to “protect her family”. She has, as of this writing, raised over $700,000. Many of the donors have usernames like “Adolf”, “The fourteen words” and “Fig R Naggot”. It appears that in the United States in 2025, calling a little kid a slur is an infinite wealth hack. While the right wing lavishing morally repugnant people with money is nothing new, it does feel like a few short years ago conservatives would’ve felt pressure to condemn this. Not anymore. Not only are random internet Nazis making this woman rich, right wing pundits are expressing support for her. Something hideous that was always under the surface in the American political body has finally been unleashed, mask off, with no fear for consequences.Since this story aired, I have been asking myself what kind of society we live in where something like this could happen. Where racists are completely unafraid to be racist and where you can get rich by being the most despicable type of person alive. Where sitting congressmen can openly call for Gaza to starve. Where attacking vulnerable trans kids can make you famous. The tenuous social fabric that we once had doesn’t actually seem to exist at all. There is no concept of a social contract. We don’t believe we have any responsibility to each other. We do not work together. We have no shared identity. We have no common goals. Simply put, we do not live in a society.
