Teenage Boys Playing “Risk” Lead America!
When I was in high school, my friends and I would get together and play “Risk,” the game of world domination. It was an excuse to hang out, to have fun, and especially to trade insults as we rolled the dice and moved our “armies” around the board to vanquish one another.
Trump understands this mentality—the mentality of adolescent teens trading insults for fun, bonding over shared putdowns. Never did I or my friends think, however, that juvenile and puerile insults should become the foundation of politics and governance in America. That was Trump’s peculiar “genius”: he has become America’s Insulter-in-Chief.
Consider this recent post from Trump’s Truth Social account:
Now, my teenage self is smiling or laughing even as I read these insults. Of course they’re outrageous, deceptive, irresponsible, juvenile, inaccurate, add your own descriptors here. Yet Trump recognizes that they work, especially with his followers, whose main objective often appears to be “owning the libs.”
To Trump, all of this is par for the course. His “genius” in 2015-16, when he first ran, was recognizing that his Republican challengers were, as we say in the military, whiskey deltas, often deserving of insults and contempt. He recognizes too in 2025 that the Democrats similarly are weak, are corrupt, and therefore targets of opportunity for the most withering insults, no matter how exaggerated.
Predictably, more than a few of his insults are patently absurd. Israel has no bigger champion than Chuck Schumer, yet Trump labels him as a “Great Palestinian Senator.” Absurd as that is, it’s a reminder to Chuck to get back in line, to continue kowtowing to Israel, which, of course, he doesn’t need much reminding to do.
Best of all, perhaps, is Trump’s reference to Dirty Harry’s “Make My Day!” tagline, which Ronald Reagan also employed. Again, we as teenagers were fond of quoting our favorite lines from various Clint Eastwood movies, and I can still recite many from memory. (“Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?”)
Trump’s insults resonate in part because America’s so-called best and brightest have so often failed or betrayed the working classes or sold themselves out to the highest bidder. And most everyone deserves to be taken down a peg or two now and again. But, to state the obvious, there should be something more to our political scene than insults and name-calling.
Too often, U.S. politics and foreign affairs today resemble a bunch of 16-year-olds ragging on and insulting each other while hatching plots for world dominance. It might make for a fun “Risk” game, but it doesn’t make for a healthy world.
Bracing Views 
Yes, calling Schumer a Palestinian Senator is asinine. So is his use of the term “Radical Left,” which he uses a lot. There is no functioning left wing in the American political class, let alone anything approaching “radical.” It would be “radical” in America if we could have 21st Century infrastructure, affordable and true healthcare, or a commitment to a cooperative relationship with the rest of the world—as opposed to the belligerent war machine. How about we end the genocide of Palestinians, DJT? Or is that too “radical”?
LikeLiked by 2 people
“There is no functioning left wing in the American political class, let alone anything approaching ‘radical.'”
Yup, the Right (the Establishment, the Deep State, the military-industrial-congressional-national security state, whatever you choose) has accomplished domestically what it’s been doing internationally since when, Spanish-American War?
Ten years ago Tariq Ali came out with “The Extreme Centre: A Warning” [since updated to “A Second Warning”]. A quizzical, paradoxical title. From one review, Ali “skewers mainstream politics and its purveyors where ‘centre-left and centre-right collude to preserve the status quo.’ Ali calls it ‘a dictatorship of capital that has reduced political parties to the status of the living dead.’”
I’m sure videos of him discussing his thoughts and book are available on Your Tube.
LikeLike
Years upon years upon years ago, in a (forlorn?) effort to get some bearings in trying to understand the world, I took a course in political philosophy. As expected, a good number of the heavy hitters were covered – Plato, Aristotle, Burke, Hobbes, Marx, Nietzsche – and yeah, I burned up A LOTTA brain cells delving into the question of what constitutes the good, the just society.
To my surprise Machiavelli was also on the reading list, why include such a malevolent figure among such an august list? Turns out there’s good reason why he’s taught to this day. Among all the passages in the twenty-six chapters of “The Prince,” this one elicited the unvarnished “holy s***!” profanity from me:
“But since my intent is to write something useful for whoever wishes to understand it, it has appeared to me more fitting to go directly to the effectual truth of the thing than to the imagination of it. And many have imagined republics and principalities which have never been seen or known to exist in truth; for it is so far from how one lives to how one should live that he who lets go of what is done for what should be done learns his ruin than his preservation. For a man who wants to make a profession of good in all regards must come to ruin among so many who are not good. Hence it is necessary to a prince, if he wants to maintain himself, to learn to be able not to be good, and to use this and not use it according to necessity.”
Do we condemn him for his darkness, his cynicism, or pay heed to him for the realities he describes to function in this world?
LikeLiked by 1 person
“…it is so far from how one lives to how one should live that he who lets go of what is done for what should be done learns his ruin than his preservation.”
~~
Machiavelli has a sense of morality (what should be done), but is recommending that personal “success” in this world is dependent upon “going along to get along.” He appears to be saying that the reality of this world is dominated by moral corruption and if one strives to change that he will be “ruined.” I guess his advice is “know what you are up against.”
Can’t say he doesn’t have a point. But I’ll choose to be “ruined” as I fight for “what should be done.” I know what I’m up against. But thanks for your concerned advice Mac.
LikeLike
I’m in agreement with you, but I don’t know how my moral fiber would stand up to overwhelming, unremitting pressure. Think of Richard Goldstone as a result of his Sept. 29, 2009 “Statement on behalf of the Members of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict before the Human Rights Council.”
LikeLike
In keeping with Bill’s mention of the game Risk, when playing that game one never is concerned with how many armies one loses except that it means losing the game.
Imagine if all leaders thought first of human lives being lost, not just one’s own countrymen and women but of the people in the country one is considering attacking.
Machiavelli would never advise this because he is concerned only with the prince being able to maintain power. In that effort lives are expendable in any number. The life of any individual, except that of the prince, is beneath notice.
In the world of my imagination where every life is considered, there could be no such thing as “pre-emptive war” Any country starting a war would be condemned. In my youth I thought of the US as never doing that, ignorant as I was. Now, it is routine with Iraq and Iran being the most recent examples. Zionism is by nature a pre-emptive attacker.
Liberty and justice for all is all but forgotten, but I still love the idea thus I literally stand for it. If I did not do so, I couldn’t stand who I would be. It was of no concern at all to Machiavelli.
LikeLike
“Imagine if all leaders thought first of human lives being lost, not just one’s own countrymen and women but of the people in the country one is considering attacking.”
Indeed, imagine… The perversity is that we are more invested in the self-satisfying, celebratory honoring of “those who have made the ultimate sacrifice” than in endeavoring to keep them alive by ending their “deployment” overseas and closing those those 800+ bases throughout the world. Related, we are committed to fighting Putin’s “aggression” (actually, an understandable, and much warned about response to longstanding provocation by the US) to the last Ukrainian.
“Machiavelli would never advise this because he is concerned only with the prince being able to maintain power. In that effort lives are expendable in any number. The life of any individual, except that of the prince, is beneath notice.”
Yes, goes without saying. Machiavelli devoted four chapters in “The Prince” to arms or the military, in one of them can be found the following line, “Therefore, he should never lift his thoughts from the .exercise of war, and in peace he should recognize it more than in war.” Hmmm, $1+ trillion per year “defense” budget to be funded, in part, by more than $800 billion in cuts over the next 10 years in Medicaid that could leave more than 7 million Americans without coverage?
“Liberty and justice for all is all but forgotten, but I still love the idea thus I literally stand for it. If I did not do so, I couldn’t stand who I would be. It was of no concern at all to Machiavelli.”
Nope, not part of the treatise.
“In the world of my imagination where every life is considered, there could be no such thing as’“pre-emptive war.’”
If you’re not already aware of it, you may wish to sign up for updates from Andrew Bacevich’s https://quincyinst.org/.
LikeLike