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 