For Trump, revenge is a perfectly rational strategy, consistent with his other efforts to consolidate power. “IF YOU FOLLOW ME, I’LL COME TO YOU!” he wrote about Truth Social in August 2023 and, of course, he went after his enemies, to considerable effect. He bullied an entire political party into obsequious submission and managed to do the same to universities, media outlets, law firms and other institutions. If 2024 voters thought his threats were just bluster, they should know now that, as Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski said, “retaliation is real.”
While there is no mystery about Trump’s interest in revenge, there is a larger, more difficult question about American politics and culture. How did we get to the point where one of the two major parties and just over half the electorate were willing to give power to a leader who openly intended revenge and is now using state power to that end?
When Trump promises retaliation to his aggrieved supporters, he promises recompense for the transformation of American life brought about by progressive currents of liberalism since the mid-20th century. This transformation didn’t just involve racial change, although that’s where things started. The struggle for black freedom in the mid-20th century sparked a series of movements upending almost all traditional hierarchies: white over black, men over women, heterosexual over queer, religious over irreligious and secular. Liberals and progressives have called into question virtually the entire system of social precedence: who is higher, who comes first, whose values and interests are identified with all of America. They undertook this astonishingly ambitious project in a nation where the fear of being diminished, invaded, emasculated, “miscegenated,” or deprived of historical privileges and immunities has always been a powerful source of political backlash.
