Donald Trump is a bully. No surprises there. He’s already using the power he has regained through the presidency to coerce less powerful nations and individuals to conform to his will. Bullies always punch down, and they enjoy the sadistic rush that gives them. Bullies aren’t just interested in outcomes, but also in showing who’s top dog.
Trump knows it’s going to be difficult for weaker nations to resist, and he seems to relish his position as the most powerful person on the planet. He’s bullying Panama over the canal, he’s bullying Denmark over Greenland, he’s bullying Canada with the threat of tariffs, and he’s bullied Colombia into compliance over allowing military aircraft carrying repatriated immigrants to land.
Expect plenty more of this over the next four years at the international, national, and individual level. That’s how Trump operates. And now that he has power again, he’s likely to get much of what he wants. It’s difficult to stand up to bullies unless you have stronger allies to stand up for you.
Bullies exploit power imbalances. The classic case is someone who exploits that imbalance to make their victim comply with their will. Bullies are contemptuous of individual or state autonomy: they only care about domination – others’ interests are irrelevant.
Strong tyrants are the biggest bullies. They make their citizens comply with their desires. If anyone dares to oppose them, they will be crushed by the secret police whose job it is to carry out the tyrant’s bullying by proxy, by the army, by the threat of legal action from courts that are in thrall to the tyrant, or by thugs who are straining at the leash and ready to do the tyrant’s dirty work. Bullies love making threats and watching their scared victims scurrying to comply with their wishes.
In Plato’s dialogue the Republic, the character Thrasymachus suggests that justice is simply whatever is advantageous to the stronger. He believes that morality is a facade, and that within a society norms and laws are skewed to favour the most powerful and to take advantage of the weak (an idea that resurfaced two millennia later in Karl Marx’s notion of ideology). For Thrasymachus there was no such thing as objective right and wrong. Might makes right. If you obey the rules of society, then you’re just serving the interests of the powerful whether you realise that
or not.
In the world that he describes, behaving well can have a high cost – the unscrupulous thrive, while anyone who complies with laws and moral norms pays a high price for their good behaviour. A question at the heart of Plato’s Republic is: “Doesn’t it make sense to choose the path of selfish law-breaking where it suits you and you can be sure of getting away with it?”
Glaucon, another character in Plato’s cast, describes a magic ring, the Ring of Gyges, that allows its wearer to become invisible. Anyone who possessed that ring would have no reason at all to be law-abiding, he thought – they could do anything, and get away with it.
Trump would no doubt agree. But he doesn’t need the Ring of Gyges. Presidential immunity will suffice. It licenses him to operate in plain sight. For many years already he’s acted as if no one could ever punish him for anything whatsoever. Remember when in 2016 he joked that he could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot someone and not lose any voters as a result? Now, it seems, he could shoot someone and escape judicial consequences too.
There’s something that bullies don’t always take into account though. The bullied seethe with resentment. They find small, inconspicuous ways to get their own back. They realise they can’t resist their aggressor to his face without risk. But when the bully isn’t looking, they take subversive action, particularly when no one can pin it on them.
Eventually, when a bully has got out of control, there are so many victims that they club together to get their revenge – they find strength in numbers and become stronger than their tormentor. Bullying might seem to pay if you’re powerful and it can do in the short term. But the longer it goes on, the greater the risk.
There’s no guarantee that Trump will get his comeuppance, but the more he bullies, the more enemies he’ll make. And when he’s made enough enemies, and they start acting together as a coalition, he may find the roles of bully and bullied reversed.
