The Autocratic Disease: Fragile Men and the Rise of Authoritarianism

When Donald Trump welcomed Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House yesterday it was a meeting of wounded men. An impeached president, Trump’s bid to shut down his trial in the Senate and gain a quick and painless acquittal had been scurried by revelations that all but demanded witnesses. Netanyahu had just been indicted on corruption charges. Their meeting was meant to be mutually beneficial. For Trump it would remind Evangelicals of his support for Israel and present him as the historic president he so badly wants to be. For Netanyahu, it was an attempt to pretend business was usual and set in motion a crisis that would further his power.

The Israeli/Palestinian Peace Plan they presented was a fraud. It’s unfair, cruel to the Palestinians, and has no chance of moving forward. It was put into motion as a photo-op and to worsen tensions, which is the only way Netanyahu can govern.

The relationship between Trump and Netanyahu is indicative of a growing worldwide movement of autocrats supporting one another, gifting one another favors, and relying on each other on the world stage. From Washington, D.C. to Tel Aviv to Moscow and even Pyongyang, what we are seeing is a trend of insecure, fragile men spreading authoritarianism because it is, after all, the projection of insecure male fragility put into political action.

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There is no understating the monumental insecurity of Donald Trump.

For years he has rankled at every criticism. Legendarily, he has sent nasty notes to journalists who treat him poorly. Even a passing remark leaves him near collapse and ready to burn the world down to its foundations. He openly degrades women and loses his mind the moment a woman so much as dares question his authority. His bragging about his sexual conquests, his financial successes, his physical strength and endurance, even his repeated stories of how strong men, military men, leaders of men, are reduced to weeping puddles as they compliment him and call him “sir” and shower him with praise, are indicative of a need to tell the world how strong and powerful he is.

At his center, is a bleeding wound that can never heal. Trump is too old, too set in his ways, too damaged to repair this wound. And so it sucks and sucks and sucks and like a black hole that can never fill. His entire life has been an attempt to fill this hole. The money. The fame. The extravagance. The dalliances, the tabloid stories, the bragging the bragging the bragging. The presidency was just another attempt to fill that hole. If hooked into the very zeitgeist of America and the world it figured it might make a dent.

Of course it hasn’t.

Trump’s flirtations and relationships with other autocrats are notable for his ceaseless fawning. Vladimir Putin, he’ll tell you, is a strong and powerful leader. So is Kim Jong Un. So is Netanyahu. He recognizes in them, these other insecure men, the same bleeding wound, the same insatiable black hole of fragility.

With Putin, he prostrates himself and betrays America. With Netanyahu, this stunt to bolster both of their fortunes. With Kim Jong Un, Trump has revealed his worst instincts and darkest desires. The need for unquestioned power. The want for boundless fealty.

In his meetings with the North Korean dictator, Trump has shocked and horrified by remarking on the loyalty of his people. He seems to believe their subservience and fear are markers of respect and admiration, because these are the only things Trump understands. It doesn’t matter that North Koreans are murdered and kept into a nightmarish surveillance state. That Kim kills his opponents, critics, and even his allies in brutal, public executions. This seems normal to Trump because the authoritarian gene is universal. You cannot trust the world to love or believe you and so you must make it fear you.

Another thing of note from Trump’s infatuation with Kim is his longing for North Korea’s state-run propaganda. In a moment that some have forgotten, Trump told reporters he wished American media was more like that of the North Korean dystopia’s, that the dictator-controlled news was more his liking. Even Fox News, which holds daily strategy meetings determined to better support Trump’s agenda, to change history itself to his liking, to raise up new Trumpist idols while destroying Republican heroes and trusted names, to support every illegal and unconstitutional act Trump perpetrates, isn’t loyal enough. On Tuesday, Trump called them “really pathetic.” He regularly questions their loyalty, even while Fox News hums along and intentionally carries his fire.

Why?

Because even undying love and affection and loyalty isn’t enough. Trump has cannibalized everyone and everything that has ever shown him affection or loyalty. It’s an inevitability. Because the weeping wound in Trump’s heart, the insatiable black hole, cannot stand even the thing it thinks it wants. The nature of the autocratic disease is that it will destroy everything because it trusts nothing. And, if given the keys to power, it will seep out into society proper, find others who suffer the same disease, and infect the political body.

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There is a history here. Fascism as an extension of male insecurity has infected the human race for years and years and years. It finds purchase in times of insecurity. When markets collapse. When wars rage. When wars are lost. When demographics shift and power is in question. It feeds off insecure men who feel their power and dominance threatened.

In America, it grows when male-dominated industries suffer, when male earning power flatlines, when demographics show that white, patriarchal, evangelical power is steadily declining, when there is a crisis in masculinity and they are desperate for someone, anyone, even a Donald Trump, to tell them they have nothing to worry about and that they are strong.

In Israel, it grows when faced with a world that contains so much hate and discrimination, when past ways of living are challenged, when territory and safety are threatened, when the idea of negotiating with a group that has caused much damage and death lights up instincts to war and dominate.

In Pyongyang, it grows in a populace that has been controlled and told for generations that the rest of the world means to see them destroyed and that there are hungry wolves howling at the door.

In Russia, it grows in a former-superpower that is effectively a shambling, failed-state-in-waiting, in a population that longs for its past glories and is willing to cede control to murderous, oligarchial thugs who play the former Soviet anthem, who pose shirtless and drive motorcycles with gangs (only trikes and bikes with sidecars, however), who make show of their cruelty like all cruel men.

It is this cruelty, these public displays of overcompensation, that reveal the truth and the cure. Anyone who has known an insecure man (that is to say all of us) know of their propensity to crow about themselves, to brag about their strength, to show their dominance even as they seem pathetic, and they know that deep down they are wounded, frightened creatures. To defeat these bullies, as all bullies must be defeated, we must strip of them this false veneer of strength and reveal the weakness that hides within.

We must peer into that weeping wound, investigate that insatiable black hole, and recognize there’s simply nothing there but rampant, deadly, pathetic insecurity.