This state of mind used to seem alien—and not a little jarring—to Americans, who were more used to the Cincinnatus tradition begun by George Washington, the citizen-farmer who self-effacingly retired from power. Not so with President Donald Trump. With his ego now fully unbound—his narcissism on full display—Trump has given us a much fuller measure of the man in his second term. Trump’s open coveting of other nations’ territory, his quasi-imperialist “Donroe Doctrine” of hemispheric dominance, his gilding and gutting of the White House as if it were just another Trump Tower, his regular calls for prison or death for dissenters, his hints at permanent reign—all of it has been rather shocking to many Americans.
The citizen-farmer who ordered mass genocide, destruction of food sources, and stole 10s of thousands of acres of land for his own personal wealth? The president who called native Americans “beasts of prey” and who was given the epithet “town destroyer” and “devourer of villages” by the native people of the land?
That citizen-farmer?