It’s easy to dismiss Donald Trump as unhinged after his recent performance in the presidential debate between him and Kamala Harris. Too easy, perhaps: immigrants are eating people’s pets? Babies are being executed by pro-abortionists. Jeez. I think, though, that there’s a method to Trump’s madness, and I think Friedrich Nietzsche’s notion of ressentiment can help explain it. Basically, Trump tried to build himself up by putting Harris down, offering no substance on his own policies or any vision for America under his proposed leadership. Nietzsche would see this approach is that of a small-minded, insecure person. Let’s consider his analysis.
For Nietzsche, ressentiment is about the creation of values. He attributes ressentiment to what he terms slave morality, which he contrasts with noble or master morality. (These terms do not refer to economic or social classes. Rather, they refer to whether a person is a slave to others or is able to master themselves.) The difference is basically this: slave morality creates the values of good and evil negatively, while noble morality creates the values of good and bad positively. He says: “The slave revolt in morality begins when ressentiment itself becomes creative and gives birth to values… While every noble morality develops from a triumphant affirmation of itself, slave morality from the outset says No to what is ‘outside,’ what is ‘different,’ what is ‘not itself’; and this No is its creative deed.” Trump’s behavior in the debate was a perfect example of this dynamic. His entire performance came down to saying over and over again that Harris is horrible, that he is not Harris, and thus that he is great. He offered no specific analysis. One example will make the point: he claimed that Obamacare has been horrible, without saying why and how, and that he would make it better. But when asked for a specific proposal, he said he has a “concept” for a proposal but no actual proposal. Here ressentiment is in full swing: he implies that his proposal would be great because it is not hers. There’s no substance here, which is part of Nietzsche’s point: a resentful person develops a sense of self as “good” only by negating what is different from them; they do not have a strong sense of self, only a reactive one. This move defines goodness solely in reaction to the other person. In positing the other person as evil, I am already justifying treating them as lesser, as worthy of persecution or worse.
Compare ressentiment to the way that a noble person or “master” would deal with others (again, these are not social, economic, or political categories for Nietzsche. A “master” is not someone who controls others; it is, rather, someone who masters themselves). This person creates value out of themselves rather than by reacting to someone different or other. Consider Harris’s debate performance. On the one hand, she is obviously concerned about appealing to others, since she wants to win the election. In that sense, she is clearly not simply self-defined. However, she does not define herself and her positions by putting Trump down as the evil “other.” (When she notes his danger to the country, she can point to specific problems, like his stated desire to be a dictator and invoking an anti-democratic dictator like Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán as one of his fans). Rather, she defines herself in positive terms by articulating policy goals, such as expanding the Child Tax Credit, tax deductions for new businesses, investing in childcare, and continuing the work done by the Biden Administration to bring drug costs down. Unlike Trump, she doesn’t say that her proposals are good because they aren’t his; she says they are good because they help the average American. She defines “good” in positive rather than negative terms. Her approach suggests that she has a stronger sense of self than does Trump; indeed, she did not get thrown off by his attacks on her as he did when she goaded him. Trump’s ressentiment suggests that he really is weak and small-minded, and that he needs affirmation from similarly weak and small-minded people like dictators.
What, then, accounts for Trump’s ongoing appeal? (Recent polls suggest that the race between him and Harris is close enough that he has a real chance of winning through the Electoral College.) Part of it, I think, is that Trump both embodies ressentiment and manipulates it in others. He fear-mongers, playing off many people’s belief that some “other”—immigrants, women, LGBTQ+ people, people of color—threaten their social, economic, and political standing. This tactic works because there is a strand of deep seated Us vs. Them thinking in US culture. Making claims about immigrants eating our pets, abortionists killing babies, and schools imposing transgender identities and surgeries on children specifies the otherwise general sense of threat, making it seem more real. These attacks on “them” suggest that “we” will be safe if immigrants are deported, abortion is outlawed, and trans people are prevented from living their lives fully and on their own terms. The logic of Trump’s resentful rhetoric seems to go like this: “they” are a threat; I will contain that threat; therefore, I will make your lives better. The last piece is implied rather than fully stated, and there is no evidence to back up the implication. But if you buy the first two claims, the “therefore” seems to follow. That these threats are false doesn’t undermine the logic behind them, and the logic is powerful. The same logic underlies many of the practices that have arisen in Republican-controlled states, such as banning books, outlawing classes on Critical Race Theory and Gender Studies, requiring trans athletes to participate in the sex assigned to them at birth, etc. In each case, the goal is to eliminate the supposed threat rather than address the assumptions defining them as threats to begin with. Here, too, ressentiment rules the day. Those who want book and abortion bans and so on are defining themselves as “good” because they are not those evil ones who are threatening “us.” And rather than engage with those with whom they disagree, they do what they can to eliminate them from public life. Those who elect these folks into office operate out of the same thinking: if “they” are eliminated, “we” will be safe. Trump’s claims that he will be a dictator from his first day in office and his insistence that he will jail anyone who disagrees with him work in the same way: contain those who are different from you. Bomb threats and assassination attempts are more violent versions of this impulse.
People like Trump seem to think that this approach of dominating, controlling, and threatening others is an indication of strength. Nietzsche would say exactly the opposite: to be unable or unwilling to share the world with people who are different from you, who disagree with your principles, goals, and values, reflects a deep weakness of character and will. A strong, noble person would welcome the chance to defend their beliefs and values in a public setting. They want to control not others but themselves, to be willing and able to question themselves in light of others’ views, beliefs, and values. Nietzsche defines a true friend not as someone who always agrees with and supports you, but as someone who is willing to challenge you, to help you strengthen your views, values, and beliefs in the face of criticism. Trump’s inability to take even the smallest criticism—that people leave his rallies out of boredom, for instance—indicates a very deep weakness of character and will. The ease with which Harris could anger him showed how weak he truly is.
Trump’s weakness makes his threats to treat his opponents with jail time and worse absolutely believable rather than the ravings of crazy person. (These are not mutually exclusive possibilities, of course.) Anyone who doubts it need only remember the January 6th attack on the Capitol and his followers’ plan to execute Mike Pence: anyone who refuses to support him becomes a potential target of his wrath. It is precisely this desire to dominate and control others that makes ressentiment so dangerous.
Further reading:
Wendy Brown, States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity
Katherine J. Cramer, The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals
For Love of the World: 