Donald Trump appears at a rally for his 2024 presidential campaign. Image via screengrab/Fox News.
There has been near-endless debate over the last decade about why President Donald Trump has been able to persuade voters and what he offers them. In a recent interview with the New York Times, historian and author Jackson Lears put forward another, distinctly American explanation: the promise of "vitality" and the cure for "tedium."
However, he argued, it has become a "dark" bargain that corrupted his initial promises, often with "destructive consequences."
Speaking with the Times' John Guida, Lears dug into the concept of "animal spirits," which he published a book about in 2023, explaining that the phrase refers to "the notion of a vital force linking matter and spirit, soul and body," which also pertains to a kind of "free-flowing energy in human experience, from romantic relationships to capital investment."
"For human beings in general, they constituted the core of the personal magnetism that energized successful democratic candidates," Lears said. "Americans, in particular, have been obsessed with the pursuit of vitality for centuries, often characterizing it as the expression of animal spirits, a current of energy or life force that is morally neutral."
Lears noted that Trump's "animal spirits have been a huge part of his appeal," with voters of a certain stripe being taken by his embodiment of "spontaneity and authenticity," a sharp contrast to "the scripted tedium" of the oftentimes more "managerial" liberal candidates.
"But he scatters his energies in a hundred different directions, usually with destructive consequences — against immigrants, trading partners, foreign allies and rivals," Lears added. "That war [with Iran] is the clearest example of destructive energy run out of control. Trump promised an end to endless war, but he could not resist the bipartisan imperial project that every president has pursued: the effort to regenerate animal spirits, to lift people out of stagnation, through a dark form of vitality, which is righteous war. It’s been a common reflex in the wake of the heroic role the United States played in World War II. We’ve been saving the world for a long time, first from Communism, later from terrorism. Yet the U.S. overseas military interventions have become harder and harder to see as regenerative war."
He continued: "Trump’s war on Iran falls into this trap; hardly anyone can see this assault by choice on an ancient civilization as a source of vitality. The Caribbean strikes and the kidnapping of Nicolás Maduro are more Trump’s style — in, boom, out — but they are resonant with Gen. Smedley Butler’s statement that he was a 'racketeer for capitalism' (for business interests) in Latin America."