Victims on Both Sides of the Ocean

Both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and United States President Donald Trump have labelled the media the “Enemy of the People” and have called protesters “anarchists.” Their behavior is a combination of playing the victim and whining.

In the imaginary world he has created, Trump sees himself as the great savior of the divided, tormented American people, the one who will save them from the forces of evil. In his own eyes, he is the messenger of God, or at least the son thereof and is fit to be king. Any person who exposes Trump’s weakness is called “deep state” and blamed for subjecting him to “the greatest witch hunt in history.” Those who protest him are called “anarchists”— a term which, in America, is considered at least as bad as “communist”— all the while Trump himself is the one who has turned his term into a strange mixture of chaos and anarchy. He is the one who refuses to recognize the rule of law. He is the one who insults the gatekeepers, while the protesters just want to stabilize their democracy.

At the moment, Trump finds himself somewhere between a fight for survival and war of fortification, so he has turned his manipulations into a work of art: He wants to put off the elections. He knows that it’s impossible, but, still, he is laying the groundwork so that if he loses to former Vice President Joe Biden he can claim that the elections were fake.

In Trump’s eyes, only a person who doesn’t understand his lofty status would go out to demonstrate, and, in recent days, he has sent U.S. troops into the streets to attack these “lazy” anarchists with pepper spray and water cannons—those same US troops who await Trump’s command if the results of the election in November displease him and he decides that he will not recognize them, as he has hinted.

Trump built his power and reputation on fanning the flames of hatred between groups of people, and now he has gone into high gear. People says he’s a racist anyway, so there is no reason to put on the brakes. He behaves the way his base wants him to, keeping the hate going and igniting it even further. This is the only ammunition he has left in the face of his nose dive in the polls and the economic recession in the U.S. which is a historic crisis of proportions not faced since 1947.* Under Trump’s watch, the golden American dream has turned into a nightmare. The guy who described himself as the “artist of the deal” has handed America a bad deal.

The situation begs for a comparison to Israel — Trump’s buddy in Jerusalem, Prime Minister Netanyahu, has learned a lot from him. Both have declared that the media is the “enemy of the people” and have called the demonstrators “anarchists” who are only interested in overthrowing them.

Sometimes it seems that Netanyahu is running around in the White House disguised as Trump, and sometimes it looks like Trump is running around in the Prime Minister’s office dressed up like Netanyahu: the symbiosis between them is perfect and they both demonstrate a combination of hubris, whining and victimhood. Both see themselves as geniuses and magicians, both create imaginary demons and then complain that those creatures are chasing them.

On Netanyahu’s behalf it could be said that he doesn’t have Trump’s primitive, childish side. He has the talent of being able to get back on his feet, even when everything has crashed around him. With Trump, on the other hand, what you see is what you get: a big man with a little boy’s head.

These days, both Trump and Netanyahu are dealing with at least half their people waiting for the end of their political career. Both are dealing with waves of protesters seeking to remove them from power. Both are dealing with a community that wishes to clear the air that they have created and to begin to breathe again.

* There was no major U.S. recession in 1947. Many experts agree that the current crisis is comparable to the Great Depression which began in 1929.

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