In that sense, Trump's rhetoric of mass destruction is truly nothing new under the sun (except perhaps in its pure blustering bravado); Trump, that is, just salivates more openly at the prospect of inflicting pain on a mass scale on peoples he doesn't like. And even that isn't as new as you might imagine.
In this century, Republicans have been especially keen to share their dreams of massively bombing others. On the campaign trail in 2007, to the tune of the Beach Boys' cover "Barbara Ann," Senator (and former bomber pilot and Vietnam POW) John McCain smirkingly sang of bombing Iran. ("Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran!") Similarly, during the Republican presidential debates of 2016, Senator Ted Cruz boasted of wanting to "utterly destroy" the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq by carpet-bombing its territory and, in doing so, making the desert sand "glow in the dark." The implication was, of course, that as president he'd happily use nuclear weapons in the Middle East. (Talk about all options being on the table!)
Alarming? Yes! Very American? USA #1!
Consider two examples from the nuclear era, then and now. In the depth of the Cold War years, in response to a possible Soviet nuclear attack, this country's war plans envisioned a simultaneous assault on the Soviet Union and China that military planners estimated would, in the end, kill 600 million people. That would have been the equivalent of 100 Holocausts, notes Pentagon whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, who was privy to those plans.
Whether China had joined or even known about the Soviet attack didn't matter. As communists, they were guilty by association and so to be obliterated anyway. Ellsberg notes that only one man present at the briefing where this "plan" was presented objected to such a mindless act of mass murder, David Shoup, a Marine general and Medal of Honor winner who would later similarly object to the Vietnam War.
Fast forward to today and our even more potentially planet-ending nuclear forces are still being "modernized" to the tune of $1.7 trillion over the coming decades. Any Ohio-class SSBN nuclear submarine in the Navy's inventory, for example, could potentially kill millions of people with its 24 Trident II ballistic missiles (each carrying as many as eight nuclear warheads, each warhead with roughly six times the destructive power of the Hiroshima bomb). While such vessels are officially meant to "deter" nuclear war, they are, of course, ultimately built to fight one. Each is a submerged holocaust waiting to be unleashed.
Rarely, if ever, do we think about what those subs truly represent, historically speaking. Meanwhile, the Pentagon continues to "invest" (as the military likes to say) in ever-newer generations of nuclear-capable bombers and land-based missiles, promising a holocaust of planetary proportions if ever used. To grasp what an actual nuclear war would mean, you would have to update an old saying: one death is a tragedy; several billion is a statistic.
Aggravating such essential collective madness in this moment (and the president's fiery and furious fascination with such weaponry) is Trump's recent cynical call for what might be thought of as the nuking of our history: the installation of a truly "patriotic" education in our schools (in other words, a history that would obliterate everything but his version of American greatness). That would, of course, include not just the legacy of slavery and other dark chapters in our past, but our continued willingness to build weaponry that has the instant capacity to end it all in a matter of hours.
As a history professor, I can tell you that such a version of our past would be totally antithetical to sound learning in this or any world. History must, by definition, be critical of the world we've created. It must be tough-minded and grapple with our actions (and inactions), crimes and all, if we are ever to grow morally stronger as a country or a people.
History that only focuses on the supposedly good bits, however defined, is like your annoying friend's Facebook page -- the one that shows photo after photo of smiling faces, gourmet meals, exclusive parties, puppies, ice cream, and rainbows, that features a flurry of status updates reducible to "I'm having the time of my life." We know perfectly well, of course, that no one's life is really like that -- and neither is any country's history.
History should, of course, be about understanding ourselves as we really are, our strengths and weaknesses, triumphs, tragedies, and transgressions. It would even have to include an honest accounting of how this country got one Donald J. Trump, a failed casino owner and celebrity pitchman, as president at a moment when most of its leaders were still claiming that it was the most exceptional country in the history of the universe. I'll give you a hint: we got him because he represented a side of America that was indeed exceptional, just not in any way that was ever morally just or democratically sound.
Jingoistic history says, "My country, right or wrong, but my country." Trump wants to push this a goosestep further to "My country and my leader, always right." That's fascism, not "patriotic" history, and we need to recognize that and reject it.
Learning without Flinching from History
The United States has been the imperial power of record on this planet since World War II. Lately, the economic and moral aspects of that power have waned, even as our military power remains supreme (though without being able to win anything whatsoever). That should tell you something about America. We're still a "SmackDown" country, to borrow a term from professional wrestling, in a world that's increasingly being smacked down anyway.
Harold Pinter, the British playwright, caught this country's imperial spirit well in his Nobel Prize lecture in 2005. America, he said then, has committed crimes that "have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It's a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis."
Anyone with a knowledge of our history knows that there was truth indeed in what Pinter said 15 years ago. He noticed how this country's leaders wielded language "to keep thought at bay." Like George Orwell before him, Pinter was at pains to use plain language about war, noting how the Americans and British had "brought torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, innumerable acts of random murder, misery, degradation and death to the Iraqi people and call[ed] it bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East."
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