Sleepwalking Into Revenge: The Rise of the Politics of Retribution

For Trump, revenge is a perfectly rational strategy, consistent with his other efforts to consolidate power. “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!” he wrote on Truth Social in August 2023 and, sure enough, he has come after his enemies, with considerable effect. He has intimidated an entire political party into obsequious submission and had some success doing the same to universities, media, law firms, and other institutions. If voters in 2024 thought his threats were just bluster, they must know now that, as Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski said, “retaliation is real.”

While there is no mystery about Trump’s interest in vengeance, there is a larger and more difficult question about American politics and culture. How did we get to the point where one of the two major parties and just over half the electorate were willing to empower a leader who was openly intent on revenge and is now using state power for that purpose?

When Trump promises his aggrieved supporters retribution, he is promising payback for the transformation in American life brought about by the progressive currents in liberalism since the mid-twentieth century. That transformation did not involve only racial change, though that is where things began. The Black freedom struggle of the mid-twentieth century set off a series of movements upending almost every traditional hierarchy: white over Black, men over women, straight over queer, the religious over the irreligious and more secular. Liberals and progressives challenged virtually the whole system of social precedence: who stands higher, who comes first, whose values and interests are identified with the whole of America. They undertook that astonishingly ambitious project in a nation where the fear of being diminished, overrun, emasculated, “mongrelized,” or denied historic privileges and immunities has always been a potent source of political reaction.