Trump’s brand is pure pulp fiction. In these novels omnipotent, omnicompetent, obsessively autonomous heroes define encounters. Everything is a zero sum game. Life is simple. The adored hero wins and the other guy is humiliated.
Trump’s current dilemma is that Iran holds absolute power to strangle the world and American economy, which doesn’t fit his story line. America, not Iran, ends up with zero in the Hormuz zero sum showdown.
Trump sold himself as the simplistic brutal solution to America’s problems. He could muster followers because the gunslinger model, the brutal war lord has been sold over and over again by American culture as the path to manhood and success. Trump cast himself as the hero, the Jason Bourne, the Mandalorian, Jack Reacher, Sam Spade, the Godfather. Video games, the entertainment industry, podcasts are awash in a vision of male dominance. The most extreme end has fed the White Supremacists. These are our cultural stories.
The economy has outstripped the culture. Up until 200 years ago, over 90 percent of Americans lived on farms. That was still the economy of the world. Warfare paid off. Killing everyone on a battlefield did give Genghis Khan an empire the size of the continent of Africa and an estimated thousands of descendants. Women were lucky if they could be a “princess” attach to powerful warriors in a gestation protection racket. They risked death in childbirth pumping out babies to replace the fallen. Patriarchy life stories, the world of pulp fiction, were about motivating people to sacrifice in battle or childbirth to keep their community going.
The point was that men didn’t just posture about violence; they made real sacrifices experiencing hell. A peek into this world is offered by the German battlefield site of Tollens in 1250. This was the real Game of Thrones, the real showdown at the OK Corral. Bodies show arrowheads embedded in ribs, arms, legs; crushed skulls from clubbing at close range; torsos and limbs cut at close range by spears and edged weapons. Blows came from all sides suggested a chaotic melee of death swirling on a battlefield of maybe 1,000 men. Manic focus on winning and ruthless brutality were life and the winner did take all.
The patriarchy was a system of great courage. You needed to believe some God was on your side and some bro had your back just to show up. This wasn’t theater. This isn’t Pete Hegseth’s crazy world comfortably in the Pentagon. This isn’t Steve Miller cowering on an army base. This isn’t Trump avoiding the draft with fake bone spur diagnoses from Daddy’s doctor. This isn’t just a crazy civilian political fantasy while mostly Red state kids are sent to be killed. Blowing things up at a distance is posturing cowardice, stolen valor.
The war with Iran is the living breathing proof. That a modern economy needs a modern culture of leadership. That modern flourishing depends on a carefully built system of win-win cooperation in a delicate international supply chain. The modern does not need posturing brutally killing of the other side. The control of the international supply chain, the straits of Hormuz, is the choke point and all the might of the military of America has ground to a halt because the economic reality is a win win and not encounters by single men in violent one on one combat that yields power. There were 1,000 men on the Tollens battlefield, there are 90 million in Iran, a country one-and-a-half times larger than California. No fire power exists much less can be afforded that destroys Iran.
Ironically, Jules Winfield, the character in Tarantino’s eponymous movie Pulp Fiction whose made-up righteous and blessed by God lines were cited in Hegseth’s prayer lecture at the Pentagon, is right on target. He starts with the craziness and then goes into self-reflection, the next step needed for a pulp fiction oligarchs. Maybe it is time to seek the Obi Wan Kenobi, Aragon, Ted Lasso, Jean Luc Picard men who make the world, the community work. Either we follow the obsessive male story off a cliff into nuclear holocaust or we learn to respect good people, of whatever gender, skin color who have the ability to build community.
I had an anthropology professor who mused that modern complexity may be too much for primates like us to actually manage. Let’s hope not, let’s hope we evolve win-win leaders. If men can’t find a new manhood in making a win-win community work, we may simply self-destruct.
Trump will have to take a deal in which there is no regime change in Iran. America has proven itself a paper tiger with infinite reputational damage. Our debt and destroyed base cost and munitions replacement cost will stagger us in the defense budget. Iran will have no regime change. They will agree to some paper treaty and then do precisely what they want. Trump and his crew will spread the lie of a great pulp fiction win. If we don’t get new leadership that pulls everyone together we will lose and die at the showdown.
Beth Rogers is a Santa Barbara–based political anthropologist, businesswoman, and civic leader. She has served on numerous educational and cultural boards, including the Santa Barbara Education Foundation and the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History.
