Trump and the Death Drive
Is Donald Trump simply an incompetent president, or does his politics follow a deeper and more destructive logic? Through Freud’s concept of the death drive, this analysis examines Trump’s compulsion to repeat: premature declarations of victory, collisions with reality, denial of failure and renewed escalation. From tariffs and mounting debt to the expanding war against Iran, Trump appears unable to transform failure into knowledge. Instead, every defeat produces another enemy and another performance of strength. His movement survives because destruction is not always perceived as failure…
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