Dwain Northey (Gen X)

Donald Trump, amid the smoke, the shouting, the threats, and the ever-present soundtrack of grievance, would very much like you to know that he is not insecure. He just happens to measure his self-worth the way toddlers measure height against a doorframe: by scratching a new mark and insisting it’s the tallest one ever. If reality disagrees, reality is clearly part of the conspiracy.

At heart, dear Donald is not a strongman. He is a sulking little prince pressed up against the palace window, nose smeared on the glass, staring at other men’s toys. He does not envy wisdom, competence, or restraint—those are boring virtues for people who don’t own gold-plated toilets. No, he envies something far more primal: unchecked power paired with obscene wealth, preferably acquired without consequences.

Take Vladimir Putin. Trump looks at Putin the way a petty thief looks at a master burglar. Here is a man who managed to extort an entire nation, hollow it out, siphon off its wealth, silence critics, and somehow emerge as one of the richest men on Earth while pretending to be a humble public servant. To Trump, this isn’t tyranny—it’s a business model. Putin didn’t just bend a country to his will; he monetized it. That’s the dream. That’s the vision board.

Then there’s Elon Musk, hovering in Trump’s mind like an especially irritating ghost. Musk may be erratic, reckless, and powered almost entirely by impulse, but one fact gnaws at Trump’s soul: Musk might actually become the world’s first trillionaire. A real number. A verifiable headline. Trump, who has spent decades inflating his net worth like a carnival balloon, cannot stand the idea that someone else might win the “richest man alive” title without creative accounting and Sharpie math.

This is where the tantrum metastasizes into policy.

Trump doesn’t just want power; he wants the record of power. He wants plaques, rankings, and superlatives, preferably with all inconvenient footnotes removed. If extorting oligarchs worked for Putin, why not extort the American public? What is democracy, after all, if not an annoying middleman standing between a man and his legend?

So we get shakedown politics. Loyalty demanded. Institutions leaned on. Norms treated like optional side quests. Every office becomes a branding opportunity. Every crisis becomes leverage. Every citizen becomes a mark. The country isn’t governed; it’s milked. Whether the numbers add up or the claims are true is beside the point—the goal is to see his name someday printed in bold next to words like richest and most influential. Truth is negotiable. Headlines are forever.

And now, because no tantrum is complete without knocking over something large and expensive, the petulant child has discovered maps.

Suddenly Venezuela is “taken.” Greenland is “on the table.” And everything—everything—is justified with the sacred, endlessly reusable phrase: national security. Blah blah blah. The phrase you mutter while jingling the keys to the vault. Trump could not possibly care less about actual security, strategy, or stability. National security is just the napkin he wipes his fingerprints on after grabbing for something shiny.

Venezuela isn’t about drugs, democracy, or peace. It’s about oil, dominance, and the childish thrill of saying he took something big. Greenland isn’t about Arctic defense or shipping lanes—it’s about acreage, about size, about the belief that history is a game of Monopoly and whoever owns the most land wins. He doesn’t see nations; he sees properties. He doesn’t see people; he sees assets. He doesn’t see consequences; he sees his name etched into a textbook in bold, tasteless font.

This isn’t empire-building in any serious sense. It’s cosplay. Trump isn’t interested in governance—he’s fantasizing about titles. He wants to be the next emperor of the Northern Hemisphere, or better yet, the first emperor of the Western world. Crowns without responsibility. Power without accountability. Glory without truth. The substance doesn’t matter as long as the story sounds grand when he tells it to himself.

That’s the throughline: ego dressed up as destiny. Every threat, every incursion, every absurd justification traces back to the same bruised little boy staring at the global leaderboard, furious that someone else is winning. Putin looted a nation and called it patriotism. Musk collects zeroes like Pokémon. Trump wants his turn—his chapter, his myth, his monument—no matter how many laws, facts, or people have to be trampled to make room for the engraving.

So don’t be fooled by the flags, the slogans, or the hollow invocations of security. This isn’t strategy. It’s envy with an army. It’s a tantrum with nuclear codes. And at its core, it’s still just that same petulant child, pointing at the map, stomping his foot, and declaring to the world, Mine.