Donald Trump thinks he knows what strength and heroism is, but he doesn't have a clue (not having exhibited either at any point in his life or his term in office). He has a coward's view of both.Here is part of how Michael Gerson puts it in his op-ed in The Washington Post:
Two recent events — one deadly serious, the other merely pathetic — raise the question: What is the true meaning of strength? First, there was President Trump’s grant of clemency to three American servicemen accused of war crimes — two of whom Trump brought to the stage during a Florida fundraiser in a kind of presidential tribute to brutality. In Trump’s version of events, he was protecting “warriors” from the pettifogging timidity of the so-called deep state. “We train our boys to be killing machines,” tweeted the commander in chief, “then prosecute them when they kill!” Both act and explanation are destructive and offensive. The men and women of the U.S. military are not trained to be killers, though killing combatants in war is certainly part of their job. They are marinated in a code of honorable conduct and serve a cause — the cause of freedom and human dignity — that is inconsistent with the commission of war crimes. Trump, as we know, is not big on moral codes and is disdainful of causes that transcend nationalism. Once again, he is squandering an inheritance he does not value or understand. He also is expressing a certain view of strength — strength as the brutal application of lawless violence — that is closer to the creed of the Cosa Nostra than to the “duty, honor and country” that calls and characterizes the U.S. armed forces. Trump has adopted the weak man’s view of what strength looks like, the small man’s view of what greatness looks like, the coward’s conception of heroism. The second event — Trump’s cyberbullying of 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg — had lower stakes but represents a similar view of strength. Trump — probably feeling both envy and anger at Thunberg’s selection as Time’s Person of the Year — urged her to “work on her Anger Management problem.” If pressed, Trump would surely explain that he was getting back at someone who had criticized him first. Future historians will look back with horrified confusion at the spectacle of a thin-skinned, graceless old man attempting to crush the spirit of an idealistic, teenage girl. In Trump’s worldview, nothing is more contemptible than weakness — which he defines as vulnerability and self-restraint in the face of provocation. The elements of his code? Blessed are the powerful and pitiless. Blessed are the cruel and ruthless. Do unto others twice as bad as they do unto you.
