America’ Operation Epic Rage in opposition to Iran does greater than mark an army escalation. It displays how Trump revives outdated nationwide myths: the American frontier, the cowboy, regenerative violence and windfall – whilst stripping them in their civic size and turning them into narratives of domination.
That is what distinguishes him from earlier presidents: he does no longer depend on those myths to have fun collective effort or democratic function, however to degree dominance, purification, and private omnipotence.
A struggle fueled through myths
For the reason that get started of the conflict in opposition to Iran, Trump has sounded much less like a president than like an invader. He calls for the “unconditional surrender” of Tehran, guarantees to “drop bombs everywhere” and inspires the election of “great, acceptable leaders” for the post-war length.
This language is greater than the language of army necessity: it reactivates the outdated grammar of American energy in a brutally hardened shape.
In Republics of Fantasy (2022), Hussein Banai, Malcolm Byrne and John Tirman argue that the struggle with Iran is pushed no longer most effective through strategic pursuits but in addition through two incompatible nationwide narratives, every of which turns every new disaster right into a affirmation of older humiliations, fears, myths and animosities.
At the American aspect, that narrative stays deeply formed through the parable of the frontier: an area to tame, “savages” to defeat, and a challenge to satisfy. Implemented to the Heart East, that framework posits Iran as an exterior frontier to be conquered. Trump didn’t invent this narrative. He radicalized it.
The frontier: from enlargement to predation
In his inaugural cope with on January 20, 2025, Trump offered the border as some of the country’s central founding myths. America, he stated, should as soon as once more develop into “a growing nation — one that increases our wealth, expands our territory” and pursues its “manifest destiny.” He added that “the spirit of the border is written in our hearts.” Right here, the border is not a metaphor for collective growth. It as soon as once more turns into the language of energy and appropriation.
Nor did this rhetoric stay summary. Within the early weeks of his 2nd time period, Trump again and again stated Canada must develop into the 51st state and declared Greenland:
“I think we’re going to get it one way or another.”
This narrative is rooted within the Puritan imaginary of a challenge into the barren region, a “new Jerusalem” and the violent conquest of a territory inhabited through figures regarded as “barbarous savages.” Republics of Fantasy additionally displays how this grammar was once projected from Latin The us to the Heart East.
Trump is due to this fact no longer merely reusing an outdated American symbol; he reactivates its maximum expansionist model. The similar mechanism works at house. At the southern border, Trump talks about “invasion”, “migrant occupation” and, once more, “savages”. In a foreign country, he applies the similar good judgment to Iran, describing it in apocalyptic phrases as an “evil” pressure that should be overwhelmed and an forthcoming existential danger. In each circumstances, the purpose is much less to give protection to the border than to degree a reconquest thru an ethical narrative of excellent as opposed to evil.
The cowboy turns into a cult chief
Every other delusion is that of the individualist cowboy, as analyzed through historian Heather Cox Richardson: the best of the “real” American, generally white, who acts by myself, expects not anything from the federal government, protects his personal, and imposes his will through dominating others.
Richardson displays that this delusion, transformed within the trendy generation through Barry Goldwater and later offered through Ronald Reagan, has develop into a central a part of Republican political tradition. Below Trump it’s been taken to the intense. One sentence, uttered when he introduced the beginning of the assault on Iran on February 28, displays the good judgment:
“No president has been willing to do what I’m willing to do tonight.”
The cowboy is not a determine of in style autonomy. He turns into an abnormal guy, one that dares by myself, above institutional warning.
Trump bends the parable into his persona. Conscious of the alleged Iranian plot to assassinate him all over the 2024 marketing campaign, he even gifts the loss of life of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as an OK Coral-esque duel:
“I got him before he got me.”
The place previous presidents would possibly have used frontier imagery to relate a countrywide effort, Trump turns the cowboy right into a template for a charismatic, transgressive chief. The hero not stands for collective order. He externalizes struggle, polarizes the arena into just right and evil, and justifies himself most effective through his skill to win. This trend isn’t with out precedent. From Reagan’s “Evil Empire” to George W.’s “Axis of Evil” Bush, American presidents have ceaselessly contrasted the virtuous “us” with the menacing “them”. However below Trump, the ethical narrative not serves essentially to protect values or the “free world.” It serves to glorify a pace-setter whose legitimacy rests on his skill to succeed. But Trump additionally subverts the very binary he applies: even after branding an opponent as evil, he can flip round day after today and include the theory of a care for the enemy. The rhetoric is due to this fact no longer most effective sharper than ahead of; it’s also extra risky, extra transactional and theatrical.
Violence as regeneration
A 3rd delusion is the parable of regenerative violence, lengthy recognized through historian Richard Slotkin. He confirmed that the concept that violence can blank up dysfunction and repair misplaced order runs thru trendy American political mythology.
Violence isn’t an twist of fate of the border; it’s his symbolic engine. It destroys the barrier, it maintenance the humiliation, as an example, the humiliation left through the hostage disaster of 1979, which Trump referred to in his cope with on February 28, 2026 – it clears the distance and regenerates the neighborhood.
Already in 2017, Trump’s inaugural cope with referred to the “American carnage” that painted a portrait of a damaged nation that needed to be rebuilt in the course of the cracks, a story drawn from the rhetorical custom of the Jeremiah.
2025–2026, that good judgment extends to overseas coverage as neatly. At West Level, addressing graduates of the USA army academy, Trump stated he sought after to refocus the army on “crushing America’s adversaries, killing America’s enemies” and the facility to “dominate any enemy and destroy any threat.”
For the reason that starting of his 2nd time period, that delusion has been dramatized much more explicitly thru a fusion of leisure and fact, as in a White Space video that blended photographs of the strike on Iran with scenes from Hollywood motion pictures and video video games below the slogan “American Justice.”
Trump guarantees his enemies “certain death” and hyperlinks destruction with meant political liberation. Violence, due to this fact, is not only a software. It turns into a situation of renewal. That is the place Trump maximum obviously deviates from the extra standard presidential use of energy.
The place his predecessors related violence with an specific venture of political transformation – democratization, state-building, regional redesign, Trump expresses a extra radical trust: energy itself turns into a distinctive feature, and crushing the enemy is its easiest evidence. Violence not prepares a brand new order. It turns into an lead to itself, as though just a display of energy can produce a political resolution.
Below Trump, the outdated American delusion of violence has been stripped of its universalistic options. What stays is destruction as evidence of energy.
The windfall and challenge of the chief
The fourth delusion is non secular. From the start, the American frontier was once related to the providentialist creativeness: a challenge within the barren region, a delegated other people, an instantaneous Protestant dating to God. Trump takes that custom, however turns it on himself. In his 2025 inaugural cope with, he stated his “life was saved for a reason” and that he was once “saved by God to make America great again. At the National Prayer Breakfast, he again declares that God has a “particular plan and superb challenge for The us.”
And right here the unique delusion is distorted. Windfall is not invoked to recall the country’s collective name. It’s used to sacralize the president himself in a quasi-messianic function. Trump’s supporters accentuate this shift: a part of the evangelical Trumpism has offered him to the language of anointing, prophecy, or the conflict between just right and evil. Faith does no longer exchange technique right here; it sacralizes pressure.
US Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth is a in particular revealing embodiment of that dynamic. A contemporary crusader determine, he combines nationalist Christianity, martial prowess and the holy legitimization of pressure, with a imaginative and prescient of violence in large part unbound through restraint. He appeals to a divine function ahead of the troops to justify the conflict.
What the standoff in opposition to Iran truly unearths
The conflict in opposition to Iran throws all this into sharp aid. It displays how outdated American myths don’t seem to be most effective reused, however hardened and distorted. The frontier turns into a predator, a cowboy – a pace-setter’s cult, violence – redemptive crushing, faith – a pace-setter’s sacralization.
Trump is not just inheriting the American presidential custom. He radicalizes its darkest impulses, draining those narratives in their civic, ethical, or universalist content material and leaving most effective their maximum brutal core: conquest, pressure, divine proper, and the destruction of the enemy. It is also a part of what makes them horny to many Republican sympathizers.
