Faded Glory, Growing Dishonor

By Jonah Goldberg

Friday, February 21, 2025

 

Imagine you’re a pop star or famous actor. You have an entourage of yes men (or yes persons if that’s too sexist for you). They suck up to you, lavish you with praise, let you win at cards or video games, and generally act like they think everything you say is more brilliant or funnier than it really is. It doesn’t matter if your entourage is sincere in its sycophancy or cynical. You can’t tell the difference. 

 

Now imagine that you stubbed your toe one morning. At dinner with your crew, you talk about how much it hurt. Everyone sympathizes and makes a big deal about how awful it is to stub your toe. Then, later in the meal, one of your cronies reveals he has been diagnosed with cancer. Everyone sympathizes and asks what they can do, including you. But eventually the conversation returns to the ordeal and agony of toe-stubbing. It’s not that anyone said toe-stubbing is worse than cancer, but the overall effect is to leave the subtle impression that your toe-stubbing is a bigger deal because it gets more attention. 

 

Now imagine that you’ve had hundreds, or thousands, of similar experiences. Your hassles and minor hardships get more attention and sympathy than other peoples’ real ordeals—deaths in the family, car accidents, whatever. Over time, you’ll start to think that your small problems are more important than other peoples’ real crises and calamities. You’ll think your banal insights are brilliant while actual brilliant insights can’t hold a candle to your dim-bulb ideas.

 

This state of mind is called acquired situational narcissism, a term coined by Dr. Robert Millman, a prominent psychiatrist. I first heard about ASN 20 years ago in an NPR segment on Michael Jackson, and it’s come to mind countless times since Donald Trump smashed into our lives like the Kool Aid-Man.

 

But I don’t want to talk about Trump’s obvious narcissism.  Rather I want to discuss three different, but weirdly related, problems.

 

The valet effect.

 

I haven’t studied the literature on ASN, so maybe Millman or someone else has looked at its effects on its enablers. It just seems to me that ASN doesn’t just involve the psychic deformation of ASN sufferers, but of the people who make it possible. In my time in Washington, I’ve met countless people who have become blind to their own sycophancy of their bosses and heroes. People who like sycophants attract people who are comfortable being sycophants. In my experience, the proverb, “No man is a hero to his valet” is not always true, though it can be. 

 

German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s famous quip is also correct only sometimes. “No man is a hero to his valet; not, however, because the man is not a hero, but because the valet is a valet.” Quite often the opposite is true: The man is a hero to the valet because the valet is the kind of person who wants to be a valet to a hero. Whether or not the man is actually a hero is irrelevant to the valet who needs to believe he has hitched his fate to greatness. 

 

I see this dynamic all over the place these days. People need to believe they are part of some great cause, that their supplication to Trump and the subordination of their own judgment is a small price to pay for being in the “room where it happens.” The thrill of having his fame rub off on them is intoxicating and seductive, particularly, but not exclusively, among the sorts of people for whom being a valet to a “great” man is the only way they can buy significance or respect or celebrity. 

 

This dynamic is most obvious among those with actual proximity, personal or political, to Trump. But it also happens at a distance. Influencers, superfans, politicians, and TV hosts carry water for Trump like Gunga Din to be in on the action. 

 

Cults of personality are not new. I met someone whose family was so enthralled with the cult of the Kennedys that a room in their house was a veritable shrine to that corrupt clan. Form letters from Ted Kennedy’s Senate office were framed and prominently hung on the wall. You couldn’t convince them that the autopen signature wasn’t the real thing. The letters and photos were, to them, akin to medieval relics of a saint. Then there’s Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, who cultivated the idea that he was married to the women of Italy. That came in handy when he asked Italians to give their gold to the state to compensate for international sanctions against Italy, and millions of Italian women sent him their wedding rings. A quarter of a million came from the wives of Rome alone. I think about these things every time I get spam from Trump Inc. offering the latest swag—membership cards, meme coins, hats, special slots as a “Cabinet level advisor.” Like this email I got the other day:

 

 

I understand that most people understand this is conventional fundraising BS and Trump never even saw this email. I mean, we can all agree that Trump is not interested in having me as an adviser, Cabinet-level or otherwise.  But I’m also sure that some statistically significant number of people convince themselves that this is somehow real. They want to believe. Kayfabe only works on the kayfay-able.

 

The great flattening.

 

Which brings me to the second thing. One of the exhausting things about political life these days is the way the Outrage of the Day—or Outrage of the Hour—dynamic flattens controversies. Trump says something outrageous and everyone rushes into the virtual octagon to defend or attack it. Or a Trump critic says something outrageous and the scrum starts again.

 

What vexes me is that distinctions don’t matter. People simply go to their battle stations heedless of whether the criticism is justified or the issue is even worth fighting over. It’s because the fighting is the point. The result is that everything gets flattened, commodified. This is the thing we’re arguing about now. Tomorrow—or in 10 minutes—it will be something else. Just as the diva’s (or divo’s) stubbed toe is put on the same two-dimensional plane as the sycophant’s cancer diagnosis, petty transgressions or petty accusations of transgression are relegated to parity with true outrages and scandals. Whataboutism becomes an all-purpose tool for defending the misdeeds of your side. Joe Biden did X so that cancels out what Donald Trump is doing right now. Never mind that when Joe Biden did X you were outraged, or vice versa. Two distinct wrongs become an argument for one wrong making another wrong right. It’s all so very stupid. 

 

And it’s tragic.

 

Dishonor among nations.

 

And that brings me to the thing I am most angry about.

 

If you read Wednesday’s G-File, you’d know that I am legitimately appalled by the Trump administration’s betrayal of Ukraine and the larger assault on the NATO alliance. This is a bigger deal than DOGE, the Eric Adams controversy, or any stupid tweets about Napoleonic brain farts or the fake King Trump Time magazine thing. It’s a historic travesty. 

 

I am sick of hearing that Trump is trying to strengthen NATO by delivering “tough love.” NATO deserves some tough love, but this isn’t that. All of the arguments about Trump strengthening the alliance are pretextual rationalizations for not speaking up against what he is actually doing. 

 

Trump’s deceitful and dishonorable attacks on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Trump’s appalling adoption of Vladimir Putin’s talking points make it clear that Trump’s priority is not strengthening NATO or even delivering “peace.” He is simply siding with Putin. Trump pretends that he cares—wrongly—that Zelensky is an illegitimate “dictator,” but he doesn’t care an iota that Putin is an actual dictator. He says that Ukraine “started the war” and that since Russia has fought for the Ukrainian territory it stole at gunpoint, it should keep it.

 

Vice President J.D. Vance says we shouldn’t think of “good guys” and “bad guys” in foreign policy. Fine. I think that’s morally obtuse and shortsighted. But okay. That idea has a formidable intellectual pedigree. What I cannot fathom is why the U.S. should affirmatively defend bad guys and slander good guys, in return for … nothing from the bad guys.

 

The Trump administration and its supporters are signaling, in word and deed, that America is no longer a reliable ally. The administration is apparently floating a unilateral withdrawal of troops from the Baltics and is generally fine with loose talk, speculation, and panic about the future of NATO. And Trump’s valet-like supporters are starting to call for exiting NATO. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered a Pentagon review for massive defense cuts.  These are signals. 

 

Indeed, just by talking about lifting sanctions on Russia—and by gutting the parts of the government that enforce them—Trump has given a massive gift to Putin. Other nations now know they don’t have to worry too much about defying sanctions. The Russian economy and war machine have been given a lifeline thanks to Trump’s incredibly stupid “negotiating” strategy of signaling in advance that we will give Russia almost everything it wants. 

 

But our allies believe that America cannot be relied upon. Australia, which has fought alongside America in every major conflict since World War I, is preparing to be shafted by America. No doubt the Japanese, South Koreans, and certainly the Taiwanese have similar concerns. 

 

You can say our allies are overreacting to the administration’s signals, or you can argue that they should fear being abandoned by America. But you can’t argue both.

 

Strike that. You can argue both in this stupid climate. Because arguments are reduced to whatever words you need to throw out of your cake hole in a given moment. Consistency, truth, principle, rigor? That’s cuck-talk. Just claim Trump was joking until you can’t defend that claim, then celebrate the fact that he’s serious. Take him figuratively until it’s time to take him literally. 

 

This stuff is too serious for such games. If our allies think we are no longer a reliable ally, you know what happens? They become unreliable allies. They start looking to make new alliances. They stop cooperating with us. Why should they? Again, if you think this is all to the good, fine. We can have that argument. But blowing up an international order we spent 80 years building, on a bipartisan basis, is something you do carefully. If you truly think Donald Trump has put much thought into this, you’re probably the sort of person who’d send him your wedding ring if he asked for it.

 

But, fine, let’s all pretend this isn’t happening. The Europeans are getting their panties in a bunch for no good reason. When Trump pulls off his master plan, NATO will be stronger, more reliable, and more useful for the challenges that lay ahead. 

 

But there’s still the issue of honor. 

 

It’s funny, the rhetoric of MAGA is all about glory, but either silent about, or contemptuous of, honor—both when it comes to character and foreign policy. Classically glory and honor are linked: True glory can only be achieved by acting honorably. Glorious acts are meaningless when pursued for fame instead of virtue. I’m running very long, so I’ll spare you all the quotes from Cicero and Aristotle. 

 

I’ve been writing about the importance of honor in foreign policy for decades, usually in spats with left-leaning “realists.”  I think real realism—not the quasi-Marxist version so popular among the people who wear the label like a uniform—is impossible without taking into account notions of national honor. I don’t mean national pride, which is a good thing in the colloquial sense even though technically speaking pride is a sin. Pride is self-directed, even self-centered. Honor is constraining because it requires following rules for what is right, when it comes at a price, including at times to our pride. 

 

As a matter of honor, we owe fidelity to our allies, to our commitments, to our frick’n word. You can disagree with Joe Biden’s commitment to Ukraine, or to every president’s commitment to NATO since Harry Truman, but those commitments were made—with the consent of voters and legislators—by America itself. I get that Trump thinks such commitments have no moral or political binding power over him, and as a constitutional matter there’s some—not a lot, just some—truth to that. But America gave its word to our allies, and in a sense to our enemies, that we would stand by our obligations, by our treaties, by our word. 

 

Again, you can scoff at that. You can think honor is for suckers, as so many seem to do when it comes to everything from marriage vows to election results, to international alliances. But behaving dishonorably has a price. I don’t mean to your soul, though I think that’s obviously true. I mean as a matter of actual realpolitik. If America’s word is deemed worthless, that will have geopolitical costs for generations to come. And if America behaves dishonorably on the world stage—and that dishonor is celebrated as glorious strength—it will change American character as well. Look at the deal Trump has tried to cram down the throats of the Ukrainians: It is vicious, cruel, and unworkably greedy.  It’s more onerous than the terms imposed on Germany after World War I, and far less defensible. 

 

But if, in an act of desperation, the Ukrainians actually agreed to it, Trump would celebrate the America First genius of the deal and so would all of his valets across the media and political landscape. And a large number of young people would come to believe that vampiric, imperialistic, cruelty, and betrayal are the essence of “smart” conservative foreign policy. Trump’s definition of a patriot—essentially someone who blindly follows Trump’s dishonorable orders and little else—is the one Americans should take to heart. 

 

And America would be the worse for it. As Edmund Burke said, “To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.” Likewise, to make us honor our country, our country ought to behave honorably.