The haunting inevitability of Donald Strangelove Trump

Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 black comedy Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, is widely considered one of the greatest works of satire in cinematic history. Telling the story of a rogue American general who kickstarts a chain reaction of events that ultimately culminates in nuclear war and the end of the world, it remains universally acclaimed sixty years later. The film’s success is such that it is widely accepted as having irreversibly damaged popular opinion of what had until then been widespread and successful tropes of American military power: the nuclear bomb, the military-industrial complex, and the Presidency’s image of competence and authority, were all resoundingly trashed by the film’s ridicule of the contradictions inherent to these ideas. None were ever seen in the same light again.

The businessman’s television persona and brash, macho style of statesmanship drew frequent, usually despairing comparisons to the genocidal generals of Kubrick’s satire.

Having made a modest recovery in the decades since, aided by America’s victory in the Cold War, these concepts came under a similar level of strain with the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States in 2016. The businessman’s television persona and brash, macho style of statesmanship drew frequent, usually despairing comparisons to the genocidal generals of Kubrick’s satire. The documentarian Errol Morris in 2017 struck a chord for many when he invoked a scene from the film, in which a letter from the nuclear-crazed General Ripper is read to the movie’s President, who simply responds, “It’s obvious. This person is insane!”.

Though opinions differ sharply on the legacy of Trump’s first and (so far) only term in office, there is, at least outside of America, a growing consensus that the 45th President’s return to office in 2024 would constitute a catastrophe for the Western global order. From his staunch refusal to accept the results of the 2020 election, to recent comments on NATO suggesting Russia would receive permission to attack underpaying member-states, and his employment of language at campaigns that has taken on an increasingly ugly, racialised, and aggressive nature – all signs suggest a second Trump administration would have profound and severe consequences that inevitably reverberate worldwide.

Accepting this, it becomes attractive for more poetically minded observers to draw a direct parallel between the events of Dr. Strangelove, and current American politics. The film’s central premise is the creeping, awful inevitability of the end of the world: we watch in real- time as the leaders and generals of America come to a slow, terrible realisation that all the mechanisms they have built to ensure victory in a nuclear conflict have instead gone beyond their control, and guaranteed their own annihilation. By the film’s close, some on the President’s staff have chosen not only to accept nuclear war, but to celebrate it – the titular ‘learning to love the bomb’.

In a very similar sense, for many observers there is that same awful inevitability about a Trump victory in 2024. Despite much initial enthusiasm, a credible challenge to the former President failed to materialise in his party’s primaries, the contest to decide the presidential nominee: those who openly opposed him, including his former Vice President Mike Pence, did not even make it to the first contests of the primary. Other widely hyped candidates, from South Carolina Senator Tim Scott to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, contradicted all their initial attacks to endorse Trump’s candidacy once his victory became assured, in awesomely cringeworthy acts of self-humiliation. A single challenger, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, battles on in a futile effort thirty points behind Trump in her own home state. There is every chance she too will have dropped out to endorse him by the time of this article’s publication.

Having initially elevated Trump into the political titan he is today, Republican donor groups and the conservative media have found themselves now completely powerless to direct his agenda, as the former President threatens democracy itself.

In Dr. Strangelove, Kubrick’s President learns early-on in the film of “Plan R”, a contingency which has enabled the United States to retaliate even if its entire government has been wiped out in a surprise first-strike. To achieve this, it has actually stripped the President of his authority to order nuclear strikes, and empowered his low-ranking generals including the film’s mad General Ripper. In a comparative sense, the American right-wing establishment have discovered a similar emasculation in their power over domestic politics. Having initially elevated Trump into the political titan he is today, Republican donor groups and the conservative media have found themselves now completely powerless to direct his agenda, as the former President threatens democracy itself. Fox News, who loyally amplified Trump’s claims of voter fraud in 2020, has been repeatedly lambasted by the former President for its supposed bias against him, in reporting the variety of criminal prosecutions he is battling. It has been suggested that Rupert Murdoch, the international colossus of right-wing press who announced his surprise resignation in September 2023, was brought down in-part due to his opposition to Trump. Certainly, Murdoch, a once-close ally of the former President in 2016, had eagerly backed the candidacy of Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin, yet another failed Trump challenger.

Billionaire Republican elites, meanwhile, confronted perhaps by the notion of having to treat characters such as MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell as equals, have turned similarly sour on Trump. Eye-watering sums of money have been paid in the attempt to block his candidacy, without avail. $160 million was burned for the DeSantis campaign to ultimately contest only a single state, making it probably the most expensive second-place Iowa finish in American political history.

For perhaps the first time ever, the American billionaire class has lost its power.

Republican businessman Charles Koch, one of the richest men in the world, has poured tens of millions of dollars in donations to funding the doomed Haley campaign. Trump strides on regardless, effortlessly raising his own grassroots funds off of MAGA caps, evangelical donations, and t-shirts bearing his own mugshot. For perhaps the first time ever, the American billionaire class has lost its power.

In the face of this seemingly unstoppable cruise towards re-election, pundits at home and abroad have begun to prepare for what they deem a certainty. NBC News in February reported that prominent domestic critics of Trump have actually begun considering whether to flee the country, should he be elected. These include Alexander Vindman, a key witness in Trump’s first impeachment who described how his wife has begun to save money for the eventuality, and Stephanie Grisham, Trump’s press-secretary-turned-whistleblower, who said she had discussed with friends which countries do not have extradition treaties with the US. Across the Atlantic, fears among European nations that Trump is incapable of taking a woman seriously have actually ended the hopes of prominent female leaders like EU President Ursula von der Leyen or Estonian PM Kaja Kallas of becoming Secretary-General of NATO. Despite having once vowed to have a female leader, European nations have instead swung wholly behind Mark Rutte, PM of the Netherlands, who it is hoped can stand up for the alliance against a domineering Trump if and when he returns to office.

For many, this resoluteness in his election victory will come across as confusing, not least given there is still an election to be fought, and credibly lost, against the incumbent President Joe Biden.

These actions, taken in the shadow of Trump’s march back into power, are planned seemingly with a faith in the inevitability of his return. Rather like Dr. Strangelove’s proposal at the close of the film for the assembled generals to flee into mineshafts with harems of beautiful women, they are attempts to make the best of a disastrous situation, having abandoned any hope of trying to avoid it. For many, this resoluteness in his election victory will come across as confusing, not least given there is still an election to be fought, and credibly lost, against the incumbent President Joe Biden. Biden, who will turn 82 three weeks after the 2024 election, has already defeated Trump once – yet faith in his ability to achieve this again is dissipating, and panic amongst those in the Democratic Party is rising. Biden has the lowest approval ratings of nearly any post-WWII incumbent for this stage in the election calendar, on par with Jimmy Carter, who lost his re-election bid in a landslide to Ronald Reagan in 1980. After a series of bruising reports on the President’s memory, just 32% of respondents to a February Monmouth University poll have faith in Biden’s mental and physical stamina. 48% feel there is at least some chance he will not even be the Democratic candidate by November. Yet challengers to Biden as the nominee have met similar success to Trump’s. Try as they might, there is no enthusiasm for an alternative to the octogenarian incumbent. Really, there is no enthusiasm full-stop. Just a creeping sense of inevitability, as the prospect of American democracy’s very own end-of-the-world looms on the horizon.