We are in the midst of a war. American forces are engaged in a dangerous conflict abroad. Yet instead of rallying around the country and its army, a large swath of the public remains focused on one thing: Donald Trump.

The real question is not why Trump is like Trump. The enduring puzzle is us.

How did a majority of Americans, across two presidential cycles, rally behind a candidate widely seen—even by many of his own voters—as self-absorbed, linguistically blunt, crude and theatrically abrasive?

People may debate the severity of these traits. Some see flaws, others authenticity. But one point is clear: Trump would not have been electable without conditions in American society that made his rise possible. Political figures rarely create such moments; they ride forces and trends already present. Trump, in that sense, is less a cause than a symptom. To understand him, we must examine the country that made him possible.

Political philosopher Thomas Hobbes argued that people look to government first for security, not virtue. When citizens feel unsafe—physically, economically, or socially—they will accept leaders they might otherwise reject. Order becomes more important than refinement. Under those conditions, voters tolerate the strongman, even the bully, if they believe he can restore stability.

Trump’s election suggests that a large portion of America did not feel secure.

Security, however, is not just about terrorism, jobs, or crime. It also concerns whether the political system itself feels stable and intelligible—whether institutions function, leaders anticipate problems, and the rules are clear. On that front, the signals have been troubling for a long time.

In recent years, many Americans have felt the opposite. Politics increasingly resembles a zero-sum contest: one side’s victory must mean the other’s defeat. Trust in government has eroded, and leadership often appears reactive rather than proactive. The examples are many: repeated shutdowns, budget brinkmanship, congressional paralysis, unresolved immigration crises, rising debt, and a constant sense that Washington reacts only after crises have spun out of control. In such an atmosphere, governance feels like chaos, and voters look less for refinement than for force.

The sense of insecurity extends beyond domestic politics. Many Americans have also doubted the country’s standing in the world. Examples abound: in 2014, Vladimir Putin seized Crimea after Barack Obama failed to enforce his 2013 “red line” in Syria; eight years later, during Joe Biden’s presidency, Russia invaded Ukraine, sensing weakness; the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 further reinforced the sense of retreat. Responsibility does not belong to one party alone. Under George W. Bush, the United States entered two long, costly wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, leaving distrust in government and unresolved outcomes that deepened public doubts about leadership.

Into that vacuum stepped Donald Trump. He did not speak the careful language of traditional politics. He spoke of dominance, winning, strength, crushing enemies, and restoring respect. To voters unsettled by years of drift and uncertainty, that message resonated.

At the same time, many Americans watched elites chase symbolic virtue while core problems festered. They saw border chaos straining states and cities, culture-war battles over gender in sports and bathrooms, and young people instructed to define themselves in grievances over race and history. To many, these experiments looked less like sober governance and more like moral grandstanding—optimistic in theory, destabilizing in practice.

None of this excuses Trump’s own conduct or rhetoric. It does, however, help explain his appeal.

History suggests that societies get the leaders they deserve. If citizens accept chaos, institutional decay, and theatrical politics in place of serious policy, they should not be surprised when a strong, abrasive figure fills the void.

Richard Nixon, a man of deep insecurities and sharp resentments, rose amid the turbulence of the 1960s and the agony of Vietnam. He spoke for a “silent majority” that felt besieged by cultural revolution and strategic failure. Like Trump, he promised to restore order—and like Trump, he revealed how much disorder people were prepared to tolerate in the name of that promise.

When Americans feel besieged by instability—at home, abroad, or both—they have repeatedly chosen strength over subtlety, certainty over civility, dominance over deliberation.

Today, American politics is trapped in a feedback loop. Each crisis—financial, cultural, geopolitical—erodes trust a little further. Each erosion of trust makes compromise harder. Each failure to compromise pushes voters toward figures who promise not to manage the system but to break it.

The danger now is that our political system has become so reactive that each crisis is worse than the last. Polarization deepens. Social cohesion erodes. Unity stops being a luxury and becomes a requirement. And the media sells it to us wholesale. The result is a politics that confuses catharsis with governance.

Breaking that cycle requires more than swapping one personality for another. It requires a modest but radical shift: the decision to value institutional stability and social cohesion at least as highly as we value symbolic victories.

That begins with a shared mission. We do not have to agree on everything to agree that the United States needs to defend itself and its allies. Supporting our armed forces as they confront real, present dangers—including the threat posed by Iran—is one immediate way Americans can act together, rebuild confidence in leadership, and defend the broader Western order.

The choice is not between Trump and virtue. It is between a politics of permanent crisis and a renewed politics of responsibility—starting with us.

Trump is not an aberration to be explained away. He is a warning. The real question is whether we will treat him as an endpoint—or as the symptom that finally forces us to examine the deeper illness.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)