In his recent Rolling Stone article, “Trump’s Greenland Strategy: Manifest Masculinity,” political columnist Matt Bai takes a Maileresque lens to Trump’s surreal, repeated claims that the U.S. should buy Greenland. Bai sees more than just real estate speculation or strategic positioning—instead, he interprets the fixation as an act of “manifest masculinity,” a performance of dominance that resonates with the posturing and political psychodrama Norman Mailer explored in Why Are We in Vietnam?
For Bai, Trump’s fantasy is less about Greenland itself and more about staging a spectacle of conquest, a masculine assertion of will dressed in geopolitical clothing. Just as Mailer’s Vietnam peeled back the cultural neuroses driving American expansionism, Bai suggests that Trump’s rhetoric channels similar undercurrents: insecurity, mythmaking, and a craving for symbolic victories in the face of domestic entropy.
Society members will appreciate the nod to Vietnam and the continuing relevance of Mailer’s ideas in diagnosing the emotional theatrics of American empire.