LA is a small price to pay

Trump said it. 

The cost of the war with Iran might include Iran destroying Los Angeles and San Diego. 

The Nebraska crowd cheered.

Trump:

It's a small price to pay for keeping the world safe, keeping our country safe. They can take out a city. Let them take out Los Angeles, let them take out San Diego. This is a very small price to pay and it's going to be over very soon. It's essentially almost over with, and they might keep going a little long, you know? They always say they have a big threshold for pain. They need it, let me tell you, they need it. But it's going to end very soon. It will end one way or another.

Trump knows Americans are unhappy. Gasoline is up 25 percent, and inflation is running about 3.5 percent a year. That may cost him one or both chambers of Congress. Call it what it is: a form of regime change. Meanwhile, Iranians have endured the sudden death of their top leaders, the destruction of military sites, schoolgirls killed, shortages of food and fuel, and hyperinflation. Yet their new government remains secure in office. Moreover, their bombed-out military is somehow driving our forces from their bases and our aircraft carriers out of the region. This week they even chased American B-1 bombers out of the United Kingdom. Like the old Timex watch, Iran can take a licking and keep on ticking. Not us.

I am accustomed to this from Trump. It means nothing.

More interesting is the crowd's response. The cheering started at the names of the cities. That didn't surprise me. Trump has twice been elected president by dividing the country. There are friends and there are enemies. Trump doesn't express respect for the "loyal opposition." He rewards his friends and destroys his enemies. He moved U.S. Space Command headquarters from Colorado to Alabama, and he didn't bother with a pretext. He said he did it because Colorado votes by mail and Alabama does not.

This partisan notion of reward and punishment has drifted out into the zeitgeist. It isn't just Republican leaders and voters. MSNBC interviews Iowa farmers who voted for Trump and are now in distress from his tariffs. Social media passes around memes of MAGA voters hoist on their own petard. There is joy in the misfortune of foolish people whose votes backfired.

The country has changed in the past 25 years. When planes struck the World Trade Center, we all became New Yorkers. It was an attack on us.

At a 2015 campaign rally in Alabama, Trump spoke of Muslims celebrating:

Hey, I watched when the World Trade Center came tumbling down. And I watched in Jersey City, New Jersey, where thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down. Thousands of people were cheering.

What he described did not happen. There is no record of anything remotely like it. It was a lie Trump wanted to tell. 

Trump was finding an audience and shaping it: There are enemies among us. They hate us, so we can hate them. Trump did not create this zeitgeist out of nothing. People have wished ill on their enemies forever. But Trump trades in this emotion, inflames it, and profits politically from describing internal enemies. It secures his base. It is part of what historians will examine when they write about the Trump era in American politics.

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