Morefieldmay require the rest of the world to believe that the U.S. president might
use nuclear weapons, but the president is not supposed to hint that he
might actually do so. The president is supposed to be concerned with
regulating the flow of immigrants but not reveal that race plays a role
in these calculations by blurting the phrase “shithole countries.” The
president is supposed to believe that the United States is the most blessed,
exceptional country on Earth—as Barack Obama put it, “I believe in
American exceptionalism with every fiber of my being”—but not engage
in excessive nationalism by making “total allegiance” the “bedrock” of
his politics, or combine it with a commitment to “make our Military
so big, powerful & strong that no one will mess with us.”
Sometimes Trump’s utterances hit so close to home that they surpass
uncanniness. In an essay by Sigmund Freud on the uncanny, Freud says
dolls and mannequins unsettle precisely because of the possibility that
they might actually be alive, a discomfort that has inspired nightmares,
works of literature, and horror movies. Trump, by contrast, is a living
nightmare. He opens his mouth and the things-which-must-never-
be-said simply fall out. Thus, when Bill O’Reilly asked him why he
supported Putin even though he is a “killer,” Trump shot back, “There
are a lot of killers. You think our country’s so innocent?”
Trump’s willingness to say such things has precipitated an existential
crisis in the international relations world. U.S. foreign policy, as an academic
discourse and political practice, is built on the delicate foundation of what
Robert Vitalis has called the “norm against noticing,” This deflective move
has long been the gold standard of international relations; under its rules
of play, IR experts act as if the United States has never been an imperial
power and that its foreign policy is not, and has never been, intentionally
racist. The norm against noticing thus distinguishes between the idea of
the United States as a necessary world-historical actor and the reality of
how the United States acts.