If life is just a game, as Trump suggests, how many cards do you hold?

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On Friday, President Donald Trump let slip his truth: That life is just a game; that you win or lose depending on the cards that you hold.

Trump told the world that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has no cards, so he and his people must give in to Putin’s atrocious demands.

Trump spilled the beans: His truth is to cut a peace deal according to who holds what cards, not according to what is just.

Philosophically, Trump revealed himself as a hedonist. The cards that Trump has in mind are the ones that bring personal pleasure or avoid personal pain. They are useful. His theory of human nature is choosing pleasure over pain, a theory of appetites as proposed by Epicurus in Greece centuries ago but updated by English utilitarians in the 19th century.

Hard work, sacrifice, dignity, integrity and idealism do not seem to be high cards in his estimation.

During the Peloponnesian War, the Athenian generals told those they had defeated on the island of Melos: “The strong do what they can; the weak suffer what they must.” In Trump’s thinking, the Athenians held the high cards.

But the Athenians lost that war with Sparta.

For us, the curtain has been pulled open and we have seen our Great Oz as he really is: a huckster.

But how will Trump’s fixation on who holds what cards go down with ordinary Americans?

Fifty percent of Americans own only 2.5% of our national wealth.

In the game of life how many cards do they hold? Practically none. Maybe only the vote. They’re big-time losers.

Worse, over the past four years, inflation, provoked by our federal government, has taken cards away from these Americans — most of them in Trump’s MAGA base.

Every day, half of America knows that it has no cards to play in the game of life — to use in caring for a family, making a good living, being admired by their children, getting elected to public office, retiring with comfort. Do they think the country is going in the right direction?

But, differently, those Americans who have lots of financial and influence cards get Trump’s personal attention.

Trump is well-versed in playing life as a game of chance and in betting shrewdly with the cards that come his way, starting with his father’s wealth. In business his forte was using “other people’s money” — debts to him, assets to his lenders. He put their money to work in speculations. He was not a capitalist, creating institutionalized wealth (which became new cards for others) but rather was only a salesman evaluating how he could profit from each transaction as it came along: At what price to buy? At what price to sell? How to convince others to buy what he had put up for sale?

Each transaction is a bargaining confrontation. Only the infamous “morals of the marketplace” apply where buyers need to be suspiciously on their guard and take nothing for granted or as it is presented.

For a salesman it is all about the money — the cash flow — the spread between what you paid and what you earn. In transaction markets, suckers and the easily impressionable are easily found.

He learned early in life that celebrity in America brings you many high cards which, by showing them off to others, you can turn into money and power.

Those without cards look up to those who have the high cards and want to be like them.

Trump also quite insightfully saw the advantages to be had in making himself into a brand. When you are the brand, you gain absolute personal control of many valuable cards playable in the game of life. An established personal brand is a gift that keeps on giving.

Part of the Trump brand value is experiencing Trump himself and paying for the symbolic cultural goods that define the customer’s personal identity in the minds of others. When you play your cards right and become a cultural good for so many people, their appreciation of you delivers into your hands many, many big cards to play in one new transaction after another. The new cards you are dealt for being who you are constitute a form of rent that just keeps coming your way as long as your brand has value. Selling your brand is rent-seeking.

The political consequences for Trump in letting the cat out of the bag about his approach to life are adverse and will be lasting. He has trashed his reputation for prowess. Now, everyone will test him. Few will trust him. Deals will be harder to reach and each one will come at a higher price — “show me your cards and I’ll get back to you with my proposal.”

Internationally he now finds himself stuck between Scylla and Charybdis (a rock and a hard place). In dealing with all the foreign leaders whose partnership he needs — say Xi Jinping agreeing not to conquer Taiwan — Trump must, on the one hand, avoid having his bluffs called by not overplaying his hand and being forced to back down but, on the other, he must bluff enough to convince them he has cards that he really will play. He can’t be too hard or too soft in his posturing. If he is either, he won’t get what he wants.

Trump’s negotiations are more likely to suffer from “cry uncle” escalation tactics to see who will fold first and will be more easily sabotaged by misunderstandings and misperceptions.

This is what happened to him in playing cards with Zelenskyy. Trump lost. He did not get his minerals deal. He did not get Zelenskyy’s agreement to giving in to Putin. He did not browbeat the president of the Ukraine into a neocolonial submission. Zelenskyy stood his ground to honor his people’s sacrifices — on the battlefield and in their homes. His cards were moral ones of idealism and integrity. Zelenskyy is not a Fuller Brush salesman.

In Ukraine, Natalka Sosnytska — program coordinator at an organization that helps children with war trauma, affirmed: “By standing his ground. Zelenskyy preserved our dignity as a nation.”

It now will be very hard for Trump to bring off a peace agreement and qualify himself for a Nobel Peace Prize. The price of getting both Putin and Zelenskyy to settle just went up. Trump gave away cards to both of them.

From now on, to Trump’s face, people will play the unctuous servant. But behind his back, they will scheme to get the best of him.

Trust cannot happen where dissembling on either side is going on. And without trust, nothing good and lasting can be put in place.

Thinking of the American presidency as a game of poker or blackjack will never Make America Great Again.

Domestically, good, proud, patriotic Americans will distance themselves from his brand, which he has now tarnished. Americans don’t want their president to be a cheapskate or a petty haggler. They want someone who can be trusted, who is frank, who stands up for what is right and good, whose word is his or her bond. Someone who can lead, who would never stoop to chisel others — who builds for the ages much more than skim a profit from the occasional deal.

The exemplars are George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.

But Trump can’t turn back the clock now that we know who he really is.

After we have seen his Chesire cat out in the open, putting it back in the bag will not erase our unquiet thoughts.

Stephen B. Young, of St. Paul, is global executive director of the Caux Round Table for Moral Capitalism.