ArcaMax

VANCOUVER, British Columbia — Home maintenance is so politically undervalued that U.S. President Donald Trump seems embarrassed to be seen doing any actual housework himself these days.

If history has taught us anything, it’s that empires collapse when their leaders become more keen on conquest over domestic upkeep. Rome expanded while its infrastructure decayed. Britain romanticized imperial grandeur while neglecting industrial decline at home. Great powers often become addicted to shows of strength to the fatal detriment of any interest in the discipline of home chores. Unfortunately, Trump looks keen to keep that proud tradition alive.

Instead, what seems to excite Trump — not drastically unlike other American presidents — is bombing campaigns, trade wars, summit theatrics, giant tariff announcements and making deals — only to tear them up later so he can experience the thrill of “winning” all over again.

Domestic stability sure doesn’t flatter the ego in the way that conquest does. Nobody ever got to experience the thrill of standing beneath a giant “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED” banner because eggs got cheaper. Nor does Trump appear to have much interest in initiating the practice.

The American president has repeatedly conveyed that he views the ordinary upkeep of American life — affordability, social cohesion, functioning institutions — as somewhere between boring and vaguely beneath him. Unless the domestic project involves constructing another ballroom or monument to his own magnificence.

He recently dismissed affordability concerns as a “good line of BS” used by Democrats.

Days later, amid his tensions with Iran causing rising fuel costs at home, he confessed: “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation.”

Of course not. Thinking about grocery bills is spiritually incompatible with imagining yourself as Julius Caesar.

Amid his recent China trip, Trump spoke favorably about allowing large numbers of Chinese students to remain in the United States after graduation.

Strange talk coming from the same guy who usually describes the border like it’s the final defensive wall before zombies breach the gates of civilization. Apparently, once immigrants can code AI systems for his Silicon Valley pals — who also happen to be equally obsessed with global control and domination — then migration suddenly stops being civilizational collapse. So even when he’s letting people into the house, it’s to serve the greater cause of global domination, to beat China technologically in a clash of empires, despite the obvious detriment to the domestic job market for the average American who voted for him.

To be fair, Trump did briefly — and rather famously — try his hand at a little domestic “housekeeping” through immigration enforcement. But after critics nagged him over his methods — like Mom when she sees you dump bleach all over her kitchen floor in order to “clean” it — he was quick to drop the mop, get out of the house and move onto something that could make him look good.

Trump himself practically admitted it. In a recent Fox News interview, he said that bombing Iran was “more for public relations than it is for anything else.”

Which might just be the most honest thing that any modern president has ever said about military intervention. His rationale for confronting Iran changes constantly — nuclear concerns, deterrence, credibility, strength, serving Israel — but the underlying emotional logic never changes in that he seems to never want to appear to be suffering from the weakness of restraint.

Anyone who has actually run a household understands something that empires obsessed with external dominance and conquest never do: maintenance is forever. Roofs leak again. Kids stay out too late again. Groceries need buying again. Elderly parents need help again. Maintenance and constant upkeep are, in fact, the only real stability there is.

But Trump makes it sound like everything he does is with the goal of it being permanent. We’ve already seen that it never is.

Trump talks as though once he has “dealt with” China, Iran, Venezuela, immigration, or inflation, the matter will be settled forever. It just makes him sound like a guy repeatedly punching a malfunctioning appliance and declaring it repaired because the noise temporarily stopped.

This is nothing more than insecurity and anxiety masquerading as dominance.

Trump embodies the fantasy of total control over a world that he feels needs to be subdued, renamed, tariffed, threatened, or bombed because his own vulnerability is intolerable. In reality, the world can’t realistically be governed indefinitely by people who treat uncertainty like a personal insult.

We have never possessed more systems of control in the entire history of mankind, yet ordinary citizens have never felt more unstable, economically anxious, socially fragmented, politically exhausted, and emotionally fried. The more our elites promise mastery over reality, the less reality seems willing to indulge them.

Historically, women have often understood this better, if only because they have traditionally had far less luxury to believe that life can be conquered once and for all. Domestic life teaches adaptation, endurance, compromise, and maintenance. And that the only stability is upkeep.

Trump seems intent on reaching for the brass ring of eternal triumph. The “Golden Age of America,” as he calls it.

But he wants to do it without having to tackle the mundane domesticity — the unglamorous scrubbing from which shine emerges. Anyone who has ever cleaned a kitchen floor knows better.