Attribution: Photo by Igor Omilaev on Unsplash
By Geoff Carter
“Winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing.”
—Vince Lombardi
“Sixteen times a year, all thirty-two NFL teams give us what we’re looking for: speed, skill, violence, fantasy league orgasms and a final score. No confusion. No doubt. No indecision. A winner and a loser.”
–Mike Barnicle
Winning has become the only thing that matters in American culture. Good sportsmanship, fairness, sacrifice, and honor seem to have taken a back seat to the one thing that Americans love and live for: winning. We live in a culture where winning has become synonymous with success and success has become synonymous with money. Of course, this has always been true to some degree, but today’s emphasis of winning has come to include not only the thrill of victory, but the intentional and malicious subjugation and humiliation of the opponent. Winning and dominance has become the American dream.
These are the days of trash talking, PEDs, sideline spying scandals, and sign-stealing. While it hasn’t quite become the norm, cheating is becoming more and more common. Tom Brady, who at the time was arguably the best quarterback in the NFL, felt it necessary to underinflate footballs before the 2014 AFC Championship game. Because of the Deflategate scandal, Brady was suspended for four games and the New England Patriots were fined one million dollars. But New England won the Super Bowl, so I suppose the scandal was worth it.
Call me naïve but I grew up in a time when good sportsmanship was the norm and cheating was the aberration. I speak from experience: believe it or not, I was a boy scout, and the adages of membership: being trustworthy, loyal, brave, true, and honest were drilled into me. Honest. I can’t pin down exactly when bending the rules to gain an edge started becoming normalized, but it’s been here awhile. Look at sports heroes Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds, Lance Armstrong and their use of illegal performance enhancing drugs. They lied, they cheated, got caught, and faced the consequences. Which is as it should be, but as the ideal of winning has eclipsed all else, even those consequences are disappearing.
In America, success equals money and money equals success. Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Larry Ellison, Mark Zuckerberg, the Walton family, and, yes, Donald Trump, are worth billions of dollars. They are the winners; they’ve punched their tickets, grabbed the golden rings, and hit the mother lode. These captains of industry are admired by many Americans for their (alleged) grit, shrewdness, and determination. What is not discussed is their ruthlessness, inhumanity, cruelty, and avarice. Their treatment of workers, ruthless culling of competition, and abuse of the environment are evidence of their all-consuming greed. The very definition of striving to be part of the richest one percent implies a pathological selfishness and narcissism.
Donald Trump is the most obvious example of the false equivalency of great money and great success, and—well, greatness. When wealth is championed above honor, dignity, ethics, and common human decency, we all—even the one percent—lose, and our president, Daniel Trump, is living evidence of that prioritization. He may be rich, but as a human being, he is a loser.
During his first term, Trump broke the law countless times and ruled over the Republican party with an iron fist, threatening to primary any candidate who defied him. He is a chronic and habitual liar, who consistently violated the Hatch Act, the Emoluments clauses of the Constitution, and defied Congressional subpoenas. He was impeached twice, once for obstruction of Congress and abuse of power for his dealings with the Ukraine, and secondly for “incitement of insurrection”, fomenting a rebellion against the United States (The Library of Congress).
After he lost the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden, Trump instituted a campaign to overturn the results of that election. He and his cohorts engineered alternative election ballots from battleground states like Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, and others (PBS) that attempted to pledge those states’ electoral votes to Trump. Winning was that important to him. When those attempts failed, Trump called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, asking him to “find” 11,000 votes to overturn the election. To his credit, Mr. Raffensperger refused.
When all these schemes and plots—crimes—failed, Trump called a rally to Washington, D.C. on January 6th, 2021, the day of the election certification, and incited a riot that resulted in the invasion of the Capitol Building that Trump hoped would stop the certification. He attempted to bully Vice-president Mike Pence to refuse certification. To his credit, Pence refused.
After the revolt was put down, Trump left for his Mar-a-Lago retreat, and somehow, after trying to overthrow the government by armed insurrection, was re-elected.
Winning is everything to Donald Trump, and he used the fruits of this last victory as an excuse to pillage the country. He placed Elon Musk, one of his largest donors, as head of DOGE, a nebulous group which invaded government offices and began, like a troop of monkeys, to destroy and dismantle everything in sight. The VA, Social Security Administration, and others were raided. Private information was stolen and placed on secret databases—God knows for what.
The president then began using the power of the office to enrich himself. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, Trump has “added approximately $3 billion to his net worth. Two-thirds of that increase came from the explosion of his cryptocurrency ventures, while hundreds of millions more came from the resurgence of Trump-branded international real estate deals.
The country of Qatar gifted a $400 million dollar luxury jet liner to the president, which he has said he plans to keep—illegally—after his term ends.
This is what winning looks like in today’s America. Use any means necessary to win—lie, cheat, and steal—and then take whatever you want. While this has been Trump’s creed throughout his checkered career as a businessman, including his refusal to pay contractors, his tax evasion, and his manifold—and sometimes pitiful—money-making schemes (Trump Steaks? Really?), he has taken this despicable amoral behavior to a new level.
He won the 2024 presidential election. He won. That much (unbelievable as it is) is beyond dispute. He did everything to win. He lied to the American people. He defamed his opponents and his predecessor. He insulted and bullied anyone who got in his way.
The president not only violated all previous ethical and legal norms during his election, he has used his victory as a rationale for taking everything and anything he could possibly want. His definition of a “winner” is someone who was unlimited power and unlimited access to the nation’s money. He has gathered a posse of billionaires around him as he heads for a summit in China. They’re going there for a reason—to line their own (and their president’s) pockets. Trump believes winning allows him to erase all boundaries for his thievery, his bullying, his tastelessness, and his behavior. He has engaged in an unprecedented level of lawlessness and corruption.
Winning is not everything. In Trump’s case, it is proof that victory has grown into an excuse for every sort of self-serving behavior. He has leveled the East Wing of the White House, is turning the Reflecting Pool into a cheap-looking hotel pool, and transformed the Oval Office into a credible replication of a New Orleans whorehouse. Honor, pride, sacrifice, and teamwork have no place in this sort of victory or in the land of Trumpworld.