In March, the White House circulated promotional footage of American bombing runs over Iran, juxtaposed with scenes from action movies and baseball home runs. The montage was captioned ‘Justice the American way’, with Pete Hegseth posturing as one of its heroes. Commentators described it as ‘bizarre’, ‘puerile’, ‘disgusting’ and despicable’. Donald Trump, meanwhile, told aides it was ‘more fun to sink’ than to seize Iranian ships. Killing, he suggested, is a ‘great honour’ for a president. Hegseth described drowning at sea as a ‘quiet death’ and boasted that the US is ‘punching them while they’re down’. On 14 March, in a thirty-minute interview with the NBC News journalist Kristen Welker, Trump said although the US had ‘totally demolished’ Iran’s military capabilities, they could ‘hit it just a few more times just for fun’. Various officials described the president’s language as ‘obscene’, ‘sickening’ and ‘dangerous’. In The Power Elite (1956), the sociologist C.…