Why can’t Donald Trump just shake hands like a regular person? Instead of the simple clutch of palms that humans have used for ages to demonstrate friendship, Trump jerks and pulls hard on people’s arms, almost knocking them off balance.

His handshake with Judge Neil Gorsuch, Trump’s own nominee for the supreme court, went this way. And it’s a good thing Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was already seated when they greeted each other for the cameras.

I have no idea how large Trump’s hands really are, but his handshakes are small, hyper-masculine demonstrations of strength, as if he’s afraid even of the decorum of equality that a handshake brings. With this bizarre behavior, Trump turns basic social etiquette into a weird exercise of authority, giving us one lens through which we can see this president’s style of leadership.

Every president has a leadership style. Jimmy Carter’s style was a folksy friendly, prez-in-a-sweater kind of thing. Ronald Reagan may have been a dyed-in-the-wool cold warrior, but he was always so damn cheery about it. Bill Clinton was constantly trying to seduce people to his policies – and maybe other things. George H W Bush brilliantly mastered having no style whatsoever, while his son had all the swagger and intelligence of a cowboy hat. Barack Obama was, of course, Professor Cool.

And Donald Trump? His clumsy leadership style seems oriented around the goal of convincing us that the United States is on the brink of every kind of collapse imaginable – except for climate change, which obviously is a “hoax”.

Trump wants us to think that if the Muslims don’t kill us then the refugees clearly will. In Trump’s world, a wall separating us from Mexico is needed to save civilization. Our cities are burning up from the inside out, and crime has already swallowed up the once great metropolis of Chicago. Immigrants are deportable criminals unless they can prove otherwise. And then there’s Nordstrom. So much American carnage everywhere you look. Be very afraid.

The production of fear is central to Trump’s policies. And while he and his administration insist you believe their leadership is all-powerful in the face of these mortal threats, they confuse the exercise of power for power itself.

Of course, they have the awesome resources of the government behind them, and with those means, Trump and his team have embarked on a series of executive orders and actions that are already wreaking havoc on some of the most vulnerable groups in our society – almost all non-white, we should note – and those attacks will no doubt grow. But is beating up on the weakest among us really a show of strength?

The resistance: 1, Ivanka Trump: 0 | Jamie Peck Read more

I don’t think so. And, judging by the number of people on the streets, neither do millions of other Americans. Spontaneous crowds of thousands appeared at airports around the country to protect Muslims after Trump signed the travel ban. Half a million marched in Washington DC alone for the Women’s March on 21 January. And 80,000 showed up this past weekend in Raleigh, North Carolina in a show of force for voting rights and immigration.

The marches and rallies opposing Trump and his policies have not only been glorious and inspiring. They are also challenges to Trump’s fear-mongering style of leadership. The political philosopher Hannah Arendt has written that the hyper-nationalism of totalitarianism depends on “an atomized and individualized mass”. Meanwhile, the demonstrations against Trump create the exact opposite: a public united along multiple and varied causes, ready and mobilized for action.

The one who appears alone and atomized in this drama is actually Donald Trump. He is the one with a constant need to demonstrate his might, to harp neurotically on his win, to belittle others and aggrandize himself. But rather than consolidating his strength, these actions disarm Trump’s power. No American president has looked weaker and pettier to such a large number of people and governments across the globe.

Trump wants us to be afraid. I’m mostly just embarrassed.