The Insatiables

“Enough is as good as a feast” are words of wisdom. But the way the world is set up, we suffer greatly from the unfortunate humans for whom “there’s no such thing as ‘enough.’”

On the world stage now, a great many of the major roles are being played by people who had a huge amount of power but continually grabbed for more.

Just consider Putin and Trump (not the only such characters on the world stage).

Putin was already the unchallenged dictator of a vast nation and nuclear superpower. But that wasn’t enough. He had to drag Ukraine back under the Russian thumb, and menace the nations of Europe the old Soviet Union once dominated. Never enough power.

He also plunged his hands into Russia’s wealth, He also plunged his hands into Russia’s wealth, plundering it to enrich himself and his circle of kleptocrats. The material welfare of millions of ordinary Russians is sacrificed by a man who cannot get enough of either power or wealth.

And in the United States, the man who commands American power was not content to be made “the most powerful person in the world,” as presidents have been called for generations. No sooner was he inaugurated as President than he began crossing all sorts of barriers to presidential power to claim more powers than the Presidency should have in a nation ruled by laws that respects the will of the people.

With his illegal tariffs, his phony national emergencies, his strong-arming of independent institutions (from media companies to universities), his dictating of what monies to spend, his weaponizing of the Justice Department against opponents, and his attempt to end the independence of the Federal Reserve—Trump showed that his lust for power had no limit. Given the great powers of the Presidency, Trump still grabbed for more.

And no president has shown such greed as Donald Trump—a billionaire, handed the Presidency by the American electorate—milking the Presidency with every kind of grift (and graft) a creative mind can engineer. So much money, but willing to sell out anything to get more.

The insatiable mentality isn’t all that common among people in general. But—significantly—a disproportionate share of the world’s rulers show that same “never enough” drive. We see it in leaders like Erdoğan in Turkey, Bolsonaro in Brazil, and, to a degree, Xi in China. While most people can get to a place where they say, “Enough,” among ruling powers the spirit of “I always want more” is over-represented.

But that spirit is not found only at the level of individuals.

The ruling group in Israel today is run by the insatiable. Not content with devastating Gaza, they have prolonged a war that not only deepens Palestinian suffering but also inflicts nearly irreparable damage on Israel’s image in the world. They wield their power to block Gaza from beginning to recover, while striving to subdue the Palestinians still more in the West Bank. Even after military successes against Hezbollah and Iran, these Insatiables lacked the wisdom to cease hostilities and allow both Gaza and Israel’s reputation to begin to heal.

Here in the United States, the cost of empowering the insatiable has also been high.

One of America’s two major political parties—as a collective force—suffers from the same pathology. Republican officeholders already hold privileged positions of power, yet they are not satisfied with the authority the people have granted them. Rather than just operating from their own place within the existing system, they continually grasp for more power—seeking to make a President from the other party fail, trying to overturn elections they lose, even voting to strip away the powers of offices that voters entrusted to their opponents.

No amount of power satisfies.

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What—in psychological and spiritual terms—is the meaning of this kind of insatiability? If people warped by this kind of brokenness are likely to claw their way into major roles in our world, we should understand what has disabled such people from gaining the most basic feelings of satisfaction—leaving them always driven to get more.

(Yet in another sense, figures like Trump may have learned — as traumatized children growing up in their families — the nightmare of powerlessness in a world ruled by cruel tyrannical power. Their traumatic over-learning of the terrible costs of powerlessness led them to believe that only by grasping ever more power could they keep that terror at bay. It is the traumatic wound that makes the craving for power insatiable.)

Whatever feeling Putin and Trump are seeking, they will never feel content. The wounds we can presume they suffered early on left them unable to be fed where it really counts—matters of affection, respect, pleasure, and security, the things that lead to human fulfillment. Not the real food, but instead compensatory protections against their own humiliation and annihilation.

They are not only broken—and therefore the last kind of people we should want shaping our world—but they are also wounded. Disabled from getting their most basic needs met, and unable to feel nourished, they are stuck on “full speed ahead” toward MORE, without limit.

Insatiability, then, is the outward face of an inner hunger that can never be filled. Driven by a relentless need for MORE, the Insatiables are sure to use their power destructively.

And it is plain enough that the brokenness which makes people insatiable is itself a reliable engine of more brokenness in the world.

If Russia’s power these past twenty-five years had been in the hands of someone like Gorbachev rather than Putin, 2025 would look far different. There would have been no unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, and the world would be far more whole than the one we inhabit today.

Likewise in the United States: had we a President like Reagan—or, indeed, virtually any of his predecessors—the nation would be far less damaged than it is now, with The Insatiable having launched an all-out assault on the constitutional and legal restraints of the presidency, and having abandoned America’s role of “leader of the free world.”

Brokenness begets brokenness. Insatiability drives democracy’s descent into fascism.

It doesn’t seem possible that people don’t see the evidence of Trump’s insatiability. Why would anyone give power to one of The Insatiables — those so broken they will endlessly claw for more, always obsessed with their own unmet—unmeetable—needs?

How could anyone think it a good idea to empower someone whose power inevitably transmits their brokenness to the world around them?