Yesterday, I was on “Judging Freedom” with Judge Napolitano to discuss America’s state of permanent war and the fantasy of our leaders that America remains the world’s hegemon:
America had its hegemonic moment in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union. For a decade, Pentagon spending was curbed and the Clinton administration produced budgetary surpluses at the tail end of the 1990s. (With U.S. national debt soaring above $40 trillion this year, those budgetary surpluses seem fantastical, a unicorn and rainbow moment.)
How did America throw away its moment of triumph? Hegemonic vainglory was one reason. Mistaking military might for being morally in the right was another. Seeking vengeance after 9/11 in 2001 by declaring an unbounded “war on terror” globally was a third. Meanwhile, no matter how poorly wars went in Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Iran, and no matter how wasteful the Pentagon proved to be in that war (eight failed audits and counting), no one was held accountable for lost wars, wasteful spending and wanton corruption. In fact, those who were punished were patriotic whistleblowers who tried to shed light on what became a massive system of theft from American citizens.
That said, let us not forget all those on the receiving end of U.S. military power—all those killed, maimed, and displaced by America’s state of permanent war across the globe.
And let us not forget as well that U.S. security doesn’t come from vast “investments” in wars and weapons—quite the reverse. Our security comes from the exercise of our constitutional rights and freedoms, our collective wisdom, our willingness to stand for what is right and true.
War isn’t security. War certainly isn’t peace. And a state of permanent war isn’t healthy; in fact, it’s the most insidious threat we face to our way of life, if by “way of life” we mean a people committed to liberty and justice for all, especially the weak and the vulnerable.
Donald Trump is a one-man horror show. Call him “annihilation man” for threatening to exterminate nearly 93 million Iranians for the crime of defying his will (and that of Israel and Netanyahu).
I don’t write about Trump a lot because he’s so scrutable. He is what he is, an utterly shameless con man, a bullying narcissist who’s always on the make. What he isn’t, what he’s never been, what he never will be, is a public servant. Sadly, he has a lot of company. Few prominent politicians today really are, and if they are, the system does its best to corrupt them or expunge them if they can’t be corrupted.
Trump came pre-corrupted, so to speak. Put more charitably, the powers that be determined they could live with Trump because he was so easily manipulated. Let him make some money, let him sign things with a Sharpie, let him pose and preen and insult, and otherwise flatter and cajole him in the direction you want him to go.
Some Americans, Trump supporters of course, seem to think of Trump as a sort of lovable rogue. They laugh with, sometimes at, Trump while investing him with far more meaning than he has. It’s strange. They make apologies for him and think of him as being on their team.
Back in October 2016, I implored Americans to “dump chump Trump.” I remember getting a comment from a reader about my article, in which I contrasted my father’s character with that of Trump’s. Basically, the guy commenting said he preferred the kind of man Trump was. He really did emulate the bully, the braggart, the bigot in Trump. Perhaps because it gave him the excuse to be the same.
Anyhow, here’s that article I wrote ten years ago this month. Obviously, America chose not to dump chump Trump, and so here we are, facing his many lamentable qualities, most especially his boasts about annihilating Iran just because they choose to resist his will.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump holds a rally with supporters at the Suburban Collection Showplace in Novi, Michigan, U.S. September 30, 2016. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
What kind of a presidential candidate tweets in the middle of the night about alleged sex tapes involving a former Miss Universe winner? Indeed, what kind of a man does this?
Donald Trump is a chump. I’d call him a chimp, except it would be an insult to chimpanzees everywhere. The man has no discipline, no sense of decorum, and no compassion for others (let’s not forget his signature line, “You’re fired”). Indeed, he seems to revel in humiliating others. This was mildly amusing when he was taking on equals on the stage during the Republican primaries, but it’s disturbing in the extreme to see him bullying the little guys and gals for whom he’s supposedly a champion.
So many sane people and major newspapers have gone on record as being against Trump that there’s little I can add. Sadly, Trump’s followers seem unperturbed and undisturbed no matter his insults and tyrannical behavior.
All I can say is this: Trump is not the kind of man my father taught me to be. My dad, who fought forest fires in Oregon in the CCC, a veteran of an armored division in World War II, a city firefighter for more than 30 years until his retirement, treated people fairly and squarely. He was humble about himself and considerate to others. I can’t recall him insulting others, certainly not in the intentional and hurtful way that Trump directs at others. Trump is especially fond of attacking women or minorities or anyone he sees as vulnerable, the very opposite of my dad’s code of behavior.
Don’t get me wrong: my dad wasn’t perfect. He had his faults. But his faults were not directed at others; he didn’t try to demean or diminish other people, as Trump so obviously enjoys doing. Unlike Trump, my dad wasn’t boastful; indeed, three favorite sayings of his were: “Still waters run deep,” “Don’t toot your own horn,” and “The empty barrel makes the most noise.”
You were right, Dad. The rushing nonsense from Trump exhibits his shallowness; the man is constantly tooting (or tweeting) his own horn; and, like the empty vessel that he is, he makes an awful amount of noise.
Trump: Not the kind of man my father would respect; not the kind of man our country needs.
The one quote I know from Joe Biden is show me your budget and I’ll tell you what you value. Biden wasn’t exactly Abe Lincoln but that quote does resonate.
As the “Department of War” budget approaches $1.5 trillion, as spending on boondoggle weapons systems like the Sentinel ICBM, the B-21 nuclear bomber, and the “Golden Dome” continues to soar, it’s obvious what America’s leaders value: war and weapons, full-spectrum dominance, coercion and control, mass violence and threats of the same.
Only an American leader is currently threatening the complete annihilation of ninety million people, as Trump has done repeatedly with Iran. Surely mass death and destruction shouldn’t be what America values most?
As war and weapons spending continues to spiral upward, Americans should reflect on the lost opportunity cost of all that money. Better schools, more affordable health care, more housing, a cleaner and safer environment, all this and more is achievable if we invested in them rather than wasting it all on more weaponry and more wars.
Bringing this message home with the help of humble Oreo cookies is Ben Cohen, famously of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. The short video below is well worth watching.
Tell your members of Congress you’re fed up with murderous wars and deadly weaponry. Vote them out if they refuse to change their ways. And let’s start saving some Oreos for ourselves and our hungry neighbors rather than handing them all to gluttonous warmongers.
There’s a kerfuffle about art being political, with journalists and writers I respect, such as Matt Taibbi and Caitlin Johnstone, coming down on opposite sides of the issue.
Johnstone puts it bluntly: “I have no respect for this idea that art is somehow separable from politics. ALL art is political when you live in a genocidal dystopia, because all your expression exists in relation to our freakish civilization.”
While I sympathize with Johnston’s opposition to the ongoing genocide in Gaza, and have written plenty of articles myself against this genocide, I don’t define all my writing as reducible to politics. Writing is a form of self-expression, a creative act, and though we are all influenced by the society in which we live, that doesn’t mean that everything we write (or otherwise create) is necessarily a political expression.
Of course, art can have political meaning, often by design, occasionally not. But if all art is political, doesn’t that suggest that art is simply politics by another name?
Without looking at dictionary definitions, I think of art as a creative act. An act of imagination, an expression of the human spirit. We draw, we write, we sculpt, we make music, we dance, etc., as forms of expression. The richness of that expression–those creative acts–shouldn’t be reduced to political expressions. The best art transcends politics.
It’s like saying all sports is politics. Sure, sports can have political meaning, but sport is something more than political expression. For example, there is a physical joy to sports, as a form of expression, that denies its reduction to politics.
This idea that everything is politics or political is a dangerous one. It seems to be driven by those who want to attack others for the “wrong” politics in their art. Defining art as politics seems a handy formula for the dictator to outlaw or repress art that is considered dangerously “political” or otherwise threatening to political power.
Hitler, a failed artist, judges “degenerate” art
Recall that in the 1930s Adolf Hitler attacked “Jewish” art as degenerate. Included in that was jazz as well, treated by the Nazis as a degenerate form of music, associated as it was with Black and Jewish musicians.
Art, put simply, is something more than politics, and those who create art shouldn’t be defined or judged or constrained or condemned by the politics of critics who see everything through a political lens.
A strange conceit of American exceptionalism is the naked ambition of full-spectrum dominance. The idea is this: America must dominate every realm of potential conflict, land-sea-air as well as space and cyber and any other realm you can imagine, for that is the only way Americans can truly be “safe.” Such a conceit comes with a hefty price tag as Pentagon spending soars toward $1.5 trillion a year. But money is the least of it. The heftiest price tag is the constant state of warfare (and preparations for yet more war) that has characterized U.S. foreign policy since 1945. That, and the erosion of personal liberty and freedom and the hollowing out of the American middle- and working classes as money flows upward to war contractors in the service of boundless imperial ambition.
There’s a god-like quality to this ambition, the idea America must be omnipotent, dominating all realms of warfare, and omniscient, sweeping up all data everywhere, in an unapologetic quest for global reach and global power together with the unapologetic exercise of that murderous power against peoples generally having brown or black skin and therefore treated as inferiors.
With only slight exaggeration, the U.S. government can be said to be projecting power everywhere and helping ordinary Americans nowhere. Destruction is favored over construction. Enriching the already rich is the goal even as the impoverished are made poorer.
The U.S. taxpayer, in the old days known as citizens, are paying through the nose for unneeded weapons systems (Sentinel ICBMs, B-21 nuclear bombers, Golden Dome), unwanted wars (Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran), and an imperial structure of force projection that virtually guarantees the violence will be unending. This imperial structure, with its goal to control all, to know all, to dominate all, is supported by Democrats and Republicans. Critics of this structure, present in both parties but in small numbers, are attacked and otherwise kept on the margins.
None of this is new. In the early 1960s, Senator George McGovern, a decorated bomber pilot during World War II, argued against the pursuit of nuclear “overkill” and called for substantial cuts to defense spending and reinvestment in civilian infrastructure. In support of this initiative, he cited Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s military-industrial complex warning of January 1961. McGovern’s initiative was quickly abandoned as the Johnson administration ramped up its disastrous war in Southeast Asia.
Nearly a decade later, with Southeast Asia ravaged if not defeated, McGovern urged his fellow citizens to “come home,” to stop the folly of overseas wars and ever-increasing military budgets. He was overwhelmingly defeated by Richard Nixon in the 1972 Presidential election.
Ever since that defeat, the Democratic Party has conspired to silence candidates who are antiwar and who dissent from the idea of imperial dominance. Dennis Kucinich comes to mind here. Even moderate calls for reform from candidates like Bernie Sanders are dismissed as naive or dangerous. The result has been Democrats like Obama, Biden, Hillary Clinton, and Harris who openly embrace “good” wars (Afghanistan, for Obama) and who eagerly celebrate military lethality (Harris).
Meanwhile, the Republican Party never met a military budget increase it didn’t like. Rare indeed are voices like Ron and Rand Paul and Thomas Massie who question the wisdom of endless wars and their adverse impact on rights and freedoms here.
What is to be done? Bernie Sanders called for a political revolution, surely a correct call, but he was neutered by the establishment of both parties. Elizabeth Warren spoke of “big, structural changes,” but that was for the domestic economy; her foreign policy was basically that of Biden/Harris. A few rogue Republicans speak up against the Iran war today, but rare indeed are those who openly call for major cuts to war spending.
In short, electing our way out of imperial dominance and colossal war and weapons spending is unlikely in the extreme. Many many people (myself included) have written sensible articles calling for deep cuts to military spending, but good ideas that go against the grain gain little traction without a strong and concerted movement behind them.
America desperately needs a coordinated mass movement against endless war and massive military spending, yet the “powers that be” keep doubling down on yet more wars and even more massive war spending. That same establishment continues to multiply U.S. “enemies.” It may be Iran today, but Russia and especially China always loom, with North Korea and other “rogue” states held in reserve just in case.
The sheer folly and massive expense of it all will likely lead to the end of the (however imperfectly practiced) American democratic experiment. That’s a grim conclusion, I know, but I’m less than hopeful as the tools America has used in its unjust wars overseas are now increasingly applied in the “homeland” against alleged dissenters.
Remember when “dissenters” used to be called concerned citizens? Remember when war was considered to be bad and weapons spending was seen as the unwisest of ways to spend our resources?
America doesn’t have to be a warrior-state or in a state of constant war. A “silent majority” of Americans clearly doesn’t want endless war and outspokenly wants better lives for their children. But better days will not come if this majority remains silent or otherwise demobilized.
The Main Obstacle
As Ike said in 1961, the main obstacle is the military-industrial complex (MIC), to which he added Congress as an abetter and accomplice. That complex in 65 years has greatly added to its power and cultural penetration. The term MICIMATT adds the intelligence “community,” the media, academe, and think tanks. To that we might add the sporting world, Hollywood, video games, and now wildcard tech billionaires. All these interests conspire to absorb trillions of dollars from U.S. taxpayers, ostensibly in the name of national security, while waging or supporting endless war.
Ike said only alert and knowledgeable citizens, actively participating in democracy, could compel the MIC to curb its worst and most grandiose ambitions. Sadly, this is precisely why the American people are constantly lied to, especially about wars, why so much is kept hidden or “classified,” and why people are encouraged to salute smartly and let the military experts handle everything.
Even worse, the very idea of active citizenship is now degraded; the only “duty” apparently left is voting, where you’re encouraged to vote Democrat or Republican and otherwise to reject any third-party candidate who may be antiwar as irrelevant if not invalid (and possibly un-American).
Our ultimate security doesn’t reside in guns or other weapons or in boundless violence. It resides in strong institutions committed to the rule of law in which individuals of character stand up and speak out against abuses of power. Come home, America, to a land of generosity and hope and peace.
Americans like to think we live in the best country in the world. It’s part of our culture, almost the air that we breathe. Perhaps it’s even in our DNA. We’re told from birth how lucky we are to be American. We’re so much better than everyone else that “they hate us because they ain’t us.”
It’s American mythology, of course, and it’s something I was reminded of as I saw this chart (below) this morning on Twitter/X:
Grim chart. I’m surprised that the chart didn’t include that America is indeed #1 at needless wars, colossal military spending, weapons exports, and militarized pageantry that extols the wonders of being an American as various combat jets roar overhead. We’re also #1 at the size of our national debt, now exceeding $40 trillion and rising.
The chart above suggests how America could close the gap by making health care better and more affordable, by improving education, by enhancing the quality of living for all, and so on, but politicians rarely address such issues. The political ads I’ve seen during this electoral season focus on which candidate is more corrupt or which candidate wants to raise your taxes or which candidate can lower the price of gasoline.
George Carlin famously said that you had to be asleep (or perhaps very rich) to believe in the “American dream,” but it seems today that the aspirational dream of a better, more enlightened, more democratic country is dead. The only people dreaming big are people like Trump, he of triumphant arches loaded with snipers and drones, of ballrooms with underground bunkers, of a new “Club Med” in Gaza once the Palestinians there are murdered or starved or forced out.
And maybe that’s a big legacy of MAGA: the death of the American dream, strangled by wars and militarism and corruption. Along with the redefinition of “greatness,” which is now defined by “warriors” kicking people when they’re down and threatening entire civilizations with annihilation.
Shame, and eternal shame, nothing but shame!(The Duke of Bourbon, Henry V)
Why isn’t President Trump being impeached and removed for cause?
This week he went before the United Nations and once again threatened a nation of 93 million people (Iran) with total annihilation. Defying Congress, he seeks to build a triumphant arch in DC complete with snipers, ammunition, and other weapons and surveillance equipment. He illegally bans news agencies from the White House. He’s doing everything possible to steal elections in November. He has embraced militarism and war while choosing himself as America’s greatest president in history. He dismisses climate change as “fake news” even as he accelerates fossil fuel production in the most sensitive environmental areas. He openly uses the office of the presidency to enrich himself and his family.
Trump has never had any desire to support and defend the U.S. Constitution. He has never been a public servant. Like Richard Nixon before him, Trump believes he is above the law, or as Nixon infamously put it, When the president does it, that means it’s not illegal.
There is no more serious threat to America than a lawless president. A president who refuses to support and defend the U.S. Constitution is one that must be removed from office. This is not about being a Republican or Democrat. This is not about partisanship. This is about serving one’s country and upholding the law of the land.
Tolerating a U.S. president who wages illegal wars, who threatens genocide against another people, brings nothing but shame. Trump has threatened the equivalent of 15 Holocausts against Iran—more than 90 million dead, an ancient civilization obliterated because it refuses to bend the knee to Trump’s will.
How can any constitutional republic tolerate such a dangerously unhinged leader?
I went on “Judging Freedom” today to discuss the many dark legacies of 9/11. This video is especially worth watching for Judge Napolitano’s summary of the PATRIOT Act and how it degraded our fourth amendment protections under the U.S. Constitution. Unlike him, I have not read all of the PATRIOT Act.
I had many thoughts both before and after my interview with the Judge. Perhaps the most disturbing to me is the sense of how much my country has embraced war as a creative act, as a force for good, as equivalent to freedom. Hence names like “Operation Iraqi Freedom” and “Operation Enduring Freedom” for the Iraqi and Afghan Wars. Barack Obama had his “good” war (Afghanistan) and his “bad” one (Iraq), even as Hillary Clinton chortled and gloated over the death of Gaddafi in Libya when she was Obama’s Secretary of State.
There was a time when Americans saw war as corruption—as the most insidious threat to democracy (James Madison), as brutal, stupid, and often futile (General Dwight D. Eisenhower). Ever since 9/11, if not before, too many Americans (especially those who don’t have to fight) have come to embrace war as positive, even “good.” This is among the most worrisome signs of creeping fascism—the identification of war with freedom, with patriotism, openly adopted and supported by both political parties in America.
Militarized madness, if left uncorrected and unopposed, will destroy freedom and liberty.
The Judge and I also briefly discussed Islamophobia and the death toll in countries like Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria. The harsh reality of hundreds of thousands killed, and millions displaced, during the War on Terror is rarely mentioned in the mainstream media here, and usually goes unacknowledged in 9/11 memorial ceremonies.
The chief legacy of 9/11 is as obvious as it is tragic: a state of permanent warfare in the United States, both abroad and in the “homeland” (a term not used in normal discourse before the 9/11 attacks), with millions dead and displaced for no defensible reason.
If you’re 25 years old or younger in America, you’ve never known a time when your country wasn’t at war. “Peace” is no longer seen as desirable, let alone possible. War is seen as America’s natural state; a land of warriors are we, imbued with a “warrior ethos” that applauds kicking other countries when their down and beating the snot out of them just because we can.
Meanwhile, in the “homeland,” surveillance grows ever more intrusive by the day as agents of ICE kick down doors and haul people away to detention centers that are being rapidly expanded. Personal privacy is increasingly a thing of the past as the government wraps itself in a shroud of secrecy that makes oversight and accountability well-nigh impossible.
The global war on terror has become a war of terror. War begets more war, with no end in sight.
Re-reading the Atlantic Monthly 150th anniversary issue from November 2007, I came across this gem of a quote from America’s 9/11 mayor, Rudolph Giuliani:
We’ve got to be patient and committed [in Iraq], but we’ve got to multitask … We’ve got to talk about Iran—Iran is more dangerous than Iraq—and we have got to get the job done in Afghanistan and in Pakistan.
That was Giuliani in July of 2007 when he ran as a Republican presidential candidate. In America, that’s how you get treated as a “serious” candidate for the presidency—by urging for war not just with Iraq and Afghanistan but with Pakistan and Iran as well. We can “multitask” our wars! Truly a sign of American greatness.
Well, Giuliani’s dream has come true—we are talking a lot about Iran today.
Back in 2007, Ron Paul had a different take on 9/11 and America’s state of forever war, but he was roundly booed for asking Americans to exercise just a bit of empathy by asking why “they” hate us:
That “crazy” Ron Paul, talking about blowback for America’s wars in the Middle East. He obviously didn’t know about America’s peace-making bombs and freedom-bringing missiles. Didn’t he know as well that “they” hate us for our freedoms?
I know: this is old news. But I was going through my notes from September of 2024 on the Harris/Trump presidential debate and came across Kamala Harris’s gushing praise of the “late great John McCain,” American hero. And I thought again to myself: this is how the Democrats run for office, by praising Republican warmongers like McCain?
I get it: Harris was trying to rattle Trump, who had no love of McCain. But as I wrote in my notes at the time, Harris came across as a moderate Republican against a madcap one in Trump. And when you offer voters a “choice” between a moderate rightist and a more extreme one, they tend to go for the extreme one.
A few reasons why Harris struck me as a moderate Republican in that debate:
Her high praise for McCain.
Her tight embrace of military lethality.
Her rejection of Medicare for All and her support for private health insurers.
Her willingness to quote Goldman Sachs with approval.
Her boasting of personal endorsements from Dick and Liz Cheney.
Her strong support of NATO and Ukraine in its war with Russia.
Her unchecked support for Israel despite the genocide in Gaza.
My Democrat friends will likely respond that she was “moving to the center” to win more votes. How did that work out for her?
Yes, I know Kamala wasn’t as crazy as Trump. If she’d been elected in 2024, we wouldn’t have been subjected to the DOGE, or absurdly high tariffs, or ICE goons, or the idiocy of Pete Hegseth. I get that.
But Harris did support “military lethality,” so the Pentagon budget would have increased (though not nearly as much as under Trump). She said Iran was America’s greatest threat, so her foreign policy vis-a-vis that country may have been as bellicose (though whether she would have started a disastrous and illegal war with Iran is unknowable but I think unlikely).
Looking through my old notes from that debate, I’m struck again by the grim vision Trump offered of America. Our country has gone to hell, he said. The nation is in decline, or dying. Other countries are laughing at us, Trump said. They don’t respect us. Migrant crime is killing America. Immigrants are eating your pet dogs and cats. Babies are being aborted (“executed”) at nine months. Biden doesn’t know he’s alive and Harris hates Israel. Or so Trump claimed.
Trump wasn’t wrong about America’s decline. What he fails to see is how rapidly he has accelerated that decline since he was reelected in 2024.
Trump is America’s first declinist president, as Tom Engelhardt has noted. Hence the whole MAGA ideal of a national revival, which resonated with so many people. The problem of course is how Trump is worsening that decline even as he uses the office of the presidency to enrich himself, his family, and his cronies.
It shouldn’t be that difficult for Democrats to beat a corrupt and venal blowhard like Trump, except the Democratic establishment thinks the way to do that is to praise John McCain and to hug the Cheneys. And even while Democrats today criticize Trump for the Iran War, they rarely do so on moral terms, even as they typically put forth their own preferred military action plan against Russia or China or both. Trump actually makes occasional antiwar noises, which is more than can be said for many Democrats.
If Democrats really want to gain the upper hand on Trump, they had best stop praising the McCains and Cheneys of America and reject constant warmongering. And they should be much stronger in their criticism of Trump and Company as WMD, as weapons of mass destruction to democracy, for that is exactly what they are proving to be.
The DSA candidates in 2026 get it: American voters really want alternatives rather than Democrats wearing John McCain and Liz Cheney masks.
