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 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.
I know: politicians lie. Who knew? But the lies are so blatant, so fundamental (if that’s the right word), that it’s hard not to despair.
Consider Barack Obama. As a candidate he was a beacon of hope and change. He told Planned Parenthood that signing the Freedom of Choice Act would be the first thing he did as president. Once in office, he said it was not his highest legislative priority—and it never got done. He allied himself with neoliberals and Wall Street and bailed out the banks in a process begun by George W. Bush (remember the TARP?) even as millions of Americans defaulted on their home mortgages. In 2011 he offered little meaningful support to the Occupy Wall Street movement as the police in New York and other cities dismantled the encampments. He escalated the Afghan War (promise kept!) and became (according to the 2013 book Double Down) “really good at killing people” via Predator and Reaper drones. His health care plan was much like Romney care as he abandoned the public option. After he left the presidency, he cashed in big time through books, media deals, speaking fees and other ventures, with Forbes estimating his net worth at more than $70 million. (I got a fundraising letter from him last week asking me to send $25 to the DNC. Instead, he could donate a few million or sell his mansion on Martha’s Vineyard.)
Obama said he was the hope and change for Americans to believe in. He proved to be a very smooth con man.
Consider Donald Trump. He promised to put Americans first, to end wasteful wars, to take on the military-industrial complex, and to restore American “greatness.” Instead, he’s waging a costly and apparently losing war with Iran and he’s throwing buckets of mega billions at the Pentagon as he chops away at educational, Medicaid, food/SNAP, and other funds for the working classes. Trump is using the presidency to enrich himself and his family, showcasing a brazen greed that might make Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi blush. He’s a one-man wrecking crew for faith and trust in the government.
Trump said he was the man to make America great again. He’s proven to be an abrasive but nevertheless very successful con man.
Back in the Reagan days, we were told government was the problem not the solution, and that it had to be downsized radically (the Pentagon, of course, was exempt from downsizing). An untrustworthy and spendthrift federal government is most definitely a problem today as the U.S. national debt just soared past the $40 trillion mark.
And where does half of federal discretionary spending go today? To wars and weapons, to the Pentagon and Homeland Security, to more nukes and golden domes, together with more schemes to enrich Trump and his oligarch cronies. If that’s not bad enough, Trump is seeking $500 billion more for the Pentagon in FY2027. Remember he vowed to take on the military-industrial complex? He’s feeding it instead.
Betrayal. Small wonder that Americans are despondent as well as angry. And why perhaps so much effort is being exerted to redirect that anger away from the betrayers-in-chief and toward other “enemies.” Even “Marxist-communists” are back—the “enemy” that will not die, as if Marxists are pulling the strings and reaping the profits in Washington, DC. It’s laughably absurd.
“Throw the bums out!” is a mood in America today. But will new politicians actually have principles to serve working-class Americans? How do you reform a system where money basically equals speech and where lobbyists exert enormous power? Stay tuned as the great American experiment plays itself out.
Note to Readers: The short essay below represents a joint effort of the Eisenhower Media Network, or EMN, an organization of former military and government officials who seek a wiser course for America and a more peaceful world. I’ve been a member since EMN’s founding.
In Common Sense, Thomas Paine challenged Americans to question an institution that had long seemed beyond challenge. He wrote, “A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right.” Two hundred and fifty years later, those words apply just as well to America’s defense budget. What has become accepted through habit is neither sustainable nor accountable. Only the American people can change it.
The “defense of custom” now comes from the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex that President Dwight Eisenhower warned against in his farewell address. Years earlier, in his famous “Cross of Iron” speech, Eisenhower observed: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed… Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.”
More than seventy years later, Eisenhower’s warning has become reality. The United States spends more on its military than the next eight countries combined, most of them allies, while millions of Americans struggle with the costs of health care, child care, education, and housing.
The Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex thrives by portraying every international challenge as justification for ever-larger Pentagon budgets. Defense contractors finance political campaigns and employ armies of lobbyists who help shape the annual National Defense Authorization Act. Taxpayer dollars then flow back into executive compensation, shareholder dividends, stock buybacks, and continued political influence, creating a self-perpetuating cycle that rewards corporate profits rather than national security. Even maintenance contracts are often structured so that only the original contractor can repair the equipment, locking taxpayers into decades of additional costs. The troubled F-35 fighter program—billions over budget, years behind schedule, and only partially mission capable—has become a symbol of this dysfunction.
An Air Force general described the F-35 (top) as a Ferrari, meaning it’s ultra-expensive, less than reliable, and overall less effective than the two F-16s also shown in the photo (Official AF photo)
Yet despite these enormous expenditures, America’s recent military record raises serious questions about whether ever-increasing budgets produce better outcomes. Since World War II, the United States has rarely achieved the political objectives it set out to accomplish in major conflicts, despite possessing the world’s largest military establishment and one of the most geographically secure nations on Earth.
Even more troubling, the Pentagon remains unable to account for how it spends taxpayer money. It has repeatedly failed the financial audits required by law, something every other federal department has managed to complete. Nevertheless, it is now requesting a budget approaching $1.5 trillion. Asking taxpayers to approve such an increase before explaining where previous funding went reflects a level of fiscal irresponsibility that would be unacceptable anywhere else in government—or in any American household.
Thomas Paine understood that institutions derive their power not only from force but from unquestioned assumptions. Britain’s empire appeared invincible in 1776 until Americans decided its authority no longer deserved their consent. Today, questioning the continual expansion of military spending may seem equally unfashionable, but history reminds us that accepted practices are not always wise ones.
A $1.5 trillion Pentagon budget represents more than $9,000 per taxpayer. As America marks its 250th anniversary, we should ask whether endless increases in military spending truly make us more secure, or whether they come at the expense of the investments that strengthen our nation at home. The courage required today is not to defeat an empire abroad, but to confront the entrenched interests of the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex and reclaim a government that serves the American people rather than the economics of perpetual war.
Sad to say it doesn’t seem to matter what we the people think about war and military spending.. President Trump doesn’t care that at least 70% of Americans are against the Iran War. Dick Cheney infamously replied, “So?” when he was told by a reporter that Americans opposed further escalation in the Iraq War.
It might matter what we thought if we lived in a democracy, but we don’t. We live in a kleptocracy, a kakistocracy.
First, we must recognize we’ve lost our say–that we don’t have a government that represents us–then we need to reform, re-create, or otherwise change that government.
Again, in the main, Americans don’t want militarism and wars–but there are other forces at work that do want these things, for their reasons, and they are in control.
Americans, I believe, don’t want more nuclear weapons. We’re getting them anyway. Read this article by Bill Hartung on the profiteers of Armageddon.
Americans, I believe, don’t want to spend between $1.5 trillion to $2.3 trillion each year on the Pentagon and war (read this POGO report on the true total U.S. military budget), but the warmongers and the military-industrial complex spend that money anyway.
As George Carlin said, the owners don’t care about you—at all! At all! At all! Your preferences, your needs, simply don’t matter. You have no say. To “our” leaders, the owners, inflation is good—just ask President Trump. Rising gas prices are great—for fossil fuel companies. Rising credit card balances and debt are healthy—for bankers.
We need to act. We need to change American-made destruction into American-made construction. We must become builders again, not destroyers.
The weapons they fund and build, the wars they prosecute, all the shredded human bodies, and for what? What morally abject fools the weapons makers and warmongers are. Why do we allow them to get away with it?
Until we regain our morality and our nerve, until we cast aside the kakistocrats and kleptocrats ruling us, we will remain stuck in the malaise of mindless militarism and endless war.
Withhold your consent. Run for office yourself. Organize and protest. Talk to your neighbors. Even write a blog. Whatever you can do to derail the war train rushing toward Armageddon is a good thing.
When it comes to war (and more war), the USA is a dictatorship.
Consider Trump’s words that he will make “the final determination” whether the Iran War will persist. Roughly 342 million Americans and 93 million Iranians await Trump’s decision. The decision of an egotistical narcissist who’s convinced he must always be seen to be “winning”—that all that really matters is his own self-image.
How Trump sees himself (courtesy of the Guardian)
Trump, America’s de facto dictator, if not yet de jure, recently told the American people he didn’t care if the war was hurting their finances or making life more difficult for them. As Dick Cheney once said about American opposition to the Iraq War: “So?” So what? Who cares what the people think. What matters is what the dictators think.
What’s especially shameful here is mainstream media coverage, which presents Trump’s absolute power over war as completely normal—even legal.
Remember when wars were supposed to be declared only by Congress in the name of the people?
Saying when to fight, when to go to war, when to send U.S. troops into harm’s way, is the ultimate power, literally the power over life and death, and we the people, as much as I hate to say this, have accepted with little protest that Trump has total power here.
Meanwhile, the Democrats mutter something about affordability. And there’s always a Democrat or two (“the rotating villain”) in Congress who prevents any curb to Trump’s war-making authority.
Welcome to America’s shamocracy. We might be able to remove Trump’s name from the JFK Center for the Performing Arts, but we can’t remove Trump from sending U.S. troops to their deaths in an illegal war. Where’s Congress? Where’s SCOTUS? Why do they leave war-making to the whims of one greedy and power-driven man?
I was reading an article today about Pete Hegseth, self-styled Secretary of War, and his decision to remove four officers from the Brigadier General-select list. Turns out the four officers were either Black or female, but I’m sure that was a coincidence.
Anyhow, the article referenced this pearl of wisdom from Hegseth from last September:
“The leaders who created the woke department have already driven out too many hard chargers. We reverse that trend right now.”
For those of you who don’t know military jargon, “hard charger” is a term of approval. And that’s been Trump and Hegseth’s approach to war with Iran. Call it the bull in the china shop approach. Charge in hard, kill people, break things. Drop enough bombs, kill enough people, and obviously victory must follow.
Hard chargers are what we want in this man’s military, so might Pete Hegseth say. I’ve heard Hegseth’s nickname at the Pentagon is “Dumb McNamara,” apparently for his slicked-back hair together with his, well, lack of intelligence. (Robert McNamara was Secretary of Defense during the disastrous Vietnam War.)
Of course, the military needs its share of Type A, Can-do, mission-driven, hard charging men and women. It also needs its share of skilled, knowledgeable, and smart people as well. And there’s nothing that says that a “hard charger” can’t also be a thinker, especially as that can-do type learns from experience that not every problem can be solved with bullets and bombs.
Deep thinkers are especially needed at strategic levels, else wars go nowhere and are quickly lost. One thing is certain: the so-called Department of War isn’t being led by a deep thinker.
Hegseth, surely a leading member of the kakistocracy, prefers pushups to planning and bombs to diplomacy. He’ll keep charging hard, or, more accurately, he’ll order others to charge hard into harm’s way, all in a quest to drive out “wokeness” and win wars through maximum violence and minimal thought.
Charge harder!
Any enemy wanting to fool Pete Hegseth should invest in a red cape and start waving it smartly.
Joe Kent’s principled resignation letter, in which he calls out the influence of Israel and AIPAC on President Trump’s decision to go to war with Iran, illustrates the nature of power and dissent in government circles.
The main response is denunciation. Leading the way was Trump, whose response to the news was basically good riddance even as he claimed that Kent, a former Green Beret with extensive combat experience, was “weak on security.” Organizations like the Jewish Anti-Defamation League and AIPAC suggested that Kent was trafficking in age-old anti-semitic tropes (apparently it’s “anti-semitic” to suggest that Israel and AIPAC have influence over the President and Congress).
In the age of social media, denunciation is nearly instantaneous — and often unhinged. I’ve even seen calls to have Kent investigated under the espionage act!
The method to the madness is obvious: discredit Kent by smears, attack him as disloyal, even as such efforts are designed to intimidate others from airing their legitimate concerns.
Kent deserves a lot of credit for going on the record because he surely knew he’d be denounced.
Not quite denouncing him, but showing (so far) conformity that’s more than disappointing is Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and Kent’s former boss. Previously, Tulsi was on the record as being strongly against regime-change wars and especially against war with Iran. She’s often made speeches in the name of her “brothers and sisters in uniform.” Yet so far she has quietly abetted Trump’s policies and actions in his foolish and illegal war against Iran.
I fear Tulsi’s “brothers and sisters” will pay a high price for her complicity.
Here’s her message posted yesterday at X/Twitter:
Donald Trump was overwhelmingly elected by the American people to be our President and Commander in Chief. As our Commander in Chief, he is responsible for determining what is and is not an imminent threat, and whether or not to take action he deems necessary to protect the safety and security of our troops, the American people and our country.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence is responsible for helping coordinate and integrate all intelligence to provide the President and Commander in Chief with the best information available to inform his decisions.
After carefully reviewing all the information before him, President Trump concluded that the terrorist Islamist regime in Iran posed an imminent threat and he took action based on that conclusion.
This is carefully-worded nonsense, designed to satisfy Trump and his handlers. I bolded a few obvious BS phrases. First, Trump wasn’t “overwhelmingly” elected president, though Trump loves to think he was. Second, anyone who knows how Trump operates can’t imagine him “carefully reviewing” all the intelligence, but perhaps Tulsi is being cute here, since she adds the intel “before him.” (I truly wonder how much of the DNI’s intel actually reached Trump, how much he truly read and reviewed; not much, I’d wager.)
Finally, there’s the notion of an “imminent threat,” which Iran truly didn’t pose to U.S. national security, not before the Israeli/U.S. attacks. And the usual dismissal of Iran as “terrorist Islamist,” i.e. “bad people” we don’t like.
I’ve been a Tulsi supporter for many years and I wrote that she’d make a fine DNI. Recent events are proving me wrong. Her message on X in response to Kent’s resignation was more than disappointing. I’m hoping she also resigns for cause, but perhaps she thinks she can do more as an insider to restrain the worst impulses of Trump, his toadies, and those who have always spoiled for a war against Iran. Her resignation, I think, would be more powerful than her restraining influence (assuming she has any influence).
Of course, if she does resign for cause, she will be smeared and denounced, and not for the first time.
Readers, what do you make of all this?
Addendum: Perhaps I should add that I don’t agree with everything in Kent’s resignation letter, nor would I be likely to vote for him, assuming he runs for office again. His resignation letter is useful exactly because he was a strong Trump loyalist whose military record earns him respect among those who are otherwise unlikely to question Trump and the official narrative. In short, for me this isn’t about Kent and his character, It’s about his recognition that there wasn’t an imminent threat from Iran and his willingness to highlight the roles played by Israel and AIPAC in U.S. politics and foreign policy. As a Trump insider, his words carry persuasive weight. They could also indicate a fracturing of support for Trump’s disastrous war with Iran.
Reading NBC News this morning, I saw where the U.S. “is winning decisively, devastatingly and without mercy,” so claimed self-styled Secretary of War Pete Hegseth. “We are only four days in,” he added, and the U.S. “will take all the time we need” to prevail. He further added “We are punching them while they’re down, which is exactly how it should be.” (There’s nothing more honorable than punching someone when they’re down, right?)
“They [the Iranians] are toast, and they know it, or at least, soon enough, they will know it. And we have only just begun, to hunt, dismantle, demoralize, destroy and defeat their capabilities,” Hegseth boasted. As far as how long the war will last, he equivocated. Three weeks? Eight weeks? Who knows? Hegseth doesn’t.
Hegseth also doesn’t know something fundamental: You can’t do a wrong thing the right way.
The Iran War is wrong. It’s illegal, unconstitutional, immoral, and also extremely dangerous. There’s no way to prevail in a war fought for the wrong reasons, a war fought without clear goals, a war that is already beginning to spiral out of control. But Hegseth thinks if the U.S. launches enough missiles, drops enough bombs, and torpedoes enough ships, somehow the U.S. will “win.”
Congratulations, U.S. and Israel: You made him a martyr
In so many ways, the U.S. has already lost. The Ayatollah Khamenei is now a martyr. Iran is now more likely to pursue a nuclear weapon. Even more so than usual, Israel is now in the driver’s seat, calling America’s shots in the Middle East. This has all the makings of a major catastrophe for U.S. forces, but all Hegseth can see is the promise of punching a man when he’s down.
Clearly, Hegseth is intoxicated with winning “without mercy.” Think about that for a moment—war without mercy. Only the most barbaric or fanatical person would boast about waging war without mercy.
With the Iran War, the Trump administration is marching down the most perilous of paths, blinded by illusions of total victory.
A warning: More than anything, America must not allow this to become a religious war, a crusade, between a Judeo-Christian force and a Shia-Islamic force. We’re already seeing a lot of talk within the U.S. military of a God-driven mission against Iran, with (positive!) references to Armageddon. Such rhetoric is incredibly dangerous and inflammatory. (In this context, that crusader cross tattoo on Hegseth’s chest is more than alarming.)
If anything, the best outcome for the U.S. would be an immediate ceasefire before more U.S. troops are killed and wounded. But how is such a ceasefire to be negotiated? U.S. diplomacy has no credibility. None.
Among the worst outcomes would be the commitment of U.S. troops to Iran, so-called boots on the ground, which would likely create a massive Bay of Pigs-style fiasco. America can ill afford yet another land war quagmire in the Middle East. There is already talk, however, of committing U.S. Special Forces to Iran, perhaps to organize Kurdish and Iranian dissidents against the legitimate Iranian government. Such folly must be prevented.
Any commitment of U.S. troops to Iran would further accelerate escalation. If you begin to hear rumblings about Selective Service and a return to a military draft, you’ll know the Trump administration has become completely unhinged (if it isn’t already).
In just a few days of “major combat operations,” the Trump administration already has more than enough innocent Iranian blood on its hands. That toll in blood is only going to increase, as will the risk of blowback on the “homeland.”
The smartest course for America at this moment is to declare “victory” and leave. Since it’s unlikely Trump and Hegseth will see the light, Congress should immediately cut war funding. Sadly, a weak-willed Congress seems far more likely to pass supplemental funding bills to give Trump and Hegseth a blank check to wage a Judeo-Christian crusade.
We don’t live in interesting times: we live in unhinged times. Perilous times. We must find a way to seek a merciful peace. The alternative just might be World War III.
