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.
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?
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.
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.
Poor Donald Trump! He “wants to move on” from his violent illicit affair with Iran and the Middle East, but his mistress won’t let him. He just has to keep pummeling Iran until she sees sense and lets him go.
The mainstream media always presents war as something inflicted on U.S. presidents, a weighty burden over which they have no control, their iron cross to bear. It’s ludicrous and loathsome.
Mary McCarthy
It reminded me of what Mary McCarthy said about the American press during the Vietnam War—the way that war was framed as a burden LBJ had to carry and for which he should earn our sympathy. Disgusting, right?
Back in 2009, I wrote about that for TomDispatch; here’s an excerpt.
Even now, we speak too often of “Bush’s war” or, more recently, “Obama’s war.” Before we start chattering mindlessly about Iraq and Afghanistan as American tragedies, we would do well to recall what McCarthy had to say about the war in Vietnam: “There is something distasteful,” she wrote, “in the very notion of approaching [Vietnam] as an American tragedy, whose protagonist is a great suffering Texan [President Lyndon Baines Johnson].”
Yes, there is something distasteful about a media that blithely refers to Bush’s or Obama’s war as hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans suffer. For American troops, after all, are not the only ones paying the ultimate price when the U.S. fights foreign wars for ill-considered reasons and misguided goals.
If only U.S. presidents like LBJ and Trump could do something to stop these terrible wars! They want to move on, they want peace, but Southeast Asia or the Middle East or some other foreign region just won’t let them.
Right … What U.S. presidents really learn is that it’s far far easier to start wars than to end them, that other peoples have a say as well, and that imposing one’s will (nice euphemism for bombing Iran and facilitating genocide in Gaza) is difficult because other countries and peoples do object to being bombed and murdered.
P.S. Note how Gaza is framed as a “conflict.” Note the conceit that Trump is actually trying to impose his will there to end the “conflict,” even as Zionist Israel pursues a genocide and land grab there with total support from Trump.
U.S. presidents since Lyndon B. Johnson, if not before then (think here of Woodrow Wilson’s false promises in 1916 to keep America out of the Great War, known now as World War I), always promise peace, especially while running for office. Trump is the most recent example here. Yet whether Democrat or Republican, as soon as they become president, it’s war and more war. LBJ led America into the disastrous Vietnam War; Trump led America into the ongoing disaster of the Iran War; and the overseas wars just never seem to end, whether George W. Bush is issuing the orders or Barack Obama.
LBJ lacked the courage to resist the siren call of war
I had this thought as I re-read a comment from Mike Murry, a frequent Bracing Views contributor and an astute student of U.S. political and cultural history. Murry, a Vietnam War veteran, had this to say back in 2018:
Then, in the first semester of my senior hear in 1964, JFK’s successor as President: Lyndon Johnson, started his campaign for re-election, promising not to send us American boys to fight a war in Asia that Asian boys could fight themselves. He sounded just like Donald Trump did last year [January 2017], before assuming office. Johnson beat Goldwater in a landslide. The American people did not want another Korean War and made that overwhelmingly clear. But President Johnson betrayed us all, the way all U.S. Presidents now regularly do. Every one of them without exception preaches peace to win election. Then they invariably give their generals the wars that they demand. It happens every time. The stunning cynicism of that betrayal by President Johnson, I think, severed once and for all time any sense of “patriotism” that I might once have felt for the “America” of my youth. From that point on, I became an alien in my own land. My government would later send me abroad for the worst possible reasons, to do the most unnecessary and shameful of things. That same me never came home again. Someone else did. A damaged, but better man, I think. But much less an “American” one.
Today, the most important act to restore America is to end these needless and disastrous wars overseas. And not just overseas but here at home, as Trump promotes the malicious and mendacious notion of an enemy within, often labeled as the “radical left” with “terroristic” tendencies.
Nothing, I think, is more important to America’s health now and in the future than ending wars that waste so much, that kill and destroy so many, and that estrange our own citizen-soldiers from their country.
