What Americans Have Never Been Able to Deal with Well: Equality & Differences

What Americans Have Never Been Able to Deal with Well: Equality & Differences

“Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three-fifths of all other Persons.” 

 Original Text of the US Constitution, Article 1, Section 2, Paragraph 3

In 1787, as our forefathers met, realizing that the existing Articles of Confederation needed a ground-up re-do, they soon knew they needed a bona fide Constitution. The battle between large (land mass) rural states with relatively sparse populations, driven by slavery-supported vast agricultural estates, and smaller states, with stronger trade and other commercial interests with no reliance on slavery, now had to establish representation in the new legislature and how taxes were allocated, which became a North/South differential. This note from the History Cooperative sets the issues:

“After the Great Compromise helped settle the debate between large and small states, it became clear that the differences that existed between the Northern and the Southern states would be just as difficult, if not more so, to overcome. And it was largely due to the issue of slavery. … In the North, most people had moved on from the use of slaves. Indentured servitude still existed as a way to pay debts, but wage labor was becoming more and more the norm, and with more opportunities for industry, the wealthy class saw this as the best way to move forward. .. Many Northern states still had slavery on the books, but this would change in the following decade, and by the early 1800s, all states north of the Mason-Dixon Line (the southern border of Pennsylvania) had banned human bondage.

“In the Southern states, slavery had been an important part of the economy since the early years of colonialism, and it was poised to become even more so… Southern plantation owners needed slaves to work their land and produce the cash crops they exported all over the world. They also needed the slave system to establish their power so that they could hold onto it — a move they hoped would help keep the institution of human bondage ‘safe.’” The 3/5 compromise still afforded the South proportional representatives in the new population-driven House of Representatives, and the two Senators per state regardless of population gave the South the comfort they needed to accept a new constitutional republic.

But colonialism still defined Europe, and it was the United States that built its global face on the notion of free navigation of international waters, even as slavery – hallmark of colonialism (Haiti defeated Napoleon and banned slavery in 1804) – continued its dark hold on the Americas. The Civil War and the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments notwithstanding, the biases of lighter-skinned people increasing against those with increasingly darker skin was a global phenomenon, adding religious and cultural bigotry along the way. The explosion of our post-WWII civil rights era, watching as the last vestiges of colonialism vaporized… it was America’s quest for equality, the emphasis on democratic values and freedom of movement, that hyper-accelerated the United States into the premiere position of economic and political success on Earth.

Unfortunately, political opportunism, the reality of the rest of the world’s catching up, and the rise of new foreign manufacturing plants competing against older US plants with roots in pre-WWII tech slammed into a nation that was increasingly relying on its past, willing to borrow heavily to maintain a standard of living, assuming its superiority would last without massive new investment. Even our reaction to the Soviet Sputnik success in 1957 – spurring education and investment in technology – was not enough to keep the post-WWII political witch hunts (like the McCarthy era or federal troops escorting children into schools) from redefining who we are and should be.

The post-Vietnam War era saw a fear-response in under-educated America, well past the GI-Bill educational spurt that was starting to rebuild our excellence… until racism, a powerful “domino theory” movement, and blame driven xenophobia became the tools of local, then national politicians to assure Americans that our greatness was maintenance free… that we could not fall. Instead of “we are more alike than we are unalike” (Maya Angelou’s famous “Human Family” verse), Americans eschewed the effort of rebuilding and opening opportunity… and elected politicians whose only skillset was vituperative-driven blame and self-aggrandizement.

We sit today foundering from an ill-advised WAR that will not end in a better world, one where we have reversed centuries of fighting for free navigation of international waterways and fighting efforts to maintain colonial rule, where blame and bias are the most powerful political tools in use by American political leadership. We have the weakest, least effective and most democracy averse President in our nation’s quarter of a millennium history, one who equates himself with Jesus Christ (see above 4/13 Truth Social post by Trump himself). The King of Divisiveness, the Ego of National Destruction and the most dangerous leader on the planet.

I’m Peter Dekom, it is bitter irony that Donald Trump’s model for a “desirable” illiberal democracy, a man Trump strongly supported openly and frequently – Hungary’s PM Viktor Mihály Orbán – went down to a landslide defeat after 16 years of imposing Trump’s dream set of policies that literally tore Hungary apart.

Cancelled Checks & Balances

 

Cancelled Checks & Balances

It began during the Reagan presidency, the American push-back against restrictions imposed on our head of state to prevent another undeclared Vietnam War. Congress, looking to rein in the President’s control over the military, passed restrictions on how far a president could declare and sustain military action without consulting Congress, the only body the Constitution empowered to declare war. We still have a law from that era that requires the president to seek authorization from Congress within 60 days of beginning an armed conflict.

But there was an underlying conservative theory, taken from ancient Roman law, where when a quick response and military action was required, the Roman Senate could and did issue emergency decrees (senatus consultum ultimum) it deemed necessary to protect the state and could appoint one of their own to lead, a “unitary executive,” who could react without returning to the Senate for approval along the way. Even during Imperial times, the Roman Senate retained extraordinary powers.

When 9/11/01 occurred, the United States faced a military attack on major targets (the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, etc.) for which it was fully unprepared. President George W Bush’s Vice-President, Dick Cheney, looked at those Vietnam era restrictions as inappropriate for the rapidly changing modern era. But as the horrors of 9/11 were sliding into history, Cheney, a strong believer in the Unitary Executive system of governance, realized that the only way to repeal those restrictions on the presidency was to declare a major threat to the Republic and pass legislation as a necessity to counter those threats. Cheney and his cohorts drafted a 300+ page statute that was ultimately to be the Patriot Act… but he needed a threat big enough to get Congress to pass that tome, releasing restrictions on the President.

That draft of the “Patriot Act” sat in a drawer as Bush/Cheney finally manufactured the need to counter Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein’s purported build-up of possible nuclear, biological and chemical “Weapons of Mass Destruction.” Th CIA was ordered to prove the existence of these “WMDs”… even if it meant fabricating the necessary evidence. As the administration demanded a freer hand being accorded in countering Hussein’s WMDs (never found), the Patriot Act was introduced to Congress as emergency legislation on a Friday, with a vote scheduled for the following Monday. It passed, mostly based on its title, with very few members of Congress having read the bill.

Conservatives continued pressing to enhance presidential power, some even to the extent of giving the president the power to act without Congress and, perhaps, to ignore contrary rulings by the Supreme Court. It was within this push for more presidential power that Donald Trump, a CEO who expected his corporate orders to be carried out without objection, became President and, in his second term for Project 2025 to become the new Patriot Act. The notion of constitutional checks and balances (defined in the first three articles of the Constitution) had been eroding for years, and Trump and his appointees turned quickly to solidify his power.

But Trump 2.0 has been a disaster at every level. His unilateral executive orders produced an illegal and costly system of tariffs, his immigration rapidly deteriorated into a cruel and indiscriminate purge of mostly innocent, hard working undocumented workers and his de facto unilaterally declared WAR on Iran produced economic disaster, rapidly rendering Trump one of the least popular presidents in modern history. Inflation returned, prices in every corner rose fast (the shutting of the Strait of Hormuz raised fuel and other costs dramatically), and Americans and the international community watched as Trump was backed into a corner with few off-ramps.

Was this a time when those checks and balances could be restored? Democrats were winning in most off-season elections. Trump’s efforts to cull the voter rolls were failing. It sure looked as if the GOP members who controlled Congress were heading for almost certain midterm defeat. But Trump’s election plans were gathering, perhaps from the use of ICE agents at polls or, perhaps more subtle efforts as reported in the April 26th Los Angeles Times by columnist Mark Barabak:

“There is, however, a looming threat causing nervousness among Democrats and their allies as they contemplate a celebratory fall, a landmine of sorts buried deep in the congressional election process… Let’s acquaint ourselves with Article 1, Section 5 of the Constitution… The pertinent language written by the Framers states, ‘Each House shall be the Judge of the Elections, Returns and Qualifications of its own Members.’…In other words, it’s up to the House and Senate to acknowledge and abide by the will of voters as expressed in the election returns… What could possibly go wrong?

“Well, if you let your paranoia run wild, quite a lot. If the election outcome is close — and probably it would have to be very close — Republican lawmakers could theoretically seize on phony claims of fraud and effectively nullify the results of enough contests to deny Democrats control of the House… There’s plenty of skepticism that would or could ever take place. But if it were to happen, hello, national crisis!...

“This president has amply demonstrated the lengths to which he’ll go to overturn an honest election, siccing a violent mob on lawmakers certifying his 2020 defeat, telling endless lies and using the Justice Department to confiscate ballots and intimidate innocent election officials and others Trump deems his enemies… He strong-armed Texas into a highly unusual, highly partisan redrawing of its congressional boundaries, an effort to net five seats and lengthen the odds against a Democratic takeover… The move appears to have backfired, spurring voters in California and, last week, Virginia to redraw their state’s political maps to more than offset Texas and boost Democrats in November. (The Virginia results are being contested in court.)

“That failure doesn’t take away Trump’s malign intent. And in the supine Speaker Mike Johnson, he has the perfect handmaiden to undermine the midterm vote… One theory goes like this: When the balloting is over, Johnson could appoint a House committee packed with Trump’s acolytes to investigate alleged voting irregularities. (And if you think Trump won’t be bellowing the words ‘rigged’ and ‘fraud’ in the face of defeat, you’ve either been in a coma or living on another planet for the last decade.)…

“Those hearings and the ‘evidence’ they turn up could then be cited by election officials in key states — collaborators, if you will — as a reason to delay the certification of election results and block the seating of majority-making Democrats in the next Congress.” Trump seems to know no bounds to rig election results.

I’m Peter Dekom, and whether Trump pursues any of the above election attacks or finds another way to retain control, unless those checks and balances are restored and work as intended by our forefathers, welcome to the end of the noble American experiment with democracy.

Trump’s New Blank Check to Eliminate Any Opposition – Label Opponents as "Antifa"

Trump’s New Blank Check to Eliminate Any Opposition – Label Opponents as “Antifa”

“Antifa” (short for “anti-fascist,” which sounds like the United States vs Mussolini’s Italy or Hitler’s Germany in WWII) has never had a membership list, a genuine website, a physical address, any identified leaders or spokespeople or any clear criteria for recruitment. Simply put, it is word that rightwing America uses to denigrate anyone or any group, left of center, they consider a political opponent. Yet, it is often referred to by MAGA Trumpers as if it were a real, identifiable radical leftist organization. It isn’t, but the label is often applied as if it was a tangible force that has existed for some time.

But if you want some names of prominent anti-fascists, let’s start with every member of the Allied Armed Forces in the European theater of WWII… and their civilian leaders. The list includes FDR, Harry Truman, Winston Churchill, Dwight Eisenhower, George Patton, Bernard Montgomery and a passel of Congressional Medal of Honor winners, etc., etc. Many thousands of brave American soldiers died to fight those fascists, so it is shocking that Trump has selected a word to insult those heroes, who were all anti-fascists. To those who believe that Donald Trump’s quest for total power, pursued with autocratic zeal, is a real time, modern reflection of a fascist state, stand back and standby. Everyone of the nearly nine million who attended a March 28th “No Kings” protest is reflecting the anti-fascist views and values of all those who, throughout history, have railed against brutal dictators. If there were ever a modern assembly of anti-fascists, those participating in that national protest meet that criteria.

Yet, the Donald Trump, at the nadir of his popularity and approval level, needs to unleash every conceivable weapon he can grasp – from culling voter rolls of Democrat-likely voters (banning vote-by-mail and pushing for the Save America Act), to arresting or otherwise making his opponents miserable… using taxpayer money and government agencies and personnel to advance his autocratic ambitions. So, if Donald Trump can enlist his anti-constitutional loyalists under a virtual blank check to purge or disempower his opponents, simply by attaching a distorted Trump/MAGA created label, and thus render his opponents as “genuine” enemies of the state, who should be shown no mercy. Writing for the March 31st Puck.com, Julia Ioffe offers this excellent description of Trump’s most recent attempt to eliminate all those who oppose him:

“Since 9/11, the U.S. intelligence community has relied on the National Intelligence Priorities Framework to determine where its constituent agencies focus their attention and resources. The classified document tells the C.I.A. which organizations to infiltrate, the N.S.A. which signals intelligence to intercept, and the National Reconnaissance Office where to point its spy satellites. It’s historically included targets like Al Qaeda, ISIS, and the Taliban. But in recent months, according to three sources with direct knowledge of the conversations, the Trump administration has been working to add a new top counterterrorism priority to the NIPF: antifa.

“This has been a dramatic and alarming development for many counterterrorism veterans, especially given that ‘antifa’ is not a coherent organization like Al Qaeda. The term has become a sort of MAGA catch-all for left-wing protesters—including domestically, where collecting intelligence on citizens is subject to a much stricter standard. The effort to shift focus to antifa has raised concerns among current and former counterterrorism officials that the administration aims to turn an intelligence apparatus built to combat foreign threats against domestic political opponents. ‘They’re putting antifa on the list and bumping them up in the queue in a way that doesn’t correspond to threats,’ one national security official told me. A recently retired counterterrorism official who was involved in the discussions confirmed this, saying, ‘The view from on high was that we had been ignoring this very dangerous threat and we needed to devote resources to confirm that.’ An administration official told me ‘it’s true’ that the process of adding antifa to the NIPF has begun. (The State Department did not respond to a detailed list of questions in time for publication.)

“Antifa has never been part of the NIPF before—and for good reason. The term, short for ‘anti-fascist,’ has its origins in the (woefully unsuccessful) German and Italian anti-fascist movements of the early 1930s. These days, it is a vague and mutable ideology, encompassing a broad range of far-left ideas—anarchism, communism, anti-capitalism—with no unified belief set. More importantly in the counterterrorism context, it’s not an actual organization with leaders, a command structure, or financing sources that can be targeted. What it is, however, is a central obsession of the second Trump administration.

“This tension was on stark display in December, when Michael Glasheen, the F.B.I.’s operations director for national security, testified in front of the House Homeland Security Committee that antifa is the bureau’s ‘primary concern right now’ and ‘the most immediate, violent threat’ domestically. But when questioned by Rep. Bennie Thompson, the committee’s top Democrat, about the location of antifa’s headquarters or how many members it has, Glasheen was visibly flummoxed and could not answer.” In short, our major intelligence and governmental law enforcement agencies are using government personnel and taxpayer money to use intimidation and the criminal justice system to crush legitimate and peaceful domestic opponents of King Donald John Trump, in an effort which, for decades, has been severely limited by law.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I am rather dramatically against Nazis, fascists, brutal dictators and anyone who wants to revoke the American experiment in democracy and end it after 250 years.

The Lost Boys

 

Cole Allen, Cal Tech grad and would-be assassin

The Lost Boys

20-30 million semiautomatic assault rifles, more guns that people, hate speech everywhere = political violence

Today’s blog is short and not exactly sweet. Political violence – particularly feeling justified in killing leaders that are associated with fostering agendas that the shooters have learned to hate (from healthcare to military figures to heads of state) – is hardly new. Assassination has been a part of history at least since recorded history began. And whether it is crass rivalry, anarchy, religious zeal, a search for fame or martyrdom or a belief “I must stop them,” killing what you hate or are taught to hate has accelerated as weaponry has increased in sophistication, volume killing capacity, range, lethality and effectiveness. Whether recruited fanatics, foreign operatives with defined targets or passionate lone wolves, in the modern world, every assassination attempt or success finds large cadres of supporters cheering, sometimes silently or to their core believers.

The April 25th Correspondents Dinner was cancelled after an alleged attacker and presidential wannabe assassin, 31-year-old parttime teacher, Cole Allen, failed to penetrate a very effective shield around President Trump and his political team. Even as he was a registered guest at the Hilton Hotel venue, Allen managed to bring a shotgun, a handgun, lots of ammunition and a passel of knives into his hotel room with assassination seemingly on his mind. But since most of these assassination attempts are by younger men, I feel justified calling them the “lost boys.”

Lumbering under a profoundly flawed interpretation of the Second Amendment (Antonin Scalia’s majority opinion in the 2008 Supreme Court ruling in Heller vs DC), the first Supreme Court decision in over two centuries to rule for an almost ubiquitous right of American citizens to own firearms, even military-grade assault weapons… was never the intent of James Madison who penned the Bill of Rights (which included the Second Amendment). We have since become the most violent developed nation on Earth, bringing a gun culture to dominate American life… and death.

We are now told that anyone opposing our leadership is the enemy, often deserving prosecution and execution, unpatriotic operatives that must be silenced. The nation has been divided into basically two camps, now identified with colorful red and blue markers. The mass and social media of each camp has demonized, marginalized and targeted the other side with a litany of hate and blame the United States has not witnessed at this scale since our Civil War. Vituperative rhetoric, the dehumanization of political opponents with hate-filled labels, has brought us to where we are today, often accompanied by warnings from other governments to their traveling citizens to beware of the dangers of traveling to the United States.

We did this to ourselves, and the language of hate and blame continues unabated, with some minimal signs that perhaps these labels are false, and that extremes on either side of this nasty debate are, simply, wrong and out-of-touch. We need to learn these lessons better, reject leaders who goad us to extremes. We need to stop outsourcing our political beliefs to extremists with simple and obviously undemocratic solutions… and learn to seek out facts vs conspiracy theories.

I’m Peter Dekom, and what we have before us is what happens when common sense is so vilified that it has simply left the building.

Trump Broke It but Wants Europe to Fix It

Trump Broke It but Wants Europe to Fix It

Iran totally controls which tankers can pass through the Strait of Hormuz

Donald Trump, who has never been able to articulate a consistent reason why US forces have attacked Iran, claims repeatedly that all US goals have been met (and we’re leaving soon), that liberating the Strait of Hormuz is not our fight (even though it is closed primarily in response to the Trump-initiated WAR on Iran, and opening the Strait was an announced goal), that the 970 pounds of Iran’s fissionable material is no longer a threat (because it is buried under tons of rubble), and that if Europe wants the Strait open, it must send military forces to “liberate” that passage. With relatively cheap, low-tech drones and mines, neither the United States nor Israel has achieved the slightest success in reopening that waterway. Insurance companies covering international shipping still will not cover losses incurred by shipping companies who attempt to pass through the Strait without Iran’s approval.

Here are the main catches: first, contrary to Trump’s beliefs, over 95% of the oil and gas passing through the Strait has always been directed at Asia and not Europe. We’re not talking about the Suez Canal! Second, the price of oil and gas in the United States will always be impacted by any global disruption in those products, notwithstanding our ability to produce those fossil fuels as one of the largest suppliers on Earth. As Trump berates our European allies for not joining the US in its assault on Iran and threatens to pull out of NATO, he seems to forget that NATO has always been a defensive pact and not one that can force NATO members to join a raw attack on another nation. That most Americans disagree with Trump’s WAR should be an indicator that NATO allies are in alignment with the predominant US sentiment… and it is Trump who is the odd man out.

If the US pulls out of the region, letting it mire in damage and firm Iranian control of the Strait, oil prices are unlikely to return to pre-WAR status anytime soon. Trump speaks with the certainty that his dialog with Iranian leaders is working, that they are ready to make serious concessions, despite a clear contradicting take from the Iranians in power, who claim no such conversations. Trump also tells us that there has been a regime change (several times over) in Iran, which is categorically false. The underlying theocracy is intact, the layered leadership has replaced all major Iranian leaders who have been killed, the IRGC still dominates the entire country, there is no popular uprising in this brutally repressive nation, and despite the incessant hammering of critical Iranian infrastructure by US and Israeli forces, Trump will never get his demanded “unconditional surrender,” no matter what he claims.

European leaders are not letting American voters off the hook. They remind us that Trump’s outrageous and autocratic proclivities were well established in his first term, his campaign for his second term was even less ambiguous, and still America voters put him back into the presidency. There is a sweeping change of attitude among NATO allies, that if Trump pulls out of that defensive organization, perhaps the world just might be better off. I can actually envision traditional allies breaking diplomatic relations with the United States, further reinforcing the isolation Trump seems to embrace, sending a message that the world cannot trust a bully who cannot keep his word, that the US financial stranglehold over international trade must end, that TACO tariffs are no longer acceptable.

Even if Trump were unable to sustain Trumpian authority past the 2028 presidential election, or even if a powerful Democrat were to retake the White House, even if both Houses of Congress were to turn blue, the world can no longer assume that the US will not later elect another malignant autocrat to undermine any return to a true democracy. We are politically damaged goods with almost no way to convince the world that we aren’t really that way.

The great beneficiary of Trump’s misplaced WAR is the same nation that invaded and proceeded to decimate and attempt to annex Ukraine (so far unsuccessfully): Putin’s Russia. With oil prices staggeringly high, and with Trump’s release of sanctions against Russia, Trump has actually become Putin’s champion; Russia is making a fortune from its latest oil exports, and Trump is effectively helping Russia finance the war in Ukraine, while the same time using up America’s most powerful stash of sophisticated weapons, draining our treasury and showing the world how militarily vulnerable the US truly is. China is also cheering as well as we cannot truly claim victory.

Trump’s approval levels have never been this low. His TACO responses on this WAR, immigration and the economy, may not have alienated his MAGA cult loyalists, but he has lost his grip on the independent voters who backed him… and there is scant likelihood that they will return to back him and his policies.

And his feeble explanation in his April 1st speech failed at every level. 19 minutes of meaningless babble. Trump said we have met all of our military goals (what exactly were they, and why are we still striking targets?), that even though we never threatened regime change (we did), we effected eliminating hardliners at the top who were replaced with more reasonable leaders (except the replacements are vastly tougher and more intransigent than those they replaced), a desperate Iran is seeking a ceasefire (denied by Iran), we are almost finished (but no timeline was announced), the Strait of Hormuz is not our problem (it’s no more Europe’s problem than ours, but global oil prices have soared through the roof everywhere), we may withdraw from NATO (like we are a good partner now?), and unless the Strait were immediately open, we would bomb Iran into the “stone age.”

Prior to this failed speech, the UK and Australian PMs made it clear that they considered this WAR to be Trump’s unilateral decision (with Netanyahu’s push), and Spain, Italy and France declared that they would deny US military aircraft destined for Iran the right to use their airspace, reminding Trump that NATO is a defensive, not an offensive, pact. Trump pledged that we would keep satellite surveillance over the rubble where the enriched uranium seems to be lodged and attack if Iran attempted to extract it. But weren’t we already doing that? The stock markets crashed, oil prices soared further, sending a clear message to Trump that he was in this alone, increasingly viewed as a global loser. A few regional Arab nations resurrected their traditional antipathy against Iran, but their request to continue the WAR was a small ripple on a very large pond. And Iran pledged even more powerful retaliatory strikes, and suggested that the United States will have no say in the future of the Strait of Hormuz.

I’m Peter Dekom, and the more extreme Trump’s policies these days, the lower his polling and the more he is being reversed by our judicial system, proving that Donald John Trump is America’s greatest LOSER president presiding over a toxic legacy.

Can There Be Any Remaining Doubts of His Insanity?

 Truth Social, 5/2/25, 11 days after the death of Pope Francis

Truth Social 4/13 deleted

“The Radical Left Lunatics might not like this,

 but I think it is quite nice!!!” Truth Social 4/15

Can There Be Any Remaining Doubts of His Insanity?

“If I weren’t president, the world would be torn to pieces.” 

Donald Trump after failed Vance Iran negotiation

Trump gives me the feeling of an insane relative who stole my credit card, going on a fool’s errand to spend as much as he can, without my consent, to buy guns, ships and hire armed soldiers to kill, destroy, kill and decimate my life and the lives of those around me. For some odd reason, the banks won’t let me challenge those expenditures and shut down that credit card. Trump is as much a Christian as the devil incarnate himself, it seems, even as his followers (including hordes of GOP member of Congress) seem unwilling to lift a finger to stop him. His actions and his statements confirm, in my mind at least, that Donald Trump is beyond delusional and exceptionally dangerous.

Trump has violated virtually every election pledge he has made, appointing weak and sycophantic cabinet members who tremble at his very words, and every day brings further irreversible damage to our economy, our plunging global influence on life support, and a delusional autocrat tells us his “regime change” (when did that happen again?) has left us in better position: “The U.S. and Israel launched the war with the hope that killing top Iranian officials—starting with Mojtaba’s father, Ali Khamenei—would create the conditions for regime change or at least the emergence of leaders more willing to bend to America and Israel’s interests. In an address to the nation one month into the war, President Trump called the new leadership ‘more reasonable.’... Instead, the void is being filled by radical new leaders who have shown little interest in political compromise at home or abroad.” Wall Street Journal, April 14th. The hardest hardliners we have ever met!!!

Indeed, as the world is now deep into questioning the mental capacity of the President of the United States, Trump’s constant threat to pull the US out of NATO (which actually requires congressional approval) is beginning to have traction among the balance of NATO allies, particularly since Hungary’s pro-Putin regime has just been ousted in a landslide election. “A fallback plan to ensure Europe can defend itself using NATO’s existing military structures if the U.S. departs is gaining traction after getting buy-in from Germany, a long-term opponent of a go-it-alone approach.

“The officials working on the plans, which some officials are referring to as ‘European NATO,’ are seeking to get more Europeans into the alliance’s command-and-control roles and supplement U.S. military assets with their own… The plans, first conceived last year, underscore the depth of European anxiety over U.S. reliability. They accelerated after Trump threatened to seize Greenland from fellow NATO member Denmark, and are now gaining fresh urgency amid the standoff over Europe’s refusal to back America’s war in Iran.’ Wall Street Journal, April 15th. A weakened United States, having spent a massive number of its sophisticated military hardware while being stalemated by the cheap drone attacks from what had been touted as a helpless Iran, seems to making a strong impression on China, which is both learning about our weaknesses and watching our global power dissipate.

“When China declared on Monday [4/13] that the U.S. blockade of Iranian oil leaving the Strait of Hormuz was ‘dangerous and irresponsible,’ it was a brief window into President Trump’s latest challenge: how to keep the Iran conflict from upending an emerging détente with China.” NY Times, April 15th. What would happen if China determined that its navy would now escort its tankers through the Strait of Hormuz? Will that become a topic of discussion as Trump and Chinese President Xi meet?

And back here, Trump’s unrestrained spending has had a humongous economic impact on so many levels. Without the slightest congressional authorization, lumbering under the already deficit destroying Big Beautiful tax cut for the rich, Trump seems to be spending us into the ground. Writing for the April 14th FastCompany.com, Sarah Bregel brings us the economic analysis from one Harvard financial expert: “While wars always come with an added cost to taxpayers, a public policy expert is saying the Trump administration’s military efforts in Iran, which include attacking infrastructure and a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, could drag on and come with tremendous costs to the American people—and long term, the projections are alarming… That’s according to Linda Bilmes, a senior lecturer in Public Policy and public finance expert at Harvard’s Kennedy School. She says that the war is already costing about $2 billion a day, but that’s only ‘the tip of the iceberg.’

“In a recent interview, Bilmes said that while the Pentagon said the war cost around $11.3 billion in the first few days of the war alone, that’s an “underestimate,” and the true cost is much higher… ‘According to my calculations, those first few days cost at least $16 billion,’ Bilmes explained. “We are spending down munitions at an extraordinarily fast pace—to put it in perspective, we fired more Patriot missiles in the first four days of the Iran war than we have given to Ukraine over the past four years,” she said.

“The researcher asserted that short-term costs are adding up quickly, as “we are losing high-cost assets,” but it’s the long-term costs that are most troubling. For starters, Bilmes said it’s important not to overlook the cost of human life, which is already being lost. Thousands of Iranians, including at least 1,700 civilians, have already lost their lives to the war. Hundreds of U.S. soldiers have been injured with at least 13 dead. Financially speaking, the cost of medical and disability care for veterans will be substantial. So will be the increase in the defense budget, which Bilmes explained could become permanent…

“‘The president is proposing roughly a 50% increase in the defense budget,’ Bilmes explained. ‘If enacted in full, that would push defense spending to levels about 20% higher than the peak reached during World War II. This raises the baseline. Even if Congress does not agree to approve the full increase, it is highly likely that at least $100 billion per year will be added to the base defense budget that would not have been approved in the absence of this war.’”

“Bilmes says those costs add up to at least $100 billion per year. ‘I am certain we will reach $1 trillion for the Iran war,’ Bilmes explained… While the projections are no doubt troubling, Americans are already paying for the war. Gas prices recently saw the largest jump in about 60 years, which means that air travel costs are also up. And on Tuesday, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned that if the conflict continues to escalate, we could face a global recession.”

If the obviousness of Trump’s delusion isn’t sufficient deterrent to GOP members of Congress, perhaps their belief that they require the voting support of an equal number of MAGA stalwarts to hold their congressional jobs is the most destructive vector in American politics today. Can we afford to wait until the midterm elections to change our destructive course… when ever day our political and economic realities get so much worse so much faster?! Trump would rather battle the Pope than deal with his own crimes and misdemeanors… as the GOP continues to support him.

I’m Peter Dekom, and the most troubling aspect of this not-so-funny comedy of errors is how much of this is a result of the decisions of so many Republican voters.

As Our (?Former?) Allies Begin the Great "Weakened America" Isolation and Workaround

As Our (?Former?) Allies Begin the Great “Weakened America” Isolation and Workaround

As Our Clown-Car of Senior Trump Appointees Seems Addicted to Power & Failure

I mean seriously, who takes on the most popular Pope in recent memory, and backs Donald “34 felony convictions” Trump, the man who unilaterally declared a full-on war against Iran, in a religious debate? Over the Pope’s statements that God is a champion of peace over war? MAGA Republicans (are there any other kind?) are tripping all over themselves to justify Trump’s violent approach (he threatened to bomb the entire Persian civilization into the “stone ages”) against the Pope’s admonitions against a raw warrior mentality, the rantings of a recovering alcoholic ex-Army major, in favor of a humanity-embracing peace. To say this is colossally stupid seems to be so horribly obvious, that I find myself questioning why it is even up for debate. No, Sean Hannity, the Iran conflict does not remotely have the justification that American soldiers had in WWII against the hellish Nazis who slaughtered millions in death camps.

It really has gotten ugly, as the “Trump administration canceled millions of dollars in funding to Catholic Charities in Miami… The Office ‘of Refugee Resettlement (ORR)’, under the Department of Health and Human Services, has been a long-time source of funding for the Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Miami under the unaccompanied children program. The Catholic Charities received $11 million from HHS in fiscal year 2025, according to federal spending data, but the award ended as of March 31.” USA Today, April 17th. But nothing is quite as ugly as the massive fall from grace of the entire Trump administration in the eyes of most of the rest of the world.

Apparently, I seem to stand with the majority of western nations who find Trump’s WAR baffling. We had free passage through the Strait of Hormuz before Trump’s assault, begun during peace negotiations, and today, we do not. Oh, sure there are statements to the contrary, and with Chinese intervention (which a weak US President sought), we are somewhat better off, but the Trumpian threats to bring Iran to its knees continue with barricades on Iranian ports, seizure of Iranian oil and gas tanker ships on the high seas… the financial equivalent of saturation bombing.

But the President’s mandates continue to irritate at least 30 nations, now working through the Strait of Hormuz Maritime Freedom of Navigation Initiative, to fix the damage wrought by Donald J. Trump. Needless to say, the United States was specifically excluded from this aggregation of seriously angry world leaders who, with zero consultation, faced soaring oil and gas prices resulting from the uninformed actions of America’s self-declared monarch… “The leaders of France and the U.K. gathered dozens of countries — but not the United States — on Friday [4/17] to push forward plans to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a key oil route choked off by the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.

“The Paris meeting is part of attempts by sidelined nations to ease the impact of a conflict they didn’t start and haven’t joined, but that has sent the global economy reeling. After the war started on Feb. 28, Iran effectively shut the narrow strait though which a fifth of the world’s oil usually passes… The U.S. is not part of the planning for what has been branded the Strait of Hormuz Maritime Freedom of Navigation Initiative. In a post on X ahead of Friday’s conference, French President Emmanuel Macron said the mission to provide security for shipping through the strait would be ‘strictly defensive,’ limited to non-belligerent countries and deployed ‘when security conditions allow.’

“British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, facing political troubles at home, was greeted by Macron in the courtyard of the Elysee presidential palace on Friday [4/17] afternoon.

… Macron and Starmer have spearheaded international efforts to increase diplomatic and economic pressure on Iran, which Starmer has accused of ‘holding the world’s economy to ransom.’ U.S. President Donald Trump’s announcement of a retaliatory American blockade of Iranian ports has raised the economic jeopardy even higher…. ‘The unconditional and immediate reopening of the Strait is a global responsibility, and we need to act to get global energy and trade flowing freely again,’ Starmer said before the meeting.” Associated Press, April 17th.

Just to watch Trump’s cabinet appointees writhe to find a path to please an increasingly unpopular President implement his even more unpopular policies. By way of example, the Department of “Justice” has instead embraced policies protecting Trump buddies from exposure as pedophiles, as would probably be revealed by full release of the Epstein files, to a continuing losing effort to use the federal legal bureaucracy to hunt down and prosecute Trump’s growing litany of opponents. Trump pseudo-lawyer, and now disgraced Attorney General Pam Bondi, was the first major minion to go, and it sure seems that the mockery of an FBI Director, Kash Patel, is likely next to leave. Just a few apparently well-documented excerpts from The Atlantic’s Sarah Fitzpatrick, published April 17th, makes that point very clearly:

After a major Patel freakout that he had been fired because he seemed locked out of the FBI computer system (false alarm, Kash), the heavy drinking FBI director seemed most justifiably in fear for his job. Using FBI personnel and jet aircraft to ferry his country-singer girl friend around was not the worst of it. “[FBI officials] said that the problems with his conduct go well beyond what has been previously known, and include both conspicuous inebriation and unexplained absences. His behavior has often alarmed officials at the FBI and the Department of Justice, even as he won support from the White House for his eager participation in Trump’s effort to turn federal law enforcement against the president’s perceived political enemies.

“Several officials told me that Patel’s drinking has been a recurring source of concern across the government. They said that he is known to drink to the point of obvious intoxication, in many cases at the private club Ned’s in Washington, D.C., while in the presence of White House and other administration staff. He is also known to drink to excess at the Poodle Room, in Las Vegas, where he frequently spends parts of his weekends. Early in his tenure, meetings and briefings had to be rescheduled for later in the day as a result of his alcohol-fueled nights, six current and former officials and others familiar with Patel’s schedule told me.”

OK, why this mix of global opprobrium over the Trump-Pope religious debate, the global fury over the consequences of Trump’s WAR on oil prices and the machinations within the Trump Department of “Injustice”? The simple answer rests with the difference between a nation governed under the rule “of law” (where no one is above the law) – which once defined the United States – to one defined under rule “by law” (where one man and one party impose their “laws” on everybody else). The new USA.

I’m Peter Dekom, and unless the checks and balances inherent in the first three articles of our Constitution are restored, not only will our nation unravel as a working democracy, but our global power and influence will continue to plunge, with very serious consequences for every American.