Undoing Trump’s Numerous Failures

Undoing Trump’s Numerous Failures

Donald Trump has had one hell of bad second term to date. His Big Beautiful Bill has gutted US healthcare and left the nation with a staggering increase in deficit debt… and that was before his massive Iran WAR miscalculation. His climate change policy – “hoax” driven falsehood – has left our American carmakers at a massive international competitive loss to China with federal policies making us look more like a backward, third-world country. Our resulting environmental pullback has made air and water pollution edge towards previous dangerous levels of toxicity. Allowing RFK, Jr’s conspiracy theories to dominate our HHS and CDC medical contractions as once eradicated diseases, like measles, have returned to infect and kill; HHS antivaxxers have redefined “acceptable” medical science.

Trump’s bully tactics, his territorial claims against Canada and Greenland and his constant put-down of allied leaders as he embraced autocrats everywhere, perhaps irretrievably alienating “allies,” were compounded with his inexplicably cruel immigration policies that have wasted billions and billions of taxpayer dollars with strong negative economic results. His exceptionally ineffective DOGE purges of federal payrolls saved nothing but hampered an otherwise effective workforce. Funding cuts to research, attacks against once prolific prestigious universities, the false use of “antisemitism” as an excuse to decimate those schools, and the rampant attack on major law firms as agents of change for the better have paralleled his hollowing out of federal lawyers, eliminating so many simply on perceived disloyalty to him… have crippled so many once-extraordinary bastions of excellence that once made the United States stand high.

The world has reacted to Trump glaring failures by pushing Trump-like politicians out of office (Hungary’s Orban) and moving liberals to new positions of power (Canada’s Carney). So, with so much wrong with Trump’s double-down failures, I asked myself what a well-implemented “big fix” might look like. So, here’s my take on those repairs, assuming America is even willing to admit it made a massive error in reelecting an autocrat tyrant wannabe, who has decimated our nation.

Climate Change. To me, this is priority one. It may be too late, but the recent spate of “natural disasters” screams the necessity of change. All of Trump’s efforts to reverse or deny climate change must instantly be reversed. Subsidies for alternative energy, restoring cancelled energy programs and scientific expertise (NOAA, Weather Service, etc.) must be restored. As red state Wyoming illustrates, this should not be a partisan issue.

Tax and Tariff Policies. Repeal the Big Beautiful Bill in its entirety. Base tariffs taking only these factors into consideration: balance foreign industries that survive only because of government subsidies and embrace true reciprocity. Recognize that except for very complex technologies, the US just might not be the most appropriate place for a renewed emphasis on manufacturing. Encourage high-end foreign manufacturers to locate facilities here.

As other nations (Canada) have successfully done, allowing for up to $5 million exemptions for intergenerational inheritance of farmland and marital property, repeal estate taxes in their entirety. We desperately need to stop perpetuating the growing massive disparity in wealth and income; it has killed upward mobility and rendered only the rich with true political power. Except as noted above, inheritance should be treated as income.

Healthcare. It’s time we stop kidding ourselves: universal healthcare, now available as a right in every other developed nation on Earth, is cheaper, more efficient and more humane than the US system. It is a social program, not “creeping socialism” as rightwingers are wont to tell us. We spend far more per capita on healthcare than any other developed nation (17%+ of GDP) with a lower average standard of care than many third world countries. The middlemen and corporate profiteers have made a mockery of the term “American healthcare.” We still can retain private insurers as administrators with a cap on fees if we must. But an uncapped version of Medicare, with no “donut hole” for medications, should be available to all Americans.

Military Policies & Expenditures. Congress’ power to wage war, clearly established in Article I of our Constitution, must be restored and reinforced to cover conflicts we initiate that could lead to war as well. As clearly illustrated by our asymmetrical losses (“failure to prevail”) in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and recently in Iran, our massive military superiority simply does not get the job done in most of the armed conflicts we have faced in recent years. We need to continue building defensive systems, and our cybersecurity is a joke. Massive aircraft carriers ($15B+, excluding aircraft, crews and necessary escort ships) have not been able to defeat hidden mobile missile launch platforms, mines, cheap drones and very small swift boats. If one carrier were taken out, that could be a $50B hit to our nation. Look at how much damage was inflicted by the fire on the USS Lincoln. We’ve wasted billions as we have depleted our mega-expensive munitions on a WAR that seems endless. We also need to stop subsidizing Israeli arms; they can afford to pay full price (as most of our allies do). We also have to learn that where there is a divergence between US and Israeli goals, we need to protect US values over Israeli priorities. We need to have a modern and effective military, not just a big, archaic and mega-expensive vestige of the past. Our military is an unjustified amplifier of national deficit that can no longer be tolerated.

Rebuild, restore alliances and admit our mistakes to our long-term allies. Everyone knows we screwed up. Our power and influence have plunged. Our allies are meeting without us, figuring how to move forward and sidestep what they see as a rogue nation, where political cronyism rules, where the “rule of law” (where no one is above the law) is fading in favor of “rule by law” (where a privileged elite call the shots) and where election rigging has become an American national sport. Congress can no longer be a rubber stamp for appointments by an angry cult leader. We have terrible leadership at so many federal agencies, as fact-averse, doctrinaire zealots and conspiracy theorists have replaced neutral, science-based leaders with common sense and a notion of representing all Americans. The Supreme Court needs to stop issuing shadow docket rulings without any published logical reasoning. And…

I’m Peter Dekom, and I suspect all of the above can be summarized by reversing and giving true meaning to the misused phrase, “Make America Great Again.”

International Suffering & Iran’s Lucrative Alternatives to End the War

  Chicago “No Kings” Protest 

Ships unable to pass thru the Strait of Hormuz                  

International Suffering & Iran’s Lucrative Alternatives to End the War

“Early in this administration, high-ranking Israeli officials and influential members of the American media deployed a misinformation campaign that wholly undermined your America First platform and sowed pro-war sentiments to encourage a war with Iran… This echo chamber was used to deceive you into believing that Iran posed an imminent threat to the United States, and that should you strike now, there was clear path to a swift victory… This was a lie and is the same tactic the Israelis used to draw us into the disastrous Iraq war that cost our nation the lives of thousands of our best men and women. We cannot make this mistake again.” 

Trump-appointed director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Joe Kent, in his March 17th letter of resignation to the President.

At a March 25th prayer session at the Pentagon, Hegseth prayed for U.S. troops to inflict “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy … We ask these things with bold confidence in the mighty and powerful name of Jesus Christ.”

As an estimated 9 million people took part in the March 28th “No Kings” day protests, it’s abundantly clear that even within MAGA ranks, Trump’s WAR is exceptionally unpopular. The depth of ignorance among the top American deciders is staggering. Farmers are watching the cost of fertilizer (petroleum based) skyrocket, airlines are forced to jack-up travel costs to accommodate jet fuel price hikes, virtually all commodities and manufactured goods now reflect the increased cost of shipping, the price at the pump is vectoring upwards with no sign of abating, and corporate employees are increasingly asked to cut costs at every corner and take on more responsibility for the same pay (life for much of that labor force has dropped to “miserable”).

“A malaise is sweeping office life at American companies, which appear to be in a race to find inefficiencies and cut costs. The curtailing of perks, from offsites to travel, is happening against the backdrop of an AI push that employees say seems aimed at squeezing more work out of fewer people. The upshot, many employees say, is that work has been stripped of fun. Middle managers say they’re on the front lines.” Wall St Journal, March 30th. Still, the various spokespeople for the Trump administration speak of “temporary price increases” and their absolute military victory at every level. But ground forces are converging into that theater, with discussions of finding and removing Iran’s almost one thousand pounds of enriched uranium. Any significant use of US ground forces is precisely the same step that foretold the “forever wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Still nothing passes the Strait of Hormuz unless Iran permits passage. Even as Iran’s most expensive and sophisticated weapons – from radar stations, manufacturing plants to launching facilities, Iran’s navy and air force and most of the “big stuff” – are severely damaged or destroyed, Tehran’s massive decentralized stash of cheap weapons (e.g., drones, mines and surrogates like the Houthis) seem to provide an inexhaustible means of controlling that exceptionally narrow Strait. With unarmed citizens living in an extreme surveillance state, our strategy seems to depend, ultimately, on boots on the ground defeating the IRGC and all supporting military groups, well beyond the mere occupation the oil port on Kharg Island is hardly determinative.

We seem to forget how badly the US military has fared against asymmetrical warfare, the slow but consistent use of cheap weapons by doctrinaire or religious zealots, avoiding massive confrontation in favor of the sapping strategy of hit and run tactics, has hobbled us time and again. Vietnam. Iraq. Afghanistan. And with a Secretary of WAR/Defense more concerned with shoving white Christian nationalism as the guiding vector for our armed forces instead of attempting to understand what Trump’s aspirations are up against, we are at a profound, self-inflicted disadvantage.

With adequate healthcare plunging, as popular social programs (like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and SNAP) are being rapidly diminished to accommodate the record-breaking tax cut for the rich embodied in Trump’s misnamed “Big Beautiful Bill,” the administration’s demand for a $200 billion dollar deficit-busting additional allocation for the WAR against Iran (we’ve spent about $1 billion/day so far), the fulfillment of Benjamin Netanyahu’s wish list to destroy Iran, would seem to be an easy way for Congress to reassert its war powers and reject this absurd request… by just saying “no.” Trump is lobbing insults at GOP members of Congress to force them to eliminate the Senate filibuster rule and pass the Save America Act, a statute aimed at culling as many likely Democratic voters as possible.

As much as Iran’s leadership (which has replacements waiting for every level of government) has no particular concern for its people and seems to be enjoying decimating civilian targets (like hotels) in neighboring Arab states, outlasting the US is a complete victory to them. As the price of oil soars, they are able to export enough of their product (through the Strait with US consent) “Iran may be getting pummeled on the battlefield, but it is winning the energy war. The Islamic Republic is now earning nearly twice as much from oil sales each day as it did before American and Israeli bombs started falling. Our report goes inside Iran’s wartime oil machine, a complex operation that relies on front companies and shadow banks.” Wall Street Journal, March 29th.

And Iranian leaders are wise enough in dealing with a US transactional President – who has never been able to understand that running a government is not remotely like running a business – where the off-ramp will probably include recognition of a new Iranian toll for ships to pass the Strait safely. Meanwhile that mega-ignorant faction of the Republican Party has, once again, resorted to Muslim-bashing, claiming religious superiority, while still not knowing the difference between Shiites (Iran is 95% Shiite, a faith that deems the highest prelate in the faith as the sole interpreter of the Koran) and Sunnis (most of the Muslim world, where the Koran is taken literally, at face value). Bigotry seems to be the go-to response of the ignorant.

I’m Peter Dekom, and it must come as no surprise that Donald Trump’s utterances about the progress of the Iran WAR are both conflicting and bear no resemblance to the real WAR news.

How to Ignore/Rewrite the Constitution Made Easy

How to Ignore/Rewrite the Constitution Made Easy

“We are stuck with one another whether we like it or not.”

Justice Amy Coney Barrett in her book “Listening to the Law.”

The Trump reconfigured Supreme Court seems hellbent on repealing the civil rights legacy of the famous Eisenhower era Earl Warren court. The Warren Court noted that the reconstructionist constitutional amendments were focused on leveling the voting playing field for all races and ethnicities, yet somehow earlier congressional classes simply failed to pass the expected implementing legislation. The Warren court also set about undoing the toxicity of the Jim Crow era. But as right wing, racially biased Supreme Court justices were added, they seethed, awaiting their time to reverse decades of the Warren Court’s rulings. The big change began with two George W Bush appointments two decades ago.

As noted by David Savage writing for the May 5th Los Angeles Times: “Alito and Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. joined the court 20 years ago believing the government may not make decisions based on race… Their first major ruling was a 5-4 decision that struck down voluntary school integration policies in Seattle and Louisville, Ky. It was illegal to encourage some students to transfer based on their race, Roberts said…. When faced with a redistricting case from Texas, Roberts described it as the ‘sordid business ... [of] divvying us up by race.’… With President Trump’s three appointees on the court, the conservatives had a solid majority to change the law on race. Three years ago, they struck down college affirmative action policies.” The unsubtly continued.

Writing for the May 4th The Atlantic, David A. Graham, notes how the conservative faction of the Supreme Court is obsessed with the word “race”: “Seven years ago, midway through a multiyear demolition of the Voting Rights Act, John Roberts’s Supreme Court heard a case on a slightly different topic: partisan gerrymandering. Republican legislators from North Carolina had drawn a map of U.S. House districts that courts, including the high court, had found was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander under the VRA. So, the North Carolina lawmakers tried again, this time going out of their way to make clear that they were trying to reduce Democratic representation, not Black representation.

“The gambit worked. Roberts, writing for the majority, lamented that partisan gerrymandering was pernicious and unfair. ‘Excessive partisanship in districting leads to results that reasonably seem unjust,’ he wrote in Rucho v. Common Cause. But the majority nonetheless concluded that federal courts had no role to play in policing partisan gerrymandering, because it was a political question. Still, Roberts didn’t want that to seem like an endorsement: ‘Our conclusion does not condone excessive partisan gerrymandering.’

“That was then. The conservative majority’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais [in late April] doesn’t just tolerate but encourages states to embrace partisan gerrymandering as a justification for squeezing out majority-Black districts. As politicians work through the impact of the decision, Republican-led governments in Louisiana, Tennessee, and Alabama have all announced plans to try to redraw maps this week, and South Carolina’s legislature may not be far behind. The mission will be drawing the most ruthless partisan gerrymanders they can, in the hopes of protecting the GOP majority in the U.S. House.”

Whether these red states can act fast enough to prevent a Democratic retaking of the House, given the proximity to the midterms, remains a question, but Trump and his reactionary Court seem willing take that chance but seal the Democrats out of national politics in time for the 2028 national election. Writing for the May 4th Puck.com, Abby Livingston tells us: “House Democrats had less than a week to savor their redistricting victory in Virginia before conservatives punched back—twice. First came the passage of Ron DeSantis’s new Florida map, which could eliminate four Democratic seats. Then came the Supreme Court’s Louisiana v. Callais decision, which blew up Voting Rights Act protections for minority-majority districts across the South.

“The court’s ruling came down too late to impact Democrats’ bullish chances of retaking the House next November. Even so, Dems are reaching an R.B.G.-death level of panic about the 2028 cycle and the party’s longer-term capacity to control the House. With more time, Republicans are expected to dismantle around a dozen V.R.A.-mandated majority-minority districts, potentially unseating nearly all of the South’s Black Democrats.

“But as Democrats have learned, the best way to fight gerrymandering is to gerrymander even harder in return. They already have their sights set on new maps in New York and New Jersey next year, and are expected to try again in Illinois and Maryland. They’re also hopeful that the anticipated 2026 wave might consolidate their control of states like Michigan, Minnesota, and Washington—putting them in a position to execute even more retaliatory redraws. The court’s decision has not only intensified the existing redistricting war, but ensured it would spread to other neighborhoods: ‘This could be done in more states by the next census, at the rate this is increasing,’ said a Democratic chief.” Yes everyone admits gerrymandering is wrong and unfair!

The Trump enhanced Supreme Court repealed Roe v Wade, and through a series of cases, also repealed the Voting Rights Act, piece by piece, as they released ostensibly pro-Christian rulings ignoring the 1st Amendment’s separation of church and state, and seem to be poised to cull the Congressional Black Caucus almost out of existence. The Roberts Court has mercilessly used the once rarely applied shadow docket to support Trump’s blatant efforts to usurp Congressional constitutional power and impose his own edicts by executive order.

I’m Peter Dekom, and the Roberts’ majority of the Supreme Court seems to have effectively waged a civil war by judicial distortion, having greater impact than an entire well-armed rebel army, turning the United States slowly into sheer autocracy, led by an unpopular President who may well be seriously mentally impaired.

Hey Insiders: Don’t Look a Grift Horse in the Mouth

Hey Insiders: Don’t Look a Grift Horse in the Mouth

Nothing like being on all sides of an issue, but Donald Trump is against regulation in most any business model, even to the point of trying to ban states from regulating AI, so the feds can create the mildest of the mild, AI-lite “guardrails” that really stop nothing. Crypto was a “scam” according to Trump’s earliest description, but since scams are Trump’s long suite, soon he discovered a way, with a little official recognition by the feds, to make billions for himself and his family with old sorts of crypto/bitcoin games. But with online prediction games, you can bet on almost anything… and billions of trading dollars suggest that millions of Americans do.

But what sets this new format apart is the ability to vote for evil and against your country… and more importantly: so much winning seems to be based on obvious insider knowledge. So, what’s Trump take on this new justified insider trading game? As Alexander Osipovich and Krystal Hur, writing for the April 25th Wall Street Journal, put it: “‘The whole world, unfortunately, has become somewhat of a casino,’ Trump told reporters. ‘Every place they’re doing these betting things, I was never much in favor of it. I don’t like it conceptually. But it is what it is.’

“A tougher government stance on prediction markets represents a collision between the Trump administration’s policies and his family’s business interests…Trump’s oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., is an adviser to both Polymarket and its chief rival, Kalshi. He is also a partner at a venture-capital firm that owns a stake in Polymarket. The president’s media business, Trump Media & Technology Group, has announced plans to get into prediction-market betting on sports and elections.” Donald seems to be organically attracted to scams; a genetic predisposition that seem to capture the hearts, minds and wallets of his equally scam-prone children.

“Polymarket’s unregulated offshore platform, which has long had an edgy, anything-goes culture. The platform uses cryptocurrencies to settle bets… Unlike on U.S.-registered prediction markets, the offshore platform’s users don’t have to provide ID to set up accounts, helping keep them anonymous. Its blockchain-based technology, however, allows amateur sleuths to spot suspicious trading activity.” WSJ. Which gives rise to an insider-betting case impacting one of our surprise military operations: the US Special Forces capture of former Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro. It seems that one of those soldiers, master sergeant with the U.S. Army Special Forces, Gannon Ken Van Dyke, predicted (and bet) that capture immediately before it happened, earning a cool $400K. Van Dyke was arrested and “charged with using classified information to place lucrative bets on Polymarket [which] is a watershed moment for prediction markets, heralding a new era of stricter government enforcement of the wildly popular betting platforms.” WSJ

But to play in the predictive marketplace ,where so many have unique knowledge is a fool’s game… unless the bettor is an insider. Well… In the stock market world, using knowledge not available to the general public to trade or hedge shares is a crime. Martha Stewart got her street cred when she did time in a federal penitentiary for precisely the crime of insider trading. And sure, if you use classified information to win bets, you are facing serious time. But is there a more general insider trading rule in these predictive gambling sites? Maybe… or maybe not.

“Van Dyke’s arrest signals that U.S. authorities won’t ignore allegations of egregious behavior on the platforms, even as the Trump administration has otherwise taken a largely laissez-faire approach to prediction markets.

“Alongside the criminal case, a regulatory agency that oversees prediction markets filed a civil lawsuit against Van Dyke for insider trading. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission [CFTC] suit suggests that the agency thinks it can go after bad actors on Polymarket, even though the platform isn’t registered with the agency and is legally domiciled in Panama.” WSJ But in a world where government regulation is heavily definitionally driven, will a federal regulatory schema aimed at pork bellies, crop futures and bets on expected the price of oil or gold commodities apply to insiders in predictive gambling? Does the CFTC have jurisdiction over the new scam… er… market? The CFTC thinks it can regulate these new insider scammers, when the President and his family are so directly involved?

I mean with Trump’s “Grifter-in-Chief” status, watching his eldest son walk the Trump walk in predictive scamming… er… I mean predictive wagering, Mister Deregulation just might instruct his GOP sheep in Congress to kill any regulatory initiative in committee, so that such bill would never reach the House floor. But dangers of letting folks bet on anything – from death and injury to prediction in our theater of war – seems particularly unsavory… even for Trump… or is it?

I’m Peter Dekom, and it just may be a point of pride for DJT to watch DJT, Jr walk in his footsteps, but is there ever going to be a line drawn somewhere against this grift at the top, something to make the horde of bad men stop…or is America doomed to be the poster nation for kleptocracy?

The "Hoax" with Vastly More Global Credibility than Donald Trump

 

The “Hoax” with Vastly More Global Credibility than Donald Trump

When you realize that we are fighting another “oil war,” which we are destined to lose one way or the other, and realize our President is using large payments of taxpayer dollars to stop alternative energy projects right here in the United States (in favor of oil and gas), you have to wonder if Trump’s retro “Make America Great” has become more of a luddite cry. Push the United States out of modernity, stifle university research, elevate the antivax mantra and watch hitherto diseases like measles return, reject the progress of a transition away from fossil fuels, reject the data revealing the harsh increase of expensive and fatal damage from cumulative climate change, and spend trillions on super-sophisticated weapon systems that can be brought to a standstill by cheap drones and extremist regimes willing to sacrifice their population to maintain power.

We now eschew allies, insist on bullying tactics in all of our domestic and international polices, watch MAGA leaders suggest we’d be better off as a monarchy, as the only other superpower is grateful for our self-destruction. Or as the May 4th The Economist puts it: “In late January, as Donald Trump completed his first year back in the White House, a group of scholars in Beijing penned a report thanking the American president. Their gratitude was sarcastic, not an endorsement of Trumpian policy. But the sentiment behind it was genuine. Thank you, they wrote, to President Trump for driving away America’s traditional allies. Thank you for showing the world that China is more trustworthy and stable. Thank you for putting economic pressure on China and thus pushing it to innovate. And thank you, most of all, for illustrating that America is in its ‘imperial twilight’, a decaying and hypocritical power.

“This report by Wang Wen and his colleagues at the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University was at the strident end of Chinese discussions about America. Mr Wang, a cheerful nationalist, is known for his punchy language. But he is not an outlier. Many of China’s leading intellectuals and officials believe that American power is terminally on the wane. This has been expressed most authoritatively in Xi Jinping’s dictum that ‘the East is rising and the West is declining’. (He has been diplomatic enough not to say explicitly it is China versus America.)…

“[It] would be a mistake to doubt the sincerity of China’s verdict that America’s best days are past it… Donald Trump’s two election victories have only hardened this conviction, taken as evidence that American democracy is malfunctioning, too, in producing an agent of chaos as president.” China is hardly misjudging Mr Trump as the accelerant of our decline, as our once most powerful allies are jumping ship. “Swaths of the public in Canada, Germany, France and the U.K. have soured on the U.S., driven by President Donald Trump’s foreign policy decisions, according to recent results from The POLITICO Poll…

“The POLITICO Poll — in partnership with U.K. polling firm Public First — found that respondents in those four allied countries believe it is better to depend on China than the U.S. following Trump’s turbulent return to office… That appears to be driven by Trump’s disruption, not by a newfound stability in China: In a follow-up question, a majority of respondents in both Canada and Germany agreed that any attempts to get closer to China are because the U.S. has become harder to depend on — not because China itself has become a more reliable partner. Many respondents in France (38 percent) and the U.K. (42 percent) also shared that sentiment.” Politico, March 15th.

China, sensing US weakness internationally, is about to deploy countermeasures against US sanctions, as noted by Lingling Wei in the May 5th Wall Street Journal: “Since the trade war Donald Trump opened in 2018, during his first presidency, Beijing has been quietly building a counter-sanctions arsenal: a blacklist for foreign firms it deems hostile, a law authorizing punishment of any company that helps enforce U.S. sanctions on Chinese targets, a rule ordering Chinese parties to ignore those sanctions outright, and expanded powers for its antitrust regulators to kill cross-border merger deals on national-security grounds.” The world now knows Trump is more a loud noise than persuasive international leader.

With the Iran “Oil War” in progress, fact-averse Donald Trump also touts his massive failures as success. Yet, the Strait of Hormuz is closed, Iran keeps targeting regional American allies, and global prices for oil, gas, fertilizer and shipping continue to rise. Even oil and gas states are being supported by alternative energy. Texas, with an aging grid and power generation system, would not have made it through this winter without a massive local increase in solar and wind power. We are so out of step with the rest of the world.

“Low-carbon sources of energy (including nuclear) accounted for all the increase in the world’s electricity demand last year and by a long way, according to a new chart from Our World in Data based on insights from Ember's Global Electricity Review. Much of the increase is from China (and even the solar panels and windmills installed in other countries are very often made there). It shows the dramatic global shift away from coal and oil although there was a rise in the use of gas, which is also a fossil fuel.” Newsweek’s Geoscape, May 5th, also published the above chart.

We’re fighting wars under the old-world assumption that readiness to combat superpowers, with big weapons, is our only hope to protect the United States. Even as the last battleships were phased out decades ago as archaic large targets, Trump believes in a new class of “big, bad battleships” – labeled as “Trump class” (of course)… firing the Secretary of the Navy because he could not build one fast enough. Meanwhile, $400 drones have brought us to our knees… and the Strait, even with US naval escort vessels, is still blocked. Money is pouring out of our treasury, sending the federal deficit into the financial stratosphere, and still Major Pete, Secretary of Defense/War, wants more than half a trillion dollars more. A majority of Americans are adjusting the quality of their lives to pay for these Trump-caused increases, watching medical benefits and Social Security increasingly in Trump’s crosshairs for serious reductions.

I’m Peter Dekom, and as Donald Trump becomes increasingly aware that his extraordinary unpopularity would certainly tank the GOP’s control of both houses of Congress, he is enlisting local red state legislatures and a pliable Supreme Court to rig future elections to ensure that Democratic candidates, who have generated a clear majority in every recent special election, can never win a major election ever again.

Facing Global Opposition and Low US Approvals - Trump: Cult Leader or Aging Demented Zealot?

 

Facing Global Opposition and Low US Approvals - Trump: Cult Leader or Aging Demented Zealot?

As the stepson of an American Foreign Service Officer, I have lived (Beirut, Lebanon) and traveled extensively (Syria, Jordan [parts now in Israel], Egypt, Iran) in the Middle East, so MAGA musings about our “superiority” over and the “evils” of Islam seriously contradict my own direct life experience. I have read the Bible (Old and New Testaments) and the Qur’an, and as a teenager, I was an altar boy in the Anglican/Episcopal faith. Recently, I was reading a very cogent summary of Donald Trump’s growing list of second term failures – each substantiated with both domestic and international reactions. More later as I examine MAGA reactions to the article. Nevertheless, I have always been acutely aware of the regional politics in the Middle East, including having studied Islamic history as an undergraduate.

Distortions of faith abound. While my “Dark Ages” European ancestors were burning books (and more than a few people at the stake), Islam was preserving those writings in the Great Library of Alexandria, Egypt, Islamic explorers were mapping their world, Arab mathematicians were codifying and expanding what has become the modern system of math (Arabic vs Roman numerals) and their scientists and doctors were laying the foundation for modern medicine. Scholars at their major universities cherished learning and encouraged open-minded thinking and empirical research.

In Muslim teachings, Jesus Christ was a significant and powerful figure, and Christians and Jews are referred to jointly and respectfully as “people of the Book.” The notion of a unitary God, whether called Yahweh, Allah, the Lord or any number of sacred epithets that recognize the Western notion of a Supreme Being, is more universal than divergent. Sharia Law, which too many Americans assume is the dictate of the Qur’an, is actually based on an earlier tribal code intended to protect vulnerable camel caravans moving through a harsh desert (where temperatures can reach 130+ degrees Fahrenheit and water is scarce). Given that a single theft, infidelity or violent quarrel could disrupt the order needed for a caravan to survive that harsh reality, the resulting Sharia Laws are equally harsh and unforgiving. But the Qur’an itself mandates charity, piety and high standards of devotion from Muslim adherents.

Hardly the “savages” too many Americans “see,” a perception that often justifies slaughter, marginalization and conquest. That Persian culture, over 3500 years old (older than any Western religion), represents the underpinnings of Western Civilization as we know it. The transition from nomadic to sedentary life opened the door for cities, architecture, modern agriculture, major institutions of higher learning and scientific achievement. Despite the theocratic dictatorship that governs contemporary Iran (Persia), Iranians are among the most educated and organized peoples on Earth. And while there is more than a touch of arrogance in a long-standing Persian belief, Iranians and their forebears have always carried an air of intellectual superiority over regional Arab cultures.

I felt obligated to anchor my opinions of the self-declared “stable genius” – Donald Trump’s first term statement, updated in his second term to self-described “brilliance” – in a more realistic understanding of those we are willing to kill, bomb and whose very civilization Donald Trump has threaten to bomb and obliterate into the “stone ages.” So many of Trump’s orders and the brutal execution of his military mandate to unapologetically self-described “White Christian Nationalist” zealot, Secretary of “WAR”, Major Pete Hegseth, who seems to delight in killing, seem to fall squarely within very specific definitions of war crimes, whether under the Geneva Conventions, the UN-supported rules of war or other international bodies of crimes against humanity that can be prosecuted in most of the world (yet not in the United States).

Since Republicans running for office, fear Trump’s threats of retribution – backed by a still mostly loyal MAGA cult that will punish Trump defectors in primary contests – it becomes an obvious area of question whether Donld Trump has crossed the line and moved well into the area of serious mental decline, which may well be a technical descent into one or more forms of medically defined “dementia.” What fascinated me about the above article listing Trump’s second term failures was less about that list than the groundswell of negative MAGA comments that followed. Trump was hailed as “God” rather directly by some, and as anointed by God to pursue his path of major failures, recast as bold triumphs by almost all of the self-described MAGA followers.

I couple that MAGA barrage of support with an exploration of how dementia impacts strong and intelligent individuals as they advance into elder years. Even without looking at Trump’s physical manifestations of deterioration – the shuffled walks, the seeming incurable bruise-stained hand, the swelling of his feet and legs, etc. – the signs of mental deterioration seem more pronounced. After researching how dementia impacts IQ and other functional metrics, I found one particular article that presented the underlying research particularly well: the UK’s The Telegraph, presented on January 25, 2025 (before Trump’s second term machinations showed results). Health Correspondent Michael Searles wrote:

“Experts believe it is because people of higher intelligence are more resilient to cognitive decline and able to function for longer without signs or symptoms of the disease onsetting… This often means they are diagnosed with dementia at a more advanced stage, making it harder to treat or slow down. As a result, they are likely to have fewer years to live compared to those diagnosed earlier… Authors from the Erasmus University Medical Centre, in Rotterdam, Netherlands, said: ‘This paradigm postulates that people with higher education are more resilient to brain injury before functional declines… Once this reserve has been used up and dementia is diagnosed, however, these people are already at a more advanced stage of the underlying disease and clinical progression will be faster.’”

Applying this medical observation to Donald Trump, his caution and willingness to listen to experienced advisors in Trump 1.0 was replaced in Trump 2.0 by the Project 2025, worshipping loyalists, many with their own blaring psychological shortcomings. But either a “cult leader” or “dementia-impaired” president, assuming you accept my opinion, are toxic to our democracy, deleterious to constitutional “rule of law,” and continue to erode this nation’s global power, influence, and political/economic wellbeing. Anyone who truly believes we’ve won the WAR against Iran and that our strong alliances with our allies do not matter is in for some exceptionally unpleasant surprises in the coming months, even the coming decade.

I’m Peter Dekom, and it is a most troublesome fact that 100% of our federal domestic and foreign policy is completely controlled by a MAGA contingency representing about one-third of the total vote, that has ceded complete authority to a President who just might not be mentally fit to remain in office.

Windmills and National Security

 

Windmills and National Security

“This is not the first time the Court closes its eyes to noncompliance, nor, I fear, will it be the last… Yet each time this Court rewards noncompliance with discretionary relief, it further erodes respect for courts and for the rule of law.” 

 Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor in a dissent where the majority just looked the other way at Trump’s non-compliance with a court order.

“The Defense Department is not in the business of climate change, solving the global thermostat. We’re in the business of deterring and winning wars.” 

Secretary of Defense, Major Pete Hegseth.

Trump believes that all he has to say is “emergency” or “national security,” and he can overrule courts, Congress and perhaps God Himself. Afterall, Trump is self-declared to be infallible. And repeatedly, the Supreme Court lets him ignore lower court rulings and even distort Supreme Court rulings to shade their interpretation seemingly to favor Trump. As virtually the entire rest of the world sees overreliance on fossil fuels to be a threat to their stability and a hinderance to future growth, Trump sees alternative energy as the real threat. His “drill, baby, drill” mantra, effectively killing Detroit’s EV business, has taken virtually the entire US carmaker manufacturing establishments out of the global automotive industry’s overwhelming commitment to cheaper and more efficient EVs. China now manufactures 70% of global EVs. Not much competition from the US, where unlike most of the rest of the world, EV sales have dropped 27%.

As Trump’s vendetta against alternative energy rises, there is a very real chance that he just might kill off Detroit’s automotive industry. Indeed, the Iran war and the concomitant rise in the price of gasoline just might accelerate Detroit’s demise. As reported by Kyle Stock and Lili Pike in the May 4th Bloomberg, “consumers in France, Germany and the U.K. drove off in 206,200 EVs, a 44% increase over the year-earlier period. In South Korea, electric car transactions more than doubled. In Italy, where the path to electrification has been slow, 16,000 battery-powered vehicles left dealerships in March, a 67% increase…

“Where EV sales are bubbling up, analysts point to a cocktail of two ingredients: elevated gas prices and affordable new models from Chinese automakers. Indeed, Chinese exports of EVs and hybrids reached a record in March, increasing 140% from the previous year, according to the China Passenger Car Assn.” EV sales were skyrocketing worldwide, except in the US, even before the Iran war.

If you look at some vocabulary machinations, you just might understand that Trump’s vicious antipathy towards climate change has absolutely nothing to do with national security. The US military has, for years, expanded their reliance on alternative energy, freeing military bases from complex supply lines and logistics based on hard shipping of oil and gas to military bases. The new word in military-speak is “resiliency.” As reported by Patrick Sisson in the May 1st FastCompany.com, “Given the rhetoric coming from today’s military leaders, you’d be right to think climate change and sustainability has been tossed aside. The nation’s 2025 National Security Strategy labeled climate change a ‘disastrous’ ideology… And yet, there is still progress on sustainability being made; only now, it’s been rebranded as resiliency. At an Army base at Fort Polk in Louisiana, a renovation promises a cleaner, less carbon-intensive future, as well as a better living situation for servicemembers and their families.

“Completed in early March, the base represents a first-of-its-kind, $30 million investment in modernizing traditionally outdated and poorly maintained housing. It includes the installation of a large-scale geothermal energy system, all using U.S.-made equipment. It’s the first such geothermal installation at a U.S. military base, and an investment in reducing the installation’s carbon footprint… The upgrades are projected to reduce the Fort Polk family housing portfolio’s annual electrical consumption and deliver more than $2.6 million in annual utility and operational cost savings. Beyond delivering long-term savings to the installation, the initiative fostered local economic growth by investing in the community and supporting the local workforce.”

Trump’s war with the fact of climate change may harken back to his lost battle in Scotland that first erupted publicly 15 years ago in a seemingly trivial spat over wind turbines visible from his Scottish golf course. He called them “windmills,” a Chinese con-job to sell “failed” electrical power generation to suckers around the world. To this day, Trump promulgates his absurd “climate change hoax” theory, even willing to waste taxpayer dollars to shut down alternative energy projects at varying stages of development. “The Trump administration will pay energy companies hundreds of millions of dollars to abandon their plans to build two wind farms off the U.S. coast, the Interior Department said Monday [4/27], in a repeat of a tactic the government used to cancel other offshore wind leases last month.

“The firms will forfeit their leases in federal waters for the two wind farms, one of which would have been built off New York and New Jersey and the other off California. The government will reimburse the companies a combined $885 million, the amount they paid for the leases under the Biden administration…In exchange, the companies have pledged to invest that money in oil and gas projects, including liquefied natural gas facilities along the Gulf Coast… The deals are modeled after a similar agreement last month [March] with the French energy giant TotalEnergies. TotalEnergies forfeited its leases for two wind projects planned off the coasts of New York and North Carolina, while committing to a range of fossil-fuel investments.” New York Times, April 27th.

Sequentially, Trump’s foreign and domestic policies have made living in the United State increasing unaffordable, tanked the US dollar by 10% (and falling) as global prices soar by reason of Iran’s closing the Strait of Hormuz. As federal deficits and consumer costs rise, Trump’s popularity has plunged into serious negative numbers. But Trump always prefers to double-down, backing his decisions even as they have been generally perceived as major errors in judgment. After all, as the hat says, “Trump was always right about everything.”

I’m Peter Dekom, and Trump’s double-down approach, supported by a terrified GOP-controlled Congress and a “whatever Trump wants” Supreme Court, is designed for an executive order governed nation, which may continue even if MAGA’s effort to rig the 2026 and 2028 elections fails.