As Republicans Battle with God, "Destruction of a Civilization", No End Game & Soaring Prices

 

As Republicans Battle with “God,” “Destruction of a Civilization,” No End Game & Soaring Prices

The United States also seems terrified of competition & how to explain toxic Trump practices alienating so many

April 15, 2026

In addition to their utter puzzlement at Trump’s self-defeating direct attacks on a very popular Pope Leo XIVth, “Few Republican lawmakers said anything publicly about President Donald Trump’s startling social media post last week warning Iran that ‘a whole civilization will die tonight,’ but privately, in a large text chat, a group of them read his threat with alarm.

“The chat is among members of Congress’ ‘Main Street Caucus,’ a group of almost 100 GOP lawmakers. One Republican lawmaker questioned how the remarks were helpful to those having to defend Trump’s costly war with Iran and complained that the president’s rhetoric isn’t doing the party any favors, according to three House Republicans with direct knowledge of the exchange. Multiple members then chimed in to echo similar concerns.” NBC New, April 15th.

These Republican members of Congress aren’t stupid; they know Trump is eroding their chances at the midterms. However, they are caught in a trap. If they challenge Trump – effectively, do their jobs as members of a theoretically independent branch of government – the MAGA Trump cult, even as their numbers are falling slightly, will punish any GOP member of Congress who questions anything Trump says or does… by killing that congressperson in the next primary. That the policies embraced by Trump may be barriers to winning in the subsequent general election doesn’t move the MAGA needle one whit.

What’s worse, Trump’s actions, combined with the medical catastrophe of RFK, Jr’s war against vaccines as infections rise and Trump’s obvious inability to face the ravages of climate change, are making Russia rich (feeing their coffers to battle Ukraine as oil prices rise) and rapidly moving China to the become the global “king of the hill.” “President Donald Trump’s decades-long ambition to dismantle the Iranian regime has culminated in a six-week conflict that critics warn is exposing American fragility rather than projecting strength. As the war transitions into negotiations largely brokered by Beijing, the United States finds its global authority and the dollar’s supremacy under unprecedented strain.

“The offensive, fueled by a ‘hard sell’ from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was intended to kneecap Tehran before it could threaten the Strait of Hormuz. Instead, the administration’s miscalculation has triggered what historians call a ‘Suez moment’—referencing the 1956 crisis that effectively ended Britain’s era as a global superpower.” Thomas Smith writing for the April 15th Better America. But then, Trump doesn’t read history books.

We’ve moved from a government that has, until now, measured governmental success in terms of embracing global values that have reflected policies and directions redefining how the rest of the world can benefit from following this template. Instead, the Trump era has shifted American policies to a simple dollars-and-cents metric of success, more reflective of the era of colonialism and slavery, as opposed to a global system of mutual dependence… ending the system that led to our 20th century ascendance to the top of the global influence and economic food chain. The more Trump has insisted on setting the global rules, the more the loss of alliances, the greater the pushback and the more China has benefited from that arrogance.

The allegory of this erosion of American power can easily be observed in Trump’s inane support of the fading value of fossil fuel globally, resulting in a massive technology shift favoring China, while minimizing the value of the entire American automotive sector. We’re actually fighting another oil war! As Jack Ewing, writing for the March 3rd NY Times points out: “[US auto] industry veterans say they can’t remember a time when the biggest carmakers faced as much uncertainty as they do now. They have been whipsawed by tariffs. Chinese carmakers are breathing down their necks around the world. Self-driving taxi companies like Waymo are changing the very nature of transportation. Software has replaced horsepower as a key selling point. Sales are flat almost everywhere, and profits are declining.

“How U.S. carmakers cope with this pivotal moment will determine whether they survive as global players or slide into irrelevance, becoming niche manufacturers of pickups and sport utility vehicles that only Americans buy… The early indications are not promising. Many established U.S. and European carmakers have been stumped by electric vehicles at seemingly every turn. First, Tesla’s meteoric rise caught them unawares. They responded by investing in new factories but are now pulling back after the U.S. government repealed tax credits and other subsidies for those cars.”

Not only are Chinese EV cars vastly cheaper, often with enhanced luxury, but they are usually far more technologically advanced… their new batteries often having double the range and far more AI elements than their American counterparts… and they face almost no competition from old world American fossil fuel-driven cars… as oil prices soar from the American failure in Iran. And trust me, after China moves in to solve this American-made “Iran War” problem (behind the scenes or directly), we will fall more than a mere notch to their ascension, eclipsing American power with Trump’s total assistance. Does the new America truly hate competition that much?

So why is April 15th featured in red above? Tax day or something much more? To me, it will soon become apparent that it was the day that Donald Trump accepted that he was unable to extricate the United States from a completely unnecessary war declared by him (alone) without Congress or any allied support – after the world’s most powerful military led by a recovering alcoholic Christian nationalist zealot who never made it past the rank of major, facing serious retention/recruitment issues, was brought to its knees by cheap drones from an asymmetrical enemy after massive bombing destruction – and a nation less than a third our size… decimated our economy. It was the day that Donald Trump had to enlist China (in a private call with China’s President Xi) to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz… an admission that the United States was no longer the number one superpower on Earth. The rise of China to the top became undeniable.

I’m Peter Dekom, and by our accepting Trump’s new bully-driven, under-analyzed colonial expansionist monetary metrics of success, we have cleared the way for China to assume the top position of global economic power and influence.

God is on [Insert Name of Aggressor Nation’s] Side

God is on [Insert Name of Aggressor Nation’s] Side

“Happy Easter — He is Risen indeed!... From the foot of the Cross on Good Friday to the stone rolled away from the now empty tomb, sin has been destroyed. Jesus has been raised from the dead. And God has granted each of us victory and new life.” 

Excerpt from an Easter email from Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins to approximately 100,000 USDA employees

“Using government resources to promote one religion contradicts what I learned about how America was founded on separation of church and state. Even though many of my coworkers were also celebrating Passover, the email didn’t address any other religious traditions.” 

One USDA employee mirroring the reactions of many others

The embrace of white Christian Nationalism as an official Trump policy objective began with the text of Project 2025, a zealous pursuit by senior White House advisor, ultra-rightwing Stephen Miller. “Donald Trump’s establishment of the newly-minted White House Faith Office and ‘anti-Christian bias’ task force isn’t merely another gesture to his evangelical base — it’s the methodical implementation of Project 2025’s radical blueprint for installing Christian Nationalist governance throughout the federal bureaucracy. The strategy, emerging with crystalline clarity, reveals how a sophisticated network of religious nationalists has positioned itself to transform executive power and infuse one particular version of religious dogma into American life.

“At the nexus of this transformation stands televangelist Paula White-Cain, newly appointed senior advisor to Trump’s Faith Office and current chair of the Center for American Values at the America First Policy Institute, a cousin to Project 2025 and a similar far-right, anti-LGBTQ+, anti-woman think tank with several other Trump appointees among its ranks.” Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, February 12, 2025. Indeed, White-Cain likened Donald Trump to Jesus Christ, drawing strong pushback from legitimate mainstream American pastors. Yet Iran’s theocracy, claiming victory against the “Great Satan” (the United States) in recent days, firmly announced that God is completely on their side of Trump’s War.

No one has been as religiously zealous as recovering alcoholic, WAR Secretary Pete Hegseth, whose messages to the troops is constantly repeating how a Christian God has anointed the US military as Crusader saviors of Christianity as our primary underlying value. Members of other faiths are not mentioned, often completely ignored, made to feel they are now fighting a religious war for someone else’s view of God. To Zealot Pete, the Constitution does not exist, and the Supreme Court decision, that he cannot unilaterally exclude members of the press from the Pentagon for refusing to agree to report only Pentagon official releases, can be subject to a workaround. Having touted our victory in Iran, assured the President of our complete victory, Hegseth is second only to DNI head, Tulsi Gabbard, as the next cabinet officer to be discharged.

As a complete repudiation of diplomatic protocol, it seems that the Ambassador to the US from the Vatican was summoned to the Pentagon to face criticism of Pope Leo XIVth, who has spoken out against the Trump administration on a number of occasions since he took on the role last year, including over the Iran war in recent weeks. “According to the report, also backed up by independent reporter Christopher Hale, who writes the Letters from Leo Substack, a closed-door meeting between Vatican and Pentagon officials took place in January.

“U.S. officials were reported to have lectured the Catholic Church representatives, with one official reaching for a 14th century weapon and invoking the Avignon Papacy—a period of time when the French monarchy used military force to bend the Bishop of Rome to its wishes… U.S. Vice President JD Vance said Wednesday [4/8] he would look into reports that senior Pentagon officials lectured the Vatican‘s ambassador, leading to the cancellation of a planned visit by Pope Leo XIV.” Newsweek, April 8th. Vance’s standing within the Catholic Church is on very thin ice, bordering on formal excommunication, given his support of Trump’s and Secretary of Defense/War, Pete Hegseth’s, constant references to “God’s” absolute support of Trump’s WAR against Iran.

“The meek shall inherit the Earth” has been replaced with “only the strong are blessed by God,” and the woke (“meek”) are disposable. Even as prices everywhere are soaring due to the failing WAR against Iran, inflation resuming, Trump proposes higher WAR taxes, cutting social services like Medicare, SNAP, Medicare and Social Security even further, and spending money (either from corrupt donors seeking Trump favors or directly from taxpayers) on his rising collection of Golden Calves, from his party-room extension on the White House to the proposed 250 foot golden arch (pictured above), on the Potomac as Trump’s paean to America’s 250th anniversary this coming July 4th.

This rise of Christian nationalism is everywhere red Republicans have been elected to high office. Texas, the poster-state for “Christianity is America’s only true faith” and damned the First Amendment, is at it again, as LZ Ganderson, writing for the April 10th Los Angeles Times, observes: “We had so much going on this week, with the new season of ‘Euphoria’ coming out and the president threatening to wipe out a 2,600-year-old civilization, that it’s easy to miss things like the latest attempt by conservatives to reshape the U.S. into a theocracy. Not satisfied with shoehorning Bible stories into its English curriculum and the push to display the Ten Commandments in public classrooms, the Texas Board of Education is now considering adding Bible verses to the required reading list for students.

“For one of the country’s largest providers of public education to consider requiring students to read Bible verses feels like a grenade being hurled at the wall separating church and state. However, when you factor in similar challenges from other red states such as Louisiana, which also wants to display the Ten Commandments in public classrooms, or Oklahoma, whose attempt to use public funds to create a religious online charter school was blocked by the Supreme Court last spring, it’s clear state officials in red states have launched a full-on coordinated attack. Which means the collection of warm and fuzzy scriptures being considered in Texas is likely just a Trojan horse to either bring in more extreme theology next or force another visit to this conservative Supreme Court. And recall, it was the court’s ruling on an antiabortion law out of Texas in 2021 that set the stage for overturning Roe vs. Wade the following year.

“Now, in a country in which more than 60% of people identify as Christian, there may be a temptation to view the Ten Commandments in public schools as innocuous. Most of the content is uncontroversial: Murdering and stealing are bad; lying and cheating are things one should not do. However, how does a state government reconcile displaying ‘you shall have no other gods before me’ in a democracy in which a third of citizens may have another god or no god at all?... And why place public school teachers, many of whom are not Christians themselves, in a position in which they may have to explain that religion’s doctrine?” Especially when the current administration seems to interpret the New Testament in a manner that seems to repudiate the most basic teachings of Christ himself. I think Thomas Jefferson and James Madison got it right when they clearly separated Church and state.

I’m Peter Dekom, and instead of reconfiguring the Bible as an instrumentality of a state that embraces violence as a routine solution, perhaps the MAGA (what’s left of it) “Ministry of Propaganda” needs to leave religion to God and bona fide worshippers, and not highly biased politicians!

"Military Moron" or "Stable Genius" – America’s Iran Report Card to Date

“Military Moron” or “Stable Genius” – America’s Iran Report Card to Date

Each of the United States and Iran claim victory; which side is more credible?

Democratic Senate Minority Leader, Chuck Schumer, noting that we are much worse off than we were before Trump’s unilaterally declared WAR, opts for the former descriptor. Trump, noting that we have kneecapped Iran’s main military assets, claims the latter (which he has repeatedly used to label himself). Hard to imagine Trump’s threat to annihilate Persian civilization (back to the “stone ages”) while simultaneously making a White House appearance with the Easter

Bunny. Assuming we are in a ceasefire that holds – a huge assumption – let’s look at the facts:

The United States: Allies supporting Trump’s WAR: Israel and perhaps Persian Gulf nations (e.g., oil producers like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the Emirates, Kuwait that must use the Strait of Hormuz to export oil) which have been attacked by Iran as supporters of regional US military installations. While NATO (a defensive and not an offensive pact) allies are willing to chip in to stabilize the Gulf region once there is peace, some NATO allies have refused to allow the US to use their airspace or local US bases to launch attacks on Iran. No Western allies have offered direct involvement in what is uniformly viewed as Trump’s WAR. Trump relied almost entirely on highly biased Israeli intelligence, ignoring his own US intelligence assessments, in deciding to join Israel in an all-out WAR on Iran.

What the US has accomplished, noting that before the WAR, oil tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz moved through that waterway, unimpeded: Since, the few ships that have passed through that navigation chokepoint have been Iranian vessels and those of approved Iranian allies? As of this writing the Strait is closed, and Iran refuses to share control over passage with the US. The US has so far been unable to open the Strait against Iran’s complete control.

The question as to whether Lebanon was part of the ceasefire is hotly contested as Israel continues to pound that neighboring country without mercy.

The price of oil and gas has skyrocketed globally, and the destruction wreaked by the US and Israel suggest longer-term high prices on those commodities, with no immediate relief no matter what happens. The trickle-down effect has also embraced the cost of shipping and travel accordingly.

As the US continues to maintain that they won this combat because Iran’s mainstream military has been decimated into subservient helplessness. Yet even without a traditional air force or navy, US military assets are still at risk to Iran’s cache of missiles and mines as well as its ample supply of asymmetrical weapons of choice: drones. As the US touts its overall tactical triumphs, it seems to have failed in achieving any of its constantly changing meaningful goals.

Iran: Allies: Iraq (the fellow Shiite neighbor), Iran’s regional surrogates (like Hezbollah, the Houthis, Hamas, etc.), China (which seems to be providing Iran with satellite intelligence), Russia (having no difficulty sending cheap drones to Tehran) and joyously selling its oil freely to finance its invasion of Ukraine, with allied intermediaries like Oman and Pakistan helping to communicate with the United States. Russia may be the biggest winner of Trump’s failed initiatives.

The only “regime change” I have seen is a move of the same “death to America” theocracy from hardline leadership to ultra-hardline leadership. With the elder Khamenei dead, his son-successor does not have the clout to assume the control he probably hoped for, putting the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps at the top of Iranian governance. Resuming executions of arrested civilian protestors and having no problem spraying bullets into the few Iranians still willing to protest, suggests that an unarmed public has no chance to topple their repressive government. Message: killing civilians and destroying civilian infrastructure will never move us to yield or surrender, because God is on our side. Huh, that’s Hegseth’s line. Don’t believe us? Then why can a “destroyed nation,” as Trump calls it, shoot down American jets and still totally control the Strait of Hormuz, wreaking total havoc on the global oil market?

While Iran will never convince the US to pay reparations for the damage we caused, the exceptionally high and rising value of Iranian oil plus the probable ability for Tehran to charge ships seven figure tolls to pass the Strait, are still gifts to Iran. And as much as big-mouthed Pete “Still Searching for Competence” Hegseth continues to state US forces can get control over remaining stores of fissionable material at any time, that nuclear ingredient is still under Iranian control.

Strange that the only metrics that impact American citizens directly are those that hit our pocketbooks, our international power and influence and our ability to use the international marketplace to our advantage as we always did… until… Under those parameters, our grade to date is an F, while Iran merits a C+ just for surviving and remaining in control. Will JD Vance be able to generate some benefits in his direct negotiations with Iran under the aegis of Pakistani mediators? Trump and his family negotiators haven’t made any difference, Netanyahu has only made matters worse, so who knows? But, as Julia Ioffe, writing for the April 9th Puck.com, notes: “After six weeks of bellicosity in Iran, the Islamic Republic is richer, more entrenched, and newly in control of the Strait of Hormuz.”

I’m Peter Dekom, and a cultural and historical illiterate, who loves to shoot from the hip and trust autocrats he likes over his own experts, is no match for the obstacles Trump must overcome to undo his mess.

Weeding Out Competence

                                   The New Republican Party

Weeding Out Competence

The King of Grift, Election Fraud, Damaging Loyalty, Inconsistency and the Great Filterer of Competence out of Government

Trump’s WAR: The average price of gasoline at the pump is $4/gallon, Brent crude – the global benchmark for oil – topped $115 a barrel on March 31st (up roughly 60 percent since the war began on Feb. 28, a surge that some oil majors have turned into bumper profits at consumers’ expense), the stock market is unstable but seriously down, the price of most everything is dramatically up (from basic plastics used in manufacturing, fertilizer, oil and gas, airfares, everything that is shipped), the job picture is abysmal (particularly for young job-seekers), talks of recession are rising fast, climate change is cooking or flooding us all over the nation, new Epstein files are pouring out, almost 9 million people showed up at the March 28th “No Kings” protests, more people are dying in ICE custody, over 350 thousand federal employees have been fired with no cost savings, Iran is firmly in control of the Strait of Hormuz (a squeeze that impacts 20% of global oil supplies), Trump’s request that Congress fork over another $200 billion for the WAR (which has cost roughly one billion dollars/day so far) is falling on deaf ears, his approval levels seem to be sinking faster than the Titanic (especially over immigration and the WAR), Republicans are campaigning for another tax cut (forgetting that the Big Beautiful tax cut impacted US healthcare like a nuclear bomb), Trump has resurrected his 2020 election fraud investigation demands with full GOP support, his political appointees are decimating Constitutional rights with rampant new conspiracy theories and an effort, led by the most incompetent Secretary of Defense/War we have ever had, to convert our military and our country into a white Christian nationalist America… free and clear of Christian values… and this paragraph is just too damned long (it could go on for pages), so let me just say, Trump completely misinterpreted the 2024 election results into cruelty, greed, incompetence, failure and global isolation. Once Netanyahu had pulled enough strings, all of these failed policies belong 100% to Donald John Trump, whose second term has been the most disastrous in our history.

I could embellish the above with snippets of relevancy. Like the fact that the thousand pounds of enriched uranium somewhere in “obliterated” Iran is still one or two levels below weapons grade. Or as Carlo Versano, Newsweek's Director of Politics and Culture reports on March 31st, Trump isn’t remotely as powerful as he claims to be: “Trump, of course, has never been a popular president, and his power derives not from broad-based public approval but by the vice grip he holds on his party. And that hasn't loosened all that much. Republican voters are more or less with the POTUS on the war. But the bottom has fallen out among independents, who have broken with him completely on virtually every issue now. And when they go, it's tough getting them back.” His terrified and sycophantic Republican members of Congress are marching lemming-like off the midterm election cliff, going out of their way to embrace Trump’s unpopular policies, fearing Trump’s “primarying” them off the ticket, a reality with eroding effectiveness, if they don’t follow orders. Trump’s efforts to cull Democratic voters by the Save America Act is failing too.

We’re in this WAR because (pick one): Iran was about to attack American assets, we were giving ordinary Iranians (unarmed and under constant malevolent state surveillance) the opportunity to overthrow their theocracy, our attacks would foment regime change, we needed to safeguard ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz, the Strait of Hormuz needed to be a free-passage international waterway, we needed to defang Iran’s hold over regional surrogates, we would jointly (with ??? Iran ??? other) control Iran’s oil and gas assets, we could “take” their oil, we would confiscate all refined nuclear material and finalize the denuclearization of that nation, we would remove all sophisticated weapons (particularly missiles and nukes), Israel asked us to join them and to refuse would be antisemitic, it would be an easy, short-lived mission that would turn the tide in our favor with our overwhelming firepower.

Pete “I’m blind to cultural and political variables, I’m a Christian crusader and I completely do not understand the power of indigenous sustained asymmetrical armed resistance against my powerful Christian military force” Hegseth confirmed “victory” by the number of bombs and missiles dropped as well as the degree in perceived inflicted damage. That Iran could attack forces 2,500 miles away, could take out any tankers attempting to pass through the Strait of Hormuz without Tehran’s blessing and maintained complete control of the Strait did not matter to that incompetent “leader.”

Yet, “President Trump told aides he’s willing to end the U.S. military campaign against Iran even if the Strait of Hormuz remains largely closed, administration officials said, likely extending Tehran’s firm grip on the waterway and leaving a complex operation to reopen it for a later date.” Wall Street Journal, March 31st. As I have stated repeatedly, there is no reasonable likelihood of Iran’s surrender or acceptance of US demands anytime soon (if ever). They can replace leaders by the dozen, no matter how many we kill off. Our best interests in the region – a reasonable level of peace and stability in the region – bear no resemblance to the Israeli goal of obliterating Iran and its ability to do anything militarily ever again.

When Trump first breached his desire to join Israel in a massive follow-up military campaign against Iran, “It was at that moment, before an operation, that prior defense secretaries would typically stress to the president that there were potential downsides to such a move. In the case of Iran strikes, those would include the likely economic fallout should Tehran retaliate by closing the Strait of Hormuz and the limits of a military air campaign when it comes to destroying the country’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium or in fomenting regime change.

“But Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth not only validated the president’s idea to move forward, he also downplayed the inherent risks of the conflict spiraling out of control, according to three sources familiar with the matter. Nobody in the room during that critical meeting emphasized the potential risks of starting the war.” CNN's Zachary Cohen and Kristen Holmes writing on March 31st. I think that this fool-Defense/War Secretary actually believes we won… and won big. Instead, he led his boss down the road to political failure, and all the meaningful signs of genuine military victory were non-existent.

I’m Peter Dekom, and notwithstanding all the blame the President may seek or charge against others, this entire Iran debacle is 100% Donald Trump’s War, all by his lonesome self (sorry Lindsey, you have lost all of any political capital you may ever have had anyway).

The New Class-Based American Plutocracy

       According to WalletHub's Analysis

The New Class-Based American Plutocracy

Middle and lower classes haven’t got a prayer of fair and equitable political or economic influence

“I can’t think of one person in a relationship that I would want for myself… I’ve done it before and prefer focusing on me and my own needs.” 

The ready explanation of one woman deciding permanently against marriage.

Increasingly, Americans feel abandoned by society and are learning to make it on their own. I have long maintained that the standard metrics of the well-being of our nation are heavily skewed to measure averages and data that give excessive weight to those with extreme wealth or income. If you have nine people each making $100K/year and one making $10M/year, the average annual earnings of that cohort is $1,090,000. That reality reveals the serious flaw in the averaging effect of Gross Domestic Product, a number used by nations everywhere as their metric of relative national success. Likewise, federal statistics reveal how US stock ownership is allocated: The top 10% of Americans hold 93% of all stocks, the highest level ever recorded. Meanwhile, the bottom 50% of Americans hold just 1% of all stocks. This spread has been roughly the same for years. Yet our media dwells heavily on these two metrics, as if they mattered for most of us.

There are pundits who suggest that the only reason TACO Trump (“Trump always chickens out”) announced a last-minute ceasefire with Iran on April 7th (“destruction of the Persian civilization day”) is that the stock market was severely plunging, looking for a turnaround sign. The volatile stock market seems to rise and fall at even the slightest news about Trumps unilaterally declared WAR on Iran. But those market changes really only impact the rich, yet Trump watches that metric like a hawk. In fact, the mega-wealthy make fortunes as oil prices soar, as the demand for replacement munitions as the WAR eats up our stockpiles of weapon systems and underlying arms, and as government contractors are pressed for more.

When you combine the double-whammy of Trump’s WAR – as he demands that Congress add 50% to last year defense budget while cutting Medicaid, Medicare, SNAP and Social Security to the bone to accommodate his military ambitions – and the invasion of artificial intelligence into the American workplace, it is clear that our entire economic, political and even our social structure is being forever transformed without the consent of most of the nation. The basic lesson: unless you are very rich, you do not matter in this reconfigured United States. There’s no question that in Trump-world, money buys previously unheard-of political influence and privileged economic access. The Trump family even seems to brag about their billion-dollar growth since the Donald became President.

Trump’s WAR has further moved that bar of American homeownership from the economic reality of most of us. Between tariffs increasing the cost of building materials to the rapidly rising interest rates directly attributable to a WARtime economy, Americans are finding themselves struggling to pay for ordinary consumables, with fuel prices leading the way, and much less likely to seek a home of their own. Add AI disruption to the mix, and millions of lower middle level and clerical jobs are clearly at risk. The April 7th Realtor.com reveals a short “think-piece” memo from OpenAI, which underscores the obvious: “As AI becomes more productive, it could leave behind ordinary households who are more exposed to job loss, weaker safety nets, and higher utility costs—but it doesn’t have to be that way, according to a new memo from OpenAI… In the 13-page report, Industrial Policy for the Intelligence Age: Ideas to Keep People First, the company warns that AI could wind up ‘controlled by, and benefiting only a few,’ unless governments act fast to spread the gains more broadly…

“Housing is especially exposed to this shift through the link between job security and demand, the public funding that supports housing assistance and other safety-net programs, and the rising cost of essentials like energy. OpenAI’s answer is striking: Taxes tied to automated labor, a public wealth fund that could distribute returns directly to citizens, and rules meant to keep households from subsidizing AI infrastructure… At the core of the housing market's exposure is the connection between job security, income, and housing demand.”

The impact of this WAR/AI double-whammy is pernicious, to say the least, as former Obama economic advisor, Jennifer M Harris (writing for the April 8th NY Times) warns: “Inequality is such a fact of American life that it’s easy to shrug off. But we are in uncharted terrain. The amassed wealth of today’s tech titans makes the Rockefellers and the Vanderbilts look quaint. Over the past two years, 19 households have added $1.8 trillion to their coffers, the economist Gabriel Zucman told me — roughly the size of the economy of Australia.

“Into this fragile state enters artificial intelligence. It threatens to make a bad situation much worse… Left on its current course, A.I. could deliver a bleak picture: lower- and middle-income jobs automated away, with top earners remaining unscathed. Income shifting from middle-wage workers doing the bulk of the labor toward those wealthy enough to bankroll the technology. Growth headwinds. Worsening affordability. So, too, a federal government less able to respond, thanks to a shrinking tax base…For any society in which this much wealth gets concentrated in so few hands, and is then so easily parlayed into political clout, the question becomes one not just of economics but of basic civic standing. At some point soon, we are no longer sharing in self-government.”

As stunning negative as this trending data clearly is, we may be missing some very interesting trends, even as our indigenous population is shrinking due to record low birthrates, as faith in our system has fallen so low that even the desire for young Americans to get married is vaporizing: “As of 2023, the last data available from Pew Research Center, there were about 111 million single adults ages 18 and up in the United States. That was a sizable increase from 70 million in 1990… There is now consensus among researchers that after years of a steady decline in marriage rates the institution has lost its luster for many… ‘I used to say we didn’t know if marriage was being delayed or foregone,’ said Richard Fry, a social and demographic trends researcher at Pew. ‘I think the evidence is pretty clear now. It’s not just that adults are delaying marriage.’ Increasingly, he said, they are dismissing it.” Tammy LaGorce, writing for the March 29th NY Times.

I’m Peter Dekom, and there is a very good reason why Americans continue to fall farther down on the annual international happiness index.

Rogue President Openly Admits to Suborning Strikes that Violate International Law

He’s old, infirmed, surrounded only by incompetent sycophants, and probably insane

Rogue President Openly Admits to Suborning Military Strikes that Violate International Law

Under any number of laws, including the Geneva Conventions, a Treaty Ratified by the Senate

“Tuesday [4/7] will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the F**kin’ Strait, you crazy b*stards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.” 

 Donald Trump’s Truth Social post on Easter Sunday, April 5.

“I am hoping and praying [Trump’s threat to blow up civilian targets]… really is bluster…

I do not want to see us start blowing up civilian infrastructure. I do not want to see that.”

Sen. Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican and staunch Trump ally, responding to the above.

“Everyone in [Trump’s] administration that claims to be a Christian needs to fall on their knees and beg forgiveness from God and stop worshipping [sic] the President and intervene in Trump’s madness… I know all of you and him, and he has gone insane, and all of you are complicit… This [sic] NOT what we promised the American people when they overwhelmingly voted in 2024, I know, I was there more than most…This is not making America great again, this is evil… Jesus commanded us to love one another and forgive one another. Even our enemies. Our President is not a Christian and his words and actions should not be supported by Christians.” 

 Former GOP Georgia Congressperson and Trump/MAGA supporter Majorie Taylor Greene posted via X after Trump’s post above.

“Let us allow our hearts to be transformed by his immense love for us! Let those who have weapons lay them down! Let those who have the power to unleash wars choose peace! Not a peace imposed by force, but through dialogue! Not with the desire to dominate others, but to encounter them!” 

Pope Leo XIV’s first Easter Mass, words targeting the United States.

I’ve dissected Donald Trump’s profoundly ignorant approach to his personal WAR against Iran in detail in recent blogs. He was led by the nose by master-manipulator and ICC indicted war criminal, Israeli PM, Bibi Netanyahu, to add US firepower to nuclear-armed Israel’s own arsenal against a non-nuclear-armed Iran (according to our own intelligence services). Yet Trump constantly repeats that Iran was/is a nascent nuclear power, when our own government’s assessment is quite the contrary. Scare tactics, Trump must believe, would keep him centered as “America’s champion” with the American public, even if his position is predicated on repeated lies. He blames Biden and Obama for not pursuing this tactic during their tenures, even if the reason they did not was 1. Diplomacy was working. And 2. They were not that stupid. Oh, and recent polling suggests that a majority of Americans have rejected his argument. But can Iran still embrace vowing not to develop nuclear weapons after Trump’s WAR?

Pretended to be guided by railing against antisemitism, Trump appointed a Secretary of Defense/WAR, a self-admitted recovering alcoholic who believes he was personally anointed by Jesus Christ to wage war, killing as many Iranian infidels as possible… a former Army major and Fox “news host,” who fantasizes himself as a modern-day Crusader against Islam. To compound the error and the horror, Pete “Little Man” Hegseth has serially hollowed out our nation’s top generals and admirals, anyone who showed the slightest rational independent thought, so that his amazingly misdirected military theories have become the official mantra of the entire US armed forces. War crimes are hardly a deterrent to Hegseth.

On the day before Trump unilateral de facto declaration of WAR against Iran, the Strait of Iran was wide open, as normal international tanker traffic passed by freely carrying oil and gas from the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman. Once Trump moved his military devastation into Iran, the Strait closed up, except as Iran otherwise approved. It was an obvious Iranian response, their “trump card” if you will, and why Trump cannot win this one militarily. The ruling IRGC obviously does not care if their own civilians die en masse. They are confident that the United States has not and cannot destroy all their highly mobile, clandestine weapon systems, and that cheap and plentiful drones are the asymmetrical weapons that keep the United States at bay. When Pete and Donald declared Iran’s air defenses “obliterated,” Iran instantly shot down two American jet fighters.

Trump sees his WAR as an existential threat to Persian civilization: “Airstrikes hit two bridges and a train station in Iran on Tuesday, and Iranian officials urged young people to form human chains to protect power plants, as U.S. President Donald Trump warned that a ‘whole civilization will die tonight’ if Tehran does not meet his latest deadline for the Islamic Republic to agree to a deal that includes reopening the crucial Strait of Hormuz.” PBS News Hour, April 6th. What he fails to recognize is the once unified Western Civilization, united by the glue of NATO, is the civilization most threatened.

There is little in it anymore for European powers, Canada or Austral-Asia to be aligned with a power-hungry madman who has serially purged integrity and competence from every nook and cranny of our government. As witnessed by our traditional allies’ distancing themselves from Trump’s unilaterally declared WAR, following the American President has become politically toxic across the globe.

If Trump had not assembled the Keystone Cops equivalent of cabinet officials, those willing to live in Trump’s imaginary universe, Mr Trump may well have already been removed under our 25th Amendment, having proven beyond reasonable doubt of his dramatic inability to fulfill his presidential duties. His only hope of survival is to ensure that full, fair and free elections in this country never happen, notwithstanding constitutional protections giving states control of voting.

He’s lost Hispanic voters; his Gen Z support has not only dwindled but when it is their turn to vote to support aid to Israel, I doubt our past support will continue. Beyond Putin’s Russia, Netanyahu’s Israel or Kim Jong-Un’s Korea, the United States – on the verge of celebrating a quarter of a millennium of existence – has become the most hated and least trusted nation on Earth, solely responsible for massive oil & gas price related increases everywhere. The world seems irretrievably committed to a systematic workaround against US power and influence. He’s got a minority of the remaining MAGA voters who worship him, but his sway with independents has vaporized, his approval levels at new lows. Oh, what’s this I hear? As bipartisan echoes of impeachment and 25th Amendment removal bounced around Capitol Hill, TACO Trump generously gave Iran a two-week extension on cultural obliteration. How kind of him!

I’m Peter Dekom, and it is painfully obvious that Donald Trump and his lockstep minions are cornered with no clue how to extract themselves from the mega-mess their leader has created for us all.

Our Eroding Literacy: Fodder for Autocracy

 

Our Eroding Literacy: Fodder for Autocracy

I watch as the United States, on average, seems unable to shake its reliance on conspiracy theories, is willing to elect officials with extreme proclivities (beyond their “lips are flapping” memes) to lie and cast anyone with opposing views with exceptionally demeaning labels, and is increasingly searching for shortcuts to exceptionally complex issues with multilayered variables. As I will drill down later, the performance levels of American students are slip-sliding downwards as hallucinating AI is providing information that caters to the bias of the individual asking the platform for answers. Unlike the age of enlightenment (which the preceded the industrial revolution), where curiosity, education and knowledge were elevated societal values, the United States has, for the last decade or two, increasingly has relegated intelligence and education into a vat of elitist tripe, out of touch with reality. We have even challenged medical research, once-cherished medical doctors, and those driven to make life better for all through research.

Facts and the willingness to accept reality are fundamental to making democracy work. If lies, distortions and severely biased propaganda become the basis for election choices, where truth is distrusted, the door is wide-open for autocrats without moral compass, to foment falsehoods, repetitively and with passion, catering to fabricated fears and biases. The underlying underbelly of cherished ignorance makes it all possible. Start out with a few common biases, find people to blame, attach fighting words (“radical,” “extreme,” “unpatriotic,” “low IQ,” “communist,” “Godless,” “brainwashed,” etc.) to those who oppose the aspiring autocrat, and, well, you can explain Hitler’s rise from the post-WWI ashes and forced poverty on Germany, to a murderous villain who was directly responsible for the horrific deaths of millions.

Today, at a lesser level, where complex technology and billionaire access to capital and privileged government granted “indulgences” have marginalized most Americans to second class status, subordinate to the rich… you can see how a charismatic, cult leader, catering to millions of constituents seeking easy answers with a clearly eroding public school education, could cast a misguided spell. Looking at recent events, there are facts that even antecede Donald Trump.

Today, we have an attorney general who, per as earlier blog, has no understanding of the difference between privileges and rights guaranteed by the Constitution, or a former Trump-appointed Homeland Security head who turned habeas corpus, a shield against unwarranted incarceration, into a blanket right for the President to order warrantless arrests and jailing of people he considers “criminals” without proof. Hordes of Americans believe these profound inaccuracies as so many of our elected officials repeat these distortions as if true, I asked myself, what is the evidence of this decline? Or what The Atlantic staff writer and Washington bureau chief for The Economist, Idrees Kahloon addressed in his October 14, 2025 article, “America Is Sliding Toward Illiteracy.”

It can start with our falling comparison test scores, domestic and international. In the examination of 80 nations, the US has fared badly in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) (looking at 15-year-olds) over recent decades, dropping from first decades ago, into the middle of the developed world pack. “Test scores have been trending down for over a decade. There are some signs of recovery in math, but not many in reading. Learning declines are not a distinctly U.S. phenomenon and are not even limited to schoolchildren. Researchers are only just beginning to wrap their heads around the causes of this…

“Consider one example from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP: In 2013, 74% of American eighth graders scored at the basic or above level in math, the highest figure since the test started in 1990. In the most recent round that number fell to 61%, hitting levels last seen in 1996. Scores have fallen in other grades and subjects, too.” Matt Barnum, writing for January 8th Chalkbeat.org. Reading has fallen out of fashion as students increasingly rely on AI platforms for summaries, eliminating essential elements and nuance.

Attention span is eroding even faster: “While there is a formidable knowledge gap when it comes to measuring attention spans over time, particularly in pre-teens and adolescents, the work of Dr. Gloria Marks offers us some insight. Dr. Marks’ research shows that on average, the length of time people stay on a single computer screen before switching to another has decreased from 2.5 minutes to 47 seconds over the past two decades. In a study that used screen capture technology to analyze mobile device screen time, researchers at Pennsylvania State University and Stanford University found that the median number of times participants engaged with their phone was 228. What’s more, on average each session only lasted 10 seconds.” Columbia University’s CBMS (April 2, 2024). Kahloon focuses more directly on the pervasive failure of American education:

“The past decade may rank as one of the worst in the history of American education. It marks a stark reversal from what was once a hopeful story. At the start of the century, American students registered steady improvement in math and reading. Around 2013, this progress began to stall out, and then to backslide dramatically. What exactly went wrong? The decline began well before the pandemic, so COVID-era disruptions alone cannot explain it. Smartphones and social media probably account for some of the drop. But there’s another explanation, albeit one that progressives in particular seem reluctant to countenance: a pervasive refusal to hold children to high standards…

“We are now seeing what the lost decade in American education has wrought. By some measures, American students have regressed to a level not seen in 25 years or more. Test scores from NAEP, short for the National Assessment of Educational Progress, released this year show that 33 percent of eighth graders are reading at a level that is ‘below basic’—meaning that they struggle to follow the order of events in a passage or to even summarize its main idea. That is the highest share of students unable to meaningfully read since 1992. Among fourth graders, 40 percent are below basic in reading, the highest share since 2000. In 2024, the average score on the ACT, a popular college-admissions standardized test that is graded on a scale of 1 to 36, was 19.4—the worst average performance since the test was redesigned in 1990.

“American schoolchildren have given up almost all of the gains they achieved at the start of the century. These learning losses are not distributed equally. Across grades and subjects, the NAEP results show that the top tenth of students are doing roughly as well as they always have, whereas those at the bottom are doing worse. From 2000 to 2007, the bottom tenth of fourth graders in in reading and math scores not seen since these tests began in 1971 and 1978, respectively.

“A seemingly plausible culprit, and a familiar boogeyman for progressives, is insufficient spending. The problem with this tidy explanation is that it’s not tethered to reality. School spending did not decline from 2012 to 2022. In fact, it increased significantly, even after adjusting for inflation, from $14,000 a student to more than $16,000… Low-expectations theory explains other trends that the smartphone thesis, by itself, does not. If the bar for grading and graduating were constant year over year, we would expect both to decline in line with student performance. Instead, we see the opposite. An Act study found that the share of students getting A’s in English rose from 48 percent in 2012 to 56 percent in 2022, even as their demonstrated mastery of the subject declined over that period. (The same is true of other subjects, including math, social studies, and science.) Over the same decade, high-school graduation rates improved from 80 to 87 percent despite objective declines in academic achievement.” No, we seem to be learning less and accepting a lesser standard, or as George W Bush once stated, “the soft bigotry of low expectations.” I’ll add to that as the soft bigotry of lower values, normalized at the highest level of our nation.

I’m Peter Dekom, and it is so easy to blame Donald Trump for the collapse of a viable democracy, but the seeds of this demise were planted long before he arrived; he just turned these variables into his advantage.