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.

Effective Diplomacy vs the Art of the Deal

Effective Diplomacy vs the Art of the Deal

Clearly, the Latter Does Not Work in a World of Competing Values… or Serve Us Well as a Nation

"Iran's Navy is at the bottom of the sea, their frigate class, their prized drone aircraft carriers, submarines, minelayers sunk… Iran's air force has been wiped out. We own their skies. Their missile program is functionally destroyed." 

Trump ventriloquism dummy, Secretary of Defense/War, Major Pete Hegseth, April 8th.

“Iran retains thousands of missiles and one-way attack [drones] that can threaten U.S. and partner forces throughout the region, despite degradations to its capabilities from both attrition and expenditure.” 

Lt. Gen. James Adams, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, in a public question-and-answer document provided on April 16th to the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Intelligence and Special Operations

“Trump’s ceasefire extension means nothing. The losing side cannot dictate terms. The continuation of the siege is no different from bombardment and must be met with a military response. Moreover, Trump’s ceasefire extension is certainly a ploy to buy time for a surprise strike. The time for Iran to take the initiative has come."

Mahdi Mohammadi, a senior adviser to Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad-Baghar Ghalibaf, on X, April 22nd

There are rumors that Donald Trump is paying particular attention these days to the “nuclear football,” the briefcase carried by aides when the President is not at the White House. Formally, it’s called the “Presidential Emergency Satchel,” and it carries our launch codes with which the President can unilaterally order a nuclear strike. Whether you believe Trump is mentally incapacitated, was conned into war by Israel’s Prime Minister or simply does not know what he is doing, facts are facts. Iran’s does control passage through the Strait of Hormuz (which never happened before), is capable of shooting American military jets out of the sky, is able to launch sophisticated missiles to a distant target thousands of miles away, and it threatens US forces at sea with small fast-attack boats, cheap drones, mines and where they are willing to waste a more expensive weapon, sophisticated targeting missiles from elusive mobile platforms.

Whatever the underlying cause, one thing is for sure, while Trump may know how to negotiate monetary transactional business deals, he has zero ability to negotiate on a diplomatic level, where our values are at stake (not dollars) and where our goal is not to maximize hard dollar profits but reinforce bigger matters than mere money. The Trump’s continuing litany of mega-failures may manifest itself in hard dollars costs – out of control deficits and soaring consumer prices – but focusing on the dollars is all Trump seems to be able to do.

Or as attorney, Atom Ariola, states in an editorial in the April 22nd Los Angeles Times: “Stop confusing diplomacy with making ‘deals.’… That language may work in business, but such transactional thinking does real harm in geopolitics… Something strange has happened to the language of politics. Everything is now a ‘deal.’ Not a framework, not an accord, not a negotiated architecture — just a deal. The word appears everywhere, from headlines to cable news chyrons, as if it were the most natural way to describe diplomacy. But it isn’t natural. It is imported. And its quiet dominance marks a shift in how political events are not only described, but conceived: as transactions to be struck, rather than systems to be built.

“What looks like harmless shorthand is doing more work than it seems. Because “deal” is not just a word; it carries a set of assumptions. It suggests two sides, clear terms and a moment of closure. It implies that problems can be reduced to a negotiation and resolved with enough leverage and timing. That may work in business but it does not describe the reality of geopolitics, where multiple actors operate at once, where interests overlap and where outcomes depend less on a single agreement than on whether anything holds together over time.

“This is not a coincidence. It is the language of marketing — simple, repeatable, built to hold attention. It does not describe the events so much as it sells them, and this unsettling shift has spread into the tone of political language more broadly. Events are no longer just significant; they are ‘massive,’ ‘historic,’ ‘unlike anything we’ve seen before.’ Even commentators who are openly critical have begun to borrow the same phrasing, the same rhythm, the same constant escalation.

“Once that language takes hold, it reshapes our expectations. America’s ceasefire with Iran is no longer a fragile arrangement; it is a major and ‘historic deal.’ A negotiation is judged not by whether it creates stability, but by whether it produces an announcement. The headline becomes the outcome. And anything slower, more procedural, or less conclusive begins to look like failure, even when it may be the only real way to manage a complicated situation.” Writing for the same issue of the LA Times, contributing writer and former Naval officer, Jon Duffy, adds this dose of reality to the mix: “America is already diminished by this war…

“Supporters of this war often try to shut down criticism by suggesting that anyone who questions it is somehow siding with Iran. This is both lazy and wrong. Iran is a malign regime. But the issue was never whether Tehran posed a danger. It was whether this war would leave the U.S. and the world in a stronger position. Any serious strategy would have anticipated Iran’s response and accounted for the second- and third-order effects of attacking it. This one clearly did not. Once attacked, Iran moved to exploit disruption and uncertainty in ways that imposed wider costs on everyone else. This war made an already dangerous problem bigger and harder to contain.

“There is no clear sign that Iran is eager to accept favorable U.S. terms. Washington is trying to restart talks, but no U.S. delegation has departed for Pakistan and Tehran has not confirmed participation while the blockade remains in place. Even if some settlement is eventually reached, it will not reverse the military depletion, diplomatic damage, economic disruption or lost legitimacy this war has already caused. At this point, a settlement would look less like vindication than damage control.

“That is the real verdict on this war. Trump may claim he was the first president with the ‘guts’ to confront Iran. But strategy is judged by outcomes, not bravado. So far, the outcome is that America has emerged from this war weaker than before. Hurting Iran may have been politically satisfying, but it was never enough. The question was whether doing so would leave the United States stronger, safer and better able to shape the world that follows. It has done the opposite.”

And for what’s worth, those in a position to right this sinking ship – cabinet officers and leaders of the majority party in Congress – are cowering cowards unwilling to step up and perform their constitutionally mandated duties. Americans are now victims of fearful quivering Trump sycophants unwilling to do what they know must be done. Many know the administration is fabricating outcomes and manufacturing “facts,” but that’s all they need to back a loser President.

I’m Peter Dekom, and that the United States of America may be brought down by fearful and stubborn mediocrity makes the pain of their inaction that much more horrible.

The Art of the Steal: Creating and Sustaining a Complete Alternative Reality

The Art of the Steal: Creating and Sustaining a Complete Alternative Reality

Victor Orbán did it slowly (over 16 years), amending the Hungarian constitution to increase his power, muzzling the press and forcing media to sell to his cronies, adopting police-driven repression against protestors and politicians opposing his mandates, pushing non-ethnic Hungarians out of the country, making billions with his family, nuzzling with Putin putting a wrench in the EU’s anti-Russian vectors, and blatantly redefining “illiberal democracy” to the delight of the American rightwing.

Orbán’s policies were codified in the US Project 2025 manifesto that became the backbone of Trump 2.0, in everything from brutal immigration policies, refusing to follow federal court orders, ignoring Congress, fostering white Christian nationalism, spending/tax cuts that slammed the economic well-being of most Americans, mounting blistering attacks on media as he favored media mergers and acquisitions that would replace neutral and liberal media with Trump-friendly reporting, indicting and prosecuting his political foes, making sure “Trump” was everywhere, feasting at the corruption trough, and erasing inconvenient historical realities from museum presentations to historical descriptors in our National Parks.

But eventually, Hungarians had enough, and in the last election, they decimated Prime Minister Orbán’s Christian nationalist and far-right Fidesz Party, a now marginalized and very unpopular political movement, that could not keep Orbán in power. Orbán had attempted to redefine “correct thinking” in his culture war against what he believed was his nation’s biggest enemy: anything liberal or even at the center of local political thought. Inconvenient facts were erased, and anyone objecting to these revisionist falsehoods was declared an enemy of the state and treated accordingly. Trump 1.0 was a mild tiptoe into ultra-right revisionism. Trump 2.0, following the Project 2025 Orbán-like manifesto, tried to replicate Orbán’s 16-year agenda in under two years… with similar accelerated negative reactions, internationally and domestically.

The big difference between Orbán’s Hungary and Trump’s America was our massive military capacity… and perhaps Trump’s “I passed the dementia cognitive 30-question test with flying colors” ego… even bigger than Orbán’s. Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill generated a very dangerous deficit increase via his tax cut for the rich, tanking medical affordability for millions of Americans in the process. Surrounding himself with “loyalists without competence”, “yes” men and women backed by a MAGA-controlled Congress which quivered in fear at being “primaried” out of office if they dared to defy cult-leader Trump, mediocrity and downright ignorance replaced a flawed but reasonably effective prior government.

But Trump’s hypersonic fall from grace, a self-inflicted coup de gras, began with his “I know better than my own genuine military experts” in accepting the failed, never-ending war admonitions – which had been rejected by every recent US president despite the Israeli PM’s efforts to persuade – Bibi Netanyahu’s insistence that Iran was a nuclear weapons threat (without actually having one) and that a joint military attack on Iran would be short, sweet and highly effective.

After all, Trump’s military genius was able to “shoot to kill” very small helpless, fast-boats, purportedly carrying drugs, in the East Pacific and the Caribbean, and extract Venezuelan Drug Lord/President Nicolás Maduro using our Special Forces, letting Cuba know it was next. These miniscule triumphs seemed to convince Trump and his ventriloquist dummy, Major Pete, of their supreme military expertise, which led to a voluntary leap into Netanyahu’s custom designed pool of inescapable quicksand.

Our military leadership, even the ones who were not fired, knew the risks, the impact that a closure of the Strait of Hormuz would have on oil and gas prices everywhere, that Iranian missiles could reach regional US military bases, and that this religious zealot-controlled nation would never surrender, accepting massive civilians losses as the cost of their rule. As our experts believed in 2018 when Trump terminated the functioning UN-sponsored nuclear containment treaty with Iran, Tehran still did not have a nuclear weapon … and with the earlier B2 bombing damage, was nowhere likely to have one anytime soon.

The economic havoc, the rapid rise of oil, gas, fertilizer, etc. prices are profound, and experts have warned that the war’s damage to oil fields, dozens of refineries and the shipping infrastructure would keep those prices high for potentially years even if the war ended tomorrow and the Strait were open wide. Add this obvious mistake to Trump’s misunderstanding that tariffs were economic depressants, de facto sales taxes, that not only slammed American consumers but were bully tactics that alienated our closest allies, perhaps beyond redemption. Sidestepping the Supreme Court’s rejection of most of Trump’s tariffs, Trump is now threatening Europe with a more than doubling of agreed tariffs. It never ends.

But Trump’s failures just seem to multiply; his latest in his “follow your ego, think later… if ever” response to German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s chastisement of Trump’s being held into a stalemate by a Iran – super-weapons vs drones: pulling 5,000 US troops out what maybe our European/Middle Eastern most important series of bases. Our central military medical base, even our regional command focus and bastion against Russian aggression – Germany – may be our most important overseas situs for American military power.

The Trump administration tells us that our economy is strong, that prices will tumble soon, that our allies and enemies alike will succumb to our demands and that America’s “might makes right” policy will prevail. All false. Unless the just-announced Supreme Court ruling in Louisiana vs Callais, allowing partisan gerrymandering with virtually no limits but even the slightest reference to “race” is constitutionally unjustified, is able to justify a blatant mid-term election steal (which is possible), Trump’s MAGA candidates will at least loose the House and probably the Senate. Southern states are accelerating redrawing congressional election maps in a desperate attempt to keep Trump’s alternative and objectively false reality as the continuing law of the land. Meanwhile Trump and family are milking their relationships to make more billions before they are tossed from office.

I’m Peter Dekom, and as a practicing lawyer for decades, with respect for what was once a nation of laws and the US Constitution as it was envisaged by our Founding Fathers, I am appalled and ashamed of how Trump has managed to change our country into his personal (failed) fiefdom.

Standards Who Needs Standards? We Just Need Willing Bodies Loyal to Trump!

 

Standards? Who Needs Standards? We Just Need Willing Bodies Loyal to Trump!

We have a newly reconfigured and profoundly inferior federal government, where senior federal officials and firmly established federal agencies – particularly those created to protect ordinary Americans from toxic and predatory practices of mega-powerful corporate interests – have been terminated, hollowed out or replaced with “appointment by cronyism” without regard to true competence or necessary experience. All federal employees are charged to protect the Constitution as their most basic assignment. But to get a federal job today, only loyalty to Trump matters.

As we watch even some of these crony-driven appointments fired (forced to resign in some cases because they failed Trump as some level) – Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Attorney General Pam Bondi, Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, a literal army of seasoned FBI agents, weather/fire prevention/merger officials discharged, civil rights and environmental lawyers shown the door, top level Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials dismissed, our most senior generals and admirals relieved of duty, a litany of US Attorneys and Assistant US Attorneys - who have been unable to secure grand jury indictments against Trump’s clearly-identified “enemies” - gone, immigration “judges” (administrative appointments by the DOJ) who recognized statutory rights of asylum-seekers eliminated – we are watching objectively unqualified replacements (many in fear of losing their jobs that they are willing to do “whatever Trump wants” without regard to legality) run what’s left of our government.

Federal judges are nominated without academic or litigation experience. Diseases (like measles), ounce fully eradicated here, are breaking out under the antivaxxer leadership of RFK, Jr and his conspiracy theory/anti-science senior managers as HHS and the CDC. As allegations of misfeasance and substance abuse, coupled with charges of misuse of federal personnel and jet aircraft for personal use, are raging in the headlines focused on FBI director, Kash Patel, who has personally presided over the firing agents who, in the past, were part of investigation teams looking into Donald Trump’s misuse of classified files taken for personal use. Several recent articles in The Atlantic by Sarah Fitzpatrick have made powerful claims of in-office inebriation, Patel’s alleged inability to meet daily scheduled events, all purportedly documented through multiple sources. Patel’s response has been to file a $250M defamation action against Fitzpatrick and The Atlantic, which will subject the FBI Director to wide-open discovery that could be embarrassing to him. To endear himself to Trump and purportedly to keep his job, Patel has initiated a new investigation into the rehashed Trump’s 2020 election loss and pledged that arrests are imminent.

With a seriously depleted federal workforce, particularly within the Justice Department, the once-stellar standards that made prestigious lawyer candidates vie for appointments to into the highly-regarded corners of the federal legal community, are now having extreme difficulty in finding applicants – knowing that loyalty to Trump, a willingness to defy the Constitution and federal law to placate the President, is required to get and keep that job. Competence, law school achievement and experience are qualities that have fallen by the wayside.

Likewise, in the military, morale has plunged so low – by the seemingly whimsical firing of flag-rank leadership and the persistent hammering of fundamental Christian national conspiracy theories to his troop by a recovering alcoholic who never rose above the rank of major in the Army – that the military is unable to meet its recruitment goals, and there is a push to reinstate a very unpopular draft to meet these needs.

But the bottom line across these federal needs is a massive reduction in the quality level for people deemed acceptable to the Trump administration. ICE agents are among the least skilled recruited, many failing background checks (even after they have been hired). With about two months of training, these agents are released to administer Stephen Miller’s brutal immigration scheme, often arresting people without a judicial warrant, only using a very questionable administrative warrant that carries no legal weight. Masked and unidentified, these subpar agents are accorded power without meaningful accountability.

In a nation where “rule of law” (vs “rule by law” created by a privileged and extreme elite) is the most fundamental building block for our democracy, the hollowing out of our experienced and neutral federal lawyers, has left our constitutional guardrails in shambles. Trump, as truly unpopular as he is, has been able to push autocratic edicts while fostering election rigging for the upcoming 2026 and 2028 elections with the support of new federal lawyers unwilling to challenge obviously unlawful Trump orders. But the Trump restaffing efforts are not restocking that legal staff with competent, ethical and appropriate lawyers. Writing for the April 22nd Associated Press, Eric Tucker and Alanna Durkin Richer explain the depth of the problem:

“The FBI and Justice Department are scrambling to rebuild a depleted workforce after a wave of departures over the last year, with leaders easing hiring requirements and accelerating recruitment in ways that some current and former officials see as a lowering of long-accepted standards… The FBI has turned to social media campaigns to attract applicants, offered abbreviated training for candidates from other federal agencies and relaxed requirements for support staff seeking to become agents, according to people familiar with the changes and internal communications seen by the Associated Press. At the same time, the Justice Department has opened the door to hiring prosecutors right out of law school to help fill vacancies in U.S. attorney’s offices across the country… Some current and former agents also say the FBI is promoting into positions of leadership employees with less experience than would be customary for the jobs…

“Elements of the regimen have been periodically tweaked to fit the bureau’s needs, including over the last year under the leadership of FBI Director Kash Patel… With a mantra to ‘let good cops be cops,’ Patel announced last fall that transfers from other agencies such as the Drug Enforcement Administration would be able to complete a nine-week training academy instead of the traditional academy that spans more than four months. The change rankled some current and former officials who say the FBI’s protocols, professional culture and diversity of cases it handles help to distinguish it from other agencies.” Simply, the new agents are undertrained, significant requirements are waived, and the entry-level standards significantly lowered.

I’m Peter Dekom, and if you had to pick a pattern of recruitment that would erode democracy the most, Donald Trump and his cronies seem to have hit the motherlode of destructive mediocrity and cronyism.

Hey Kid, Wanna Buy a Drone?

 

Hey Kid, Wanna Buy a Drone?

Teaching our enemies how to fight us; our military’s weaknesses are increasingly clear.

“The Iranian arena serves as a living laboratory to test the effectiveness and efficiency of Chinese technology and data against advanced Western and American weapons.” 

Nadia Helmy, a China expert at Egypt’s Beni Suef University.

Aside from our most obvious vulnerabilities – failed leadership from a mercurial President and an arrogant and profoundly inexperienced Secretary of Defense/War – our strategic misunderstanding of how asymmetrical warfare can wear down our most expensive and rather sophisticated weapon systems has led us to a stalemate in our war against Iran. All this notwithstanding our battlefield experiences with cheap weapons against our state-of-the-art military in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan (conflicts we lost). China has nurtured sophistication alongside its development of cheap drone technologies that are defining a new era of combat.

Finally catching up with Russia and China, the United States is about to deploy its own hypersonic missile: the $15+ million Dark Eagle, which, together with its specialized launching platform can cost upwards of $2.7 billion. But the good news (?), is that it can reach those retained Iranian missiles and launching pad 1700 miles from its Persian Gulf coast, cruise at absurd speeds, hugging the ground, sneaking up on those Iranian sites that we “totally obliterated.” Major Pete has new ways to run up the costs of the war, if and when we resume full attacks.

Writing for the May 2nd Wall Street Journal, Timothy W. Martin, Thomas Grove and Chun Han Wong explain what the Iran War has taught our true enemies about how to combat the United States: “The Iran war has offered China, Russia and North Korea—the U.S.’s biggest security threats—a rare opportunity to learn about the capabilities and limitations of the U.S. military… The three powers have witnessed certain new American weapons in combat for the first time, including lightning-fast precision airstrikes assisted by artificial intelligence. But they have also seen how quickly the U.S. depleted key munitions, especially stockpiles of long-range Tomahawk missiles and Patriot interceptors.

“And they have watched how Iran’s low-cost drones have been able to threaten the U.S.’s heavily fortified Gulf allies—a potential advantage for China in a Taiwan contingency… Asked what China is taking away from the Iran conflict, Adm. Samuel Paparo, the commander of American troops in the Pacific, told Congress: ‘I think they see the power of small, low-cost munitions.’” You simply have to do a side-by-side comparison between the Trump/Hegseth braggadocio of total military victory with the obvious Iranian pragmatic triumph: by closing the Strait of Hormuz with low tech weapons, Iran has strangled global oil prices and brought much of the world to its knees.

Unless the Strait can be reopened in the next two months, expect oil and fertilizer prices to bring the entire planet into recession. Iran has not, nor is it likely to, surrender. They still have their enriched uranium stash (albeit under rubble), maintain their surrogate state attacks, have inflicted major damage on regional US military bases, and their stocks of ballistic missiles and cheap drones appear intact. The only regime change we have seen is a much more hostile, entrenched and still very capable armed leadership, hell-bent on defying US pressure. And the world blames Trump for all these missteps… and the resulting oil and gas price spiral.

One of the most fascinating developments in this fundamental asymmetrical mainstay – air, land and sea drones – is the ability to eliminate over-the-air or satellite transmissions to control drone movement. Those transmissions facilitate tracking and downing these mobile and inexpensive weapons. While such traditional controls are still mostly in place, for example, the ability to use fishline thin fiber optic cables – unspooling for up to thirty miles from launch site to detonation target – is both cheap and quite effective. Russia and Ukraine have using such drones effectively.

“Many drones are susceptible to electronic jamming by air defenses. Jamming can cause a drone to crash or return to its point of origin… Fiber-optic drones are not piloted via, for example, GPS signals or radio control. They have a thin cable that connects an operator directly to the drone, making it impossible to electronically jam.

The drones are not infallible because the wind — or other drones — can cause the cables to tangle… But, ‘if you know what you’re doing, it’s absolutely deadly,’ said Robert Tollast, a drone expert and researcher at the Royal United Services Institute in London, explaining how the drone can fly low and creep up on a target… Experts say militaries must either intercept the drones, which is difficult due to their small size and short flight path, or find a way to snip the nearly invisible cable…

“An Israeli military official told AP the fiber-optic drones are a relatively new threat during the latest round of fighting with Hezbollah. Hezbollah seems to have turned to them because Israeli air defenses have been successful against larger and more powerful rockets, missiles and other drones, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in line with military guidelines.

“Israel believes the drones are made locally and are easy to produce — requiring little more than an off-the-shelf drone, a small amount of explosives, and transparent wire that is readily available on the consumer market, he said… He called the drones the biggest threat to troops inside Lebanon but said the Israeli military is working on technological solutions. In the meantime, Israel is taking measures on the ground to defend troops, such as adding nets and cages to military vehicles. The fiber-optic drones are the latest part of a cat-and-mouse race as Israel’s high-tech defenses race to intercept new threats, especially ones that are less sophisticated.

“Ran Kochav, a former head of the Israeli military’s air defense command, said Israel is failing in its attempts to defend against the fiber-optic drones… ‘They fly very low and very fast, and they are very small, it’s very difficult to detect them, and even after they’re detected, they are really hard to track,’ he said… Ali Jezzini, a journalist specializing in security and military affairs who closely follows Hezbollah’s capabilities, estimated that the drones used by the group cost between $300 and $400 each. He added that they appear to be manufactured locally using 3-D printing technology, in addition to readily available electronic components typically used for civilian purposes but capable of dual-use applications.” Associated Press, May 1st. And yes, this same technology is beginning to be deployed by Iran, many using Chinese designs.

I’m Peter Dekom, and in the end, our mismanagement of the war against Iran, our failure to anticipate the obvious tactical and strategic choices that have been and often still are available to Iran has led to a war that defies the Trump/Hegseth cabal of historical, military and cultural ignorance, pretty much leaving Iran calling the shots.