A Tale of Two Countries

A Tale of Two Countries (in the same geographical space)

A Quarter Millennium Resetting of America’s Moral Compass

Remember that Madison was the principal author of our Bill of Rights. Currently, there is a huge transition in basic American values, from cherishing freedom and democracy to replacing that moral vector with centralized power and efficiency. Given control of both houses of Congress, Trump could have easily relied on using a sycophantic GOP to legislate his desired changes without relying on executive orders that obviously usurped congressional constitutional powers. But he didn’t. He took the autocratic approach instead. Looking at the Musk de facto co-presidency, there is a rising force in the United States, relying on red America’s cultish fascination with billionaires, particularly within the relatively recent rise of Silicon Valley’s techno-billionaires.

Whether you call it “tecno-fascism” – a man-up, anti-“woke” class of “our success tells you we know better than the masses” belief that modernity mandates a new metric of qualified “efficiency-directed” leadership or – “tech bro Maoism” – disrupt, destroy, replace and only we can do it (echoing the familiar Trump refrain, “only I can fix it”) – there is little question that there is a massive war of values reshaping America. Gone is the studied, surgical precision and low-key nature of a Clinton-era $400,000,000 annual budget cut of federal agencies, one secured with the cooperation of the agencies involved, one that did not provoke a single challenging lawsuit but one that lacked the media-grabbing headlines of autocratic performance art or the gas-lighting necessity of totally rewriting of history. Simple autocratic efficiency is a new moral direction. Blow it up and ask questions later!

There is clarity of that American shift rejecting that it was an autocratic Russian invasion of Ukraine three years ago. On February 24th, joined by 17 nations allied with Russia (including Belarus, North Korea, Syria, Nicaragua, and Haiti), the United States specifically rejected a European-drafted United Nations General Assembly resolution that condemned Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, an unenforceable act. Trump has repeatedly refused to agree that it was Russia that unilaterally invaded Ukraine (in fact, actually stating the opposite) or state that he opposes autocracy. The above UN vote reverses previous UN votes where the US voted squarely to blame Russia for the invasion. Russia was once an untrusted “Evil Empire” (as Ronald Reagan once called it)… but today, the United States picks autocratic Russia over democratic Europe. Russia’s track record suggests that trusting Russia seldom works:

“[Russia and Ukraine] began with the Budapest Memorandum of 1994 amid the illusion of the ‘end of history.’ Ukraine yielded its nuclear weapons in exchange for security guarantees from the U.S., U.K. and Russia. Moscow explicitly promised to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and refrain from economic coercion.” February 23rd Wall Street Journal. Over 1,000 nuclear Ukrainian warheads were moved to Russia.

Russia’s violating its treaty commitments began less than a decade later: “In 2003 Russia began building a dam on the tiny Ukrainian island Tuzla without warning or permission from Kyiv. Ukraine responded to this territorial violation by deploying troops, and the crisis diffused only after Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma struck a compromise with Mr. Putin on terms favorable to Moscow.” WSJ. In 2014, also in violation of that accord, Russia invaded and annexed the Crimean Peninsula, then part of Ukraine. The United States did nothing. Three years ago, under the guise of protecting the interests of Russian speakers in Ukraine, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, denying that Ukraine was ever an independent state, with the stated goal of annexation, thus keeping Ukraine from drifting farther towards the West and NATO.

On March 1st, at a gathering at the Oval Office to witness the signing of an economic/mineral rights agreement, a question from a member of the Polish press corps ignited a firestorm. Based on Russia’s breach with his own country’s treaties with Moscow, that correspondent, Marek Valkuski, asked Trump and Zelenskyy how a peace treaty with Putin’s Russia was even possible when Russia consistently breached treaty and ceasefire pledges it made, without more than a simple Russia pledge to respect Ukraine’s territory… again. Until that moment, the meeting was quiet and civil.

As Trump responded, suggesting that he “trusted” Putin, and that after the mineral rights agreement was signed, Zelenskyy was free to pursue European guarantees but that the US was not making any such guarantees, all hell broke loose. Zelenskyy agreed that without strong third-party guarantees, the proposed peace agreement with Russia could be meaningless. And Trump exploded, supported by VP JD Vance, suggesting that Zelensky was an ingrate, that he was disrespectful to the President of the United States and the US itself, that even his lack of suit to such a meeting was disrespectful in and of itself (since the inception of the war, Zelenskyy has never worn a suit) and that a weak Zelensky (“you have no cards to play” as Trump stated) had no choice. Zelenskyy, constantly being interrupted, tried to explain that he was simply expressing the will of the Ukrainian people and had no other choice. Zelensky was soon expelled from the White House by Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

The global reaction was divided between the democracies of Europe and loyalist Republicans reworking the truth, ignoring that the issue originated with a member of the Polish press, that accused Zelenskyy of inappropriately raising the issue of territorial guarantees. The Ukrainian President was just answering a question and stating the obvious. The aftermath was predictable: loyal Republicans faulted only Zelenskyy (who was subdued yet obviously emotional). Democrats, and virtually all American allies, questioned Trump’s apparent abandonment of “freedom.” Particularly aghast at Trump’s migration into the pro-Russian camp, European leaders noted that democratic freedom was a European core value, one our allies had theretofore assumed was core to the US as well. Every poll that I have seen has clearly stated that about 80% of American dislike and distrust Vladimir Putin. Trump openly rejects that view.

Indeed, Trump’s failure to condemn Russia as the aggressor combined with threats to force-buy Greenland, to take over the Panama Canal and push Canada as the 51st US state, did reek of autocratic rejection of freedom and democracy. A rising pattern of sycophantic GOP members of Congress – gas lighting everything from labeling the January 6th invasion of the capitol as “peaceful” or the March 1st Oval Office Trump bullying session as having originated with Zelenskyy’s rejecting a peace treaty with Russia – was pretty convincing evidence of a new MAGA/Trump realignment with Russia as a rejection of democratic freedom itself. MAGA America feels such a threat from the American left, which may have a few (very few) elements of justification, that to them ending democracy is the only was viable response. Did Trump’s address to a less-than-full gallery in his March 5th address to Congress change any minds? More later.

I’m Peter Dekom, and to many Americans, the form of government that has defined the United States for a quarter of a millennium (as the oldest constitutional democracy on earth) is an inappropriate, outdated form for the governance of the United States of America.