Governance by Insecure Vengeance?

King Trump’s wildly unpopular ballroom Versailles “I am your retribution” campaign pledge

Vengeance

  “I am your retribution” campaign pledge

Governance by Insecure Vengeance?

“Based on what I read, I guess I’m not allowed to run… So we’ll see what happens… [A few days later] I would love to do it.” 

End of October, Trump statements on a third term.

“If my father was a king, he probably wouldn’t have allowed those protests to happen…You saw the people that were actually protesting — it’s the same crazy liberals from the ’60s and ’70s, they’re just a lot older and fatter.”

An October 29th Donald Trump, Jr’s gaslight in Dubai of the 7 million strong October 18th “no Kings” US protests.

Having taken credit for a number of peace settlements and accords, often contradicted by one of more of the participants, a rapidly unraveling ceasefire in Gaza, as he ordered more US high-yield nuclear testing (the last US test was in 1992), as he announced a more widespread use of all branches of the military to join an amped up pattern of extra-judicial killings of “narco-terrorists” in foreign territorial waters or lands (without any tangible proof or any congressional authorization) as well as a greater deployment of US armed forces in cities (against gubernatorial and mayoral objections, all in blue cities with falling crime rates), questions of his mental competency seem to be reinforced by his stated puzzlement as to why he did not receive the Nobel Peace Prize. His feeble attempts at tariff bribes to generate international support for such a nomination only reinforce the notion of his failing mind.

Unambiguously in response to Vladimir Putin’s braggadocio rants announcing new “unstoppable” missiles and torpedoes carrying nuclear warheads and China’s ramped-up deployment of modern combat ships and aircraft, Trump has ordered immediate resumption of high-yield nuclear weapons testing. Why? What’s in it for us? We already know we are capable of starting a war that could destroy all life on Earth.

“Mine is bigger than yours” nuclear testing does not help the United States develop and modernize its military capabilities. Given the global saturation of Chinese and Russian spy satellites and their massive underwater and terrestrial monitoring stations, the only benefit of our resumption of nuclear testing will be to our enemies. They will learn more about what we are capable of from the less-than-clandestine big-bangs generated by nuclear tests. But then, strategic thinking was never a Trump long-suit, further hampered by a rogue ego operating in an obviously deteriorating aging brain.

Serially indicting his political opponents has led to anomalies in which qualified federal prosecutors resign or are replaced by inexperienced political hacks. With the exception of potential genuine criminal issues involving the wrongful retention of classified documents (John Bolton… hmm? Where have we seen this before?), the likelihood of successful convictions of his indicted political foes lies somewhere between zero and none. Yet this notion that the elected party in power has a God-given right to do whatever it takes to decimate the “loyal opposition” began as a stuttering abysmal failure as a Nixon authorized burglary of the Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate building that resulted in criminal, an impeachment that forced Nixon to resign (8/8/74) as he himself narrowly avoided a nasty trial by reason of a presidential pardon. Trump saw potential in that criminal act.

In Trump 1.0, his qualified cabinet appointments stopped the newly elected President from crossing constitutional red lines and allowing obviously corrupt officials from improperly influencing him to make what would have been catastrophic decisions. But Trump 2.0 eschewed qualified candidates, essentially any internal guardrails, in favor of weak choices willing to ignore the Constitution and resulting statutes to remake the United States in Trump rather dramatically undemocratic image. The names of appointees who find loyalty to Trump as their guiding force and the Constitution as an archaic hinderance to their perceived mandate roll off the tongue. Those who have topped that list include AG Pamela Bondi, Immigration Tsar Tom Homan, Senior Whitehouse advisor Stephen Miller, OMB head Russell Vought, DOJ/W head Pete Hegseth and the majority of GOP congresspeople who will never vote in any major legislative matter against anything Trump.

There is very little in Donald Trump’s tariff policy that has made life better for most of us. The world is angry at his (our) bully tactics, his naïve opposition to climate change containment is already killing hundreds of thousands of AMERICANS, and our educational primacy and global economic advantage are eroding quickly. Most of those “concessions for lower tariffs” will never happen (remember in Trump 1.0 how China promised to buy lots of US agricultural exports), are countered by inane internal policies (like excluding immigrants needs to grow the economy and perform work that no one else will do). His recent 90 minute meeting with China’s Xi Jinping produced little more than platitudes and unenforceable abstract policy statements. But then, why should China make major concessions when Trump is taking the United States out of the race, brick by brick?

I’m Peter Dekom, and I am sick and tired of selfish billionaires, wildly and openly corrupt government officials and a President quite willing to line his own pockets at the expense of most of the rest of the country.