President Pinocchio, the overlord of bluster and blunder, excels at one thing: Indiscriminate ruination and squandering American values, standards and advances—unchecked by equally clueless, nodding stooges.
What stands out right now are two painful insights: 1) that a perverse, sadistic president can pulverize whatever he touches; and 2) worse still, that legal, cultural, political and structural stop signs are tinpot trifles. How much damage occurs before a critical mass snarls loudly enough to impede the barrage? What happens when even 70 percent+ decide MAGA Trumpism amounts not just to bad policy failures but bad faith and bad intentions? Know how many fans back Trump using troops to invade Greenland? 4 percent, a mere rounding error. Or favor a phony “acting president” ordering GIs to invade Venezuela? Barely 26 percent per Economist/YouGov. The dismissed majority already declares Renee Good’s murder “unjustified”—rejecting nonsense about being a “domestic terrorist,” a lie of unspeakable dishonor.
Looking older, bedraggled and more deranged, Trump is running out of laws, rules, thresholds, institutions, alliances and Congressionally-mandated programs to burn down. Short of causing another civil war (not impossible), has any other president done so much systemic damage to so many people in such a short time? What president even imagined turning his election into non-stop, imploding stunts? Not one. So, which is worse: that damage over time is becoming inestimable—or that institutional correctives are so shockingly worthless? Who with a brain and heart is stunned that a wreckage-strewn, convicted career criminal would replicate prior disasters? How exactly did the Biden-Garland DOJ fail for years even to start two epic trials that might well have impeded the Trump terror?
Nevertheless, who’s surprised per CNN that nearly 60 percent conclude Trump’s “terrible” first year was a monumental “failure”? Or that just over one-third still take pride in the DT’s reign? Or that less than a quarter think he’s improved children’s health or safety, preserved free speech, advanced peace or stopped DOJ weaponization? Only a failed politician boasts so many failures and so few wins. While BSing MAGA bullies continue to flood the zone with chaos and threats (Greenland lunacy, ICE thuggery, TACO militarism), centrists and low-information types finally see this stunt presidency for what it is—calculated distractions to obscure Epstein cover-ups, price/trade/job fiascos, dreadful polling and countless judicial rebuffs. The finale from a chronic stunt presidency is that, once the putrid smoke vanishes, what rises up are failure, betrayal, and disgrace. How long can a stunt regime last when dripping clown make-up blinds them to the onslaught of TV cruelty and popularity-shredding abuses?
Just listing all the domestic Trump indecencies, spanning legal abuses and bushwhacked precedents, could fill volumes. Need we drag in outlandish ignorance about economics, overseas trading, the Federal Reserve, foreign affairs, sabotaged diplomacy, military operations (and honorable legacies), doomed attacks on steadfast allies, even that discarded Trump obstacle once called “international law”? The addled rejection of multiple overseas treaties, even NATO membership, are historical catastrophes. Asserting the triumphant willfulness of blundering gut instinct and moral sophistry, Trump told the NY Times. “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me … I don’t need international law.”
Limitless debacles writ large
The low points of the Trump Disintegration Syndrome (the real TDS), dripping with symbolism, are two dramatic calamities without demonstrable positives: the infamy of DOGE and pulverizing the WH’s East Wing sans input, planning or foresight. The DOGE disgrace, run by the most clueless anti-government “consultant” in history, first destroyed Congressionally-mandated, structurally-critical agencies, willy-nilly exiling career experts, before having to re-spend billions reinstating irreplaceable talent. Never were more billions and gross misdirection squandered with more stupidity and pointless waste. A close second, the East Wing fiasco epitomizes TDD—Trump Derangement Derangement, where the “people’s house” was plundered, then carted to the dump like a decrepit cow shed. Presidents should get impeached for less. Who recklessly violates American history on a whim—without real-world consensus—and escapes getting pilloried afterwards? No Demolition Derby better dramatizes Trump’s self-serving, gold veneer-loving contempt for other Americans. Per Sidney Blumenthal neat summary, it’s all “schlock and awe.”
Domestically, MAGA Trump now invokes the worst drunk at the church Christmas party, careening recklessly, smashing tables and chairs, terrorizing the shocked bystanders, leaving broken platters and splattered ketchup. As with all things MAGA Trump, culprits sneak out and sabotage with lies, then the adults must clean up, pay for damages and nurse the traumatized. Nor has any foreign realm improved. Not Ukraine, worse, with more unimpeded (indeed, encouraged) brutality from Russia. Not Gaza, worse, with more unimpeded (indeed, encouraged) brutality from Israel. Canada, Venezuela, Greenland (Denmark and the EU) are rightly confirming borders and readying special forces to resist idiotic threats of invasion.
MAGA destruction is, like the universe, seemingly infinite. Not only are immigrants, legal and law-abiding, let alone innocent bystanders, indiscriminately kidnapped, beat up or shot but the outlaws are sneering gestapo types oblivious to legal and civil rights protected since the Bill of Rights. Destruction is in fact accelerating, too fast and furiously for stunned corrective forces to respond in kind. While ICE is the most visible of local abuses, millions elsewhere dread being pummeled by U.S. missiles, threats or trade mayhem.
Could obscene floods be more obvious?
What happens now? Is there a threshold so onerous those who defend reason, justice and morality rise up and say “Enough. Enough destruction, enough injury, enough death, enough warring against citizens.” The bullying, the refusal to respect any limits to law or sovereignty, is truly self-evident. And the solution is equally so: organized bullies rampage until stopped by greater forces, whether physical or legal or moral. Will it take a crazed invasion of NATO allies to bestir spineless GOPers to join long-delayed House impeachment proceedings? Is that what impeachment takes—ignoring all agreements and aggressing against former friends (of which Denmark is unparalleled)? Will only the prospect of many dead GIs, killed by defending NATO/European forces, move the needle and break the horrid jinx? Must America imitate Russian or Israeli militarism to bestir Rethug cowards to preserve residual democratic checks and balances?
The magnitude of broken systems (judicial, Congressional, military, regulatory, capitalistic, healthcare, imperial, climate, environmental) remains. Arguably, the vast conspiracy of anti-democratic, right-wing extremism has exceeded its dreams, crowned by King Donald running rampant—without enough resistance. Consider victories: dreadful DOGE, the worst cabinet ever, a terrible budget/tax bill, defiance of mandated Epstein releases, shredding of historic alliances, gross misuse of tariff rules and now war against big cities in blue states because they are Democratic strongholds. Have winners, echoing Joe McCarthy, no shame?
We don’t need many decent (or terrorized) Rethugs to begin the battle against waves of blackmail and DOJ weaponization, not just vs. northern cities (and legitimate officials), responsible universities and once potent law firms, let alone the most corrupt favoritism slathered on favored Trump donors. Where are loud objections to schemes that enrich the ruling family while channeling billions to undeserving deviants like Argentina, another blackmail/payola ploy? Even the murder (and cover-up) of an innocent (white, middle-class) mother has not yet incited enough resistance by a critical mass. But reason and history signal that a rampaging, maniacal regime will always go too far, indeed that recklessly defending the murder of innocents in bad faith could well be the beginning of the end, at least of the worst.
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