This Week and Next
The Septic Shock of Trump’s America
Sitting in bed, fire crackling, I feel like Chicken Little. But here’s the crucial difference: in the storybook, Chicken Little was wrong. This Chicken Little is right. The sky is falling.
Our world, like any system, can only absorb so much chaos before it tips into instability. I’m not talking about the theatrical gasps of the stock market when Trump tweets. I’m talking about genuine shock – not the pearl-clutching kind when you drop an F-bomb at Thanksgiving, but the medical kind. Sepsis. System failure.
And yet Americans, ever self-absorbed and self-assured, keep chanting: “This too shall pass,” as if they are in an AA meeting. God, what children we are. Tell that to Iran, Russia, Cuba, Afghanistan, China, Gaza. Governments fall all the time. Wake up, kids. Sometimes bad things happen and stay happened.
This week felt different. I wrote less than usual – other projects beckoning – but I watched. And something has shifted. I can feel it, like a bone-ache before a winter storm.
Start with what we’re not discussing: Pete Hegseth casually rebranding the Department of Defense as the Department of War. Millions will be spent on new letterheads and signage, but the deeper damage is more than semantic. Defense is noble – I want my government defending me, my country, democracy itself. War is aggression. War is a killing word.
And Hegseth is practicing what he preaches. We’ve parked warships in the Caribbean – no danger there, just theater – while using them to kill unnamed people off Venezuela’s coast. No indictments. No Congressional oversight. No drug hauls. Just bodies. Judge, jury, and executioner, all flying the American flag.
Oh, and we bombed Iran too. Again, without bothering to ask Congress.
Meanwhile, Trump is playing emperor, conducting peace talks with Russia while Ukraine and Europe shiver in the cold. This demented wannabe dictator meets with an actual one about the fate of a sovereign nation and potentially all of Europe without all the key stakeholders? This is exactly how world wars start.
Tariffs have turned the global economy into a demolition derby. So many casualties. Such little payoff. Has anyone seen that promised windfall of cash?
Marjorie Taylor Greene is fleeing Congress, and while many celebrate, I’m chilled to the bone. She’s not leaving because she went too far. She’s leaving because she didn’t go far enough. When MTG isn’t MAGA enough, we’ve crossed into territory that should terrify us all.
Then came “Piggy-gate” – Trump’s latest misogyny served fresh. In any actual workplace, calling a woman “Piggy” would mean instant termination. Instead, we get Caroline Leavitt, Pit Bull Skipper, spinning it as “transparent Trump.” Leavitt represents the worst kind of collaboration – training herself to out-perform Raccoon-eyed Sarah and Killer Barbie McEnany in the pageant of female complicity. These women are modern Stella Goldschlags, the Jewish woman who worked for the Gestapo. Vichy feminism at its finest.
The week’s pièce de résistance? Trump hosting Saudi Crown Prince MBS in the new Vegas version of the Oval Office. When a reporter (female, naturally – later attacked by Trump) asked about the murder and dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi, Trump delivered two words worthy of Hannibal Lecter: “Things happen.”
But MBS wasn’t just there for dinner with billionaires and the money-hungry Trump spawn. Trump is selling the Saudis our most sophisticated fighter jets – technology paid for with our tax dollars (not Trump’s, since he doesn’t pay taxes) that will inevitably end up in China’s hands. For years, both parties said hell no to this deal precisely because of Saudi-Chinese entanglements. Our most advanced weapon technology given to the world’s largest standing military - yes this is happening.
You might dismiss this as just Trump being Trump – the constant drip, drip, drip of his methodology. But remember: dripping water does two things. It drains the pond. And it carves rock. The landscape changes forever.
And where are our guardrails? The Supreme Court, packed with Bush and Trump loyalists, contorts itself into pretzels reading law to support this con man. Or worse – like with Roe – they just say fuck it.
America’s little Johnson, who should be pumping the brakes, instead shuts down the government in a tantrum. Then this “Christian” in his Jos. A. Bank suit has the temerity to blame Democrats, despite Republicans holding the Senate, House, and White House. He stands before cameras, rep tie perfectly knotted, and lies. Ironically, the third in line to the Oval Office is a man who represents the poorest and sickest district among all 435 in the US. Let that sink in. But rest easy, he will pray for you - or so he says.
Trump has unleashed Bottle-Blond Barbie (AKA US Attorney General) on his political enemies, deploying hand-picked DOJ lawyers after ethical ones refused. Not satisfied, our goblin president went online and identified six members of Congress who appeared in a PSA about not following illegal orders. His response? He wants them hanged.
The week ended with the burial of America’s most hated vice president – until JD Vance made us all a bit nostalgic for Cheney. More disturbing than the death was the disintegration of decorum. The Cathedral should have been packed. But GOP members stayed away, terrified Trump would come for their scalps. Cheney the Red’s unforgivable sin? Voting for a black woman over Trump.
Though it looked like a Trump-Vance snub, the reality is simpler: they were told to stay away. The Cheney’s have always a polish no matter what you think of them - Trump and Vance would only bring tarnish.
Trump is killing our country, and I find myself wondering: When will America have enough of ICE terror and its own military policing citizens? Will those denied SNAP benefits create that spark?
Or more terrifying: When will the world decide enough is enough?
Consider the wreckage: Trump has slashed foreign aid to countries we once called allies, leaving vacuums that China and Russia gleefully fill. He’s pulled us out of international agreements like a petulant child taking his ball and going home – the WHO, climate accords, trade partnerships painstakingly built over decades. Each withdrawal a middle finger to cooperation, each tariff a brick in the wall isolating America.
We’ve abandoned the Kurds. Betrayed Ukraine. Turned our backs on refugees fleeing the very chaos our policies helped create. Meanwhile, we’re cozying up to Putin, MBS, Orbán, and every tin-pot autocrat who flatters Trump’s ego or lines his pockets.
Our tariff tantrums have sent shockwaves through global supply chains, punishing not just our so-called enemies but our allies – Canada, Mexico, the EU. Farmers can’t sell their soybeans. Manufacturers can’t get parts. Prices spike everywhere while Trump claims victory.
We’ve weaponized food aid, turning humanitarian assistance into political leverage. We’ve undermined public health initiatives globally, creating breeding grounds for the next pandemic while Trump’s CDC becomes a political tool rather than a scientific one.
NATO allies no longer trust us. Our intelligence partners hedge their bets. The dollar’s dominance as reserve currency – built on trust and stability – teeters as the world watches us roil markets with predawn tweets and impulsive policy reversals.
As we invade sovereign nations without Congressional approval, create refugee crises, destabilize democracies, and genuflect before dictators and absolute monarchs, America is becoming less the home of the free and the brave and more of a global liability – the drunk uncle at the family dinner who everyone tolerates but secretly wishes would leave.
The sky is falling.
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