All around the world, many nations and their concerned citizens are asking a simple, terrifying question: Have Americans collectively lost their minds? If recent events and pronouncements from our resident dictator, Donald Trump, are any indication, the answer would have to be a resounding ‘Yes!’ On many levels, it appears that the US and many Americans have, indeed, lost their minds.
This is, without exaggeration, horrifying news for the entire world.
Of course, no one in the US is willing to publicly say this. No, “the show must go on,” and our business-as-usual attitudes must not be challenged. In fact, business as usual must be fully and forcefully supported — as President Coolidge famously said, “The business of America is business” — and any contrary or ‘subversive’ information must be suppressed.
Frighteningly, the foremost and crucial subversive information that is being suppressed and hidden is that Donald Trump is certifiably crazy and/or suffering from worsening dementia. As he’s shown repeatedly over the past several weeks, his narcissism, greed, and megalomania are now spiraling out of control — and no one in our government is doing a damn thing to stop him or even slow him down.
Trump is acting like a total dictator, more and more, yet our Congress and many Americans are blithely going about their ‘normal’ lives as if pretending ‘normalcy’ will save them from what’s coming.
Six highly dangerous trends consuming the US
What is coming, now, for the US and its hapless citizens? We can already see the outlines of our near future lurching into view, and it’s not a reassuring picture. The disturbing and/or dangerous trends looming over the US today include:
* Accelerating climate disruptions are now exacerbated by our wholesale rejection of climate science and our abandonment of all attempts to even try to curb global warming. Instead, Trump and US energy policy have gone ‘all in’ on fossil fuels — even coal! — while undermining or rejecting so-called ‘green’ technologies and cleaner energy sources.
* Trump ran on a strong “America First” platform, which MAGA and most Americans assumed meant an inward-looking focus on domestic US issues and economic problems at home. Wrong! Instead, Trump and US policy objectives are now focused on dominating the entire Western hemisphere, including Greenland. And he doesn’t care that 80+% of Americans don’t want or like this new expansionist, imperialist ‘vision.’
* Trump is absolutely trashing our trans-Atlantic alliances. He regularly insults European leaders and their countries; he is undermining NATO and threatening the future of this long-term alliance; and he is bullying Europe and threatening increased tariffs if they don’t knuckle under and support his bonkers plan to take over Greenland. Our allies are rightly furious about this ongoing mistreatment. Trump’s ongoing treachery is forcing them to separate from the US economically and politically, to preserve their own security and economic freedom.
* Trump is using every tool and arcane law at his disposal to bend the US military to his will and use it to pursue his personal — usually vindictive — agendas. He is eager to sic our military on any blue cities or states that object to or try to thwart his oppressive agenda and actions. Plus, he is illegally using our military to blow up alleged “drug boats” and kill those piloting them, without any sort of trial or even public evidence of their ‘crimes.’
* Trump 2.0 has weaponized the DOJ (Department of Justice) to go after and indict his opponents in blue cities and states. The DOJ has willingly surrendered its independence. It has become an agent of the executive branch and is basically functioning as Trump’s personal law firm and attack dog. It’s both infuriating and reprehensible.
*To enact Trump’s promised mass deportations, Trump 2.0 has vastly expanded ICE operations in the US. Scarily, these accelerating ICE operations have proven to be both heartless and lawless. ICE has been given carte blanche to descend on any US city, terrorize its residents, and round up anyone even loosely fitting its criteria of ‘illegal alien.’ Their methods are both brutal and overly broad — since they are seizing both citizens and non-citizens off the streets and even breaking into people’s cars and homes. And their claim to only be pursuing “the worst of the worst” is a brazen lie — and has been disproven, over and over, in real time.
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We’re spiraling down into socio-political madness
That’s a frightening list of six different ways (minimum) that Trump is shredding democracy and undermining the rules-based world order. Yet, there is NO effective opposition — at all — within the Republican party or the US Congress, which is totally controlled by the GOP. And opposition from the Democrats has been far too polite and muted — as well as utterly ineffective.
Here’s what the rest of the world sees: a leader and nation that are spinning out of control and spiraling down into socio-political madness. They see a powerful leader — the most powerful man in the world, at this point — descending into petty vengefulness, wildly greedy ambition, and arbitrary (and bizarre) ‘kingly’ pronouncements. He is unilaterally causing vast economic disruption and social chaos both at home and abroad.
They see a tyrannical megalomaniac demanding — and getting — his arrogant, imperious way with the poor, befuddled United States, which seems utterly helpless to resist or oppose him. They see an American populace that has been stunned and scared into submission, as they witness one institution, law, norm, and rule after another crumble under Trump’s and MAGA’s sustained assault.
And make no mistake: it IS an assault, and a very intentional one. America is under sustained attack from the far right, and has been for over a decade now. And everything we hold dear, including such social necessities as ‘the rule of law’ and interpersonal empathy and compassion, are rapidly fading or being stripped away.
Can anything or anyone stop Trump?
If we consider everything that has happened in the US over the past decade, and especially since Trump 2.0 began one year ago, it really does look like the US has lost its collective mind. The horrendous downward spiral that Trump and MAGA initiated is still intensifying and accelerating — and the collective mental and moral collapse that accompanies it is also accelerating.
Yes, I’m asserting that America’s moral compass and overall mental and emotional states are quickly deteriorating. The insidious, intensely negative influence of Trump and MAGA has been that potent — and wildly effective. Many commentators contend it’s not really about Trump, and insist that one man isn’t responsible for America’s current plight and dysfunction. Well… yes and no. Just as it’s easy to point at Trump as a virulent distillation of everything that’s wrong with America, it is also easy — too easy — to deny the man’s immense power and overwhelming influence.
While it’s undoubtedly true that the last 40 years of American dysfunction and right-wing hatefulness paved the way for Trump, setting the stage for his awful omnipresence (I almost wrote omnipotence), it’s also true that without Trump as a figurehead and master deceiver, MAGA would never have become so influential or disrupted US (and world) politics this intensely.
Donald Trump has dominated US politics for over a decade, now, and his quasi-demonic influence has only strengthened during that period. At the same time, however, we’re all watching him lose his (tenuous) grip on reality and veer off into wild paranoia, vengefulness, and tyrannical edicts and actions. His narcissism and megalomania know no bounds, and he is now ‘free’ to do exactly as he pleases, with little or no push-back from Congress — or anyone else.
As he put it recently in a New York Times interview, when asked if anything can stop him, “Yeah, 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….”
But that’s a doubly scary statement, because he is a totally amoral person who has no morality. Plus, his mental faculties are clearly deteriorating, so his mind won’t slow or stop him either. This horrid double-whammy ensures that America stays stuck in deep shit for the foreseeable future — while we watch, stunned, as our society and collective well-being get flushed down the toilet. It’s all… totally crazy.
“The whole world is watching”
Perhaps you remember the old Vietnam War-era slogan, “The whole world is watching.” Well, that’s even truer today. The whole world is watching and waiting to see how the US deals with its megalomaniac-in-chief and with severe, mounting crises. And what the world sees, so far, is the ease with which the US has been corrupted and, in a sense, defeated.
They see how our political system and politicians have rolled over for Trump. They see how we’ve enabled him and utterly failed to contain him.
What the world sees, so far, is a nation in total disarray — a nation that is losing its collective mind and morality. And there are NO viable signs, yet, that we’re anywhere close to turning this American tragedy around.
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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.
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Photo by Koshu Kunii on Unsplash
