After taking a look at how Trump senselessly ended Pax Americana, undermined the most successful military alliance in history, eliminated American soft power, and gave a lifeline to the enemies of the United States when they seemed to be on the brink of collapse, all that in just 2 weeks, let's see what's happening inside the US.
A lot of Americans think that although things are going bad, all the hysteria about American decline is overblown. The US is a country of strong democratic institutions and robust civic culture, it will weather this period out.
I'm sorry, they are mistaken. The health of the US is not a question we are waiting for the answer to. That ship has sailed. A sitting president tried to stay in power after losing an election, first by trying to pressure the DOJ to declare the results invalid, then attempting to steal it through his fake electors scheme, then finally, inciting an insurrection. And four years later, half of the American people voted for him. Trump being elected a second time proves two things. One, the people's tolerance (putting it very mildly) for a wannabe fascist was not a historical aberration, but a permanent fact of reality from now on. Two, the laws, courts, and other institutions are not enough on their own. Modern society depends on norms, which have proven to be much more fragile than anyone had thought before. The justice system had four years to act on Trump's 97 criminal indictments and failed. America is broken in a fundamental way. Even after Trump is gone, trying to steal elections, lying about it blatantly, and inciting political violence (and dozens of minor issues like dining with neonazis) are just part of the new norms, and one of America's two big parties will build on it.
Now all these above were a bit abstract so let's go down to concrete facts. Just a few, I don't have all day. Starting with Trump's appointments.
The new Head of National Security Agencies, whose job is to collect the information provided by the different intelligence services, is Tulsi Gabbard. There is one question about Gabbard no one seems to know the answer to. Is she a paid Russian asset, or is she just an America-hating idiot who never met a bloody dictator she did not support against her own country? In the former case, one can argue that Gabbard has been put into the position because Vladimir Putin doesn't have time every week to fly to Washington himself.
The Defense Secretary is Pete Hegseth, former FOX host, who has been mostly known for the fact that his colleagues regularly have to carry him away from office parties once he is too drunk to walk himself and has already harassed his female colleagues. Ah yes, he is a white nationalist and Christian fundamentalist, too.
Kash Patel, the new head of FBI has been a strong Jan 6 supporter of Trump. His main claim for fame is writing a children's book in which Trump, the good King, is undermined by his evil advisors, but Patel, the court magician comes and saves the day. No, I'm not joking. He started with tenure demanding the names of FBI agents who worked on Jan 6 cases. The purge has begun.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr, the Health Secretary, is probably mentally ill, in a medical sense. He is a man who believes vaccines cause autism and would like to get rid of them if it's up to him. All vaccines. Against polio, measles, cholera, you name it. To be frank, I wish for him to succeed, just stop all transatlantic lines before he gets to work. Then let's catch up after the first cholera epidemic.
In normal times, one could hope that the robust civil service will dampen the damage the President and his idiots will inflict on the system. These are not normal times. Elon Musk has got bored faking being an engineer and now he is faking to be an accountant who can find fraud and waste in government. It's a permanent illusion among Silicon Valley types that leading a government is like leading a business company. Even if it were true, it's not clear why exactly Musk is the man for the job, whose last business venture was buying the world's most influential social media platform and reducing it to less than a third of its value. Notwithstanding, the world's richest imbecile is bulldozing through government offices, canceling programs, firing people, and exposing sensitive data without any legal authority. In the long term, he will probably save millions, with the chaos and destruction costing billions.
Ah, by the way, X's CEO Linda Yaccarino is going around telling companies to advertise on X, or they will get no government contracts. Ah, and by the way, the administration is purging not only the FBI, but the CIA as well. The timing is perfect because Musks's schlepp must be teeming with Russian spies, for whom DOGE is just an espionage bonanza.
If the Russians had a free hand to destroy US interests globally and its system domestically, they couldn't do it better. Paid, blackmailed, or brainwashed, it's irrelevant. Trump and Musk are Russian assets, hellbent on destroying America, and liberal democracies overseas.
And for those who think that the system only needs to hold on for four years, here is what has a real chance of happening in 2028. I said it already in front of an audience overlapping with the New Vac Times readership, so I'll be brief. In 2028, Trump's second term ends. If he is still alive and his brain has rotten enough, he will say, "I don't care, I'm not going anywhere". Republicans already started floating suggestions to eliminate the two-term limit. Everyone would fall then in line. If he is happy to step down, he will put Jared Kushner, Donald Trump Jr, or some other family member as the nominee, so the grift can be passed down to the next generation.
Here is the next step. There is a 50% chance that Republicans lose the election, as is always. Luckily, certifying the results is the job of the incumbent VP, who happens to be J.D. Vance. Vance had one question from Trump, and one only, when he was selected as a running mate: "In the place of Mike Pence, would you have followed my orders to accept my elector slates instead of the real ones?". So that problem is solved. If protests erupt, Trump has Pete Hegseth and the new top brass of the military (he has just fired the current ones) who will be happy to shoot into the crowd if asked. Trump has already asked for this during BLM protests and was politely declined, as we know from the memoirs of his former Secretary of Defense, Mark Esper.
For those who think that Trump will be dead, or too old, or too lazy to care anymore and the next nominee will be J.D. Vance, who might be a creepy, spineless fucker, but he is not crazy, ponder what Vance said in 2021: “We are in a late republican period...If we’re going to push back against it, we have to get pretty wild, pretty far out there, and go in directions that a lot of conservatives right now are uncomfortable with.” Considering how comfortable a lot of conservatives are right now, exactly what do you think he had in mind? What do you think?
If you think that all of this is an exaggeration, you will get over it. Denial is the first stage of grief.
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