Great American power and responsibility are not unprecedented, and have been used with restraint and great benefit in the past. We have not assumed that super strength guarantees super wisdom, and we have consistently reached out to the international community to ensure that our own power and influence are tempered by the best common judgment.
War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children.
The bond of our common humanity is stronger than the divisiveness of our fears and prejudices. God gives us the capacity for choice. We can choose to alleviate suffering. We can choose to work together for peace. We can make these changes – and we must.
He was awarded the prize during the run up to the Iraq war. Read the whole thing. Carter was long out of office at the time but he used his moment, as an elder statesmen, to make a moral statement at a time when it was difficult to do so.
The astonishing thing is that we’re back where we were then except the people in charge are much worse and the only rationale is the most fatuous of all: the president took the country to war because he “had a feeling” they were going to attack.
Trump had a full blown tantrum last night. I don’t expect that you will read these through but I think it’s important to document them:
He wants to censor the news because he says it’s disseminating misinformation. Someone needs to alert the Twitter files people like Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss because the last I heard they were very upset by this kind of behavior.
But he wasn’t finished. This one seems to have been written in some kind of fugue state:
Imagine if someone said any of those things about Charlie Kirk.
The war isn’t a cakewalk and he doesn’t know what to do. He’s incapable of grace under pressure and has no ability to act any way but impulsively. Epstein is dogging him and the economy is failing rapidly. Will we see a total breakdown in public?
Donald Trump has made many audacious claims during his political career, and he has shown a remarkable talent for convincing people that up is down and black is white. But his latest attempt at gaslighting the nation is his most brazen yet. In the midst of a hike in gas prices the likes of which we haven’t seen in decades, Trump took to Truth Social to lecture and scold the American people. “Short term oil prices, which will drop rapidly when the destruction of the Iran nuclear threat is over, is a very small price to pay for U.S.A., and World, Safety and Peace. ONLY FOOLS WOULD THINK DIFFERENTLY!”
He later went a step further in an attempt to convince people that paying more at the pump is actually benefiting them: “The United States is the largest Oil Producer in the World, by far, so when oil prices go up, we make a lot of money.”
Watching Trump squirm over oil prices would be amusing if it weren’t a result of a widening war of choice that’s leaving a growing number of Americans and Iranians dead and may well devolve further into a catastrophic regional conflict and international economic disaster.
After two weeks of airstrikes from the U.S. and Israel, and retaliations from Iran, the American people still don’t know exactly why Trump decided to pull the trigger when he did. One would have thought that if Trump understood anything, it would be that going to war with Iran would disrupt the oil markets at a time when inflation was still American voters’ number one concern leading up to the November midterms. For months he has falsely touted low gas prices as proof that the economy is roaring, and since January he has pointed to his incursion in Venezuela — and seizure of the country’s oil — as the reason why.
Trump certainly didn’t listen to any of his military advisers who told him that war with Iran would not be a cakewalk. And none of Trump’s briefers drew him any pictures about what would happen if the regime blocked access to the Strait of Hormuz, the choke point at the end of the Persian Gulf through which 30% of the world’s oil flows. Since the war began on Feb. 28, over 1,000 cargo ships, the majority of which are oil and gas tankers, have not been allowed to pass through the strait.
By Friday night, with frustration mounting, Trump announced the U.S. had bombed military sites on Kharg Island, which is also home to Iran’s most important oil terminal. While its oil infrastructure was left intact, he threatened to destroy the facilities if the Strait of Hormuz is not reopened. Hours later, without providing specifics, he said on Truth Social that “Many Countries” would soon be sending “War Ships…to keep the Strait open and safe.” The president urged Britain, China, France, Japan and South Korea to help reopen the waterway, promising that “One way or the other, we will soon get the Hormuz Strait OPEN, SAFE, and FREE!”
Anyone with even rudimentary knowledge of recent history would have known this was likely. Yet CNN reported on Thursday that Trump officials acknowledged to lawmakers in recent briefings that they did not consider the possibility, a revelation that has left experts and experienced hands with their jaws on the floor. “Dumbfounded” is how one former official who served in both Republican and Democratic administrations described their response, explaining that “planning around preventing this exact scenario — impossible as it has long seemed — has been a bedrock principle of U.S. national security policy for decades.” The administration was so unprepared for Iran’s predictable response that it pulled U.S. minesweepers out of the Persian Gulf last fall after stationing them there for decades, all for the express purpose of countering a potential closure by Iran.
Since the oil shocks of the early 1970s, people who follow world events have been aware of the perils of getting into a protracted war with a large oil-producing country in the Middle East. The U.S. even demonstrated it in living color just 20 years ago when we made the tragic mistake of invading Iraq.
The prospect of a war with Iran always invited the possibility that the world’s oil markets would be severely disrupted, which is one reason why political leaders of all stripes and in all countries have been leery of confronting the regime militarily.
Trump was an adult in 1973 when OPEC (the Arab state members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) cut production in protest of America’s support for Israel in the Yom Kippur War. In an attempt to keep inflation low, then-President Richard Nixon instituted rationing. The country was already entering a period of stagflation — simultaneous recession and inflation — an economic condition that played no small part in weakening Nixon during the same period that Watergate was unfolding, which eventually led to him resigning in disgrace.
Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, his Republican and Democratic successors, dealt with the same moribund economy, and Carter oversaw another oil crisis in 1979 precipitated by the Iranian Revolution. The economic upheaval, and his response to the Iranian hostage crisis, were the biggest factors in his 1980 loss to Ronald Reagan.
Today we’re seeing the result of the aging Trump’s lack of inhibition and unwillingness to listen to anyone but sycophants who tell him what he wants to hear. The strait is effectively closed, just as every analyst on the planet predicted. Oil prices are hovering at just under $100 a barrel, and experts predict that could double as the war drags on. Gas is now, on average, 60 cents per gallon higher than it was in February, and prices are still climbing. As energy costs are the number one driver of inflation, we can expect that rate to rise. And all of this comes on top of an economy already reeling from Trump’s tariffs, which were beginning to bite hard.
We’ve seen this before. Meanwhile, Trump has no idea what to do. The plan to underwrite the insurance for tankers to go through the strait shows a total lack of understanding of how insurance works, and any process for U.S. naval escorts is on hold because it’s too dangerous for all involved. On Monday the president told Fox News that oil tanker crews should “show some guts” and just go through the strait, which is easy for him to say. Now he has given a gift to Vladimir Putin by lifting oil sanctions on Russia, even as CNN reported that the country is aiding Iran by providing “specific advice on drone attacks.”
Early in this second term Trump proclaimed that even in the face of existential climate change, the U.S. was “going back to fossil fuels. We have to go back to what works. We can’t be foolish.” That announcement should have been everyone’s first clue that he had no idea what he’s gotten himself, and the world, into.
America’s sensitivity to oil prices is well known and well documented. There is no excuse for anyone in government to not understand this and consider the risks. It’s always possible that this will be a temporary economic blip — that the Iranians will give up the closure due to, if nothing else, the environmental horror show being visited on them by the Israelis. In the meantime, here we are, once again holding out hope that Trump — and America — will have the good luck to survive his monumentally terrible judgment.
Republicans are uneasy. Panicked maybe. With good reason (Politico):
Democratic wins have come even in deep red states, including Texas, Arkansas and Mississippi, and often by margins that make Republican leaders uneasy.
“I’m ringing the alarm bell,” said Brendan Steinhauser, a Texas GOP consultant who has run campaigns for Republicans in the state, including Sen. John Cornyn and Rep. Dan Crenshaw.
Tara McGowan, publisher of Courier Newsroom, describes for The Daily Blast’s Greg Sargent the concrete block Donald Trump has tied around Republicans’ ankles:
Clearly these tariffs have hurt the economy and our alliances abroad. The cost of living has only gone up. It was a huge promise of Trump and his campaign that that would be a priority for them, as was releasing the Epstein files.
They have bait-and-switched on every single promise made. And instead now we’re in a billion-dollars-a-day war in Iran that no Americans want and that Congress did not approve—a war that is now increasing gas prices that could skyrocket to $5 a gallon on top of how Americans are already feeling squeezed. So of course Republicans are panicking.
Trump demands passage of the SAVE Act. To save his presidency, that is. He and SAVE Act supporters are not just telegraphing their desire to rig the 2026 elections for Republicans. They are practivcally shouting their interest in canceling them altogether.
And so this is the situation they’re in. I think it’s so important because we all need to be pre-bunking this to the American people, right? Making it very clear what they’re trying, and their desperation out of this administration, because the writing is on the wall.
As their panic grows, Trump administration figures sound more like Soviet censors intent on punishing reporting that challenges the party line:
Brendan Carr, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, threatened on Saturday to revoke broadcasters’ licenses over their coverage of the war with Iran, his latest move in a campaign to stomp out what he sees as liberal bias in broadcasts.
As the war entered its third week, Mr. Carr accused broadcasters of “running hoaxes and news distortions” in a social media post and warned them to “correct course before their license renewals come up.”
“Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will lose their licenses if they do not,” he said.
The press presents such threats as isolated incidents. But the pattern is clear for those who have survived oppressive regimes. The arc of the MAGA universe is ragged, but it bends toward dictatorship. And their would-be dictator is a madman. Imagine Carr’s response if the press reported that.
For the life of me I’ve never understood why the press and the political class find it so difficult to talk about @realDonaldTrump‘s severe and manifest personality disorders.
These disorders may be impossible for any professional to treat, but they are easily understandable to any intelligent lay person who can read and follow along.
Indeed, Donald Trump’s mental illnesses and the American press and political class’s appalling and shameless cowardice in failing to address them will be someday be a mandatory part of the curriculum for secondary-school and university students the world over.
Conway issued that warning in response to this Aaron Rupar tweet:
Trump: "Our Country was unnecessarily RANSACKED by the United States Supreme Court, which has become little more than a weaponized and unjust Political Organization. The sad thing is, they will only get worse! They wouldn’t even call out The Rigged Presidential Election of 2020,… pic.twitter.com/uHIa52IMJ3
MARY TRUMP: “This is a nightmare of America’s own making. This is what happens when you put in charge people as incompetent, greedy, corrupt and quite frankly stupid as Donald Trump, who never learn from history because they never learned history.” pic.twitter.com/u7gwl4s7Jc
Press coverage of this Trump voter-suppression wet dream focuses on barriers to voting. But it will prove a voter registration nightmare for harried elections officials as well.
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) calls the SAVE Act “one of the most despicable pieces of legislation I’ve come across in the many years I’ve been a legislator.”
Legal declaration of citizenship under penalty of perjury is already a requirement for voter registration. But providing documentary proof has not been a requirement for 250 years:
9% of all eligible voters do not have, or do not have easy access to, documentary proof of citizenship.
SAVE not only erects that new barrier to voting (it may amount to a poll tax to obtain the necessary documents), but exposes elections officials to criminal penalties, explains the Bipartisan Policy Center:
The SAVE America Act also exposes election officials to heightened legal and personal risk. It establishes criminal penalties for officials who register an applicant who fails to present documentary proof of citizenship, even if that applicant is in fact a U.S. citizen. The bill also authorizes private individuals to sue election officials under the same circumstances.
Together, these provisions could encourage overly cautious behavior (e.g., not accepting applications to register when an election official isn’t familiar with the type of documentation provided) and further strain an election workforce already facing high turnover and burnout.
“Criminal penalties” in the act could mean fines and/or five years in jail for elections officlals for doing their jobs. How are county election officials supposed to authenticate birth certificates they’ve never seen before, some dating back decades, and from 50 different states and U.S. territories? Not to mention elections officials facing lawsuits from MAGA conspiracy zealots. SAVE could dial election registration chaos up to 11.
Sen. Majority Leader John Thune last week told reporters that he did not have the votes to pass the SAVE Act to overcome the Senate filibuster which Republicans have no appetite for eliminating. He nevertheless said he would bring the bill to a vote this week “to put Democrats on the record.” Presumably, for opposing Donald Trump’s insistence that no one vote in this country without first proving their citizenship. Noncitizen voting, like voter impersonation fraud, is virtually nonexistent, but passing new barriers to voting is an itch Republicans can’t help but scratch. Even if it hurts their own voters.
In order to circumvent the filibuster, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), who is sponsoring the bill, Trump and other far-right proponents of the SAVE Act have been calling on Thune to invoke a “talking filibuster,” also known as “standing filibuster,” as a part of their pressure campaign. The method, rarely used in modern times, would force Senate Democrats to continuously hold the Senate floor by debating the bill in question in order to delay and avoid voting on the bill itself.
Such efforts have “almost always failed,” Matt Glassman, senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Government Affairs Institute, told TPM.
Trump wants the SAVE Act badly enough to lobby for it, so do not count on him not being able to pull a rabbit out of his MAGA hat. Make sure your Republican senators know what a shit show this bill is.
I’m sure Lindsey Graham will have that framed for him.
It’s a gross concept but Judis’s thesis is compelling nonetheless and it’s a must read. The thing you have to understand is that if he is an Alexander The Great or a Napoleon it is not a good thing and it says almost nothing about him personally other than he’s willing to break things because he’s too stupid to know the risks. One little excerpt:
Trump’s break with neoliberalism and liberal internationalism perfectly fits Hegel’s profile of the world-historical individual standing at the center of a transition from one era to another. So do his character and leadership. He didn’t merely appear to act out of a “morbid craving” for power and glory; that is at the center of his being. When Napoleon became first consul of the French Republic in 1799, he had one of his successful battles turned into a national commemoration. Trump has put his name on buildings and institutions and lusted after the Nobel Peace Prize. When Napoleon became emperor in 1804, he bestowed titles and riches on his family and supporters. Trump has enriched himself and his family.
Trump, like Hegel’s world-historical individuals, has ignored or repudiated “sacred interests” including the Constitution and its checks and balances. He tried to overturn the 2020 election. He shut down or fired leaders of independent agencies that Congress created. He fabricated pretexts for patently illegal actions by invoking laws that were intended for entirely different purposes — for instance, citing the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, intended to root out French insurrectionists, to justify deporting Venezuelans to a foreign prison without a hearing. His actions — which have included calling Somali immigrants “garbage” and belittling a female reporter as “piggy” — have been, in Hegel’s parlance, “obnoxious” and deserving of “moral reprehension.”
When Caesar vanquished his enemies, Hegel wrote, they “had the form of the constitution, and the power conferred by an appearance of justice, on their side.” Like Caesar, Trump sees himself as above ordinary morality or law. In the wake of his invasion of Venezuela, The New York Times asked Trump if he saw any limits on his global use of power. “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me,” he responded. “I don’t need international law.” This willingness to defy law and morality, and to pursue power and glory relentlessly, has been integral to world-historical individuals — and to their ability to detonate outworn ideas and institutions.
Great. Trump may go to his grave thinking that he’ll be remembered as a world historic figure and maybe he will be. But the odds are that he won’t be remembered fondly.
The thing is that all these prior examples of transformational figures were operating in a world that wasn’t armed with nuclear weapons and facing global climate change. I’m sure those previous transitions were existential for the cultures and peoples involved but this is an existential crisis for the entire planet and the whole human species. The risk is a million times greater. And Trump is a million times dumber.
This moment from February 2025 may go down as one of the most prescient exchanges in modern diplomatic history. Zelenskyy warned Trump that while the United States may feel protected by an ocean today, a time could come when America would need help in war. Trump scolded him… pic.twitter.com/8IJJYWiS0f
That moment from February 2025 may go down as one of the most prescient exchanges in modern diplomatic history. Zelenskyy warned Trump that while the United States may feel protected by an ocean today, a time could come when America would need help in war. Trump scolded him instead. Perhaps he should have listened.
Zelenskyy: First of all, during the war, everybody has problems, even you. But you have nice ocean and don’t feel now. But you will feel it in the future. God bless –
Trump: You don’t know that. You don’t know that. Don’t tell us what we’re going to feel. We’re trying to solve a problem. Don’t tell us what we’re going to feel.
Zelenskyy: I’m not telling you. I am answering on these questions.
Trump: Because you’re in no position to dictate that.
Vance: That’s exactly what you’re doing.
Trump: You are in no position to dictate what we’re going to feel. We’re going to feel very good.
On Saturday, Trump spent hours at his golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida, before attending a closed-door fundraiser for his MAGA Inc. super PAC at his Mar-a-Lago estate.Last weekend, he also golfed at another of his South Florida properties a day after witnessing the dignified transfer for six U.S. soldiers killed in the Iran war. That death toll rose this past week.
The president — who kept allies other than Israel in the dark about his war plans for Iran — also for the first time suggested the U.S. would need to lean on the international community to help oil tankers move through the Strait of Hormuz, where transportation has been severely disrupted, throwing global energy markets into a tailspin.
Iran has said it plans to keep up attacks on energy infrastructure and use its effective closure of the strait as leverage against the United States and Israel. A fifth of the world’s traded oil flows through the waterway.
“Many Countries, especially those who are affected by Iran’s attempted closure of the Hormuz Strait, will be sending War Ships, in conjunction with the United States of America, to keep the Strait open and safe,” Trump wrote on Saturday, later adding, “this should have always been a team effort.”
Maybe he shouldn’t have told America’s allies to go fuck themselves.
KILMEADE: Is it true you're telling your whole cabinet to wear the same shoes, these Florsheim shoes?
TRUMP: I have fun with it. When they tell me they have a problem, I say, 'let me get you a pair of shoes.' It seems to work out pretty well. Now they look all spiffy and nice.… pic.twitter.com/hwHqZaFHkr
KILMEADE: Is it true you’re telling your whole cabinet to wear the same shoes, these Florsheim shoes?
TRUMP: I have fun with it. When they tell me they have a problem, I say, ‘let me get you a pair of shoes.’ It seems to work out pretty well. Now they look all spiffy and nice.
It’s not unprecedented for his cultists to voluntarily dress like him. Remember this?
I’s a classic despot move. On some level he knows that many of these men probably don’t want to do it. And that’s what makes it so satisfying for him.
I ran across this essay from 2021 through David Roberts on BlueSky. I’ve never heard of this concept but man does it ring true to our current circumstances:
In communist countries, psychology could be a dangerous profession. As with any role, if you didn’t use your expertise in service of state propaganda, you were in danger of falling foul of authorities. The Polish psychologist Andrzej Lobaczewski was persecuted especially harshly, since the focus of his research was political power, and how it can be misused…
After spending his early life suffering under the Nazis, and then under the Soviet rule of Stalin, Andrzej Lobaczewski recognised that ruthless and disturbed individuals were strongly drawn to political power, and often constitute the government of nations. He began to study the relationship between power and personality disorders – like psychopathy – and coined the term ‘pathocracy’ to describe the phenomenon.
As he put it, pathocracy is a system of government ‘wherein a small pathological minority takes control over a society of normal people’. Since he was living under a ‘pathocratic’ regime himself, Lobaczewski took great risks studying this topic. He was arrested and tortured by the Polish authorities, and unable to publish his life’s work, the book Political Ponerology, until he escaped to the United States during the 1980s.
According to Lobaczewski, the transition to pathocracy begins when a disordered individual emerges as a leader figure. While some members of the ruling class are appalled by the brutality and irresponsibility of the leader and his acolytes, his disordered personality appeals to some psychologically normal individuals. They find him charismatic. His impulsiveness is mistaken for decisiveness; his narcissism for confidence; his recklessness for fearlessness.
Soon other people with psychopathic traits emerge and attach themselves to the pathocracy, sensing the opportunity to gain power and influence. At the same time, responsible and moral people gradually leave the government, either resigning or being ruthlessly ejected. In an inevitable process, soon the entire government is filled with people with a pathological lack of empathy and conscience. It has been infiltrated by members of the minority of people with personality disorders, who assume power over the majority of psychologically normal people.
Soon the pathology of the government spreads amongst the general population. As Lobaczewski wrote, ‘If an individual in a position of political power is a psychopath, he or she can create an epidemic of psychopathology in people who are not, essentially, psychopathic’ (2006, p.25). The pathocratic government presents a compelling simplistic ideology, promoting notions of future greatness, with a need to defeat or eliminate alleged enemies who stand in the way of this great future.
The government uses propaganda to stoke hatred towards enemies, and to create a cult of personality around the leader. In the general population, there is an intoxicating sense of belonging to a mass movement, inspiring loyalty and self-sacrifice. Present sacrifices become immaterial in the movement towards a glorious future. In addition, the mass movement inspires acts of individual cruelty, including torture and mass murder.
Yep. But there is some good news:
Once they possess power, pathocrats usually devote themselves to entrenching, increasing and protecting their power, with scant regard for the welfare of others. However, Lobaczewski also noted that pathocracies never become permanent. At some point, they are destined to fail, because their brutality and lack of moral principles are not shared by the majority of the population, who possess empathy and conscience. This was certainly true of the two pathocracies that Lobaczewski himself experienced, Nazi Germany and the communist regime of Poland.
I actually think it’s likely to fail even more quickly in America than those two regimes. Our psychos are very shallow, ignorant people who come from the realm of entertainment rather than the military or politics. And we are traditionally a feisty people with plenty of resilience so I’m hopeful that this particular iteration of pathocracy will be relatively short-lived. However, the damage is already great and they aren’t done yet. What emerges out of this carnage is hard to predict.
The rest of the essay is well worth reading if you have the inclination. I don’t think there’s any doubt that this administration, with its depraved, criminal leadership, ethnic cleansing policies and now wars of choice is pathological. They flaunt their degeneracy and corruption and the bloodthirsty way in which they treat allies and enemies alike says everything. It’s not just Trump. It’s become the whole party and institutions clamoring for its favor.
