David K. Shipler's Blog, page 2

By David K. Shipler 

            PANAMACITY, PANAMA—If President Trump takes over the Panama Canal, a wish he keeps pushing,he will be able to disrupt a significant chunk of global trade at his whim,rewarding and punishing countries he happens to like or dislike, as he has donewith various measures in his first few weeks in office. The canal’s neutrality,enshrined in a US-Panama treaty, would be in jeopardy, and this shortcutbetween the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans would be compromised.

            On a tripthrough half the canal’s length last Sunday, and in subsequent research in twomuseums, I learned how easy it would be to weaponize the vital waterway. Whilemost cargo through the canal is part of US trade, Trump could force longwaiting times on certain other vessels, impose different fees for differentcountries, or even bar passage to ships transporting goods to or fromdisfavored nations.

That is, he could add the canal asa tool in the global and domestic protection racket that he has already devisedwith on-and-off tariffs, interrupted military aid, funding cuts to schools anduniversities, sanctions against lawyers who oppose him, and the like. Nothingin his behavior, even toward his own citizens, suggests that he would respectthe Panama Canal’s universal accessibility, which served 170 countries last year.

Although Trump has railed against whathe calls the high transit fees charged by Panama, it’s a good bet that his long-termdesire is less about money than political leverage. His method of politicalleverage, based on bullying, would risk a popular backlash in Latin America,especially in Panama, and undermine US standing in the region.

Furthermore, the canal has waterproblems that only Panama can address from outside the strip that Trump wantsto own.

The thoroughfare relies on fresh waterfrom rivers and manmade lakes that also supply Panama’s growing population, so acompetition for a precious resource has to be managed by the government and theCanal Authority. Because the canal crosses an isthmus created by volcaniceruptions about 3 million years ago, the land between the oceans is high inplaces, navigated through a series of locks that raise ships from the Caribbeanby 85 feet, then lower them to the Pacific.

No pumps are needed. The waterflows naturally into the canal and then, as the locks’ enormous gates areopened for each vessel, about 52 million gallons of fresh water course down fromthe chambers into the sea. When a drought hits, as it did in 2023, fewer shipsare allowed to transit.

The Canal Authority could gobble upmore water, but that would deprive Panamanians. Let’s guess how much Trumpwould care about water supplies for the people of Panama. A promised solution,under the authority’s plans, would dam the Rio Indio, west of the canal,displacing some 12,000 people for a new reservoir—a six-year, $900-million project.The residents have been protesting; they’re being promised relocation to newfarmlands. Let’s guess how sensitive Trump would be to their plight.  

The canal is the product of dreams.In 1534, King Charles V of Spain senta team to survey a route, but it was deemed impossible. In 1869, PresidentUlysses S. Grant ordered a survey; as an army captain, he had led a unit of menand their families across the isthmus on the way to California. Cholera killed150 of them. In the late 1800s, France began a sea-level canal, but the depthof required excavations to cut through the highlands stymied the project, whichran out of money. The company was sold to the US, which completed the canalwith locks in 1914 and operated it until a transfer to Panama began afterPresident Jimmy Carter signed twotreaties in 1977. The turnover was highly controversial, with mostRepublicans adamantly opposed. Ratification, requiring two-thirds of the Senate,barely passed, 68-32.

One treaty provided joint managementuntil final transfer to Panama in 1999. The other commits both the US andPanama to “the neutrality of the Canal in order that both in time of peace andin time of war it shall remain secure and open to peaceful transit by thevessels of all nations on terms of entire equality, so that there will be nodiscrimination against any nation, or its citizens or subjects, concerning theconditions or charges of transit …”

Trump has shown no compunctionabout violating US laws, regulations, and international agreements, so the twotreaties are, in practice, subject to his whim. How he would take the canal isa question, though. By whatever means, “there would be war,” one experiencedcanal worker told me. “Panama has many friends.”

Then, too, running the canal requiresa plethora of skills, as anyone who sails through it can see. Timing shiptraffic is tricky, and repairs to locks cannot be deferred. Some ten thousandworkers are employed in specialized fields, including hydraulics, electricalsystems, welding, water management, computer operation, and marine piloting ofenormous vessels in confined spaces. Mishaps are a constant danger, with thepossibility of catastrophic consequences. If the US seized the canal andPanamanian workers boycotted, the waterway would be closed for as long as ittook the Trumpists to find and train replacements.

Panama’s government makes moneyfrom the canal, which apparently rankles Trump as he rants about fees. Infiscal year 2024, the CanalAuthority’s revenue totaled $4.99 billion, with a net income of $3.45billion, of which $2.47billion went to Panama’s national treasury, 8 percent of the government’sbudget. That’s not peanuts for Panama, but it’s less than four-hundredths ofone percent of the US federal government’s $6.5 trillion budget, not enough tomove the needle. Canal tolls averaged just $11.80 per ton of cargo.

            The feesare computed by complicatedformulas that begin with base rates of $15,000 for the smallest ship to$300,000 for the largest vessels that can fit through the newest locks. Tothose rates are added fees per unit of cargo capacity or actual loads—forexample, $2.05 per cubic meter of liquid natural gas in an enormous tanker, and$3.50 for a smaller ship; $2.75 per ton for a huge vehicle carrier, $6.00 forthe smallest ship. Loaded containers are charged from $35 to $45 each.

            Additional feesinclude mandatory tugs, running from $2,000 to $30,000, depending mainly on thesize of the ship; deck hands to secure lines; and $500 per cable attaching theship to locomotives running alongside the lock. Last Wednesday, a big SouthKorean auto carrier squeezed into a lock with no more than a foot or two ofspace on either side. In the hands of a canal pilot on the bridge and sixhighly skilled locomotive operators, the cables were constantly adjusted so theship threaded the needle perfectly and never even grazed the concrete walls. Thetoll added up to about $450,000, said a guide at the visitor’s center.

            The largestship to pass through the newest locks, completed in 2016 at a cost of $5.6billion, was as long as the Eiffel Tower and carried 13,926 containers. Thehighest toll so far, paid by the vessel Poland, was $1,205,511. The shipcarried 13,935 containers. A lot of money, but just $86.51 per container, notbad for saving the three to four weeks it would take between the Atlantic andPacific around Cape Horn. Ships have to wait an average of less than 24 hoursto enter the canal, whose 51 miles can be covered in 8 to 10 hours.

            You don’tneed warships to block the canal. All you have to do is commit passiveresistance: not provide a tug, not open a lock, and not do lots of other things.No wonder, when Trump reiterated his demand to retake the canal as he spoke toCongress last week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio looked as if he had indigestion.

                                                         By David K. Shipler 

When Vladimir Putin sent Russiantroops into Ukraine three years ago, he made several bets that might haveseemed like sure things to him then. One, that Ukraine would quickly fold. Two,that the United States had no staying power. Three, that Europe was toofractured to mount effective resistance.

            Ukraine hasfought valiantly, however. The US under President Biden mustered huge suppliesof weaponry and diplomatic support. Europe united to provide even more militaryaid than the US. And instead of crumbling, NATO added two new members, Swedenand Finland.

Nevertheless, Putin’s gamble finallybegan paying off last week, thanks to his admirer Donald Trump, who is soobviously volatile that next week might be different. Putin once labeled himunpredictable. By contrast, the Russian leader has the patience of a chessmaster—albeit an emotional player, as I wrote in the WashingtonMonthly two months before the invasion.

His long game relies on a wish anda belief: his wishful, messianic ambition to expand and restore a Russianempire, and his passionate belief that Western democracies are vulnerable tomoral decay, internal disorder, and external subversion.

He is acting in both thesedimensions simultaneously, and now has a willing (or unwitting) partner inPresident Trump.

Russia has tried to accelerate thedecline of democracies by exacerbating domestic divisions with onlinedisinformation during elections, which probably helped elect Trump in 2016. Moscowis promoting pro-Russian parties in Germany and other NATO states, a Russianinterference campaign that has been joined by Elon Musk and Vice President J.D. Vance, who have championed rightwing European parties with neo-Nazi sympathies.

Trump, apparently a propagandavictim, is parroting Russian lies by denouncing Ukrainian President VolodymyrZelensky as an unelected dictator who started the war, fictions that areembarrassing the United States. And for the first time in the 80 years sinceWorld War II, the trans-Atlantic security alliance of NATO is under attack byWashington in cahoots with Moscow. In other words, Trump’s re-election isalready proving a boon to Putin’s agenda.

Putin comes to this moment leadinga wounded, humiliated nation. And humiliation is a toxin, often overlooked as afactor among the military and economic forces that dominate internationalrelations. There is nothing like lost dignity to poison a leader’s behavior.

The 1991breakup of the Soviet Union into 15 separate countries was hailed in the West, butPutin called it, depending on translation, “the greatest [orgreat] geopolitical catastrophe of the century.” He clearly saw it as asecurity problem. As the Moscow-led Warsaw Pact disintegrated, its EastEuropean members eagerly courted membership in the opposing militaryalliance—the American-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization. And NATO, pledgedto defend any member subjected to attack, gladly picked them up one by one,trophies of the West’s supposed victory in the Cold War. The expansion of NATOto Russia’s borders violated multiple oral promises by American and WestEuropean leaders that the alliance would not be enlarged. Former Soviet leader MikhailGorbachev said he was “swindled.”

 The sting of Russia’s diminished stature wasadministered in a derisive comment by President Obama after Putin seized Crimeafrom Ukraine in 2014. "Russia is a regional power that is threatening someof its immediate neighbors, not out of strength but out of weakness," Obama declared.

 Putin’s response? To further humiliatehis country by invasion and internal oppression. By aggressive means, he seeks dignityby regaining the power to swagger across the global stage. And Trump is poisedto help him.

Putin’stwo-track strategy—pursuing both short-term security and historical destiny—isclear from his writings and speeches, which apparently go unread in the OvalOffice. They raise a question about what might restrain Putin on those twotracks. It seems obvious that only a strong counterweight to his ambitions—fromEurope and the US—presents a deterrent. The war has cost Moscow dearly; itsarmed forces have been badly damaged, much of its manufacturing has beenreoriented toward military industry, and its economic stress is growing acute.If allowed to play out longer, those elements in themselves might deter suchadventures. But not if the aggression is now rewarded.

Onthe security track, Putin’s demands include no NATO membership for Ukraine; noEuropean troops in Ukraine; and ideally a rollback of NATO from other nearbycountries, such as Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania (former Soviet republics), andformer Warsaw Pact members such as Poland and Hungary. Trump might grant mostof Putin’s wishes, including reducing the US military in Europe, with specificlimits or bans on certain tactical weapon systems capable of reaching Russianterritory. If NATO disintegrates under Trump’s unprecedented assault, we canimagine Putin in the Kremlin performing whatever rhapsodic acrobatics his72-year-old body would allow.

 It is conceivable that a Putin-Trump pactwould carve up Europe into spheres of influence, as the US, the Soviet Union,and the United Kingdom did at the 1945 Yalta conference after World War II. Trumpalso might be amenable to chopping up the world into American, Russian, andChinese zones of hegemony—a 21st century brand of colonialimperialism. That would betray American allies in Asia, particularly SouthKorea and Japan, and pave the way for China’s takeover of Taiwan.

Oddly,the supposed master of “the art of the deal” gave up three of his bargainingchips before negotiations over Ukraine even began. He, Vice President J.D.Vance, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have collectively staked out a veryweak position going into talks. They’ve already said that Ukraine will not joinNATO, will have to give up territory to Russia, and will not get the shield ofAmerican military support that has kept the country alive in the face of thebrutal Russian onslaught.

Whyforfeit your opening position before the opening? How does the tough guy in theWhite House think he can handle a canny fellow like Putin by caving in advance?

Itcan be argued, as Hegseth did, that the NATO and territorial concessions aremerely statements of reality. All 32 members would have to agree to admitUkraine into NATO; Hungary and possibly Turkey would be expected to object. Besides,admitting a member at war with Russia would mean a NATO war with Russia. As forRussian-occupied territory, the virtual stalemate on the battlefield can’t betranslated into a Ukrainian victory at the negotiating table. The realities won’tproduce Ukraine’s maximalist desires.

Still,those are positions to be traded away for something from Putin in return. Trumpseems keen to just end the war without caring about how it ends. Carelessnesswill lay the groundwork for another war, and for Trump’s ignominious legacy asan appeaser without a spine.

Nothingin Trump’s emerging policy addresses Putin’s second track: his messianicyearning to recreate the Russian empire, of which Ukraine is a linchpin.  

            “Putin’sattachment to Ukraine often takes on emotional, spiritual, and metaphysicalovertones,” wrote EugeneRumer and Andrew S. Weiss back in 2021. Alongside his tangible geopoliticalconcerns, they observed, he is driven by the personal compulsions of historicalfabulation and ethereal bonds to a land that he denies constitutes a country.

“By his own account,” writesMichael Hirsh of Foreign Policy, “Putin sees himself not as the heir tothe Soviets but as a champion of Russian civilization and Moscow’s Eurasianempire, whose roots extend back to a much earlier Vladimir—St. Vladimir, theGrand Prince of Kyiv from about 980 to 1015. St. Vladimir was ruler of what theRussians consider their first empire, the Slavic state known as KievanRus—based, of course, in Kyiv, the capital of what is now Ukraine.”

By David K. Shipler 

            There areseveral ways to curb law enforcement. One is to cut off funding literally, as aminority of Black Lives Matter protesters urged. Another is to redirect some moneyfrom uniformed officers to social workers and mental health counselors, whichis what many demonstrators meant by “defund the police.” Still another is torelease convicted violent assailants of police officers. Or to ignore specificlaws; declare no intention to enforce them; and to investigate, fire, andintimidate prosecutors and policing authorities who combat certain crimes.

            PresidentTrump is doing all of those things except, of course, moving money to mentalhealth services. He and his consigliere, Elon Musk, have frozen spendingbroadly enough to impede law enforcement. Trump has fired most of theinspectors-general who investigate waste, fraud, and abuse. He has frozenhiring at the IRS and discussedlaying off 9,000 employees to undercut tax enforcement. He has pardoned menfound guilty of violently attacking police officers on January 6. He has removedveteran specialists from counter-terrorism work in the Justice Department,robbing the country of expertise in a critical area of national security.

            He hasannounced that the law prohibiting Americans from bribing foreign officials toget contracts abroad will no longer beenforced. He has defied the congressional statute, unanimously upheld by theSupreme Court, that bans Chinese-owned TikTok and has promised no prosecutionsof companies that continue to distribute the prohibited platform.

            He has stymiedthree agencies that enforce laws protecting workers and customers of banks and creditcard companies by shuttingdown the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and illegallyfiring the Democratic-appointed chair of the National Labor Relations Boardand two of three Democrats on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.  

He has subordinated the JusticeDepartment to his political and personal vendettas by firing prosecutors whoworked on cases against him and his supporters among the Jan. 6 rioters. Thispresidential invasion of Justice and the FBI sweeps aside a half century ofethical standards.

Trump’s underlings have sent achill through federal law enforcement by compiling dossiers on some 5,000 FBIagents and staff who investigated those cases, and who seem likely be fired aswell. Lists have been drawn up of 3,600 new FBI agents and staff, alreadyvetted and trained but still on probation and thus easy to dismiss.

            Federalprosecutors have been ordered to drop corruption charges against New York CityMayor Eric Adams, not for lack of evidence, the acting deputy attorney generalmakes clear, but as a quid pro quo for the mayor’s cooperation with Trump’santi-immigrant agenda. Adams responded to that good news by allowing ICEagents into the city’s Riker’s Island detention center, evading a local lawbarring such access.

            That caseis particularly significant on three counts. First, Adams—a Democrat and formerpolice officer—paid a friendly visit to Trump in Florida for conversations onvarious topics, including immigration. Trump obviously sees him as an ally,indicating how blatantly this administration intends to convert criminaljustice into a tool of presidential power, dispensing with the rule of law.

 Second, the charges are to be dismissed“without prejudice,” a legal term meaning they could be reinstated later. Thatleaves Adam twisting in the wind, vulnerable to Justice Department retributionif he is insufficiently compliant with Trump’s wishes.

Third, the US Attorney for thedistrict, Danielle R. Sassoon, who refused the order to dismiss the case andresigned in protest, has sterling conservative credentials. A graduate of YaleLaw School, she clerked for the late Justice Antonin Scalia, a towering figure onthe right, and she is a member of the conservative Federalist Society.

            Herprincipled stance raises a question of whether the mainstream establishment onthe right who want to conserve the constitutional system will ever reacha critical mass of alarm sufficient to block the Trumpists. It seems unlikely,given Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party, which has marginalized andthreatened anyone who speaks up.

            Meanwhile,lawlessness prevails at the top. No obvious checks exist on Musk’s conflicts ofinterest as he and his young computer techs pervade agencies that award andoversee billiions in government contracts with his companies. Nothingguarantees that he won’t have access to privileged information on competitivebids, for example, or that he won’t be favored by pro-Trump, highly politicizedofficials who fear the president’s disfavor. Does anyone seriously imagine Muskor any other Trump buddy being prosecuted for corruption that might occur? Doesanyone seriously imagine FBI agents or prosecutors risking their jobs toinvestigate Trump allies?

            TheTrump-Musk rhetoric notwithstanding, the longterm goal of mass firings seemsless to cut government spending (employees’ salaries make up only5 to 6 percent of the budget) than to open space for an influx of highlyideological officials to politicize agencies that have been traditionallyprofessional and nonpartisan.

            Creatingvacuums in law enforcement is a key element of the strategy. As they arefilled, even partially, they stand to be truly weaponized, reversing Trump’s claimthat they already were, against him. Yes, neutral law enforcement agencies tendto be biased—against criminals, notes Jason Stanley of Yale, author of ErasingHistory.

            As everyautocrat knows, you can’t rule without having control over the policingapparatus, plus the military and the intelligence gatherers. Trump made war onthose three institutions in his first term. Now he is moving to co-opt them. 

By David K. Shipler 

                One of President Trump’s campaign slogans most popularwith his supporters was the mantra, “Promises Made, Promises Kept.” But themost important promises that presidents are obligated to keep are those made bytheir country. And in merely three weeks, Trump has broken multiple solemn promisesmade by the United States, many longstanding and life-saving.

                His message is clear: Don’t trust America.

Ifyou work for our soldiers in war and are promised safe passage to the US, don’tbelieve it. If you’re promised continuing treatment with HIV medication, don’tbelieve it. If the world’s leading democracy promises to keep supporting yourpro-democracy efforts in your not-so-democratic country, don’t believe it. Ifyou’ve obtained a hard-won promise to fund effective work combatingsex-trafficking, civil conflict, ethnic strife, or radicalization that leads toterrorism, don’t believe it. If you have a subcontract or a lease or anemployment commitment from a non-profit organization funded by the US, don’ttrust it. Don’t think that promised funds for hospitals, ports, roads, or otherdevelopment projects already underway will actually be paid—unless the money iscoming from China.   

                Don’t trust any international agreement with theUnited States, not on nuclear weapons, climate change, or trade. Don’t believe inany alliance with Washington. Don’t think that common security interests oreconomic interdependency protects you from a blizzard of broken promises.

Ifyou’re in the US, don’t believe the promise of a written contract based on federalfunding; it can be scuttled at midnight. If you’re a federal employee, don’tbelieve in the promises of the law, civil service protection, due process, oreven plain ethics; you can be kicked out of your office in an instant. Don’tbelieve that your long expertise will protect you; in fact, it is likely tohurt you, since the Trump movement resents, vilifies, and distrusts “experts.”

Donot, under any circumstances, text or email anything sensitive, particularlywith such terms as “gender” or “diversity.” Use the phone if you have tocommunicate. Don’t trust your coworker, who might be an informant.

Theopposite side of this coin is a panoply of new assumptions. If you’re anAmerican taxpayer, you can assume that much of your money will be siphoned off intothe pockets of corrupt Trump acolytes. Assume that no watchdogs will catch thegraft, since Trump fired some 17 agencies’ neutral inspectors-general—theinvestigators who combat waste, fraud, and abuse. You can assume thatTrump-favored businesses will get waivers to avoid tariffs in exchange for moneyor loyalty to the Dear Leader. You can assume that your Social Security numbersand private bank account numbers will no longer be safeguarded, now that they’vebeen accessed by Elon Musk’s gang. They could even be sold for profit.

Ifyou use a credit card or have a bank account or mortgage, assume more risk as Trumpassaults the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.  Assume that you will face more discriminationin the workplace if you are Black, Latino, female, or gay as Trump emasculatesthe Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and empowers Musk, who displayed masteryof the Nazi-style salute.

 If you’re in a university, your promised fundingfor health research has already been suspended, halting projects in midstream,and you should assume that future research will be very scarce. A theme of theTrumpist movement’s hatred of the accomplished “elite” is its campaign against institutionsthat train and house them. America’s longstanding promise of advanced research,which has garnered more Nobel Prizes than any other country’s, is coming to anend. Top scientists should look for greener pastures elsewhere.

                This new American landscape, littered with brokenpromises, is likely to have consequences. When Trump suddenly halted flights tothe US for Afghans who had risked everything to help Americans during the war—peoplenow cleared for refugee status after years in hiding from the Taliban—his colossalbetrayal was denounced by US troops who’d fought there and more quietly in the expatriatecommunity of Afghans already in the US. In the next conflict, wherever itoccurs, how foolish would you have to be to sign up with an unreliable partner?

                The same can be said of foreign leaders. As a rule,they’re keen on their own survival, and when they see Trump hating America’sfriends—Canada, Mexico, Panama, the Europeans—their calculations are sure to change.How reckless would they have to be to place all their chips on American loyaltyinstead of hedging their bets? China and Russia are bound to benefit.

                A brain drain from government also seems probable.Many skilled federal employees can earn more money in the private sector, andit’s hard to imagine good people with options choosing to serve their countrywhen their country doesn’t serve them, denying them basic honor and dignity.

                 The resultmight be just what Trumpists want. Their movement rode to power on the wave of thepublic’s disrespect for government, and making government worse feeds those popularpassions of resentment. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy: denounce the evils ofgovernment, excise them with a butcher’s cleaver, and leave a maimed remnant ofgreater dysfunction to prove your case.

Then,populate the power centers with agents of zealotry to wield nefarious meansaimed not at making considered reforms but rather at spreading ideologicalconformity and political loyalty in government and far beyond, into civil society.It is a totalist mindset.

Can itbe stopped? Trump is trampling the centerpiece of the constitutional system—theseparation of powers among the three branches of government—and has moved sofast that the checks and balances cannot keep up. Nearly all his brokenpromises also break the law, but the law has never been a restraint on him, notas a businessman and not as president.

Indeed,he and Musk are treating the federal government as if it were their own privatecompany. Musk’s email urging federal employees to resign with pay untilSeptember was reminiscent of his housecleaning email to his employees atTwitter, now X, after he bought the platform. It carried the same subject line:“A fork in the road.” It should have read, “A knife in the back.”

Thequestion is whether the two other branches of government, conceived by theFramers to prevent dictatorship, will act decisively and be obeyed. Thelegislative branch has punted. Dominated by Republicans who either fear oradmire Trump, neither house of Congress has fulfilled its constitutional role,not even to the point of blocking his wacky cabinet nominees to date.

IfCongress acted, would Trump defer? He’s been ignoring its legal budget andprocedural mandates, with hardly a peep of protest from his Republicans.

Wouldhe defer to the courts? Federal district court judges have been imposing temporaryinjunctions on some of his expansive power grabs (but not all) pending fullhearings and rulings. Yet it’s not clear that those orders have been followed.

TheUnited States Agency for International Development, USAID, remains essentiallyclosed, with almost all workers on administrative leave or ordered to returnhome from overseas, despite a judge’s temporary injunction, which applied only tothe employees. The judge did not unfreeze the freeze on foreign aid.

Noris it known how to enforce another judge’s order to block the Musk team’saccess to the Treasury Department’s payment systems, and to destroy any downloadedmaterial. Courts in such matters rely on deference by the law-abiding, withcontempt citations as punishment. There is no such deference in the Trumptakeover. Federal marshals enforce court orders, but could they realisticallybe sent to keep prohibited people out of the Treasury Department’s securecomputers?

Ajudge also ordered a pause in the Musk “fork-in-the-road” program offering paythrough September to employees who resigned by Feb. 6. But it’s not clear whatwill happen to those who want to rescind their resignations if the courts findthe program illegal. Nor is there any congressional authorization to pay themfor not working: in other words, a scam.

Theseand other cases of expanding executive power are likely to end up in theSupreme Court, where a rightwing 6-3 majority prevails. It’s widely assumedthat it will grant Trump a win in at least one area—the president’s power tofire commissioners of agencies Congress has made semi-independent. Trump has justdone that, too, in violation of existing laws deemed likely to be swept away bythe extremist high court.

Afinal question is whether this descent into unconstitutional lawlessness can bereversed, or whether it will reach a point of no return. The semi-autocracy thatTrump and millions of his voters seem to desire will surely be pursued. We haveseen only the beginning. Will Americans eventually rise up? Or will the publicbe governed by complacency, acquiescence, and fear? Better hedge your bets.

By David K. Shipler 

                Anyonewho has seen the overthrow of a country’s government, either peacefully or by force,must be watching the United States with an uneasy sense of familiarity. In lessthan two weeks since his inauguration, President Trump and his zealous staffhave committed offenses typically associated with a sudden takeover of anunstable autocracy.

Is this what most voters whoelected Trump wished for? While stopping short of arresting political opponents(so far), the new regime has threatened criminal investigations of disfavoredofficials, begun ideological purges in government agencies, ordered federalworkers to inform on colleagues, yanked security details from former officials whocriticized Trump, risked the health of millions by halting worldwide humanitarianprograms, erased essential medical information from government websites, pressedcolleges to report on foreign students’ supposed antisemitism, undone rulesagainst racial and gender discrimination, dictated that schools nationwide indoctrinatechildren with a “patriotic” curriculum, and more.

 The widespread destruction of norms and institutions,aimed at creating immense vacuums to be filled with a new belief system, hasnever before been seen in the United States. It reflects an aspiration thatmight be called totalism—not totalitarianism, which connotes completesubservience of the population to the will of the state. But rather, an effortto infuse both government and civil society, as totally as feasible,with a comprehensive ideology. Part of that is borne of a distaste for governmentitself, except when used to expand raw presidential power.

This cannot be accomplished withinthe confines of the Constitution’s separation of powers and the republic’s decentralizationof authority to the states. Therefore, Trump has been ignoring the legislativebranch—the laws passed by Congress—and in one case so far (not shutting downTikTok), ignoring both the legislative and judicial branches. He also seemspoised to bully recalcitrant states by withholding federal aid.

Whether either branch rises todefend its key role in America’s ingenious constitutional system remains anopen question. Voters might not care or be aware. Fewer than half of Americans could name the three branches of government, whose checks andbalances devised by the Framers have been a critical bulwark against authoritarianismsince 1789. Yet in Trump’s Republican Party, only an occasional murmur ofconcern has been heard from legislators, who seem indifferent to their emasculation.

Nor is the judicial branchdependable now. Two federal judges have stopped two Trump orders with temporaryinjunctions—one halting the freeze in domestic spending, the other blocking whathe called Trump’s “blatantly unconstitutional” elimination of birthrightcitizenship, which is enshrined in the 14th Amendment. But Trump inhis first term installed plenty of right-wing extremists in the federaljudiciary, right up to the Supreme Court, with more to come. The country is nowin a state of profound uncertainty.

Predictability is a cardinalprinciple of the rule of law, which is critical to a functioning democracy. Transparencyand stability are elements in the definition of the rule of law as devised bythe WorldJustice Project, a creation of the American Bar Association to monitor countriesaround the world. Significantly, the US ranked only 26th in theproject’s 2024 rule-of-lawindex. Under Trump, its standing will surely plummet. (Denmark, by the way,was No. 1. That includes Greenland, which better hope it can hang on.)

On day one of his administration,Trump damaged the rule of law by his sweeping pardons of about 1500 rioters whostormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, hundreds of whom had been convicted ofviolence against police officers. As long as they were acting to support Trump,he considered them political prisoners and “hostages,” as he put it. Releasing prisonersof the former regime is a salient feature of a coup-like takeover of government.

In the area of civil law, Trump aspresident has been a serial violator. He fired the inspectors general of adozen agencies, ignoring the federal law that requires that he give Congress 30days notice and specific reasons for dismissing the officials who investigatewaste, fraud, and abuse. Trump clearly wants no neutral oversight to checkcorruption that he and his minions will commit.

He has fired Democraticcommissioners of the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission and the NationalLabor Relations Board, paralyzing or politicizing the agencies and ignoringlaws that require him to make various findings of cause, such as malfeasance ornegligence.

By freezing spending on foreign aidand temporarily pausing domestic spending, he ignored the fundamental role ofCongress in budgeting and appropriating funds—a role chiseled into Article I, Section8 of the Constitution—and also the 1974 Impoundment Control Act requiring thepresident to spend appropriated funds unless he gets Congress to review andapprove his move. Trump simply evaded Congress, possibly setting up a legalchallenge in which he apparently hopes the Supreme Court will find the lawunconstitutional.

In fact, that seems to be theoverall strategy of his legal advisers: to push and push executive power as faras possible to see where the right-wing Supreme Court finally draws the line. Theadministration will probably win a few to expand presidential authority. Since most“conservative” justices have shown their inclination to make policy instead ofjudgments, they might approve executive branch authority where they like thepolicies, even though they’re eager to overrule its authority on policies theydislike. The Court recently reversed longstanding precedent giving regulatory agenciesbroad latitude to interpret amiguous statutes to regulate private industry, inline with traditional conservatism’s view that such power usurps thelegislature’s role. By that reasoning, Trump is clearly on the wrong side, yetit’s not certain that the “conservative” justices will see it that way.

“Conservative” isn’t the right termany longer. We need updated vocabulary. What do Trumpist “conservatives” wantto conserve? Not the constitutional separation of powers. Not the rule of law.The Trumpists bear little resemblance to the revolutionaries who forged ademocracy. They are more like counterrevolutionaries.

If the pendulum eventually swingsand the counterrevolutionaries are defeated, a big question would arise. Once restraintsare eroded under Trump, the freedom to abuse can pass to anyone in power. Trumpistsmight ask themselves whether Democrats will do the same things when (if) they regainthe White House. Will they be less civic-minded than they have been, lessdevoted to the democratic norms that they have honored? Will they exploit forthemselves whatever enhanced authority Trump has acquired for the presidency?Will they purge, prosecute, freeze, and destroy whatever Republicans havecreated? Will they mimic Trump’s movement and proceed as if they haveoverthrown the government?

If so, if the system is too fragileto withstand the Trumpists’ onslaught, too brittle to correct itself, then anew, tragic chapter of American history will be written.    

By David K. Shipler 

     Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying,”she said: “One can’t believe impossible things.”

 “I daresay youhaven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always didit for half-an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as siximpossible things before breakfast.” 

                TheUnited States is capitulating to one-man rule so rapidly that only LewisCarroll could describe the absurd fantasies that Americans have accepted.

                Considerthis: The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, flatterer and purchaser of PresidentDonald Trump, gives two straight-arm, Nazi-type salutes at a Trump InaugurationDay rally, and the Anti-Defamation League, which touts itself as “the leadinganti-hate organization in the world,” dismisses it as “an awkward gesture in amoment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute.”

Judge for yourself. Watch these twovideos, one of Musk, one of Hitler: Compare.

And consider this: The number ofillegal entries from Mexico drops to a four-year low, and Trump declares astate of emergency at the southern border. The country’s oil and gas productionreaches an all-timehigh, and Trump declares an energy emergency. The violent crime rate dropssteeply, lowest among non-citizens, and Trump pictures a crime wave driven by immigrants.The society spends decades combating discrimination against minorities andwomen of merit, and Trump calls for a meritocracy by demolishing the programs thatare achieving it. What’s more, big companies rush to follow his lead back intobigotry.

To appear to be a solver, Trumpneeds problems to tackle. And since his remade Republican Party is still averseto attacking the real problems of its own working-class supporters, who have financialtrouble in everyday life, Trump needs fake problems. Then he can conjure upfake solutions to the fake problems, crow about his progress, and—evidently—foolmost of the people most of the time. And that’s a most distressing feature ofthis new American era, which might be called Make America Gullible Again.

It is not remarkable that acharlatan could come along in American politics. The world is full of conartists. They once traveled from town to town selling magical potions to makeyour hair grow or infuse perpetual youth. Now they’re online weaselingmillions of dollars from lonely people lured into the mirages of love affairsand financial windfalls. And also online, Trump will benefit from his billionairefriends who run social media companies. In trepidation or collaboration, theyhave abandoned fact-checking and opened their platforms to Trumpist alternativerealities.

Are most Americans as lazy about thetruth as Trump seems to think? His artificially bleak portrait of their country setshim up as the rescuer, as long as they accept his false premises. How manybelieved him when he said in his inaugural address that he’d “end the Green NewDeal?” The Green New Deal was proposed but never enacted. How many believedthat he’d “revoke the electric vehicle mandate?” A mandate doesn’t exist, only atax incentive to buy one. How many believed that auto workers were struggling,when employment in the industry hit a 16-year high in July? How many believedthat “China is operating the Panama Canal?” Notso. Two ports are managed by a Hong Kong company, but the canal is controlledby the Panamanian government.

And so on. Inflation is down, unemploymentis down, the stock market is up, and Trump will surely take credit for all thatand more. Even today, his staff could write a schedule of celebratory boasts tobe made in coming weeks. In fact, have you noticed that now, on his first fullday in office, the “American decline” he so bitterly condemned has ended? Lookaround. It’s not there. At least not as he means it. Decline of another sort,fostered by Trumpism itself, is gathering momentum.

 In this world beyond the Looking Glass, non-problemsare treated as real and real problems are ignored. The real problems for theRepublican’s new constituency—those with less than a college degree—include structuraland policy defects that impede workers’ prosperity. Hourly wages remain low,with legal minimums being raised reluctantly only at the state level, not nationwideby Congress. Union membership has fallen into the abyss, and Republicans will notfacilitate workplace organizing. Resistance to the social safety net remainsfirm among Trumpist Republicans who still won’t respond to their voters’ needsby increasing housing subsidies, supporting health care, protecting workers’safety, reforming tax laws, or taking other steps to benefit those who putTrump back in office.

It remains to be seen whetherAmericans who are having trouble making ends meet will grow disenchanted whenTrump tells them, as he must at some point, that they are living in the new “goldenage” that he promised. Last November, Democrats learned how angry people get atcandidates who brag about an economy whose good statistics don’t match the hardshipsof individual households.

If you expect the disconnect betweenupbeat pronouncements and everyday life to catch up with Republicans eventually,a cautionary note, however: Remember how Trump has messed with Americans’ heads.He has led the country into a Bizarro World whose up is down, whose crimes arevirtues, whose felons are heroes, whose laws are illegal, and whose mostprominent sinner is rescued from death and empowered by God.  

The lasting consequence of thisinverted universe is its normalization. Even beyond Trump, America will bebroken, perhaps for a long while, perhaps permanently. Faith of the democratickind—not in the divine but in the common values of fellow citizens andtheir institutions—has been swept aside, and not just at the righthand end ofthe political spectrum.

On the left, too. Malfeasance byone side begets malfeasance by the other. The country is losing an essentialelement of every pluralistic system: the rule of law. Its demise has been on dramaticdisplay in recent days.

Trump promised to have hispolitical opponents prosecuted, his nominee for FBI director published an “enemieslist,” and President Biden replied with preemptive pardons to protect those whohad stood up for legality and ethics. Republicans threatened to investigateBiden’s relatives, provoking Biden to pardon much of his family as well. Itwould have been healthier, if uglier, to let the courts rebuff the politicalpersecutions and thereby cleanse the system. But the system itself has becomesuspect, not only in the minds of the powerless but also of the politicalclass. This is acutely dangerous.

In Vietnam during the war, asardonic quip circulated that even what you saw with your own eyes was a rumor.So, Republicans have successfully revised what we saw with our own eyes in theJanuary 6 Capitol takeover by Trumpist thugs, making it seem like a rumor, and blockingthe united revulsion that would have been society’s normal response to such an attackon the sacred democratic process. Trump compounded the offense, right after hisinauguration, by issuing pardons and sentence commutations for nearly all thosewho pled guilty or were convicted by juries for crimes ranging from seditiousconspiracy to assaults on Capitol police officers. Remember the old RepublicanParty’s support for law enforcement?

These sweeping pardons by bothpresidents, combined with the Supreme Court’s unwarranted grant of criminalimmunity to former presidents for “official” acts, constitute a deep confessionof cynicism and distrust in the American criminal justice system. The law is nowseen as little more than a shape-shifting tool of favoritism or vengeance. It canbe twisted against those at the highest levels of politics in the world’sforemost democracy as easily as in the world’s most corrupt dictatorship.

Not long ago, this would have been consideredimpossible. But as the Queen says in Alice in Wonderland, to believeimpossible things, all you need is practice. And Americans are getting plentyof that.

By David K. Shipler 

                The onetrue thing that Pete Hegseth said in his Senate confirmation hearing for DefenseSecretary this week was that the military is a better place for minorities thanperhaps any other American institution. What he fails to recognize is how muchwork it has taken to get there, and how much it will take to stay there. Thatpoint was not even made by Democratic senators as they berated him about hishistory of sexual assault, alcohol abuse, and lack of management experience. Itwas a missed opportunity for serious discussion.

Hegseth railed, mostlyunchallenged, against programs promoting DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion)and pictured “wokeness” as antithetical to the lethality essential in afighting force. Yet actual experience shows the opposite: racial, religious,and gender tolerance has to be taught, sadly, and if it isn’t, fissures canopen to the military’s detriment.

In 1971, after the decay ofmilitary cohesion as racial tensions and violence spiked among troops duringthe Vietnam War, the Pentagon established the Defense Race Relations Institute,now named the Defense Equal OpportunityManagement Institute (DEOMI). There, military trainers operate on apragmatic philosophy about the interaction between bias and readiness. Theysummed it up for me years ago, when I visited DEOMI several times whileresearching ACountry of Strangers: Blacks and Whites in America: You can think anythingyou want; that’s your business. But what you do becomes our business ifyou undermine your unit’s cohesion and fighting effectiveness.    

Like most conservatives, Hegseth apparentlybelieves that the natural landscape is a level playing field, and that doingnothing will guarantee a meritocracy devoid of privilege for one group oranother. (Or, perhaps more likely, he and other conservatives make this self-servingargument to preserve white males’ longstanding advantages.)

Not only is Hegseth’s position obliviousto the nation’s history, it’s also blind to the future. Halting diversity effortsallows institutions to snap back into old patterns of bias and discrimination. Themilitary “does not do the equal opportunity and fair treatment business becauseit’s the nice thing to do,” I was told back then by DEOMI’s director oftraining, army Colonel Eli A. Homza Jr., who was white. “We do it because wehave learned that if we don’t do it, we will not have cohesive and battle-readyunits.”

The military is hardly free ofbias, of course, and good training can illuminate how it works. Often encrypted,the shifting shapes of prejudice find forms that seem acceptable at the moment.Criticizing policies that “lower standards,” for example, plays to the society’slongstanding assumptions that Blacks are inferior. Hegseth uses the accusation tooppose women in combat. The stereotype is pernicious, for it can impede theirchances for promotion and, among troops in the field, corrode mutual confidenceacross the lines of race, ethnicity, gender, and religion—whatever group istargeted by the generalization.

To expose and correct such images, DEOMIruns a battery of courses online and in person, lasting from one week to threemonths, designed to educate seasoned officers, senior enlisted personnel, and DefenseDepartment civilians in the dynamics of prejudice; the history of socialinequality; federal anti-discrimination law; facilitation skills; and—accordingto one course catalogue—how to “apply prevention and response strategies toprevent problematic behaviors to include harassment, retaliation, reprisal,hazing, and bullying.”

Trainees return to their units as advisorsto commanders, as commanders themselves, or to pass their training on to others.

Conservatives often denouncediversity workshops as attempts to blanket whites with an indictment of guilt.Indeed, DEOMI’s methods in the early days were confrontational, with facilitators,badgering and cajoling participants until they confessed their biases and werethereby purged. “Chase the honky around the room,” some army critics called it.By the late 1970s, the approach had mellowed into a more academic rendering ofthe patterns of prejudice, which allowed trainees to see the issues spread outon the table, all the better to understand and rectify them. How it’s donetoday I can’t say, but it’s unlikely that colonels would enjoy sergeants trashingthem as bigots.

 Not that the military is free from bias even with DEOMI, ofcourse. Nor can it be free from the opposite extreme of unforgiving dogmatismthat triggers conservatives’ complaints about having to walk on eggshells.

To take the temperature periodically, DEOMIoffers commanders a ClimateSurvey in which the rank and file are asked whether people in their unit “believethat everyone has value, regardless of their sex, race or ethnicity, or sexualorientation.” They are asked whether they had witnessed people being mistreatedor excluded because of their gender, being “intentionally touched in unwantedor sexual ways, or being shown sexually explicit materials or receiving sexualcomments about your appearance or body “that make you uncomfortable, angry, orupset.”  Similar questions are posed about whether they hearracial/ethnic jokes, stereotypes, offensive terms, or experience “alack of respect because of your race/ethnicity.”

Survey results are not made public,but I was told that they generally show white men answering quite differently fromwomen, Blacks, and other minorities, even in their perceptions of what happens to others. It’s not surprising that people targeted by slights anddiscrimination feel the sting much more than members of the majority, but it's a reality check for commanders. And thatdisparity undermines Hegseth’s insistence that all is well, or would be withoutthose infernal intrusions of diversity policy.

            He saidthis in his Senate hearing: “What gender you are, what race you are, your viewson climate change, or whether you are a person of conscience, and your faithshould have no bearing on whether you get promoted or whether you’re selectedto go to West Point, or whether you graduate from Ranger school. The only thingthat should matter is how capable are you at your job, how excellent are you atyour job. I served in multi-ethnic units every place that I worked, every placethat I served. None of that mattered. But suddenly we reinject DEI and criticalrace theory, dividing troops into different categories—oppressors and oppressed—inways that they otherwise just want to work together.”

It would be useful to hear fromBlacks, Muslims, and women in his units to learn if they had such perfect experiences.It’s possible; combat can be a unifier. Yet if they did, you can bet it was largelybecause of the military’s decades of work that Hegseth deplores.

 It's not clear whether the future DefenseSecretary knows about DEOMI or will try to demolish what has become a respectedinstitution. Located at Patrick Space Force Base in Florida, it survived thefirst Trump administration, and while its mission statements contain words detestedby the right-wing—“diversity” and “inclusive”—it has tinkered with the languageto embrace broad management goals “to optimize total force readiness.” Thatmight have appeal even for Hegseth.

By David K. Shipler                 

                As ofJanuary 20, when Donald Trump is inaugurated, the world’s three strongestnuclear powers will all be led by criminals. Only Trump has been convicted, butVladimir Putin faces an outstanding arrest warrant from the InternationalCriminal Court—for his war crime of abducting children from Ukraine to Russia—andXi Jinping should face one for his genocide against the Muslim Uighurs in China.Trump has obviously been found guilty of much less—mere business fraud—althoughhe was justifiably charged with mishandling classified documents; obstructionof justice; and attempting, in effect, to overturn the linchpin of electoraldemocracy.

                Theworld is in the throes of criminality. Where government is weak—orcomplicit—organized crime or terrorism often fills the vacuum. In Mexico,cartels manufacture drugs freely and now control the conduits of illegalimmigration into the United States. In areas of Myanmar ravaged by internalcombat, narcotics producers are in open collusion with Chinese traffickers, andkidnap victims are forced onto the internet to scam the unsuspecting out oftheir life savings. And so on, amid a sprawling disintegration of order.

    Moreover, warfare has widened farbeyond the familiar headlines. Not only in Ukraine, the Middle East, and Sudan,but in 42countries total, wars are raging: invasions, insurgencies, ethnicconflicts, and militias fighting over precious resources. Combined with droughtand storms fueled by the earth’s unprecedented warming, the wars are uprootingmillions in the most massive human displacement of modern history. As of lastJune, an estimated 122.6million people were living as refugees worldwide after having been drivenfrom their homes by violent conflict, persecution, and human rights violations,according to the UNHCR, the United Nations Refugee Agency. Another 21.5million people each year, on average, are forced out by droughts, floods,wildfires, and stifling temperatures.

                  Intothis maelstrom come Trump and his eccentric minions with their wrecking ballsand decrees, soon to be taught the inevitable Lesson of Uncertainties: Theoutside world can be neither controlled nor ignored by Washington. It intrudesin unexpected ways, defies prediction, and resists domination. It pushespresidents around.

    Therefore, while some sure things areprobably in store, it’s more useful to examine questions, not answers,regarding what the new year might bring.

    First, will Trump’s bluster andimpulsive promises to end wars with his social media rants bear fruit? He likesto think of himself as a dealmaker, as we’ve been told endlessly by  people who know him. But he is a bully, not achess player, and he seems less canny than his opponents in Beijing and Moscow.Most of the ideologues and acolytes he’s naming to his administration lookill-equipped to deal with this fragile, threatening world.  

    A modestly hopeful scenario rests intwo wars most susceptible to resolution: Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Hamas, whichare both approaching a turning point toward diplomacy.

    If Trump proves skilled enough tonavigate through the various parties’ maximalist demands, both Russia andUkraine might be ready for a halt. After nearly three years, the fighting ispractically a stalemate, even as Russia gains some ground and exhausts theUkrainians.

    On the one hand, Russia has paiddearly in lives, military hardware, economic security, and its own domesticfreedoms. It has revealed its weaknesses as Putin has damaged its globalstanding by his humiliating dependence on Iranian drones, North Koreanammunition, Chinese technology, and  evenNorth Korean troops. Far from dividing NATO, his invasion added to its ranks byscaring Finland and Sweden into joining. A rational, non-messianic leadershipwould look at the debit side of the balance sheet and see Putin’s war as adeterrent to future adventures.

    On the other hand, Putin is, infact, a messianic leader devoted to reestablishing the Soviet empire, whichbroke apart into 15 countries in 1991. He is also patient. He plays the longgame. And his vision might pay off if Trump makes good on his anti-Ukraine postureand curtails aid. Europeans see the risk of an emboldened Russia and a widerwar, which Trump may not recognize.

    In diplomacy as in warfare, timingis key. Back in November 2022, General Mark Milley, Chairman of the JointChiefs of Staff, urgedUkraine and Russia to negotiate, because he thought that total military victorywas unlikely for either side. Obviously, he was absolutely right. “You want tonegotiate from a position of strength,” he declared. “Russia right now is onits back.”  He might have been channelingCarl von Clausewitz, who noted that war is diplomacy by other means. Flipping thataphorism around, it’s clear that negotiating strength at the bargaining tablereflects the reality on the battlefield.

               TheGaza war, after 15 months of atrocities, might also be close to a pause,although certainly not a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. UnlessTrump undergoes a conversion, he is likely to be the worst possible presidentto help Israel and the Palestinians toward a lasting settlement. At best, he mightget a temporary truce. The remnants of Hamas are trying for a ceasefire thatwill keep alive the embers of their presence in Gaza, which Israel isdetermined to extinguish permanently, even by bombing massively, killing andmaiming innocents, disrupting food and medical supplies, and obliteratinghospitals and schools.

President Biden and his staff haveworked hard on a ceasefire, have come close, but have not been able to get Hamasto release all the Israeli hostages it seized on October 7, 2023, or to getIsrael to withdraw its troops. Biden hasn’t put the screws to Israel for itsdevastating military onslaught, and Trump is poised to give Israel carte blancheto “do what you have to do,” as he reportedly told Israeli Prime Minister BenjaminNetanyahu. Trump’s prospective ambassador to Isdrael, Mike Huckabee, supportsIsraeli annexation of the West Bank, which would finally close off the optionof a Palestinian state as a means of resolving the conflict. Ending wars is thefirst of Trump’s challenges.

Second, Iran is a question mark.Since its two failed missile attacks on Israel and Israel’s near demolition of Iran’sair defenses and proxies—Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon—the Tehran governmentappears vulnerable both internationally and domestically. But militantauthorities that are backed into a corner can go in different directions. Iran’scomplex society, with pro-Western yearnings, might produce more conciliatoryleadership. Or, the government, temporarily debilitated, might race to build anarsenal of nuclear weaponry.

One of Trump’s most thoroughlystupid acts as president was withdrawing from the intricately negotiatedagreement that halted for a time Iran’s progress toward nuclearization. Thecountry is now on the cusp of becoming as untouchable as North Korea.

The short-term military answerwould be an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, with the help of USaircraft and bunker-busting bombs that are beyond Israel’s capability. Israelappears to have laid the groundwork for such an attack. Would Trump give thegreen light? Would he commit US forces? He’s made a point of wanting out ofwars abroad. But perhaps he knows that a nuclear Iran would generate aregion-wide nuclear arms race to include Saudi Arabia and other Arabpetro-states.

In summary, the developments arisein an era of remarkable instability. Syria, a keystone in the Middle East,teeters on the brink of failed statehood after the fall of the house of Assad.Yemen collapses into civil war. A traumatized Israel lashes out violently at widespreadtargets of opportunity with no conceptual framework achieving a future withoutwarfare.

Third, China’s economic andmilitary expansionism raises critical questions of how to manage a relationshipthat ought to include cooperation as well as competition. Symbolism andlanguage, always woven into international affairs, are not Trump’s strong suit.He likes insults and threats, which might work with allies but rarely withadversaries. He and the militant China hawks he’s appointing, such as Senator MarcoRubio as secretary of state, seem ready for confrontation through tariffs and forwardmilitary deployments.

But China doesn’t have to retaliatein kind. It can counter American interests in asymmetrical ways, perhaps byblockading or even attacking Taiwan, the world’s dominant chip manufacturer.How would Trump respond? What military posture would he adopt? Is he ready tosend the Seventh Fleet to Taiwan’s rescue? If not, and if he really wants toavoid tripping into a war, he needs some advisers who know China and can thinkclearly.

Fourth, what is to become of pluralisticpolitical systems in the US and abroad? How much stress can they take withwannabe authoritarians at their helms?

The question is especially acutefor the United States, but Italy, France, and Germany also face this challenge.For their part, Americans have entered a Faustian bargain by selling the soulof their democracy for lower grocery and gas prices. The test will be critical.Trump pledges to round up undocumented immigrants in massive sweeps that wouldchill many communities nationwide.  Hepromises to pardon white supremacists who were duly tried, convicted, and imprisonedfor attacking Congress in its most sacred duty of certifying the electionresults of 2020. That would unleash on ordinary Americans an extraordinaryonslaught of armed militants beholden to Trump and hostile to the basis of alegal and democratic order. He has nominated as secretary of defense PeteHegseth, a “Christian nationalist” who promises to purge the officer corps. He islikely to be a gateway for white supremacists to enter the upper ranks.

Trump plans to turn his JusticeDepartment and the FBI into tools of revenge against his legitimate politicalopponents—an assault on more than two centuries of democratic values. And hemight be able to do it, because he is surrounding himself this time withsycophants who seem ready to display fealty to him, as if to a dictator, and toride with his passion to amass personal authority in a vacuum of moral and ethicalrestraint.

Trump has inflicted terror on membersof the Republican Party, who don’t dare oppose him and purge those who do. Heoperates very much like a mafia boss and so will strain the ligaments of theconstitutional order. He has managed already, just in his first term, to packthe Supreme Court with compliant justices who have taken the dangerous step ofgranting him immunity from criminal prosecution for so-called “official” acts.

In his first term, some observerspredicted that the weight of presidential responsibilities would make Trump responsible.It did not happen. Yet some are grasping at straws again, hoping that Trumpcares about a more dignified legacy, that his draconian campaign promises willprove as empty as most politicians’ electoral flamboyance, or that the checksand balances woven so ingeniously into America’s governing fabric will somehow foilthe coming autocratic agenda.

As Trump likes to say, we’ll see whathappens.

By David K. Shipler 

                “Donnie,do you know the difference between you and me?” Vladimir Putin asked Donald J.Trump in a brief phone call yesterday. “It’s a riddle.”

                “Don’tcall me Donnie,” Trump said. “Or I’ll call you Vladdie.”

                “Hey, don’tget so upset, comrade,” said Putin. “I’m just trying to make you think you’remy friend.”

                “Anddon’t call me comrade till Tulsi Gabbard gets confirmed. She’ll be thrilled,but she’s got to get past some leftover ‘experts’ in the party who don’t admireyou.”

                “Don’tadmire me?” Putin replied. “That’s impossible. Everybody I know admires me.”

                “Metoo,” said Trump. “Oh, shit, I said, ‘Me too.’ I take it back. I’ve banned thatexpression. Nobody who works for me can say ‘me too.’ But they all love me,Vlad, they really do. I’m loved from the minute I get up—well, after I leaveMelania behind in the bedroom—until the minute I go to bed. Well, if I go to bedbefore her.”

                “Comeon, Donnie, guess the riddle.”

                “Stopwith the Donnie.”

                “OK,MISTER PRESIDENT, what’s the difference between you and me?”

                “Youdon’t have my hair,” said Trump.

                “SlavaBogu!” Putin replied. “That means glory of God. You’d say thank God. Butyou don’t believe in God, do you, Donnie?”

                “Absolutelynot. Don’t tell the evangelicals. What’s he ever done for me? I’ve done it allmyself. He’s a hoax, like climate change.”

                “Climatechange isn’t a hoax, Donnie. Now come on, the riddle.”

                “I giveup,” said Trump.

                “Yougive up easily, comrade. Kamala was right, you know. You’re weak. You wouldn’tlast two minutes in the Kremlin. The knees on your million-dollar suits wouldwear out from groveling. But in the White House? I’m going to love it when you’rethere.”

                “OK, sothat’s the difference? You’re a strongman and I’m a weakman?”

                “You’regetting close,” said Putin. “The difference is that my oligarchs do what I tellthem or I take their billions and throw them in jail or out a hotel window. Butyou—you do what your oligarchs tell you. They run you. You worship them andfear them. You’re afraid that their contributions to your slush funds will dry upand they’ll say mean things on X and won’t keep Republicans in line. You’re afraidof that little twerp Elon Musk. Here in Moscow, I create Elon Musks andobliterate them when they get uppity. That’s the difference, Donnie Boy.”

                Therecording of the call goes silent for a few seconds. It seems to be ended untila faint sigh is heard, then the voice of Trump: “I gotta hang up and go playgolf with Elon, but I hate it. He always wins, even when I cheat. See you nextyear in Kyiv.” 

This is satire. It’s all made up (except for what isn't),a disclosure made necessary by the absurdity of current reality, which preventslots of people from telling the difference between truth and fiction.

By David K. Shipler 

Kakistocracy , n: government bythe least suitable or competent citizens of a state

[Note: Bowing to the influence of The Shipler Report, Gaetz withdrew only hours after this was posted.]

            When President Richard Nixonnominated Judge G. Harrold Carswell to the Supreme Court in 1970, his lack ofintellectual heft was defended by Republican Senator Roman Hruskaof Nebraska, who famously declared: “Even if he were mediocre, there are a lotof mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a littlerepresentation, aren’t they, and a little chance? We can’t have all Brandeises,Frankfurters, and Cardozos.”

            The Senate rejected Carswell, with 13Republicans joining Democrats in voting no.

            Ah, for the good old days. This timearound, it is not just mediocrity that is ascending to power but wildincompetence seasoned with wackiness. From Donald Trump on down, the federalgovernment is about to be converted into a cesspool of financial and moralcorruption, and into a juggernaut of fact-free autocratic decrees, politicalarrests, and military roundups. At least that’s Trump’s goal, which his keynominees are poised to pursue.

IfHruska were still with us, he would have to update his argument by noting thatthe country’s sexual assailants also deserve “a little representation.” Sincemost voters just elected a court-proven sexual assailant president, he wouldsurely find sympathy in the supine Senate. And remember, Republicans in yearspast confirmed Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court despitecredible accusations, respectively, of sexual harassment and assault. Today, Trumpseems partial to men who do that kind of thing, since the accused (but notproven) assailants he’s picked for his Cabinet include Matt Gaetz for AttorneyGeneral, Pete Hegseth for Defense Secretary, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. atHealth and Human Services.  

Theirslimy behavior with women is the finishing coat on layers of obnoxious absurditiesthat threaten the country’s well-being. Under the guise of federal reform anddownsizing, they and their yet-to-be chosen lieutenants in various agencies arelikely to damage Americans’ health, undermine national security, normalizesuspicions of democracy, deepen poverty, stifle news coverage, and chilldissent. Their designs would further fuel anti-government antagonism byundermining the best things government does, making it hostile to people’s needsand unworthy of the people’s regard.

 Institutions, government or private, needperiodic reform, fresh eyes to spot deficiencies, and sometimes tough measuresto improve their functions. There are many ways to tame a bureaucracy, to trimwaste and hone it for efficiency, and even to reorient its priorities. Some inbusiness who take over failing companies wield a ruthless ax, shedding workersas if they were detritus gumming up the works. Some dispose deftly ofunprofitable entities. Some use a scalpel on existing structures and makeadjustments. But the goal in most such projects is to save the company, not todestroy it.

In“Trump World,” the current euphemism for Dante’s third circle of hell, a verydifferent objective has taken shape. It contains a severe contradiction thatmight be summed up this way: destroy parts of the government doing things youdon’t like and expand its reach into things you like, particularly punishingthe poor and prosecuting your critics.

Thereis little about the Trumpists’ agenda that can be called “conservative” in itstraditional meaning, other than a push to deregulate the private sector and toslash benefits for Americans struggling low in the socio-economic hierarchy.That’s in keeping with conservative Republican values: Enrich yourselves andimpoverish the vulnerable.

Otherwise,the Trump agenda envisions government intrusion into in areas once thoughtimmune from the long arm of the state: scaring broadcasters and onlinecompanies into denying you information, sending the military into your workplacesand neighborhoods to check your citizenship and immigration status, requiringdoctors to ask women their reasons for seeking abortions, monitoring coursestaught by your local schools with the threat of defunding, and so on. Hisappointees are lined up to speed draconian changes in America.

Canit happen? The saving grace of Trump’s first term was his ignorance and lack ofcuriosity about the mechanisms of governing. He alienated the three mostimportant institutions that any wannabe autocrat would require: the policeapparatus in the form of the FBI, the intelligence-gathering establishment, andthe military. Trump has learned, though, and he is recruiting collaborators—someof the vilest people in America—to align these powers to support hisauthoritarian aspirations.

Witha clever sleight of hand, Trump projects his own nefarious defects onto hisopponents—e.g., the Democrats threaten democracy, the Democrats weaponize theJustice Department. His propaganda deflected many voters’ gaze. When he says hewants to turn the Justice Department against his political enemies and thepress, and nominates Gaetz to do it, he’s finally telling the truth. It’s wiseto believe what he says.

Gaetzhas such a record of nutty confrontation that some of his Republican colleaguesin the House are delighted that he resigned to curtail his ethics investigation.So there’s little doubt that he, along with a Trumpist FBI director, would aimthe immense powers of federal investigators and prosecutors squarely at Trump’sDemocratic critics, including California Senator Adam Schiff. News reportersare likely to be targeted if they cover Trump negatively. Even if fourRepublicans are sensible enough to reject Gaetz, which seems possible, Trumpcan be counted on to replace him with a nominee tuned to his revenge portfolio,even if less flamboyantly.

Hegsethalso poses acute dangers. He could be a gateway into enhancing the whitesupremacist presence in the armed forces. His tattoo resembling one used byextreme right-wing militia got him taken off the national guard detail guardingthe Capitol on January 6, and his inclination toward Christian nationalism hasa whiff of ethnocentrist religiosity. White nationalism is already present inthe ranks to an extent, but having a Defense Secretary tolerant of extremeracism, and pledging to purge senior officers, sets the stage for a dramaticremaking of a military that has been staunchly apolitical. And using activeduty forces to impose internal order by rounding up undocumented immigrants orputting down demonstrations would cross a line that would not be easily reestablished.  

Kennedy,with his crackpot conspiracy theories about various health issues, would damagemedical research for a generation, setting the United States back behind mostof the industrial world. “COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Blackpeople,” he said in July 2023. “The people who aremost immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.” This is the man Trump wantsrunning federal health programs. Yet Kennedy strikes a chord with the public inchanneling their suspicion of authority and expertise, and in railing againstpreservatives in food, to take just one example.

Thatis a tactic often used by people who peddle misinformation, according to Dr. Leana Wen, who writes a columnfor The Washington Post. “It’s not that all they say are lies. If that’sthe case, no one’s going to listen to them. But instead, you can listen tosomeone like this, you can nod your head and say, yes, that’s right, that’sright, that’s right, and then you end up going along with the other things thatare then said that are actually not right.”

Kennedyand most other nominees look attractive to the rank and file voters who hatethe federal government and think it needs to be broken. Trump has tradedcleverly on this antipathy and sense of alienation and powerlessness, and hisnaming of non-experts appeals to nihilist impulses in the broad electorate.

Ironically,though, appointing people outside their areas of expertise might impede Trump’sability to refashion the federal bureaucracy. Because “experts” are part of the“elite” that have become the “enemy” in the faux internal war exploited byTrump, he is not installing anybody who knows much about the agencies he wantsthem to run. How effective their demolition will be is a question. Nevertheless,their less visible incoming deputy secretaries, assistant secretaries, anddepartment heads, who might be equally bizarre, might know better how to getthe job done. The press—even the remaining free and fair press—will not havesufficient resources to cover those agencies at the grassroots level where they’llneed to be monitored.

Theterm kakistocracy should now enter our everyday language. It comes fromtwo Greek words meaning “worst” and “rule,” that is, a society ruled by itsworst people. Trump is obviously one of the worst, and many of those he iselevating to positions of authority are among the worst of America. How many ofus, in our own lives, have ever met anyone like Trump or the others? Certainlyvery few. It’s a good bet that very few of his own voters have, either.

Soit's time to ask why the worst people in this society are rising to govern us,why voters are allowing the United States of America to become a kakistocracy.