On Sunday morning (April 5), America woke up to an Easter message from their president, which he posted on his Social Truth page: “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day and Bridge Day, all rolled into one, in Iran. There will be no such thing!!! Open the Fuckin’ Straits, you crazy bastards, or live in hell, JUST. TRUMP.” Beyond representing another almost dreamlike example of this man’s mental disorder, the outburst signified the place the Iran War holds in Trump’s troubled mind. It barely registers. He went to Iran and is now eager to get out. The truth is that the terrible disaster he is creating is not fundamentally about Iran, any more than it is about Venezuela, or Cuba, or Greenland, or Panama—remember Panama? – or Nigeria has any real strategic importance to America. In Trump’s eyes, the war with Iran, and war in general, is a battle in Trump’s war with America. Or rather his struggle to cling to power in America, and thus to rule the world from his American position.
One of the main traits of a sociopath is to hide the fact that they are a sociopath. Imagine Iago telling Othello that he could die of jealousy for all Iago cared. But Trump is so much of a sociopath that he can’t pretend, sociopathically, that he’s not one. In his brief address to America last Wednesday evening (April 1), his first national address on the war he began more than a month ago, he expressed not a fraction of the feeling for Americans worried, frightened, economically oppressed as a result of the war. He offered no time frame or strategic conditions for ending it. Instead, he vowed to “take them back to the Stone Age”. It made no sense in any context except in the most cryptic, personal terms.
As Americans watched on their screens in amazement – and perhaps envy – as Artemis II, the US spacecraft headed for the moon, Trump’s Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, quietly fired the Army’s highest-ranking general. The fact that he did this in the middle of a war was quite alarming. But the fact that there is now no high-ranking military staff left who was not appointed by Hegseth is an emergency. Almost immediately after the news of the general’s firing, the Trump administration announced it was proposing a $1.5 trillion budget for the military, a 40 percent increase from this year and the largest allocation of money to the military in the nation’s history. It includes a 5 to 7 percent pay rise for military personnel — how much more the newly elevated military brass will make is unknown. Maybe Elon Musk will cut their checks himself.
At a time when Americans worry about the basic cost of living, Trump’s indifference to rising prices, combined with his indifference to Americans’ fears in a time of war, could mean he is placing all his bets on undermining the election in November if it doesn’t go his way. The obfuscation of war, in the Middle East, Latin America, or elsewhere, will provide cover for the undermining of democratic institutions; money spent on the military and the military’s growing prominence and stability — its stunningly successful overseas operations that command the national spotlight — could ensure Pentagon compliance in the fall.
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Trump’s sudden firing of his attorney general, Pam Bondi, should be seen in this light. People are blaming her downfall on her “missteps” with the Epstein files — she made conflicting announcements about their fate — and her inability to use the justice system to jail Trump’s enemies. Maybe. But the Epstein files have not affected Trump, only a small section of liberal elites, and the persecution of Bondi’s enemies has actually been a resounding success: the entire liberal establishment has been, for the most part, paralyzed. More likely, Trump handed the boot to Bond because of her last appearance before the House Judiciary Committee in February. She stunned Americans with her insults to sitting congressmen, calling Jamie Raskin, a congressman from Maryland, a “loser loser lawyer” and Thomas Massie, from Kentucky, a “failed politician.” By desecrating their place of power and privilege, it stunned even the Republicans.
Never mind the contrived theatrics of it and the fact that, as it turns out, Bondi was reading her insults from flash cards. Like Kristi Noem, the former Homeland Security chief who was fired by Trump in part because of megalomania by dressing up for the cameras as an armed Ice agent one day and a cowboy patrolling the Mexican border, Bondi didn’t have the right look for the mayhem Trump has planned for the fall. In November, Trump will need cabinet officials who act barbaric without appearing barbaric. His instincts here, however debased, are correct. The Gestapo-style replacement of Gregory Bovino as Border Control commander with White House border “czar” Tom Homans was greeted with relief even by the liberal media. Former mixed martial arts champion and U.S. Senator Markwayne Mullin’s intervention for Noem drew mere derision rather than the cries of outrage that followed his predecessor. Trump is grooming his cast for his biggest performance of all; he likes to do his research, to borrow a phrase, in the form of spectacle. Goodbye Joan Crawford. Hello Clint Eastwood. He is preparing the arena for his confrontation with democracy. “War is peace” – you can really imagine that is now a strategy of Trump to hold on to power. War unites, soothes, intimidates, frightens, confuses, justifies, disturbs, excites. While the US media rightly celebrated the rescue of the plane whose warplane had been shot down over Iran – thus helplessly legitimizing, in a subtle, inevitable way, US power in a war they despise – the world continues to search in vain for a way to end a war that has no cause, no reason, no apparent condition or conclusion. That’s because the origins of the war are buried like uranium deep inside the decaying brain of Donald Trump, for whom Iran is just another word for the chaos he desperately hopes to keep him king.
(Further reading: I’m ashamed to be an American)
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