That title of mine is certainly repetitive of me (me, me), but how can you not be repetitive in the distinctly repeated world of Donald J. Trump (Trumped, Trumped)? I mean, twice already and who really knows what’s to come?
Here’s the question nobody seems to be asking right now, though: What country will Donald Trump attack next? Yes, at the moment, he’s still wildly wound up in his Iran war/truce/peace/or you name it (tomorrow). Yesterday, it was, of course, Venezuela, and next week it might be Cuba or Greenland, or who on (or off) this planet knows where? And I haven’t even mentioned his military’s ongoing bombing runs in Somalia, which are barely noticed in the mainstream media here. And who knows what I’ve forgotten or what to expect in this increasingly bizarre world of ours from the president who swore repeatedly in his third election campaign that he would never, never, never go to… yes, of course, war?
Hey, only the other day, Secretary of War (a title which, of course, couldn’t be blunter in the age of You Know Who) Pete Hegseth warned that “what happens with the future of Cuba is in the hands of the president of the United States and the leadership of Cuba. No matter what, the Department of War is going to be prepared and postured for any possible contingency.”
Ah, yes, any possible contingency except one, of course: victory (which, since the Second World War, just hasn’t been in the American vocabulary) or, for that matter, peace. I mean what could possibly go wrong in a world that now, remarkably enough, has its first trillionaire, Donald Trump’s (sometimes) buddy Elon Musk? (On that, Senator Elizabeth Warren commented all too aptly: “I want to be clear: This is not just some fluke. It is a feature of a rigged economy.”)
What, in fact, could possibly go wrong on such a rigged planet? I’m sure Donald Trump and Elon Musk couldn’t imagine. What could go wrong on a world in which no American president ever seems to realize that wars are simply never to be won by this country, no matter its power and the ever-ballooning size of the Pentagon budget, now possibly heading for — ah, yes, talking about trillionaires! — $1.5 trillion yearly (and, no, that is not a typo), if Donald Trump has anything to say about it? And in Congress, mind you, that’s still referred to as “defense” spending.
What could possibly go wrong when launching a war on Iran, a country that’s slightly less than 6,500 miles from Washington, D.C.? That’s so much less dumb of Donald Trump than Vladimir Putin’s decision to launch a disastrous war right on his country’s border with Ukraine. At least, Iran is so far away that you could ask: Whose lives could possibly be disturbed by it (other than Iranians, their neighbors, or of course, anyone who drives a car or a truck that isn’t electric and has had to pay for the gas that hasn’t been making its way through the Strait of Hormuz these days, months, or for all we know years)?
In fact, here’s a suggestion for President Trump: at only 6,500 miles, Iran really shouldn’t be considered quite far enough from Washington to truly, truly count as the world’s best enemy. What about Pakistan instead, since it’s 7,000 miles away? Wouldn’t that make better sense? Especially since, as Zia ur-Rehman of the New York Times reported recently, with the planet heating up as distinctly as it is, one district in southern Pakistan hit a record 124.7 degrees Fahrenheit as May ended. And you (and Donald Trump) know just what that means: ever more Pakistanis will feel that they have to leave their country and head elsewhere and why not head for the United States of America, only 7,000 miles away? So, Donald, how about starting another war there and while you’re at it, as wars do so effectively, pour yet more fossil fuels into the atmosphere, ensuring that Pakistan will indeed get ever hotter (and hotter and hotter) even faster (and faster and faster)?
And honestly, to ask a perfectly realistic question: if President Trump can’t continue to stack up wars one atop another, how in the world will he ever get Congress to pass his next Pentagon budget for that $1.5 trillion? We certainly need another war (or two or three) for that to happen and, honestly, Greenland’s too damn cold and minimally populated and Cuba’s too close and a mere island to truly count.
Wait! Let’s look at the positive side of things for a moment. With Trump and crew ready to fossil-fuelize this planet in striking ways, as the Department of War has made clear, “President Donald J. Trump and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth are ushering in a new era characterized by peace through strength.” And what more could you ask for than that, though “peace,” of course (because definitions matter) should be “war” and “strength” should mean another 1.5 trillion taxpayer dollars for the Pentagon to blow on yet more disastrous conflicts globally, right?
Who could possibly disagree with such a definition of peace? Anyone who does deserves to be sent to Iran, Greenland, or Cuba, just to find out what peace truly feels like.
Yes, give our president full credit. He lends “brink” new meaning and what could possibly go wrong on a planet distinctly on the brink of… well, who knows quite what but nothing good — that indeed did just get its first trillionaire. I can’t imagine, can you?
And given all of that, let me end on a little more upbeat news. As the BBC recently reported, “The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has declared that El Niño conditions are now under way in the tropical Pacific [Ocean], with sea surface temperatures having risen sharply in recent months.” And even better, assume that it could prove to be “a so-called ‘super’ El Niño,” and even possibly “among the strongest ever recorded.”
So, count on this: our planet is going to get hotter and hotter and hotter. And Donald Trump is still doing his damnedest to shut down green energy of any kind and make more war. So, what could possibly go wrong when we have a president at the brink (of who knows what) and a planet at the brink (of who knows what’s next)?
Tom Engelhardt created and ran the website TomDispatch.com for nearly 25 years. He was also a co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of a highly praised history of American triumphalism in the Cold War, “The End of Victory Culture.”
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