TRUMP’S ENDLESS PERFORMATIVE WARMONGERING

Dr. Common Good

For a president who campaigned on pulling the US out of entangling foreign wars, Trump has in fact been quite the trigger-happy child, engaging in multiple, serial and episodic acts of aggression. But here is a key point – in general, these military actions (or threats thereof) are not integrated with any particular strategy or ongoing strategic aim. They are just performative outbursts, from a child who has power to “push the button” acting out. And in doing so, Trump continues to destroy the credibility and reliability of the US, even as he imagines that doing these things makes him (and thus the US) appear “tough.” Any global player who really is tough does not take this cosplay seriously. Take just a few examples:

Latest attacks on “ISIS” in Nigeria: On Christmas Day, Trump authorized a missile attack in Sokoto state, Nigeria against what he claimed was ISIS persecution of Christians to a degree “not seen in many years, even Centuries”, according to his rant-filled post. While nobody but the most extreme defends or applauds ISIS, there is little or no evidence that they are particularly targeting Christians. Violence in northern Nigeria is complex and has been occurring for years, drawing from ethnic, territorial and also religious conflicts. As the Nigerian Foreign Affairs Minister posted on X, “simplistic labels don’t solve complex threats.” Not only that, but some missiles hit farming villages where there was no violence, shocking and confusing residents (see CNN reporting on Jabo village, December 26). As usual, Trump brags and crows about the attack, claiming to have killed “ISIS terrorist scum,” even though there is little evidence that the attacks accomplished anything or even that they actually hit any concentration of ISIS members. Why then, did he do this, out of the blue, wasting American forces and putting innocent civilians at risk?

Naked, hypocritical aggression against Venezuela: As I have said before, we have to consider what the Trump administration is doing here apart from the separate issue of Nicolás Maduro as a brutal dictator. Why? Among other reasons, we know that Trump has no problem with brutal dictators, in fact he longs to become one. So let’s just rule out any fictitious moral justifications of that sort his administration may use. The apparent claim justifying his attacks on small boats in the Caribbean, seizing of Venezuelan oil tankers, saber-rattling about a possible invasion, and now an actual missile attack on a Venezuelan dock facility, is that Maduro is a drug trafficker and as such is a threat to the US. This is patently ridiculous and laden with hypocrisy. Venezuela is not a significant exporter of drugs to the US. More importantly, Trump doesn’t really have any problem with drug traffickers. He has pardoned or granted clemency to more than 90 drug criminals across his two terms (see reporting in the Atlantic, December 10), and in this term he pardoned Ross Ulbricht, founder of the online black market for drugs Silk Road, and recently pardoned former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, convicted mass exporter of drugs to the US. He has also accused Maduro of “Emptying his prisons into the US,” and of sponsoring the Tren de Aragua gang in the US, neither of which have been backed up by a shred of evidence. Trump’s apparent animosity towards Maduro is based on one issue – Maduro openly dislikes Trump and spurns him. If Trump was really concerned about drug traffickers, maybe he should try to cut off the substantial flow of weapons from the US to Mexican drug cartels, which is one key source of their power.

Trump’s attacks on Iran’s nuclear capability: Trump’s strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities in June, 2025 were hailed as an unqualified success, purportedly leaving Iran’s nuclear capability “completely and totally obliterated.” While the tactical prowess of the air attack can justifiably be acknowledged, what was really accomplished, if this was part of some long-term strategic aim to degrade Iran’s emergent nuclear capabilities? There is no evidence of any long-term strategy, and it is unclear what permanent damage the attacks actually caused, since the location of Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile remains unknown and the Iranians may have been able to move or shut off some of its centrifuges in the targeted nuclear sites, according to intelligence reports by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and other expert sources. And because the attacks occurred while the U.S. was engaged in a negotiation, the damage to U.S. credibility cannot be known. All this must be considered against the effectiveness of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), otherwise known as the Iran Nuclear Deal, signed by President Obama and five other countries. Among other things, that deal capped Iranian enrichment below weapons grade for 15 years, significantly cut its enriched uranium stockpile, restricted enrichment capabilities, prevented weapons-grade plutonium production, and allowed around-the-clock access for monitoring purposes by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Ah, but Trump pulled out of that deal in 2018, claiming it was a “terrible, one-sided deal” with, as usual, no real evidence. Most likely, he pulled out simply because it was a signature Obama achievement and, emotional child that he is, he could not bear to endorse it.

Trump’s threats of military action against Greenland, or Panama: It is actually hard to even write those words – threats of military action against Greenland? What? Or against Panama? Previous posts by Dr. Common Good have addressed these two particularly ridiculous threats, but they still pop up in his administration’s rhetoric, now again with the appointment of Louisiana governor and Trump ally Jeff Landry as “special envoy” to Greenland, an entirely unprecedented position since Greenland is a semiautonomous territory of Denmark. Naturally, the Danes were furious. So, we must ask, “what hath Trump wrought” when our own NATO ally Denmark calls the United States a security threat because of his recurring hostile rhetoric towards Greenland? There may be actual U.S. security interests connected to Greenland and Panama, but if that were purely the motive, hostility and aggressive posturing would certainly not be the normal or rational approach to addressing these concerns, especially with long-time U.S. allies. For Trump, again, it is performative, the acting out of his need to “perform power.” What he wants are public displays of capitulation.

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If you are searching for a traditional rationale for any of this aggression and waste of American military personnel, resources, and reputation, don’t bother. There isn’t any. Trump is an ignorant man-child with a colossally sensitive ego and a twisted desire to dominate others in highly public fashion. As Jonathan Chait said in The Atlantic back on December 10, “To better understand the president’s foreign policy, one must study the behavior of small children.”

NOT FASCIST? REALLY, MS. LYMAN?

Dr. Common Good

On a recent airing of CNN’s Abby Phillips NewsNight, panelist Brianna Lyman from The Federalist rolled her eyes and muttered “oh, come on” when Trump administration actions were described as fascist. Well, Ms. Lyman, if you think that is an unfair characterization, maybe you need a reminder with respect to the facts. Here are a few:

Mobilizing the Department of Justice (DOJ) for purely personal vendettas and political prosecutions – Don’t even try to claim that Trump’s and Pam Bondi’s slew of charges and indictments against political opponents are a reaction to the purported politicization of the DOJ under Biden. There is no comparison. Not only was then-Attorney General Merrick Garland exceedingly cautious, but all of the cases against Trump and other 2020 election conspirators arose because there were actual, egregious violations of the law, documented in painstaking investigations by the DOJ and by Special Counsel Jack Smith, who, by the way, was appointed specifically to distance those prosecutions from the DOJ and avoid any potential political entanglements. The evidence in those cases was overwhelming, and it is a national travesty that Trump, through legal manipulations and delays, was able to escape accountability. Trump clearly attempted to commit blatant fraud in Georgia by demanding that Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger “find” votes so that he could win. In another call, he demanded that Georgia Speaker of the House David Ralston hold a special legislative session to overturn the Georgia election results, asking Ralston “Who’s gonna stop you for that?” All of this and more is clearly documented fact. It is also very clear that Trump absconded with an entire trove of classified documents after leaving the White House and refused to give them back, even after prolonged requests from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), lying to the FBI that he had returned all documents and destroying evidence that he had them, a criminal obstruction of justice. These are felonies. The FBI did not “go after” Trump or invent charges. He violated the law repeatedly and with public belligerence. Then of course there were his actions on January 6, 2021, fomenting and supporting the unprecedented attack on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of his supporters who attempted to stop the vote certification process, resulting in destruction of property, and multiple deaths and injuries, including injuries to 174 police officers. All of this does not even count the illegal and unconstitutional actions he undertook during his first term in office.

By contrast, Trump and his DOJ (yes, “his” DOJ, even though it is supposed to be the people’s DOJ) have cooked up allegations and indicted many of the people who publicly opposed his abuses, including James Comey, Letitia James, Adam Schiff, and others. To do so, Trump has had to illegally appoint prosecutors to replace sitting U.S. attorneys who refuse to engage in such baseless and fraudulent prosecutions. He has even commandeered the DOJ and other Federal agencies, including the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), to find anything, even in personal mortgage records, which could be used as a rationale to prosecute. So there you have it. QED. The prosecutions are generated by motives against the person, not violations of the law. This is what fascist rulers and dictators do. They treat the legal system as their personal weapon to silence and intimidate, and to remove opposition.

Defying or ignoring court orders. As a corollary to the previous point, Trump and his administration have repeatedly defied court orders or ignored them altogether. In an analysis of 165 court orders earlier this year, the Washington Post found that Trump had resisted the order in at least 57 of those cases (about 34%), by responding very slowly, misrepresenting facts in filings, and ignoring the orders outright (reported in the July 21 Independent). This is what fascist rulers and dictators do. They treat the legal system as subordinate, in the way, or even as an enemy.

Illegally sending the National Guard to American cities – but only if they are “Blue” (Democrat) cities like Los Angeles, Portland, Chicago, and Washington, DC, when they are not requested (by governors) and for which there is no actual justification. Trump invents an “emergency,” and that becomes a pretext for the troops – who, most of the time, have no idea why they have been deployed. This is what fascist rulers and dictators do. They gin up fake “emergencies,” and use that cover to deploy the military for political intimidation. It is unconstitutional, and a violation of the Posse Comitatus Act.

Illegally sending ICE shock troops with masks into American cities (again, primarily “Blue” cities) and yanking immigrants or those who “look like” immigrants, including mothers and children, off the streets, out of schools, even out of court legal proceedings, shoving them to the ground, pushing them into unmarked cars and hustling them off to un-named detention centers where they cannot even contact family – without even a pretense of due process. And then sending them off to detention centers far afield, where they have no family, no contacts, no support. Not only that, in absolute contradiction to the lies coming from DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, ICE has seized almost 200 citizens, and about 75,000 people with no criminal records (around 70 percent of those seized), a flat out contradiction to the Trump Administration’s claim to be focusing just on criminals. This is what fascist rulers and dictators do. They gin up fake crises, and use that cover to deploy – in this case – thugs with masks for political intimidation. Due process is cast aside, even though it is a cornerstone of the Constitution’s 14^th Amendment.

Suppressing free speech. This includes the use of government agencies like the Federal Communications Commission (which grants licenses) in attempts to force broadcast outlets to suppress any programming or commentary that criticizes or opposes Trump and his policies, and even to call for the firing of specific individuals. It also includes limits and restrictions on the White House and Department of Defense press corps, allowing only “friendly” media representatives who won’t ask serious questions or contradict Trump or his administration’s spokespersons (Karoline Leavitt is a prime example, a routine purveyor of glaring lies) – this of course allows for control over what is reported to the public. It also includes the extortion of universities, under threat of massive fines and the loss of research grant funding, as a means of controlling campus speech and controlling the content taught in classrooms. This is what fascist rulers and dictators do. They quash opposition and control the narrative by eliminating dissent, restrict the information available to the public, and label as enemies of the people those who voice dissent. It is a classic technique.

Treating the government as a personal domain. Trump has sought, and had some success, in expanding his control over government agencies, and rendering himself immune from any criminal prosecution (aided and abetted by the Supreme Court which he stacked in his favor). And he has visibly, and illegally, appropriated buildings and American cultural institutions, like the U.S. Institute of Peace or the Kennedy Center, taking them over, and renaming them for himself, when they are in fact not “his” to control or rename. In a recent shocker, Trump – without any authorization, only his personal whim – destroyed the East Wing of the people’s White House, in order to build a cheap, gaudy monument to himself. To a degree never seen in US history, Trump has used the office of presidency to glorify and enrich himself, his businesses, his family and loyalists, mixing business deals with government business, pardoning people who effectively bribe him with investments and cash (as in the pardoning of Changpeng Zhao, founder of the crypto exchange Binance, which had closed a multi-billion dollar deal with World Liberty Financial, the Trump family’s crypto business). Furthermore, to legitimize his “domain, he has surrounded himself with Cabinet secretaries and agency heads who are little more than obsequious sycophants – one has only to watch a televised Cabinet meeting to see the obvious parallel to a meeting of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un’s ministers. This is what fascist rulers and dictators do. It is right out of the classic fascist/dictator playbook. They treat the government as merely an instrument of their personal will, and government leaders as servants of that will.

Using the military to pursue wars and extrajudicial killings under false pretense and without any legal authorization. Trump and his mindless minion Pete Hegseth have been systematically launching missile attacks on small boats in the Caribbean that are allegedly running drugs, ostensibly threatening U.S. national security, entirely without any proof and without Congressional authorization. And in doing so, Trump and Hegseth kill the boat occupants – recently even circling back after an initial attack and killing defenseless survivors, which amounts to the crime of “murder on the high seas” and is a violation of international human rights law. Now Trump is threatening to use the military to attack or invade Venezuela, again a violation of international law and our own Constitutional requirement for Congressional authorization, this time claiming that Venezuela is a terrorist country and, more recently, that the U.S. has the right to forcibly reclaim oil assets nationalized in the 1970s. No matter what one thinks of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, this is just naked aggression, hardly different than Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, or Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. This is what fascist rulers and dictators do. They use the nation’s military at their own whim, disregarding law and civilian control, simply to pursue power and control.

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So, Ms. Lyman, what do you call this? In what surreal world do you live where any of this represents the democracy this country is supposed to embody? Yes, while presidents and their administrations have, over the years, violated democratic principles and the rule of law in specific instances, we have never seen the stunning totality and ubiquity of abuse perpetrated by this administration. It is unprecedented in American history. To be blunt, you are a fool to laugh it off.

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As the philosopher, mathematician and Nobel Laureate Bertrand Russell once said, “The technique of acquiring dictatorship over what has been a democracy…always involves the same mixture of bribery, propaganda, and violence” (from Power: A New Social Analysis, 1938).

TODAY’S LITANY OF TRUMP DEPRAVITY

Dr. Common Good

Dr. Common Good has not had the chance to post for a little while, so this will be something of a “dump.”

Let’s take a quick inventory of Trump’s recent and continuing depredations on the United States and, for that matter, the world:

• Weaponizing the justice system in the U.S. – Vindictive, fabricated charges against his former opponents, including Letitia James, James Comey, Adam Schiff, among others – using illegally appointed prosecutors to do so, and abusing access to private information about their mortgages to gin up fabricated charges.

• Creating a conspicuous rule by patronage, and corruption on a scale never imagined in the U.S. (Nixon and the Teapot Dome scandals notwithstanding) – This includes a continuing slew of pardons that don’t even come close to meeting the customary justifications for granting. Trump’s pardons are either transactional or a reward for stoking Trump’s infantile ego; hence the pardon of convicted crypto executive Changpeng Zhao, whose Binance crypto exchange laundered money for terrorists, illegal narcotics trade, and others, but, of course, who provided a needed financial boost for the Trump family crypto business called World Liberty. Hence the influence-buying “gift” by Qatar of a $400 million dollar airplane, and granting the United Arab Emirates access to high-tech Nvidia computer chips, normally export-restricted for security reasons, following a promise of extensive investment. And the continuing, amateurish corruption by FBI Director Kash Patel, using DOJ jets for his pleasure trips and FBI security for his girlfriend. Oh, and a pardon for former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernandez, a convicted, high-profile drug trafficker, because he gushed with praise for Trump, and because he was convicted during the Biden administration (a Trump automatic faux-pas).

• The continued implementation of an ugly, racist, fascist police state, including the abusive and illegal snatching of people off the streets, from schools, from homes, and even from courtrooms, by ICE agents with faces covered in black masks. And the unjustified use of national guard troops, ostensibly to “quell violence,” but in reality as nothing more than a show of thuggish force against cities, or mayors, who dare to defy Trump’s authoritarian demands. Along with that, there is the patent lying by DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, who claims, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, that ICE has not detained a single U.S. citizen.  

• The arbitrary, capricious use of U.S. military force, or threat thereof, in violation of long-established rules of war – including the ongoing attacks on small boats that are alleged to be smuggling drugs to the U.S., again, without evidence. And the gratuitous killing of two unarmed men who were clinging to a boat that had already been destroyed. Then there are Trump’s bombastic threats of war against Venezuela and Columbia, smacking of 19^th century jingoism. As a corollary, Trump has also openly interfered in elections, threatening, for example, to cut off U.S. aid to Honduras if his sycophantic “mini-me” (Nasry Asfura) did not win.

• The senseless destruction of America’s economic position in the world – including the chaotic and harmful tariffs which destroy markets for U.S. goods and raise prices for Americans, and the mindless, ignorant rejection of green energy and climate change — the consequence of which essentially hands the entire global market to China, which is assiduously pursuing dominance in this sector. Along with that, the refusal to extend subsidies for health insurance through the ACA exchange (some call it “Obamacare”), soon to price out millions of Americans who need health care, and the destructive skewing of the economy towards the small cluster of billionaires and corporate influencers and their symbiotic relationship with the Mafia-like Trump clan.

• The continued abandonment of our Western European allies and the undermining of efforts by Ukraine to fend off the Russians, driven in part by a pro-Putin, pro-authoritarian, retrograde, even anti-European political ideology personified, among others, by J.D. Vance, and spelled out in appalling detail in the Trump Administration’s newly released National Security Strategy.

• The continued evisceration of the once-admired scientific research institutions of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), stripping out their public data, and depleting the critical expertise that has for so long been the foundation of their reputation and importance for the public good. Along with that, there is the inane and dangerous destruction of a health care and immunization system built on generations of research, but now driven by conspiracies and quackery under the reign of the woefully unqualified RFK Jr.

• The ongoing attempt to destroy the free press, one of the cornerstones of American democracy – using the Federal Communications Commission to threaten television stations that do not fire or discipline comedians and other individuals who criticize Trump, kicking all normal journalistic organizations out of the White House and Pentagon press briefings in favor of the fawning MAGA media, and stripping National Public Radio of its funding.

• The nauseating display of ego by the this president, the likes of which has never been seen in the U.S. – plastering the Oval Office with tasteless gold ornamentation, destroying the East Wing of the White House (again, without legally required permits and approvals) in order to build a Versailles-like monument to himself, taking over the Kennedy Center and moving to rename it for himself, illegally appropriating the U.S. Institute of Peace and, of all Orwellian twists, renaming it the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace, and – at the same time as he is eliminating National Park Service free days on Martin Luther King’s birthday and Juneteenth holidays – establishing a free day in honor of his birthday.  

• The public abandonment of longstanding American values, including the support for democratic movements worldwide, the provision of humanitarian assistance and foreign aid to needy countries and peoples, a commitment to equal rights, a pluralist, welcoming society, freedom of religion, the rule of law and much more. However imperfectly these values have been practiced, they have at least been held as aspirational.

Once again, I must repeat. There is nothing about this that makes America great. Nothing.