HOW DO YOU DO IT, KAROLINE?

Dr. Common Good

Dr. Common Good has a question to ask of press secretary Karoline Leavitt: How do you do it? How do you get up, look at yourself in the mirror, and then stand up at the podium and lie like there will never again be an opportunity to lie?

Let’s just take your press conference on Wednesday March 4 as one of many examples. Among other things, you said:

President Trump didn’t start the war, Iran did: No, Iran did not. Trump claimed to be in negotiations with Iran about their nuclear program and, during these negotiations, launched the attack.

One reason for the attack was an imminent threat from ballistic missiles: The president, you said, “had a feeling” that an attack from Iran was imminent. But there was and is no intelligence supporting any claim of imminent threat from Iranian ballistic missiles, or any intelligence that demonstrates that they even have an intercontinental ballistic missile capability that could threaten the US.

Another reason for the attack was to destroy Iran’s nuclear capability: First of all, the Trump administration claimed that their June, 2025 attacks “completely eliminated and obliterated” Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities, and later claimed that the attack had significantly set back Iran’s nuclear program. If that is true, then what was the nuclear threat prompting this attack?

You claimed that President Barack “Hussein” Obama sent pallets of cash to the Iranians to finance their terrorist operations and signed “stupid and naïve deals that put Iran on the path of developing nuclear bombs”:  Aside from the intentional and repugnant “red meat” repetition of President Obama’s middle name, this is patently false. The 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, spearheaded by President Obama and more properly called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), was signed by Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council – China, France, Russia, the UK, and the US. The deal imposed restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program to ensure that it could only be used for peaceful purposes, not for nuclear weapons. Those restrictions were guaranteed via inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Only after the IAEA verified compliance with those terms were oil and financial sanctions lifted and Iranian assets unfrozen. Experts, including the Council on Foreign Relations, estimated at the time that the deal would prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon for more than a decade, and if they tried to build a weapon at that point the sanctions would go back in effect.

But Trump, in his first term, pulled out of the deal and reimposed sanctions, calling it “horrible.” What had been a successful deal then fell apart, and Trump has never been able to come up with anything better, or even close. So, what does he resort to? A military attack that will destabilize the region, cause untold harm, and virtually guarantee that whatever regime comes to power in Iran will never, ever again negotiate anything with the United States. Some deal, Trump.  

“The world knows this president’s preference is always peace and diplomacy first. Look no further than the eight additional global conflicts he has ended in the past year as proof”: I don’t know how Ms. Leavitt spews out such garbage, with an apparent straight face. Sorry to disabuse you of your ridiculous fantasy, Karoline, but what the world actually knows is that Trump is a mindless, ignorant and trigger-happy purveyor of military force to attain whatever goal he fancies, never mind the consequent destruction of long-term alliances and people’s lives, or the breach of international law. Let’s just recap some of his record, in just one year since re-election: Threatening Canada, and Greenland, with military force if his demands are not met. Attacking small boats in the Caribbean and killing their occupants with no proof that they are drug trafficking boats as claimed, and absolutely no proof that they are transporting illegal drugs to the United States. Without any authorization from Congress or legal basis, using the American military to depose a sitting head of government* by force in Venezuela. And now, without any authorization from Congress or legal basis, attacking Iran, and in the process assassinating its leader*. Please, Karoline, spare everyone the silly and unsubstantiated claim of stopping eight conflicts.  

It is obvious to anyone not incapacitated by a hallucinatory Trumpian fantasy that Trump is unstable, stunningly ignorant of world history or any history, not bound by his oath of office to protect and defend the US Constitution, and a dangerous narcissist whose only motivation is to assert power by any means, and to have that power acknowledged with either flattery or rank subservience. And it is a tragedy, for the American people and peoples of the world, that he has a willing team of sycophants like yourself and the puppet Defense Secretary Hegseth, along with a spineless, craven Republican party, to facilitate his destruction of peace and decency.      

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*Regardless of whether or not that leader/head of government is viewed negatively.

DONALD TRUMP, STEPHEN MILLER AND THE INSANITY OF THEIR DOG-EAT-DOG WORLD

Dr. Common Good

In a CNN interview on January 5, Jake Tapper reminded Trump chief policy advisor Stephen Miller that the US actually invaded Venezuela and seized its leader. Miller’s response? “Damn straight we did!…Because the point, Jake, is we’re not going to let tinpot communist dictators send rapists into our country, send drugs into our country, send weapons into our country, okay? And we’re not going to let a country fall into the hands of our adversaries.” [Note for the record here the assertion that Venezuela has been sending rapists to the US, or that they are a major exporter of either drugs or guns to the US, is a complete fabrication, without evidence.] He then added that “The United States is using its military to secure our interests unapologetically in our hemisphere. We’re a superpower, and under President Trump, we are going to conduct ourselves as a superpower.” Even more grandiose and twisted, Miller said that the post-World War II period of the West “apologizing and groveling and begging” was over. [For the record, most of the world would have no idea what Miller was referring to with respect to American “groveling” and “begging.”]

That was about Venezuela. Regarding military force to take control of Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark, a founding member of NATO in 1949, Miller dismissively declared that “The United States is the power of NATO, for the United States to secure the Arctic region, to protect and defend NATO and NATO interests.” “Obviously, Greenland should be part of the United States, and so that’s a conversation that we’re going to have as a country. That’s a process we’re going to have as a new community of nations.” Not only that, but “The real question is what right does Denmark assert control over Greenland? What is the basis of their territorial claim?” [Note for the record that Greenland was linked to the kingdoms of Denmark and Norway for about a thousand years, officially becoming a Danish colony in 1814, a part of the Danish state in 1953, and an autonomous territory since 1979.] Ah, but Miller says that “Nobody’s gonna fight the United States military over the future of Greenland.” 

To cap off this repulsive, school-bully frothing, Miller just kept going, justifying any American imperialism with a dystopian vision of a new world order in which the United States can freely overthrow national governments and take foreign territory and resources so long as it is in the national interest. “We live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power,” he said. “These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”

Ah, I get it. The age-old “iron laws.” So, it is okay for Putin to roll over Ukraine, and maybe a few other Eastern European and Baltic states. And it is okay for China to roll over Taiwan. Same rules, eh? Is it also okay for any country to just seize the American president and his wife, and maybe other officials – like Stephen Miller – if they have the power to do so? 

Of course, Miller is not alone in his mind-boggling assertion of the right to power and the ignorance about where that leads. In a New York Times interview on Wednesday, January 7, Trump asserted that he “doesn’t need international law” to govern his pursuit of Western Hemisphere dominance. The only check on his power, he said, is “My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.” Unfortunately, we know about Trump’s “mind” and his “morality.” Neither exist in any recognizable form.

This kind of garbage, and there is no nicer word, is the stuff of people whose untethered hubris and ignorance have merged into the insane. I ask you, Stephen Miller, how ignorant can you be of recent world history? The entire reason we have what you and your fellow traffickers-in-madness derogate as the “liberal world order” is that we have the experience of two brutal world wars — somewhere around 22 million people were killed in WWI and 70-85 million killed in WWII. The horror of these wars, and the realization that such are the real-world consequences of a dog-eat-dog world governed purely by military might, is the reason the United Nations was created in the first place, along with its related system of international law and human rights. Are you not aware of this? Truly, what planet do you hail from? And what does this have to do with “groveling?” Nothing. Nothing at all, unless your vision is so warped by some puerile bully-fantasy that you cannot grasp what a significant collective of human beings attempted to do to prevent future brutality and provide some framework for human progress.  

Dr. Common Good has just one more question, this time for journalists. In your interviews and broadcasts, why are you quibbling about the feasibility of “managing” Venezuela, or what the oil companies think about this, or any other sideshow. These questions are immaterial. The real question is, what right does the Trump administration have to do any of this? And why are we, as American citizens, as global citizens, continuing to nibble at the edges of this appalling human travesty, being committed right in our collective faces by Trump, his storm troopers, and their simpering and/or conniving apologists?  

TRUMP’S BOGUS “WAR” AGAINST VENEZUELA – AMERICA, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?

Dr. Common Good

This morning’s attack on the Venezuelan capital and the abduction of President Maduro and his wife (for trial in the US) is a complete, appalling abrogation of both international law and of US law. Dr. Common Good repudiates this in the strongest of terms. Let me be straight with you. Regardless of what one might otherwise think of Maduro and his authoritarian rule, any American who thinks this attack is either justified or represents some proud assertion of American dominance is either wildly misinformed or does not think of the United States as a democratic country that stands for the rule of law. We have no right to do this, any more than some other country has a right to invade and abduct our president because they don’t like him — sorry, but you cannot do one without accepting the validity of the other. Nor do we have a right to simply claim that we will take a country’s oil or “run” the country.

And how does Trump justify this? Because, he says, Maduro is a drug dealer (a “narco-terrorist”) and thus a threat to the US, and that he has “emptied out his prisons” and sent criminals our way. There is, I repeat, no evidence to back this up, and in previous repetitions of this allegation the Trump administration has provided no evidence either. Evidence aside, for Trump to declare such concern about drug traffickers is pathetic gaslighting. Trump just recently pardoned former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, an actual, convicted mass exporter of drugs to the US. How does he justify this, after attacking Venezuela and abducting its president? He says that Hernández “was treated like the Biden administration treated a man named Trump…This was a man who was persecuted very unfairly.” A disgraceful whine from someone who purportedly represents this country.

What the US just did should shame all Americans, Democrat, Republican, Independent, or anything else. On top of that, Trump’s attack violated the UN Charter, specifically Article 2(4), which holds that countries must refrain from using military force against other countries and must respect their sovereignty. Trump’s attack also violated US law, specifically the War Powers Act. As Senator Chris Coons (Delaware) put it, “a military operation to capture and overthrow a president – even an illegitimate one – is an act of war that must be authorized by Congress.” And in willful disregard of Congress’ role, the Trump administration plainly lied in previous Congressional briefings in which they asserted that regime change in Venezuela was not a goal.

Who, then, is stopping Trump and his cronies from this wide-ranging thuggism? Where is Congress? Where is Marco Rubio, Secretary of State? Or more accurately, what happened to Mr. Rubio that he acceded to this travesty? Where, I ask, is the red line?

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.

HEGSETH, TRUMP AND THEIR SAD BUT DANGEROUS LITTLE-BOY VISION OF A MILITARY

Dr. Common Good

In the nonstop litany of idiocy that is the Trump administration, we now have Hegseth’s “gathering” of the generals and top brass to promote his, and apparently Trump’s, darkly cartoonish vision of a new military and its “warrior ethos.”

What a pathetic joke. Where, one wonders, does Hegseth get this garbage? With a full-sized American flag behind him a la Patton (the movie), he sternly addressed a room full of high-ranking, professional military who have actual, serious experience with warfighting, defense, and global conditions (and don’t need a lecture from an unqualified, junior wannabe), laying out a childish, performative vision of what his new “warrior ethos” means. Everyone needs to be fit, and must meet the “highest male standards.” No “beardos,” no “fat generals.” Appearance is paramount. There is to be no more “wokeness,” no concern for “climate change delusions,” no DEI, and a removal of “social justice, politically correct and toxic ideological garbage.” “We are done with that shit,” he said. “You are not politically correct and don’t necessarily belong, always, in polite society.” More stunning, and dangerous, was his call for the military to ignore Geneva Convention laws on humanitarian treatment during war, and to eliminate “stupid rules of engagement” often designed to protect civilians during fighting. Since soldiers are trained to “kill and break things,” they should not fight with one hand tied behind their back.   

What was that? He apparently dreams of fostering a 19^th century, Teddy Roosevelt-style corps of tough guys, charging up the hill, spitting out blood and tobacco as they run. Somebody please tell him to stop watching B war movies. This is 2025. A lot of contemporary warfighting happens behind a screen, piloting virtually-operated drones, engaging in cyber-warfare, monitoring and processing intelligence, or piloting high-tech aircraft, vehicles and ships. In this globalized world, it also requires knowledge, intelligence, and diplomatic skill. There should be two central qualifications for being in the military: 1) a strong commitment to defending the United States and the Constitution, and 2) high-levels of competence as appropriate to one’s designated role. Who cares whether you are male, female, trans, non-binary, or whatever? Yes, direct battlefield roles should require fitness and discipline, but many of these other roles should focus on competency. Look at Ukraine. They are surviving against a vastly larger military because of their ingenuity. I doubt anyone there cares whether or not you have a beard or your jaw isn’t square.

If I were in the military of any other country, particularly China, I would be laughing at this ridiculous display. It should be patently clear what is needed for a high-functioning military in this age of high tech and AI. And it is highly likely that America’s rival, and even allied, militaries, are not running around spouting off this kind of retrograde drivel. It would be a joke, except this is a serious matter and potentially damaging to our national defense. Responsible people need to pull Hegseth off the stage before he turns the national defense into a Potemkin-like simulacrum.   

And then on top of Hegseth’s blather comes Trump. In an hour-long, largely incoherent ramble that included a bucketload of false claims, a professed love for his own signature, criticism about how “ugly” stealth ships look, and his usual bragging and whining, he also tossed out a number of exceedingly disturbing statements. He warned that “America is under invasion from within,” and that the enemy from within is “no different than a foreign enemy, but more difficult in many ways because they don’t wear uniforms.” US cities, he said, are now a “big part of the war.” In fact, he added, “we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military.” This, from a President of the United States of America. Such statements should be instant grounds for impeachment or removal via the 25^th Amendment. Ah, but did we hear from any shocked Republicans? You know the answer.

By the way, despite the MAGA claims about cutting government expenses, the cost of forcing high-ranking military personnel to leave their posts all over the world and come to Virginia for this shallow, incompetent, and useless reality-show spectacle must have been enormous.

PETE HEGSETH AND HIS IDIOT REVISIONISM – REWARDING MASS MURDER

Dr. Common Good

Yet again, we have to wonder. How did the United States, yes, the United States, end up with a Secretary of Defense so generally ignorant and so thoroughly steeped in a dangerous and myopic MAGA-ism?

In the latest of a litany of incidents displaying this ignorance, along with a kind of cruel, racist revanchism, Hegseth has decided that 20 soldiers who committed an infamous mass murder of Native Americans should retain their Medals of Honor; specifically, for the 1890 killing of close to 300 Lakota Sioux men, women and children at Wounded Knee, South Dakota. This, after legislation had been introduced in 2019 to revoke the medals and the previous Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin III, had ordered a review of whether or not the medals should be rescinded. Hegseth, in announcing this decision, said “we’re making it clear that they deserved those medals.”

Think about this. This is the United States in 2025, rewarding mass murder. The Wounded Knee massacre was preceded by years during which the US government had seized Native land, protected hunters who were killing off the buffalo herds – a staple of Lakota (and Plains Indian) existence — abrogated treaties that aimed to protect Native land from settlers, and generally proceeded to destroy the Lakota way of life. Just prior to the massacre, US cavalry troops had moved in to disarm a Lakota encampment. During the disarmament, it appears that one deaf Lakota man struggled against the soldiers and his gun went off, after which the cavalry opened fire, ultimately killing most people in the encampment, including women and children who fled the fighting and were hunted down. Some Lakota fought back, but they had largely been disarmed.

And for this, Medals of Honor? What is the “honor” that mindless Pete Hegseth is commemorating? What is the “valor”? Is this some perverse representation of the “warrior ethos” he seeks to promote? What an abject disgrace, and a slap in the face to the many soldiers who have earned Medals of Honor for true bravery and sacrifice, including, by the way, many who were Native American. Among other things, this is one more glaring example of the hollow, twisted logic of the Hegseth/MAGA “anti-woke” crusade.

Any American with an ounce of integrity, and an ounce of dignity, should repudiate this sickening act and all that it represents. And I will say this straight out: Pete Hegseth, you are no warrior. You are a sham, and like your president, all you know how to do is create cartoonish displays and ersatz rituals. You know nothing about being truly human, nothing about sacrifice, nothing about human history, and given your religious pretense, absolutely nothing about grace. 

HOW?

Dr. Common Good asks…

How is it possible that we have an American president whose “speech” today before the UN was just a blowhard rant filled with braggadocio, completely baseless and egotistical claims about his “peacemaking,” whining that he has not received a Nobel prize, bragging that the US is the unchallenged “hottest” country in the world, lecturing the UN on its uselessness, spewing out a racist demagogue’s blanket condemnation of migration as the reason countries are “going to hell” and losing their heritage, and issuing a flagrantly ignorant denunciation of green energy and climate change science as perpetrated by “stupid people” and “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world.”

How? How did we get here? Yet Trump’s repulsive word-sewer is seen as coming from the United States, a key founder of this very United Nations. 

And just a day earlier, a fumbling president who could not even pronounce the word “acetaminophen” stood before the US and proclaimed “Tylenol” as the cause of autism, following the “conclusions” of his depraved and ignorant HHS Secretary RFK Jr. The world laughed, and the scientific experts stood flatfooted with mouths agape.

How?

Right now the United States is seen by most of the world as an idiotic, pathetic caricature of its former self, a country to be ignored, a country giving away many of its greatest assets, and a country to be taken advantage of because of its self-destructive and colossally stupid leadership and policies – which can’t help but raise this question in the minds of many: “How? How did this once thriving, admired country, defender of democracy (at least part of the time), purported “leader of the free world,” fall so quickly off a cliff into a turgid morass of myopic, ill-informed, moronic, mindless and just plain psychotic swill? How? Weren’t we just the country that did a better job than most of the world in addressing and recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic? Weren’t we just the country that was expanding healthcare to cover more people who could not afford it? Weren’t we just the country that, through USAID-funded programs, supported so many efforts to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS, starvation, and infectious disease? Weren’t we just the country that harnessed the sometimes-erratic relationships between NATO countries into a galvanized and coordinated opposition to Russia’s cold-blooded invasion of Ukraine? Weren’t we at least beginning to rejuvenate our leadership in the global fight against climate change? Weren’t we? Huh?

So, I ask again, how has it come to this? What this appalling imposter of a president and his servile, unqualified, self-dealing administration has done should be way over the line, beyond the pale, for Americans of every political stripe. Yet here we are.

You – and I mean all Americans — should seriously be asking yourself, how? And you should be thinking about some answers. Now. It’s past Paul Revere time.

POLITICAL MANIPULATION, DISTORTIONS AND THE SHOOTING OF CHARLIE KIRK 

Dr. Common Good

I am going to make this short and to the point.

First, political violence is unacceptable, period. No matter what Mr. Kirk said, or what his positions were, there is no place whatsoever for assassination or political violence in the United States. We empathize with the Kirk family for their loss.

That said, the canonization of Mr. Kirk by Trump, Vance, and other right-wing voices is grotesque. However clever his manner, he espoused vile racism, bigotry, white Christian nationalism, hostility to immigrants, and a backwards misogyny that fed hatred and violence.  To wit:

• He opposed the fundamental American tenet of equality, calling, for example, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 a “huge mistake,” and that Black people were “better off” years ago during Jim Crow and slavery, and he hosted on his podcast a slavery apologist who said that things went downhill after Black people were guaranteed the right to vote. He was a major proponent of the “great replacement theory,” claiming that liberal forces were seeking to replace white people with immigrants. He also once said that Black women – including Michelle Obama, Sheila Jackson Lee and Ketanji Brown Jackson – “did not have the brain power to be taken seriously.” They had to “go steal a white person’s slot” to be taken seriously. And he spread a litany of lies about the police killing of George Floyd.

• He called for a white Christian state, claiming that “there’s no separation of church and state. It’s a fabrication, it’s a fiction, it’s not in the Constitution.” He advocated for an “American way of life” based on “Christendom” and he was routinely, and rabidly, anti-Islamic, saying that he didn’t ever want his children to hear a Muslim call to prayer. He even called the prophet Muhammad a rapist and a pedophile, among other names. Along the same lines, he wholeheartedly supported Israel’s war in Gaza, denying reports of mass deaths and genocide, and professing his belief in the “scriptural land rights given to Israel.”

• He claimed that women should be subservient to their husbands and that having children was their primary role; so much so, that on being asked if his 10 year old daughter should bear the child if she was raped, he unequivocally said that she should.

• He opposed any gun control and argued, ironically, that a few deaths every year was an acceptable price to pay for maintaining his version of the right to bear arms. 

There is little doubt that these and his many other pronouncements fed into extreme MAGA and right-wing hate.

Now, Trump, Vance and generally the MAGA-world, are shamelessly exploiting the Kirk shooting to excoriate and call for vengeance against liberals and “woke-ism,” calling liberals “scum,” exhorting people to root out liberals, and blaming them for political violence, conveniently forgetting the right-wing extremist assassinations of Minnesota state representative Melissa Hortman and her husband, attempts on the life of Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro and his family, the attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband, and the litany of mass shootings inspired by right wing hate against people of color, immigrants, and the LGBTQ community, at churches, synagogues, bars, and Walmarts, among other locations. At the same time, they have held up an imaginary Charlie Kirk as a bastion of American values, with Vance taking his casket on Air Force 2, and Trump awarding Kirk the Presidential Medal of Freedom as an exemplar of American values and a “champion of liberty.” And to cap the hypocrisy, Attorney General Pam Bondi now says the Justice Department will go after hate speech, which, she said, is not free speech. Really. After charging liberals with “cancel culture” allegations when there was any outcry against right-wing hate speech, she can still say that with an apparent straight face. George Orwell would have a field day.

For Dr. Common Good, what Mr. Kirk stood for should never be held up as exemplary American values. What he stood for is not the America the world once admired, not the America of the great democratic experiment, and not an America that many recognize any longer.

Despite all of this, we should be using this as a moment to be reflexive about the ugly political divide, and to seek out ways to move forward, allowing for civil disagreement and not zero-sum game authoritarianism or the politics of exclusion. That is not American. Unfortunately, that is not the path Trump and his MAGA allies have taken. They are instead using this opportunity to ramp up authoritarian control.