“First principles, Clarice. Simplicity. Read Marcus Aurelius. Of each particular thing, ask: What is it, in itself, what is its nature...? What does he do, this man you seek?” — Dr. Hannibal Lecter.
Every person in power has a history, a trail to follow, which leads to the essential thing motivating them to power. With our current president, we have 40 years or more to pore over, literally a million words written about or (ghost-written) by him. Certainly we have the words spoken by him. In all things, Donald J. Trump is about faking it till he makes it, but mostly about faking it, because what fun is there in getting things the hard way?
More wisdom from the fabled Dr. Lecter, who eats a very rare cut of steak. “No, he covets. That’s his nature. And how do we begin to covet, Clarice? Do we seek out things to covet? Make an effort to answer.
“We begin by coveting what we see every day. Don’t you feel eyes moving over your body, Clarice? I hardly see how you couldn’t. And don’t your eyes move over the things you want?”
It really isn’t hard to figure out our president. He’s been doing this schtick since the early 1980s. The properties he buys, he buys for the glamor and the name, to pair with his own. He’s made his name great by adding all these other things to it. But all of it is faking—there’s little real value in it.
Look at the things President Trump has done in the White House. He tore down the East Wing, a fait accompli that the Supreme Court will likely allow to proceed, in building a ballroom, because otherwise the White House grounds will be left with a dust-filled pit and half-finished steel and concrete framing over the underground secure Presidential Emergency Operations Center—the PEOC, or as it is more commonly known, the Bunker.
Trump put his name on the Kennedy Center for the Arts, after causing all the actual art to flee. He then shut the place down for renovations (I was there a year or so ago and didn’t see a need for renovations, but my eye is not expert), and tarped the front where a judge ordered the name removed. Now it will say something like “The Kennedy Center for the Arts, renovated by Donald J. Trump.” He didn’t build it, but he did put his name on it.
If the dreaded triumphal arch is allowed to be built on the Arlington side of the Memorial Bridge over the Potomac, Trump will have succeeded in marking Washington, D.C. in a rather permanent way, putting his own stamp on the place. The ballroom will also bear his name, and the U.S. Navy is considering naming a planned Ford-class aircraft carrier, CVN-81, the USS Donald J. Trump. This would strip the honor of naming it the USS Doris Miller, the first Black American to receive the Navy Cross for his actions on December 7, 1941 during the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor.
And, absent a change in orders, that carrier’s design will change, removing the electromagnetic catapult system in favor of the 60-year-old steam-powered design. Coveting things in his name is what Trump is about.
He will leave no thing untouched. The Trump Card, the Trump Account, the Trump passport, the Trump $1 coin, and TrumpRx are only a few of the current examples littering the government with his name. The things in front of him are all the levers of presidential power, and President Trump will pull them all with gusto to fake it, even if he doesn’t make it.
He is never content to leave friendly relations alone, or to nurture those relationships with friendly nations. He would rather solicit a gold-plated 747 from the Al-Thani family, and the Emir of Qatar. He would rather propose a utopian Board of Peace for Gaza, which has been largely reduced to rubble as Israel continues to pulverize the hundreds of kilometers of tunnels Hamas dug over two decades, than deal with serious issues in the Middle East.
He would rather waste the entire U.S. inventory of advanced missile interceptors, Patriot PAC-3, than have a plan to defeat Iran’s jackbooted religious zealots running that place. This war has left Iran more powerful than it has ever been since the days of Cyrus the Great.
It has also left Israel, though powerful, thoroughly alone.
Instead of shoving the world further from nuclear nightmares, this new alignment under Trump has dragged the world kicking and screaming into territory not seen since the days of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Abandoning South Korea in favor of some impossible deal with the North edges Japan closer to jettisoning its constitutional prohibition against possessing an offensive military capability, and nuclear weapons. It will be trivial for Japan to build and field nukes should it make that decision—which seems almost inevitable at this point.
It also emboldens North Korea to flex, with China and Russia as its clients and protectors. The U.S.’s unstable relations in the Far East makes Taiwan nervous, as it seeks to protect itself from a one-day invasion by mainland China. It gives China leave to cause all kinds of havoc in its regional area of operations, as U.S. carriers are busy turning sailors into deserters in the Persian Gulf.
It gives Russia permission to continue bombarding Ukraine with more and larger missile and drone strikes, because the U.S. cannot supply Ukraine with advanced interceptors, having used nearly all of them in our war with Iran. It gives Ukraine unprecedented power to design and field new and terrifying weapons like UGVs and killer drones. The battlefield of the future, due to Trump’s mismanagement, will be more deadly than ever, and not to the advantage of the United States. (You can argue that President Biden also had a hand in the Ukraine war, but Trump’s poor treatment of Volodymyr Zelenskyy has had a far worse effect.)
The world is inexorably crawling toward global conflict, and Trump would be happy if it was called the Trump World War for history’s sake. It’s all about the naming rights.
And Canada. Our friendliest friends, who have always suffered from little brother syndrome, now define themselves by their disdain for the American government and its leaders. Mind you, the Canadians love us, as does the rest of the world. The World Cup proved this. But none of that will matter when our children and the generation now in young adulthood lie dead in far flung battlefields due to a guy who made his name hucking steaks, wine, real estate classes, vitamins and supplements, watches, crypto-currency, and overpriced golf clubs. And in none of those things did Trump’s stubby fingers have the least to do with the items being sold, or the rubes who bought them.
Over the last 40 years, Donald J. Trump has bankrupted casinos (which is nearly impossible to do), an airline, various hotel properties and resorts, Trump University, and an entire professional football league. The biggest challenge for him now is to bankrupt the United States Treasury. Our national debt is the highest it’s ever been in history: $40 trillion dollars. Yet our government continues on an enormous spending spree.
He has subverted the Republican Party to his will. He has had a large part in ruining the Democratic Party, sending voters running to the Democratic Socialists for cover. And now, not content to bankrupt America alone, he has his sights set on bankrupting Canada.
At the end of this term, I might expect the only nations doing well will be Venezuela, Qatar, and Turkiye (Turkey). The rest of the world will be consumed in petty wars, trade wars, and shooting wars.
And if things get too far out of control, there’s always the specter of nuclear war. Remember, it was Donald J. Trump who said, in 1990:
I think of the future, but I refuse to paint it. Anything can happen. But I often think of nuclear war. Nuclear war?
I've always thought about the issue of nuclear war; it's a very important element in my thought process. It's the ultimate, the ultimate catastrophe, the biggest problem this world has, and nobody's focusing on the nuts and bolts of it. It's a little like sickness. People don't believe they're going to get sick until they do. Nobody wants to talk about it. I believe the greatest of all stupidities is people's believing it will never happen, because everybody knows how destructive it will be, so nobody uses weapons. What bullshit.
People didn’t believe in COVID-19 until they got sick, either. Including Donald J. Trump, who hosted a superspreader event in the White House Rose Garden while incubating the virus in his own body. If it’s so stupid believing nuclear war will never happen, I suppose Trump could start one to prove himself right.
Nuclear war is the one thing Trump can’t fake. Everything else can be faked until the mushroom clouds bloom over the horizon.
Faking the dream is the essential Donald J. Trump. “What does he do, this man you seek?” He covets, then he fakes, then he puts his name on it. Everything reduces down to this. It’s all about selling fake steaks to angry Canadians, who refuse to buy.
Remember, we did this to ourselves.
On the bright side, the capital will be filled with testimonials reminding visitors of the foolish decisions made by American voters ignoring character and embracing campaign acronyms, derogatory nicknames and vile attacks on the opposition. God Bless America!