Honestly, I can’t believe I’m in this world of ours (or do I mean His?). Yes, this very one and no other!

Almost a quarter of a century after, in response to the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. launched its war in Afghanistan that would last a mere 20 years until Donald Trump prepared for and Joe Biden carried out a humiliating withdrawal of the last American troops there, the U.S. is back big time, dumber and more wildly destructive than ever.

Whew! That’s a lot of (terrible) history to get into a single sentence!

And so, here’s a TomDispatch question for you: What four-letter country, the first three of which are IRA, has the U.S. now been bombing? No, not Iraq! That war began in 2003 and ended a mere eight years later in 2011. And remind me, how did that work out? It’s Iran, of course.

And what a nightmare that is! By now, everyone who didn’t vote for Donald Trump (and even some who did) knows that he’s an all-American maniac. In his own striking fashion, the former “president of PEACE” has undoubtedly, even proudly, taken possession of the label: the most dangerous man on Earth. And believe me, on this planet of ours right now, that’s no small accomplishment. (Think Vladimir Putin for a start!)

And given that he has almost three years (3 years!!) to go in his presidency (if all goes well and he doesn’t nationalize the American electoral system and run for a distinctly unconstitutional and unprecedented third term in office), everything we’ve seen so far is undoubtedly just a prologue to a future from hell! (And yes, sad to say, at this point we are indeed in the second exclamation-point presidency of Donald J. Trump on an exclamation-point of a planet, itself going downhill all too fast.)

Of course, anyone — and, for that matter, any people — can make a mistake. And electing Donald Trump president the first time around might once have qualified as exactly that.

But no longer — not when, having just missed in 2020 with 46.9% of the vote, he won again in 2024 with 49.8% of American voters backing him.

Of course, at some level, we shouldn’t be shocked. For so many years, the United States was simply the most powerful country on Planet Earth, an imperial #1 of a sort that arguably hadn’t been seen in history. But sooner or later, all great imperial powers do go down. If you don’t believe me, just check any history book. That’s beyond predictable.

What’s been unpredictable is that the United States would begin going down quite so wildly and, as a first in history, that “our” president would distinctly try to take the planet itself down with him. So, here we are blasting the hell out of Iran and, of course, in the process, as all wars do, putting wildly more fossil fuels into the atmosphere. Modern war and preparations for them may, in fact, be the most carbon intensive activity on this ever warming planet of ours.

Of course, century after century, great powers have experienced decline, but seldom have their leaders been quite such a personification of imperial decline as Donald Trump. Yes, the self-proclaimed “president of PEACE,” who campaigned in 2024 on the promise that he’d “break the cycle of regime change,” is now distinctly the president of WAR, leaving the rest of us not in a Dump-Trump, but all too sadly in an increasingly dump-truck of a world.

The “Con Job” Presidency

If, once upon a time, you had told me about a world in which Donald Trump would be president of the United States (twice!), I would have thought you a genuine nut case. And worse yet, he has proven to be anything but alone in his madness. I mean, how could there possibly be a war in its fifth year right at the edge of the European heartland, another in Lebanon, a third in Iran (and mind you I’m not even mentioning Gaza), and a major civil war underway for endless years in Sudan on a planet that already seems to be going down the tubes in a big-time fashion? (And, mind you, I’m not even counting the never-ending American bombing of Somalia!)

How could all of that be happening on a planet already (all too literally) heating to the boiling point thanks to what’s come to be known as climate change (itself far too mild a term for what’s going on)? How could all of that be happening when it’s no secret that wars and militaries (even in peacetime) release staggering amounts of fossil fuels into the atmosphere — and my own country’s military tops them all? (And honestly, in this world of ours right now, it’s hard to write anything without exclamation points!!) As Nina Lakhani of the Guardian has reported, that military is “the world’s largest institutional greenhouse gas emitter” and “the largest single fossil fuel consumer in the U.S.”

You might wonder how that could be possible, when it’s become all too apparent that making war on each other, while a nightmare in itself, is also the worst imaginable way of making war on this planet of ours.

Honestly, how could we Americans have elected — not once, but (yes again!) twice — a president who rejects the very idea that this planet is beginning to broil from the burning of staggering levels of fossil fuels and has openly called climate change a “con job“? And worse yet, he remains deeply indebted to the fossil-fuel industry, which poured at least $96 million into his 2024 reelection campaign and an estimated $445 million into influencing the total election. He might indeed not have won the presidency without their donations, and now, undoubtedly as his thank-you to the industry, he’s doing everything he can to take our future away from us by, among other devastating things, trying to halt........

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