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Puppet Masters Will Be Unleashed on Americans

From Gaza to Minnesota, the Trump administration is accelerating a politics of fear and of intimidation.

A puppet in the likeness of US President Donald Trump holding a sign reading “The Lying King” is held up held up in front of the Colorado State Capital during the “No Kings” national rally in Denver, Colorado.

Earlier this week, Trump publicly wrestled with the weighty question of whether to “bomb the shit out of” longtime US ally Oman. Oman’s apparent sin is, it appears, simply being located geographically near Iran and thus having no choice but to engage with the Islamic Republic over the Strait of Hormuz. At the same time, his authoritarian ally in the Middle east, Israeli National Security Minister Itamir Ben-Gvir publicly advocated killing “thirty to forty” Palestinians per day in the Gaza Strip, saying there were some people not worthy of life; some people, in fact who weren’t even human. It was as quintessential a statement of fascist intent as anything to come out of the Netanyahu administration, yet not a single member of the Trump administration mustered even a peep in protest at this heinous proposal. And why would they? It was quite in keeping with the stuff that comes out of Trump’s mouth on a regular basis.

To be fair, Trump had other things on his mind. He had just ordered the Pentagon to scale back military exercises with longtime ally South Korea, made it clear this was punishment for the country not jumping into Trump’s Iran War quagmire, and then began a bizarre days-long, and one-directional, love-fest with North Korea’s dictatorial leader Kim Jong Un, repeatedly heaping praise on the tyrant even as that tyrant remained notably close-lipped in return.

In 2017, as Kim and Trump verbally sparred over North Korea’s accelerated program, and after Trump threatened to “totally destroy” the country, Kim memorably denounced Trump as a “frightened dog,” a “gangster fond of playing with fire,” and pledged that “I will surely and definitely tame the mentally deranged US dotard with fire.” Nine years on, Kim seems to have realized his promise, as his rapidly growing nuclear arsenal serves to conjure up nothing but awe in the eyes of his erstwhile adversary. That “frightened dog” has rolled over, pedaled his legs in the air submissively........

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