To adequately address the multiple fronts of insidious chaos this Administration initiates one must triage events and establish a working order of which outbursts portend the most injury to the national interest. With trade wars ready to explode, and the President now firmly backed by the GOP to pursue repressing those who investigated his seditious corruption, both our economic vitality and pluralist political process face imminent peril. Add to those crises new UN data that clarifies Trumpism’s militant inaction on climate change as an existential threat to life on the planet, while moving up the time table on our doom significantly, and one is slapped silly by a trifecta of self-inflicted hazards. Two and a half years in we’re no longer shooting ourselves in the foot, the barrel now rests firmly at our temple.
Listening to Trump hold forth on any subject produces anxious nausea if you are brighter than he is, and/or not addled by either obsessive bigotry or greed. He still believes tariffs are a cash cow for the US Treasury, and clean coal is actually a niche ore mined for its pristine burning properties… nuff said. It has been conveyed by those who have worked in the West Wing that catching the President’s attention requires a hook of either the sensational or ugly innuendo, facts are tedious and risk losing him completely to the relentless distraction he suffers.
Apparently, bundist Stephen Miller and doomsday John Bolton have mastered the art. When it comes to pushing Trump’s buttons and focusing his most visceral nastiness, Miller is the Iago of Pennsylvania Ave, understanding the invading hordes from the south, or fiendish Persians to the east will reliably snap the President into momentary cognizance, edicts and tweet storms at the ready. And as if ending American democracy and precipitating economic as well as ecological ruin is not enough, we now must ready for ICE unleashed and war with Iran, Miller and Bolton’s twin preoccupations.
New revelations suggest what really got head of Homeland Security Kirsten Nielsen canned was her opposition to a massive 10-city Gestapo-like ICE sweep of thousands of immigrants ruled deportable. Miller’s brainchild, and vigorously supported by Trump, the operation would have surely gone off as ugly as it sounded, with ICE squads kicking down doors and rounding up families like the vermin Trump and the ghoulish Eichmann wannabe believe they are. Nielsen, and the President’s previous selection to head immigration enforcement, Ronald Vitiello, together challenged the plan, seeing it for the half-baked and chaotically authoritarian horror it represents. And while their opposition seems to have succeeded in at least postponing the madness, it earned both the boot, as Trump confirmed afterward, intoning about new plans to “go in a tougher direction.” Purges are Miller’s love language, and a West Wing awash in Apprentice pettiness and sycophancy can’t help but reward those who slither most efficiently.
In Europe our allies no longer attempt to make nice, viewing us now as far more problem than solution. Nothing proves them more prescient than our haste to pick a war with Iran. While Trump was feting a regressive Hungarian strongman previous Administrations distanced themselves from with praise he only provides “tough” leaders, who always seem to disdain the democracies which empowered them, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was stopping by Brussels to crash an EU planning session.
European Foreign Ministers have not held back criticism of Trump’s abrupt trashing of the exhaustively crafted US-Iran nuclear deal. Lately, Pompeo’s mission has been to kick things up a notch or two, making clear not only are all options on the table when it comes to Iran, but force now takes up far more space than diplomacy. Pompeo’s sorry position speech last year inferred most anything less than a surrender of sovereignty was not going to satisfy this White House, with the goals of the abandoned nuclear pact downgraded to just a couple of items on Washington’s ever expanding list of grievances. Linkage, nihilist style.
Both the Saudis and Israel would love America to commit blood and treasure to weakening their principal competition for regional hegemony. To which Trump’s reply is simple… how high?! In Brussels nobody appeared psyched to meet with our chief diplomat, understanding clearly Pompeo’s messaging was a one-trick pony express… we’re taking names of those not sufficiently aboard our war wagon! War with Iran is our prerogative, yours is to support with enthusiasm, and pay more for the privilege! European Foreign Ministers are far from inclined to oblige. England’s Jeremy Hunt actually created equivalence between America and Iran while expressing fears of escalating tensions both parties have heightened.
Of course Trump is to lessening tensions what cigarette smoking is to emphysema, and his recent statements have been especially unhelpful. The Saudis declared yesterday the damage two of their tankers and a Norwegian freighter recently sustained near the Persian Gulf was “an act of sabotage,” but wisely refrained from speculating on suspects, they knew who to rely on for that. Wisdom being a notably foreign concept to our President, he enflamed as usual, threatening it will “be a bad problem for Iran if something happens, I can tell you that.” One can only expect the worse when Iran’s rhetoric proves no match to a US President’s for militancy. Frederica Mogherini, the EU’s chief diplomat, reluctantly agreed to a last minute meeting with Pompeo and emerged unimpressed, cautioning both parties to exhibit “maximum restraint.”
Between unprecedented US pressure on allies to abide newly tightened sanctions against Iran, and the overt distrust Europe now understandably displays as Trumpian sabers rattle louder by the day, it’s near certain NATO won’t survive a unilateral US attack in the Persian Gulf. Of course Trump et al will shed few tears about that outcome, and the GOP makes it less mistakable on the hour they will fall in line behind any outrage the Administration entertains; thus, a cataclysmic war with Iran is quickly becoming a more when than if proposition.
Added to the menu of other waterfalls this White House strokes mindlessly toward, a full reckoning appears assured. The fervent hope used to be we could survive our worst civic failure with a benign mulligan, a valuable lesson we could absorb and use to do better next time, spared the worst consequences of our screw up. Trump and the GOP are having none of that, like Glenn Close’s unhinged character in Fatal Attraction, they aren’t about to be ignored, and electing a Fox/AM nihilist will prove to be anything but an innocuous dalliance. We are going to have to fight like hell to break this thing off…. and it’s going to be harrowing. Allowing the tea pot to whistle unattended will surely ruin us. BC