America is sick and her sickness endangers the whole world. Given America’s immense power and resources, a cure must be found within. The first thing that is needed is an education teaching that hate must be avoided, that excellence does not consist in violence. To achieve this change of outlook is an immense task which America’s “Radicals” must attempt to carry out. Whether the necessary heroism will be forthcoming, I do not know. We can only hope that it may be so. – Bertrand Russell, The Ethos of Violence in the Minority of One, 1965, p 607
America has, except for perhaps John F Kennedy and Jimmy Carter, had a succession of warmongering presidents since World War 2. Arguably, none of them, except for maybe Nixon and Johnson, come even close to being as unhinged and unstable as Donald Trump.
Trump may not have managed to get as many Americans killed in unnecessary acts of aggression as Nixon or Johnson, but it’s not for lack of trying. His declaration of war on Iran, which, needless to say, is unwarranted, is also blatantly illegal. Worse, Trump’s erratic conduct since the initial airstrikes on Iran began in tandem with the genocidal Israelis. They not only conspired to assassinate the Ayatollah but also bombed an elementary school, killing over 150 girls, destroyed hospitals, and other civil infrastructure. The attack on Iran has spun out of control and has the potential to spiral into a calamitous Third World War.
The original pretext for starting hostilities, which Trump absurdly calls an excursion, an operation, or a war, or all three at the same time, depending on his clarity of mind at the time, was to purge Iran of its ability to manufacture nuclear weapons. The frequent repetition of this flagrant lie doesn’t seem to perturb the American population too much, since he first announced to them in June last year that “Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated.”
Either Americans have short memories, or they don’t understand what obliterated means. Worse, they may just have an unnatural affection for lies or war, or both. Given the American predilection for celebrity worship, tolerating lies is par for the course, and an argument could be made for a baked-in imperialist culture having a natural affinity for warmongering. A recent Pew survey indicates that 37% of Americans (not an insignificant number) support the war, giving credence to the latter hypothesis.
The Pew poll aligns with partisan voting trends in America. It confirms that around a third of the population, perhaps more, are not at all distressed at having a raving lunatic at the helm of the mighty USS Hegemony. It’s also no accident that an imperialist nation came to have a Department of War, or that the bloodthirsty wacko in charge would be an alcoholic former television presenter tasked with spreading misinformation and egregious lies. Trump’s Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, seems to genuinely salivate at the prospect of killing people.
This diabolical press conference, where both Trump and Hegseth demeaned both their country and themselves, came in the wake of their gross incompetence and mishandling of the war and the hilarious underestimation of Iran’s potential. It was a vain effort to save face after Trump declared he had won the war, only to beg for assistance from the rest of the world when Iran blocked the Strait of Hormuz to ships from nations sympathetic to Israel and America. In short, Iran has him by the short and curlies.
Meanwhile, many Americans began howling, but not about the innocent lives that were being lost in the shambolic war effort. No, it was mainly about being inconvenienced at the pumps.
When Trump was elected for the second time in 2024, he made short work of putting together an administration that surely must be the envy of Germany’s Nazi regime in World War 2. This administration has been in office for more than a year, and while there are mutterings of discontent from many Americans, these are mostly due to rising food and fuel prices. While the rest of the world is utterly shocked by America’s descent into fascism, Americans still have a disturbing, no, annoying, level of reverence for the office of the President. That tolerance for wickedness and wrongdoing is perfectly emblematic of the concept of the banality of evil as described by Hannah Arendt in 1962 during the trial of Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi war criminal.
Again, it’s no accident that someone like Donald Trump won the presidential elections in 2016 and again in 2024 despite a disastrous first term in office. I don’t think anyone has summarised the reason why he was elected twice better than Michael Jochum, a touring drummer for the metal band Korn.
I used to wonder how it was possible that Trump could have won in 2016, and then again in 2024, given how emotionally toxic and depraved he is.
I don’t wonder anymore. I think he won for that exact reason. Because he carried at least one broken shard to reflect the broken shards in millions of others.
If you’re a racist, you found your guy. If you’re a misogynist, you found your guy. If money is your only religion, you found your guy. If your heart is armored shut, you found your guy. If you mock the disabled, you found your guy. If intelligence makes you insecure, you found your guy. If you’re a sexual predator, you found your guy. If you trade in humiliation and conspiracy and filth, you found your guy.
If you’ve never done a single hour of emotional inventory, you found your guy. If you cheat, stiff contractors, bankrupt your obligations, and call it savvy, you found your guy. If you lie as easily as you breathe, you found your guy. If cruelty feels like strength, you found your guy. If white grievance is your comfort food, you found your guy. If your ego is a black hole no title can fill, you found your guy. If warmongering fuels your ego, you found your guy, If empathy feels like weakness and dominance feels like oxygen, you found your guy.
If he’d only carried one or two of these pathologies, he might have been dismissed as just another loud, damaged man. But he carried a buffet of them. That was the appeal. Millions could locate themselves somewhere in the wreckage. They didn’t have to agree with all of it. They just had to recognize a piece of themselves in it.
It was never really about him. It was about the validation. The absolution. The permission. He didn’t invent the resentment; he amplified it. He didn’t create the cruelty; he normalized it. He gave millions the intoxicating relief of hearing their ugliest impulses echoed back at rally volume.
Trump is a symptom. The deeper illness is collective. If there’s one sentence that defines his power, it’s this: “He says the things I’m thinking.”
And that’s the part that should chill us.
Because what does it say about us that so many were thinking those things? That tens of millions of Americans harbored resentments so deep, so seething, that they were simply waiting for a demagogue to baptize them as virtue? That after decades of supposed progress on race, gender, and equality, so many white men felt so threatened, so displaced, so furious, that cruelty became a political platform?
Maybe we were living in a fool’s paradise, mistaking silence for healing, politeness for progress…
While I’m constantly reminded that not all Americans support Trump, Americans need to take collective responsibility for installing such a depraved excuse for a human being in office. Yes, there are tens of thousands of true Americans who brave arrest and harassment while protesting both the genocide in Gaza and the heavy-handed policing methods of the Trump administration. It’s not nearly enough. The number of people supporting the administration is grotesquely high. Philosopher Bertrand Russell had a forlorn hope in 1965 that education against hate and violence would cure America of its imperialist sickness.
Alas!
Regime change is a quintessentially American imperialist pursuit. It has been going on for years, but Americans barely noticed. They were too busy chasing the American dream while living off the comforts of imperialist conquest. For many other countries, however, the American Dream was a nightmare. Many countries now realise that regime change is imperative, not for Iran, but for the country that spent decades enforcing it on others.
Unfortunately, Americans cannot be trusted to change their regime from within. Old habits die hard. Americans love their pretend-democracy too much, and they also worship the corrupt two-party electoral system that nurtures it. Indeed, given how much time and effort the print and television media spend showcasing the whole electoral circus, it certainly seems like entertainment for the public.
However, Iran has exposed how fragile empires can be. Military might is illusory, especially when controlled by deranged lunatics. The Strait of Hormuz clearly demonstrates that world economies can be shaken and squeezed without the backing of multi-billion-dollar military arsenals.
lenny unencumbered 