Does Trump Want Another War?

 Answering Kennedy’s Call

“I’m not sure most Americans appreciate the monumental damage President Trump is doing to the post-World War II order that is the wellspring of American global leadership and affluence.” NYTimes Nicholas Kristof

USAToday

There is a growing outcry over the “monumental damage” emanating from the bromance of two ‘straight’ (and white) men on a tear of petty vindictiveness settling old scores, which can have far greater consequences.

It is tearing apart our closest alliances that protect Americans and other democratic countries from the depredations of autocrats and dictators, such as Vladimir Putin, who must imagine himself Czar Ivan the Terrible killing hundreds of thousands of his own people in attempting to conquer Ukraine to make it a part of a new Russian Empire (350,000 dead Russians at last count, per NBC’s Morning Joe).

“We have Trump and his oligarchy of ignorant shoe shiners vandalizing the network of organizations, agreements and values—largely put in place by America since the Second World War—which have given most of us, including America, on the whole an extraordinary degree of peace and prosperity.” Chris Patten, former UK Tory Chairman cited by Nicholas Kristof.

The level of ineptitude that Elon Musk’s DOGE team shows is breathtaking, as are the attempts to hide it.

“All in all, what we’ve just witnessed is a stunning display of incompetence, dismissal of critical federal workers by people with no idea of what they do and why it matters. Musk and Trump have, of course, apologized and promised to do better in the future.” Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman

Why the petty vindictiveness of our Bromancers? In a frightening insight by Timothy Snyder, Author of On Freedom, they are really ‘straight’ men trying to appear strong. But that can only be done by weakening the strong that actually stand in their way.

“Trump is a strongman in the sense that he makes others weak. He is strong in a relative sense; as Musk destroys institutions, what remains is Trump’s presence. But other sorts of power meaning vanish, as Musk takes apart the departments of the American government that deal with money, weapons, and intelligence. And then the United States has no actual tools to deal with the rest of the world.”

Dr. Snyder explained what he meant in a recent New Yorker article. Trump and Putin are both fascists, which by definition means masters of propaganda that twist words such as ‘communism’, or ‘deep state’ into meanings that feed their MAGA followers’ paranoid fantasies.

Hitler’s Goebbels, and Russia’s Stalin were masters of such propaganda that led to World War Two. It is detailed in Snyder’s bestselling book, “Bloodlands,” which describes the hideous period in the 1930s and ’40s when as many as 14 million people perished at the hands of Hitler and Stalin, with Ukraine a “particularly awful” mass grave.

And Trump is using the same fascist vocabulary today in branding Ukraine’s Zelensky the dictator, when it is Vladimir Putin.

That is why Trump and Musk’s actions threaten world peace and our own domestic order. They accomplish it by weakening the military alliances that have protected us such as NATO, while eliminating whole government departments that protect our health and safety and more environmental catastrophes, while weakening the FBI and DOJ that protect Americans from domestic and foreign terrorists.

In fact, settling old scores is an attempt to protect themselves from their own mistakes (i.e., Trump’s convictions, Musk-Tesla’s auto-drive accidents) by putting the blame on others. That is why Trump says he does not know what Musk is doing, when asked. He can therefore blame Musk or his lieutenants when said mistakes are uncovered.

Both Democrats and Republicans must now find a way now to counter Trump and Musk’s biggest mistake of all, their preoccupation with vengeance to and masks their own weaknesses that could lead to another war.

It is weakening our own strength and ability to stand up to Russia and China, where a larger war is most likely to start—because they have become emboldened by our growing weakness.

Harlan Green © 2025

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen

More Lawlessness--Republicans' Climate Denial

 Answering Kennedy’s Call

NYTimes

One year ago, on August 16, 2022, President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law – the largest investment in clean energy and climate action ever.

“The Inflation Reduction Act is a transformative law that is helping the United States meet its climate goals and strengthen energy security, investing in America to create good-paying jobs, reducing energy and health care costs for families, and making the tax code fairer,” the White House said in its latest update.

Whereas at the top of the Republican’s MAGA list in its 2024 platform is weaken as many environmental laws as possible in order to return fossil fuels and the non-renewable, most pollution intensive industries to dominance.

Trump’s acceptance speech said as much: “…And next we will add the actual and incredible waste of taxpayer dollars that is fueling the inflation crisis. They spent trillions of dollars on things doing with the green new scam. It’s a scam…We will not allow it to be spent on meaningless green new scam ideas.”

“And I will end the electric vehicle mandate on day one, thereby saving the US auto industry from complete obliteration, which is happening right now. And remember we have liquid gold under our feet, more than any other country by far. We are a nation that has the opportunity to make an absolute fortune with its energy. We have it and China doesn’t.”

This is after the last Trump administration spent four years dismantling major climate policies and rolling back many more rules governing clean air, water, wildlife and toxic chemicals.

In all, a New York Times analysis, based on research from Harvard Law School, Columbia Law School and other sources, counts nearly 100 environmental rules officially reversed, revoked or otherwise rolled back under Mr. Trump. More than a dozen other potential rollbacks remained in progress by the end but were not finalized by the end of the administration’s term.

President Biden’s four years have reversed such climate change denial. Just twelve months after the law was signed, the Inflation Reduction Act is already having a significant impact on American workers and families and “is delivering for underserved communities and those that have been too often left behind,” said the White House.

“Outside groups estimate the Inflation Reduction Act’s clean energy and climate provisions have created more than 170,000 clean energy jobs already, companies have announced over $110 billion in clean energy manufacturing investments in the last year alone, the law is delivering billions of dollars to protect communities from the impacts of climate change, and millions of seniors are saving money because their insulin is capped at $35 per month,” said the White House in its update.

The Republican Party’s attack on environmental regulations has been unrelenting in its support of the fossil fuel industry.

But in the early 1970s when I joined the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act were all passed with broad bipartisan support and signed by Republican President Richard Nixon.

What happened? The 1973 Arab oil embargo shut off OPEC supplies and led to long car lines waiting at gas stations to fill their tanks, for those that remember.

It was a very traumatic decade of soaring inflation that caused Big Business to bankroll lobbyists to support Big Oil producers, which set the environmental movement back. Oil production became a national security priority; fracking was developed to make the US the largest oil producer in the world.

The result of that decade was the beginning of what became Reaganomics, or trickle-down economics. It wasn’t even an economic theory—just make the one precent wealthier and enough will trickle down to the other 99 percent to lift all boats.

Worldwide temperatures have been increasing ever since; tornadoes and hurricanes more frequent and damaging, wildfires and floods as well. Even the Pentagon has jumped on the environmental bandwagon with its reports that have said global warming now endangers our national security.

Even the Big Oil industry has admitted the danger in many studies. But not the Republican Party, apparently, which makes its climate denial platform a national security threat as well.

Harlan Green © 2024

Follow Harlan Green on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarlanGreen