Many people bought into Trump’s ‘America First’ rhetoric thinking that it meant Trump would focus attention and government resources on taking care of everyday Americans as a priority. That is obviously not the case as the Trump administration has slashed countless aid programs and let the ACA subsidies expire so people have been hit with skyrocketing health insurance premiums. Trump’s interpretation of ‘America First’ is that America, meaning Donald J. Trump, can do whatever the hell he wants anywhere in the world. It’s kind of like his view of ‘king of the hill.’ He believes he has the most powerful military in the world and that enables him to bully and control every country and everyone including the American population.
History is replete with examples of empires whose leaders thought that because they had the strongest military, they could oppress their own citizens, conquer other lands, plunder their resources, and subjugate their people. The Roman Empire. The Mongols. The Chinese dynasties. The British empire. The Spanish empire. And more recently, the Nazis in Germany. They all have two things in common. They all thought they were invincible and they all collapsed. Some of them collapsed due to decay from within and some collapsed because they were defeated after major wars, in which they underestimated their opponents.
The fact is, everything Trump is doing today is making America weaker and more vulnerable. He believes that because the U.S. military is so powerful, the United States is invincible. He clearly does not understand that military might alone is not a guarantee of success on the world stage. The best way to ensure a strong, secure nation is to establish strong and broad alliances and to ensure the domestic population is taken care of so there is less chance of internal strife.
Trump is failing on both counts. He has alienated virtually all our allies so, despite what those in Trump world believe, America has become a pariah on the world stage. Trump’s tariffs have driven many of our former trading partners to seek other trading alliances while devastating parts of the US economy. Trump’s attacks on Canada, one of our formerly strongest trading partners, resulted in Mark Carney, the Canadian Prime Minister, taking a trip to China to negotiate a trade alliance with China. Soybean farmers have been screwed because when Trump levied tariffs on China, which used to be the largest market for US soybeans, the Chinese simply went to Brazil whose soybean industry is now booming. If Trump carries through with his threat to take Greenland by force, it will shatter the NATO alliance and the economic consequences will likely be devastating and long-lasting. In the end, strong economic and political alliances are far more important than bombs and that is something the Trump just does not understand.
At the same time Trump is busy alienating all our former allies, he is creating turmoil and unrest at home. His tariffs have been one of the largest tax increases on Americans ever and has resulted in increased costs for every American. His Gestapo-like ICE agents are terrorizing communities. He has slashed aid and benefits to millions. And this isn’t even touching on the brazen grifting that is going on in broad daylight resulting in hundreds of millions of dollars going into Trump’s pockets or those of his family.
The combination of the current internal strife and the degradation of our international alliances is a recipe for disaster. The simple fact is, America is weaker and far more vulnerable than it has been since World War II. Our enemies know this. Our allies know this. I suspect even some of the supplicant Republican Congress people know this. History is not on our side right now. We can only hope that this lunacy is stopped before America just becomes another name in the history books of ‘formerly great empires.’
