Donaldo needed both a new Epstein distraction and a quick attention fix. A packed stadium somewhere. So he hit upon the surreally ill-advised idea of ordering Secretary KegsBreath to summon 800 of the highest-ranking generals (the top guys, a tremendous group, nobody’s ever seen anything like it) to Quantico.
Young Pete was to be the opening act. Picture it: a roomful of deeply sober career admirals being lectured to by a career inebriate. No Saturday Night Live sketch writer could’ve cooked up a scenario with more satirical potential. The guy whose main claim to military fame was spilling state secrets on a group chat was gonna tell the generals what was what.
Beards verboten
Pete tried to project laser-like focus as he strutted across the stage offering tips on facial hair and where to buy his new book. Watching his exhortations, you couldn’t help but imagine him at a campus bar, holding forth to his frat buddies on the finer points of a new pussy-magnet workout.
He strapped on his funnest socks to tell the nation’s warfightingest warfighters to bring back performatively abusive drill sergeants like in the movies…– Shower Cap
All pumped up with faux braggadocio (per his distorted Neptune in Sagittarius rising [see Frederick Woodruff’s chart analysis here]), he instructed the generals to “crush the enemy.”
Thumbs down
Pete’s act sank faster than the $70 million jet that fell off the aircraft carrier.
We know Trump wants to burnish his he-man brand, but it’s still hard to fathom that he thought this would be accomplished by ordering decorated admirals to put their jobs on hold and fly thousands of miles to listen to a Fox News weekend couch flunky. The guy who tried to throw an axe that time, and missed the target, hitting the drummer.
Worse was to come after young Pete ceded the stage to his boss, the overweight draft dodger, who – because the Universe is wired by a joker — is now Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces.
President Bone Spurs speaks
Trump shambled to the podium and helpfully defined who, precisely, the enemy is that needs crushing: Americans who don’t like him. Also, stairs are too challenging, and US battleships are too ugly.
For sure, the old dimwit expected his performance would be a slam-dunk. He’s used to whipping up rage-drunk audiences without breaking a sweat. But in this case, instead of a roomful of culture warriors he faced a roomful of actual warriors. His vicious babbling was met not with whoops of validation but with stone-cold silence.
If there had been enemy agents in that crowd– and what hostile nation worth its salt would’ve passed up the chance to insert a spook in there, with all the US top military brass packed together in one place? – he’d have seen living proof of what the world already knows quite well: that the glory days of the USA are gone.
Squeaky tank bust
It’s all of a piece with that sad, comic birthday parade in June. Remember the creaky tanks, the thin-ass crowd, that one guy holding up a little drone as he walked along?
One can imagine the fury and humiliation that sorry spectacle evoked in Trump. He’d wanted a celebration of the nation’s — i.e. his own — awesome manly power. How come he didn’t get a real parade, like Xi and Kim Jong Un, goddammit? The kind where a fearless leader, ideally in a uniform covered in medals, salutes as hundreds and thousands of troops march by in lockstep?
What our leader doesn’t realize is today’s army is not so much a bang-bang world-conquest system as a bureaucratic career path, where young recruits become managers and cyber-espionage nerds.
Hyperpower no more
More crucially, he’s in doubled-down denial about how much damage his policies have inflicted on the US military and the country’s standing in the world. With its experts fired, its allies alienated, its traditional enemies strengthened (see The Fog of War podcast), the US army is weaker today than it has ever been.
Other world leaders know this. Putin knows it only too well: he helped engineer it. The dignitaries who snickered at Trump’s disastrous performance in London know it. The only people who fail to see it are the sloppy old fool in the White House and his grievance-addled followers.
Their idea of American soldiery seems to be stuck in 1950s Hollywood, where big, strong Uncle Sam (not the European Allies) vanquished Hitler. Trump made sure to anoint the USA as the savior of WWII during his recent speech to the Europeans — his grotesque ignorance matched only by his astonishing lack of tact.
Then he pressed the point further: “Without the United States everything in the world would die.”
On display here are two stunning blind spots. First, there’s the personal pathology, of an aging narcissist projecting his singular ego onto existence in general (“If I cease to exist, the world ceases to exist”).
“The more he thinks he’s on his way out, the less he cares about anybody else.” –David Rothkopf
Then there’s the blind spot with wider consequence: he doesn’t get where the world is at right now. Or more probably, he sort of gets it, but refuses to admit it. His posturing is a performative resistance to the fact that the USA’s reign as a hyper-power is over. This president, this demented, sociopathic old felon, personifies its decline.
Pax Americana
It must be taking a lot of his energy to ignore the global shifts going on right now, because they are seismic. Russia and India are in the ascendancy, and China looks to be the new global leader, not just militarily but economically and geopolitically. While Trump yearns to go back to the 19th century — he particularly fancies the fossil fuel industries — Xi Jinping ramps up futuristic tech.
We should take a warning from Trump’s blindness, and do the opposite: take in the truth of the changing world. The healthy thing to do in any situation is to identify with the energies of forward movement, and dis-identify with those of backward movement. This doesn’t mean approving of what other countries are doing. It means recognizing that Pax Americana, the world order
that has prevailed since 1945, is dying.
The Pax Americana had a good run. It maintained global balance for 80 years, and oversaw the USA becoming king of the world. But prevailing world orders, like everything else in the Universe, have to die and get reassembled.
As the Cardinal Cross years made clear, it’s time for the USA to completely change its global role. To Americans of conscience this should come as a relief. You don’t need to see Trump’s abysmal approval numbers to know that the old America, the mindset that vomited up Donald Trump, is crumbling. The ground is being cleared for something else to arise.
This national moment, for all its chaos, is at an inception point, which has a lot of power in it.
There’s a wide open lane into the future, to build something on top of this rubble. – Ben Colllins of The Onion
This is true on the individual level, too. We’re getting the chance to take a hard look at our essential values, and realign with them. If you believe that there’s nothing more important than that, you’re closing in on why you incarnated at this particular time and place.
Images
Keep Clean poster
Trump as Patton, Barry Blitt
Birthday parade, NBC News
Capricorn & Aries, Hindustan Times
Gabinete de Psicanalise, Paranoia
