Recent elections are an embarrassment to our country. 2008 gave us a slick, smooth-talking community organizer (aka left-wing activist/agitator). Well, anyway, we proved that we’re not racists. After two terms of that, 2016 gave us a vulgarian. Not a Republican mind you, but a Perotista (an acolyte of Ross Perot, the Reform Party of the 1990s). Well, at least he (Trump) was not her (Hillary). 2020 gave us another of those “at least he’s [Biden] not him [Trump]” as our chief executive, along with a lefty cultural revolution, a Kabul bugout, and inflation. Four years later, we’re back to the vulgarian and “at least he’s [Trump] not him [Biden]”. Our last three elections were vote-against affairs, not vote-for. It’s fair to say that we have produced subpar leaders of the free world, maybe even embarrassments.
Our current embarrassment is incapable of inspiring anyone beyond his political groupie, MAGA. It’s what happens when people cloister themselves into their insular socio-political bubbles. The world wide web does not help. Indeed, it seems to have accelerated the self-sequestration in a fog of ignorance. The web is the polluted equivalent of the Cuyahoga River when it caught fire in Cleveland in 1969. The longer one spends on it, the dumber one gets and the more excitable are our vacuous minds. When booting up, warning labels should be affixed as they are on booze and cigarettes.
Do you think that the other side has anything better to offer? They swim around in a crowd of Democratic Socialists (the Bolsheviks’ former moniker), eco-militants (Bolsheviks under another banner), “geniuses” who can’t define “woman”, activist swarms on the hunt for systemic oppressions (inspired by Marx), and tax and spend addicts who would turn the country into the Soviet Union with the Soviet Union’s fate. Now that’s a claque to vote against.
Neither side acts like they understand the simple maxim that politics is about addition, not subtraction. Our current occupant behind the Resolute desk is all the rage among his groupie, even if it was proven to them that he was the second gunman on the grassy knoll in Dallas, November 22, 1963.
The groupies reorient their positions to align with his, even if they must delete their old Twitter posts and see to it that their old speeches don’t see the light of day. Listening to Hugh Hewitt is a daily reacquaintance with the debasement. Free traders become enthusiasts of the “most beautiful word in the English language”, tariff. All of a sudden, no one is a “neocon”, even if Trump can’t define it. Trump moderates on China, Tik Tok, abortion and so do they. He and his sidekick, Vance, berate the leader of a country victimized by the most brazen act of territorial aggression since the little corporal went hunting for Lebensraum, and the Trump choir approvingly chants in unison. Immediately, out came many versions of the “Zelensky deserved it” line based on the shocking charge that he wore the wrong shirt and pants. Vance was especially heinous. Revolting.
For his second term, Trump is as unbridled as a kid in a candy store, but with access to his daddy’s bank account (Fred Trump, worth $300 million in 1999 dollars, double in today’s money). Only, the candy store is today’s presidency with all of its assumed near-imperial powers. He’s a mixed bag. Enforcing federal law (immigration law), finally, good. Cutting taxes, lessening the eco-evisceration of our transportation and energy industries, finally, good. Seizing Maduro and his vicious wife, finally, good. Siding with Israel to prove that the mullah-junta in Teheran have no clothes, and no nukes, good, finally.
But it also includes declaring a trade war on the world on his simple signature. Some of it is juvenile grandstanding in replacing “Mexico” with “America” for the Gulf. Some of it is blatant extortion. Trump panders to Putin, berates Zelensky, and bullies a vulnerable Ukraine into a minerals deal.
Now, he’s busy treating Denmark like an enemy, like maybe the . . . CCP. It’s looney. The ChiComs get a better deal. The CCP gets our advanced Nvidia chips and Demark experiences the seizure of a huge chunk of its sovereign territory. Yes, “sovereign” by 1916 US/Denmark treaty, a 1951 mutual defense pact, and 1954 UN resolution.
All of it over Greenland. Interesting thought experiment: What happens if Trump sends in his version of Putin’s “little green men” into Greenland and Denmark resists? What happens if Denmark, a charter member of NATO, invokes Article 5 of the NATO Treaty which decrees the responsibility of member nations to come its aid? Imagine that, Polish and Czech fighters flying sorties against our “little green man”. Sure, it’s a conundrum, but will probably end with the breakup of NATO. If so, Trump is wittingly or unwittingly Putin’s stooge? Trump invites such conclusions when he delivers a handsome strategic victory to the henchman in the Kremlin. Whose side is he on?
Is this the meaning of America First? America Alone is more accurate.
After ten years in the public eye, Donald Trump is no mystery, or shouldn’t be. The guy is celebrated for his bluntness. More importantly, he is disgustingly vain, an embarrassment, and mesmerized by big and splashy events. Here he is in a text message to Norway’s prime minister, Jonas Gahr Stoere:
“Dear Jonas: Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America. Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China, and why do they have a “right of ownership” anyway? There are no written documents, it’s only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there, also. I have done more for NATO than any other person since its founding, and now, NATO should do something for the United States. The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland. Thank you! President DJT” (see #1)
It reads like a petulant teenager on Instagram. Peace for “8 Wars PLUS”? Hogwash. The vast majority of his diplomatic interventions did not establish peace, and India, a potential ally in Cold War II, is left grinding their teeth. His other attempts were limited to bashing our . . . friends (Israel, Ukraine, NATO). He has no leverage with the thugs, unless he goes to war, which would disqualify him for the Nobel Peace Prize. The whole thing is shameful. We should be mortified. It is unbecoming of a president.
It would be nice for us to be on the side of the angels. Are we anymore? We are behaving like Putin. Yet, our alternative to the 78-year-old juvenile is a cabal of neo-Marxists. In the party, moderates are Mensheviks and the base is Bolshevik. Either party faction is an invitation to ruin. Right now, they have rediscovered their inner John C. Calhoun, another storied Democrat of the 1830s. They are infatuated with nullification in pursuit of their Jacobin-style revolution. Jacob Frey (D), Minneapolis mayor, demanded that federal law enforcement leave the city: “Minnesota needs ICE to leave . . . . (see #3)” Even stronger, “get the f— out!” Sounds like South Carolina’s 1861 ultimatum for federal troops to vacate Ft. Sumter.
The assault on the Supremacy Clause (The Constitution, Article VI, Clause 2) is garbled in gibberish about the fed’s enforcement of the federal code, Title 8. Let that sink in, the feds enforcing federal law. Violators of that law are amazingly described as “our friends and neighbors”, as if that is relevant. Yes, they could be, but they are “friends and neighbors” who violated federal law. Being a “friend and neighbor” is immaterial to being a lawbreaker. The talk billowing out of the mouths of Mayor Frey and Governor Waltz is a mash of incoherence, if not a demand for old style nullification.
Presently, that’s the political lay of the land. One party has turned itself into a MAGA fan club, while the other has greater affinity for The Communist Manifesto than The Declaration of Independence. And amazingly, the 2026 midterm, which coincides with the 250-year anniversary of The Declaration, offers the likely prospect of The Manifesto’s rise to governing prominence in at least the House.
Oh, what a mess. A groupie fan club or the hammer and sickle without the flag. In 2026, if you think that you can have the Democrats without the hammer and sickle, just give them a little time in the seat of power and you’ll get the opportunity to be . . . California. Enjoy.
RogerG
Sources:
1. “The exchange of messages between Norway’s prime minister and President Trump”, Reuters, 1/19/2026, at https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/exchange-messages-between-norways-prime-minister-president-trump-2026-01-19/.
2. “Tearing Apart NATO, over a Trinket”, Jim Geraghty, National Review, 1/20/2026, at https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/tearing-apart-nato-over-a-trinket/.
3. “Minneapolis mayor on Trump threat: Minnesota doesn’t need additional troops”, Ashleigh Fields, The Hill, 1/15/2026, at https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/5690999-unrest-minneapolis-ice-presence/.