And if that (and he) isn't the definition of shock and awe, what is?
Burn, Baby, Burn
Worse yet, tariff by tariff, tax by tax, act by act, Donald Trump stands a reasonable chance of taking this planet down with him. Think of it as little short of remarkable that, in a world in which every month, every year (and every decade) is hotter than the previous one in a record fashion, in a world in which the weather and its devastating effects -- from fires to storms to floods -- is only growing more extreme and more horrific, Americans freely voted in (a second time around!) someone whose election phrase of choice was "drill, baby, drill," but might as well have been "heat, baby, heat" or "storm, baby, storm," or simply "burn, baby, burn."
And if his platform was America First (but truly Donald First), it distinctly should have been Planet Earth Last. (Of course -- don't be shocked -- he also appointed as secretary of health a man who thinks that the way to fight measles outbreaks is with anything but a vaccine.) Yes, above all else, Donald Trump, who has called climate change both a "scam" and a "Chinese hoax," continues to be focused on making sure that ever more oil, natural gas, and coal comes out of the ground and is indeed burned, baby, burned forever and a day.
Of course, no one should be surprised, given the way the fossil-fuel companies funded his campaign. He's already gone out of his way to cancel anything the Biden administration did to fight climate change and announced the country's departure from the Paris climate accords (again). As the New York Times put it recently, "In a few short weeks [of his second term in office], President Trump has already severely damaged the government's ability to fight climate change, upending American environmental policy with moves that could have lasting implications for the country, and the planet." What he's doing is now considered a "deep freeze" on climate programs of all sorts (though it might better be thought of as a hot melt).
At one point, he was even talking about eliminating 65% of the employees at the Environmental Protection Agency (S&A!). Lasting implications indeed.
In any other era, President Trump would still undoubtedly have been considered a nightmare and a half, but not a potentially world-ending one (at least the world as humanity has known it all these endless centuries). The truth is that, once upon a time, if you had told anybody that this would be our S&A version of the future, you would have been laughed out of the room.
The Second Time Around with No End in Sight
And yet, there can be no question that, all these years later, despite bankruptcy after bankruptcy, and failure after failure, he remains the man of the second, minute, hour, day, week, month, and year. Give him credit. It's a remarkable record not just when it comes to the success of failure but of putting Himself (and yes, under the circumstances, I do think that should be capitalized!), not America First.
Oh, and while all of this has been going on, the Democratic Party has not completely but largely been missing in action. Imagine that! And as for Congress, remind me what it is (other than an audience for You Know Who).
Consider it a remarkable historical irony that America First has remained Donald Trump's slogan all these years when, in reality (or what passes for it in his universe), it should certainly have been Trump First and, when it came to anything that truly mattered to him, America (not to speak of the rest of the world) Last!
Worse yet, if all of us hadn't actually lived through the Trumpian epoch (epic? toothpick?), I don't think anyone could have made this up or, in a previous version of America, even imagined it happening. And if they could, there can be little question that they would simply have been laughed out of the room, if not institutionalized, not once but twice.
And yet here we are, the second time around with no end in sight, and a third time a history-breaking possibility, leaving us fully and thoroughly in another America on another planet. Phew! Talk about shock and awe!
I must admit, with at least three years and 10 months to go in the era of You Know Who, I find it hard to imagine our future, even if (as is certainly possible) the American and global economies go down the tubes and the Democrats are swept back into Congress -- I'm sorry, where? -- in 2026.
Nonetheless, for the (un)foreseeable future, we're all living with Donald Trump in a genuinely shock-and-awe world of almost unpredictable strangeness. In some fashion, all of us are now Afghans or Iraqis.
Copyright 2025 Tom Engelhardt
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