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Shock and Awe
Making (Non)Sense of Donald Trump, or the Success of Failure
Yes, "shock and awe" is back in the second age of Donald Trump. His border czar, Tom Homan, used that very phrase to describe border policy from day one of the new administration and, whether the president has actually said it or not, it's now regularly in headlines, op-eds, and so much else. If you remember, it was the phrase used, in all its glory, to describe America's massive bombing and invasion of Iraq in 2003. (You remember! The country that supposedly threatened us with nuclear weapons but, in fact, didn't have any!)
We Americans were, of course, going to shock and awe them. But from that moment on (if not from the moment, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, when, rather than simply going after Osama bin Laden and crew, President George W. Bush launched a full-scale invasion of Afghanistan), you could say that it was we who were truly shocked and awed. After all, in their own disastrous fashion, our post-9/11 wars prepared the way for" yes!" Donald Trump to take the White House the first time around (shock and awe!) -- and then blame the final disastrous retreat of the American military from Afghanistan in 2021 on the Biden administration. ("Kamala Harris, Joe Biden -- the humiliation in Afghanistan set off the collapse of American credibility and respect all around the world.") And of course, four years later, his reelection on a functional platform of Trump First, Americans Last, was distinctly a double shock and awe!
And if you'll excuse my being thoroughly repetitious, that was -- or at least should have been seen as -- the true definition of shock and awe. Donald Trump! Twice! Even now, can you truly take it in? In fact, more or less every moment since his reelection victory in November 2024 has been -- pardon me for the turn of phrase -- a first-class S&A experience.
And -- shock, if not awe -- I haven't even mentioned Elon Musk yet, have I? I mean, who can take him in either? The richest man on Planet Earth (S&A!) and, at least until President Trump levied those massive tariffs on our three major trading partners (only to partially back off soon after), still making money hand over fist (wrist, pissed?) -- about $224 billion extra dollars (S&A!) just between the November 2024 election victory of Donald Trump and the moment he actually took power again in January 2025 -- at the expense of the rest of us. Meanwhile, he's been more or less running this country (into the ground) hand in glove with Donald Trump, who, by the way, is already talking about a possible third term in office! ("They say I can't run again; that's the expression" Then somebody said, I don't think you can. Oh.") Now, wouldn't that be an all-American S&A first (or do I mean last?)!
An MMMW World
Phew, I'm already out of breath and exclamation points! No surprise there, of course, given the awesomely shocking and shockingly Trumpified (or do I mean Muskratted?) world we're now living in and dealing with.
After all, we once again have a president who himself is (or may be -- since you never know with him) a multi-billionaire and has at his side the DOGE-y man with a totally made-up position and an organization that nonetheless seems to have the power to dismantle whole parts of our government. (Science, Medicine? Who needs them? Veterans, who cares?) He could evidently even purchase Mars (and donate his sperm to help colonize that planet). And imagine this: despite all the dough they and their billionaire pals possess -- there are at least 13 of them in his administration, worth something like $460 billion -- Elon and he seem intent on shoving through Congress a plan that would make his tax cuts for billionaires a permanent feature of American life (whatever it may cost the rest of us).
Don't try to tell me that we're not in a mad, mad, mad world (MMMW, if you prefer). And hey, the man who only recently set a record by spending more than an hour and 40 minutes giving the longest State of the (Dis)Union speech or speech of any sort ever to a joint session of Congress has done a remarkable job of foisting his version of an America First (Foist? Last?) policy on the rest of us and this world -- a world that distinctly isn't ours, but his. Think of us as now living in a Trump First World, or TFW. Of course, his version of America First includes those recent tariffs (some but not all of which have been delayed again) that, though officially levied against Canada, China, and Mexico, were actually being foisted on the rest of us. Count on one thing: in the end, we will undoubtedly pay through the nose for them. So, no question about it, we have certainly entered a distinctly S&A era.
The Double D of Donald
In truth, the 45th and 47th ( and 48th and 49th?) president of the United States is a genuinely remarkable figure. Truly historic -- or do I mean hysteric? After all, who can't bring some image of him to mind at any moment? That face, that stare, that glare, that red tie, that wave in his hair. Need I say more?
In his own remarkable fashion, he should be given full credit and a double capital D -- for both Donald and Decline. Or just think of him as PD (for President Decline). And it is remarkable that a single figure, one man who once oversaw the bankruptcy of six different companies he had launched, could become responsible for potentially the greatest bankruptcy of all -- the ending of the American Century (as we once knew it) and even, after a fashion, humanity's centuries on Planet Earth.
I mean, who can even remember anymore the time in a distant century -- the year was 1991, to be exact, the very moment when Donald Trump filed for bankruptcy for the Trump Taj Mahal and the year before he did the same for the Trump Plaza Hotel -- when the Soviet Union went into the garbage pail, China had not yet truly risen, and this country was left alone as not just a great power but The Great Power or TGP, the only one left on Planet Earth? That, in retrospect, was a truly shock-and-awe moment. And isn't it no less shock-and-awing to think that a mere 34 years later, that same country is now led by a raging maniac on an America First platform that could, in effect, prove to be an America Last one? In a mere two terms in office, he will have taken what was once known as the planet's "sole superpower" into a world of chaos and, ultimately, disaster of a sort we still can't really grasp. He will have been the monarch -- and yes, that's the appropriate word, not president -- from hell. (In fact, the White House digital strategy team all too appropriately produced a portrait of President Trump with a golden crown and the phrase "LONG LIVE THE KING"!)
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