Submitted by Michael Brenner

Into every commentator’s life falls a one-time permission slip to make ad homonym remarks. This is confirmed by Hoyle, the Marquess of Queensbury and natural law.

• Donald Trump is a psychotic Fascist who is consumed by the mad fantasy of becoming the global emperor. The former was evident 9 years ago; the latter was evident on Inauguration Day 12 months ago

• The American voting public nonetheless chose him President twice – almost did so on a third occasion

• The United States’ elites – political and otherwise – have failed totally to protect the Republic by their acquiescence in his despotic actions. Treating his rise first as entertaining spectacle and then normalizing his pathology out of crass self-interest, ignorance and cowardice

• The global strategy of Trump and his helpmates is to extend and to institutionalize global domination around the world by coercive means. The notorious Wolfowitz Memo of March 1992 is the template. The fixed goal of everything that the United States does in the world is the securing of American hegemony – in every sphere of international life that counts and in every region where either the stakes are high or the prospect of a putative rival arising exists

• The essential elements of that plan have been assimilated by the overwhelming majority of the country’s foreign policy elites

• Much ink has been spilt in a serious pondering of these propositions: that Trump is hesitant about the application of American power as in the “useless” wars of Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, etc.; that his thinking runs counter to the “deep state”; that his obsession with the Nobel Peace Prize did correspond with that part of him that wants to be a conciliator abroad; that he was resetting the country’s gyroscope to stress strength at home, to step back from forward commitments and intervention with the exception of Taiwan; to concentrate on the Western Hemisphere – the so-called Trumproe Doctrine. These notions have been delusory, ill-informed and frankly silly – when not outright ridiculous. It reflects a complete misunderstanding of the man and our foreign affairs elites

• Living in fantastical worlds of make-believe – a pervasive phenomenon in American and an abject Europe, as well – opened the way to this distorted vision of the Trump phenomenon

• The most egregious expression of this distorted perception is the groundless faith that Trump is honestly committed to negotiating with Russia a peaceful settlement of the Ukraine conflict. This illogical, evidence-free article of faith has been shared by a cross-section of sober analysts – including Vladimir Putin. America’s leaders could not tolerate terms minimally acceptable to Russia. For such terms would represent a) an unmistakable loss of status and self-regard; b) a reversion from the strategic foundations of the country’s foreign policy put firmly in place over the past 35 years; and c) a domestic political embarrassment carrying heavy costs for Trump and his movement. Furthermore, Trump’s narcissistic, warped personality is too vulnerable to endure a rebuke and a failure of that magnitude. He is terrified at the prospect of looking like a loser.

• Trump has been emboldened in his audacious, reckless enterprises by the muted criticism at home and abroad that it has met. China and Russia (especially the latter) have put misplaced hope in achieving a working relationship with Trump above denouncing at full throat his belligerence and military aggression. The travesty of the UN approved Board of Peace for Palestine, Putin’s washing his hands of the outrageous Greenland landgrab, his tolerance and lack of reaction to American (and allied) acts of war on Russian territory and at sea, passivity in Syria, largely ignoring the Venezuelan Anschluss, the desultory relief efforts for Cuba – together could only have fed Trump’s appetite and fueled his maniacal drive to control all by acts of impunity.  Putin’s long-standing and enduring hopes of engaging constructively with the United States by following a non-confrontational approach from the outset has carried the risk of entrenching Trump’s deformed view of the world.

The gross irresponsibility of the parties noted above now has brought us to the portals of Hell.

We have brought it on ourselves – foolishness carries heavy costs

The ultimate truth is that there is little that we can do about it – fortunes of war unseen

Michael Brenner