Among other things, I am the proud father of a U.S. Marine who served faithfully and well, fighting twice in Afghanistan and once in Iraq after 9/11.
In Trump’s fantasy world, America is invincible and impregnable. But as I learned as the father of a Marine waiting for news about his well-being from Afghanistan and Iraq, that’s not true. Every military family can tell you about the sleepless nights we have.
Trump’s pretend man-brat, this drunken so-called Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, tries to get the world to see the wisdom of Trump’s war. Instead, he sounds like something between a third-rate morning television anchor and the rooster who famously claimed he brought the dawn.
“We’re playing for keeps,” he says.
“We’re punching them while they’re down.”
He brags about our lethality and about bringing silent death as if this is some kind of game.
Like Trump, this little boy is tempting the gods.
And when they strike us, it will not be this adulterer or this young drunk Secretary of Defense who pays the price. It will be ordinary men and women in uniform, people like my son.
Hegseth amplifies Trump’s wishful thinking and demonic lies. According to them, America’s military is so advanced and so skillful that it could pluck a sitting head of state from a hostile country and deposit him in a New York City jail without losing a single soldier.
Everything will be fine.
Trust us — not your lying eyes.
In this fantasy world, America can slap punitive tariffs on nations all across the globe, abandon longstanding alliances, trash our friends, and everything will still work out.
America’s awesome power, they say, means it is unfettered by rules and untouched by consequences.
But in the real world, the U.S. labor market just lost 92,000 jobs in February alone and unemployment is rising.
As an unfathomably rich nation protected by two vast oceans, we have grown accustomed to the illusion that we can do whatever we want.
USA! USA!
Tell that to a parent waiting for news from their child sitting in some shack at a U.S. military base that gets hit by Iranian drones.
Why weren’t these people in bunkers?
Why weren’t they safe?
My son was better protected at Bagram Air Base. At least we thought through the ramifications of protecting our own people in that war.
But according to Trump, we can kill and kill some more for free, as if it’s fun.
Those who serve are treated as disposable.
When casualties occur, the implication is simply: what did you expect?
Of course there will be deaths.
But Trump has plunged the United States into a war with Iran; a fantasy of omnipotence now crashing into what I’ll call gas-price reality hell.
For America, the repercussions are just beginning.
Because the gods will not be mocked.
Hubris is always punished.
Always punished.
Whether it’s from the left or the right, fascism, communism, or America’s own overreach, hubris and pride are always punished.
Already American service members have been killed, and the Pentagon is not ruling out boots on the ground. More casualties are almost certain.
Iran has rained missiles and drones not only on American and Israeli targets, but also on the Gulf countries that host American military bases, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia.
Perhaps they will rethink being our friends, just as the European Union is beginning to rethink being our friends.
We have abandoned Ukraine in order to fight this war.
We have effectively given Vladimir Putin a free hand by under-supporting those fighting for their survival in Europe.
“What do we care about Europe?” says J.D. Vance.
We are mighty and great, they tell us.
We can bring silent death anywhere in the world.
Airports, hotels, data centers, and energy infrastructure are now being struck across the region. Chaos spreads.
Meanwhile the Strait of Hormuz, the choke point for global oil, threatens energy markets worldwide.
What do we care if Europe’s energy system crashes?
We’re the USA.
We need no allies.
We need no friends.
We need no truth.
We don’t need reality.
We don’t need history.
We don’t even need to believe that the gods punish hubris.
This is the imaginary world Trump pretends exists.
But the real world is complex and interconnected. It is interwoven. And we, like everyone else, need friends.
Trump recently said Iran’s retaliation was “probably the biggest surprise.”
Yet almost every country in the world warned him Iran would respond if attacked.
But what do they know?
USA! USA!
Trump has given no coherent explanation for this war. Instead he offers a confused collection of shifting justifications.
At one point Marco Rubio even suggested America was effectively bounced into the war by the possibility of an Israeli strike.
Which leads to the unsettling question raised by Tucker Carlson: is Benjamin Netanyahu effectively the American commander-in-chief?
Trump himself seems strangely uncertain about where this war is heading.
“The worst case,” he mused, “would be that we do this and somebody takes over who’s just as bad.”
As if he had never considered that possibility before.
Trump often behaves as though he is merely a spectator to events he himself set in motion.
He seems to believe that he, like his fantasy version of America, is untouchable by global reality.
If reality contradicts the MAGA wet dream, it must be fake news.
Trump presses on, even suggesting that this war could go on forever.
Watching Trump’s Masturbating Teen Drunk, Hegseth, rant about the thrill of killing reminds me of the words of the anti-colonial poet Aimé Césaire.
In Discourse on Colonialism, he wrote:
“The hour of the barbarian is at hand.
The American hour: violence, excess, waste, mercantilism, bluff, conformism, stupidity, vulgarity, disorder.”
Sound familiar?
That is Trump and his servant Hegseth in a nutshell.
The word vulgarity says it all.
If this war teaches Trump and the rest of us a little geography, then perhaps there is a lesson here.
And it is very simple.
Other places are real.
Other people are real.
And America’s actions have consequences we cannot control.
Anything else is Pure Demonic, Demented, Ego-Driven, Psychotic Fantasy.
Speaking as the parent of a Marine, let me say this:
As the bodies of Americans are returned to their families, Trump’s nightmare becomes our nightmare.
And nothing that Hegseth says about the joy of killing will comfort real patriots; people who actually have a human heart.
