How Do You Feel Now About How You Voted In 2024?
Browsing: Opinions
Donald Trump kicked up the cultural sparks in all three cases and started what I believe is legitimately called our Trumpster fire, surfacing live embers into an environment ready for a fiery backlash amongst aggrieved sectors of America, clearly acting out of the rage Trump spoke. It evolved into a political rally culture featuring racism, sexism, and hatred of those who came to America seeking refuge—often from the wars overseas that the US either started or fueled. His crude speech was exactly what angry sectors of the US loved, and they elected him—twice.
SIPRI’s annual report for 2025 notes: “More people were killed in armed conflict, were forced from their homes or needed humanitarian assistance than in recent years, probably for decades. On many battlefronts, peacemaking was non-existent or stalled.”
For generations, Americans were told that diplomacy and war were different roads. Diplomacy was supposed to keep armies from moving, create room for compromise and end violence already underway. Military force, by contrast, was the failure of that process — or at least its last resort. The Trump administration is erasing that distinction. It is treating talks and attacks as instruments that can be used at the same time, against the same country, for the same political objective.
We once took for granted that everyone concerned with global warming outside the Trump administration’s orbit accepted the scientists’ conclusion that 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming was the critical threshold. Following on its pullout from the Paris Accords, the administration has ignored climate scientists’ overwhelming findings on the human causes of global warming and stifled publication of their research.
With the Axis powers tottering toward defeat in World War II, Roosevelt reported that the recently concluded Yalta conference of Allied leaders had agreed upon “a common ground for peace.” It would “spell the end of the system of unilateral action, the exclusive alliances, the spheres of influence, the balances of power, and all the other expedients that have been tried for centuries―and have always failed.” These approaches would be replaced by “a universal organization,” a “permanent structure of peace upon which we can begin to build . . . that better world in which our children and grandchildren . . . must live, and can live.”
Chekhov, the military budget, and endless wars
The suit pulls back horrible January and the invasion of Minneapolis, a.k.a., Operation Metro Surge, when armed and masked members of ICE and Customs and Border Protection began occupying the Twin Cities for the purpose of snatching and deporting (“allegedly”) undocumented immigrants, creating immense fear and chaos everywhere, and leading to huge protests.
A kleptocracy is a system of government in which those holding political power use public office to enrich themselves, their political allies, and wealthy supporters rather than serving the public interest. The word originates from the Greek words klepto (to steal) and kratos (rule or power), meaning “rule by thieves.” Critics argue that when political influence becomes a commodity available primarily to the wealthy, democracy gradually begins to resemble a kleptocracy.
Thunderous applause echoed through the San Francisco Opera House on June 26th, 1945, as diplomats signed the United Nations Charter. It was hailed as a victory over war itself. Eighty-one years later, the UN has many accomplishments to celebrate. But the Charter’s opening pledge to save “succeeding generations from the scourge of war” remains painfully unfulfilled.