Trump's Tyranny

Even when you begin to think that it can’t get any worse with Donald J. Trump as President of the United States the Orangeman does something that is so stupid and so reflective of a man who thinks only about himself that it makes one’s shudder in disbelief. Last week included some completely bizarre performances that could lead to nuclear war while also falsely promoting that our leader is a “man of peace.” That is in spite of the fact that it has become hard to imagine that Trump can even pronounce the word “peace” without an interpreter or the five letter word flashing up in boldface on his teleprompter screen. Let’s start with several recent developments about which there can be no real debate, though motive and expectations can be reasonably disputed. Consider for a moment the performance of a man who knows little beyond how to curse and harangue those who disagree with him as well as any skill beyond how to scribble a version of his own name in large letters with a marker pen.

In the Donald Trump era — praise be! — so much is possible that previously no one had ever even imagined. For instance, not only has “the late, great Hannibal Lecter” come back to life, he might even join Trump’s cabinet.

Well, that’s just a guess, but why not? I think he’d fit right in. All of which is to say: “There’s something happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear . . .” It’s not simply that Trump is unique (i.e., uniquely crazy). He definitely is, but he’s also American to the core. Under his leadership, our political structure is naked and exposed, stripped of its political correctness. The emperor has no clothes! Suddenly we can’t avoid seeing this.

When you imagine being safe, you imagine comfort and predictability. You imagine your bed, your backyard, a warm shower. You do not imagine kidnapping, armed conflict, or countries so unstable that U.S. troops are ordered to stay behind fortified walls.

But this is what the Trump administration has labeled “safe,” a place it can now send not only the 232 South Sudanese people who just lost protected status, but anyone who dares to seek asylum in the United States.

The United States did not emerge accidentally as a global power. It was built through two foundational crimes: the genocide of Indigenous peoples and the system of chattel slavery. Both were morally indefensible, both were economically indispensable to the formation of the American state, and both were repeatedly justified—explicitly and implicitly—through appeals to Christian theology, racial hierarchy, and destiny.¹²

The founding of the United States did not mark the beginning of these crimes but their consolidation. Genocide and slavery were already well underway, embedded in colonial law, economic life, and social order long before independence was declared.³

Genocide and the Theft of a Continent

European settlers arrived at Plymouth Colony in 1620 and initially relied on Native American assistance for survival.⁴ That period of cooperation was short-lived. As settler populations grew and European weaponry, disease, and military organization proved decisive, Indigenous peoples were systematically displaced, massacred, starved, or confined.⁵

This is a documented (but incomplete) map of their abductions and the level of escalation throughout the week. Data is from ICEOUT.

The author, Dissent in Bloom, writes at Substack   Please consider supporting her work.  https://substack.com/@dissentinbloom

Anne Frank wrote about people stolen in the night and their homes left gutted, and that warning feels painfully current in a country that insists it learned its lessons. Today’s immigration raids leave a disturbingly similar wake, with homes abandoned mid-life, belongings scattered where they fell, and pets staring at the door as if their owners might still walk in and rescue them from the silence.

ICE does not simply take people; it leaves behind the wreckage of entire worlds. Toys stay where children last played, food spoils unfinished, cars idle in driveways, and phones, wallets, and IDs vanish into agency custody and often never return. ICE policy even requires officers to hold a person’s original identification documents, adding another blow to families already torn apart.

This investigation lays bare what happens to everything left behind when someone is taken. Cars are dragged to impound lots and auctioned before families can react, homes slide toward foreclosure or are snapped up by landlords, and pets are dropped at packed shelters with no one left to claim them.

On December 19th, school let out early in Columbus, and children did what children always do. Kids walked home and waited in pickup lines expecting to go home with family for winter break and all the coming festivities of the holidays.

They slung backpacks over one shoulder. They checked their phones. They waited in pickup lines and walked familiar routes home, thinking about winter break, holidays, sleeping in, the small relief that comes with the end of exams. Some were already arguing with siblings over who would sit in the front seat. Some were texting parents they could see just down the road.

A car door opening is usually nothing. That day, it was everything.

President Donald Trump’s end of year speech to the American public that took place on December 17th was full of conceits over how the United States under the new regime in power is moving ahead on all fronts to benefit the American people. The reality is somewhat different with a struggling economy, inflation and growing unemployment as well as wars and rumors of wars. The only economic sector that appears to be doing just fine is the “military industrial complex” (MIC), or should one call it the warfare conglomerate, fattening on the one trillion dollar plus budgeted for military and related spending. For sure, the warfare bill is helping to expand the nation’s debt while providing little in the way of national security due to profound ignorance combined with serial blundering by those in power in and around the White House.

Trump favors corporations over workers. This is one influence that shapes the policies of Trump and his administration. 

Although it has a profound influence on what Trump does, it is not original with him. It is part of a Republican Party bias that extends back to the Gilded Age and the emergence of corporations in the late 19th Century. For in-depth analyses of this issue, among many others, see Sheldon S. Wolin examines this subject in his book, Democracy Inc: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism (publ. 2008), and Thom Hartmann does so in his book “The Hidden History of Monopolies (publ. 2020). 

And Chuck Collins’ new book is an eye-opener. It’s titled “Burned by Billionaires: How Concentrated Wealth and Power Are Ruining Out Lives and Planet” (publ. 2025). Collins writes this in “The Introduction,”

Introduction
It’s not a sure thing that an already tenuous democracy in the US will survive over
the next few years from the onslaught of Trump’s abuses and misuses of
presidential power. Millions of people will suffer. At the same time, there is
opposition to him from large majorities of Democrats and Independents. And his
support from his base is less strong than in the recent past.
Unfortunately, he still has over three years in the White House or more likely at
Mar-a-Lago.
And he glories in the power. You may have also noticed that he typically doesn’t
acknowledge bad news about him or his administration. For the public, he says
there has never been a better president than he (https://www.livemint.com/news/us-
news/donald-trump-nobody-does-it-better-than-me-10-times-us-president-said-hes-
the-best-11741083334974.html). At the same time, journalists and doctors question
his mental acuity and stability.
(https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-men…-