To many observers, Donald Trump’s open bellicosity – his threats to attack Greenland and Iran, and his recent kidnapping of Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro – looks like an ideological reversal. “Donald Trump betrayed his MAGA base today [by] launching a war of choice to bring regime change in Venezuela,” tweeted Democratic congressman Ro Khanna on 3 January. The day before, former Republican representative Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote: “President Trump threatening war and sending in troops to Iran is everything we voted against in ‘24.” On 20 January, National Public Radio reported that “Trump supporters share confusion and anger over the president’s focus on Greenland”.

The sense of whiplash is understandable. As a candidate, Trump often denounced war. Now he is infatuated with it. But while Trump seems uniquely set on dismantling the postwar order in the service of his quest for global domination, there is precedent for his transformation.

Presidencies are not static. They evolve. And over the last half-century of US foreign policy, one pattern is clear: the more time passes since America’s last calamitous war, and the more presidents use military force without encountering costly resistance, the more aggressive they become. Successful wars are intoxicating; they turn doves into hawks. It happened in the decades between Vietnam and Iraq. And it is happening to Donald Trump today.

History also shows that hubris of the kind presently emanating from this White House generally ends in disaster.

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7 comments in c/news@lemmy.world view that post
[–] 15 points 9 months ago (3 children)

Bored of Peace

Axis of Ego

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  • [–] 7 points 9 months ago
    [–] 6 points 9 months ago

    "Donald Trump betrayed his MAGA base"

    Stop. The hogs love this, they craved it all along, any claims to be in support of a "peace president" were a load of crap from the start.

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  • [–] 4 points 9 months ago

    What will happen, the party is bringing the military into domestic affairs, not the least using them in bad faith persecution of their others. When that happens, the military sees the weakness of the civilian leaders, the levers of power, familiarity breeds contempt, and they subordinate the civilian leadership.

    Then good luck getting rid of the army as the de facto rulers. It will be like Rome, except instead of starting out with Octavian and then Tiberius and some decent emporers we start right off with a batshit crazy sulla.

    The president passing to a new leader won't change it either, this is project 2025 stuff, part of the long game to subvert democracy, the first iteration of which was made at the 1971 business roundtable where they made a wildly successful game plan to cooperate on what they agreed on. Keeping us leaderless and divided and fighting under controlled opposition was key amongst those things, as was destroying any leaders, like union leaders, sicking the mob on unions. They perverted science and academia, changing inflation's measure to understate it several times, 5-8% a year average from then to 2008 alone under the old metric, 2-3 average under the new one.

    It's always a mistake bringing the military into domestic affairs, it cannot be undone after it gets to a certain point either. It always ends the same.

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  • 2 comments in c/theguardian_us@ibbit.at view that post
    [–] 2 points 9 months ago

    They all love war

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

    When the origins of the Trump era began, back in the early 2000s, I had wondered if this is where we were headed.

    The focus on being “Alpha”, the obsession with trad-wives or the shaming of women overall, and even no nut Novembers, leading to complete abstinence for “purity” reasons. Then, of course, the harkening back to a non-existent yesteryear with the rise of MAGA.

    It all very much reminded me of the yearn for war from what I had read of the 1890s. And even the yellow journalism to boot.

    I was wondering when the other shoe would drop, when the facade of “focus on ourselves” would fall away and Americans would once again clamor for the romanticization of War.

    When we look into the mirror, that particular faction of America despises when they see. Life on the plains is boring and hard. The city, too foreign. So we must search out for some other scapegoat to take this out upon and be our outlet of destruction.

    And so here we are, once again at the precipice. Another generation of males conferring bread for blood. Not yet realizing what they are signing up for. For those whom survive, the scars will be story worthy for sure.

    For those of us still somewhat grounded in reality, nothing happening is new. They all pull from the same playbook of rhymes. Their base is growing weary of false pretenses, so look for the false flags to start happening next.

    For America now is much like a child who acts out for attention, performing ever more bellicosely until he extracts ever more desperate concessions…or wears himself out.

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