The Surrender President: Creating a Distinctly Declinist Power on a Distinctly Declinist Planet

Source: TomDispatch
by Tom Engelhardt

Ours would be the normal story of imperial powers rising and falling on Planet Earth — nothing new there, of course — if it weren’t for one thing: the fact that this world, too, is now falling. Unfortunately, nothing is truly normal about this planet of ours anymore, as the slow-motion equivalent of atomic weaponry goes off in our already distinctly overheating atmosphere. And though he’s seldom thought of that way, President Trump, the — who would once have believed it? — second time around, should be considered an all-too-literal embodiment of some mad human urge to turn this planet into a (once almost unimaginable) disaster zone. He would, in fact, be truly unbelievable, if what’s happening to this planet at this very moment weren’t even more so. We’re distinctly in a twenty-first century from hell and yet ‘our’ president continues to act as if this were still the twentieth (if not the nineteenth) century.” (10/02/25)

https://tomdispatch.com/the-surrender-president/