Trump's bankrupt empire

From childhood, I think I had some eerie sense of just how bad it could get in America. After all, in junior high and high school, I was riveted by this country’s Civil War. Among all my toy soldiers — cowboys and Indians, British marching troops in red jackets, and plastic Army-green World War II soldiers (from my father’s war) — and those Landmark Books on American history that I piled up on my floor to create hills and valleys where I could play out the cowboy and Indian ambushes and battles I had seen at local movie theaters, my favorites were always the blue and grey lead soldiers of the Union and Confederacy, including Commanding General Ulysses S. Grant on a horse. (He’s still in the saddle on a small shelf beside the computer where, almost 70 years later, I’m writing this.)

In those days, thanks to my parents, I also subscribed to the history magazine American Heritage, whose editor was Bruce Catton, while, in my spare time, I feverishly read the Civil War histories for which he won a Pulitzer Prize. (I still have my ancient copies of "Glory Road," "This Hallowed Ground," and "A Stillness at Appomattox.") At some point in those youthful years, my father even drove me to Gettysburg to see firsthand the site of perhaps the most crucial and devastating battle of that war.

I don’t think I ever truly imagined, though, what it might be like for this country to be at its own throat again, especially in the eerily strange way it is today. I never dreamed that the world I grew up in (despite Senator Joe McCarthy) could truly ever — yes, ever — begin to come apart at the seams. And yet, at this very moment, that very country, the United States of America, is at the edge of who really knows what, but nothing — I can guarantee you — that our children or grandchildren would be thrilled to play out on the floors of their rooms (or even their video screens). In truth, how in the world would you play Donald J. Trump and crew? To my surprise, I find that there are indeed Trump toys and an Elon Musk bobblehead, and even — can you believe it? — a Pete Hegseth action figure (or am I being conned?). Still, tell me how, on the floor of your childhood room, you would sort out Trumpworld and an America that appears to be coming apart at the seams, not in ancient history but right before our eyes on a planet where the same distinctly holds true.

“Drill, Baby, Drill”

I don’t know who the Bruce Catton of the future will be or what he or she (or, yes, in the age of Trump, they) might write, but I do know that there will be no Bull Run, no Gettysburg or Appomattox, no glory on that distinctly unglorious road to… well, who knows what. Count on one thing, though: it ain’t going to be pretty.

No, Donald Trump isn’t Jefferson Davis (and he certainly isn’t Abraham Lincoln), nor is he even, I suspect, a Benito Mussolini or Adolf Hitler in the making. He’s distinctly his own strange and strangely disturbed character. He’s the man who, until he was suddenly elevated to the presidency, was known mainly for being the host of the TV show, The Apprentice, in which contestants battled for jobs in his companies (“You’re fired!”), while he pulled in the dough; for a series of books written in his name by others; and, of course, for overseeing six companies that, with remarkable consistency, all went bankrupt before he was elected — yes! — president of the United States! Elected a second time no less, even after having been told “You’re fired!” by American voters in 2020. Under the circumstances, in the Trumpworld of this moment, no one should be surprised if bankruptcy once again becomes a subject of interest.

Think of him, in fact, as President Bankrupt. Though I have no way of knowing whether he’ll literally bankrupt this country as he and Elon Musk attempt to take it apart at the seams (while globally putting tariffs of all sorts on a striking variety of goods and sending the stock market plunging), there is indeed something distinctly bankrupt about the world he represents.

And in that sense of bankruptcy, he’s a far less singular figure than he so often seems. After all, in my grown-up lifetime, the way was prepared for Donald Trump in a striking fashion, whether you’re talking about making war on this planet (in this century, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc.) or all too literally making war on this planet. We’re talking, of course, about the man who won the presidency the second time around on the slogan “drill, baby, drill,” and whose representatives are now doing their damnedest to take apart the Environmental Protection Agency, not to speak of the environment itself. In the end, loud as he is, however incessantly he babbles on, he may be overseeing a future “stillness,” if not at Appomattox, then across this planet itself.

Like every American president since George W. Bush invaded Afghanistan in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, President Trump is now engaged in his own war (guaranteed to end in a fashion no better than the others of this century), this time in Yemen. He’s already sworn that the bombing campaign he recently launched there (though Joe Biden’s administration did some of the same) won’t end anytime soon. As he put it, “I can only say that the attacks every day, every night… have been very successful beyond our wildest expectations… We’re going to do it for a long time. We can keep it going for a long time.” A long time, indeed, before there is ever again a stillness in Yemen.

And sadly, when it comes to wars, that’s the least of it for Donald Trump (and the rest of us). After all, though it’s seldom thought of that way, he’s at war with the planet in a fashion that’s no less brutal than what he’s now doing in Yemen. Of course, to put him in a proper wartime context, humanity is now essentially engaged in World War III (though no one thinks of it that way) on this planet, at least as a livable place for us and so many other species. And in that war, President Trump is distinctly a warrior first-class of a devastating sort.

In fact, just imagine for a moment, on that toy floor in your brain, how Americans could twice elect (slim though those majorities were) a man whose most significant “plank” in the last election was indeed the phrase “drill, baby, drill” and the promise that he would essentially fight the slightest attempt to bring this already desperately overheating planet of ours under any sort of control. He would instead do his damnedest to dismantle the Environmental Protection Agency as a functional workplace, while “walking away from virtually every important climate policy on the books.” (After all, why would anyone want to protect the environment in which we all live???) He is, of course, also doing away with any efforts to deal with climate change, including almost instantly reversing some of Joe Biden’s relatively modest attempts to respond to global warming. Instead, he’s preparing to go all out to take the country that already produces more oil than any other on Earth (or in history), and also exports more natural gas than any other, into a blazing future.

Nothing is too remote for him to take a hammer to, not when it comes to the climate. His administration has even typically ended “a flagship foreign aid program to support renewable energy projects and increase electricity access across Africa” run by the now largely dismantled U.S. Agency for International Development. And all of what he’s done so far is only the beginning of what should be considered his climate war — which will also be a war against the rest of us and, above all else, against the future.

Despite the progress that has indeed been made globally when it comes to producing clean energy, the use of greenhouse-gas-producing fossil fuels remains on the rise on Planet Earth, even without Donald Trump in the White House. Now, of course, he’s intent in his own striking fashion and — the second time around this is indeed an appropriate word — tradition on bankrupting the planet itself as a livable place for the rest of us. And yes, he did indeed oversee those six bankruptcies earlier in his life, but historically they will prove to be nothing compared to the bankruptcy he’s likely to oversee in the next three years and nine months before he leaves office (if he does), while saying, “You’re fired!” to the American people and the world. In a country that distinctly seems to be coming apart at the seams — if not in a literal civil war, then in some kind of civil dissolution — think of him indeed as President Bankrupt (and that bankruptcy is going to play out on Planet Earth in a way that might once have been unimaginable).

Down, Down, Down

Not surprisingly, Donald Trump has already spent the first days of his second term in office, as Robert Reich put it recently, attempting “to intimidate lawyers, law firms, universities, the media, and every other institution of civil society.” And just to add one more thing to that list, he’s doing his best to devastate this planet.

The Earth is already feeling the heat. In 2024, the hottest year on record, according to the U.N.’s World Meteorological Organization (though these days you can say that of more or less any year, since the last 10 have been the hottest ever), there were a record 151 extreme weather events — heatwaves, floods, and storms — planet-wide that were worse than any previously recorded in whatever regions they hit. Take that in for a moment and then think about the fact that Donald Trump won the 2024 election by what may prove to be the most devastating 1.6% of the vote in history.

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Madness, right? Imagine what those extreme weather figures might look like three years and nine months from today, after ever more record heat. And then try to imagine what books your grandchildren (or mine) might be reading in their rooms some years from now: The Road to Hell? This Damned Earth? A Stillness at [you fill in the blank, but be sure to make it loud and terrifying]?

Think of Donald Trump, then, not only as President Bankrupt, but President Decline. After all, he’s the leader of the country that, only 30-odd years ago, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, was considered the “lone superpower” on planet Earth and now is anything but. In that sense, Donald Trump represents something that might be considered old hat in this world of ours: the decline of empire. After all, the country that once, all too long ago, was led by a crew that liked to think of themselves as “the best and the brightest” is now led by a crew that could certainly qualify as the worst and the dumbest, and seems intent on creating an America that will prove to be a bankruptcy first class.

Not that there’s anything strikingly new about that in the history of empires. What’s new, of course, is that Donald Trump may, in his own fashion, be overseeing and intensifying a planetary bankruptcy as well, a kind of decline and fall that until now hasn’t been part of the human experience.

Of course, it’s possible that public opinion might just be starting to turn against him and the Republicans. And the civil-war-style mood might even be toning down a bit (though I wouldn’t count on that). Nonetheless, it’s not happening faintly soon enough to matter on a planet already heating to the boiling point.

For the foreseeable future, unfortunately, we will all be living in a burn-baby-burn world whose climate will be set by that expert in bankruptcies, Donald J. Trump.