NYT op-ed, "The US is no longer the conductor ..."

 

Trump has decided that the U.S. is no longer the conductor. The U.S. is now a player in the orchestra, a big-bully player. He came to power with this slogan, “Make America Great Again.” But what he’s doing, basically, is making America little at last. Because the idea is now: We are going to make America a nation-state like others. It’s no longer this kind of top power, this hegemon who is hovering around the world. And since it has this very, very large amount of power, it can pretty much do what it wants. Which, of course, the adventure in Iran is revealing that not to be the case.

            --Rahmane Idrissa

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/14/opinion/usa-decline-trump-global-powers.html

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A fair historical analysis is that 11/5, the day Trump was elected for a second term (November 5, 2025) is one of the worst days in all of human history.  It was a day that tilted the world.  It de-stabilized the post-WWII order at a time when tens of thousands of nuclear weapons are posed to go off.  The President recently ranted that he would "wipe out an entire civilization" in regard to Iran.    He has effectively blocked any world coordination on global warming by calling it a "giant scam."  He refuses to even attempt to regulate AI, when even experts in the field are crying out about the dangers.  Apparently, in about three months, AI will have the ability to self-replicate, house itself throughout the internet, and create 'worms' that break all sorts of programs [1]).  The recent Lancet Report cites "AI creation of biological weapons" as one of the two current apocalyptic threats to our survival as a species, alongside nuclear winter/famine [2].

This idiotic man has brought us to the edge of the end.  I've vented about this before, if you're interested [3].  I can't over my anger at the people who supported him and thereby cursed us with 11/5.  I channel this anger into writing and poetry.  But I struggle to talk to people who are Trumpers.  I have cut 'friends of friends' out of my life, including half the family of a friend of mine, people I used to joke around with and tolerate.  The craven, pitiable Republican politicians should go down in history as exemplars of lickspittle gutter-diving.  Of cesspool toadyism.  I can't come up with enough labels of shame to properly describe them.

Students of human psychology take note: 11/5 is a civilizational example of our capacity for incredible idiocy.  However, we are also capable of creating better and better culture.  We have ethically improved our ethos and it can keep going.  In effect, it's a fight between Good and Evil.  Susan Neiman has made a solid case for using the term "Evil," which she presented recently in a condensed quote-worthy book:  Call It Evil:  Understanding the Trump Era.    

See also my various essays on this blog about ethics as technology, including empirically verifiable definitions of Good and Evil grounded in psychology, science and critical thinking.

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Footnotes

[1] https://www.anthropic.com/research/self-replicating-ai

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/oct/11/nuclear-war-and-malicious-use-of-ai-threaten-end-of-humanity-by-2100-says-lancet-assessment

[3] https://owlwholaughs.blogspot.com/2025/10/one-of-worst-days-in-human-history.html