No Rules. No Moral Claims. Only Power.

At best, the high moral claims for American exceptionalism were always aspirational rather than realized in practice. At worst, they are arrogant and disingenuous. Now, they are abandoned altogether as murder of Venezuelans on the high seas, a reported legal observer in Minneapolis, and Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank are green-lighted at the highest levels of the U.S. government.

The New Deal and post-World War II thinly veiled pretenses of the United States as the leader of a rules-based international order, worldwide leader for democracy, and defender of human rights are stripped away. Frankly, I prefer pretense to abandonment. At least the former protected a harkening to the claim-driven hopes of struggle for something better. Trump and his GOP and corporate enablers now brazenly and proudly declare that hope is not only dead, delusional, and dangerous, but punishable.

The New Deal–even with all its imperfect compromises with southern racist power–laid claim to government action on behalf of working people and standing up to unrestrained corporate power. The defeat of fascism by Allied armies positioned the United States as the worldwide de facto defender of democracy and human rights. The significant and still to be fully realized triumphs for anti-colonialism, civil rights, women, the environment, marriage, and gender equality–all driven by mass organizing–followed. Of course, as a country, we often egregiously violated our lofty assertions at home and abroad. Yet the claims remained. Progress was achieved, and importantly, hopes for more as a goal.

Since the rise of MAGA and Trump’s 2024 victory, there is no patina covering the hypocrisy of noble claims. Stephen Miller, Trump’s consigliere, says it boldly on his boss’s behalf. It’s only about forced-enabled power, and only some Americans are worthy. With the Trump-led assault on so-called DEI initiatives, science, history, and any corporate regulation, kidnapping and deportation of immigrants, continued U.S. support for genocide in Gaza, promulgation of hate and violence, and illegal seizure of the president of Venezuela and its oil, all claims to a moral high-ground are gone. What remains is an unvarnished celebration of raw power, victims be damned. Each day reveals the fascistic and totalitarian intent of the regime in power and the timidity and weakness of any Democratic-led opposition.

Looking back, the power of German, Italian, and Japanese totalitarian fascist regimes was defeated not by internal organizing but by external armies at the price of countless dead soldiers. In Spain, only Franco’s death enabled the eventual emergence of democracy. No armies will rescue American democracy. JD Vance, or some other would-be dictator, awaits Trump’s passing.

Absent massive organizing, I have no confidence in what I expect to be a GOP-rigged mid-term election to trim the power of Trump’s MAGA coalition.

Still, I cling to hope. Like so many of us who value democracy and human rights and dignity, I experienced the surreal spectacle of Zohran Mamdani’s inauguration as a heretofore unimaginable challenge from an elected official. Here was the newly elected Mayor of our nation’s largest city explicitly calling for unity on behalf of working people in a direct challenge to prevalent hate-mongering and corporate greed. We all know that actions speak louder than words, but I could scarcely believe even the words spoken by City officials who called for real citizen action.

I just finished reading Omar El Akkad’s new book, One Day Everyone Will Have Been Against This. It is a powerful, searing indictment of the deadly hypocrisy, inaction, and complicity of Western ‘realistic’ liberals who lay claim to be advocates for justice and human rights. The book is full of anger and rage, however I read it as call on us all to resist and challenge in every way possible and not just against one injustice but against it all: The U.S. invasion of Venezuela, Israeli genocide and occupation of Palestine, corporate greed in all its inequitable health, hope, environment destroying manifestations, unbridled AI, increasing attempts to shut down dissent and democracy, the hideous grotesqueness of the progressive except for Palestine “It’s complicated” stance in the face of so many dead and maimed bodies.

Resist all of it. Take action with others.