When the Worst Human Has the Nuclear Codes

I am exercising my First Amendment rights. I never use AI in my writing.

The fascists who have taken over America have a lot in common with the Nazis, both in ideology (e.g., racism, nationalism, militarism, Christianity) and in methodology (e.g., propaganda, secret police, concentration camps). Many in the regime have openly displayed Nazi gestures and symbols, and there has been no attempt by the party to distance itself from these individuals, or from Naziism in general. Let’s not forget just how remarkable this is in itself: even just a year and a half ago, a Nazi was amongst the worst things you could be in American society… right up there with being a pedophile.

But these wannabe Nazis aren’t actually Nazis for the simple fact that this isn’t Germany in 1935. These assholes are instead modern American fascists. They are MAGA. And as such, the damage they do to our beloved country, our beloved world, and our beloved Earth will be unique to them. For one thing, Hitler didn’t have a nuclear weapon. Trump has over 5,000 nuclear weapons. And, while it’s as fucking weird and awful as all get out, he can use them tonight if he wants to.

Indeed, earlier today he “truthed” out [barf emoji] the following:

This is a threat to use nuclear weapons. And it’s getting harder to imagine Trump leaving office without using a nuke.

The reason I say this has everything to do with the reason Trump is the worst human: narcissism. Malignant narcissism on a scale that I’ve never encountered in my entire life, narcissism that even dwarves Elon Musk’s. The kind of weirdo narcissism that needs to stamp the name “Trump” on everything. The kind of narcissism that makes a person think nature itself bends to his will. The kind of narcissism that thinks it’s neat-o, as opposed to mortifyingly embarrassing, to get someone else’s Nobel Prize. The kind of narcissism that demands levels of ass-kissing in cabinet meetings that would make North Korea blush. It’s remarkable that both Trump and Musk had abusive fathers: Both were effectively shat out by the patriarchy.

There’s a certain self-consistency to this level of narcissism, a certain predictability. In Trump’s mind, Trump is the bestest most powerfulest man. The bestest most powerfulest man gets to start wars for no reason and use the bestest most powerfulest weapons. What’s more, the stupid White House ballroom project now actually makes a kind of sense: it will have a bunker underneath it, and I suspect the main point here is to upgrade the existing 1940s-era bunker to something modern designed to withstand a nuclear hit on DC. Trump is a coward, and I doubt he’d use nukes until his new bunker is ready.

Since this idiot’s second inauguration, we’ve all been gradually sliding towards World War III, with the fascists destroying alliances and norms bit by bit, day by day. Obviously, Trump using a nuclear weapon on Iran, or elsewhere, could easily result in World War III.

How can we stop this? It’s not clear. Ro Khanna and others are calling for invoking the 25th Amendment, but this would require Republicans to join. And Republicans are fascists, so unless they suddenly start acting differently than other fascists throughout history and differently than they’ve been acting this entire time, they won’t support replacing their Dear Leader. Just as with the Nazis, they’d sooner destroy the world.

I lived in Los Angeles with my family from 2008 until 2022, and in the early years of our time there my wife was friends with one of the producers from Trump’s “reality” show, The Apprentice. She was a nice person, and we went to several parties at her house with our kids. I don’t remember details - I wish I did - but she’d tell us about how awful Trump was behind the scenes. Essentially, as awful as you’d imagine, the worst kind of narcissistic toddler. I think about her from time to time, and how it must feel to have helped, in some small way, create this monster and his monstrous regime.

The silver lining to all of this is that we now know that roughly 30% of Americans are fascists - “deplorables,” to use Hilary Clinton’s term. Therefore, there’s some possibility that, on the far side of this mess, after strict accountability trials, we will redesign our society to be more robust to this unfortunate reality and less susceptible to fascist takeover, and also to reduce this “fascist percentage” (if it’s possible to reduce it) by prioritizing education and the social safety net. If Trump starts armageddon, however, there won’t be any silver lining.

But it’s a beautiful spring day here in North Carolina, the forest is the brightest green you can imagine and filled with a symphony of birdsong. Nuclear war feels at once far away, and never closer.

Today in North Carolina.

For now, I’m going to live life as best I can, loving, protesting, planning, building community. The more each of us resist, the better our collective odds.

What else is happening:

• It has been six weeks since my patellar tendon surgery, and I can finally drive again and hobble without crutches. Mobility is amazing!

• In my opinion, there’s no longer a climate movement per se - there’s instead an increasingly unified, and growing, movement against the fascist-billionaire-Epstein class and its genocidal, planet-destroying madness. This has been a reality I’ve been wrestling with throughout my posts here. Here’s another take on this by the Sunrise Movement.

With love and rage,

Peter