Ink Tea Stone Leaf

It seems like it would be a waste of time to explain to my fellow countrymen that, if some other country were to conduct a military strike on Washington, D.C. as part of an operation to abduct the President of the United States and force him to stand trial in a foreign court, all while inviting and empowering foreign corporations to seize control of American natural resources, most Americans would regard this as an outrage and a hostile act of war. I certainly would, though I happen to detest the current President, but that is not a factor that should matter. I think it would be a waste of time because many of my fellow countrymen also believe (pretty explicitly) that it is alright for the United States to do these sorts of things to other countries, because the United States is Good, and if the United States were to target the leader of any other country with this sort of treatment, that leader must be Bad.

The problem, you see, is that they have the moral imagination of infants.

It also seems like a waste of time to belabor the point that in the last election, Donald Trump promised his voters that wars of occupation and regime change were the sort of thing he would certainly not start, unlike his Democratic opponents who would without a doubt send us into World War III. I would hazard a guess that most of the Trump voters who haven’t already changed their minds about him (because he also lied about inflation and Medicaid) have simply forgotten that he promised that, or forgotten that they cared.

The problem, you see, is that they have the political memory of goldfish. And goldfish don’t even have politics, so that is saying something.

I thought I should say something about the United States’ latest international crime and Trump’s latest violation of the U.S. Constitution because I did not want anybody to think for a moment that I did not care. Denouncing this action is about the only thing I, in my personal capacity, can do about it, and perhaps it doesn’t mean much in the short term. Nevertheless, I would like to metaphorically grab each and every one of my fellow citizens who voted for this maniac by their collars, shake them vigorously, and shout in their faces, this was an easy choice, and you still voted for the maniac because he told you he wasn’t a maniac.

I honestly don’t know anymore if it would be better for the United States to try and resume its standing as a respected international leader, or shut itself in absolutely and leave the rest of the world alone. What I do know is that we are currently on track for the worst outcome of all: to become a pariah state, mistrusted and disrespected by all, and increasingly vulnerable to the kind of “interventions” in our internal affairs that the chest-thumping flag-wavers still regard as unthinkable. I hope for the sake of all of us that we don’t have to find out exactly how wrong they are.

The United States has behaved like an empire before, staging coups and occupying territory at the behest of its moneyed interests. Its President, however, has never before called upon the American people to regard themselves as imperialists with the right to exercise power for its own sake, or to conquer a neighbor for the sake of increasing the wealth of billionaires. Certain sarcastic individuals might thank Donald Trump for being more “honest” about his goals, but whereas I have more than an ounce of self-respect in me, and I actually care about whether the actions of my country’s government make the world a better or worse place, I decline to join them. There is a difference between cynicism and honesty, and the difference matters.

The Trump Administration has been violating international law against Venezuela for months, and now Donald Trump has unconstitutionally usurped Congress’s power to declare war. This is open and shut. This is easy to understand. This is wrong, and this was predictable. There will be worse things to come.