We have learned from our wildly ranting president that “only the military defense” of the USA matters in terms of the American budget. Trump explicitly dismissed federal responsibilities for Medicaid, Medicare, and childcare, even calling them “scams.” Since we already have the most lethal and most expensive military forces on earth, it’s difficult to comprehend his new demand for a $1.5 trillion Pentagon budget — unless we think of the war crimes we’ve already committed against Iran and the Queens developer’s plutocratic American background.
Long ago, there was a brief period after World War II when some German apologists asserted that there were indeed a host of “good Germans” who had disagreed with Hitler, didn’t know about the Holocaust and other Nazi war crimes, and therefore weren’t culpable for their country’s blatant war crimes. (The Geneva Convention defines “war crimes” as grave breaches of international law committed against protected persons or property during an armed conflict. On February 28 a U.S. missile strike hit an Iranian elementary school in Minab, killing more than 100 children — certainly “protected persons” — and more than 68 others, mostly teachers.
The appalling costs of Trump’s unconstitutional and vicious war on Iran include more than documented atrocities and “war crimes” — the devastating costs to our own soldiers ordered to carry out a war of conquest without congressional approval, the impact of these munitions on the earth herself, the depletion of our armaments for future conflicts versus China and Russia, and the erasure of international good will toward the USA. We haven’t yet begun to endure the enormous economic penalties of anti-Americanism throughout the world.
But let’s study Trump’s egocentric thinking based on his lifelong wealth and slippery ability to escape responsibility for his personal crimes. Although he’s a convicted felon for “sexual assault” in New York State and numerous financial crimes, he has never served time. His enormous chest of money, originally inherited from his father, has always insulated him from responsibility to pay for his crimes. Six bankruptcies did not destroy his credit. “His” lethal military shields him from any penalties for his attacks on Venezuela, Iran in 2025, and the renewed bloody assault on Iran this year. Sure, the Iranian leaders are terrible and vicious, but this does not warrant the current illegal war on the people of Iran.
Acclaimed philosopher Hannah Arendt took on that “good Germans” defense in the 1950s in her coverage of Adolph Eichmann’s trial; his defense was essentially “I was just following orders” like so many other Germans. She critically analyzed this idea that ordinary citizens were effectively innocent while remaining silent during the Nazi dominance. In Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963) she showed with brutal clarity that ordinary German citizens by their simple passivity facilitated Hitler’s evil and eventually the Holocaust. She coined the famous phrase “the banality of evil” to highlight how ordinary Germans’ inaction made them complicit in bloody war crimes.
Based on his lifetime escaping the penalties for his personal crimes, Trump’s bloated ego now believes our colossal American military power shields the USA and him from international pushback and significant “penalties.” His vast wealth and America’s enormous military power blind his — and the plutocratic GOP lawmakers in Congress — from comprehending the rest of the world’s mounting distaste, and even hatred, for our country. His pet Department of Justice, Defense Secretary toady Hegseth, and personal Gestapo ICE all lead his unhinged thinking further into the abyss.
Calling the horrid Iranian leadership “crazy bastards” rebounds in the world press to reflect another crazy Amerikan bastard in the mirror of history. His new acting Attorney General Blanche has openly stated “I love Trump,” and I now imagine we’re in a North Korean situation where all GOP members must adore and openly fawn on him. The “Dear Leader” orders his military to commit authentic “war crimes,” he loudly threatens to obliterate the entire Persian civilization, and with goose-stepping submission the complicit American people blindly follow him into this moral perversion.
I have participated in all the No Kings demonstrations, and others, and declare that this kind of virtue signaling is not nearly enough.
The next No Kings demonstrations must demand that the Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment and remove this demented and cruel “leader” immediately. Absent this kind of intense resistance to our mad King absolutely makes each one of us American citizens complicit in obvious war crimes.
The time for burying our heads in the sand is over: You and I cannot continue to hide behind our own insulating idea that today we are the “good Americans.” There are no “good Americans” now.
Bob Dylan will be playing at the Santa Barbara Bowl on June 17, but we don’t need an 83-year-old songsmith to tell us now as we participate in war crimes. Way back in 1965 he sang: “you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”
Time to get it on, folks.
