Hispanic Fanatic

I’m not exaggerating when I say that if we had installed a sock puppet as president in 2025, we would be in better shape today.

A sock puppet, or any inanimate object that made no decisions, would never have implemented idiotic tariffs that ravaged the economy, 

A sock puppet would never have launched a war with Iran for vague, confounding, contradictory, arbitrary, and imbecilic reasons, resulting in widespread death and destruction.

Would a sock puppet steal $1.8 billion dollars from the US Treasury and plan to hand it out to thugs and flunkies beholden only to him? Possibly, but not necessarily.

A president who did nothing would be an improvement on a president who willfully makes mystifying, moronic decisions that seem designed to hurt America.

Unfortunately, we do not have a sock puppet for a chief executive. We have a careening, decaying narcissist who “is not good at wars, economics, or geopolitics” but is “amazingly good at corruption.”

Americans are starting to catch on — about 18 months too late, but they are catching on, nevertheless.

The vilest person to ever be president has an approval rating that is sinking faster than a Tesla dropped into a black hole. The only people who still believe in his insanity are the hardcore base.

But that’s a new problem. You see “Trump’s strategy for power has a tighter and tighter hold on fewer and fewer people.” As MAGA withers and dies, it will become even more toxic, without the nominal need to appeal to anyone but zealots who are quite literally willing to die for this repulsive bigot.

As the right-wing “base of support shrinks, the concentration of primary-voting diehards and Cabinet-level dead-enders in the president’s party will only increase.” This means that the flailing despot’s “threats to upend democracy will only grow more intenseas Trump’s faction of MAGA diehards keeps shrinking.”

Basically, these fascistic fucks will try to take the whole damn country down with them.

I know of no solution to their whiplashing destruction. 

Hell, maybe we can talk them into voting for a sock puppet.

As you know, our most philanthropic of presidents has set up a $1.8 billion fund that will compensate supposed victims of government oppression. This unprecedented, nauseating, and likely unconstitutional decree isn’t just the most overtly corrupt act in presidential history. It is also a moronic and ill-formed idea that even its adherents can’t explain. 

Because it’s unclear who gets the money, I figured why not apply and see what happens? I deserve a few million just as much as a hillbilly insurrectionist does. So here is my application to the fund:

Dear Acting Attorney General Blanche (or Your Utmost Excellency, whichever you prefer):

Recently, you set up a $1.776 billion compensation fund for victims of lawfare and weaponization perpetrated by “political and career federal employees, contractors and agents” who targeted “individuals, groups, and entities for improper and unlawful political, personal, and/or ideological reasons (“Lawfare” and “Weaponization”).

I say it’s about time! No longer will Americans be intimidated by an out-of-control government that clamps down on their freedom of speech. Unless you’re swarthy, of course, because then ICE has the legal right to taser you just for kicks. Or if you’re a comedian who makes jokes about our chief executive, because no one has to right to criticize (all genuflect) President Trump (all rise) ever ever ever. Seriously, don’t even joke about making jokes.

In any case, I seek an award of $8.647 million from the Weaponization Fund. As with your fund amount of $1.776 billion, the amount I am seeking is based purely on punitive damages, backpay, arbitrary symbolism, and vibes.

You may ask about the grounds for my claim. Well, it’s true I don’t have anything as ironclad as storming the capitol, or lying under oath, or committing multiple felonies for the purposes of overthrowing democracy. I mean, the people who did that have it made. Am I right? If only the rest of us had known that it would be so profitable to bludgeon a cop. Alas, it’s all 20/20 hindsight.

No, my claim is based on the many angry emails and vague threats I receive from MAGA types, a few of whom imply that they work for the administration. Again, it’s nothing solid, but let’s be honest, the flunkies you’re going to pick for the commission that approves the payouts are going to be Mr. and Ms. Rubberstamp, so the details don’t matter.

The point is that I have been oppressed for political and ideological reasons. Like, really badly. So send me a big old bagfull of taxpayer-funded money as soon as possible. Let freedom ring, God bless America, ease on down the road, so on and so on.

Thank you for your attention to this matter,

The Hispanic Fanatic

You know that a triangle has three sides, and birds can fly, and fire is hot.

With that kind of independent thinking, you’ll never be a member of the Trump administration.

You see, our favorite band of charlatans, incompetents, and evil nepo-babies are harmful enough because of their zeal for distorting reality and promoting easily disproven nonsense. But the few sane and logical people who support this band of delusional freaks are so intimidated or fearful of losing their jobs that they are going along with grade-A gobbledygook and hardcore claptrap.

For example, pretty much everyone told our easily befuddled president that it was a horrible idea to attack Iran. And they were right. But at the White House, “so many people are afraid of being on the outs that they are just drinking the Kool-Aid and going along with it.” 

Yes, what could be a more powerful encapsulation of brave leadership and moral courage than the phrase “going along with it”? Perhaps that can be their motto.

But it’s not just obsequious toadies at the White House who deny reality. It’s also most conservatives in general.

For example, “rigorous research [has] demonstrated in place after place, decade after decade, that immigration to the U.S. does not cause crime to go up; it may even push it down.

And yet, 85% of Republicans “believe that migrants bring crime to the U.S.,” an erroneous belief that has held steady among conservatives for the last 20 years of polling. Conservatives insist that immigrants are synonymous with crime waves even though “the data shows otherwise.”

Perhaps conservatives would also like to know that in research that stretches back to the 1990s, the US immigrant population has “generated more in taxes than they received in benefits from all levels of government.” Without immigrants, US government public debt at all levels would be nearly twice as high, and the economic contributions of immigrants may have “already prevented a fiscal crisis.”

That hasn’t stopped “major Trump donors” from complaining about immigrant invasions, right before hiring and exploiting Mexican workers illegally.

There are many reasons why Republicans see the world they want to see rather than acknowledge inconvenient reality.

One particularly disturbing theory is that MAGA is nothing more than right-wing fan fiction, and that the participants in this unhinged movement see themselves as players in “a cinematic epic of universal Good versus Evil.” According to this theory, the Trump administration is “far more steeped in storytelling than governing,” and policy is “presented via pop myths.” 

You could argue that the original Trumpian artifact, QAnon, was nothing more than a “popular mixed-reality fan fiction unfolding in real time” that morphed into a “kludgy, byzantine conspiracy saga.” It quickly became “a collaboration between the one in five Americans who believed its core conspiracies, a cottage industry of QAnon content creators, and even a few government officials.”

Hey, maybe the January 6 riots were merely “a fan fiction IRL meetup, a live action role-playing or alternate reality game that some took more seriously than others.”

Somehow that theory doesn’t make me feel any better.

But this disillusionment is the price we pay for living in the real world.

The US is no longer a democracy. 

I know — you thought we were the shining example of this most fabled form of government, when in truth, we are more like a theocracy or oligarchy or kakocracy or, well, some kind of crazycracy.

It’s not just that the Supreme Court has decided that allowing black people to vote is a silly idea. Nor is it that a handful of billionaires have more power than the populations of entire states. 

Those are big-time indicators, but the latest proof comes courtesy of “one of the most credible global sources on the health of democratic nations,” The Varieties of Democracy Institute at Gothenburg University, which reached the “alarming conclusion that the US is hurtling toward autocracy at a faster rate than Hungary and Turkey.” The institute said America is “now back at the worst recorded level since 1965, when US civil rights laws first introduced de facto universal suffrage,” meaning that “all progress made since then has been erased,” and what “we’re seeing now is the most severe magnitude of democratic backsliding ever in the country.”

OK, that’s just one group of eggheads badmouthing the good old US of A. I’m certain that most people still love us. Well, there is the fact that residents of Europe are three times more likely to view the United States as a threat than an ally. 

And there’s the disturbing statistic that about half of Americans believe democracy is functioning poorly in the United States, “marking a sharp decline from several decades ago.” And there is also a growing movement among young people for an absolute monarch to take over America. And… damn, how did we get to this messed-up point?

There are numerous grim milestones, terrifying tipping points, and 20/20 hindsight realizations about when and why America has become a chaotic swirl of violence and hatred led by thugs and incompetents. 

One root cause goes all the way back to the 1970s, when Nixon was forced to resign, but received a pardon rather than doing the hard time that would have served as a warning to would-be despots and petty tyrants.

Ford pardoning Nixon was not the supposed balm that allowed the nation to heal, but the moment when “powerful people in both political parties worked assiduously to ensure that their leaders would escape the consequences of their actions.”

When Mr. Watergate escaped any punishment whatsoever, it jumpstarted the “decades-long backlash among the American leadership class to the idea of accountability.” As a result, we ended up with Trump, a man whose corruption was well-known before he even ran for political office but whose many moral, ethical, and legal transgressions were viewed as ok because he was, you know, rich and stuff.

The only felon ever elected president “has evaded punishment for crimes both low (campaign-finance violations, for which he was convicted, though he will serve no time thanks to his 2024 victory) and high (his attempted overthrow of the federal government in the aftermath of his 2020 election loss, for which he was spared by the Supreme Court’s decision to grant him kingly immunity).”

The adjudicated rapist in the White House “is the product of a society that has worked hard to help the rich and powerful elude punishment for criminal behavior.”

And it’s worked great… for the rich and powerful.

For the rest of us, not so much.

People keep shooting at, or in the general vicinity, of the president. Yet everyone seems surprised that a random lunatic with access to a firearm might try to become famous by murdering a well-known individual, even though this is literally the dream of thousands of unstable, gun-wielding Americans.

No, there is no way out of our Second Amendment nightmare without even more death or a national catastrophe of some type.

There is also no way out of Iran without American troops getting killed or American credibility, what little of it remains, going up in flames like the Stars and Stripes at a Taliban rally.

Consider that the “costs of Trump’s folly include far more than the thousands of deaths and tens of billions of dollars the Pentagon has spent on the war.” All that is bad enough, but in the best-case scenario, we will get a shitty deal that will reopen a strait “that was open before the pointless war he started, with [Iran] demonstrating its control over the strait and potentially extracting fees plus sanctions relief.” That’s in addition to the hundreds of dead children, with U.S. embassies badly damaged, “U.S. standing in the world obliterated, and U.S. munitions badly depleted.” Also “prices are up everywhere, and more global economic fallout to come.” Furthermore, Putin has been “strengthened and enriched,” while we endure a “profoundly shameful episode in American history no matter what happens next.”

Again, that is the best-case scenario.

We arrived here because an oblivious megalomanic surrounded himself with cabinet members who exhibit “lickspittling, bootlicking, groveling, kowtowing adulation and unctuously servile toadyism.” And now all of them — every macho-postering moron and reality-denying jingoist — are shocked that the Iran war is breaking Trump and has “significantly damaged American credibility and influence in the region.”

Who could have foreseen this — other than every president before Trump, every Middle East expert, and most of the people who have more than nine brain cells in their heads?

In addition to the inevitable quagmire and/or defeat, what has made the “outcome of the war so embarrassing was Trump’s conduct during it—not only the constant lies and dissimulations about why he had launched the conflict and what he hoped to achieve from it but, even more, the spectacle he presented of unhinged, unaccountable American power.”

But on the plus side, we got some great footage of shit blowing up.

Totally worth it.

If you are a Christian conservative, you’ve been quite willing to overlook Trump’s many deviations from devout behavior. There’s the nonstop lying, cheating, adultery, “unrepentant mendacity,” arrogance, gleeful boasting that he hates his opponents, and threats of death on all who oppose him. Despite his “suspect professions of faith and his glaring unfamiliarity with scripture, conservative Christian leaders have praised him and described him as heaven sent.”

But now, our most holy of presidents has indulged in full-force, straight-up blasphemy, and he believes you are too stupid to see it. Yes, he has presented a defense, which is based on the man being so moronic that he doesn’t understand basic imagery that a nine-year-old would comprehend. And that is the best-case scenario for his behavior.

It’s bad enough that the president is a narcissistic liar who doesn’t even care if he insults his followers and who revels in ultimate cringe. The bigger problem is that he is a nutjob.

Yes, I’ve addressed the man’s frayed sanity before, and as far back as his first term, many political commentators and healthcare professionals were shouting, “This guy is cuckoo for Coco Puffs.”

It will forever be mystifying to me how millions of Americans saw this demented act in 2024, excused the word salad and meandering as “passionate” or “joking,” and thought this dementia-addled bigot was fit to make economic policy and negotiate with heads of state. This philandering oligarch was one step from babbling on the subway. Clearly, “they’re eating the cats and dogs” was a cry for help, but huge swaths of Americans thought it was a campaign slogan.

In any case, more people are openly debating the 25^th Amendment, which I advocated for in 2017.

This development is because “Trump’s erratic behavior and extreme comments in recent days and weeks have turbocharged the crazy-like-a-fox-or-just-plain-crazy debate that has followed him on the national political stage for a decade.” 

Instead of leadership, we get “a series of disjointed, hard-to-follow and sometimes-profane statements,” interspersed with threats to destroy entire civilizations. It leaves even the most partisan of observers with “the impression of a deranged autocrat mad with power.”

And Americans are catching on. Polling shows that 61% of Americans “think Mr. Trump has become more erratic with age” and half think he is too old to be president. Only one-third of Americans thought the near-octogenarian was too old just a year ago, so we have to wonder why such a large percentage of people suddenly realized how time works.

Regardless of this abrupt epiphany, we now have a government run by psychos, and a president who went from “making insane genocidal threats this morning to hyping the ‘golden age’ of Iran hours later,” even if the situation did not change in the interim. It is no exaggeration to say the chief executive is “an absolute basket case who needs to be removed from power before he follows through on one of his mass murder fantasies.”

Right now, this is how we live: “The American people spent the whole day wondering if their mad king would destroy the world, only to find out he was terrorizing them in order to protect his ego after starting a disastrous war.”

This is madness.

In my last post, I discussed how Finland was crowned the happiest country in the world for like the 19^th year in a row. In fact, all of Scandinavia is prosperous, peaceful, and delightful. 

This fact should put American conservatives in a quandary. After all, when multiple nations embrace the exact opposite of your values, and those countries go on to become the envy of the world, one would think it would constitute a strong rejection of your ideals.

But conservatives are a hardy lot. Even when total disaster befalls them, and everything they said would happen doesn’t occur, and their agenda implodes into chaos, they insist that they are right and everyone else is wrong.

One could call this perseverance. I prefer the term delusion, but perspectives vary.

In any case, conservatives have a quick answer for why the Nordic countries — all socially democratic with active governments and generous benefits for their citizens — are doing so well.

“It’s obvious,” says the conservative. “They are reaping the benefits of being small, culturally homogenous societies with little ethnic diversity.”

To the conservative, the Nordic governments prosper not because they provide universal healthcare and don’t allow their citizens to carry around assault rifles. No, they thrive because all of their citizens are white and blonde.

This is, to say the least, an interesting viewpoint. It’s also implied racism, but we will let that go for the moment.

Let’s take a look at each of these arguments in turn.

First, I agree with conservatives that smaller countries seem to be more hospitable. This is one reason why I advocate for splitting up the United States (or at least studying the idea more thoroughly). 

Huge countries like America, China, and Russia tend to devolve into unmanageable messes or international bullies. Maybe the Nordic countries have an advantage in that they don’t have to keep 300 million people happy under one system. 

However, there are large countries that seem to have their shit together, like Canada, and small countries that are hellholes, like North Korea. So this is a supporting factor at best.

What about being culturally homogenous? It makes sense that a shared culture and national character would bind a country together. However, many studies have shown that the most culturally diverse cities tend to be the safest and most productive within any given nation. So maybe we call this factor a draw.

That leaves us with the heart of the conservative argument, which is that the happiest countries don’t have a lot of foreigners running around, and most people there are the same skin hue and look like they could be related.

Again, this is an interesting position to advocate for.

To analyze this argument, let’s look at that list of nations again. According to the study, the five happiest countries, in order, are the following:

Finland 

Iceland 

Denmark 

Costa Rica 

Sweden 

Yes, those places are not exactly melting pots. But do me a favor and take a glance at the same study’s list of least-happiest nations. The five most miserable countries, in order, are the following:

Afghanistan 

Sierra Leone 

Malawi 

Zimbabwe 

Botswana

Um, those countries are even less racially diverse than the Nordic countries. 

Well, that’s a plot twist.

Now to be fair, if conservatives are talking about ethnic diversity, they may have a point, because Afghanistan, for example, is home to many different tribes, all of whom apparently hate each other. But if you’re talking about racial diversity — and let’s face it, that’s what conservatives really mean — then the conservative argument is backward. 

Places like Afghanistan and Sierra Leone have almost no racial diversity. The vast majority of the people in those nations enjoy the cultural and racial hegemony that conservatives dream of, and yet this has not led to paradise. Also, those countries have limited governments (to the point of almost nonexistent) and plenty of guns in the hands of residents, so they sound like conservative Edens.

And if we really want to get bossy, please note that the top five happiest nations, in addition to being more racially diverse than the five saddest countries, also have much higher immigration rates.

This makes sense, because if you were a refugee, would you rather escape to Denmark or Malawi? So once again, if an immigration rate of zero is your dream, you must really love Zimbabwe.

At this point, it’s fair to say that even this most fragile of conservative arguments for the success of Scandinavia is absurd. In truth, there is no logical way anyone can look at the most prosperous nations, line them up with American conservative ideals, and see a match.

So maybe conservatives are wrong about the ideal society, and perhaps we should not listen to people who want American to emulate Hungary (the 74^th happiest country in the world) rather than Norway ((the sixth happiest country in the world).I know where I would rather live. How about you?

You know that phrase “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer”?

Our illustrious president has taken this advice to mean, “Piss off your friends and give people who want to destroy your country a big hug.”

You see, it’s bad enough that our butterfly-brained chief executive does pretty much whatever Putin wants him to do. But ever since he reclaimed the White House, this former best friend of Epstein has “gone out of his way to antagonize our allies and partners, warning them that the United States will act alone and working to undermine the international alliances the U.S. has shaped since World War II.” The twist is that ever since instigating “a regional war in the Middle East after ignoring what virtually everyone said would be the result of attacking Iran a second time, Trump is begging other countries to come to his aid.”

To the surprise of absolutely no one (except the Trump Administration, which is constantly surprised when their moronic plans explode into chaos), our allies are saying, “Not my problem.”

The president of the United States has been reduced to the status of a blubbering nine-year-old upset that nobody came to his party. 

“Fine, I didn’t want them to come anyway. It was just a test.”

Sure it was.

There is one key difference, however. The dysregulated kid can be given cake to soothe the pain. 

But a power-hungry narcissist with a bottomless pit of a black heart will not be happy until everybody suffers.

And the suffering is coming.

This botched excursion, unique in American history in that nobody can say exactly why we’re at war, has already killed thousands of people. Here in the well-insulated United States, this idiotic campaign could raise the price of food, gas, plane tickets, and those cheap toys you get your kids as stocking stuffers for Christmas.

Yeah, pretty much everything. But I guess inflation is patriotic now.

In any case, the “window for Donald Trump to end the Iran war by simply declaring victory and walking away is rapidly closing.” Soon, the man who cannot be bothered to read anything and rarely stays on one topic for more than a minute will have to “face a stark choice: He can take greater risks in pursuit of a decisive tactical success, prepare the country for a prolonged conflict that could last for many months, or seek a negotiated settlement that involves a real compromise with Tehran.”

It should be perfectly obvious to all but the most delusional that America’s reckless, childish leader “does not think strategically… historically, geographically, or even rationally.” The man “does not consider the wider implications of his decisions [or] take responsibility when these decisions go wrong.” This wildly unpopular president “acts on whim and impulse, and when he changes his mind—when he feels new whims and new impulses—he simply lies about whatever he said or did before.”

We are at the tipping point where the US will either get dragged into yet another horrific ground war in the Middle East, or we will slink away in embarrassment after unleashing death and destruction for no discernable reason.

How’s that for winning?

There is something mathematically pure about the Republican Party. For the past 30 years, they have insisted that once they have the presidency, everything will be great, but the exact opposite — i.e., massive chaos — always occurs.

This predictable political formula of A plus B equals C would be charming enough. But it’s the specifics that amaze and astound.

Consider that the last three GOP presidents (Bush Sr., Bush Jr., and Trump) all began their terms with solid economies and ended their terms with recessions. Although Jr.’s was the worst, Trump 2.0 has the potential to create a definite trend of economic downturns intensifying with each Republican administration.

However, the most amazing mathematical formula, too precise to be coincidence, is that the last three GOP presidents have waged an unnecessary war in the Middle East, with the rationale for each one becoming more ludicrous than the last.

We’ve gone from defending Kuwait to imaginary WMDs to… well, nobody really knows why we’re bombing Iran. It could be one of a dozen vague, contradictory reasons or no reason at all.

This latest round of GOP warmongering in the Middle East looks to end the trilogy with a full-blown scene of total Armageddon. Seriously, we have religious zealots who are eager to kill us all for the glory of Jesus (which theologians would tell you is not something Christ would actually want). But hey, if the apocalypse comes, at least we would be spared another GOP president.

In any case, I have long wondered about voters who insist that Republicans are better for the economy, despite a century of evidence that this is not true. However, now I have to ponder why any sane adult would look at Trump during the 2024 election, listen to the GOP’s shrieked bloodlust, and think “They are the party of peace.”

Yeah, Trump said he wouldn’t start any wars, but it was a minor miracle that he didn’t launch one during his first term. He was too busy golfing and denying Covid to attack anybody. Only a child would believe that our luck would last. Trump and his right-wing acolytes are happy only when Americans are dropping bombs on people.

Invading Venezuela was just too easy and didn’t deliver the carnage that conservatives love and the distraction that Trump needed. And that is why “the most powerful man on Earth is cavalierly bombing and reshaping one of the most geopolitically explosive regions in the world — and has offered nothing even approaching a coherent explanation for why he’s doing it or what he’s aiming to achieve.” We all know that it was horrific enough “for America to have a mad king, [but] now the world is seeing the rise of a mad emperor.”

Our lunatic president — who has really shot to hell his chances of winning that elusive Nobel Peace Prize — “is telling liesabout the war that not only contradict one another, but contradict themselves internally.” We have to ask if this misbegotten war is “about a nuclear program that doesn’t exist” or a regime change “that we haven’t thought through” or “an imaginary Iranian threat to elections.” Our befuddled commander in chief “has claimed both that he already destroyed Iran’s nuclear program and that he is now destroying it,” which makes it a Schrodinger’s cat of atomic weaponry.

This conflict — which has yet to gain a catchy name, so we will likely go with the Iran War — has been launched “without explanation, without Congress, without even an attempt to build public support, [and] without a coherent strategy.”

Of course, that’s not entirely true. Because according to the GOP ideology, “the dominance itself is the point; there is no other endgame.”

As for the war itself, at some point, America “may be forced to choose between an escalation or an embarrassing climbdown.”

Assuming that this campaign doesn’t end in a disaster that makes the Iraq War look like a mighty victory, our best hope is that our easily distracted president just gets bored with the war and impulsively calls it off. That would not be the first time he creates a cataclysm, leaves a mess for others to clean up, and declares victory.

If we tell him that America has won the war already, will he tweet himself congratulations and go back to ranting about paper straws?

Sounds like a coherent strategy to me.

As we know, supporters of Trump come in all styles.

There are angry young men, cackling oligarchs, virulent racists, smug misogynists, cowed conservatives, frightened boomers, furious Gen Xers, religious zealots, conspiratorial lunatics, pedophile defenders, oblivious minorities, and casual voters who wanted cheaper eggs, among other demographics.

It’s more difficult to find highly educated professionals who see a blithering, self-aggrandizing bigot go on and on about himself who think “This is the guy.” But you will find them. There are economists who support his tariffs, political scientists who insist Trump is a strategic genius, and doctors who like polio. 

However, one professional class refuses to get on board the Trump train. That would be the historians.

I have yet to see a prominent historian say, “This is a golden age, and Americans will celebrate Trump in the future.” Indeed, historians are among Trump’s strongest critics. They really dislike the guy.

Many will say, “Who cares what a bunch of elitist eggheads think?” And then these people will steal the historian’s lunch money and yell, “Nerd” while giving them wedgies.

But in some ways, Trump’s horrible reputation with historians may be even more alarming than his notoriety among scientists, journalists, heads of state, and anyone who believes that citizens should not be murdered in the street.

You see, historians have devoted their lives to studying the past, analyzing the present, and presenting conclusions. And pretty much all of them are saying, “This shit is fucked up and will lead to chaos for years, even generations.” And they have been saying this since his first term.

Historians are shouting about the signs of fascism, the parallels to other countries that dabbled with authoritarianism, and the fact that the GOP has a Nazi problem. They are pointing out that all of this has happened, in some form, in many other countries over many decades, and it has always led to catastrophe.

They are the Cassandras that Americans are not listening to, either because it’s too disturbing, too unbelievable, or too easy to dismiss as the caterwauling emanating from ivory towers.

But keep in mind that historians judge presidents differently than voters and journalists do. Historians don’t evaluate leaders on how the economy is doing today (although the answer is “not well”). Nor do they obsess over partisan ideology, culture wars, or political wins and losses. 

Rather, historians prioritize long-term institutional effects, like constitutional norms, minority rights, commitment to rule of law, respect for democratic processes, and the peaceful transfer of power.

And guess what? Trump sucks at all of those.

If historians don’t like a president, it’s usually not because he was mean to trans people or constantly insulted allies (but let’s be honest, that doesn’t help). No, historians interpret warning signs in democracies and say, “This is ominous as fuck for all these reasons that we have seen in other countries, and America will not be an exception.”

Other experts are beginning to agree, like the research firm that states “the United States [is] the principal source of global risk in 2026.”

Unless we alter our terrifying trajectory, the historians of 2126 will shake their heads at our ignorance, sigh, and add America to the long list of countries that didn’t pay attention to the lessons of history.