The End of the American Civilization

The brinkmanship that brought the world to the edge of a nuclear holocaust was a damning indictment of a civilization undergoing the very thing it was threatening another with.

By April 7, the pronouncement had been made. The maximalist demands put forth by a country so over-confident in its own powers, had so misjudged a situation that it could now be characterized as having “no cards to play.”

And yet he did it anyway. Donald Trump, who claims to have perfected the “art of the deal,” is actually a poker player at heart, a reckless gambler who specializes in bullying and bluffing his way into cheap and easy “wins.” After over five weeks of subjecting the world to a wild joy ride, a whiplash of ever-changing objectives, demands, threats and developments, this time he was threatening to end a civilization in a night.

All over the world, heads of state had no way to interpret that other than to assume he was referring to nuclear weapons. Threatening to bomb all civilian infrastructure into oblivion, a clear war crime, was bad enough. An entire civilization implied vaporizing everything, and leaving no one and no thing standing.

Thus, it was that an hour and a half away from his “8 PM Eastern deadline” to “open up Hormuz or else,” for once Donald Trump did the right thing and backed down, MAGA. I know it’s a fate worse than death for you proud-as-peacocks tough guys, but having made an absolute mistake, morally and strategically on February 28, by April 7 Trump now had a choice to make. Either double down and make the situation for the world infinitely worse, or relent and allow millions, perhaps billions to live another day.

What caused him to blink is anyone’s guess. One theory is that the sight of thousands of Iranians gathering on their bridges and around their power plants, may have been too much, even for him.¹

Defying the US to go ahead and show the world our actual moral condition, their carefree, festive attitude reminded me of the spirit abroad at the “No Kings” rallies. Certainly, it was a rebuke yet again of the long-standing Netanyahu con that when you attack and abuse another nation’s government and assassinate their leaders, their people will love you for it and “greet you with open arms.” The truth is usually just the opposite.

More Crude and Vulgar Than Ever

Nonetheless, Trump’s “civilization” threat was diplomatic language about as extreme as has ever been heard for centuries. You’d have to reach back to the days of warlords and the barbarian hordes who butchered their way into the blood-soaked pages of history to find like sentiments. And all of it on the heels of his bonkers Easter morning Presidential greeting to the world no less, wherein he bellowed out (Jer 50:11):

“Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH!”

To such demented demands, he had to of course finish with an ineffable, “Praise be to Allah”! Can you imagine the right-wing meltdown if Barak Obama had said such a thing? Afterwards, America’s great Christian champion, the guy who’s “more into the Gospel than anyone else” of course, didn’t even bother to go to church that morning, but did find time for another round of golf.

Making Sense of Madness

Donald Trump doesn’t just like to scare people, indulge in hot air bombast, and make threats all out of proportion to someone else’s claimed transgressions. He also loves to use vague language that leaves everyone guessing as to what in the world he’s actually thinking, fulfilling yet another clue about how the Antichrist will be a master of deception and a trafficker in riddles (Dan 8:23,25).²

Maybe this is a Republican Grand Old Tradition now. Richard Nixon in his day once admitted he had no problem with the Chinese and Russians thinking he was “a little crazy,” because it would keep them off balance. Very responsible of him, and Trump loves to crib from former Republican stars like that to develop his image. His endless mimicry of all kinds of quirky Ronald Reagan gestures is but one example.

This combination of sadism, manipulation and veiled threat Trump has perfected to a point where it’s like second nature to him, and perhaps explains why so many people see him as a “negotiating genius.” The outcome of course, is something much more down to earth:

“In recent days, US and Israeli forces have attacked civilian infrastructure, including power plants, bridges, universities, steel factories and petrochemical facilities, killing and injuring civilians, condemning the population to years, if not decades, of deepened economic hardship, inflicting serious harm on civilian health and the environment, and leaving long lasting damage to civilians’ lives and livelihoods.

Intentionally attacking civilian infrastructure constitute war crimes under international law. Even in the limited cases that civilian infrastructure qualify [sic] as military targets, a party still cannot attack them if this may cause disproportionate harm to civilians. Power plants, water systems and energy infrastructure are indispensable to civilian life, underpinning access to clean water, medical care, hospital electricity, food supply chains, and basic livelihoods. Attacking them would be disproportionate and thus unlawful under international humanitarian law and could amount to a war crime.” ³

But America’s partner in crime Israel, had already set the precedent, a whole new step down into the gutter for the world, with their brutal reduction of Gaza down to dust, with Lebanon soon to follow. Without shame, Netanyahu’s blatant disregard for Trump’s unilateral ceasefire agreement⁴ was on full display the next day by his subsequent attack on pure civilian targets in Beirut, the deadliest single day in his latest assault on Lebanon.

Norm Finkelstein is rightly referring to the US and Israel now as “two beasts,” an ironic insight into two last days entities that God refers to as beasts Himself.⁵ Since October 7, 2023, Israel is pulverizing the Palestinian people with US blessing, and no one but a handful of harassed activists is standing up for them. And among states, no one but Iran and the Lebanese. Therefore, they too must suffer the Gazans’ fate.

This is how we are being trained by this little rogue cult. Finkelstein has also pointed out that even the Nazis felt obligated to fabricate a fake border incident to justify their aggression against Poland.

Diplomacy As A Weapon

But in this war, the Iranians suffered the most flagrant, blatant and egregious assault upon them in the modern era, openly initiated with no real excuse or warning. Iran was in no way threatening the United States, but Israel has long sought for their complete reduction to a failed state, just like we did to Libya, now a breeding ground for real terrorism for the world,

But these two “allies” didn’t stop there. They just had to launch this pre-planned attack in the middle of “peace” negotiations to replace Obama’s 2015 nuclear deal that Trump tore up at Bibi’s prodding.⁶ As the Iranians put it, the US and Israel have now “turned even diplomacy into a weapon of deception.” And they’ve done it twice now in the space of a year.⁷

There is no other way to caricature that than as rank treachery. It is just stunning how so many Americans and all Israelis can now so casually act this way, like it’s the most normal thing in the world.

The entire system of international law, led by the United States after World War II, and understandably demanded the most by the world’s Jews, Israel has systematically ignored since 1948 whenever it’s convenient to them. But that’s what happens when a world superpower, which claims to be the most Christian nation of all, is slowly trained by the one-sided “ethics” of the Pharisee cult of Israel.

What’s The Bible All About?

American Christians in general, and MAGA Christians in particular, see themselves as the “gold standard” of the Faith in the world. They assume that no expression of Christianity is more “Biblical,” more anointed, more “in the flow” of what “God is doing” in the world today than their own. Yet ever since the rise of the Word of Faith movement in the 1980s, and now Dominionism, Christian Zionism and the Christian Right, I’ve been asking a simple question—are “these (truly) His doings” in the earth (Micah 2:7)?

I mean, what after all is the message of the Bible? You could argue that it’s all about Jesus Christ, in Whom all things in heaven and earth are to be summed up by God the Father, and you would be right (Eph 1:10). But what is its value culturally to the earth, since we pretend to be such experts in “Biblical culture” now, given that the “larger culture” doesn’t “share our values.”

You’re telling me they don’t “share our values”! And why should they? It’s obvious to the world what we value—greed, lying, corruption, hypocrisy, self-righteousness, inequity, lawlessness, cynicism, insincerity, treachery, power, double standards, pedophilia, protecting the guilty and powerful while ignoring the victims, misogyny, racism, war, violence, tough-guy-ism, intimidation, arrogance…

I could go on and on. All Donald Trump is, is a political version of the fast-talking charlatan evangelist offering hot air promises and non-existent miracles while grifting his poor and Biblically-untaught followers. He’s got the full face of makeup, the bouffant, the silk ties, the expensive suits, etc. The only thing he lacks is some sexy shoes.

To it all he adds another step down, bullying and bluffing his way through life. He secretly despises and has no respect for all his Evangelical “fans,” and who can blame him?

He demagogues, demonizes and caricatures all Democrats as sinister cultural Marxists while he never fails to give everyone a Che Guevara clenched-fist salute. He has trained his entire party to admire either dictators or mobsters while he despises democratic heads of state as “weak” and “woke.”

So Where’s The Moral Judgment?

As the “civilizational” nuclear crisis was starting to defuse, I heard about a just-released New York Times blockbuster article about the two Situation Room meetings in February when the decision to finalize the assault on Iran was made. The first was on February 11 when Bibi Netanyahu no less, was allowed to sit in the room and make his pitch to Trump and his cabinet to do the dirty deed. At the second, Trump and his people alone made the decision.

What struck me was two things. One, after Netanyahu left, several of Trump’s top people expressed skepticism if not outright ridicule of doing what the Israeli PM had failed to get so many other Presidents to do in the past. Yet by the second meeting, everyone one of them caved in, simply because they didn’t want to suffer the wrath of “The Boss” if they dared contradict him.⁸

The second was that, throughout all the discussions, at no time was there any concern for the legality or morality of what they were contemplating. Deliberately plotting to surprise attack the party you are professing peace negotiations with at the moment, is sheer treachery, a subject the Bible has a lot to say about.

Likewise, assassinating a head of state is a war crime. So is the sadism of attacking civilian infrastructure rather than sticking to military targets. So is “decapitating” an entire “regime” just because you don’t like their policies or philosophy. So is attacking a nation that hasn’t attacked you first (the “crime of aggression.”) These rules of law are all the things that the national embarrassment known as our “Secretary of War” disparages as “woke” chains, “tying our warriors’ hands.”

Just as Ukraine refused to attack Russian civilian life for so long while Russia did it to them, so likewise, for so many years Iran’s responses to blatant provocations by Israel and the US were met with restraint and token retaliations.

Now the gloves are off. Both Ukraine and Iran are playing by the rules handed to them, and listen to the Russians, Israelis and Americans whine like stuck pigs. How does it feel to finally get a taste of your own medicine, Israel?

We could get into a lot of sidebar discussions here about the legitimacy of the international “rules-based/international law” paradigm established after World War II. Or, we could delve into the argument that the United States for all practical purposes has been at war continuously with Iran “for 47 years now,” as our Dear Leader never stops loving to gaslight us with.⁹

All of which are worthwhile, but it tripwires another subject the right never stops loving to ridicule, the liberal obsession with understanding “underlying causes.”

Yes indeed, there is a long history of “underlying causes” about US treachery towards Iran that right-wingers loath to be reminded of, but does go a long way toward explaining “how we got here.” Indeed again, you could argue that all of history explains cause and effect, a subject the Bible emphasizes for its importance (Prov 4:7).¹⁰

But let’s not go down those sidebars. Let’s stick with the stunning phenomenon of how casually we now talk about, not just sins, not just crimes, but mass crimes of the highest order—murder and genocidal intentions as defined by US-sanctioned and initiated definitions. It reveals the degree to which US “Christian” culture has been “Talmudified” now, because Pharisee tradition is the “art of the argument,” including how when Gentile nations try to eliminate Jews, that’s a war crime. When Israel tries to eradicate an ancient civilization, that’s “pre-emptive self-defense.”

This is one of the great lessons, the great “take-aways” to be had from this whole debacle. What’s clear here is the gap between purported US aims in this war and Israeli ones. Donald Trump was sold a bill of goods, based on ever-cooked Israeli intelligence, that “decapitating” Iranian leadership would result in the “collapse of the regime,” when they knew how multi-layered the Iranian plans for “continuity of government” were. Yet once Trump was lured into this quagmire, they knew he might be tempted to “go all the way” and nuke Iran if need be.

As we know, thank God he stepped away from that abyss at the last moment. But you can be guaranteed every government in the world knew what the US President meant by “ending a civilization tonight.” Like the right-wing loves to say, “words mean things.”

Nevertheless, Israel has always been fine with reducing its neighbors to failed states if it serves their drive to become the sole regional hegemon. This has been the “Oded Yinon/neo-con” strategy for 40 years now.

The fact that it results in huge refugee crises that inflame tensions in Europe and elsewhere, or turns these regions into breeding grounds for true terrorism that spills over into Europe, Russia the US or elsewhere, is none of their self-centered concern. Bottomless faith in their talent for manipulating the world into their rope-a-dope strategies will see them through to ultimate “world domination.”

Or so they say, wise in their own conceits (Rom 11:25; 12:16). God on the other hand has a trap for people like that (Job 5:13; I Cor 3:19), and His Church is supposed to be people who understand that that is what the Armageddon scenario is all about.

This is a huge discussion regarding Zionism’s obsession with its own “legitimacy” and the “Greater Israel” plan. I will leave that for a future article. For now, I want to stick with the implications for America.

Vain Janglings and Talking Nonsense

5 Now the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned:
6 From which some having swerved have turned aside unto vain jangling;
7 Desiring to be teachers of the law; understanding neither what they say, nor whereof they affirm.
-I Tim 1:5-7

Donald Trump since like forever, has endlessly made merchandise of Ronald Reagan’s old catch phrase, “Make America Great Again.” That’s right, “MAGA.” Yet he never seems to define or understand what actually once made America great, if indeed you can even make that argument.

Since he wants to be more of a cultural hipster than an actual visionary, philosopher, intellectual or even a political leader, he just isn’t interested in respecting dictionaries.¹¹ He characteristically leaves it all vague as I argued above about his speaking in riddles.

If anything, he seems to be referring to a brief time post-World War II, when the US was truly number one in everything—military power, economic power, education, quality of life and the like. Until about 1968, Americans regularly left their homes and cars unlocked because stealing someone else’s property was considered immoral, not a “revolutionary act.” Today’s young people have no idea what a real threat from the left is like.

This is the kind of nostalgia for a better time in American culture Trump has been so good at exploiting, even though much of it is romanticized fiction. In fact, “the good old days” anywhere and anytime in history have rarely been that way. This is what I meant by spiritual vs. cultural Christianity.

Indeed, greatness has never been in the American people. Individuals here and there have been exemplary or done great things. But American history as a whole has been a remarkable record of violence,¹² injustice and vulgar arrogance. Donald Trump is just the most extreme distillation of all those attitudes in our time.

This is why of course the right-wing hates “woke” things like the 1619 Project and other efforts to tell the complete story about America. They know pulling back the scab of the history of slavery will lead to other examinations, such as the disgraceful story of how native tribes here have been treated, the oppression of labor unions, etc.¹³ Yet, how can you “mend your every flaw” if you don’t face them or acknowledge they’re even there?

So, they opt for sanitized mythology. It’s no wonder they love a man who is a literal fantacist, just declaring things that aren’t true who always goes to his “happy place” (decorating, golf, sex, superficial glamor, etc) to avoid the reality that he isn’t the world’s best at everything. He’s like the social and political version of Word of Faith theology, where you just open your mouth and declare “realms” into being to create a reality more to your liking.

So, What Then Made America Great?

In my book, American Babylon, American Antichrist, I devote the entire second chapter to this question of the ways in which the United States has and has not been exceptional. But back to the question just begging to be asked. What ever made America great if it hasn’t been its people or history?

The answer is, those Enlightenment ideals and concepts the Founding Fathers built our now much-maligned government upon, a government utterly trashed ever since the days of Ronald Reagan.¹⁴ A rule of law, not of kings, nor the whims of men; consent of the governed; co-equal branches of government; checks and balances; habeus corpus; government in the sunshine; of, by and for the people (democracy); due process; innocent till proven guilty; equal justice under the law; the inalienable rights of all people in the world, etc.

All these things Donald Trump hates and trashes because, as Lawrence O’Donnell put it so well, he doesn’t just disrespect the law, he despises all law—all limitations on his childish impulses, his whims, his horrible intuition. As one international headline sarcastically put it, the US is now “Government By Gut.”

These are the things that have given us a flexible government, able to respond to the People’s demands and changes in culture and technology over generations. Its complexity is likewise not an accident. Spreading the power around to many officials, branches, processes and the like prevents it from being monopolized by any given individual or political party.

This indeed is America’s contribution to civilization, these ideals that have allowed us to survive for 250 years, history’s longest-running single form of government. And now it’s dead. Because of Trump and the logical consequence of 50 years of perverse Republican policies, coupled with a fraudulent cult of Phariseeism we are tethered to, here we are, discussing war crimes so casually we hardly even recognize it.

Every rationale Donald Trump has come up with since the start of his unbridled and brutal second term has been built upon hubris and presumption. He brags we were “dead” two years ago; now we’re “the hottest country in the world.” That we have an economy the rest of the world will do anything to have access to. Endure the greatest insults, pay the highest tariffs…whatever.

He’s either delusional, or a big, fat liar. He doesn’t understand that the world has moved on from us. In 20-30 short years, we have gone from being the “indispensable nation” to a rogue state, living in a fantasy of past glory, much of which never was. We are truly a “Tower of Confusion” to the earth, the “Great Babylon” of the last days prophecies.

Notes:

1. Right-wing spin artists will no doubt try to spin this as more evidence of their being a suicide cult, but they’ll be ignoring our own cultural icons like the Spartan 300, the Alamo, and an endless list of other examples of people putting their lives on the line for their country. ↩︎
2. Most modern translations refer to him in 23 as a “master of intrigue,” “skilled in intrigue,” “one who understands [knows how to use] riddles,” etc. Verse 25 as “a master of deceit/deception,” “By his treachery he will succeed through deceit,” that he will “succeed by using lies and force,” etc. ↩︎
3. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2026/04/iran-president-trumps-apocalyptic-threats-of-large-scale-civilian-devastation-demand-urgent-global-action-to-prevent-atrocity-crimes/ ↩︎
4. The actual facts were that the US drew up the concessions, sent them to the Pakistanis to announce so as to make it look like an agreement they brokered, thus saving face for the US. ↩︎
5. The United States is depicted in Daniel 7:7,19-23 as a beast empire, Trump is the Antichrist beast of Revelation 13, Netanyahu as the false prophet beast later in the same chapter (verse 11ff). ↩︎
6. Although the deal was working, Trump just had to tear it up, due to his deep jealousy of Barak Obama and the pressure of Netanyahu who needs a foil to demagogue. It all played right into the warnings of Iran’s own right-wing. ↩︎
7. Last June during similar negotiations, the US and Israel launched attacks wherein Trump claimed he had “obliterated their nuclear program.” His own Pentagon later contradicted him and he predictably blew a fuse. ↩︎
8. This is such a common feature of petty tyrants. The day before Putin launched his disastrous invasion of Ukraine in 2022, he held a nationwide televised meeting of his intentions. In it, he seemed to openly dare his top intelligence official to contradict what he was about to do. Since the man didn’t want to be fired, he swallowed the ritual humiliation and said nothing. He turned out to be right.
    This kind of leadership style stands in direct contrast to those like Lincoln or Obama, who assembled a “team of rivals” who would often clash. It’s because the two men had the humility to defer to experts, rather than shove through their egos. It is one of the reasons Trump hates Obama so much, because he had what Trump will never have. ↩︎
9. He does so because 47 corresponds with the fact that he’s the 47^th US President. Get the connection? You don’t? ↩︎
10. 4:7b, to be specific. ↩︎
11. Of” course, who nowadays does? Speaking right past people seems to be an entire artform, especially on the right. Terms like “anti-Semitism,” “woke,” “socialism,” “terrorist,” “far, far left,” “Biblical” and others serve more as buzzwords, words of incitement and the like, rather than disciplined political science language. ↩︎
12. A good example of this is waterboarding. This was not a form of torture first introduced by the Reagan administration in Central America, but in the 1890s, when the US was occupying the Philippines and on its way to slaughtering 600,000 of its people. It was just called “the water treatment at that time. ↩︎
13. Howard Zinn’s masterwork, A People’s History of the United States, is an exception, covering all those gaps Establishment fantasies ignore. ↩︎
14. Reagan’s famous attitude that “the nine most frightening words of the English language are, ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help,’” has to be one of the most cynical and anarchistic statements ever made. Government is ordained of God (Rom 13). If it’s not working right, that’s another question of how to fix it, not “drown it in a bathtub,” privatize everything, etc. Republicans were alarmed beyond words by the success of the New Deal, because it showed the American people it can provide valuable services to them, not just to the plutocratic class. ↩︎