Voters: America’s Last Line of Defense

Posted on November 5, 2026 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, November 5, 2026

Thirty-two years ago, the murder trial of a celebrity football star turned into a referendum on allegations of corruption in the Los Angeles justice system. Shockingly, when his trial began, most people assumed without any direct evidence that O. J. Simpson had murdered his wife, Nicole, and her boyfriend, Ron Goldman. The case rapidly turned into a media circus, starting with the fact that the entire trial was televised. The judge, Lance Ito, seemed to be performing for the television cameras, and as the trial evolved, it became apparent that the outcome might have as much to do with the LAPD’s reputation for planting evidence than whether the jury thought Simpson was guilty.

At the height of the trial, after LAPD detective Mark Fuhrman was accused of planting false evidence, I was talking with a cousin who was a prominent conservative Los Angeles attorney. I asked him how he would vote if he were on the jury, and his answer stuck with me ever since. He said everyone in L. A. knows the police and the courts are corrupt. Personally, he believed Simpson was guilty, but in his view, the failures of the L. A. justice system was more important than whether Simpson was convicted. “If we’re ever going to clean up the corruption, the jury is the people’s last line of defense.” Therefore, he said, he would vote to acquit to send a message that police corruption wouldn’t be tolerated. I agreed with him then, and I agree with him today.

I’ve often written during Donald Trump’s time as president that with his ability to threaten or corrupt opponents into submission, it seemed like he was well his way to becoming the autocrat he dreamed of being. If Democrats didn’t have the clout to deter him, if Republicans were either unwilling to give up profiting from Trump’s antics or too terrified to oppose him, and if the Supreme Court he stacked kept enabling him, how could he be stopped from undermining the Constitution and ruining the country? The answer was what my cousin said in 1995. Our last line of defense is the voters.

I’ve clung to that belief throughout Trump’s second term, but at times it was more of a hope than a conviction. Trump got nearly fifty percent of the popular vote in 2024 a fact that was traumatizing for many Americans. How could half of the United States support an immoral narcissist who would sell his soul to anyone with money? The Supreme Court, in granting a sitting president immunity from all crimes committed while in office, had set up a situation in which the president could stage an insurrection at the Capitol in which law enforcement personnel were killed or injured and our entire Congress and Vice President were at risk of assault and murder, and then use his pardoning power to exonerate everyone involved.

Our extrapolations were horrifying. What if in his totally unfettered second term, Trump used his ICE force, which numbers more than 22,000 armed agents, as his own private secret police force? What if it grew into a menacing entity reminiscent of the Nazi Gestapo? At the same time, people asked, what if Trump destroyed all our trade relationships and military alliances? What if he got us involved in another endless war? What if his economic policies, like his tariffs, threatened to wreck our economy? And what if Trump preferred to align himself with dictators like Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping and disparage our traditional allies?

We began counting down the days to the midterm elections eighteen months ago. We knew Trump would do everything he could to rig or invalidate the elections, but even so, they were the country’s best chance to survive his administration. Trump did exactly what we expected. He convinced the Supreme Court to gut the Voting Rights Act, ignited an unprecedented war of gerrymandering, and ordered his corrupted Department of Justice to remove millions of people from the voter rolls. It was scary, but the courts recognized that the Constitution was far too clear about states controlling elections to agree with Trump, and his political advisors failed to anticipate the backlash among Hispanic voters to Trump’s handling of ICE.

Still, we feared, the boundary less Trump might escalate the war with Iran or find another pretext to declare a national emergency and cancel the election. I was losing hope for the first time in my 83 years, but it turned out that my cousin was right. All the times we preached that freedom isn’t free, it comes with a heavy price, and it turned out Americans were listening.

Two days ago, the voters, our last line of defense, saved the America we grew up in from extinction. They proved that money can’t buy votes nearly as much as our political operatives believed. Elon Musk spent almost half a billion dollars propping up Republican Senators, yet the voters ousted every Senator he invested in. Voters proved that no amount of lies, foreign bots or slick political ads running nonstop on television can change the minds of people who see with their own eyes that their country is being destroyed by one powerful man and his sycophants.

American voters, who were being vilified as lazy, ignorant, and stupid proved their mettle. They not only turned the entire country on its ear politically, in Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ words, they staged an extinction event against the MAGA Republican Party. My faith in the fundamental decency and judgment of the American people has been vindicated. I hope the rest of the world who watched our election coverage on the edge of their seats feels the same way.

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The Beginning of the End of the Trump Nightmare

Posted on November 4, 2026 by alanpzendell

Alan Zedndell, November 4, 2026

The majority of Americans are euphoric today as are our partners around the world. But before I address that, I have to say how disappointed I am in the responses of lame duck Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader, John Thune to the thumping voters delivered to Republicans. It’s clear to almost everyone that the magnitude of the Democrats’ victory was a direct response to Donald Trump’s presidency. His basic meanness, insensitivity to average Americans, his greed and corruption, his immorality, and most important, his incompetence and that of his appointees.

Both Johnson and Thune reacted to the election results by defending Trump, reprising his theme that they only lost because he wasn’t on the ballot. The rest of us know the repudiation voters delivered to Republicans was entirely because Trump asked voters to pretend he was on the ballot. They did exactly that, and rejected his administration completely, but Trump’s delusions of grandeur continue.

Trump will always be Trump, but we can be thankful that his ability to harm Americans and disrupt the world order and the rule of law are greatly diminished today. Now, Democrats must prove they can govern, something about which I and three-fourths of Americans have been extremely skeptical. But next year’s expected Speaker of the House, Hakeem Jeffries, set the right tone this morning. What he said greatly reduced my concern that the Democrats might drop the ball after Trump and the Republicans fumbled it.

The most important thing about Jeffries’ remarks was what he didn’t say. He didn’t talk about impeaching Trump or Pete Hegseth. He didn’t talk about retribution against the venal and vile people who are Trump’s sycophants, though they richly deserve it. Jeffries understands that the worst thing Democrats can do is continue the divisiveness and chaos Trump has brought us, that the Americans who voted for Democrats aren’t interested in a Democratic version of Trump’s revenge tour.

Instead, Jeffries talked about passing a new War Powers Resolution that would require Trump to suspend offensive military operations in the Persian Gulf unless and until he receives Congressional approval and funding. I imagine we might see that very soon, as the lame duck Republicans in Congress who have been terrorized by Trump and defeated largely by the impacts of Trump’s war are now free to vote their consciences. Outgoing Senators Thom Tillis and John Cornyn should be eager to vote YES this time.

The next item on Jeffries’ agenda was restoring cuts to health care that are leaving millions of Americans without it and millions more struggling with higher Obamacare premiums added on to the price of food and energy.  He stressed that investigations of corruption and malfeasance will take place, but he did not direct Trump-like anger and vitriol at his defeated opponents.

Of greater importance, Jeffries addressed the diversity of the new Democratic Party, reminding Americans that both his Party and the Constitution are broad tents that encourage dissent and promote synergy, the polar opposite of what happens when our leaders surround themselves with yes-people and sycophants. Case in point: Abdul El-Sayed, who handily won his Senate race in Michigan, was not my favorite candidate, nor was he loved by many other Democrats, especially in Jewish communities.

But as a Jew, myself, I see a good deal of truth in El-Sayed’s criticism of the actions taken by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. I strongly support Israel’s right to exist in peace, but that doesn’t stop me from being horrified at Netanyahu’s attempted genocide in Gaza. I decry El-Sayed’s most radical comments, but there’s room in the Senate for his point of view. Without it, presidents like Trump can run amok as Trump has done throughout his current term.

I hope Jeffries and soon to be restored Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer will reclaim Congress’s constitutional responsibility to assess and manage tariffs. Where Trump used them as cudgels to try to force allies like Canada to heel to his leadership, the Democrats will follow the advice of leading economists who actually understand how trade agreements and tax policies work. Another priority of the Democrats must be to restore Europe and specifically NATO’s confidence in America. The least we can expect is an end to the shocking corruption and incompetence of Trump’s people, who have consistently used economic and diplomatic initiatives to enrich themselves.

Of all Trump’s bad policies and the harm he has done, one of the worst was his treatment of Canada. I therefore rejoice with my Canadian friends, who while suffering serious financial harm from the Trump administration, have consistently made it clear that they stand with most Americans and feel the pain Trump has bestowed on us. We have never had an ally like Canada, and we never will. A strong North-American confederation would greatly benefit all of us, but it should be based on mutual respect and recognition of the value each nation brings to the table.

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Voters Must Blunt Trump’s Power

Posted on November 2, 2026 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, November 2, 2026

This year’s midterm elections forced me to make a decision I normally would scrupulously avoid. I’m not a single-party voter. I always try to vote for the individual rather their party affiliation. But not this year.

This year, with all the difficult issues we’re facing, I have only one priority: limit Donald Trump’s ability to do more harm to our country, the world order, and the rule of law. In 2017, six months into Trump’s first term, I published The Fable of Mika and the Pig, in which I used George Orwell’s Animal Farm, and specifically, Napoleon the Pig, as a metaphor for the Trump presidency. It was apt then, and it’s a hundred times more applicable today.

Trump is not only narcissistic, venal, completely lacking in both moral character and empathy for Americans who don’t have the means to enrich him, he has demonstrated a frightening level of incompetence in matters that threaten our future. We saw it first in his misguided obsession with tariffs. He barely made it through the Wharton School of Business, and likely wouldn’t have without his father’s money and influence, yet he thinks he knows more than ninety percent of the world’s most highly regarded economists.

Tariffs are weapons, not tools for creating prosperity and global harmony. Those two things, which previous administrations including Ronald Reagan’s consistently promoted, are anathema to Trump’s personal goals and ambitions. He has demonstrated that his only focus in office is to increase his own wealth and power and satisfy his enormous ego. His pet Supreme Court justices gave him immunity from any criminal act he commits while in office, and his power to pardon extends that immunity from prosecution to everyone who does his bidding.

In recent months, he has eased financial pressure on both Russia and China while exacerbating his economic war with Canada and western Europe. He has destroyed our trade alliances and alienated the international partnerships that have maintained economic stability in the world for eighty years in favor of imperial dreams of hegemony in which he, Vladimir Putin, and Xi Jinping divide the world into three fiefdoms they control dictatorially.

All of the above are repairable if the Trump sycophants in Congress are replaced with people who revere the Constitution and care about the the American Dream we grew up with. But not everything has a clear remedy, and Trump’s lack of judgment and total incompetence with regard to his war with Iran top that list. The alleged intent of the war, which he was drawn into by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was to prevent Iran from having a nuclear weapon.

A noble goal and one that may be critical to averting World War III. But something that important requires a president who knows what he’s doing and a Secretary of Defense who is focused on optimizing the performance of our military. Instead, we have Pete Hegseth, who with Trump’s full approval and support, spends his time getting rid of generals who don’t fit his White Male image of a fighting force, and transforming a defense-oriented military into an offensive war machine. Moreover it requires close coordination between competent military and intelligence professionals. Trump and Hegseth’s prosecution of the Iran war has demonstrated neither.

Instead of a quick six-week victory, we have an eight-month stalemate which spread to a regional conflict that threatens Saudi Arabia and our Gulf State allies, and has already drawn Pakistan and Egypt into the growing conflict with the Houthis in Yemen. It has disrupted the world’s energy resources and markets, and caused inflation to rise steadily as there is no end in sight. Hegseth irresponsibly allowed our arsenal of strategic weapons to be depleted, a situation which has spilled over into Russia’s aggression against Ukraine that is causing the deaths of thousands of civilians.

Most telling is that we have no reliable information about the original intent of the war. Bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities set back their attempts to develop a nuclear weapon, but by how much and how long it will take Iran to recover are basically unknown. Meanwhile, our incompetent leaders handed Iran a weapon it never used before the war: the ability to hold the world’s energy supply hostage with impunity.

The only way this can come to a conclusion that is not disastrous for the United States and its former partners is for Americans to make a clear statement with their votes. They must repudiate the Trump administration’s disregard for what most Americans believe in and its attempt to destroy the rule of law. American voters must make it clear to our former allies that we can be trusted again, and that promises made by one administration cannot be easily undone every four years.

I find the rise of a socialist movement in America distasteful and dangerous, and I’m concerned about the anti-Semitism and discord caused by candidates like Abdul al-Sayed. I also believe there is room under our Constitution for those voices to be heard. But their importance pales in comparison to the need to reign in Trump’s power.

Do I have confidence that Democrats can unite and lead us back to sanity? No, I don’t, but I’m willing to bet our future on people who are united in opposition to Trump. Nothing is more important to both America and the world.

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Trump Has Become a Cliché

Posted on October 21, 2026 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, October 21, 2026

People who have followed Donald Trump’s career have always known that he is an unsavory character who completely lacks compassion for others. He has spent his life lying and cheating his way through cycles of wealth and bankruptcy, demonstrating a total lack of moral character. We who have watched his antics over half a century recognize that he is fundamentally a gangster at heart. His absolute shamelessness and showmanship, and his ability to sense vulnerability and need in people, backed by billions of dollars from wannabe oligarchs in the Russian style, are what enabled him to reach the position of power he now holds.

It’s an unfortunate fact of life that every modern society including that of the post-World War 2 United States always contains a minority of people who feel left behind or ignored. Sometimes it’s bad luck, sometimes it’s their own laziness or lack of ambition, and sometimes it’s simply the side effects of classism, racism, bigotry, and misogyny.  Sometimes hardworking decent people are simply overwhelmed by the buzz saw of change. They’re angry and they need someone to blame, which makes them easy fodder for someone like Donald Trump whose most impressive skill is straight-facedly promising them things he has no intention of delivering and promulgating lies and conspiracy theories that almost defy the imagination.

That he has been elected president twice shows more than anything how imperfect we are, how susceptible to falling prey to the hatred, divisiveness, and chaos he creates. Usually, people like Trump burn out before they can do serious damage, but not always. The obvious comparison, which historians and scholars make, is with Adolf Hitler. But as close as Hitler came to wrecking western civilization, aided and abetted by the  complacency and cowardice of his adversaries, even he was defeated at a cost of nearly 100 million lives and the disruption of the lives of millions more.

The all-out push for Fascism might have succeeded here but for the doggedness of the free press and a legal system that, while often corrupt and biased toward wealth and power, still retains enough integrity, even among judges appointed by Trump, to uphold the Constitution they swore to defend. Trump tried everything in his Project 2025 playbook to silence his opponents: threatening our great universities that attempt to teach truth, attacking media outlets in violation of the first amendment, packing appellate courts and the Supreme Court with people he thinks are loyal to his cause, and leading the insurrection at the Capitol, which history will surely view as a profound act of treason after the dust settles.

All of the above was not enough to undermine our republic, because as Abraham Lincoln told us, you can fool some of the people all the time, and all of the people some of the time, but in the end, the chickens will come home to roost. The last few months have seen a remarkable turnaround in Americans’ awareness of how despicable and uncaring Trump really is. They see that his primary reason for running for president was to enrich himself and satisfy his insane lust for power, which is manifest in his complete buy-in to the notion that powerful autocrats and oligarchs should split the world into spheres of influence that they control, eschewing alliances designed to preserve peace and economic cooperation designed to allow all of us to prosper.

We’re now in the era of clichés. It’s always darkest before the dawn. There’s nothing more dangerous than a wounded animal. Rats always abandon a sinking ship. Those and more are coming into play as the inevitability of a midterm drubbing of MAGA becomes clear. Trump tried to rig the election through gerrymandering, which I believe will backfire. He tried to suppress voting by attempting to force states to allow a corrupted Department of Justice to edit their voter rolls in clear violation of the Constitution. And finally, as the election is only days away, with his own popularity at an all-time low not seen since voters rebelled against George W. Bush’s policies in 2006, Trump is trying to buy votes.

Trump and allies like Elon Musk are spending several billion dollars on this election, an appalling thought in itself that exposes how craven and corrupt the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision was. But Americans aren’t buying it. We may be slow to learn, but when corruption and incompetence are as blatant as they are in the Trump administration and average citizens feel the pain at home, we eventually see through the smoke and mirrors.

Trump has reduced himself to a cliché. His rallies attract only a small fraction of the people they used to, and most people see through his constant lies and recognize him for what he is, a sad, pathetic old man who is not remotely fit for the office he holds and the power he wields. He claims he’s about to pour $400 million into Republican campaigns in the twelve days that remain before the election, all aimed at perhaps 2% of voters in states that were safely Republican six months ago, but voters are calculating how much food and health care that money could purchase.

Trump is about to receive the humiliating defeat he deserves, and what remains of the western alliance will breathe a collective sigh of relief.

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Trump’s Last Chance to Destroy the World Order

Posted on October 19, 2026 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, October 19, 2026

This morning, in today’s edition of her Letters From an American, Heather Cox Richardson wrote, “After ten years of Trump insisting that reports of his cooperation with Russia were a hoax, here we are, watching one profoundly unpopular man tear apart the global system under which we have lived for eighty years in order to climb into bed with Vladimir Putin.”

In less than two years, Trump has broken the alliances that have enabled us to avert World War 3, disrupted the world’s economy, our own, and those of our closest allies with his tariffs, undercut NATO’s support for Ukraine’s defense against Russian aggression, and initiated a war with Iran that is out of control and that has exposed the vulnerabilities in what is left of the world order. In doing so, he has proved, once again, that superior weaponry and trillions of dollars invested in defense cannot defeat a determined enemy willing to sacrifice everything to stand against us.

That’s quite a list of accomplishments in a mere twenty-one months. And Trump, finally facing the reality that his dominance in American politics is about to be muzzled, seems determined to put the final nail in the coffin of the world order his predecessors created and which millions of Americans lost their lives defending. The complicity of the Republican party and his hand-crafted Supreme Court will be coming home to roost in two weeks, and Trump is determined to make the destruction of the world we grew up in an accomplished fact before a hostile Congress can stop him.

The violence that began in France last week with public protests over the rapidly spiking cost of living are now spreading across Europe, and nothing could make Vladimir Putin happier. His seemingly hypnotic hold over the American president seems to be finally bearing fruit as he has been given a windfall of billions of dollars to support his war machine, separated us from all of our allies and created chaos across Europe that has brought NATO to the brink of collapse, while allowing right-wing extremists to gain power around the world.

Even though we have all seen this happening before our eyes like a slow motion avalanche, it’s still difficult to comprehend that one insane narcissist could have caused so much damage. It’s not clear how he managed to turn a once proud conservative political party into the impotent lapdog that MAGA has made it, but Americans, though they may not understand how we got here, finally realize that Trump’s America is not a place they want to live in. Despite all his attempts to gerrymander the election, suppress the votes of his opponents, and persist with the lie that elections have been rigged against him, he’s about to experience a humiliating come down that will neutralize his power.

Even Putin couldn’t possibly have imagined how Trump’s incompetence in starting a war he can’t win would have shifted world affairs to Russia’s (and China’s) advantage. The chaos we’re witnessing across Europe which appears to be threatening Emanuel Macron’s government in France is a direct result of that war and Trump’s failure to understand the underlying power of the Iranian regime. The single egregious error of failing to recognize Iran’s ability to disrupt the world’s energy supply, especially with winter approaching, may bring more nations than France to their knees.

The cost of gasoline and diesel fuel have emerged as the most consequential results of the Iran war that are separating nations and increasing the influence of Russia, China, and the state sponsors of jihad and terrorism. We think we’re suffering in America as the cost of everything rises, but it’s far worse elsewhere, and that is very bad for our future. Today, gasoline prices average $4.33 per gallon and diesel fuel averages $6.31 per gallon across the United States. Compare that to what our former allies are facing:

                        Regular unleaded Gasoline          Diesel

USA                                 $4.33                                  $6.31

France                            $9.08                                  $10.06

UK                                   $7.43                                  $8.49

Germany                        $9.38                                  $9.64

Italy                                 $8.66                                  $9.55

Netherlands                   $10.45                               $10.53

Canada                            $7.57                                 $9.88

Can you imagine what would happen across the United States if the prices our allies are facing existed here? Can you imagine what will surely happen starting in January when Trump’s cuts to SNAP (the federal food assistance program) will end assistance to up to six million people and up to ten million Americans will lose their health insurance due to cuts to Medicaid and Obamacare subsidies? After the January sixth insurrection that threatened our Capitol, will there be any restraints to how suffering people, millions of whom are armed, express their anger?

Pay attention to the worsening violence in Europe. It can and very likely will happen here if Trump’s horrendous policies aren’t reversed by the new Congress. Every vote matters. I cast mine a week ago.

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A Courageous Leader and a Betrayed Ally

Posted on October 17, 2026 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, October 17, 2026

2026 has not been a good year for the United States. It has been an even worse year for the stability of the world economy and our allies, and beyond that is the lingering possibility that looms larger every day that the wars in Ukraine and the Persian Gulf might both erupt into a nuclear war among the world’s superpowers. The Doomsday Clock, which is maintained by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, stood at 85 seconds before midnight at the beginning of 2026, the closest it has ever been to signaling a human-made global catastrophe since it was initiated in 1974. With both wars raging, and Trump playing a major role in both, I shudder at what it will be set to as we enter 2027.

In the Middle East, the Trump administration has created a quagmire from which there will be no escape as long as he is able to make critical decisions about its future. Seventeen days before the midterm elections, Trump is using both wars as political chess pieces. Given his extreme narcissism, which leaves him unable to distinguish the difference between what’s good for America and what’s in his personal interest, we’re living in an extremely perilous time.

Trump has gone back and forth in the past month about ordering a massive bombing attack against Iran. He does it publicly on his personal social media site where the entire world can read his crazy rants. He is violently torn between wanting to blow things up in Iran, an insane need to extend his gangster tough guy act to the war, and fearing how resuming the hot war would affect the midterms. There’s no doubt in anyone’s mind that uppermost in Trump’s is holding on to power for the rest of his term, so he can continue to steal and line his pockets with our tax dollars. The prospect of how an enraged, out-of-control Trump might react to the resounding defeat he’s raining down on his party after the election is horrifying.

If you’re not convinced, consider what he has done to affect Russia’s Ukraine war in the past few weeks. Trump signed the Lindsey O. Graham Act Sanctioning Russia and Iran on September 18. The new law was to honor and reflect the views of the recently deceased Senator Graham who staunchly advocated for strong resistance against Vladimir Putin’s expansionism in Europe. But yesterday, Trump completely undercut the new law, which wasn’t even scheduled to go into effect until next week, by canceling sanctions on Russian diesel fuel exports.

The only certain result of that action will be adding several billion dollars to Russia’s war effort, which Putin desperately needs. Trump claims he’s acting out of concern for how dangerously high diesel prices are affecting average Americans and threatening America’s economy. But industry experts are unanimous in asserting that Trump’s gift to Russia will have very little impact on diesel prices. All Trump cares about is offsetting the tsunami of disapproval his actions have caused among voters.

In addition to handing Putin billions of dollars to expand his war efforts, he’s now blaming the world shortage of diesel on Ukraine, specifically on Volodymyr Zelensky’s decision to attack Russia’s oil infrastructure. Most people saw through that lie immediately. The shortage is, without doubt, a direct result of Trump’s attacks on Iran, and Zelensky’s decision was in reaction to Putin’s obvious attempts to destroy the energy infrastructure of Ukraine as winter approaches.

If that wasn’t clear enough, the sudden unexplained loss of support from SpaceX’s Starlink and Starshield systems left Ukraine unprepared and defenseless against massive attacks by Russia which are destroying Kyiv and killing unprecedented numbers of civilians. Trump says he had nothing to do with that, and Elon Musk, who owns SpaceX, says it was Trump’s doing, not his. Since both men are known to lie whenever it’s in their interest, I don’t believe either of them, and reliable sources in Europe and Ukraine leaked that Musk recommended the plan to Trump who wholeheartedly embraced it.

Trump also renewed his personal attacks on Zelensky, while our European allies pledged to continue to support Ukraine. But both European leaders and Zelensky have to tread likely since Trump’s antics are unpredictable, especially when his hold on political power at home is slipping away from him. Zelensky must walk a tightrope, because if Trump goes all out in his support of Putin, it’s unlikely that the rest of NATO can assure Ukraine’s survival.

Yesterday, the world saw Zelensky do what very few world leaders have dared to. He stood up to Trump in speeches and press conferences that were broadcast around the world. I can’t even imagine the courage that required as he watched his country being destroyed one piece at a time. If only America was led by someone who always put his country and its people ahead of his own personal interest.

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America’s Lost Credibility

Posted on October 15, 2026 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, October 15, 2026

International relations among allies depends on credibility, and credibility depends on  trust and the ability to communicate accurate intelligence. The Trump administration has been failing miserably at both. Many Trump supporters in the United States laugh off the fact that Trump lies shamelessly and makes wild accusations based on nothing but his whims. They claim it’s just the way he negotiates, but we see, now, that it’s far more serious.

Trump’s on again, off again support of Ukraine defines the trust issue perfectly. His abusive treatment of Volodymyr Zelensky stands in stark contrast to his distasteful attraction to dictators, specifically to Vladimir Putin. Many people are puzzled about his almost worshipful approach to Putin. Is it his narcissistic need to be respected and feared by people he views as strongmen? Or is the answer staring us in the face? Maybe it’s only about Trump’s insatiable lust for wealth.

When he entered politics eleven years ago, no major American or western European bank would deal with him after his scandalous relationship with Deutschebank. He financed his construction projects with Russian money, which means he had intricate relationships with Russian oligarchs, one of whom is Putin. We all saw how eager, some might say desperate, he was to have his name on skyscrapers in Moscow and we saw his unsavory relationship with Ukraine, when he attempted to extort a negative report on Hunter Biden.

NATO recognizes that support for Ukraine is essential for the security of Europe. They liken Putin’s desire to reclaim the old Soviet Union’s natural resources and manufacturing base through military intimidation to Hitler’s attempt to dominate Europe. The great majority of Americans, especially pre-MAGA Republicans like Lindsey Graham and John McCain, warned repeatedly that Putin was an untrustworthy partner in any negotiation, much the way Winston Churchill continually reminded Franklin Roosevelt about Josef Stalin.

But Trump doesn’t care what anyone thinks. He says and does whatever he wants, and with respect to Russia’s war in Ukraine, he has lied repeatedly about his support for Ukraine. If not for NATO’s solid support for Ukraine and the existence of a few Republicans in Congress who aren’t Trump sycophants, Trump’s support for Putin would be even more blatant. Diplomats and heads of state don’t take anything Trump says seriously. He has no credibility with foreign leaders, and he’s losing credibility with his voting base. A new Fox News poll found that voters under thirty, who had been a strong source of support for Trump now disapprove of his presidency by an unprecedented margin of 91% to 9%.

So much for trust. Trump doesn’t seem to care if our allies trust us, no doubt a symptom of his mental illness, but most Americans do care. He has squandered something that will be near impossible to replace, and although he isn’t capable of appreciating how seriously that depletes our standing in the world, the rest of us will pay a price for that for decades.

Even if they don’t trust us, most foreign leaders still respect our vast military might. They know that Trump can nuke Iran or any other nation he dislikes into oblivion, regardless that that would likely trigger World War 3. But Trump has squandered even that respect.

Since World War 2 our combat encounters ended badly. We fought the Korean War to a draw which left us with a belligerent nuclear-armed North Korea. Our vast killing power didn’t help us much in Vietnam, either, which will forever remain as an embarrassing stain on our history. Our intelligence networks failed to shield us from nine-eleven, and our twenty-year war in Iraq and Afghanistan was a disaster that proved we were not prepared to handle that kind of asymmetric warfare, and our military and political leaders didn’t realize it until it was far too late.

Most recently, Trump’s attacks on Iran showed an even worse failing of our intelligence and military planning. Our leaders seemed to have had no idea that we would be relatively defenseless against drone warfare. Neither did Vladimir Putin, by the way. As a result, two of the world’s great superpowers have been stymied on the battlefield by nations no one thought could stand against them.

Our intelligence, starting with George W Bush’s claims of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, has been unreliable to say the least. Even Pete Hegseth wouldn’t have killed more than 200 schoolchildren on the first day of bombing Iran if he’d had accurate intelligence. We see every day that we and our allies are relatively helpless against cheap drones. We armed Saudi Arabia with the same sophisticated defensive equipment we sold to Israel, yet Iran and the Houthi rebels in Yemen brought the kingdom and all of our Gulf State allies to their knees, despite Trump claiming he destroyed their military capability.

What carnage Trump has created! Aside from our thousands of nuclear weapons, no one fears us any more, and worse, everyone sees the United States as completely lacking in moral or competent leadership. That will be Donald Trump’s legacy. The only good in all that is that after the midterm elections, we can began to mitigate the damage he does.

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Like Something the Nazis Did

Posted on October 9, 2026 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, October 10, 2026

It’s brutal. It’s barbaric. It’s sick. It’s a hallmark of the way radical Islamic terrorists like ISIS behave. And not surprisingly, Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump think it’s a spectacular idea.

Public executions were commonplace in ancient Rome, Persia, and China with heads on pikes and long-dead bodies of crucified victims lining roadways. They were also common in Napoleon Boneparte’s France, Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and still are, today, in North Korea, Somalia, and Yemen. As a measure of how sick the practice is, even autocrats like Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping eliminate their enemies discreetly. Putin even denies doing it at all. Josef Stalin, whose regime was responsible for the execution of nearly a million people, always kept them out of the public view.

In fiction, public executions are generally used to signify the worst kind of sinister, sadistic regimes. We’ve seen them in classic works of literature: Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities, George Orwell’s 1984, Veronica Roth’s Divergent series, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, and dozens of others. The idea of crowds of people standing by a gallows or of ordinary Americans watching executions filled with vigilante zeal is human nature at its worst, yet Pete Hegseth plans to livestream the execution of Nidal Malik Hasan, who murdered 13 people at Fort Hood in 2009 so anyone with an internet connection anywhere in the world can watch a firing squad riddle his body with bullets.

Whether or not you believe in capital  punishment, if anyone qualifies for it, Hasan surely does. But this is not about Hasan’s guilt or the heinous nature of his crime. It’s about a Trump administration that has shed any semblance of decency, and an incompetent zealot in charge of the United States military. It’s about having no civilized boundaries, limits, or filters. It’s  the next chapter in two years of more and more outrageous decisions: re-orienting our Defense Department from defending America and the Free World toward offensive wars; disregarding other nations’ sovereignty; concluding that women and people of color are not fit to serve as officers; boasting constantly about the lethality of our armed forces.

Vice President Vance, when asked about livestreaming the execution by firing squad at first appeared tongue-tied, obviously shocked by the whole thing. When he regained control of himself during a live television interview, he said he wouldn’t watch it. President Donald Trump told reporters who asked if he had approved the livestream plan, said, “Yes, absolutely.” Under U. S. law, executions by firing squad, even performed discreetly, must be explicitly approved by the president. After thinking about this for a while, the only thing that really surprises me is that Trump hasn’t figured out a way to profit from the spectacle – yet.

Both men fail to understand that this is not about either Hasan or his crime. It’s about reversing decades of enlightenment during which humanity has struggled to behave more humanely. It’s about something neither Trump nor Hegseth can grasp – reining in their primitive lust and behaving like the leaders we deserve. This event is being staged by the same Pete Hegseth who wrote off the killing of more than 200 Iranian elementary school children on the first day of bombing Iran due to unvetted intelligence, and describing it afterward with the old saw, “Accidents happen in war.”

According to Northeast Global News, “[u]nder the U.S. Army’s regulations for military executions, attendance is strictly restricted to official personnel, execution team members, the prisoner’s family, legal counsel, a chaplain, and a limited number of media representatives, while explicitly barring minors.” How do Trump and Hegseth plan on squaring their decision with their own rules? How will they avoid the spectacle of your children and grandchildren watching? The answer is pretty clear – the same way they ignore federal law and the Constitution whenever it suits their agendas.

In 2025, there were seventeen documented cases of public executions, six by the Taliban and eleven by the Iranian government. There has not been a public execution in the United States since 1936. Our allies and the United Nations Council on Human Rights are calling this barbaric and Reuters reports that Yassamin Ansari, the first Iranian-American elected to Congress, said, “It’s all part of Trump’s authoritarian takeover of the United States.”

It seems fitting that the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded, today, to Navi Pillay, a South African U. N. Criminal Court Judge, for advancing international criminal justice, prosecuting war crimes and genocide, and protecting the legal global order. It was the same Peace Prize that Trump has loudly proclaimed should have been awarded to him, despite his condoning the genocide in Gaza, supporting Russia’s brutal killing of civilians in Ukraine, and starting a war with Iran from which there seems no clear exit.

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Our Gangster President

Posted on October 5, 2026 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, October 5, 2026

Whenever I feel pessimistic about the future of our country and how much damage Donald Trump can do before his power is neutralized by voters, I think back to the 1970s. It was the decade of my thirties, a young husband and father caught up in the Top Secret world of things I can’t discuss. The humiliation and loss of life caused by all the mistakes around the Vietnam War, compounded by the corruption and criminality of President Nixon was my first terrifying reminder of how fragile our Constitution and democracy were.

The integrity of the Republican Senate and the decency of President Ford gave us a reprieve in the mid-70s, but the chaos of the Jimmy Carter administration made things worse. The Arab oil embargo of 1973 had started the world on a path of constantly rising energy prices culminating in the 1979 energy shortage, while inflation had reached 14%, more than four times higher than it’s been through the Biden and Trump years, and interest rates reached a shocking 19%. Apparently, our economy wasn’t any more stable than our foreign policy and governmental ethics.

When the decade ended with the Ayatollahs in power in Iran, our reputation as a respected world power had been severely damaged. It seemed to many that our government was being run by incompetents, and there was a popular notion that the United States would fare better if we let the Mafia run things. Morality and criminality aside, there was a certain dark logic to that idea.

Organized crime families were ruthless and efficient in pursuit of their ambitions. Loyalty in the ranks was brutally enforced, and there was a cult-like, top to bottom structure that kept mob families in line. Moreover, they were largely successful, enriching themselves and evading the law  through bribery, intimidation, and a willingness to destroy anyone who got in their way.

A half century later, Donald Trump brought that whimsical fantasy to life. The government he put together in his second term mirrors the way the major crime families operate in every aspect. The only qualification for the most important jobs in our government is loyalty to a ruthless, sociopathic president whose primary focus is enriching himself, his family, and friends. Anyone who questions that is quickly silenced by the intimidation of an army of sycophants financed by billionaires whose wealth is being rapidly multiplied by Trump, which is exactly how mob families and gangsters operate.

Like gangsters, Trump’s mob routinely ignores laws, issues Executive Orders that are immoral and unconstitutional, and uses the flaws in our legal system to confound their adversaries – that is, decent hard-working Americans. They flood the courts with specious lawsuits, most of which have been rejected, even by the Supreme Court justices Trump put in place because they assured him of their loyalty.

Trump, like the mobsters he emulates, understands that laws are no barrier to criminals whose greed and lust for power know no limits, that unrelenting criminal behavior, though it may ultimately be stopped by our fractured system, can go on stealing from taxpayers and destroying careers and lives of the law-abiding professionals who resist them. Even when they are ultimately defeated, the apparent victory of good over evil is generally Pyrrhic. Corruption goes on, and most of the worst perpetrators are never brought to justice.

Trump, using the outline of Project 2025, has worked to corrupt every engine of government he can lay his hands on, while using Orwellian Doublespeak to accuse his opposition of all the crimes he commits. He turned the Department of Justice and its stepchild, the FBI, into dysfunctional extensions of his own lust for wealth and power. Most Americans now distrust both organizations, and have little faith in the courts’ ability to stop corruption and lawlessness before they do massive damage.

He has turned the Department of Defense and the control of the world’s most lethal military force over to Pete Hegseth, an unqualified incompetent who is attempting to transform the image of our military from the defender of the Free World to a force of mindless, heavily armed warriors whose only credo is Might Makes Right. Hegseth and Trump have spent the past two years creating wars that satisfy their egos, while stripping from our forces much of the diverse leadership that made it what it is.  

Russell Vought, Trump’s Director of the Office of Management and Budget, blatantly ignores federal laws and the Constitution, diverting billions of dollars authorized by Congress away from their required legal responsibilities to fund the Project 2025 agenda.  

Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Trump’s friend and son-in-law, supplanted competent professional diplomats in Trump’s efforts to end the war in Ukraine in which he has steadfastly supported Vladimir Putin and the war in Iran which was a misguided disaster from the start. Witkoff and Kushner used the opportunity to strike business deals for themselves worth billions, while making no progress toward ending hostilities. Both wars have worsened and expanded while they enriched themselves and Trump’s family.

All these things are hallmarks of the way gangsters and organized crime families operate. Americans are finally starting to realize that that’s the only way Trump knows how to function, and that is a primary reason they’re going to defang him in november.

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The Coming Seismic Political Change

Posted on October 3, 2026 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, Ocober 3, 2026

Heather Cox Richardson described the situation perfectly, today, in her Letters From an American newsletter. “[T]he crux of the crisis that is driving a seismic political change [is that] it has become crystal clear that Trump never intended to address the real problems he identified. His tariffs, deep tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, extraordinary corruption, multiple vanity projects, and war on Iran are benefiting him, his family, and his cronies. At the same time, the Republicans are, at his direction, slashing the social welfare programs, medical funding, education, infrastructure, and healthcare that used to serve the American people.”

The political change she referred to is emerging on the midterm election scene from every direction. If you’re skeptical of poll numbers, there’s still a ton of convincing evidence that in thirty-one days, American voters will deliver a repudiating defeat to the Republican party that has allowed itself to become a Trump cult. While individual poll numbers might be questioned, an overwhelming trend in those numbers from dozens of reputable pollsters is very believable and reliable as a forecasting tool.

Ever since the primaries, Trump’s overall approval rating has dropped steadily and consistently. The most recent polls suggest that it is now approaching thirty percent, a horrifying number if you’re a Republican incumbent who has been making the wrong choices. Even if you think thirty percent is off by a bit, the trend is unarguable. Trump has mostly lost the support he had in 2024 from Independent voters, Hispanics, and blacks. More and more, two and three-time Trump voters are turning against him because they see that he never had any intention of following up on his promises and his actions throughout his second term have been making life worse for Americans.

Trump hoped that most of the negative impacts of his policies wouldn’t become apparent until after the midterm elections. Many of the draconian cuts to programs millions of Americans depend on are slated to take effect in January. But even before those cuts hit, the combination of Trump’s tariffs, his stalemated war in the Persian Gulf which still threatens to expand into a uncontrollable disaster, the shocking cost of energy, especially diesel fuel, and his focus on vanity projects over things people need to survive have revealed him to be the huckster he is.

The corruption isn’t abating, either. As Trump accepts the reality that the November election will stop most of his initiatives in their tracks, his efforts to enrich himself and his friends and his disregard for laws and standards of ethical conduct now have no guardrails at all. He is eloquently telling all Americans that he intends to do anything he pleases regardless of legality, decency, or basic morality. He has so handicapped our justice system that he’s confident he can sufficiently cripple the legal process that no one can stop him. The Supreme Court decision that granted him full immunity from prosecution for criminal acts while in office and his shameful use of presidential pardons to hold the perpetrators of his illegal acts harmless make it certain that no one and nothing will stop his rapacious behavior. Don’t forget that he pardoned the insurrectionists who threatened the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Look back at what this egocentric monster has done in twenty months in office. He has severely damaged all of the alliances that have kept our adversaries at bay for seventy-five years, weakening NATO to the point where it may not survive as an effective deterrent. He has disrupted the world economy, creating inflationary pressures domestically that forced even his handpicked fed chairman to begin a series of interest rate increases that will extend through 2027. Mortgage rates are now at 7.28%, and the cost of buying and financing almost everything we need rises every month.

My son told me yesterday that he sees diesel prices in the Pacific Northwest as high as $8.60 per gallon. Since a typical semi-truck’s fuel tank holds over 250 gallons, it now costs truckers in that region more than $2,000 per fill-up to fuel the trucks that carry food and manufactured goods to our stores and warehouses. Industry experts tell us it will be a long time, if ever, before those prices return to what we used to think of as normal.

The latest example of Trump’s craven approach to governing is a proposal to end Russia’s aggression in Ukraine that involves a deal to purchase billions of dollars worth of Russian oil and natural gas resources to sweeten the pot for Vladimir Putin, while also providing a massive influx of dollars to the families of Trump, Steve Witkoff, and Jared Kushner. Even the most loyal of Trump’s followers feel the pain, and even the most dimwitted among them realize they’ve been fleeced.

American politics has tremendous inertia. Changes take time, but the unprecedented incompetence and criminality of Trump’s presidency have created a wave of reaction that has the inevitability of a slow-motion avalanche.

Still, change will not happen unless all of us cast our votes, regardless of the intimidation we’re likely to run into at the polls.

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