On Bombing Iran

Posted on June 22, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, June 22, 2025

Bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities was something that had to be done – assuming our intelligence was correct, and that’s a pretty big IF. Faked (Gulf of Tonkin) or incorrect (Weapons of  Mass Destruction) intelligence involved us in costly wars for thirty of the last sixty years in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. It’s not clear that those wars made Americans’ lives better or safer, and in each case we retreated with our tails between our legs.

Israeli intelligence is supposed to be the best in the world, but if we go back to October 7, 2023, we’ll recall that when Hamas committed the acts of murder and kidnapping that started the war in Gaza, the world, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blamed poor intelligence for not picking up warning signs of the attack.

In the current case, the vaunted American and Israeli spy networks contradicted each other. The issues were how much enriched uranium Iran possessed, how close it was to building a nuclear bomb, and whether it was even intending to. I have no use for the smug pundits paid to make predictions on cable news. They’re wrong as often as they’re right. In World War 2, intel that Germany was developing an atom bomb convinced President Roosevelt to create the Manhattan Project. We built the bomb first and used it in Japan to bring the war to a faster close. Hurray for us!

It wasn’t until after the war that Allied intelligence learned Germany had suspended its attempt to build an atom bomb in 1943. It turned out that our fear that Germany would have one first and use it in Europe or America was baseless, yet it drove us to make decisions that wound up initiating the era of nuclear warfare. That’s not to say that nukes wouldn’t have been developed anyway, after the war, but we can’t possibly know how things would have turned out if our intel about what the Germans were doing at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics had been correct.

There’s sufficient reason to question whether the intel that convinced Donald Trump to attack Iran was accurate. If it turns out that it wasn’t, and we wind up involved in another devastating Middle East war, what will that say about our leadership? What if, when all the post-war investigations are completed it turns out that we were sucked into a deadly, costly conflict because Netanyahu used faulty intel to attack Iran to sabotage diplomacy, because he knew that the moment Israel’s survival was at stake, the United States, no matter who was president, would not be able to stay out of the conflict?

The time to ask these questions is now. It’s clear from our history that had we asked them honestly during that last eighty years, the world might be a very different place today. Part of the MAGA movement is also challenging the constitutionality of the attack. The Constitution grants the power to declare war exclusively to Congress, but that’s an area where our founders got it wrong. The President can create a state of war simply by ordering an attack as Commander in Chief. This isn’t the first time that’s been done, and as a practical matter, a Congressional battle over whether to declare war televised around the world wouldn’t do much for security and secrecy.

If it turns out that Iran really was weeks away from building a bomb and the attack was as devastating as Trump claims, I’ll applaud him for having the courage to take the risk. I’m not opposed to pre-emptive strikes when they’re warranted. But forgive me for being suspicious. Trump claims to hate war, but he is enamored with military hardware and parades like the kind autocrats stage for themselves. He also loves acting like a tough guy, and nothing satisfies his narcissistic need for adulation like being a hero. His delusions of power and grandeur were terrifying enough when the consequences were hypothetical.

There is nothing hypothetical about the death and destruction that is occurring every day in the Middle East. There is also nothing hypothetical about the uncertainty of the next weeks, months, or years, and the possibility that the attack on Iran may not have obliterated Iran’s nuclear capability, but only encouraged them to build a bomb as quickly as possible. Trump’s bragging sounds more like the words of our autocratic adversaries in North Korea and Russia, not to mention Iran. It also reminds us of George W. Bush’s premature declaration of victory on an aircraft carrier.

Our teachers told us nations that fail to learn from their histories will commit the same mistakes over and over again. The problem is, every time we do it, the stakes are higher. I’ve tried to warn you how dangerous Donald Trump was for ten years. Now, all we can do is hope I was wrong.

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The World on the Brink

Posted on June 19, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, June 19, 2025

When the Soviet Union disintegrated, the most serious consequences revolved around who would retain possession of its nuclear weapons. We had survived for forty-six years since Hiroshima without blowing everything up, a fact that still astounds me.

The Soviet Union had stockpiled thousands of nuclear warheads in four countries: Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Khazakstan. Since the idea that fledgling independent republics would suddenly be saddled with responsibility for maintaining and securing them was a diplomatic nightmare, Russian Premier Nikolai Gorbachev, with help from President Bill Clinton, offered the former Soviet republics a guarantee of sovereignty in perpetuity in exchange for turning their nukes back to Russia.

The world hasn’t ended in a nuclear holocaust because during every previous crisis, at least one of the major nuclear powers was governed by a true statesperson who had their head on straight. If that’s the case, our current situation is worrisome. Iran is run by religious zealots who believe death by Jihad is preferable to living in peace. They are religious bigots who are willing to die and put nearly 100 million of their own people at risk just so they can kill Jews.

Allowing suicidal maniacs like Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to possess nuclear weapons would place the entire world at risk, which leaves the rest of us with two options. Either convince Iran to completely dismantle its nuclear production facilities, or find a way to destroy them ourselves. Like it or not, there is no other viable choice.

People who follow the Middle East have anticipated the current situation for more than twenty years. Whether you think the deal worked out between Iran and President Obama was wrong, or that President Trump was wrong to tear it up, the failure of the rest of the world to deal with the situation until now has us all in great jeopardy.

The person driving the current crisis, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, will not stop attacking Iran until he has destroyed both their capability to build a nuclear weapon and to manufacture ballistic missiles, because he is convinced that anything less threatens Israel’s survival. He’s right about that.

I believe Netanyahu, aside from his domestic problems and criminal indictments, believes he’s acting in Israel’s best interest. We don’t know, yet, whether Trump encouraged Netanyahu to attack Iran last week, or Netanyahu did it on his own, knowing the United States would have no choice but to back his play. Whatever the truth is, we are dealing with the horrifying reality that the fate of the world now lies in the hands of Donald Trump.

I am among the majority of Americans who does not believe Trump is competent to make the decision about whether to use 30,000 pound bombs to take out Iran’s Fordo nuclear site. It makes him feel powerful to make threats and keep everyone on edge about what he might do. He gleefully told the world, yesterday, that no one knows what’s going on in his head, like a five-year-old saying, “I have a secret, and I’m not telling anyone what it is.”

I have never hoped I was wrong as much as I do today. The great deal maker has been a complete bust since he took office. The rest of the world is refusing to knuckle under to his tariff threats, and scores of lawsuits are challenging his quest for autocracy. At a time when solidarity with our allies is critical, he has alienated NATO and angered Canada and most of Europe. I hope with all my heart that Trump’s desperate need for adulation will make him listen to whatever competent advisors he has, if any. Do you want Pete Hegseth and Tulsi Gabbard deciding your future?

Despite having been ignored by Trump, Europe is stepping up. “After several days of back-channel discussions, foreign ministers from Britain, France and Germany, together with Kaja Kallas, the European Union foreign policy chief, are scheduled to hold talks [tomorrow] with their Iranian counterpart, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.” Maybe the Europeans can convince Iran that it’s in the best interest of their people to dismantle Fordo in exchange for removal of the sanctions that crippled their economy.

The White House wants us to believe master negotiator Trump forced Iran to talk to Europe. It looks to me like Trump mostly created chaos playing power games, without any appreciation of what was at stake. We can make a strong argument for taking out Fordo with bombs, but we should consider that Iran’s threats of immediate retaliation might have teeth no one has considered.

A lot of the nukes that were supposed to be returned to Russia, thirty-three years ago, remain unaccounted for. Are there terrorist cells armed with suitcase nukes hiding in every major city, as Hollywood has suggested? I don’t claim to have the answer, but I fear that our self-absorbed leaders who are spending their time enriching themselves don’t understand what their dealing with.

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Fordo

Posted on June 17, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, June 17, 2025

It sounds like a character from a Tolkien novel, but it’s neither fantasy nor amusing. Over the next few days, it may be the fulcrum on which the future of the Middle East depends. Fordo is the principal underground nuclear facility being used by Iran to enrich uranium, which can have only one intended outcome: the development of nuclear warheads that would be used to destroy Israel.

That’s not speculation or hyperbole. It comes right from the mouth of Iran’s Supreme Leader. There’s plenty to fight about in the region, drinkable water, for one. But things like water, arable land, and natural resources can be discussed and negotiated. Whether or not Donald Trump is the master negotiator he claims to be, they are things he understands. What the world faces in the four-day-old war between Israel and Iran is something very different.

It’s different for two reasons that cannot be overlooked. One is the obvious potential for a larger conflict that could include the whole region, and possibly the world. The other, is that the conflict is based on things that can’t be sensibly negotiated. When the United Nations declared Israel a sovereign state in 1948, all of its Arab neighbors immediately declared war on the fledgling state. While countries like Jordan and Egypt have found it in their interest to be at peace with Israel, since then, a state of war has continuously existed for seventy-seven years.

Why? Because of religious bigotry, the worst reason I can imagine to kill thousands of people and threaten nuclear annihilation. Lesson number one to take from this is that it’s time we grew up as a species. Our major religions evolved from fear, ignorance, and insecurity. Thousands of years ago, that may have made sense, but in today’s world, it’s insanity born of the immaturity of human beings in general.

Israel is a nation of bomb shelters. Every kibbutz has them. Every village, every high-rise apartment or office building, every school and hospital. Israelis have lived that way since 1948 simply because they and their neighbors, who outnumber them a hundred to one, cling to the absurd notion that their God is the only true one. I reject all of that, and at this moment in time the thousand-year war between Islam and the Judeo-Christian world has taken on an existential dimension. Religious wars reflect a deep psychosis in human development that we must outgrow.

I don’t have the answer to that any more than any world leader does, and the fact that religious hatred appears to be unassailable limits our options. Every American president since Harry Truman has tackled it, and despite some successes with countries that have a more secular view of life, they have all failed. Today, we have a president who is quixotic and unpredictable, whose only real talents appear to be a negative 1 / 1 1 charisma and a willingness to enrich himself in defiance of every moral and ethical standard of behavior up against a rabid, extremist leader who believes more in Jihad than peaceful coexistence. The very notion of a holy war is insane. The idea of a supreme being who demands blood sacrifices of such magnitude ought to be enough to convince us to change our ways, but alas, we live in the real world.

The line in the sand we cannot cross is allowing a radical Islamic regime hell-bent on the destroying its neighbors from ever having a nuclear weapon. The entire world agrees except for Iran’s clients. Russia and China are silent on the matter, which tells us in the clearest possible terms that they don’t want the current incarnation of Iran to have one, either.

There are only two ways out of this without killing millions of people. Either Trump authorizes the use of the 30,000 pound bunker buster bombs and the lends Israel the aircraft capable of delivering them, or Iran agrees to dismantle Fordo under UN supervision. There is no other  option. Israel believes its existence is at stake, and Israel already possesses nuclear weapons. If they were pushed to brink and saw no other alternative to saving their people, do you think they would hesitate to use them?

The key player in all this is Donald Trump. He craved power, lusted over the idea of being the most powerful man in the world. His narcissism-driven fantasy has run into reality, however. Wielding more power than anyone else doesn’t mean he can control what other heads of state do. I’ve not been shy about my lack of confidence in Trump, and I believe he is the worst possible person we can trust to get this right, unless – is it possible he can grow into the job the way Lyndon Johnson did?

Can Trump make the right decision? There are a lot of concerns that he’s physically not up to the job anymore. We can only hope he proves us wrong.

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The Coming Conflict

Posted on June 12, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, June 12, 2025

Donald Trump loves symbols. Gold toilets, trophy wives, private jets, things most of us live happily without. He also loves alternate realities, like the one in which he lights a match to the Constitution and no one rushes in to douse the flames. Ten years of Trump’s politics have America in shock. In addition to his attempts to dismantle our democracy and government, we’re essentially living in a one-party country, since Democrats have yet to find a leader to coalesce around. That’s a lot more serious than it sounds, because without organized resistance by the opposition party, there’s little hope of stopping Trump without doing serious damage to the country.

Many Americans walk around shaking their heads in confusion and dismay. I do it myself, saying things like, “Did you ever imagine this could happen in America?” But I’ve come to realize that the answer to that question is “Yes.” We all have, whether or not we acknowledge it. I know because of the surprising popularity of dystopian books and films. We can thank the great Demon Hollywood for that. Hollywood has always had its finger on the pulse of the nightmares Americans dream. It displays them on the silver screen, and we devour them.

During the Cold War, films like Seven Days in May and The Manchurian Candidate were huge successes. Obviously, in order for that to have been true, Americans must have been harboring fears that such things might happen at some level. Dystopian stories only grab our attention if they contain grains of truth and credibility. We watched them, horrified inside, and once outside the theater in the light of day, reassured each other that that could never happen in America, but in 2025, anyone not in a coma knows it can.

There are a lot of smart, talented people behind Project 2025, the blueprint for Trump 2025. They understand history and they understand power and wealth, and how the latter has always dominated former. They studied how Adolf Hitler took down the Weimar Republic in only four months, how the Bolsheviks overturned a revolution that ended centuries of monarchical rule in Russia, and lately, they understand the world-wide shift toward populism and away from democracy.

They also understand that they only have a narrow window to achieve their goal of turning America into Gilead, Oceania, or Hungary. Our system is robust enough, our media still free enough, and most of us are still moral and decent enough, that they can only succeed by deceit, intimidation, and enough money to hire armies of sycophants and lawyers. Because the window is small, they understand that they must take desperate measures to win. They salivate over the Nazi blitzkrieg that re-wrote the map of Europe in a few blinks of an eye.

Thus, the lightning strikes against every aspect of American democracy. It really makes no sense to declare war on everyone at once – that’s usually a losing strategy. But Trump 2025 doesn’t have the luxury of restraint even if he were capable of it. His people understood that it wouldn’t take long for voters to realize how they were being screwed by Trump, and turn on him. They knew that if his approval rating dropped below forty percent, House members in swing districts would feel empowered to vote against him, and with the slimmest of margins, it would only take a handful to turn the majority back to Democrats. Today, Trump’s approval rating is 38%.

The only way they could win was to launch an all-out attack on everything Americans hold dear, and that is exactly what they’ve been doing since January 20th. Trump knows that to win, he must neutralize the courts, the media, the Congress, our scientists and educators, and every opposing political movement, and he only has the rest of 2025 to do it. He is narcissistic and insane enough to be willing to put everything on the line. He is the most dangerous person on Earth.

Essential to his plan is the cooperation of the military. It’s illegal, in America, to use active duty soldiers and marines to suppress free speech and protests, unless they pose a clear threat to the nation. Every officer in our armed forces was taught that they must refuse any presidential order that is clearly illegal or unconstitutional. Yet, that is exactly what Trump intends. If he subverts the military into serving as his Gestapo, we’re doomed.

When we strip away all the BS and emotion, all the political, racist, and xenophobic rhetoric, what we face for the rest of 2025 is really simple. Trump is engaged in a winner-take-all gambit to turn America into a fascist oligarchy. He won’t quit until someone stops him, and if that doesn’t happen in the Courts or the Congress, it will happen between armed factions in our streets. Trump is willing to foment civil war to get what he wants.

We can’t hide  or pretend. That’s what’s coming if Americans don’t rise up in huge numbers and let our representatives and judges know we won’t stand for it. Next year is America’s 250th anniversary. We can either celebrate it or mourn its passing.

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A Dangerous Distraction

Posted on June 10, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, June 10, 2025

Sometimes, when the world appears to be spinning out of control, it’s valuable to take a step back. When chaos is everywhere, especially when it’s used as a political tactic, we need to be sure we see things clearly. Are events as they seem or are they part of a broader agenda, and if they are, whose agenda is it and what is their end game? Sometimes, it’s valuable to see who has addressed the subject in the past.

Hollywood producer Barry Levinson might shed some light on what’s happening in America today, and I mean TODAY. In 1999, he made a brilliant satirical film that asked: What would a president desperate to achieve his ends do if all reasonable measures failed? His answer was to create a fake war to distract the public. The film, Wag the Dog, was a hit, 86% approval on Rotten Tomatoes, suggesting that Americans found it both credible and entertaining. It was a study in how politicians and the media manipulate public opinion, well before Fox News turned journalism into a spin debate.

Another visionary tale to keep in mind is Margaret Atwood’s A Handmaid’s Tale. Its warning message is even scarier. In Atwood’s dystopian future, the United States is turned into a “Christian” autocracy, which is really a front for the rich and powerful to own and control women who can carry pregnancy to term, in a future in which fertility is near zero. As a science fiction writer, I appreciate her warning about the power an unscrupulous minority for whom morality, ethical behavior, and the rule of law don’t apply, can achieve if we do not vigilantly defend our democracy.

One aspect of Atwood’s story always disturbed me, however. She suggests America could be transformed from what we thought it was into a vicious fascist dictatorship, that is so well entrenched no one even remembers the past in just fifteen years. I always thought that was hopelessly unrealistic, but I wonder if she was a better predictor than I am.

It doesn’t take a visionary to see that Donald Trump is attempting what Atwood feared, minus the fictional fertility crisis – Trump would rather terrorize women who don’t want to carry a pregnancy to term, along with medical professionals who help them. During the eight years that viewers have been watching the popular television version of A Handmaid’s Tale, which coincidentally spans Trump’s whole political career, we were shown horrifying scenes of a Nazi-like police state, in which enemies of the  government receive no mercy, and the government defines an enemy as anyone who violates its edicts.

We’re about to find out if Atwood was right. Levinson, Dustin Hoffman, and Robert DeNiro convinced America that it was possible to use the media to make the public believe we were at war to distract them from a scandal that could bring down the president.

Trump, following the script of Project 2025, spent his first 150 days in office setting up violent confrontations with those who oppose him. His weapons are deceit and misdirection, and an instinct for tapping into the anger and fears of voters by flooding the media with lies that support a fantasy in which he is saving the country from extremists on the Left. Having created a level of confusion over immigration such that very few people know what’s true, and having identified California as the enemy of everything good and righteous about America, he set the stage for what’s happening in Los Angeles.

By usurping Governor Gavin Newsom’s control of the California National Guard and deploying active duty marines over civilian protests of ICE raids that obliterate due process and ignore court orders, Trump has thrown down the gauntlet approaching No Kings Day. This isn’t accidental. It’s the first major salvo in Trump’s goal to ensconce himself as the unquestioned leader of a fascist autocracy, formerly known as the United States.

If you’ve spent the months since he was elected avoiding the news and shutting down any suggestion of a political debate, your grace period is up. Americans need to engage right now, not by hundreds or thousands, but by tens of millions, marching in every city and agricultural town, on every university campus. Can you imagine what will happen when Trump tries to deploy the full force of our military against their own people? Do you think they would follow orders to attack their neighbors whose only crime is defending our Constitution?

Unless cooler heads than the lunatic Stephen Miller convince Trump to back off (don’t bet on it) we’re likely to witness something like that this summer. Trump knows he has one shot at this. If he’s not king by 2026, the midterm elections will end his power grab, but that only happens if Americans fight him, starting now.

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David and Goliath

Posted on June 2, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, June 2, 2025

There is little in the Old Testament that can be taken to be literally true, but its books and stories do a good job describing human nature and shaping our values. Perhaps one of its most pervasive morals is to never underestimate a weaker-seeming adversary. Americans, especially, have always been drawn to underdog stories, but when I refer to Americans, I do not include Donald Trump, who only sees underdogs as prey.

Yesterday, we had a biblical event, when David (i.e., the Ukrainian armed forces) took Goliath (the entire Russian military apparatus) by surprise. The latest incarnation of David didn’t use a stone in a sling, however. Instead, the attack that seriously tarnished Goliath’s reputation as a fearsome fighter was carried out with 117 drones. It took everyone including the White House by surprise, and today, military analysts are heaping praise on the brilliant, patient planning that went into the attack that may have destroyed a third of the aircraft Russia has been using to bomb Ukrainian cities.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is neither biblical allegory nor fairy tale. It’s a vicious, deadly conflict driven by an implacable autocrat’s ambition to rebuild the Soviet Union. Vladimir Putin is not likely to roll over and play dead because of a stone flung at his forehead. And Volodymyr Zelensky, no matter how much we may cheer for him, does not have the resources to defeat Russia on his own. The story from the Book of Samuel isn’t a valid analogy. The reasons should serve as a dire warning.

Ukraine’s ability to successfully strike and severely degrade five Russian military bases separated by more than two thousand miles with absolutely no resistance and no casualties, was extremely impressive. It’s not likely to cause Putin to flinch during the alleged peace talks in Istanbul, but it sends a serious message to the rest of us, who have been consoling ourselves with the belief that although who wins this conflict matters, it’s not really our war. We keep hoping it’s not Europe’s either, but what Ukraine did, yesterday, belies that.

Ukraine demonstrated with a single coordinated attack with limited resources, how quickly the conflict could encompass targets all over Europe, and with us on the sidelines, it’s not clear what NATO would do. Trump’s ego requires him to continue to see himself as a savior with some magical ability to turn Putin into a decent human being. It’s clear, however, that that’s just another of Trump’s delusions. Putin couldn’t care less about Trump, except to manipulate him to get what he wants. We can only hope Putin is smart enough to realize that Trump’s new nickname, TACO, doesn’t apply here.

It doesn’t really apply to his tariff war, either. Anyone who thinks Trump chickens out on tariffs is as delusional as Trump. His tariffs are like a professional boxer’s jabs. Remember when Muhammed Ali taunted his opponents, “dancing like a butterfly,” taking random shots that did little damage, but seriously messed with the other boxers’ heads? Trump doesn’t chicken out, even when any rational person should. He’s incapable of it, not because he’s a courageous warrior, but because his very serious mental illness won’t permit him to. Trump only knows how to double down when he’s backed against a wall. It’s what extreme narcissists always do.

The risk should be obvious to everyone. Putin will never back down until a coup among his own people takes him out. Trump will never back down unless he’s put in a strait jacket and dragged out of the White House by saner heads, but there’s no evidence that any of those exist among the MAGA movement. The whole point of Project 2025 was to attack relentlessly on every front until someone had the guts and resources to stop them.

Trump’s not a master strategist. He’s more a prisoner of his own limitations. If he can’t deliver on his brag about ending the war on day 153 or day 500, there’s no reason to believe diplomacy can save the situation. In 1962, the world averted nuclear war because despite his bluster and reputation, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev was a shrewd statesman who understood that everyone would lose if he didn’t back off, since the Kennedy administration had backed itself into an untenable corner.

Putin isn’t Khrushchev, and no one can assure that he wouldn’t risk the destruction of Russia, Europe, or the entire world to achieve his goals. Ukraine’s successful retaliatory attack on Russia, yesterday, showed us how quickly the war that isn’t ours could escalate.

A rational president with objective, expert advisors would know that trusting Putin and failing to defend Ukraine are a disastrous strategy. But if you’re a fan of world wars, it’s a brilliant tactic. Trump can go ahead with peace talks with an adversary who will never back down or concede territory, but if he doesn’t ramp up weapons deliveries to Ukraine immediately, Europe and the world are both at risk.

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A Horrifying 1983 Television Event

Posted on June 1, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, June 1, 2025

An article in today’s New York Times, grabbed my attention, as I expect it grabbed the attention of everyone who read it who is old enough to remember 1983. Alissa Wilkinson’s column, When the Whole Country Watched a Nuclear War Movie at Once, brought back the horror more than 100 million of us experienced watching an ABC movie that terrified the entire country.

The film, The Day After, and all the controversy it caused, not the least of which was over whether it should ever have been shown on television, are the subject of a new, soon to be released, documentary, Television Event. In horrifyingly realistic detail, it depicted the aftermath of a nuclear attack on Kansas City, from the point of view of the University of Kansas trauma center in Lawrence, thirty miles to the west.

Back then, horror films were defined by zombies, vampires, and crazed killers with chainsaws, but none of them came remotely close to the terror-inducing trauma of watching babies die of radiation poisoning. Wilkinson wrote that research for the upcoming documentary found that after watching The Day After, seventy percent of adult Americans believed there would be a nuclear war in the next ten years.

In 1983, I lived in the Seattle suburb of Bellevue. I was there because I thought it was a safe place to raise my family in the years after Vietnam and Watergate, but Puget Sound was suddenly elevated to nuclear target number one in the United States, when the Defense Department chose to build the base for Trident nuclear attack submarines across the Sound from Seattle. Months of protests, including people lying on railroad tracks to impede construction of the base, led to an event called “Target Seattle,” which is credited with spurring the Nuclear Freeze Movement and the Strategic Arms Limitation talks.

On October 2, 1982, 14,000 people, including me and my 14 and 12-year-old sons gathered in the Kingdome for an afternoon of anti-nuclear films, songs, and speeches. The place we’d always associated with the Mariners and Seahawks was very different that day. I’ve regretted taking my kids there ever since, though they reassure me it didn’t traumatize them. I’m not sure I believe them, though, because researchers concluded, subsequently, that a whole generation of young people lived with the expectation their parents had: they’d likely be dead before they reached adulthood. How that affected them growing up I can’t say, but I heard things like, “Why do we have to go to school when we’re going to be nuked anyway,” more times than I can count.

Being reminded of all that affected me because of what it implies about today. I frankly marvel that we’ve avoided mutual nuclear destruction for eighty years. The idea of nuclear war triggers our normal reaction to terrifying situations – denying and tucking them away where we don’t have to look at them. But the war in Ukraine and the conflict in Gaza with Iran looking on gave those fears life again. When the Soviet Union collapsed, Ukraine was the depository of a large fraction of its nuclear weapons. Russia wanted them back, and Ukraine agreed to give them up in exchange for a guarantee of sovereignty and independence from Moscow. In the thirty-plus years since then, however, military analysts acknowledged that many of those weapons are unaccounted for. Where are they and who has them? I’m not sure I really want to know.

Both Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump have used the N word as a vague threat in the war in Ukraine. That’s of great concern, as is Iran’s nuclear program. It’s difficult to know what’s really happening because of the Trump administration’s questionable relationship with truth. Trump claims he is close to a deal with Iran, but he also brags that he’s close to trade deals, without evidence of anything significant in the works. The Times also reported today that Iran has accelerated the pace of its uranium enrichment program whose only goal is the production of nuclear warheads.

The international chaos caused by Trump’s tariff war, his apparent disdain for our former allies and NATO, and the way Putin and Xi Jinping have mocked his tough-guy stance should give everyone pause. Chaos is the worst possible background for international diplomacy, and with someone like Trump involved, and the questionable nature of unqualified, extremist Cabinet officers like Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, we hear people making irresponsible threats and shooting from the hip without supporting evidence every day.

We’ll probably muddle through this, but adding the idea of using nuclear weapons to the madness Trump has caused is chilling. That’s the main reason there is so much controversy over Television Event. After what I recall from 1983, I’d ask the same question people asked back then? Is reminding the country of the horror nuclear war would bring a good thing or a serious mistake?

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A Matter of Time

Posted on May 29, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, May 29, 2025

Ever since Donald Trump turned to politics, many of us who followed his career for decades had a sense that it was just a matter of time before Americans caught on to what he’s really about. His extreme narcissism aside, his history of business fraud, stiffing people who worked for him when the bill came due, vindictiveness, and relationships with organized crime figures suggested he would govern the same way if he were ever elected. Corruptly.

We were right about all of it except the part about Americans catching on – yet. While Trump’s approval rating is a moving target, currently hovering just above the level that triggers warning sirens for the 2026 midterm elections, his base, so far, is sticking with him. A large factor in that is the utter lack of leadership and unity shown by Democrats, whose only virtue seems to be that they’re not MAGA Republicans.

Another major factor is Republican billionaires’ willingness to pony up huge amounts of cash through PACs and questionable vehicles like foreigners investing billions in Trump’s crypto business. The money flowing into Trump’s accounts is unprecedented. The greediest among wealthy Americans see a one-time window to establish long-term oligarchic dominance that will close the moment Trump’s base deserts him.  In many parts of our country, flooding right-wing media with dollars can buy almost anything.

It’s a matter of time before people see through Trump’s immigration policy to its real underlying intention: seizing power unconstitutionally and threatening courts and law firms when they try to reel him in. There’s a painful reality that makes it difficult to fight back, however. No administration since World War 2 has been able to pass a meaningful immigration law or interdict trafficking in drugs like fentanyl because Americans with power and money don’t want them passed. Millions of small businesses would close without the cheap labor provided by undocumented immigrants, and too many Americans want illegal drugs and are willing to pay for them.

It’s a matter of time before voters realize Trump’s infatuation with autocrats and his boasting about special relationships with people like Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping are part of his power-mad fever dream. Xi has shown no inclination to bend to Trump’s will, as China looks to replace American markets with others in Europe, Africa, and South America. And the corollary threats to business leaders who manufacture products in China are having no impact, because the economic realities that created the problem haven’t changed.

Putin has demonstrated that there is no “special relationship” with Trump. Trump said he would end the war in Ukraine on Day One of his presidency. Yet, here, on Day 150, Russia is killing more civilians and destroying more Ukrainian infrastructure than at any time since the war began, three years ago, all of this happening under the guise of pretending to be considering Trump’s cease-fire plan. All Trump has accomplished is humiliating Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky on the world stage and driving him to find support from Europe, specifically Germany and Poland. America is the loser in Trump’s mishandling of the war.

It’s a matter of time before Americans, especially Jewish voters who Trump panders to by cozying up to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, realize that Trump’s only interest in the Middle East is enriching himself. When he thought it would help him win votes, he was all about stopping the killing in Gaza, about which he cares even less than he does about Israel. His bluster about ending the war in Gaza stopped when Arab nations began investing billions in Trump’s businesses and gifts, like airplanes and golf resorts. He seems to neither notice nor care that Gazan civilians are starving and dying, as Israel intends to occupy all of Gaza completely and attempt to annex it.

It’s a matter of time before Trump’s tariff war collapses under its own weight. We’re not very far from that day, as billionaire investors have figured out how to get richer using the TACO strategy. Wall Street coined the phrase Trump Always Chickens Out to remind investors that his on again, off again tariffs, which have changed more than fifty times in Trump’s 120 days in office, are a wonderful opportunity to buy low and sell high, timing trades to his tariff announcements.

It’s a matter of time before the dozens of lawsuits filed against the Trump administration by private citizens, universities, law firms, and state governments reach the Supreme Court. Trump’s batting average in the lower courts is close to zero, as judges appointed by Democrats and Republicans rule his actions unconstitutional. He took a major hit, yesterday, when the U. S. Court of International Trade ruled that all of his Liberation Day tariff orders were illegal.

Finally, it’s just a matter of time before most Americans react to Trump’s pardoning of gang leaders and hardened criminals, because they supported his campaigns.

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The Most Corrupt President Anyone Can Remember

Posted on May 23, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, May 23, 2025

Years ago, a story circulated about a brilliant way to avoid capital gains taxes on the sale of a home (or any other capital property.) The idea was not only clever, but simplicity itself. It worked like this: suppose someone made you an offer to purchase your home, let’s say, for half a million dollars. You sign the contract and the buyer makes you an alternative offer.

The buyer has a rare coin collection. Every coin is legal U. S. currency, mostly solid gold or silver. The buyer presents you with an assay report valuing the collection at $650,000, 30% more than your agreed price, and offers to trade the collection for your house. You do your due diligence, accept the offer, and issue a bill of sale. The price on the bill of sale is $375, the total face value of all those gold and silver coins. Remember, the coins were legal currency.

To make the issue more interesting, my suburban Washington DC county, was home to dozens (maybe hundreds) of IRS agents, so there was a spirited debate about whether you could claim you sold your home for $375. If IRS accepted that, you’d not only avoid capital gains taxes, but be able to claim a sizable capital loss. Even my extremely conservative tax accountant couldn’t definitively answer that, although he said if I ever tried it, he wouldn’t sign my tax return. I believe IRS eventually ruled such transactions were illegal, but since I didn’t know many people with million-dollar coin collections, I lost interest in the issue.

The story seems particularly apt today because of all the ways Donald Trump is enriching himself in office. It sounds a lot like his Crypto marketing campaign. Federal law makes it illegal for non-Americans to contribute to political campaigns, candidates, or elected officials. But it’s not illegal to sell them highly inflated Crypto shares or futures.

Seven federal agencies play a role in regulating Crypto sales and trades. For example, the US Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Unit (FinCEN) “governs virtual currency businesses…and mandates them to have anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing regulations.” I’m not an expert on this stuff, but it seems to me that the only difference between Trump selling Crypto shares to billionaire foreigners and money laundering is that we can’t know whether the money they invest comes from criminal acts.

Neither Trump nor his foreign investors are likely to open their books to public scrutiny any time soon, so it will be decades and several administration changes before we can examine these transactions, but insiders are leaking and speculating that the whole thing is rigged. It looks like a legal investment scheme on the surface, except we know it’s not.

If, as president, I offer to sell you $100 million in Crypto shares, and privately, we both agree that you expect to lose half of your investment, because it’s worth $50 million to you to have access to me, that smells like a bribe that carries heavy federal prison time if you’re indicted and convicted. (Not me, the Supreme Court said I’m immune.)

When Trump talks about making deals, he always means, “What are you willing to give me in exchange for… .” You fill in the blanks. In a local barter economy, that’s fine. When you’re the President of the United States, and your investors are wealthy foreigners who stand to profit from being in your good graces, it’s criminal.

Crypto corruption is only the latest in a series of actions that began the moment Trump took office. Half-million-dollar memberships in the Trump family’s Executive Branch Club, which explicitly offers presidential access to members, started it all. I won’t list the other instances here – I and many others have enumerated them before.

If you voted for Trump, was that kind of outright theft and corruption you had in mind? And as his “Big Beautiful Bill” and his tariff war make everything you buy more expensive while enriching Trump and his wealthy friends, while it reduces your health care options, and even threatens your job if Trump doesn’t like your employer, do you still think you made the right choice?

We hear a lot about Trump’s fixation on President William McKinley, who also loved tariffs. But in the 1890s, America was not the most powerful country in the world and the hope of every nation threatened by 21st century imperialism. We have a responsibility to at least pretend to act morally and ethically.

All the bad actors aren’t Trump loyalists. The Democrats have their problems, too. While there is no federal law that specifically makes lying about or covering up a President’s failing health a crime, the events of the past year tell us there should be. Jake Tapper’s new book, Original Sin, while much too late to the party, details a horrifying conspiracy among senior Democrats to hide President Biden’s failing health from voters. That would be appalling under any circumstances, but when you look at the result – four more years of Trump as president – I wouldn’t mind seeing a few Democrats held accountable. Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries should be ashamed of what they were a part of. Nancy Pelosi got it right, but the cow was already out of the barn by then.

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The Danger of a Transactional President

Posted on May 18, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, May 18, 2025

We’ve had transactional presidents before, but never like this. The President of the United States is arguably the most powerful and influential person in the world. Despite Donald Trump’s America First philosophy there’s a lot more to the American presidency than jingoism. MAGA and America First are largely disingenuous when you examine the details. Is it great for America to raise billionaires to the level of oligarchs and rigidify the lines between economic classes?

The leader of the Free World has an obligation to act responsibly, but Donald Trump has no concept of that. As a businessman, he surely understood that the larger a business entity grows the more it takes on responsibility for all the lives it affects. Startups and small businesses are driven by entrepreneurs hoping to cash in on the American Dream. But as companies succeed and grow, their priorities change. They must be cognizant and supportive of the needs of their employees and customers, even of their competitors.

Modern, civilized nations aren’t solely about fierce competition and the survival of the fittest, either. As a businessman, all Trump ever cared about was loyalty and profit, and even then, there were levels of fealty. He’s worse as president. He throws around words like peace and greatness, but the entire world realizes they can’t take anything that comes out of his mouth, literally. He’s quixotic and unpredictable, which are more about a practiced strategy than personality traits. Everything Donald Trump says and does is aimed at increasing his wealth and appeasing his monstrous ego.

According to our Constitution, governing is a partnership among co-equals. But Trump considers Congress his vassals. He manipulates legislators like a puppet master with no respect for their constitutional role. Our founders thought they were building in guardrails, but they never counted on someone like Trump.

How does attacking our finest universities and trying to control what they teach, destroying public education, placing someone who has no respect for medical research in charge of the nation’s health care, suspending habeas corpus, and treating ethics as something only for losers and sukers make America greater? How does trashing our alliances, trade agreements, and defense treaties while fawning for the support of dictators who laugh at him behind his back improve the lives of Americans – or of anyone except foreign dictators?

Today’s New York Times reported about a Heritage Foundation (the organization behind Project 2025) plan to destroy all support for Palestinians in the United States sheds light on Trump’s reaction to Palestinian demonstrations on American college campuses. Trump charged white steed to protect Jewish students against anti-Semitism, but the truth is, being anti-Palestinian is good politics in America, especially if you pretend to give a damn about Jews or Israel.

Trump couldn’t care less about either, except inasmuch as it increases his power and personal wealth. The notion that Republicans are more protective of Israel than Democrats is a myth that has plagued our politics since 1947, and Trump proved it this week. After touting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as his BFF, and continuing to supply Israel with massive amounts of weapons with no regard to how they might be used, it was clear that neither Netanyahu or Hamas was listening to anything he said. They were all just playing him.

When he realized there was no benefit in remaining engaged, Trump turned his back on Israel and Gaza with covetous eyes on the trillions of dollars looking for investments in Qatar, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia, and accepted a half-billion-dollar airplane as a gift from a nation with which he was engaged in trade talks. Ignoring Israel, he unilaterally removed sanctions on Syria suggesting that he wanted to give its new leader, Ahmed Al-Sharaa, a chance to be great, the same Al-Sharaa our State Department labeled a terrorist with a ten-million-dollar bounty on his head. And while all this was going on, Netanyahu continued to pound Gaza in the midst of an alleged cease-fire.

Not coincidentally, another Trump touted BFF, Vladimir Putin, is doing the same thing in Ukraine, violating his own cease-fire by bombing civilians in Kyiv. Trump was going to end that war on day 1, remember? He went so far in sucking up to Putin that he staged a humiliating ambush on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky before a world-wide television audience. I wonder if Zelensky being Jewish had anything to do with that.

The most frightening aspect of Trump’s transactional presidency is that so far, he’s getting away with it. We hear rumblings about deep rifts among Republicans and whispered unhappiness about Trump, but there’s little evidence of anyone standing up to him. Yesterday, Utah Senator John Curtis, who replaced Mitt Romney as the only Senate Republican willing to speak out against Trump, announced that he intended to be an independent voice and push back whenever he thinks Trump is wrong. (He doesn’t like tariffs.) I’ll be waiting with baited breath.

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