Flailing

Posted on July 23, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, July 23, 2025

We see things like this all the time – a desperate criminal on the run, surrounded by law enforcement with no place to go, a terrified child caught in one lie too many, a cornered rat. What they all have in common is that their actions are completely unfiltered, emotionally driven, violent, and impulsive. They lash out in every direction, attempting to hurt as many of their perceived persecutors as possible. They’ll say anything about anyone, having long passed the point where truth or facts have meaning.

What’s most interesting about that behavior is that it does nothing to address its root cause. It teaches the child nothing about lying, it teaches the criminal nothing except, possibly, how to not get caught next time. And rats will always behave like rats.

Our president, Donald Trump, who spent his entire life ignoring rules, violating laws, and living like an immoral glutton, isn’t about to change as he approaches eighty. He spends most of his time juggling problems, most of which are of his own making. His stock in trade is creating chaos and obfuscating truth. And his most predictable behavior is accusing everyone else of all the things he’s guilty of. Nothing seems to stop him, not even nearly a hundred felony convictions.

But sometimes, people like Trump go too far, and they drown in their own swamp. The absurd situation surrounding Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex criminal who died in his prison cell, and who managed to draw countless celebrities into his schemes, makes this point like nothing else. The idea that with two wars that Trump said he would end the day he took office still raging more violently than ever, the nation is focused on the possibility of another salacious sex scandal, ought to make it clear how much trouble our country is in.

Vladimir Putin is determined to take advantage of the fifty days of grace Trump graciously offered him to destroy as much of Ukraine as he can. Benjamin Netanyahu continues to escalate the destruction of Gaza and its two million civilians. Trump’s personal Gestapo, formerly known as ICE, is steadily ramping up its campaign of terror, mostly against legal U. S. residents, citizens, and green card workers, simply because they’re Hispanic. Only in Trump’s universe would anything related to scum like Epstein trump all that in importance.

Trump’s friendships with people you wouldn’t want within a mile of your wife, sister, or daughter are well documented. He hung out with organized crime figures, prostitutes, and porn stars, and new photos of him and Jeffrey Epstein together show up every day. Undoubtedly, many of the celebrities Epstein solicited were Democrats, and Trump decided that exposing them would help him both win re-election and solidify his grip on power.

But as we’ve seen with Trump, it doesn’t matter whether the things he says are true or they ever come to pass. The chaos and noise he produces completely occupy the news cycles, which effectively silences everyone else’s voice. The only thing that puzzles me and a lot of other people is why he demanded the Epstein files be released when they were as likely to be damaging to Trump as to his enemies.

The answer is that Trump doesn’t think like a normal person. His narcissism causes him to believe he’s invincible, that things that bring down other men can’t touch him. When he ordered the release of the Epstein files, he knew his lapdog Attorney General, Pam Bondi, would attempt to redact anything that might be embarrassing to him before the records were released, and based on what we’ve seen lately, she’d likely get away with it except that it’s Trump’s most rabid supporters who are demanding to see them.

Last week, when Trump and Bondi caved in to pressure from the extreme right faction of MAGA supporters, and ordered grand jury testimony released, they only did it to cool rising tempers that might have hurt Trump. But a Federal judge in Florida denied the request, today. Could it possibly get any crazier? Trump, who is desperate to hide the details of his relationship with Epstein, realized his only play was to order the files released, but that backfired, adding even more fuel to the scandal.

To complete this absurd picture, House Speaker Mike Johnson, under orders from Trump to scuttle any attempt by the House to pass a bill demanding the release of the Epstein files, declared the House to be in recess until after Labor Day.

So – Trump thought he could discredit Democrats by associating them with Epstein, but it turned out that it would all likely splash back on him. As a result, our government is in total stasis, people are being killed by the thousands in Ukraine and Gaza, and hundreds of innocent lives are being destroyed by ICE, every day, while Trump flails ineffectually, resorting to accusing Barack Obama of treason to distract attention.

We used to ask when this kind of thing would ever stop. It won’t until someone knocks Trump off his pedestal.

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Carville and the Midterms

Posted on July 21, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, July 21, 2025

Thirty-three years ago, when Bill Clinton was running for president, Democratic strategist James Carville burst on the scene. He brought with him an acerbic wit, an unusual talent for political analysis, and a good-old-boy Louisiana drawl. Pearls of wisdom spilled from his mouth, and many people credit him with being a large part of Clinton’s victories.

Ever since then, whenever the Democratic Party seems to have lost its way, like every moment of the last eighteen months, for example, I wait for the master to speak. When he spoke in March, it was to tell Democrats to lay low. Don’t fight Trump’s attempts to destroy the government, just get out of the way and give him enough rope to hang himself. His approval rating will be way down in the 30 by the end of May.

Was he right? It’s July 21st, and the four most recent polls (CBS, Reuters, AP, and CNN) have Trumps approval at 40-42% and his disapproval rating at 54-58%. Carville was wrong. The numbers may look close, but the low forties is where Trump has spent most of his political career. Interestingly, polls on specific issues are far less favorable. More than 60% of Americans disapprove of the way ICE operates – OpEds are beginning to refer to the pseudo-law enforcement agency as America’s Gestapo.

The Big Ugly Bill polls at about the same level, but Trump’s base doesn’t seem to have made the connection between the harm his actions have caused them and Trump himself. It would be absurd, in terms of national priorities, for the Epstein scandal to be the thing that finally convinces his base that Trump lied to them, but it would also be strangely fitting, given Trump’s life-long relationship with sexual predation.

The Democrats may not have intended to lay back and let Trump run amok, but there’s no evidence that the leaderless, lost Dems did anything to slow him down. In March, Carville begged someone, anyone to end the Democrats’ lack of leadership. In today’s New York Times OpEd, he contradicted that, and then in the same piece contradicted his contradiction.

Today, Carville said the Democrats shouldn’t even think about selecting a leader until after the midterm elections, sixteen months from now. Without saying why, he simply stated that any attempt to select one before then would fail. Then, a few paragraphs later, he said, “Until then, we must run unified in opposition to the Republicans to gain as many House seats as possible in the midterms.”

Huh? How can they run in unified opposition when they don’t have a leader? When even Jim Carville doesn’t make sense, the Democrats’ cause is hopeless. Another thing Carville said was that Democrats should start campaigning immediately, and from now until the midterms, the theme should be a single word: Repeal. Repeal the Ugly Orange Bill. Repeal the Trump tax cuts. Repeal the legislation that’s intended to turn ICE loose on an unsuspecting America, even after the overreach and violation of civil rights that they publicly celebrate.

Carville didn’t say it, but I will. With the Supreme Court telling Trump he can do whatever he wants without ever addressing the legality or constitutionality of his actions, and with not a single Democrat able to gain traction with independent or Republican voters, the midterms are our last hope of surviving Trump with our democracy intact. Democratic state legislatures, who have never abused gerrymandering as badly as Republicans have, are now looking at redistricting, to squeeze every possible seat out of the midterms, but that won’t accomplish anything until a charismatic leader emerges.

The last two successful Democrats, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama both possessed that quality. Neither had much of a track record relating to national politics or world affairs when they ran for president, but they had a positive version of what Trump has. In a country as polarized as the United States is today, it’s scary to say, but the next charismatic idol who comes along is likely to be our next president.

I have hope for the midterms, based on the way independent voters reacted to Trump in the 2018 midterms. But the MAGA machine is a lot more sophisticated now than it was then. Stephen Miller, who drives the most hateful of Trump’s policies, has moved the culture of lies and disregard for the rule of law to a new level, and the Democrats have so far been totally ineffectual in combating that. How does Carville imagine they’re going to win back the House without coordinated leadership?

Just as I was rallying my own optimism for the midterms, I noticed something that could derail our hopes for them. Fifty-three days before the election, we will commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of nine-eleven. Imagine how Trump and MAGA will use that leading into the midterms. I wonder which Arab countries he’ll decide to bomb to show everyone how tough he is.

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Don’t Believe a Word He Says

Posted on July 8, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, July 8, 2025

The tragic flooding in Texas that took so many lives, especially those of innocent children at a summer camp, made it clear, yesterday. The disingenuousness of President Trump’s response would be appalling if it weren’t so typical. First it was White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt responding to criticisms from meteorologists all over the country that Trump’s cuts to NOAA and the National Weather Service had degraded the quality of storm forecasts. Qualified people reported that there are now insufficient staff to launch weather balloons, which are essential for accurate forecasts. A South Florida meteorologist who is a former NWS official has been sounding the warning for months.

Ms. Leavitt, who has a talent for feigning righteous indignation, declared trying to blame Trump for the lack of preparation by local Texas officials was outrageous, asserting that there was no degradation in forecasting capability. You can believe whomever you choose, but my money is on the climate and weather scientists who spent years learning their trade. It turned out that Trump and Elon Musk’s arbitrary slashing hamstrung not only NWS’s ability to forecast, but they seriously curtailed a different NWS service – assuring that local communities under threat of major storms or flooding were notified timely. These things, as we saw in Texas can develop and change drastically in a matter of minutes.

That, apparently, did not happen in the middle of the night in Kerr County, Texas, as flash floods were overwhelming a girls’ summer camp. A day later, federal officials tried to pin the blame on the local sheriff. Aside from the horrible loss of life, this is an indictment of the Trump administration’s whole approach to governing. Slashing and cutting necessary programs, like FEMA, to pay for indefensible tax cuts to billionaires, without having a clue or giving a damn how those cuts might affect or end people’s lives.

But there’s more to be learned from the Texas floods. Trump went on television to deliver a sickeningly saccharine speech, claiming to love the people hurt and killed by the floods. Don’t believe a word he said. I’m sure he cares about how the disaster affects him, but nothing in his character or his history suggests the people’s suffering matters at all to him. It’s an absolute tragedy that 104 lives, mostly children, were lost. But yesterday, EU health officials estimated that the wholesale slaughter of USAID will result in the deaths of more than four million children in third world countries. Do those children have less of a basic right to live because they weren’t born in America?

Whether Trump was unaware of the consequences of killing USAID programs, or he understood perfectly well that he was putting all those children’s life at risk, either way, it makes his phony declaration of love for the people who voted him into office even more nauseating. All he wants is a photo op of him flying around in a helicopter overseeing his flock.

This should be an object lesson. Instead of the National Weather Service, or the Federal Emergency Management Agency, substitute Medicaid, Medicare, or Supplemental Nutrition Assistance. Does Trump give a damn how his cuts will impact the seventeen million people who will lose Mediciad benefits, almost all of whom are mothers, children, and blind or disabled individuals? Does he care about the millions of American childen, most of whom live in the red states that supported him who go without food for most of the day? Of course not – they’re not old enough to be bamboozled into voting for him, and not one of them has nine zeros after their name.

Trump also doesn’t care how many Palestinians die from starvation or bombs. His only interest in post-war Gaza seems to be whether he can build golf resorts along the Mediterranean after throwing two million Palestinians out of their homes. And he cares even less about the gradual destruction of Ukraine. His humiliation of the Volodymyr Zelensky was really a declaration that forty-four million Ukrainians are nothing more that trading chips in his quest to win the admiration of Vladimir Putin.

Trump also couldn’t care less about the families and children trying to escape death and tyranny in Central America, as long as he gets to play tough guy with immigration and send out troops, a big step toward turning America into the autocratic police state he craves.

Never forget that you can’t believe a word that comes out of Trump’s mouth. I wonder if he even understands the concept of truth. To him truth is whatever is required for him to get what he wants, no matter how many people suffer for it.

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Trump and the Nobel Peace Prize

Posted on July 5, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, July 5, 2025

I am both puzzled and flattered by the number of people who ask my opinion about our quixotic, terrifying president. I don’t have any sources of information that they don’t have, and no one from the White House calls me with the latest gossip. I guess it’s just peoples’ mindsets. What I hear most often is, “How did this happen?” or “I never thought this could happen in our country.”

Much of this apparent confusion, the millions of people wandering around with dazed expressions like those deer caught in your headlights, is a direct result of Donald Trump’s deliberate approach to politics, business, and personal relationships. He learned from our most unscrupulous and successful criminals. Lie, cheat, steal, occasionally throw in a truth or two, the overall intention being to create chaos and keep everyone else back on their heels.

“How does he continually get away with it?” I’m asked, and all I can say, is find a good book on human nature. Donald Trump understands some things very well: greed, intimidation, fear, insecurity, and his own narcissistically driven lust for power and dominance. He has an instinct for other people’s weaknesses and vulnerabilities, and he manipulates them ruthlessly. It helps that he possesses not a shred of moral conscience. He’s a sociopath.

And now, he’s decided that his next achievement will be the Nobel Peace Prize. Let’s examine his second term, so far. His huge push on immigration is insensitive, racist, and downright cruel, with its primary goal having nothing to do with immigrants. Rather, the point is to rally those parts of his base who believe his lies about people who flee here from poverty and tyranny, or those who are too lazy to learn the facts for themselves. To them, he’s a hero. To the rest of us, he’s simply a disgusting human being.

The same goes for his Big Beautiful Bill, which he passed through intimidation by his billionaire friends who want everyone in Congress to believe that their money can defeat them when they run to keep their seats, which only works because they are as craven as Trump himself is. The bill was just another example of trying blow up the established order so his henchmen can rush in and steal what they want while changing the rules to favor them in the future.

About that Peace Prize. This is classic Trump. He has encouraged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to do whatever he wanted to in response to the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas. Let me be clear: Hamas is a terrorist organization of the most despicable kind. I have no sympathy for them, and as agents of murder and destruction, they deserve everything they get. But just as the rest of the world doesn’t blame 300 million Americans for Trump, despite the fact that we elected him, we must be cognizant of the death, maiming, and starvation of thousands of civilians in Gaza. Yes, two million Palestinians chose Hamas to lead them, but they were subject to even more hate propaganda than Trump’s base was.

The only reason Trump is in a position to broker a cease fire is that he made Israel totally dependent on being re-supplied as the war ground on. Trump couldn’t care less how many Palestinian children are killed or have the rest of their lives ruined. If he threatens, now, to withhold weaponry that would allow Netanyahu to continue his war, he’ll probably get his ceasefire, but he will also have been the one who allowed the humanitarian catastrophe to get to this point by ignoring everyone else’s pleas for restraint. Trump is as responsible as anyone for creating the disaster that exists today in Gaza, much of which has little to do with Hamas. Threatening to turn off the flow of weapons does not make him a peacemaker.

His actions with respect to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have been far worse. The war has raged for more than three years mostly because Trump has winked at Putin, letting him know that he will do nothing to stop the invasion even if it means the dissolution of NATO, if only Vladimir will show him the love and respect he craves. The destruction of Ukraine’s beautiful cities, the diaspora of millions of innocent civilians fleeing Russian bombs could have been stopped long ago, if Trump cared about anything but himself.

Does this man deserve a Nobel Peace Prize?

What he deserves is to be held accountable for his crimes, among which is the attempted overthrow of our Constitution. Let’s not forget the lengths Trump has gone to to stay in power. His is the most immoral administration of my lifetime, and Trump himself is the most dangerous person on Earth.

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Lies and Other Trumpisms

Posted on June 28, 2025 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, June 28, 2025

There’s an important part of Trump’s repertoire, whose central theme is creating chaos and then swooping onto the scene like a vulture, claiming to be a hero because he cleaned up the mess he created, that’s largely unnoticed. Others have used it, but not even close to the extent that Trump does.

Gerald Ford relished his comical meme of a clumsy oaf who kept tripping over things, despite being in the University of Michigan’s football Hall of Honor. Ronald Reagan liked to pretend he was just an average guy who didn’t know much, because it appealed to people to see a politician who looked like them. George W. Bush did it with his six-shooter-totin’ cowboy approach to diplomacy, also designed to make him look like a regular guy. Dan Quayle did it, dumbing down his intellectual prowess to pretend he was a bumbling idiot when it suited him – do you think he really couldn’t spell “tomatoes?”

In Donald Trump, among other things, we have a president who goes out of his way to look stupid, but don’t be fooled, he’s not. Yesterday was a perfect example. He was making his despicable argument against birthright citizenship, which is nothing more than an attempt to head off the trend that America was in danger of becoming majority non-white. There are some dates that every American who went to school knows as well as their own names. The years 1776, 1812, 1861, 1929, 1941, 1945, and 2001 (nine-eleven) all have enough special significance to Americans that we instantly recall what event each refers to. Does anyone reading this not know that the Civil War ended in 1865? Give him credit – Donald Trump is a well-practiced clown of the most sinister kind, and far better at pretending to be a bumbling idiot than Dan Quayle ever was.

His entire public persona is based on deliberate lies and misdirection. Some of it is intentionally aimed at his base, whom he sees as stupid enough to buy anything he says, not to mention contributing hundreds of millions of dollars to his campaigns that most of them can ill afford, and much of which winds up in Trump’s pockets.

Trump claimed, the other day, that he had just signed a trade deal with China, while failing to mention that it only involved critical rare earth minerals which are vital enough to both countries, they prompted Trump to threaten to steal Greenland from ally Denmark and strong-arm Volodymyr Zelensky to hand Ukraine’s over to the United States in return for defending him against Russia, a tease Trump appears to be reneging on. There is still no deal that addresses broader trade issues with China, like tariffs, supply chains, and taxing American corporations for manufacturing their products in other countries to increase profits.

He has alienated our most stalwart ally, Canada, whose citizens overwhelmingly voted, last week, to abandon trade talks with the Trump administration and seek deals with partners who treat them with respect. He continues to claim that he cares about his base, yet he fights for tariff policies that hurt American farmers, champion a billionaire tax cut that takes money out of his base’s pockets, and treats the elimination of health care for more than ten million Americans as a normal part of doing business.

He very deliberately equates families fleeing tyranny and murder with hardened criminals and drug traffickers. By now, the entire country understands that MAGA is so desperate to ensure that non-white people don’t one-day dominate our elections, they’re willing to arrest innocent, hard-working people who only want a safe place to raise their children and deport those same people back to the horror show they left, while simultaneously causing severe financial harm to millions of small businesses that depend on those people to work.

Trump’s stupid lies, like claiming the fourteenth amendment was intended to assure that babies of freed slaves were citizens, are truly offensive. They imply that Americans have no idea what their Constitution says, although that amendment has been in the spotlight throughout both of his terms as president. It’s an appeal to the anger and frustration of people who struggle every day and need someone to blame. Trump’s message is, “I can do any damn thing I want and no one can touch me.” The dangerous subtext is “so can you.” Have we forgotten January 6, 2021?

Congress has a chance to cut through Trump’s bullshit by stopping his Big Beautiful Bill and passing a new war powers act. People in our government who understand the value of our alliances and mutual defense treaties, including the Joint Chiefs and our senior diplomats, have a chance to reign in the destruction of our image around the world. If someone doesn’t stand up to Trump’s strongman tactics soon, he’ll win, and all of us will lose.

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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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