America has entered a new era.
We no longer "speak softly and carry a big stick."
We now speak loudly and blow up tiny boats.
We no longer have a Department of Defense.
We have a Department of War.
How did we get here?
After dropping two atomic bombs on Japan in 1945, America decided that it no longer needed to wave its "big stick" in people's faces like a drunken Brett Kavanaugh at a frat party.
In 1947, Congress went "woke" (according the Trump retelling) and dissolved the Department of War in a process that, by 1949, birthed the Department of Defense.
For three quarters of a century, the world's great powers recognized that, in an age of "mutually assured destruction," it was best to: a) Be highly disciplined in matters of diplomacy; b) Strengthen alliances while maintaining deterrence; and: c) Not to be in "warrior mode" all the time.
Today, the US war machine is high-volume, performative, ALL-CAPS
In the pre-Trump world order, the basic idea was that hotheads and loudmouths were only permitted to run countries if those countries didn't have nuclear weapons.
In the Trump age, stupidity reigns.
The MAGA version of "masculinity" is, like Dear Leader himself, mentally feeble, morally bankrupt and totally childish.
Throughout his life, "Cadet Bone Spurs" has always been happy to send "losers and suckers" to fight America's wars so he and his family wouldn't have to.
When Trump was elected in 2016, he was still wondering what was the point of having nuclear weapons if you were too scared to use them.
So far, he's restrained his desire to start launching nukes — although he had to be talked out of dropping them into hurricanes.
But Trump really does like blowing things — and people — up.
Within three months of taking office in 2017, he became the first president to drop the "mother of all bombs."
In June 2025, Trump tried to mask his failure to contain Iraq's nuclear program with "Operation Midnight Hammer" — immediately claiming that the attack had "totally obliterated" three nuclear facilities. In reality, Iran's nuclear ambitions were set back only by months.
Just this week, Trump unlawfully blew up a boat off the coast of Venezuela, footage of which he used as social media content.
Trump is always provoking, always distracting, always signaling his intentions
Trump's whole life has been about selling the Trump name as a brand.
His approach has always been that of a mass-marketer using simple slogans or catchphrases and repeating them often, from "The Art of the Deal" to "You're Fired" to "Make America Great Again" to "Crooked Hillary" to making us tired of the word "Winning."
Now that he's selling himself as a "strongman" not a CEO, Trump's rebranding of the Department of Defense as the "Department of War" is as scary as it is simplistic.
Whereas "defense" implies restraint, "war" implies action — and lethal force.
Whereas a "Department of Defense" could logically be sent to defend a city, a "Department of War" is called upon only to defeat an enemy.
In the new Trump framing, if the military becomes a constant on US streets, America will be in a permanent state of war with itself.
For a president who has already identified many supposed "enemies" within the US — journalists, Democratic politicians, late-night comedians, university professors, judges, jurors, student activists — normalizing the use of troops is both a strategy to tighten his authoritarian grip on the country and a convenient distraction from the still-percolating Trump-Epstein scandal.
Trump even used a military flyover in DC this week to intimidate and temporarily silence the victims who were repeatedly invoking his name as they demanded an end to the Epstein cover-up.
When it comes to the military, Trump, like a Bond villain, is not afraid to reveal his intentions out loud. He often tells us what's ahead (and what he expects his supporters to do for him) in social media posts and seemingly casual or jokey comments. "A lot of people are saying, ‘Maybe we like a dictator,'" he said to reporters on August 25.
This is Trump's most powerful — and his weakest — moment
Like the Wizard of Oz before the curtain gets pulled back, Trump the politician seems invincible. He's a 21st-century strongman — pre-absolved of all crimes by a corrupt Supreme Court, enabled by a party of grifters, cowards and true believers — driving the seemingly unstoppable steamroller of fascism that's currently burying American democracy under a thick layer of suffocating asphalt.
Personally, though, he's disintegrating before our eyes. He's a mentally feeble con artist in a state of accelerating physical collapse — desperately trying to cover up the kind of sex crimes even his most ardent supporters won't forgive him for.
On one hand, Trump acts like a dementia patient in a garbageman outfit mumbling about going to heaven even as the steamroller he's driving is weaving like Mel Gibson at a sobriety checkpoint. On the other, in his moments of clarity, he's still willing to do whatever it takes to destroy the evidence and conceal the truth about the crimes that would soil his legacy.
Above all, Trump is anxious to retain the support of the cultish followers who elected him — and whose support he may still need in the war ahead.
Because Trump is not looking to defend America. He's looking to defeat all enemies, real and perceived, both foreign and domestic.
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