By Philip Yeung
Of all the hills to die on, America has chosen Donald Trump. Soon, if the chaos continues to fester, America's adversaries will be dancing on its grave. Under Trump, the absurdities, vulgarities, and animosities keep boiling over. In the latest display of bizarre bad taste, 800-plus US generals and admirals were summoned from around the world by its Secretary of War to Washington for an urgent meeting. No-shows were considered AWOLS. At a big slice of its military budget, this pow-wow stinks with the smell of gunpowder.
People began to wonder whether another war might be on the horizon. Or did horny Hegseth want a mass sex orgy before World War III? Why the urgency? Why the global gathering of generals at such short notice? What if a virus were to wipe out the collective American top military leadership? Something earth-shattering must be in the cards.
But what an anticlimax! The ugly truth was spat out from the war minister's incontinent mouth or his itchy behind. Instead of announcing another military misadventure, Hegseth dressed down this august assemblage of military top brass, hectoring them on weeding out the fat, the woke, or those wearing a beard.
One might ask in retort: what about fat and senile presidents or war ministers suffering from verbal diarrhea? This is an expensive lecture on how to look soldier-like, with the insult spiced up by a lowly former major, way down the military totem pole. It might be Hegseth's moment in the limelight. But the sullen silence of the generals tells another story.
Act-two was Trump, pouring salt on the angry wounds. He was blunt and in-your-face: if the generals don't like what he says, they can either leave or lose their ranks and their future. Predictably, with paychecks on the line, not a squeak or syllable from the generals. But you can bet that as soon as they are out of earshot of the blond buffoon, f-bombs will be dropping all over the camp. Trump wants his generals to use crowd-controlling American cities as training grounds to sharpen the US military's use of deadly force. Is that a prelude to endless civil war?
America is edging close to lunacy, forcing generals to live on their knees. Under the Donald, unquestioning loyalty to the president trumps all else. Friends and foes of the US can take comfort, if this is how America treats its top commanders.
The Trump administration has retired the word "respect" from its dictionary. It is a government run by bullies and hollow-headed ass-kissers whose only job is to massage their leader's ego. At cabinet meetings, one by one, cowed ministers took turns brown-nosing Trump in nauseating fashion, genuflecting before an emperor with no clothes. And yet, Trump's fan base remains rock-solid at 40% of the American electorate.
You don't need a Chinese fortune-teller to predict that the bitterly divided American empire is going to the dogs.
The signs that America is on a slippery slope are everywhere.
Its leader lies through his teeth, cheats at golf, taxes, and in business---a convicted serial criminal bragging about "grabbing women's pussy", defunding elite universities, and slapping a hefty US$100,000 on H1B visa apiece. Meanwhile, the US is sending bombs and bullets to kill tens of thousands of innocent civilians in Gaza, whose genocide America owns as an enabler of Israeli atrocities.
Netanyahu, strangely, acts entirely without fear of Trump. Could it be that the Israeli convicted war criminal, like Russia's Putin, has Trump in his back pocket because he has the goods on his dirty, sociopathic, and salacious past? With the whole world denouncing this mass slaughter in Gaza, America has repeatedly vetoed UN resolutions calling for an immediate ceasefire. There is no other plausible explanation.
The international rule-based order is no more. The UN has been castrated; diplomacy is dead. Back in the US, its comedians are facing the axe for poking fun at their unhinged president. America isn't even allowed to laugh anymore.
The latest sign of America's moral collapse is in the Ryder Cup golf tournament between the US and Europe. European players were mercilessly taunted by local fans, with the wife of its leading player hit by a beer can, while the poor man himself was drowning in a torrent of homophobic slurs. This avalanche of abuse was meant to rattle European golfers to help the home team win dirty. It was ugly America at its ugliest. They are certified Trump cultists.
Golf is supposed to be a gentleman's game. But these white hooligans are undisguised, beastly rednecks. So much for making America great again.
On the other side of the Pacific, genteel China is celebrating the 76th anniversary of the birth of the People's Republic. Its people don't die at the hands of trigger-happy cops. There are no weekly or daily mass shootings, and no one is sleeping rough. Nor is there organized looting of shops and supermarkets. Its streets are safe in the dead of night. Proportionately, in terms of population size, America has five times China's prison population. While China is gleefully opening up its borders to foreign visitors, America is closing its gates and building walls to keep foreigners out while indiscriminately deporting people of color.
Which country is a dark and dystopian state now? It is not China.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.
Read more articles by Philip Yeung:
Opinion | China's secret of success--internationalization
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