There’s a great scene in “Lawrence of Arabia” when Peter O’Toole’s Lawrence comes back from battle and meets with Gen. Edmund Allenby, his British superior in Cairo.
The bookish Lawrence tells Allenby he executed an Arab ally with his pistol and, “There was something about it I didn’t like.”
Allenby reassures him that his distaste is to be expected.
“No, something else,” Lawrence explains. “I enjoyed it.”
Donald Trump was always an impresario of chaos. He told me that when violence broke out at his rallies, it added sizzle to the proceedings. He seemed proud of the anarchy and bloodshed in his name on Jan. 6.
Yet he wasn’t that keen on military adventurism, even though he liked military parades. He came to see W.’s imperialism in Iraq as “a big, fat mistake.” He thought our occupations of Muslim countries were a waste of time and money. He was more into deals than invasions, dreaming of beachfront hotels rising in North Korea and the Gaza Strip.
But now, in his second term, he’s morphed into Donald of Deliria. He’s mad to make the military do his bidding.
‘I got power, too’
At a White House ceremony Thursday honoring the Florida Panthers, the Stanley Cup champions, Trump mused about the players flanking him: “Young, beautiful people. I hate them. You hate standing here with all this power behind you. But I got power, too. It’s called the United States military. I don’t care.”
Trump Redux is infatuated with drone strikes and airstrikes, tumescent with the power of the world’s greatest military, hungry to devour the hemisphere in one imperialistic gulp. He plucked the dictator of Venezuela out of his compound to plunder that country’s oil. He’s threatening Iran with military action. He demands that protesters in Iran not be killed, while stoking tension against protesters in Minnesota.
He has infuriated Denmark, formerly one of the most pro-American countries in Europe, by warning he will strike a deal to get Greenland “the easy way” or will get it “the hard way.” He said Saturday that he would slap tariffs on nations that resist his effort to grab Greenland. His belittling boasts about swallowing Canada helped drive our nicest neighbor into the arms of China.
Donald of Deliria is wallowing in brute force.
He told Reuters that “we shouldn’t even have an election” because his administration had accomplished so much. But in a new CNN poll, most respondents called Trump’s second term a “failure” so far. Imperialism is ever so much easier than affordability.
He has already ratcheted up a horrifying military-style occupation of Minneapolis. Pouring gasoline on a raging fire, as always, he mulls over invoking the Insurrection Act of 1807 to send troops there.
As the daughter of a cop, I am sympathetic to the split-second life-and-death decisions the police have to make. But Jonathan Ross, the ICE officer who shot and shot and shot Renee Good as she was trying to drive away, tragically overreacted — then called her a “fucking bitch.” He could have stepped aside and caught up with her later, since he had her license plate.
As a Times story pointed out, Ross, formerly a National Guard member deployed to Iraq, embodies the post-9/11 militarization of border enforcement, a “high-risk approach that favors counterinsurgency-style aggression over careful policing.”
Rahm Emanuel said on CNN that scenes of masked ICE agents with no body cameras roughing up people have become such a disturbing part of the American landscape that the agency as we know it will have to end.
“ICE has become a lawless mob rather than law enforcement under President Trump,” he said.
When Times reporters asked the president in an interview whether there were any limits on his power, he replied, “My own morality, my own mind.” God help us all.
Combustible combo
It’s chilling when you combine Trump’s stupefying greed with all the power in the world.
It’s almost quaint to look at the misrule of W. and Cheney. At least they made up some highfalutin’ cover story about bringing democracy to the Middle East, when the real story was closer to daddy issues for W. and a Halliburton windfall for Cheney.
Trump’s entire doctrine is naked rapacity, from Venezuela to hijacking the Kennedy Center to hideously remaking the White House in his own gaudy image.
A fake peace prize from FIFA wasn’t enough for him. The greedy little piggy was licking his lips as María Corina Machado, Venezuela’s opposition leader, curried favor by handing over her Nobel Peace Prize on Thursday. Pathetically, Trump accepted it, giving Machado a swag bag in return that included a medal with his picture on it.
The Panthers presented Trump with two championship rings, a jersey that said “Trump 47” and a gold hockey stick.
“That stick looks beautiful,” said the gilt aficionado, fearing the jersey would be his only swag. “Maybe I get both. Who the hell knows? I’m president. I’ll just take them.”
Maureen Dowd is a columnist at The New York Times.
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