No matter who occupies the White House with their fingers on the nuclear trigger, the problem is not the individual human in charge, but the system which empowers them. Both the best and the worst US presidents reveal the essential problem that the vast economic and military power of the United States of America is too enormous to be left in the hands of one individual.

Let’s examine the regime of John F. Kennedy, widely considered to be the greatest US president since World War 2. Romanticized as Camelot, Kennedy’s presidency is regarded as a time of optimism and hope, of peace and prosperity, of rule by ‘the best and the brightest.’ Yet JFK brought the world to the brink of nuclear war during the Cuban missile crisis, when humanity came closer than ever to global catastrophe. Jack Kennedy also initiated the largest chemical war in history, euphemistically named ‘Agent Orange.’ Using dioxin, one of the deadliest chemicals known to humans, he ordered widespread defoliation of the Vietnamese countryside, seeking to deny the ‘enemy’ cover. As a result, several million civilians and thousands of American soldiers continue to suffer serious health issues like leukemia, lymphoma and cancers.

Without Jack's eloquence or Jackie's tact, the current occupants of the White House would be uncultured and ill-educated. They are backward-facing miscreants who dishonor the Earth and debase human dignity. Obsessed with wealth and power, they have openly plagiarized Michelle Obama’s speech, their children hunt protected ducks in the lagoons of Venice, and they treat Palestinian genocide as an inconvenient hindrance to real estate development on the Mediterranean coast. They have appointed the ‘worst and the witless’ to high positions of power.

Their vision to make America ‘great again’ is akin to Hitler’s quest to build a new German empire, a ‘Third Reich,’ and to Mussolini’s pledge to restore the ancient glory of Roman world supremacy. ‘Make America Great Again’ explicitly turns to a glorified past, a promise of supremacy based upon an idealization of Euro-American culture, whose crimes punctuate world history. The centuries-long decline of Italy and Germany from their imperial heights was specific historical conditions that paved the way for fascism and Nazism in the 20^th century.

Today, the decline of the USA and Europe from the world’s sole center of power is so readily apparent that even the slogan ‘Make America Great Again’ acknowledges that the USA is no longer great. China’s rise and the US decline are so steep that both Democrats and Republicans fall over each other as they rush to surround China with military outposts and blockade its economy. The rise of China is no abstraction. In the past three decades, China lifted more than 700 million people out of absolute poverty, an astonishing three-fourths of the global reduction in the number of people on the edge of survival. Despite frantic efforts by both Democrats and Republicans to stop China’s ascendancy, little can be done to reclaim the leading role of the USA. Indeed, the international standing of the USA and 'Israel' is falling precipitously. The world’s people have witnessed the American-Israeli war machine attack Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen. As the Gaza Holocaust is celebrated by the evil clown in the White House, the world’s peoples look in horror at his 'Israel'-first policy and celebration of unbridled military policy.

So misguided is Trump’s economic understanding that he is actually helping China’s rise. He has purposely weakened the dollar by imposing steep import tariffs. Little does he understand that his tariffs are unwittingly aiding China in capturing an even larger share of global trade and manufacturing. On a fool’s errand to make the US once again the world’s foremost manufacturing center, he promises foreign governments tariff reductions for goods they build in the US. Wages in the USA are so much higher than most other places, products manufactured here will be prohibitively expensive--unless American workers suffer drastic cuts in their wages. Trump’s war against universities already costs the contributions of thousands of researchers. His anti-intellectual attacks will negatively impact universities’ finances. By compelling tens of thousands of foreign students to leave the USA, he will certainly hinder the future global reach of American culture. He may believe that cutting millions of dollars in research grants will save money, but is also harming long-term innovations in the USA. Here again, he contributes to Chinese supremacy in AI and other new technologies.

Using a slim mandate in the 2024 elections (he won only 32% of those eligible to vote, a lower percentage than Hitler received in 1933), he threatens Panama to control its canal and proposes Greenland be absorbed by the US. Empowering federal agents to implement racist roundups, he sent government agents to occupy Los Angeles and treat migrants like animals. He cut budgets so widely for all agencies concerned with global warming that weather forecasters in Texas failed to warn of the recent flood that killed more than one hundred people. His cuts to aviation safety will result in more deadly crashes. During the elections, he hid his genocidal intent to murder Palestinians, but his open support for 'Israel' and his bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites already rivals Kennedy’s nuclear brinkmanship.

Make no mistake about it. The dangers posed by tens of millions of fanatical evangelicals who embrace Trump with blind enthusiasm are yet to be fully realized.  He has long toyed with the idea of staying in power beyond 2028 in spite of the constitutional prohibition. His ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ is a direct attack on the poorest people in the USA. The longer MAGA policies dominate, the more economic insecurity will abound. When his cuts to Medicaid come into effect after the Congressional elections in 2026, millions of people will lose their health care. The majority of people will be compelled to work longer hours, for more years, and for less money. 

The corporate aristocracy’s disregard for equality punishes poor people to further enhance elite privilege. After buying admission for a mere million dollars each, Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg and other new aristocrats obsequiously lined up at Trump’s inauguration, like Prussian landowners and German industrialists who pampered Hitler. Altogether, Trump raised $239 million for his celebration of his second ascendancy to the world’s most powerful position. This observation simply concerns the immorality of the new aristocracy’s great wealth, not a political solution for their greed.

Long ago, esteemed historian Barrington Moore painstakingly came to the conclusion that fascism in Germany, Italy and Japan was essentially rule by aristocracies in the 20^th century. Unlike France, these three countries had failed to produce revolutions overthrowing feudalism. According to Moore, the guillotine executions of two thousand French aristocrats probably saved France from becoming fascist in the 20^th century, a small price to pay when compared with the millions sacrificed on the altar of making German, Italy and Japan great again.

Today’s new aristocracy may believe ‘technofeudalism’ is somehow innovative and technologically advanced, but it is still rule by an aristocracy. Their dream is eternal and unlimited power, a quest that necessitates disregard of basic democratic principles like equality and justice. If the elite’s notion of ‘freedom’ as ‘freedom for the rich’ does not fall apart because of their own stupidity and arrogance, how can their power and wealth be diminished?

They are so fearful of an eruption of a popular movement that they have already legislated extreme restrictions on free speech. At the same moment as they espouse support for ‘freedom of speech,’ they destroy such freedom for anyone supporting the human rights of Palestinians. Without public deliberation, they have distorted the meaning of anti-Semitism to make even peaceful criticism of 'Israel' into criminal behavior. They have successfully redefined ‘anti-Semitism’ as criticism of 'Israel', when in fact, it is a specific form of racism, not a political perspective. To be sure, the new oligarchs’ anti-Semitism is murderously enforced in a new form, namely against Semitic Palestinians, who suffer daily massacres in Gaza while the western world cheers on the sidelines. Popular rejection of Trump’s policies is so robust that Zohran Mamdani recently won the New York City mayoral primary while running against MAGA and genocide. Demagogue that he is, Trump responded by playing to people’s fears of immigrants and threatened to deport Mamdani for ‘anti-Semitism.’

On the heels of their unquestioning support of a Zionist state, the corporate aristocracy has compelled the ‘Israelization’ of the world. Not so long ago, we were able to greet our incoming loved ones at terminal gates. Today airports have become high security zones where body searches and surplus repression abounds. Public space is increasingly spied upon and monitored. Have people ever agreed to lose basic freedoms in exchange for arming a rogue state to the teeth and abetting it to commit genocide? How much longer will Americans tolerate high security measures imposed on their space as a result of "Israel’s" influence on US policies?

We may fantasize about the guillotine and preserving democracy in the 21^st century, but who could do it? Surely the new aristocracy has stolen the vast wealth produced by previous generations and deserves to be held accountable, but by whom? The popularity enjoyed by Luigi Mangione, assassin of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO, indicates widespread approval for punishment of corporate greed. Long ago, psychologist Frantz Fanon uncovered the joy of oppressed people when they confront their tormentors. Mangione’s action has unleashed feelings of happiness among many other victims of UnitedHealthcare, but what will be the outcome of his individual act of justice?

To rid the world of Hitler, Tojo, and Mussolini, it took a great war at the cost of tens of millions of lives. Must a similar international effort be needed to topple US domination? I certainly hope not. If properly nurtured and widely propagated, existing initiatives for a global boycott of the US and 'Israel' might be a path to avoid a global military conflict. If governments and individuals resolutely refuse to buy and sell to the USA and 'Israel', how long could their domination continue? A worldwide boycott like that mounted against South African apartheid could prevent future wars. Beyond such non-violent means, how could the rule of the new global aristocracy be ended?

Although it may appear that Trump and the MAGA faithful have won the day, history has its own cunning that carries us along strange and mysterious paths. "Israel’s" very ‘success’ prepares the subjective conditions for the isolation and global rejection of the current genocidal apartheid regime. When the world’s peoples join hands in a concerted effort to compel 'Israel' and the US to behave without murderous ill-will, humanity would take a giant leap forward.