by TOM ENGELHARDT
Making (Non)Sense of Donald Trump, or the Success of Failure
Yes, “shock and awe” is back in the second age of Donald Trump. His border czar, Tom Homan, used that very phrase to describe border policy from day one of the new administration and, whether the president has actually said it or not, it’s now regularly in headlines, op-eds, and so much else. If you remember, it was the phrase used, in all its glory, to describe America’s massive bombing and invasion of Iraq in 2003. (You remember! The country that supposedly threatened us with nuclear weapons but, in fact, didn’t have any!)
We Americans were, of course, going to shock and awe them. But from that moment on (if not from the moment, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, when, rather than simply going after Osama bin Laden and crew, President George W. Bush launched a full-scale invasion of Afghanistan), you could say that it was we who were truly shocked and awed. After all, in their own disastrous fashion, our post-9/11 wars prepared the way for… yes!… Donald Trump to take the White House the first time around (shock and awe!) — and then blame the final disastrous retreat of the American military from Afghanistan in 2021 on the Biden administration. (“Kamala Harris, Joe Biden — the humiliation in Afghanistan set off the collapse of American credibility and respect all around the world.”) And of course, four years later, his reelection on a functional platform of Trump First, Americans Last, was distinctly a double shock and awe!
And if you’ll excuse my being thoroughly repetitious, that was — or at least should have been seen as — the true definition of shock and awe. Donald Trump! Twice! Even now, can you truly take it in? In fact, more or less every moment since his reelection victory in November 2024 has been — pardon me for the turn of phrase — a first-class S&A experience.
And — shock, if not awe — I haven’t even mentioned Elon Musk yet, have I? I mean, who can take him in either? The richest man on Planet Earth (S&A!) and, at least until President Trump levied those massive tariffs on our three major trading partners (only to partially back off soon after), still making money hand over fist (wrist, pissed?) — about $224 billion extra dollars (S&A!) just between the November 2024 election victory of Donald Trump and the moment he actually took power again in January 2025 — at the expense of the rest of us. Meanwhile, he’s been more or less running this country (into the ground) hand in glove with Donald Trump, who, by the way, is already talking about a possible third term in office! (“They say I can’t run again; that’s the expression… Then somebody said, I don’t think you can. Oh.”) Now, wouldn’t that be an all-American S&A first (or do I mean last?)!
An MMMW World
Phew, I’m already out of breath and exclamation points! No surprise there, of course, given the awesomely shocking and shockingly Trumpified (or do I mean Muskratted?) world we’re now living in and dealing with.
Tom’s Dispatch for more