What America’s barely-elected president is trying to do to Ukraine and the world order is a disgrace. Most Americans are horrified. Even as Donald Trump, Elon Musk and Vladmir Putin conspire to force their naked oligarchy on the world, most of us have grandparents who remember how fascism works, and we don’t like strongmen. As our hearts break for Ukraine, America, and every democracy now fighting for its life, millions of people have reached out to President Zelenskyy in solemn solidarity. Democracy is under threat around the globe, and, though it took longer than it should have, the educated half of the US is finally paying attention.
We know Putin is a KGB-trained thug who disappears his critics, and that Trump admires him for it; we also know that Trump keeps declaring national emergencies to give his criminally unqualified Secretary of Defense on-the-job training. Secretary Pete Hegseth, a former Fox News host with white supremacy ink all over his body, needs to learn early which military commanders will go along with Trump’s second violent coup, and which ones he needs to terminate (or worse).
