Tag Archives: donald-trump

Serious Reflections on Mr. Trumps Soliloquy Concerning Electoral Fraud

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Mr. Trump may be vile and corrupt but he is not always wrong or wrong about everything although he certainly tends to distort reality viciously, even when he has a scintilla of a point. 

For example, his allegations about electoral fraud are not without foundation.  There are clearly ineligible voters registered to vote in the United States and elsewhere, although how many is not clear.  And many of the suggestions in the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act have merit, indeed, many of the safeguards are staples of electoral systems all over the world although the United States federal system, coupled with the antipathy in the United States to a uniform form of national identity card, makes implementation problematic.

However, a much more serious related problem, one apparently being exploited by Israel and perhaps others (including diverse intelligence agencies all over the world), involves an insidious form of identity theft, i.e., where eligible voters who do not normally vote but whose votes are sometimes cast nonetheless, without their knowledge or consent, drastically impact electoral results.  There is purportedly evidence that companies with access to electoral data trace such non-voters and make related information available to diverse governments and entrepreneurial enterprises, facilitating electoral fraud.

The indicia is a large and anomalous increase in voting volume in favor of the victorious candidate, one that then wins by small margins as recently occurred all over Latin America and may have occurred in the 2020 United States elections.  Given the political disinterest of those whose “votes” are cast without their knowledge or authority, such tactic is almost impossible to prove or even detect other than on a macro level, and the law generally does not accept that kind of proof.  And when those charged with electoral integrity are involved, no investigations take place, complaints being dismissed on technical grounds. 

That seems to be the new electoral norm everywhere.  Of course, the foregoing observation is labelled, at best, as a “conspiracy theory” although it is clear that it is really more than just a working hypothesis.   When added to the reality that abuse of social media to circulate massive amounts of false information, scientifically timed for optimal electoral results is rampant, it seems obvious that “democracy” has become even more of a non sequitur than usual.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2026; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.  Image copyright New York Times.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet and aspiring empirical philosopher) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

New Warnings Fresh from the Echoes of Trojan Princess Cassandra’s Dystopic Visions, Israeli Edition

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On January 10, 2026, at 10:55 a.m., EDST, ToI Staff and Jacob Magid of the Times of Israel reported that “Israel had warned the United States that Iran devised a new plot to assassinate Trump”.[1]

Just how stupid does Israel think the majority of people in the United States are? 

Well, given the probable truth behind the assassination of JFK, the destruction of the Twin Towers, the “Six Day War, the Nakba, etc., very stupid indeed.  And the Israeli leadership has a point.  So much so that it is brazenly adding a new element to its hoped for total destruction of Iran.

First, Israeli leadership talked Donald J. Trump into going on an assassination spree in Iran, a frequent Mossad tactic but this time engaged in on an industrial scale using the United States as the weapon.  Then, Netanyahu terrified Mr. Trump (like Mr. Netanyahu, he’s not very brave unless heavily protected or in a bunker) by whispering into his ear that such actions might have consequences.  Horrors, tit for tat.  But, then again, speaking of tits, the United States and its tax payers have been providing Israel with all it wants for three quarters of a century.

Sooo, by claiming that if Mr. Trump is assassinated it will have been the Iranians’ who were  responsible, Israel’s leaders have apparently set in a motion a plan where United States retaliation will implement the Greater Israel project at little or no cost to the Israeli state (as occurred in Iraq and Libya and Syria, etc.).  Which in turn means that should that occur, it will probably have been Israel that orchestrated the assassination, whether or not it was actually Israelis who carried it out (think Twin Towers); especially with a cadre of United States politicians whose loyalty is to Israel ready to replace Mr. Trump, perhaps permanently, given Israeli success in electoral manipulation all over the world.

Something to bear in mind as Israel once again collectively cries wolf (think antisemitism and holocaust) while it sort of pretends to dress in (slaughtered) sheep’s clothing.

Apologies for all the parentheticals (for some reason, they just seemed appropriate).
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2026; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet and aspiring empirical philosopher) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

[1] The article, “Israel reportedly warned US that Iran devised a new plot to assassinate Trump” can be accessed at https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-reportedly-warned-us-that-iran-devised-a-new-plot-to-assassinate-trump/.

Of Fractured Constitutions and Cultural Realities

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I firmly believe that if any president of the United States has ever deserved to be impeached, it would be Donald J. Trump.  He has made high crimes and misdemeanors an art form, primarily those crimes declared to be against humanity at Nuremburg, and he has also rendered the Constitution of the United States a nonsensical decoration.  The latter has impacted the entire system of governance, especially the ill-named Department of Justice.  His claim that he is responsible to no authority other than his own sense of what is moral defines a “dictator”, not in the classical Roman sense, but in the sense of a Führer, perhaps reflective of his German ancestry.  Having said that however, the concept of impeachment has been rendered an abusive and incoherent political football, and not just by the Democratic Party’s two ludicrous impeachments of Mr. Trump during his first term of office but by the equally ludicrous impeachment of William Jefferson Clinton by the Republicans in the 1990s and even by the impeachment of Andrew Johnson following the Civil War.  It is a case of maniacal boys and girls somehow elected to the United States House of Representatives who have been crying wolf for so long that the wolves have taken over.  And if Mr. Trump deserves impeachment for his unconscionable and unconstitutional actions during his second term, what of the Congress that on, a bipartisan basis, has refused to assume its responsibilities, not only with respect to war powers, but with respect to real governmental oversight.  Today’s government oversight hearings are merely polarizing public spectacles of the bread and circus variety, without the bread.  And our judiciary, meant to assure that the foregoing would not occur is and since at least 2013 has been a politicized mess with no respect for laws.

On April 10 of this year, 2026, retired Judge Andrew Napolitano, formerly a conservative commentator on Fox News, published an interesting article[1].  Interesting not only because of its substance but because of its style, one reminiscent of Martin Luther’s ninety-five theses and of the method employed by Socrates millennia ago to enlighten his pupils.  It was entirely comprised of questions.  Questions worth reading and questions on which profound reflection is merited.  Questions, in a sense, somehow related to my introductory observations.  The realities reflected in my introductory paragraph and in Judge Napolitano’s article[2] make two things obvious: neither our democracy nor our constitution are functional.  Sacred, yes, just as “Holy Scripture” is sacred to many, but not to be taken seriously.  And they’re not taken seriously.  Neither Holy Scriptures nor our current Constitution, one rendered incoherent through sometimes idealistic but ill-conceived amendments[3].

So, what’s to be done? 

My suggestion, one I and others have made for over half a century, is one political parties of all stripes find anathema[4], the one thing they all agree cannot take place, a new constitutional convention.  They abhor the concept because they uniformly agree that the People assembled as the principal and primary constituent, assembled as “We the People”, cannot be trusted, regardless of platitudes such as “sovereignty resides in and emanates from the People”.  However, our Founding Fathers did provide a mechanism for such an eventuality, one they provided in the Constitution itself.  In relevant part, Article V of the United States Constitutions states “… on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, [Congress] shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which … shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes as Part of this Constitution when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress….”. 

As of early 2026, the movement for a state sponsored constitutional convention, one technically known as an Article V convention, had gained significant momentum with the project having been adopted by legislatures in 20 states. To trigger the first-ever Article V convention in U.S. history, 34 states must pass “matching resolutions on the same topic”, 14 more need to do so.  The following are the most likely 14 states to join the project: Iowa (passed in one chamber previously); Wyoming (passed in one chamber previously); North Carolina (passed in one chamber previously); South Dakota (passed in one chamber previously); Virginia (passed in one chamber previously); New Hampshire (passed in one chamber previously); New Mexico (passed in one chamber previously); Kentucky (being actively targeted during 2026); Ohio (being actively targeted during 2026); Pennsylvania (being actively targeted during 2026); New Jersey (being actively targeted during 2026); Washington (being actively targeted during 2026); Illinois (being actively targeted during 2026); and, Minnesota (considered a swing state for the movement).

A real constitution, one binding and enforced and reflective of the popular will, one percolated from below rather than imposed from above or by corrupt elites would go a long way towards depolarizing our divided citizenry and making our government functional rather than dysfunctional[5]. A constitution crafted to make truth in the media a viable option and to make non-interference by foreign powers in United States politics a binding rule, one that prioritized government expenditures so that the “Common Welfare” came first and foreign intervention was banned (as George Washington once urged), one that depoliticized the judiciary.  One resolving the issue of whether or not the United States should remain true to its immigrant roots or discard them and which democratically resolved the issue of whether the United States should return to its federal premises or become a unitary state, perhaps a bottoms up unitary state with most power focused in county governments.  All of the foregoing would go a long way towards achieving and maintain the so called “American Dream”.

Of course, a constitution that does not reflect the popular political culture is useless as the Weimer Republic which gave rise to the Nazis made clear.  Our political culture also needs a great deal of work.  A return to empathy reflective of the so called Golden Rule and to mutual respect recognizing the value of differences of opinion, rather than their ridicule.

I wonder which of the two would be more difficult to attain: constitutional or cultural reform. 

And I wonder if we are not already past a point of cultural no return?
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2026; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet and aspiring empirical philosopher) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

[1] Napolitano, Andrew P. (2026):  “Killing & Indifference”, Consortium News, Volume 31, Number 98 — Friday, April 10, 2026 available at https://consortiumnews.com/2026/04/10/killing-indifference/?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=19e366d7-5937-4c7b-86ee-1a1624d04b5c.

[2] The main difference between Judge Napolitano’s perspective and mine is that he still believes the current United States Constitution is viable.  I do not.

[3] Calvo Mahé, Guillermo (2023):  “Motley Constitutionalism: a labyrinthine aphorism”; Medium, July 30, 2023 available at https://guillermo-calvo-mahe.medium.com/motley-constitutionalism-a-labyrinthine-aphorism-9270c689f12d.

[4] And that includes third parties like the Libertarian and Green parties and many others.

[5] The term “dysfunctional” is not synonymous with non-functional, it implies functionality but in pain.  “Non-functional might well be significantly better as the late Judge, Gideon J. Tucker noted in a 1866 decision when he wrote “No man’s life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session”, a quote later made famous by the late, great author and social commentator, Mark Twain and comedian Will Rogers.

On the Reality of Donald Trump’s Recent Animal-Human Hybrid Video

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There has been a great outcry recently by those who despise Mr. Trump, no matter what, but also by some among those who admire him without reserve, over the post that involved the Obamas with their faces superimposed on the bodies of chimpanzees.  The criticism had been hyperbolically focused on perceived racism.  I do not support Mr. Trump and have admittedly grown to despise him but I try to maintain a sense of objectivity without which discernment of truth is impossible (absent fortuitous coincidence).  So, while I was initially dumfounded and outraged; I watched the video to see for myself what I would be criticizing.  I doubt many others have done the same.  And I was surprised.  Rather than racist, I found the video idiotically juvenile.  It was by no means limited to the Obamas, although that has been the focus of the criticism, but involved numerous political figures both opposed to and supportive of Mr. Trump, all represented with animal bodies, and that included Mr. Trump himself. 

It was obvious to me that in the associational choice of animals Mr. Trump sought to insult his opponents and glamorize himself.  His was the body of a lion.  But my conclusion was that the video demonstrated not Mr. Trump’s racism but his ignorance concerning biology and evolution.  For example, chimpanzees are extremely intelligent and in their bonobo variant, the biological species closest to humans while male lions, such as the one selected by Mr. Trump to represent himself, are lazy and indolent, albeit strong and fierce, but dominated by the females of the species who do most of the work.

Thus, the video was childish and idiotic but instructive as well, and perhaps unintentionally, the portrayal may have been all too accurate. 

Perhaps someone pointed that out to Mr. Trump who has removed the video from his social platforms.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2026; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet and aspiring empirical philosopher) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

On the Organic Ancestry of MAGA and of Its Ironic Incoherence

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The “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) Trumpian political movement[1] within the United States Republican Party, is hardly original.  It is merely a reflection of the profound xenophobia that has characterized the United States since well before its founding; at least since descendants of English invaders[2] deemed new German immigrants during the colonial era unworthy of sharing the colonial society the English were in the process of founding.  But MAGA has a more direct historical ancestor: the mid-nineteenth century “American Party” (better known as the Know-Nothing Party).  The latter was a name it proudly applied to itself based on a pledge required of its members to preserve secrecy concerning party activities by answering all queries with the phrase “I know nothing”, a phrase ironically adopted by a comic character in a sitcom set in a German prisoner of war camp over a century later[3], rather than in praise of ignorance (although a pretty good case might be made for the latter).

The American Party was an outgrowth of secretive groups like the Order of the Star-Spangled Banner[4] (which somewhat explains its paranoiac tendencies) and became a major third party political movement during the 1850s (interestingly, a time as polarized as our own) rivaling not only the traditional parties at the time (the Democratic and Whig parties) but also the emerging abolitionist (and industrialist[5]) Republican Party.  It was ideologically characterized by nativist Protestant supremacism and anti-immigrant sentiment particularly targeting Irish and German immigrants and, like MAGA today, advocated for stricter naturalization laws (proposing to extend the residency requirement for citizenship from five to twenty-one years) and seeking to keep the foreign-born, even if they had attained United States citizenship, from voting or holding public office.  They did not address the “birthright” citizenship issue as the 14th amendment to the constitution on which it is based had yet to be adopted, but they would assuredly have agreed with MAGA on that issue as well.  The party gained significant power during the 1854 – 1855 electoral period, capturing several state governments and sending numerous representatives to Congress.  Former President Millard Fillmore was their 1856 candidate securing 21% of the popular vote but winning only Maryland.  However, the party quickly fragmented into northern and southern factions leading to its collapse by the time of the Civil War.

While similar to MAGA in ideology, the American Party was a bit more coherent than MAGA in its xenophobia given the control exerted over MAGA by Israel through its American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).  AIPAC finances the political campaigns of all MAGA affiliated members of Congress who are then required to place Israeli interests over those of the United States (which would have been anathema to the American Party); however, that subservience is not limited to MAGA or the GOP given that such phenomenon equally impacts the Democratic Party.  Indeed, using the “wag the dog” analogy, there are international analysts who view the United States as a mercantilist Israeli colony, regardless of which domestic political party attains political power, a hypothesis supported by the immense transfer of United States tax revenue directly to Israel for both domestic and military purposes.

So, not much new with MAGA, just a rehash of old prejudices but this time, ironically, in the service of a foreign, non-Protestant power. 

The foregoing brings to mind the Peter Allen song published in 1974, “Everything Old is New Again”:

When trumpets were mellow and every gal only had one fellow, no need to remember when because everything old is new again.  Dancing at church, Long Island jazzy parties; waiter bring us some more Bacardi.  We’ll order now what they ordered then because everything old is new again. 

Get out your white suit, your tap shoes and tails; let’s go backwards when forward fails and movie stars you thought were alone then are now framed beside your bed.  Don’t throw the past away, you might need it some rainy day; dreams can come true again when everything old is new again

Get out your white suit, your tap shoes and tails; put it on backwards when forward fails.  Better leave Greta Garbo alone, be a movie star on your own and don’t throw the past away; you might need it some other rainy day.  Dreams can come true again when everything old is new again.

When everything old is new again, I might fall in love with you again

Well, at least sort of new.  Perhaps, with an innovation or two. 

An anthem of sorts for MAGA.

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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2026; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet and aspiring empirical philosopher) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

[1] One wonders whether Donald John Trump (or, “The Donald” as he styles himself) has registered intellectual property rights to the “MAGA” name?  I wouldn’t be surprised; indeed, I’d be surprised if he hasn’t.

[2] They called themselves colonists but the indigenous population of the continent saw them somewhat differently, actually, saw them pretty much in the same way as the invaders saw all subsequent undocumented “immigrants”.

[3] Hogan’s Heroes.

[4] A nativist, anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant secret society founded in New York City in 1849 by Charles B. Allen.

[5] Indeed, despite its abolitionist veneer, the emerging Republican Party was largely a pro-industrial revolution, pro-capitalist political movement that sought to centralize the government in order to facilitate the consolidation of the North American continent and the imperialistic expansion of the United States.

“Heil” Rather than “Hail” to the Chief

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The United States finally has a Führer!

It’s been a long time coming.  At least since the administration of William Jefferson Clinton.  And at each stage it has become seemingly worse but the sad truth is that is has just become a more and more obvious reality.  Donald J. Trump is just a more blatant and more honest version of Joseph Robinette Biden. Then again, perhaps today’s United States Führer is really Benjamin Netanyahu (well, really Mileikowsky, but that’s another story), and he has probably been the Führer since before he even became prime minister of Israel.

The United States Constitution has been illusory since the Civil War, evolving from a confederate structure to today’s unitary state in all but name, and unitary in the dictatorial sense, where the semblance of separation of powers is only a sad delusion.  Today’s system of governance in the United States of North America (as we in South America prefer to call it), both domestically and internationally, has become one that emulates Mussolini’s Italy and Hitler’s Germany, a corporatist state in training with plenty of billionaires surfing happily in the current president’s wake.  I don’t state that as an insult but rather an acknowledgement that all power has become concentrated in the presidency, something that occurred historically in ancient Rome when the Republic morphed into the Empire.  The judiciary has become subsumed at the highest level and although numerous members of the federal judiciary at the District and Circuit levels remain loyal in their decisions to “they who appointed them” now, given the composition of the Supreme Court, that is at best a stalling tactic.

One of the most repulsive aspects of “fascism” (the sociopolitical and economic philosophy common to Nazis, Zionists and today’s United States rather than the meaningless pejorative aphorism used to describe political enemies), in addition to its proclivity for genocide, ethnic cleansing and the quest for lebensraum, is how it turns decent people, moral people, into willing accomplices.  Fascism is democratic, it wouldn’t work if it wasn’t.   Mussolini, Hitler, Netanyahu and Mr. Trump (as well as Messrs. Clinton, Bush, Obama and Biden) all enjoyed broad popular support from the electorates which, for whatever reasons (and the reasons were and are diverse), their members had been led to enthusiastically espouse.  Not that there wasn’t opposition to fascist governments then and now but thuggery by masked agents of the state, masked to assure the anonymity essential for impunity, took care of that in each case, and violently so.  Interestingly, fascism (as well as other related systems) relies heavily on a sense of outraged victimhood and purported moral and xenophobic ethnic superiority as essential unifying elements.  And the foregoing describes todays United States and its idol Israel, to a tee.

Ironically, most of the United States electorate is aware of the internal fascist problem (though they have no idea what fascism is) but they have been successfully polarized so that the principle of “divide and conquer” is effectively used to completely blunt such realization.  At the federal level, the United States political system is not democratic in any sense, it was designed to create the illusion of democracy but without democracy’s impediments to control by political and economic elites.  Moreover, a two party dictatorship was imposed through legislative favoritism so that at the federal level, it is virtually impossible to attain public office unless one is sponsored by either the ill-named Democratic Party or the equally ill-named Republican Party.  In reality, they are two sides of the same coin and the coin is owned by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee which not only funds approximately 90% of all federal elective officials but destroys any candidate who rejects its dominance, in each case, through massive expenditures that in an ethical system would be identified as “bribes”.  Those voters whose allegiance is pledged to the Democratic and Republican parties clearly see the fascist tendencies in the other party but are certain that their own party is pristinely patriotic and dedicated to the ideals pursuant to which the United States was purportedly founded, i.e., democracy, liberty, justice under law, etc., although few have any idea what such ideals mean.  Thus, the fascist cancer has successfully invaded and conquered the United States body politic, … now apparently terminally.

That fascist leaders (e.g., a Führer) behave in a manner that any normally aware person would recognize as insane apparently poses no problem.  Indeed, the insanity of the Führer’s conduct is an asset, at least in the beginning, as opponents, having no idea how to deal with it, initially acquiesce to numerous ludicrous demands, demands that all too often have horrific consequences.  Demands that become incrementally more ludicrous until all aspects of organized civil conduct are replaced by the Führer’s personal morality of the moment, something that Mr. Trump personally clearly and unequivocally specified when faced with challenges based on international, constitutional and ordinary legal impediments.  Had he a bit more historical acuity he probably would have quoted French King Luis XIV by adding “L’État, c’est moi”!

It is amazing to me, and very disturbing, that so many career military officers in the United States who I have known for most of my life and who I respect and admire, men who have taken an oath to “uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States”, now take umbrage at the observation by a retired senior military officer and current member of Congress that members of the United States armed forces “must not obey illegal orders”.  That was the crux of the law imposed by the United States and its allies on the entire world immediately following World War Two through the decisions of the Nuremburg tribunals, decisions against the leaders, civil as well as military, of the defeated Nazi regime.  Hypocritical decisions, that’s true.  The United States and its allies had engaged in conduct at least as evil as had the losers in that conflict and the decisions were based on purportedly prohibited ex post facto “legislation”.  But at any rate, those decisions have proven farcical, especially with respect to the Zionists who were so active as judges and prosecutors in such tribunals but whose descendants today claim that “international law does not apply to them”.   And by extension, it cannot apply to their chief enablers, primarily the United States, but also the United Kingdom, the Federal Republic of Germany, the Fifth French Republic.  Indeed, to any of the member states of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

So we now live in the Hobbesian “State of Nature”, one essential for functional Führers where, as enunciated recently by a senior United States official, this time against Denmark, one of the United States own allies, that “only might makes right”.  And the chickens have come home to roost, as they tend to do.  The bullying of other countries is now not only all inclusive but it is now being applied to citizens and nationals of the United States by heavily armed, anonymous, poorly trained uniformed thugs, members of an evolving constitutionally proscribed virtual federal police force, and the states be damned.  After all, states rely on the Constitution first put into effect in 1791 for their authority, and that Constitution is now a zombie….

At best.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2026; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet and aspiring empirical philosopher) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

Paradoxical Reflections as 2025 Morphs into 2026

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Dateline, January 4, 2026

For many historians the assassinations of Roman reformers Tiberius Gracchus in 133 BCE and of his brother, Gaius Gracchus, in 121 BCE, both tribunes of the plebs who pushed for agrarian and social reforms against powerful Senate opposition, marked the end of the Roman Republic, at least in constitutional terms.  The rational system of governance represented by the Republic broke down after that with the dictatorships of Marius and Sulla, and then the triumvirates of Julius Caesar, Gnaeus Pompeius (self-denominated Magnus), and Marcus Licinius Crassus until Octavian Caesar initiated the Imperium a century later. 

In the case of the United States of North America (a more accurate name than the United States or the United States of America), constitutional order, at least involving the constitution usurpatively adopted in 1789, first broke down in 1861 with the war between the states (now usually referred to as the Civil War except among conservative Caucasians in the South where it is known as the War of Northern Aggression), being thereafter replaced by a militarily imposed new constitutional order which was, in turn, more legally replaced during the presidency of Woodrow Wilson by a new antifederalist centrist variant through adoption of the 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th amendments, amendments which, because they virtually destroyed the Constitution’s federalist premises, could well be considered unconstitutional constitutional amendments as described by Professor Richard Albert of the University of Texas’ School of Law.  But the end of any semblance of constitutionalism in the United States entered its death throes, as did the concept of international law, during the presidency of William Jefferson Clinton in 1992, culminating in their absolute demise during the second term of the presidency of Donald John Trump.  By that time, most of those who, upon assuming office in the United States, whether civil or military, took an oath to “defend and protect the Constitution of the United States” in truth were dedicated to serving the dictates of the de facto Führer, a more accurate term for the dictatorial presidents of the United States that started with Mr. Clinton and reached a high point (so far) with the presidency of Donald Trump.  They (the de facto führers), in turn, along with most of the bureaucracy and the members of the United States Congress, owed their loyalty to the unelected, secretive, American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) which bought most of them with monetary contributions and “favors” and which in turn owed its fealty to the Hobbesian Zionist Israeli government.

The result, both domestically and internationally, was a return to what philosopher Thomas Hobbes had once described as “the State of Nature”, not a benevolent environmentally friendly status but one where brute power was the only reality that mattered.  In both cases, the Roman and that of the United States, indeed, in that of the entire global state system, the demise of constitutional government, in each case based on superficial principles of liberty and democracy, experienced a gradual, unperceived death which, by the time it had become permanent, was virtually ignored, unmourned by the vast majority of the populations they were meant to serve. 

Unbidden, the ancient Trojan prophetess Cassandra comes to mind as I write this, and the political prophets Aldous Huxley and his former student, Eric Arthur Blair (writing as George Orwell) as well, as do the warnings in the farewell addresses of presidents George Washington and Dwight David Eisenhower.  But all to no avail. 

In this world, evil, greed, impunity and hypocrisy seemingly always triumph.  At least where collectives are involved.  It turns out that collectives, meant to foster collaboration in the quest for mutual benefit instead serve as means for the most ruthless and selfish among us to concentrate power, facilitated by our fatal individual naiveté and immense capacity for self-deception.

As I all too frequently end my reflections nowadays, I again see Elphaba Thropp (albeit in her earlier 1930s incarnation in the film, “The Wizard of Oz”) slowly melting after having been inadvertently doused with water by the ingénue, Dorothy, with Elphaba desperately declaiming: “what a world, what a world”!

Welcome to 2026!

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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2026; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet and aspiring empirical philosopher) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

If Only “the Times Were Really A’ Changing”

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On June 28, 2025, Christian Paz published an article on Vox.com entitled “The Democratic Party is ripe for a takeover”.  Apparently, the primary victory of Zohran Mamdani is the catalyst, or the symptom, or something.  Except for the author’s apparent Trump derangement syndrome in which the Democratic Party’s sole goal should be to confront Mr. Trump, a situation historically reminiscent of the old Whig party’s focus on opposing Andrew Jackson, the article posits interesting possibilities, although possibilities in which I don’t believe or rather, possibilities I don’t believe are likely.

It is a positive that at least in the city of New York so many voters are apparently rejecting the calcified and corrupt leadership of the Democratic Party, a leadership without real ideals other than the attainment and maintenance of power in order to syphon off the country’s wealth to fund perpetual wars in a quest for hegemony, albeit under the control of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).  But the Democratic Party is so tainted by historical sins and so cancer ridden with corruption that a Tea Party-like revolution ought not to save it, even if it could.  The dust bins of history have been all too empty for too much time.  Rather, as an apparent majority of the United States electorate frequently acknowledges (although it never does anything about it), what real liberals and real progressives and real leftists trapped in the quicksand that characterizes the Democratic Party need is a new political party of their own, one independent from AIPAC, the Deep State, the billionaire class and the forever war quest for hegemony that characterizes both the Democratic Party and most of the GOP.  A political party that really prioritizes the needs and aspirations of its members, the reality being that the United States political system is a factionalist collective rather than a grouping of altruistic political movements concerned with the common good and the general welfare.

The current Democratic Party, at least since 1992, has been reactive rather than proactive, with faux political goals and slogans echoed by a captive corporate press successfully enough to delude the more noble elements of its membership.  It went from GOP lite in the Clinton era, to a political hodgepodge during the Obama era more thoroughly controlled by the Deep State (an informal coalition comprised of unelected bureaucrats and judges) than is the GOP, amazing as that may seem.  And today, its principle goal is to oppose Donald Trump, no matter what he does, unless it aligns with AIPAC goals, but then again, AIPAC virtually owns both the Democratic and Republican parties.  And if opposition to Mr. Trump by any means, legal or not, has become the Democratic Party’s fixation, it is failing in that goal.  Failing dismally, and floundering.

That echoes what happened to the Whigs with respect to their hatred of Andrew Jackson during the mid-nineteenth century, when irate voters with specifically defined goals and ideals abandoned both the Whigs and the Democrats to found the Republican Party, although it too was eventually taken over by the values it was created to reject. 

The GOP too, like the Andrew Jackson controlled Democratic Party of the same mid-nineteenth century, has shifted its axis and threatens to splinter into various segments: one deemed traditionalist which tends to echo the current Democratic Party’s devotion to the Deep State and opposition to Mr. Trump;  a wing that seems to worship President Trump the way Democrats once worshipped President Jackson; and a libertarian wing that rejects forever wars, foreign intervention and the abandonment of the liberty purportedly guaranteed by the Bill of Rights.  That libertarian wing would also do well to strike out on its own as an independent political party guided by real ideals and real goals, while the traditionalist wing should just meld with the current leadership of the Democratic Party, a leadership seemingly in conflict with a substantial number of younger Democrats who, according to Mr. Paz (cool name, it means peace in Spanish) seem to be rebelling.

The electorate in general appears to be angry and dissatisfied but has been manipulated and confused by false news and the false narrative that masquerades as history so that its ability to make electoral decisions has become nonexistent.  We have been led to confuse the essential political concepts of democracy, liberty and pluralism because confusing them was essential for the small elite who rule us to attain and maintain political and economic power, not quite bleeding us dry, rather, like intelligent vampires, they understand that their victims, those who provide their sustenance, must be maintained at least barely alive.  Barely alive but without realizing their condition or who is to blame, being led to believe that they actually have a voice in their own affairs through a system that sort of smells like a meld of the adversative concepts of democracy, liberty and pluralism, a useful illusion.  A system that argues that peace can only be attained through perpetual war and prosperity through the diversion of taxpayers assets to defense contractors and their cronies.  That Christian values are now premised on acceptance of genocide and ethnic cleansing as well as capital punishment.  Somewhere, George Orwell weeps.

Democracy is the rule of a majority (more than 50%), not a plurality, and it does not guarantee that decisions will be correct, or just or equitable.  Liberty is a diametrically opposed concept that insists that no matter what a majority decides, or even what everybody else decides, every individual has sovereign and autonomous inherent rights that cannot be curtailed.  And pluralism?  That too is an antidemocratic concept but one involving the right of collectives to be different and to have a say in their affairs notwithstanding majoritarian opinions.  All three of those contradictory concepts are desirable so constitutions, in part, or at least in theory, exist to reconcile and prioritize them into some sort of workable political and legal system.  Unfortunately, like the quest for a unified field theory in physics, it has always been a utopian ideal distorted and manipulated by elites, except that physicists by and large tend to acknowledge that their goal has not been attained, while most of the electorate everywhere in our planet believes that the particular political systems through which they are ruled are really theirs and that their leaders have their best interests at heart, after all, in most countries, it was purportedly that electorate who selected them.

That is certainly true in the United States and has been true for most of its history.  For most of its history, the United States political system has seemed like a duopoly (a two party dictatorship) but rather, has always been a vehicle for the concentration of wealth and power by an elite few, today, not even an elite few in the United States but sixteen families that effectively rule the world and are responsible for almost all of the world’s poverty and for all of the world’s war and for all of the world’s disparity.

With reference to the surprise victory of Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani in the Democratic Party’s recent New York City mayoral primary, many Democratic Party leaders as well as most people who identify with the GOP are suffering AIPAC sponsored apoplexy because Mr. Mamdani is a Muslim with parental roots in Africa and opposes Zionism and genocide and ethnic cleansing and champions the working class and the downtrodden masses described in Emma Lazarus’ poem inscribed on the Statue of Liberty and thus, he must be a godless communist, although he identifies as a democratic socialist as did Albert Einstein and Martin Luther King, Jr., and Nelson Mandela, and as does Noam Chomsky today.  And the opposition of the moneyed classes to Mr. Mamdani led by AIPAC may well result in his defeat in the general election, whether by the opponents he just defeated running as independents or even by a Republican if the GOP proves Machiavellian enough to select a moderate candidate.  And perhaps the politics as usual crowd in both the Democratic Party and the GOP who Mr. Mamdani’s success has mortified have “nothing to fear but fear itself”.  But it seems to me a positive sign that in the city that boasts the largest Jewish population of any city in the world, a significant portion of that religious group (it’s not really an ethnicity and certainly not a race) may have taken up the antizionist slogan “not in our names” and rejected the distortion of Judaism marketed by AIPAC and its Israeli masters and voted their consciences and in favor of real classical Judaic values and traditions which, perhaps ironically, it is Mr. Mamdani who represents.  Or perhaps it’s not ironic.  The reality is that no religion is closer to real classical Judaism in all respects (except perhaps in the respect that it renders to that certain Jewish Nazarene), than is Islam.

Because of the foregoing, according to Mr. Paz and other optimists, it sort of smells a bit like the “times may be a’ changing”, at least in the desperate Democratic Party, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2025; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

Personal Reflections with Respect to the Prospective Second Trump Administration

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First, an apology. 

Rather than continue to concentrate on academic research, a lengthy process that takes too long and on the resulting complicated articles, frequently involving technical language and complex grammatical structure that, when eventually published, have lost relevancy as critical time has elapsed, I have, during the past decade, concentrated on more immediate journalistic-style articles, published quickly, frequently too quickly to proofread adequately, but available while they still maintain relevance.  I firmly believe that length in such politically oriented articles detracts from their effectiveness as excessively long articles, even when their length is a result of efforts to attain objectivity and provide important context, are rarely finished by potential readers.  And this article is longer than I wish it were.  A lot longer.  But, given the existentially troubling historical instant in which we find ourselves, it has kept growing and growing, almost as though of its own volition, and I can’t bring myself to cull it.  Hopefully at least some readers will find it worth the effort to finish reading.  Of course, this introduction does nothing to cut it down to size.

Anyway, ….

During the past eight years I’ve, on a number of occasions, published articles defending Donald Trump from scurrilous, defamatory distortions and calumnies by his opponents and from the Biden administration’s abuse of state and federal judicial proceedings, both penal and civil, designed to eliminate him as a political opponent and to attain revenge on him for the political humiliation of Hillary Clinton.  However, as I always made clear, I was not a Trump supporter.  Nor am I now. 

While I’ve always found Donald Trump’s personality abrasive and egocentric, that is not really an objectively reasonable basis for opposing him.  One can support people one does not like and if one strives for objectivity and seeks truth, then whether or not one personally likes or dislikes someone should not impact conclusions one reaches with respect to their abilities or performance.  Still, on a personal basis I had some axes to grind with respect to Mr. Trump and in the interests of full disclosure, I will share them before proceeding with my analysis.  Mr. Trump and I both graduated in 1964 from rival military academies in New York, he from the New York Military Academy (NYMA) and I from the Eastern Military Academy (EMA).  Notwithstanding our rivalry, members of both institutions shared deep respect and affection for each other, especially after the demise of EMA in 1979 when NYMA took our alumni association under its wing.  My personal gripe with Mr. Trump is that when NYMA found itself about to close because of financial difficulties its leaders, including leading alumni, asked Mr. Trump for assistance and he ignored their request, something a graduate from a military academy ought never to do if he or she has the wherewithal to assist.  But that is a personal choice and declining to act was his right.  Then, however, when he first sought the Republican nomination for the presidency, he elected to give his first foreign and military affairs speech at the Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina, from which I graduated in 1968, and there, he touted his wonderful experience with the military education he received at NYMA.  The hypocrisy offended me and I made that publicly clear at the time. Ironically, NYMA was sold in bankruptcy to the Research Center on Natural Conservation, a non-profit backed by a principal of China-based SouFun Holdings Ltd., and reopened after a two year hiatus during November of 2017.  So it was the Chinese, rather than Mr. Trump, that saved his “beloved” alma mater.

I, of course, am not the only one who finds Mr. Trump unpalatable.  He scares the hell out of the unelected classes that rule us through their control of the federal bureaucracy, the federal judiciary and the corporate media, an “informal conglomerate whose opponents, I among them, refer to it as the “Deep State”.  The members of the Deep State are terrified of Mr. Trump because he seems economically incorruptible, despite his ruthless business practices, and because of his unpredictability.  And they are terrified that his appeal to many, perhaps a majority of the American electorate, may solidify rejection of politics-as-usual and accelerate a drift from both the left and the right wings of the political spectrum towards democratic populism.  Mr. Trump is reactive and easily changes his mind as to details and his recall of past events and past statements is incomprehensible and easily distortable.  At best he seems to have an extremely “flexible” memory.  He is egocentric and abusive in his demeanor and either fails to understand concepts such as “communism” and “socialism” or perhaps merely prefers to distort them as emotionally useful pejoratives.  Indeed, to Mr. Trump, pejoratives are an art form.  But, despite his faults, he is his own man (except when it comes to emotional and family ties which, unfortunately, make him subservient to the most immoral force in the world today, the genocidal wing of international Zionism) and such unpredictability and independence is intolerable to those used to placing their own puppets in the Oval Office.

Mr. Trump is a man with a very public history spanning many decades and many forums.  Notwithstanding my personal negative feelings towards him as a person, I admit that in many, perhaps most respects he was an effective president during his first term and I acknowledge that his first administration was deliberately sabotaged from within and without by people whose loyalties are not to the United States but to the aforementioned Deep State; people who could not abide his threats to withdraw from the purportedly defensive North Atlantic Treaty Organization (“NATO”), an institution that had not only become anachronistic at the end of the First Cold War but had morphed into an aggressive (rather than defensive) permanent threat to world peace as it sought missions to justify its existence.  In addition, Mr. Trump earned the enmity of the Deep State because of his early threats to massively reduce the enormous complex of foreign military bases that drain the American economy and promote constant United States meddling in the affairs of other countries, an action that would permit a substantial reduction in the United States’ bloated military budget, in essence a massive tax on the United Sates citizenry for the sole benefit of investors, officers, directors and contractor of the military industrial complex against which Ike warned in late 1960. 

After Mr. Trump’s surprising victory in 2026, his opponents, rather than successfully confronting him on policy grounds relating to the foregoing (they tried but failed as such policies resonated with a majority of the electorate), successfully sabotaged his administration through three principal strategies, first, from within, by a continuous streams of leaks by firmly ensconced moles planted by former president Obama to unfriendly media accompanied by a refusal to implement his policies, the foregoing accompanied by a national campaign of resistance to Mr. Trump’s policies  coordinated on Mr. Obama’s behalf by his former attorney general, Eric Holder.  Second, by claiming that Mr. Trump was secretly a Russian agent, a Manchurian candidate planted by Vladimir Putin, a strategy developed and financed by the defeated Clinton presidential campaign with the assistance of Deep State moles but third, and most successfully, it was sabotaged by the orchestrated Democratic Party reaction to the Covid 19 “pandemic”, something that now appears to have been “manufactured” (the reaction, not the disease) in order to damage the world economy in order to facilitate Democratic Party victories in the 2018 Congressional elections and the 2020 presidential election.  Not that Covid 19 was not a serious virus, just that the mandatory vaccine demands and the related closing down of commercial activities were orchestrated for purposes with little to do with public health and welfare (unless of course, you were an investor, officer, director or contractor of one or more of the entities comprising what is now known as “Big Pharma”). 

As a result of the foregoing, Mr. Trump was successfully driven from office in 2020 in what was certainly a profoundly manipulated election, one very much impacted by Covid 19 related emergency electoral strategies that facilitated the possibility of widespread electoral fraud.  Whether or not any such fraud existed or was enough to have changed the electoral results is something we will never know as all efforts at investigating related allegations were promptly dismissed as a “Big Lie”, and groups and individuals who protested against the electoral results, most notably on January 6, 2021, were labelled insurrectionists and domestic terrorists and prosecuted as such.  In order to assure that Mr. Trump did not again threaten the Deep State, he was twice impeached by the House of Representatives (but never convicted by the Senate), once, shortly before he left office.  When such legislative efforts to disqualify him from future political office proved unsuccessful, the new Democratic Party administration and its allies, especially in New York, Georgia and Arizona, launched a series of legal actions, both penal and civil, seeking to destroy his ability to run for the presidency in 2024 but, despite some success in very legally questionable proceedings, the electorate was in what Abraham Lincoln might have described as “you can’t fool all of us all of the time” mode and, imitating the mythic Lazarus and despite news reports and  political polls, he emerged victorious in the 2024 presidential elections and is once again about to take office as president of the United States, but this time, apparently much more careful as to whom he selects to assist him as members of his administration.  Indeed, to popular acclaim, he has promised to purge the federal bureaucracy of the moles who made it impossible for him to implement his policies during his initial term; something that has his opponents terrified and seeking presidential pardons from the outgoing president for crimes they may have committed and for which they might be prosecuted in the future.

At any rate ….

Donald Trump, like Grover Cleveland, will serve a split presidency but unlike Grover Cleveland, the Republican Party whose candidate he was will also enjoy the support of both houses of Congress.  The electorate has totally rejected the horrible, even malign performance of the Democratic Party during the last four years and has elected the Republican Party to lead all branches of government.  However, the perspective that Trump allies will have a free hand in governance is an illusion, a fallacy, one Mr. Trump may not perceive.  Specifically:

  • The three seat majority in the Senate is an illusion given that “Republican” senators Bill Cassidy from Louisiana, Susan Collins from Maine and Lisa Murkowski from Alaska have clearly demonstrated their antipathy for Mr. Trump in the past and are likely to do so again and Senator Rand Paul from Kentucky is a true libertarian maverick who may well oppose not only financing of Ukraine’s conflict with Russia but also Israel’s genocide throughout the Middle East.  Given the foregoing, when James David Vance assumes the vice-presidency in January, he may have his hands full breaking senatorial ties, especially with respect to confirmation of Mr. Trump’s cabinet.
  • The narrow majority attained by the Republican Party in the House of Representatives is also illusory, first, given Donald Trump’s selection of important members of his administration from the incoming Republican membership in the House, albeit from apparently secure districts likely to elect Republican Party members as replacements, and, because of the infighting among traditionalist and libertarian factions within the Republican members of the House.  Unlike the House members from the Democratic Party who vote as a monolithic block under strict control from party leaders, Republicans tend to stand by their sometimes conflicting ideals and are clearly divided between traditionalists who have more in common with their Democratic Party colleagues than they do with Mr. Trump, Tea Party Trump allies, and ethical independents.  The GOP majority in the House of Representatives will temporarily be reduced from five members to one due to the presidential nominations and anticipated appointments and despite the historical fact that the districts from which they come have large Republican majorities, it can be anticipated that there will be a massive influx of “temporary” Democratic Party affiliated residents who will seek to vote in the related special elections, as occurred in Georgia during the 2020 special runoff elections for the Senate, thus putting the results of the special elections to replace the Republican congressmen entering the executive branch into question.
  • The federal judiciary has been packed with politicized judges loyal to the Democratic Party (as are judiciaries in states controlled by the Democratic Party) and many of them, enough of them, can be counted on to do that political party’s bidding rather than to function in an ethically neutral manner.  Then again, partisanship is no stranger to Republican Party members of the judiciary.  However, as demonstrated by the large scale lawfare attacks against Mr. Trump and his allies during the past eight years, judges and prosecutors loyal to the Democratic Party are much more likely to abuse their positions for partisan purposes.  The unconstitutional usurpation of power by federal judges from both parties through the issuance of injunctions that apply beyond the territorial jurisdiction of their courts poses an additional weapon likely to be used to obstruct policies that Mr. Trump will seek to implement in his second administration.
  • The federal bureaucracy at all levels and in all departments is riddled with moles planted at the direction of former presidents William Jefferson Clinton, Barak Obama and now Joe Biden who will leak like sieves and do everything in their power to obstruct the implementation of Trump administration policies and to make Trump loyalist seem like the incarnation of evil.  That is especially true with respect to the intelligence agencies which have more and more directly controlled the United States government since the mid nineteen forties and which orchestrated Mr. Trump’s ouster from government in 2020, and in the ill named Department of Justice.  They are, in all probability, not chastened by having been forced to come out from hiding and then having been rejected by the sane among us in the last elections.  Frank Church; where are you when we need you?
  • Notwithstanding having completely ignored or ridiculed, the allegations by Tara Reade, a former Biden staffer, that while a Senator, Mr. Biden had raped her, and then, that the Biden Justice Department had hounded her into seeking asylum in Russia, allegations involving even consensual sexual activities involving men associated with Mr. Trump will once again become salient and the moribund #MeToo movement, like Lazarus, will rise from the dead.  Witness the successful attack on Mr. Trump’s initial choice to lead the Department of Justice on the current attacks on his nominee to lead the Department of Defense.
  • Last but not least, the media, designated as either mainstream (a fallacy), corporate or legacy, and the owners of the Internet’s major platforms with the exception of X (formerly Twitter) will obstruct Mr. Trump at every turn, except, perhaps when he is doing the bidding of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) by which both the Democratic and Republican parties are controlled.

As to specific policies, many of the policies espoused by Mr. Trump seem reasonable to me although in too many cases, they are focused on symptoms rather than on the causes of the critical problems the United States currently faces and even more so, with the problems that will confront it in the future.  His proposed appointment of Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy as unpaid advisors in an informal new “Department of Government Efficiency” (“DOGE”) is an extremely timely and necessary move, as are his nominations of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., to lead the Department of Health and Human Services and Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence, in each case, charged with reforming corruption and abuse riddled government institutions largely responsible for the loss of faith by the United States electorate in the ability of government to protect them from monopolistic abuses in the pharmaceutical and agro industries as well as for the state of perpetual war which is making nuclear annihilation a distinct possibility.

To me, Mr. Trump’s major drawback, and it is existential, is the control over him exercised by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), but then, AIPAC controls both the Democratic and Republican parties.  It has turned the United States from at least the illusion of a beacon of liberty, democracy and justice into an accomplice in ethnic cleansing, apartheid and genocide as evil as that of Turkey in Armenia at the beginning of the twentieth century and Germany during the second war to end all wars (World War II).  In the latter case I note with interest that the obviously flagrantly distorted and inaccurate current mass propaganda in favor of Israel’s current campaign of genocide in the Middle East is leading some of the more objective among us to wonder just how accurate Zionist propaganda following World War II, now calcified as purported history, really was and is.  Is it possible that those who doubt the accuracy with which German atrocities have been reported have a point?  Until recently that was unthinkable.  Now?  They may be worth reexamining.  Thus, in foreign affairs, Mr. Trump’s promises present an incoherent and dangerous dichotomy.  On the one hand, he claims to oppose war and interference in the domestic political affairs of other countries but there’s a glaring exception where anything to do with the State of Israel is involved.  There, he is as subject to domination by AIPAC as are the leaders of the Democratic Party and that means full support for the Israeli genocide, ethnic cleansing and lebensraum in the Middle East that has been taking place since 1948, something which, as heretofore alluded, raises serious questions with respect to most of what we’ve been taught about the Second World War, the Holocaust, the Nuremburg Tribunals and the existence of human rights and international law. 

Another problematic complex of issues involving Mr. Trump involve his penchant for international “economic” warfare using a combination of tariffs and sanctions as well as abuse of international monetary and banking institutions to attain the geopolitical objectives he espouses.  Such tactics have proven problematic in the past and have been abused in a bipartisan manner with results that the legendary “Murphy” (he of Murphy’s Law) might envy.  Reactions to economic sanctions imposed by the United States and its allies on their adversaries, sanctions violative of the United Nations Charter and international law (or what passes for the illusion of international law) have led most countries, especially in what is becoming known as the Global South, to align with China, Russia and other United States adversaries in a quest for a multipolar rather than hegemonic world order and that primarily involves abandonment of the United States dollar as the principle means of exchange in international commerce.  Mr. Trump has aggressively asserted that he intends to continue to rely on such tactics to maintain the supremacy of the United States dollar in international trade and against the rise of the “Global South” and the proposed multipolar world order, especially with reference to the evolution of the BRICS economic alliance.  All of such inclinations promise disastrous consequences not only for the United States but for the entire world and belie respect for human rights, equity and state equality in the international sphere.  Bulls rampaging in china shops come to mind.

Mr. Trump is admittedly a far better choice in every aspect as the prospective president of the United States than was Kamala Harris or Joe Biden.  And that is as true today as it was in 2020, and as accurate as it was with respect to Mrs. Clinton in 2016, but that is not synonymous with the assertion that Mr. Trump is a good or even a decent choice.  He is not.  However the United States political system, one dominated by two political parties, neither of which is independent of the billionaire class that owns them or of AIPAC which controls their foreign affairs in alliance with the military industrial complex, is, at best, dysfunctional and at worst, a force for inequity, inequality and injustice, both domestically and internationally.  As structured and protected by discriminatory federal and state legislation and with judicial decisions incompatible with constitutional guarantees of equal protection, the current United States political system assures only that the most competent and decent among us will rarely if ever attain our highest political offices.

And here we stand, for as long as “here” lasts, just as Eric Arthur Blair, writing under the pen name “George Orwell”, predicted in 1948 when he published his seminal novel, 1984.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2024; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.

“And Perhaps” …. An Exercise in Positive Wishful Thinking

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Dateline, November 6, 2014

I did not support Mr. Trump’s aspirations to return to the house from which he was evicted four years ago, perhaps improperly so, we’re not likely to ever know.  But I certainly did not support the continuation of the tyranny under which so many in the United States and abroad have been forced to live during the past four years.  I am and have been a political independent for many decades although I have supported third party candidates, including candidates from political parties with very differing philosophies, political parties like the Libertarian Party and the Green Party and various socialist movements.  In truth, like Albert Einstein and Noam Chomsky and Nelson Mandela, etc., I consider myself a democratic socialist philosophically.  Thus on the day after the presidential electoral victory of Donald J. Trump, I watch public reactions with interest and, I confess, a bit of ambivalence.  I especially note with a bit of sardonic humor how, furious, president-elect Trump’s Deep State critics in the media and the Democratic Party seek to sow panic and more discord, whining that he will now seek revenge for all of the trauma they sought to cause him and many other opponents through abuse of the legal and penal systems during the past four years.  Hell, during the past eight years. 

Their fear is understandable, a rapist fears angry parents, angry siblings, angry spouses and police and prosecutors too.  And that fear is well earned.  And perhaps it’s justified if not justifiable.  Perhaps those who have abused the justice and penal system so flagrantly during the past four years are in for a taste of their own medicine.  But perhaps not.  During his first term in office Mr. Trump, after all, did not seek to prosecute the Clintons or their allies, even after the Steele Dossier affair.

There are other possibilities. 

Having been the victim of tyranny in action and abuse of power by the Biden administration, not only against him but against thousands and thousands of ordinary citizens, against Jill Stein, Cornell West and Robert F. Kennedy, against thousands of patriotic Americans who protested on January 6, 2021 in a manner much less flagrant than did American “heroes” in Boston Harbor centuries ago or opponents of police brutality against African Americans just five years ago, perhaps his attitude will surprise even those quacking in their boots in fear of chickens coming home to roost. 

Perhaps his administration will focus on critical issues such as sane electoral safeguards, safeguards like easy to obtain voter identification with photographs, fingerprints and other verifiable forms of minimizing fraud while concurrently seeking to assure that participation in electoral processes by all eligible voters is facilitated.  And perhaps he will recommend legislation to Congress outlawing censorship and other means of threatening the exercise of freedom of opinion and freedom of expression, whether by public authorities or by the monopolistic private entities that have gained control over the infrastructure most of us now use to communicate.  And perhaps he will propose additional legislation to Congress and state legislatures that will outlaw and severely penalize the abuse of the penal and judicial systems for partisan political purposes, eliminating related immunity which leads to impunity.  And perhaps his solicitor general can convince the Supreme Court to overturn the egregious decision in Sullivan v NY Times which has facilitated the death of objective journalism in the United States and facilitated the character assassination of so many, including Mr. Trump.  And perhaps Mr. Trump will propose a constitutional amendment that will outlaw legalized bribery through political contributions and generous fringe benefits such as free travel, etc., and seriously regulate the utterly corrupt lobbying industry.

Perhaps Mr. Trump will avoid the meddling in the affairs of other countries, including the imposition and maintenance of ludicrous punitive economic sanctions and economic blockades that destroy their economies and create a crescendo of illegal immigration seeking solace in the land that made them all kinds of promises if they’d only turn against their brethren, and, then, perhaps he and his political allies will support meaningful and fair immigration reform that will encourage compliance with applicable laws, not only by depriving violators of all related benefits and building walls, but by providing for prompt, fair and equitable procedures for immigration by foreigners who have a legitimate basis to seek permanent residency and then citizenship the way the ancestors of most current citizens of the United States once obtained it.

Perhaps Mr. Trump and other members of his administration and others who have been victims of the autocracy and tyranny rampant during the Biden administration, instead of seeking revenge and becoming mirror images of their adversaries, will do the foregoing, not in a mean spirited manner but in a manner that will heal wounds, minimize polarization and really “Make America Great Again”, but internally, not in an adversarial manner against the world.  That may not be likely but Mr. Trump is rarely predictable, and he is not always wrong.  And only someone who has been made to suffer what Mr. Trump was made to suffer during the past eight years can really understand why the foregoing changes are so essential for America’s quest to someday attain the promises laid out in the Declaration of Independence, hypocritical though they were, and the premises set forth in the Preamble to the Constitution. 

Like many Americans, I have lost faith in both major political parties and in the institutions of government, at least at the federal level, but if Mr. Trump would follow the path described above (unlikely, I know), he would earn a place on Mount Rushmore even higher than that occupied by the four deeply flawed former presidents enshrined there, all men who, notwithstanding their shortcomings, nevertheless seem to have made a positive lasting impression.

Perhaps an exercise in wishful thinking but “if our reach does not exceed our grasp, then what’s a heaven for”?
_____

© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2024; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.