While much of the world fumbles over how to live in a better future, the United States is going back to the past. More than a standard flip-flop from one administration to the next, basic truths are being discarded in a daily onslaught of insults, threats, and strained logic, military spending is rising, and new-energy projects are being cancelled, rekindling coal, oil, and gas to keep America brown. Elsewhere, the world recoils from an increasingly deranged Trumpmania that sees everyone as an enemy, where ugliness is normalized, might is right, and fossil fuels are clean. How far back America goes is anyone’s guess.

The US has long gone its own way, priding itself on advances in science, technology, and industry, often won through military adventure. The Internet was conceived as a distributed information network in the event of a disabling nuclear strike before being monetized for commercial gain as was the federal interstate highway system that created today’s free-wheeling, oil-hungry America, while the space race built our modern electronics-filled world.

Today, the US has the largest economy (25% global GNP, 4% population), the most Fortune 500 companies (28%), and the biggest armed forces to keep the commerce flowing (1.3 million active-duty combatants), along with an unsustainable carbon footprint and a $37-trillion-plus national debt to finance the bells and whistles. A new kind of adventurism is afoot, however, as the US seeks to undermine international relations, extort economic compliance, and destroy its own competence.

As part of the proposed July 27 EU-US trade agreement, covering €1.7 trillion in yearly trade for 800 million people, Europe promised to buy $750 billion in American energy over three years, including liquefied natural gas (LNG) to replace sanctioned Russian supplies. India was slapped with a 35% tariff (raised to 50%) and instructed not to buy Russian oil as was China, meaning buy American. But more LNG means more fracking, pipeline failures, and toxic fouling. More LNG means increased global warming and less green energy, along with reduced clean water, medication, and basic sanitation for one billion people living in poverty.

Columbia University geochemist Wally Broecker popularized the term “global warming” in a 1975 paper, predicting a rapid increase in global temperatures from “CO2 produced by the burning of chemical fuels.” To suggest a natural cause to environmental change via periodic solar movements, the clear trend of rising temperatures from man-made carbon dioxide – now at 426 ppm or 50% above pre-industrial levels – was labelled “climate change” by George W. Bush, softening the danger for Republican voters.

“Net zero” was the agreed goal of the 2015 Paris Agreement to restore the earth’s carbon balance, reducing man-made CO2 emissions (and methane, CH4) that fuels global warming. Net-zero is not just about removing carbon from the atmosphere, but removing pollution from our streets (7 million deaths per year, increased dementia, osteoporosis), limiting foreign influence, and increasing global security. Self-sufficiency should be on everyone’s improvement list. Alas, mitigation may be all that is left as a new climate produces more fragile weather – higher sea and air temperatures, more hurricanes, more floods – and more devastation.

Instead of helping to combat the worsening climate, the US exited the Paris Agreement (again), abrogating responsibility for any American contribution to anthropomorphic global warming. Donald Trump also gutted the green initiatives in Joe Biden’s 2022 $369-billion Inflation Reduction Act. Already the world’s top exporter of LNG, the US wants to export more, while a MAGA-led bonfire of vanities is emptying the US of workers, curtailing scientific research and development, and reducing local green manufacturing, hampering global competitiveness in a fast-growing new-energy industry.

Even Trump’s former PayPal First Buddy Elon Musk balked at the backward policies and threatened to start a new political party to oppose the stagnant Republican-Democrat duopoly, what writer Gore Vidal called “the property party.” Third parties haven’t had much success since Ross Perot’s 1992 attempt to block NAFTA, securing enough votes to win Bill Clinton the presidency with less than 25% of eligible votes, beginning a super-charged neoliberal era that has generated more inequality and militarism over the past four decades. With more than 200 million X-followers and his fingers on the engagement-based algorithms, Musk’s “America Party” could sway the next election any way he wishes.

Musk may only want to ensure his own fortune after backing the wrong horse in 2024 and seeing his electric vehicle (EV) and autonomous mobility investments tumble. Despite EVs being the most American-made cars, Trump called out Biden’s so-called “electric vehicle mandate,” axed the $7,500 federal EV incentive (starting from September), and dumped the EPA’s clean-air regulations. Although one in four car sales are now electric (17 million, 11.3 million in China, 2024) in a $3-trillion-a-year auto market, support for EVs has plummeted in the US, while Tesla shares have dropped more than 20% since Trump’s inauguration.

Thanks to the backward US policy, China’s EV revolution is carving up the auto-buying world, especially in emerging economies. Chinese investment, innovation, and manufacturing is also outstripping American industry in EVs as well as for batteries, computers, and renewable energy. The world’s second-largest economy is on pace to pass the world’s first on the back of increased renewables.

A record 600 GW of solar power was installed in 2024 – led by China at over half – up almost 20% from 2023. The green-energy market now accounts for more than 20% of grid electricity and is cheaper than fossil fuels (solar 41%, offshore wind 53% cheaper). A third of economic growth in Europe is via renewable energy, while Denmark, Spain, Portugal, and the UK have all scored 100% green days. As noted by University of Sussex energy researcher, Dario Kenner, only a small percentage of solar and wind potential is being used, especially in lucrative emerging markets: “There are genuine choices to meet rising electricity demand. It is not just having to build LNG.”

There is no shortage of new ideas and improved technologies in the green sector. China installed the world’s first 20-MW wind turbine with 124-m blades that can power 96,000 homes. A bladeless turbine is being trialled in France, “clean, quiet, and bird-free.” In Switzerland solar panels were installed between train tracks on the Swiss rail network, while in Spain an adjustable solar shutter was developed to shade and power a home. In the US, green tax credits were axed, ending incentives for rooftop solar and “Solar for All” projects.

Unfortunately, the US is stuck in the past as Trump tries to sell oil and gas via inflationary tariffs and extortionist trade policies. He is even trying to revive coal, the most expensive fuel. Fatih Birol, the head of the International Energy Agency, stated that the world is moving into a new energy world, “the age of electricity,” while the International Court of Justice decreed that major polluters are legally obligated to cut emissions, spurring on more urgency to change and innovate. The world is not waiting for the US to figure out the future.

For the rest of the world, there is no going back. The global economy is being reinvented without American input as countries look elsewhere to reduce their dependence on American goods and services and divest trade from the United States. To Donald Trump, it is bile off a schmuck’s back as he advances his nativist agenda and invests in more brown industries and unworkable “Golden Dome” boondoggles, while an anti-science, anti-immigrant stance excludes foreign workers.

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Increased militarism is also a problem as more money is diverted from essential services, especially in Europe after 5% of GDP was earmarked for NATO by 2035, up from a disparately followed 2% of GDP in the alliance agreement (1.3% Spain, Slovenia, Belgium, and Luxembourg to 3.4% Estonia and the US and 4.1% Poland, on $1.5 trillion defence expenditures in 2024 [.pdf]). More military spending means less money for health, education, and green investment to help finance the transition from carbon-burnt to green-fuelled electricity. More military spending means fewer doctors, nurses, and hospitals.

For the US, more military spending means buying more American arms, making the world more dangerous in a growing advanced-weapons race of drones, missiles, and space-based military toys. Why so much money for war, weapons, and armies? Because money spent on social systems lessens inequality. Peace from strength according to the American catechism.

The agreement may just be words, however, ignored at the next election, and the flattery heaped on “daddy” by NATO secretary-general Mark Rutte forgotten, while only 3.5% is for purely military use. Only Spain balked, opposed to €80 billion more a year (almost half its pension commitments) and lingering worries about military dictatorship. The ruling PSOE’s main coalition partner’s leader Yolanda Díaz cited “rearmament” and “cuts in social spending,” suffering Trump’s ire. Even the US is not expected to meet the proposed target.

In the Netherlands, where Rutte was prime minister from 2010 to 2024, EU agricultural policy now directs farmers to reduce nitrogen fertilizers in favour of sustainable, non-polluting farm practices, but without a workable timetable to implement new measures, far-right parties are rising to oppose the change. Would 5% GDP spending help support farmers during the transition to incorporate environmentally safe practices, including less nitrogen, permits, and land swaps? Brussels signs the bills, but must manage the way.

And yet, the US is increasing its $960-billion military budget, already more than the ten next-largest countries combined despite not being at war (other than with itself). The 1.3 million active-duty troops have to be fed, including 40,000 in the Middle East from where much of the world’s oil and gas flows, and in 750 military bases around the world. The Republican H.R.1. bill adds more military spending abroad and at home, increasing fear on the streets of America. More war games for the war channels if you can stomach the gore.

Add in reactionary tariffs and everything will cost more for consumers, from coffee to cars, from water to wine. Ontario premier Doug Ford questioned Trump’s honesty in the ongoing US-Canada trade war, the legality of which is before the courts, saying he trusts him “as far as I can throw him” and believes Trump “wants to hurt the American people.” Ontario is the number-one trading partner for 17 states and third-largest for the whole of the US, employing millions of American workers. Rome is burning, New Orleans is sinking, and the US is now an enemy.

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The architect of America’s return to a presumed past glory is Donald Trump, who enjoys annoying everyone, knowing that a pliant press will not call out the puerile invective, incessant lying, and backward policies. The list is long: a “pork-filled” spending bill that guts Medicaid yet adds $4 trillion to an already bloated national debt (from a supposed fiscally conservative party), trade deals that aren’t deals (alienating foreign partners and roiling markets), tariffs that increase inflation (raising prices that don’t affect luxury buyers), and laughable anti-green policies that support an unsustainable, old-world oil order.

Sorry Charlie, wind turbines do work, including three states that now count wind as their top energy source (Iowa, South Dakota, Kansas) – remember The Wizard of Oz? China also does wind power. One can see the extent of China’s green makeover in Google Maps, while the United States falls further behind each year in the growing, multi-trillion-dollar, new-energy sweeps. By 2030, China will generate 1 TW from wind and 100 GW via a 250-mile-long Great Solar Wall. A proposed hydroelectric dam on the Yarlung Tsangpo river will help cover grid intermittency, generating 300 TWh/year, almost four times that of the world’s largest Three Gorges Dam.

That few people can stand up to Don Trumpleone is banana-republic bad. That anyone can stomach the endless mangled tangents means the US is being led by a barstool pest. Blame Biden, Obama, the Fed, labor statistics, …. Bollocks to all with another toxic jibe in the ongoing us versus them Whig-Tory court battle, ad hominem ad nauseam. Change the focus, fire another pinball: “woke” cultural Marxism (feminism, gender studies, critical race theory, inequality, DEI), a hoax under every bed.

Social critic Camille Paglia proclaims a standard American exceptionalism in her 1992 Sex, Art, and American Cultural: “America is the most open, dynamic, creative nation on God’s green earth.” One would question that assessment today, given the daily soap opera now playing everywhere on 24/7 digital display: As The Trump Turns, starring a wind-up Mr. T (“Murdoch, you crazy”), sounding more like a grievance-filled Chatty Cathy repeatedly pulling his own string.

Pity those who have to listen. Drug prices cannot be reduced by 1,000% (“numbers the likes of which you’ve never even dreamed of before”). A Trump mobile phone cannot be made in the US for $499 (begging the question of how a president can hawk his own wares). Uncle John was not the longest-serving MIT professor, nor did he teach the Harvard-schooled “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski as told by a fact-challenged Trump to a July energy and innovation forum in Pittsburgh. The bluster might be funny if not so pathetically sad.

Liberal Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau did not kick Russia out of the G8 (the Conservative Party PM Stephen Harper did after Russia invaded the Donbas and annexed Crimea). Nor did the US send $350 billion in aid to Ukraine. “I never wrote a picture” was Trump’s answer to the 2003 50th birthday message he sent to his best friend Jeffrey Epstein as reported by The Wall Street Journal, despite Trump writing in 2008, “Each year I donate an autographed doodle.” You can’t make this stuff up. Is anything Trump says true?

The worst is the cringeworthy hyperbole replayed over and over: “They’re eating the dogs,” “You’re gambling with World War Three,” “I’d like to be pope,” inciting more fear than loathing. Indeed, the verbal stylings of a pantomime LCD villain with pretend presidential swag is the message to keep Trump atop the news cycle, replaced the next day by more dumbed-up bluster. In the words of Judge Judy, “Baloney, baloney, baloney.”

The facile invective and endless distractions are worrisome – regularly performed before a sycophantic MAGA press/audience – but are a sideshow to keep from seeing the libertarian masters pulling the real strings. There’s nothing neo-liberal about dismantling the government for private gain.

Alas, As The Trump Turns is on every channel, starring a venom-spitting Donny Rotten and the Fringe on the DC main stage for a four-year residency, rehashing a tired collection of songs, “Under my Thumb,” “Anarchy in the US,” and “My Huge Election Victories.” Trump derangement syndrome or the Stockholm syndrome? Or post-traumatic stress disorder after years of made-up wars and rising inequality?

Of course, real lives are being destroyed in Trump’s wake. Starved families in Gaza (Israeli forces killed 1,000 aid-seekers in 10 weeks), bombed Iranian cities (without required congressional approval), reduced weather prediction services leading to over 200 flash-flood deaths in Texas, to which Trump venally claimed, “Nobody ever saw a thing like this coming. This is a once in every 200 year deal.” The now-gutted NOAA did and is predicting an “above-normal 2025 Atlantic hurricane season.” Hard-working immigrants live in daily fear of deportation, including citizens and legal workers carted off without habeas corpus to who knows where. Visitors are jailed. Who wants to travel to the US today even for pleasure?

The rest of the world looks on in horror at the lies (European Union not created to “screw the US,” GERD not funded by the US, fake Obama arrest videos, …), ignorance (many Africans speak English, cancer-causing “wind mills,” Shylock slurs, …), and a daily rota of hate-filled noise. Even a usually silent Barack Obama commented on the “constant nonsense and misinformation flowing out of this White House” after being painted by Trump’s hate roller.

At an Iowa rally to celebrate Republican tax cuts, the Barfly-in-Chief noted that no Democrats voted for the bill, claiming they hate him, before stating he hated them: “I really do, I hate them. I cannot stand them because I really believe they hate our country.” The news went out as usual at nine. No mention of the “Top ten lies today as told by Donny Rotten,” a.k.a. The Greatest American President Ever.TM If he wanted to reach more than just the MAGA crowds, he could take over a rebooted The Late Show: “Heeere’s Donny.” GET IT DONE!

Of course, one must wonder about someone who hates opponents. How low is the American civility bar? Hate is the currency of a lost soul, calling the weak to arms. Apparently anger wins ratings, while amplifying anger wins even more air time. One understands swag, but is nauseating narcissism, incessant babbling, and self-aggrandizement an American personality trait? Is everything a ratings grab – the goofy, the ugly, and the horribly cruel – unchecked by basic decency? How did the American DNA become so malignant? If Trump is meant to represent those who have been hurt in the past, why incite more harm? Unless that is the goal.

Trump acts as a contrarian to aggravate rather than alleviate, all the while selling more soap. Getting people to yell and argue amongst themselves is the oldest trick, sowing division and distraction like any three-card-monte carnival huckster. Misdirection is the goal as government services are eliminated and more money trickles up to the already wealthy. Trump incites fear to distract from the real takeover so the state can no longer impede the corporate control of money, aided by a gaggle of brogrammers counting clicks.

Upon his arrival in Scotland in late July to open a golf course near Aberdeen, Trump lectured his hosts on immigration, code for keeping out non-white, non-Christians. Flying aboard Air Force One on the US taxpayer’s dime to advance his own business interests, the green fees for a single round at his new course are $665, almost the average US weekly salary of $770. Many of the MAGA millions couldn’t get through the front gate let alone pay for the gear.

And yet they sing along as the con cons on: Trump for Nobel Prize, Trump for Mount Rushmore, Trump for Mr. Universe. Add in the corruption – from Bibles to crypto, from $400-million 747s to family investments – and it’s long past time to start talking about Kevin.

The rot is not going to stop as the press continues selling the sizzle as steak, standard Madison Avenue jiggery, while As The Trump Turns broadens its reach. In the words of George Bernard Shaw, “The trouble with the media is that it seems unable to distinguish between the end of the world and a bicycle accident.”

Derogatory sports team names will occupy space beside Gaza starvation and Iran bombings. The Redskin-in-Chief (formerly Commander-in-Chief) thinks the best offence is a good offence. But why so offensive? Sugar cane versus high-fructose corn syrup ingredients (sugary cola drinks are all bad) will be sold beside sex trafficking (possibly 1,000 underage girls abused by Jeffrey Epstein and other fiddling Neros). Trump’s best friend was a convicted child sex offender, although Epstein also attended Bill Clinton’s daughter’s 2010 wedding after he was jailed and released in a sweetheart plea deal. The Russian war was supposed to end on “day one,” yet “the attacks on Ukraine have doubled” since Trump’s inauguration. We get the politicians we deserve, but no one deserves this.

What does tomorrow hold? – stay tuned for more of Donny Rotten in As The Trump Turns, daily showing the life of a subversive, small-tent bully, spouting dismissive infotainment in a punch-drunk stream-of-consciousness, Trumpsplained as a call to greatness. Not an embarrassment of riches but riches of embarrassment. The US is being filled with ignorance, applauded by a misinformed MAGA ecosystem that propels anti-diversity, anti-immigrant, and anti-human policy to prime time in a bizarre attempt to create a non-existent version of America. Even the laugh track is stale.

Expect more distractions in the ongoing fame frenzy for ratings: the earth is 6,000 years old, men have one less rib than women, coal was put in the earth by God. Equality doesn’t exist in nature, life is binary, incandescent bulbs are better than LED lighting.

The rest of the world is building a firewall around the United States to reduce American influence and keep the rot from spreading. The rest of the world knows not to court the dark forces of the past as more storm clouds gather. There is no future when one can’t tell the truth from the lies.