Trump--Not America, Not Congress--Goes to War with Iran
If anyone is still standing for the Rule of Law, it's the great writers on Substack.
The Constitution of the United States clearly leaves the power to go to war on behalf of the American people in the hands of Congress—and in the hands of Congress alone.
Yet yesterday, Donald Trump, along with his craven lackeys Hegseth, Rubio, and Vance, went to war to save his crumbling ratings after the stunning failure of a military parade in which U.S. Army soldiers slack-marched in front of empty stands, and in the face of the crashing approval ratings of Trump as president and on every single one of his major policy issues.
Yet, as astute observers know, nothing screams “I’m in control!!!!!” like bombing another country (she said acidly).
What Trump did is an impeachable offense upon which Congress should act instantaneously. The Constitution strips the presidency of all power to declare war. If war is too important to be left to the generals, it’s certainly too important to be left to a man for whom the presidency is a stay-out-of-jail pass given to him by an alt-Right-dominant Supreme Court
Behind the scenes, of course, there is something far, far darker. Nobody can think that nuclear weapons in the hands of a narcissistic, pseudo-religious nutjob like Khomenei can possibly be a good idea. HOWEVER, the ends do NOT justify the means:
There is no philosophical fallacy more dangerous that the theory that the ends justify the means. There is no end. The means are the only thing we ever experience. There is no final resolution. There are only means that produce more beautiful or uglier states of culture that provide more or less security and in the process enhance or strip human rights, freedoms, and even democracy itself.
Behind everything Trump does there stands Project 2025. We and others have spoken of this many times. Russell Vought was never forced to divulge his entire plan, but ultimately it’s Vought’s game Trump is acting out, with the help of a Cabinet stuffed with sexual abusers and drunks—McMahon (a woman, no less), Hegseth, and Bannon—and racists like Stephen Miller.
But it’s Vought who decided to be Caesar. He could never get the votes, so it’s Trump who is the figurehead with everything to gain and everything to lose, who fronts Vought’s Radical Right, Christian Nationalist ambitions—for the moment.
Everything Trump does—every executive order, every overstepping of boundaries on uses of military against American citizens, every abuse of immigrants rights, every gutting of women’s rights, every use of ICE as SECRET POLICE, every challenge to voting rights, every attempt to circumvent the decision of the courts, every usurpation of the rights of Congress—all have just one design: to break the three-branch system of government so the presidency can be the winner that takes it all. And the moment he achieves this, he is gone. And Vance, Peter Thiel’s Chosen One, will take over, but he will not be in charge. Because if there were ever a Shadow Government running a major state on this planet, at this point Thiel and Vought are it (along with the richest people in the world).
We and many others predicted months ago that the real plan coming from Vought and from Peter Thiel was that J. D. Vance would slip into the presidency when the Vought Vanguard was done using Trump, who is, to their delight, I’m sure, so nearly incapacitated that he’ll be easy to sideline. Trump has serious problems with dementia, as we have pointed out:
And previous to picking up John Gartner’s work, like that of 500 other doctors giving evidence on the state of Trump’s mental health, we noted the tendency towards Machiavellianism, narcissism, psychopathy and sadism in his behavior that mark him as a Dark Tetrad:
Russell Vought, however, gets to stay under the radar. His plan is still a secret but being played out every day. And that plan, essentially, appears to be this.
It’s Trump’s job to create an autocracy that breaks the three-branches system of government that prevents a religious state from taking hold in the United States. It’s going to be Vance’s job to preside over it in public, while Vought and Thiel pull the strings. Dealt in are Bezos, Zuckerberg, and (maybe, still) Musk.
And the irony is that the New American Oligarchy will have been put in power by an Evangelical, Christian-Nationalist, Radical Right voting enclave that will have given us the very antithesis of anything Christian. It’s Old Testament all the way, particularly in the area of women’s rights.
This morning, Substack has made itself incredibly proud. The following articles, taken individually and together, constitute a crash-course in where we are, where we’re going, and what we need.
I hope you will subscribe to all these writers and read everything they give us going forward. They are the brightest among the most luminous.
Please also watch for Joyce Vance to weigh in on the legal issues around Trump’s autonomous declaration of war.
Stay tuned.