Por John K. White
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| Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair |
According to Donald Trump, the United States is “bigger, better, richer, and stronger” since he became president, lifting his new-and-improved MAGA slogan straight from the Olympics motto of “faster, higher, stronger.” If one is to define excellence by standard of living, healthcare, or life expectancy, however, the US falls short. Counting 2026 Olympic medals, the US (33) even finished second behind Norway (41), whose population is 60 times smaller, while many other competing countries also beat the US in medals per population (US 349 million, 33), including Italy (59, 30), Germany (84, 26), and Switzerland (9, 23).
For the world’s richest country by GDP, the US oddly fails in many basic categories: household and national debt (1), healthcare costs (1), and press freedom (57) as noted by European Commission VP Kaja Kallas. Inequality is also drastic: ten Americans (Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos, Ellison, Page, Brin, Balmer, Huang, Buffett, Dell) have 50 million times more wealth ($2 trillion) than the average American annual income. All are men – the ultimate boys’ club lording protected privilege over all others. No wonder money is at the root of politics. Winning an election these days is expensive.
Sadly, the dividers characterize success by one word – winning – typically defined by money, no matter that winning comes in many forms, some not easily labelled and often holistically gleaned in prior loss. The American figure skater Alysa Liu dropped out of skating for two years, unable to enjoy her life, returning better for the break, and ultimately achieving success in Milan; not by an Olympic gold medal, but by finding joy again. As Liu noted, winning and losing is “just something that happens. It’s the outcome. But what matters is the input and the journey.”
The US men’s and women’s (ice) hockey teams excelled in their Olympic gold-medal pursuits, both beating Canada in hard-fought 2-1 overtime finals. In his typical louche way, Trump derided the women’s achievement, offering another casual misogynist remark about having to invite the women’s team to the White House after the men’s stunning victory. He then announced a presidential Medal of Freedom for men’s goalie Connor Hellebuyck, the difference-maker (42-28 shots) in an intense end-to-end final game.
But why not say good things about both teams and award the women’s captain Hilary Knight along with Hellebuyck? A five-time Olympic medalist (2 gold, 3 silver), Knight has captained the US team since 2023, has the most ever Olympic goals and assists of any American player, and scored the equalizer in the final against Canada with 2 minutes to play. Why not reward her, unless exclusion is the goal? The boys’ club again, a subset of the bankers’ club, the round table of elites. Privileged misogyny normalized once more.
Regardless of Trump’s policies, incoherent as they are, one must also question their purpose and validity when the delivery is so angry, insulting, and cruel. Unless cruelty is the goal. Illegal immigration can be curbed, but not with the loss of basic civil rights. Trade imbalances can be addressed, but not by illegal tariffs that raise prices for everyone.
Instead of calling on our best selves, Trump reaches for the worst, reducing humanity to a constant game of winners and losers, threatening those who won’t play by his own made-up rules. Money skews every decision, reducing the joy of life to a series of heartless transactions that represents not justice but a flawed psyche. The grade-school invective is depressing, comical, and sad on every level.
Oxfam’s 2026 “Resiting the Rule of the Rich” report noted that global billionaire wealth rose to $18.3 trillion in 2025, growing three times faster since Donald Trump’s 2024 election. while at the same time 50% of the world lives in poverty. In the US, the wealth of one person, Elon Musk, alone approaches $1 trillion. But at what price is wealth accumulation rewarded when democracy is eroded, social spending diminished, and militarism expanded? In a supposed Christian-based western world, must we ever be reminded that to gain the world is to lose one’s soul? Lies work only if we continue to believe what we don’t see.
Are we embarking on a post-modern anarchic state, where lawlessness goes unpunished? Which laws apply if they are unequally applied and easily sidestepped by those with money? Crime is crime, whether insider trading, off-shore tax dodges, or common everyday theft. The old order is lying to protect itself. If the E Files (E-T Files?) were a success, wouldn’t Trump have claimed his win in the longest-ever State of the Union address. Nothing, nada, zilch.
And now, the horrors of war that melts the minds of sane humans everywhere, struggling to pay bills, feed loved ones, and share free time. When a US president pressures Ukraine and warmly welcomes a Russian leader up to his eyeballs in corruption, election fraud, and malevolence, can anyone doubt the cruelty? When a US president launches an illegal attack on a country of 93 million people, which killed over 100 schoolgirls in the first few hours, how do old moral codes continue to hold sway? The world is being wrapped in terror.
No one should be surprised when a liar lies about the one thing that sets him apart – no wars. In the words of Trump’s mentor and former chief counsel to Joseph McCarthy, New York lawyer Roy Cohn: 1) “Attack, attack, attack,” 2) “Admit nothing, deny everything,” 3) “Claim victory, never admit defeat.” With Trump in full-on attack mode, the US is winning in extrajudicial killings, military interventions, and foreign coups. Number 1 in military budget, weapons sales, and missile strikes. Behind Hollywood films, violence is the number-1 US export. Welcome to an American world of indiscriminate bombing, playing “Russian roulette” with the quick and the dead. Praise the Lord.
British writer George Orwell coined the word “doublespeak” in his 1949 novel 1984, perfectly applicable to Trump’s everyday utterances: belligerent Nobel-prize winners, Board of Peace missile strikes, Liberation Day tax-raising illegal tariffs, democracy coups. More craven are “peace” negotiations interrupted by pre-planned military attacks, exposing duplicitous diplomacy as self-serving lies (non-existent WMDs, non-existent drugs, non-existent “imminent threats”). In Trumpspeak, diplomacy is called “strategic ambiguity.”
And now, a daily dose of mangled Trumpisms for all to behold. To be seen is to be heard, as the self-appointed royal arbiter of right and wrong subjects the world to more flat-earth, wake-and-shake nonsense, showing once again there is no bad press, only screen time to fill our distracted minds. Compliance is a cudgel, threatening those who won’t play along, in particular, British prime minister Keir Starmer, who initially refused US military access to the Chagos Islands, and Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez, who refused access to two Andalucian military bases, and emphatically said “no to war.”
Everybody knows dialogue is preferred to conflict – take your pick from Francis of Assisi to Benjamin Franklin to a kindergarten teacher dolling out timeouts to disruptive children. Today, dialogue is even more important, given the destructive ease of push-button, computer-controlled, video-game command consoles in distant, detached “situation” rooms. In that war, the earth is seen only as real estate (including “nice” gold drapes), narrated with shocking frat-boy language (“We play for keeps”). Obscenity is now kindness.
Nor does anyone doubt the curses to be released by such artless dealings, funded by a $1 trillion-plus US Department of War budget: more anger, regional instability, and financial uncertainty. But we are horrified anew by the destruction and fallout in yet another high-stakes game of medieval Realpolitik. Iran: The Sequel. “May you live in interesting times” is a wish some crave. May you not die in the same turbulence.
And with more war comes more ecocide and more environmental degradation delivered at the end of a million-dollar missile, ensuring those on the receiving end keep paying the price long after the dust settles. With war comes the obvious destruction of homes and habitats along with the fouling of air, earth, and water with more chemical toxins, stressing ecosystems beyond repair. Even without war, we were on our way to destabilizing planetary climate. A 2015 One Earth study found that the earth’s climate “is now departing from the stable conditions that supported human civilization for millennia” as feedback loops and tipping dynamics threaten us with “long-lasting and potentially irreversible consequences.”
War is the ultimate expression of control by a government over its citizens, powerless to stop the senseless slaughter in their names. In Herman Melville’s great American novel, Moby-Dick, Captain Ahab exposed the true motivation for his quest: revenge. Trump is similarly deluded by his desire to embark on another revenge-filled “whaling voyage,” which he believes is “part of the grand programme of Providence that was drawn up a long time ago.” Land Ho! Once more into the breach. Win another one, boys.
No one can tame nature, let alone the myriad different directions of human activity. If we can’t find our humanity in the slowly darkening world, we are already dead. Are we now seeing the end of our winning ways?
John K. White, a former lecturer in physics and education at University College Dublin and the University of Oviedo. He is the editor of the energy news service E21NS and author of The Truth About Energy: Our Fossil-Fuel Addiction and the Transition to Renewables (Cambridge University Press, 2024) and Do The Math!: On Growth, Greed, and Strategic Thinking (Sage, 2013). He can be reached at: johnkingstonwhite@gmail.com
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