In the first-season Star Trek (TOS) episode “Charlie X,” the Enterprise takes onboard a castaway teenager, Charlie Evans (played with lovely creepiness by Robert Walker, Jr). Long story short, it turns out the disembodied-nigh-god inhabitants of the planet he’d been marooned on as an infant had given him nigh-god powers over reality to help him survive — powers that, in the hands of an unsocialized, hormone-ridden, stereotypical teenager makes him an existential menace.
And, as that is becoming clearer — that Charlie can and will, with the power of his mind, control the ship, make things and people disappear (or change them into iguanas, or steal their faces), break bones, compel people to speak or be silent — Spock says to Kirk the line in the title of this post.
The US is in a Charlie X moment.
We have an elected president who does pretty much whatever he wants. If he has the people willing to do it, it gets done. If they aren’t willing, he fires them until he gets some who are. Law? He’s the president — law is something he uses as a weapon, not is hampered by as a restriction.
When you’re nigh-omnipotent, who can tell you no? Ego-driven monuments and building renamings? Sure.
- Enrich himself, his companies, his family? Naturally!
- Lie, hyperbolize, exaggerate, without any apparent sense of shame, double down when corrected, and never, ever, admit you were incorrect? Sounds like a plan!
- Militarize law and immigration enforcement? Sounds fun! Shit on international allies? Why not?
- Throw decorum, tradition, civility, politeness, and norms out the window as irrelevant wussiness that keep him from doing whatever he wants to do? Tradition and politeness are for wussies!
- Roll back a century of social and legal advancement, and securing of civil rights, by anyone who’s not a white Christian man? Hold my nuggets …
- Look to fire anyone he doesn’t like, whether he has authority or not, and disassemble the civil service that was put in to keep government from operating on the spoils system? Gilded Age, baby!
- Engage in wide-spread wielding of the Justice Department, et al., as weapons of vengeance? Damn straight.
- Call for the imprisonment, banishment, or execution of his political enemies? Naturally!
- Pander to any conservative wish list that comes from a person or group who sufficiently kow-tows and/or donates? Outstanding!
Declare anyone, or anywhere, he wants as “terrorists” or a “terrorist organization,” which he can then use his expansive “emergency” powers (granted to the President by successive generations of Congress) to outlaw, imprison, shoot, or bomb?
Who’s gonna stop me?
Ultimately, that’s Charlie X’s line — once he learns that he doesn’t have to follow the rules, that he doesn’t have to put up with Kirk’s advice, then orders. Who can stop him?
Who going to stop our nigh-omnipotent adolescent?
Not the Courts — not, ultimately, when he’s got a hand-picked Supreme Court majority that believes that the Executive gets to execute pretty much anything it wants, and that stare decisis is for suckers.
Not Congress — his GOP allies are either wildly enthused about how their ideological G-spots are being scratched, or else terrified of being primaried by his MAGA machine and its multi-billionaire backers. The only pushback from them has come where he’s bumped against their prerogatives, and even there it’s been hit or miss.
His Democratic opponents, meanwhile seem to feel that if they squawk nicely-worded protests and make pro forma (but always fragile) moves to provide a bit of publicity-worthy friction to his advance — well, that’s all they can be expected to do, amirite?
Trump’s often compared to a senile old man, and anyone who claims to not see his cognitive decline is, at the most charitable, simply not looking / wishfully thinking. But the comparison to an adolescent seems also compelling. An adolescent who has always lived a life of entitled privilege. An adolescent who has always bought or legally evaded any significant consequences to his actions, from stiffing contractors to fomenting mob violence. An adolescent raised by an abusive father to never apologize, never compromise, always go for the throat, that losers are anyone who doesn’t win everything, and losers should be curb-stomped to make sure they learn their lesson. An adolescent raised in “the power of positive thinking” — that you can make your own reality, your own truth, if you stick by it, deny anything that denies it, double down on it when in trouble, and never, ever, admit you were wrong.
An adolescent who is now arguably the most powerful person on earth, surrounded by minions who eagerly do whatever he wants and who stroke his ego that anything he wants is the right thing to do, while also surrounded by ego-stroking villains who see his willfulness and willingness to do whatever he wants can be steered to their own ideological ends, leaving him to think it was all his own idea.
And then, today …
And today he announced that he’d (a) kidnapped the leader of a foreign nation, and his wife, to be shipped back to America for a “fair” trial (note the word “fair” was never actually used; “show” may be a better word), and (b) meanwhile, the US would be running the country, with “boots on the ground,” so as to (c) build a new, democratic, and American-allied country, because that always works and was never criticized or run against by the guy now doing it, and (d) by the way, it’s open season for American (with priority) oil companies to move in and take over the petroleum resources there.
As a bonus, our Sect’y of State was out there winning hearts and minds telling the leadership of Cuba that they might be next.
Don’t be me wrong — Maduro is a piece of work. He’s a petty dictator who’s relished using American hostility as a way to leverage dictatorial power in his own country, and who’s arguably at best turned a blind eye to narcotics cartels shipping goods to a (ever-willing-to-consume) US. If he’d fallen over dead with a brain aneurism, I wouldn’t be mourning his passage.
This whole thing is quite different.
The US President, after saber-rattling and threats for quite a long time, decided to simply declare drug smugglers as an invading military force, and therefore subject to military force in return. Not surprisingly, the US Navy and Air Force and whomever else he wanted to show off were pretty effective at blowing up (what he said, with no evidence given, how dare you question his integrity?) narcotics boats. But not so effective that they couldn’t commit a few text book war crimes — denied, then angrily quasi-justified, then just handwaved off.
That got enough applause (or acquiescence) from the usual suspects to move on to declaring a shipping embargo on Venezuela. It wasn’t all that well-enforced, I’ve seen reported, but it did make for some big publicity moments, which was even more important to show Trump how big and powerful he was.
But no immediate craven surrender by Maduro was forthcoming, and our adolescent is an impatient adolescent — and one that really gets off on compensating for something by the size of his military. This is the guy who was jealous of all those military parades in other countries, so got one for his birthday. This is the guy who wants everyone to be cowed by his hand-designed battleships. This is the guy who’s happy to throw his “America First” isolationist campaign principles out the window in order to, yes, potentially start a foreign war (It’s not foreign, its on a continent named after our country!) with boots on the ground (such big boots! shoot to kill!) to do some hopefully-favorable nation-building (after attacking the very of nation-building for the last decade or more) (but I can do it right!).
I mean, this comes across as someone sending Trump an article buttonholing Trump at a Mar-a-Lago party and waxing lyrical about how in the Gilded Golden Age* the US used to invade Latin American countries all the time, overthrowing governments to put in friendly puppets, and installing American companies to extract everything they could.
*Though not just in the 19th or early 20th Century, of course.
Of course, that’s why so many people in Latin America still think the US is an imperialistic power, driven by money and ego to attack them as it pleases. That’s why a lot of countries, no matter how much we have, at times, helped them, mistrust at best and hate at worst the US. And Trump seems determined to prove them right — indeed, to double down by not only doing this, but making it clear he has the personal right to do it because he can.
And for all the people warning about how this will drag the US’ reputation and any moral high ground it carries around the world down into the mud? He doesn’t care. Moral high grounds are for wimps. The US owns the Western Hemisphere, so it can do anything it wants there — just watch! As for the rest of the world, they’re all shit-hole or doomed or ego-stroking countries, so who cares about them. Letting Russia and China do what they will? As long as he looks good (put up another triumphal arch!), it sounds to Trump like a fabulous plan.
The follow-up with Cuba is meant to tell the entire world — from Cuba, to Greenland, to Iran, to the UK — that, if they don’t say nice things and give nice concessions, the nigh-omnipotent adolescent in charge of the US military machine might invade their place next.
Nice country you got here — shame if the Marines were to invade it.
Is that the might-makes-right, organized crime approach to foreign relations that we really want to represent as the norm for us, or for our enemies (who will be ever-growing in number?
Stray thoughts that my writing above might provoke (or that come to mind, since it’s been quite some time since I spoke broadly about Trump).
He was elected President
He sure was. None of that makes the above justified, or legally or morally defensible. People wanting a dictator doesn’t make having a dictator any more legal.
Yeah, but he’s better than Biden or Harris!
Even if so, see above.
He’s making America great again!
Only in a Hobbesian “nasty, brutish, and short” war of all-against-all sort of way. Which is not likely to end well for anyone, including America.
That said, I don’t think Trump cares about the long-term reality. He wants a strong/great America because he wants to be the Dear Leader of a strong/great America. It’s about him, not us. Sure, he’d love it if people put in statues and monuments and triumphal arches to him for centuries to come — but he’s much more into them doing it now, while he’s around to bask in the adulation.
If it all goes to shit the moment he’s dead? I don’t think he gives a damn.
What about the US invasion of Panama?
Yes, one could argue that 1989 attack to arrest Noriega and end his dictatorship had the same justification (or, on the other hand, lack of it) as Trump’s actions in Venezuela. One could handwave about how Panama had formally declared war on the US, that American citizens (in the Canal Zone) were in danger, or that the Panamanian Defense Force had killed an American Marine, but that’s not much.
But even so … so? I’m not sure a 37-year-ago precedent — and not a particularly admirable one at that — means much.
It’s all just Trump Derangement Syndrome!
I’m old enough to remember when Democrats dismissed wild, weird conspiracy theories about Clinton(s), Obama, and Biden as “Derangement Syndromes,” which seemed quite credible, given the utter craziness about what was being said (e.g., Pizzagate, Operation: Jade Helm, etc.).
Trump, of course, is always happy to project what he and his are doing onto others — thus now everything is dismissed as “Trump Derangement Syndrome” (no matter what sort of criticism or concern it is).
Indeed, the TDS label is just what Trump likes, because he can just say it, rather than countering arguments being made against his actions and plans. It’s a lovely ad hominem — one of his favorite things.
If it’s worthwhile, I don’t think this invasion was a Wag-the-Dog to distract from the Epstein Files. Or from the economy. I might be convinced that he’s looking for a topic for that big triumphal arch he’s having built in Washington for the 250th of American Independence (irony is not Trump’s strong suit).
I do think that the minor reason for all this is that Maduro didn’t bow down to him when he demanded it (adolescents want respect, earned or not), and the major reason is that he wants to be a War Leader and ride in a parade, and maybe make sure that it’s his name on that triumphal arch (adolescents love ego strokes).
Oh, he’s just joking about Subject X
This is commonly said by Trump’s enablers when he says something particularly grotesque, hurtful, threatening, or a bit cray-cray.
Never mind that some jokes just aren’t funny or appropriate, given his position. If I had my family over to your house and, on your way out, said, “Hope your granny doesn’t slip and break her hip and die a painful, lingering death,” would it become “okay” if the rest of my family (not me, of course) insisted it was just a joke, ha, ha, ha, he’s so high-spirited and outspoken …
For that matter, is there a single thing that Trump has joked about doing that, when he came to it, he didn’t actually do? Sometimes its to stroke his own ego, sometimes because its what he wanted, and/or sometimes because he knew it would outrage his impotent opposition. But way too many of those jokes have turned into a twisted, Joker-like reality.
Don’t worry, it’ll all be over soon
At best, Trump is President for another three years. He’s hinted enough times that he wants a third term, of course. Is he that to:
- encourage folks to figure out a legal way to bypass the Constitution?
- see how much popular support the idea draws (either as a way to make it happen or because of the ego stroking it provides)?
- get off on making his opponents angry?
- normalize the topic so that when he does it (emergency powers!) people won’t be shocked?
But even if he doesn’t make a grab at that brass ring (and if he does, do you think the other two branches, under his control, will really stop him, given their acquiescence and support to date?), he’s still around for three years (since we know, because he’s told us, he’s in Perfect Health, Much Better Than Has Every Been Seen Before).
How much more damage will he do in three years?
How much more pollution and climate damage and opening up of wilderness to mineral extraction? How many more civil rights will he take from how many more people? How much will he Make America White Again? How much damage will he do to our national reputation, or our national norms, or our national identity, or even the idea of us being a nation any more?
And that all assumes that we don’t get President Vance taking office in 2029.
Sitting back and trusting that things will snap back to “normal” in three years, if we just hold on … doesn’t seem like a smart idea. A lot of damage, pain, and death stands in the balance.
We’re in the hands of an adolescent. What are we going to do about it?
The Enterprise is only saved because the disembodied-nigh-gods realize their mistake and come to take Charlie away where he cannot hurt anyone, even if it means that he’ll be isolated from humanity for the rest of his life. In his case, it’s a tragic ending to the story.
In our case … I don’t think can’t count on that sort of divine intervention.
It’s annoying to think that I wrote a post with the same title — and about the same person — almost nine years ago.
