American Carnage

The rapid collapse of American constitutional order has been shocking to witness. Trump's authoritarian dreams have been nearly realized. His goals are aided and abetted by a corrupt SCOTUS, led by the spin-meister Roberts, a man whose legacy will be the destruction of the constitution he swore to uphold. No one in his party seems to want to defend the Constitution and instead will do and say anything to get on TV to defend Trump. 

With DOGE, he sent a wrecking ball through multiple government agencies. He unconstitutionally slashed funds allocated by Congress for cancer research, medical breakthroughs, historical accounts, the National Parks. Elon Musk, a foreign citizen from South Africa with billions in US contracts propping up his failing businesses, made off like a bandit with our private data. 

ICE violence against civilians 

Trump has unleashed a masked, armed and unregulated militia upon blue states. In Chicago, ICE/Border Patrol agents dropped from helicopters onto an apartment building in the middle of the night. They kicked down doors and vandalized apartments. They arrested dozens of inhabitants, including children and the elderly. The reason for this military action in a peaceful US city? The administration claimed that the building was rife with Tren de Aragua gang members. To date, none of the residents have been charged with a crime. 

In Minnesota, ICE/BP agents have shot and killed a mom and a nurse. The mom's last words to her slayer were "I don't hate you" - words recorded by the ICE agent himself as he videotaped the moments leading up to his attack on a civilian exercising her right to peaceably protest. In Jonathan Ross's video, you can see him move his phone from right hand to left as he (in violation of DHS rules of engagement), so he could pull out his gun. Good was shot multiple times trying to get away from the ICE agent with the gun. 

Alex Pretti was videotaped in the minutes before he was shot 10 times in the back by ICE men. He began that moment as an observer - someone using his phone to record the violence of ICE. His deadly error was to go to the aid of a woman physically attacked by ICE. They then swarmed Pretti, violently beat him while he was on the ground, disarmed him and shot him multiple times in the back. There is no more cowardly action than shooting an unarmed man in the back. The federal government claimed Pretti was shot because he "approached U.S. Border Patrol officers with a 9mm semi-automatic handgun”  – no videos of the event support that claim. Instead, videos show ICE men shooting an unarmed man in the back as he was on the ground. Pretti's death has been ruled a homicide. But we have the kind of government where ICE men can kill civilians without any accountability. 

The administration claims Renee Good and Alex Pretti were "domestic terrorists" but in fact, Good was a mom who was trying to protect people from the violence of ICE; Pretti was a nurse who moved in to help a woman tossed to the ground by ICE. Both died as a result of their activism because ICE men have been given permission to kill civilians with impunity. 

The use of "domestic terrorist" is a deliberate attempt to tag a protester with significant criminal intent. The Brennan Center has more on that distortion of the law here. 

"American Carnage" – a phrase coined by Trump 

All of carnage was foreshadowed by Trump himself in his first inaugural address:

"At the center of this movement is a crucial conviction: that a nation exists to serve its citizens.

Americans want great schools for their children, safe neighborhoods for their families, and good jobs for themselves.

These are the just and reasonable demands of a righteous public.

But for too many of our citizens, a different reality exists: Mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities; rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation; an education system, flush with cash, but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of knowledge; and the crime and gangs and drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential.

This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.

We are one nation – and their pain is our pain. Their dreams are our dreams; and their success will be our success. We share one heart, one home, and one glorious destiny."

(Please notice that this raging egomaniac has inserted his name onto the white house account: https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/the-inaugural-address/ - a misuse of our tax dollars.) 

"American Carnage" as policy implemented by Trump 

However, instead of stopping "American carnage," the Trump II administration has expanded the carnage to  global level. Here are just some of the ways Trump has inflicted American carnage on the world:

 

• Trump has profited in the billions from his role as president, a violation of the Emoluments Clause of the US Constitution. Every foreign leader understands that to deal with Trump requires gifting something to Trump. (Tim Cook knows this too.) 

• In addition to terrorizing civilians in America with unjust arrests and the abandonment of due process, we have invaded Venezuela to remove its dictator (while leaving the rest of Maduro's cabinet in place.) 
• With the Venezuela military action, Trump has set up an international account in Qatar, the nation that just gifted him a plane, to deposit profits from selling Venezuelan oil. There is no oversight of that account.

• The US continually threatens to take over Greenland, against the wishes of Greenland, Denmark and NATO. It is unclear why this administration and majority party are so intent on alienating our long-time allies. 

• Russia's war on Ukraine drags on and on. Trump welcomed Putin to the US by rolling out the red carpet. Though he campaigned on ending this war as soon as he too office, it seems clear Trump is uninterested in helping end this war because Putin does not want to end this war. 

• Trump has initiated a war in Iran, which they are calling Operation Epic Fury, to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons, despite the fact that in June 2025, Trump told us that we had "obliterated" Iran's ability to make nuclear weapons. This is a a stupid, unjustifiable decision that risks expanding the war to multiple countries in the Middle East. 
• One of the first buildings bombed by the US was a school filled with schoolgirls, resulting in a deadly attack on children. 
• Many have noted that the Epic Fury abbreviation is the same as the abbreviation for the Epstein Files. 

• Recovering alcoholic and man chastised by his mother for his abusive behavior towards his women Pete Hegseth, who claims he is the Secretary of War (the department he leads is the Department of Defense) has told the world that the US leads the western hemisphere and other nations in that hemisphere better get behind that. 
• At Americas Counter-Cartel meeting, Pete Hegseth referenced the Monroe Doctrine, which argued that nations in the western hemisphere should stay out of the affairs of those in Europe. Tell that to Greenland and Iran.
• In his first year in power, the Secretary of Defense seems almost pathologically delighted with violence as a tactic.

• Everyone in the White House COMS department seems to think everything is a video game to them.  
• In the early days of the Iran War, they decided to publish a video mashing images of the real war with videos from movies like Braveheart, and clips from video games. The nation looks unbearably stupid and unprofessional when videos like this are released over official US government accounts, but apparently, that's the goal, I guess. 
• In addition to the childish, silly video mash of war clips with movie and game clips, the Department of Defense issued an indefensibly error-ridden news release about the death of a soldier in Iran, with the headline: "Dow Identifies An Army Believed to Be Casualty." Hard to believe that anyone looked at this mess of a release with words tossed together by someone without any kills in writing at all. 

It is discouraging to see the collapse of all American ideals and values, which have only always been imperfectly implemented. Have we ever at one moment in time trashed our allies, launched wars on multiple continents, employed a violent militia against civilians in the United States - all while providing the wealthiest with a juicy tax break? That's where we are now. Unprecedented times. Unprecedented carnage.