United States of America – Lurching from Constitutional Democracy to Dictatorship

On the last day of constitutional convention in Philadelphia, September 18, 1787,  Elizabeth Willing Powell Asked Benjamin Franklin: “Well, doctor what have we got a republic or monarchy?”

He replied, “a constitutional republic if you can keep it”.

Given the fragile nature of the republic, Benjamin Franklin must have feared that it would not last long.

But never in his wildest dreams he would have imagined that it would not only not remain a constitutional republic but devolve into a banana republic presided over by a demagogue – a 34 times convicted felon and a serial liar - who would steal the sensitive classified information, store it in his bathroom at mar-a-lago and trample upon the constitution which he took the oath to uphold and, then, try to overthrow constitutional system of governance by inciting rebellion against the constitution by sending mob to the Capitol – the US congress, the seat of US government- just to keep himself in power after losing the 2020 election.

The same man now has turned the reins of the government over to world’s richest man - not elected by anyone and not accountable to anyone - who along with his henchmen is busily destroying the government by firing federal employees and cutting down programs that help Americans as well as the poorest population around the world.

Which brings fore the most pressing question – who is exactly in charge of the US government?

It seems USA has now two presidents – Donald John Trump and Elon Musk.

On one hand, Elon Musk, who is dubbed as de-facto president or co-president, is busy dismantling federal government through his illegitimate and unconstitutional “Department of Government Efficiency – DOGE”.

From treasury to Health to NOAA, education etc., Elon Musk and his 18 to 25 year old henchmen who have no experience in government and whose backgrounds range from sketchy to racist, are giving marching orders to senior government employees.

FAA - Federal Aviation Administration is in turmoil as many air traffic controllers are fired just after a recent horrific crash at Washington D.C

Thousands of employees have been laid off from the Department of Health and Human services, all in the name of cutting waste and trimming the federal deficit. With bird-flu decimating chicken population – real reason for rise in egg prices, measles outbreak in Texas, and purging of the influenza information from CDC website on which health professionals rely, the country is one pandemic away from mass casualty health crisis.

Confirmation of Robert F. Kennedy Jr – a vaccine denier – brings no relief to the anxiety faced by the health professionals across the country and, by that extension, around the world.

The shenanigans of Musk’s henchmen have resulted in the closure of multiple programs designed to help poorest section of the American population, which resides mostly in red states.

It is quite ironic to find that the same population from red states believed the promises of the demagogue and voted to put him back in the oval office despite knowing the stunning failures of his first term including the heinous attack on the seat US Government power – the Capitol.

The Musk decimation or hollowing out of the federal government, has left many a people wondering – ranging from elected officials, legal scholars and academics – as to why such an unelected, unconfirmed and unaccountable person and his equally dodgy “DOGE” is allowed to take a wrecking ball to a constitutional system of 250 years.

On the other hand, Donald Trump – with an attention span of a gnat – is busy dismantling international alliances, trade treaties which he himself has signed (USMCA) and threatening allies.

Trump’s threats of invading Canada, Greenland or Panama, reeks of something that happened in not-too-distant past – Adolf Hitler’s concept of “lebensraum” – living space, occupying foreign land and exploiting their natural resources.

But the most crazy and ludicrous is his GAZAplan of relocating Palestinians from Gaza to Egypt and Jordan – which something Jordan would be extremely averse to do given their past painful experience with Palestinians - and turning the whole strip into a Riviera.

It is possible that he may have just spouted this nonsense to appear tough to his MAGA crowd, but the consequences would be terrible – rise in worldwide terrorism and USA possibly finding itself in the docks at The Hague on the charges of ethnic cleansing.

While Trump’s apologist and enablers dismiss many of his ramblings as mere jest, his words and actions have a profound impact.

His idea of imposing peace deal on Ukraine without participation of EU has set off alarm bells in Europe prompting French President Macron to schedule an emergency meeting in Paris. Germany and France are mulling deploying NATO troops to Greenland.

Threats against Canada has galvanized Canadian population in boycotting everything American – from travel to alcoholic beverages – and has sparked a panic in the US industries affected by the impromptu boycott that would result in job losses already exacerbating unemployment situation.

The fresh produce from Mexico also has begun to see price hike thereby straining the food budget of American citizens.

25% tariff on all steel and aluminum products is going the hit the auto sector adversely, prompting Ford CEO to issue warning of plant closures which means more unemployment.

But a lot of countries in the world, including adversaries, view the growing chaos in USA as “karmic justice which was long overdue”, as many of them have faced the same chaos caused by US interfering in their domestic political situation.

US hegemonic interventions have destabilized many countries in the world. Chaos in the USA, therefore, is seen as the USA getting a test of its own medicine.

The soft power that enabled the US to build alliances, was also used in a coercive manner in recent years by previous administrations - in the form of threats of sanctions and prosecutions – to browbeat countries into conforming to its own foreign policy goals, even if such coercion is to the detriment of the well-being of the country at the receiving end of such threats.

Just consider the example of India. Massive pressure was exerted on PM Modi’s government to not only join anti-Russia sanctions but to stop purchasing of cheap Russian oil even though such move would have caused great economic hardships to Indian population. For USA, that would have been just “collateral damage” - a necessary price that needs to be paid in order for USA to achieve its foreign policy goals.

There are numerous examples of USA's meddling in the internal affairs of the India – prime among them are protests against Farm Laws and anti-CAA protests (Citizen Amendment Act – an act designed to benefit religious minorities from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan), financed through “soft power” of “USAID”.

India’s neighboring country, Bangladesh, has also faced such a wrath in the form of violent overthrow of Sheikh Hasina government and its replacement by Mr. Yunus – a radical, just for getting a military foothold in Bangladesh which the Sheikh Hasina government was resisting. India resisted such pressure, but Bangladesh could not, and the ugly results are there for all to see – a rise in religious fundamentalism, atrocities on minorities, and ruin of once blooming textile economy, etc.

Despite all the ugly warts and tendencies that it exhibits to maintain its dying hegemony, one must appreciate the fact that the USA is still a guiding light for freedom and a place to rebuild shattered personal lives - a trait not many countries in world exhibit, and, therefore, a much-needed pole in the fast-emerging multi-polar world to maintain global balance of power.

With Musk in charge of the federal government and the top guy Trump, not aware of anything but just content to play the pretend role of being president and the continued destruction of governance unleashed by them, the summer of 2025 looks to be very hot in political terms.

Mass purges of federal employees, DoJ staff in full revolt mode, Federal and district judges shutting down Trump’s unconstitutional executive orders, discontent flaring up against the rogue president and his co-president, and DOGE phase 3 about to begin, what the social conditions would look like by June, is anybody’s guess.

A mass demonstration against the rogue government, headed by Elon Musk, might descend into chaos and violence resulting in a Kent State massacre scenario.

That would simply provide Trump the pretext to impose martial law and suspend constitution and become a dictator as he so yearns to be.

Perhaps, this tweet of Trump is an indication of his thinking…

 

This is so eerily similar to Napoleonic quote “l'état, c'estmoi”, which in English means “I am the state”.

With so many judges issuing rulings to shut down trump administration’s unconstitutional agenda, folks like Vice-president J.D. Vance, Musk and many republicans advocating open defiance of the court orders, the country could be one such defiance of Supreme Court’s judgment, away from full blown constitutional crisis.

The coup then will be complete. The “Ruleof Law” will no longer be tenable. The descent into anarchy and dictatorship would begin.

The dark clouds of fascism are gathering on the horizon. USA now finds itself standing at the precipice.

Benjamin Franklin’s words “a constitutional republic, if you can keep it” now sound more ominous.

ICC Beclowns itself!

 

- The ICC loses credibility and joins a real clown world of UN, World Bank, IMF and the western countries.

Perhaps it was destined to happen that the world would wake up one day to the realization that the global institutions – United Nations, World Bank, IMF, NATO, International Criminal Court, etc. – setup after World War II - were, in fact, tools engineered to keep the Anglo-Saxon, i.e. Western control over the world.

Such opinion is often derided as leftist conspiracy mongering. But, thanks to US, UK, EU, G-7 and NATO cabal, the opinion has become a stark reality.

The catalyst for this is Ukraine and its West backed murderous neo-Nazi regime.

The current hostilities in Ukraine were not an overnight event, but they were building up for a long time – right from the collapse and dissolution of Soviet Union to the deceitful promise of No-NATO expansion made by the USA.

In spite of the “verbal” assurances given to Gorbachev, one-by-one, former soviet block countries were being made members of NATO by the USA, with Ukraine as the last one remaining.

Alarmed by this development, Russia felt threatened regarding its security and voiced this concern repeatedly demanding security guarantees from the Western world. But to no avail.

The ultimate goal of NATO was always Ukraine, which was going to be used by the western world as a spearhead against Russia, in order to weaken it and cause its further disintegration into several republics which would have allowed the USA and its NATO bullies to control Russia’s vast natural resources.

But the problem in Ukraine was the pro-Russian Yanukovych regime, which was proving to be a hindrance to the schemes of western world.

This problem was solved through the violent of 2014 called the Maidan Revolution – engineered by the USA – removing the Yanukovych regime and bringing current neo-Nazi regime to power. After coming to power, the neo-Nazi regime started committing horrific acts of violence against the Russian speaking population culminating in the most gruesome Odessa massacre.

These violent acts forced the people of Donbas to launch a struggle for independence from Ukraine.

Minsk-II accord – that would have brought an end to hostilities in Ukraine – was just a façade created by the West in order to gain time to arm Ukraine with NATO weapons and training to solve the question of Donbas once and for all.

That would have meant destruction of Russian speaking population in the east which proved to be the proverbial last straw for Russia which had so far naively believed in the Minsk-II accord.

This development left no choice for Russia but to launch the SMO.

At first, Western world thought of SMO as a god-sent opportunity to finally subdue Russia by overthrowing Putin Government and bringing a western-compliant one in its place – just like Yeltsin Government in the 90s.

USA and its allies believed that the imposition of sanctions – economic, political and social – would bring pain to the Russian citizens who would rise against the Putin government causing its downfall.

But every action has reaction. The sanctions imposed on everything Russian – oil, trade, banking, travel etc. – not only failed to produce the desired effect but have spectacularly backfired. The Russian economy has weathered the sanctions levied against them and remained robust; whereas the same cannot be said of the western woke nations.

The countries that imposed sanctions – G7, EU – have suffered a severe blowback in the form of rising inflation, higher energy cost, rising food prices, etc. Rising energy costs have made European industries simply un-competitive, forcing many of them to close, file for bankruptcy or simply relocate to the USA in order to take advantage of cheaper energy cost.

Even though the western world was screaming hoarse and arm-twisting countries to follow them in sanctioning Russia, many countries in the world saw the real purpose of the sanctions and balked at them or refused to go along realizing that they, too would be in the line for the same treatment if they ever desire to go against or challenge the western hegemony.

The UN – a joke of an organization – has not only failed to bring peace to Ukraine hostilities but has consistently done the bidding of the western world, along with many of its agencies, while ignoring continued shelling by Ukrainians of civilians in Donbass and execution of Russian POWs with weapons supplied by the “champions of democracy and human rights” in the western world.

The combined assault led by US and its allies through UN, World Bank, IMF, SWIFT, European Union, Sports Federations, ban on air travel, etc. have simply proved ineffective. Russia’s trade surplus for 2022 has increased 1.7 times over 2021, whereas USA and EU are struggling with rising inflation, high costs of food and a Banking Crisis on slow boil. Even Moody’s – a rating agency - has cut its outlook on US banking sector to “Negative”.

All these global institutions – under the diktat of western world – are bending over backwards for accommodating Ukraine’s interest.

Consider the amounts of financial packages designed by World Bank, IMF and EU despite knowing fully well the precarious condition of Ukrainian economy. As if this is not enough, the useless WB/IMF have predicted GDP growth of 1% for war ravaged Ukraine in 2023!

Having failed to achieve their cherished dream of seeing a weakened Russia and the establishment of permanent western hegemony, the western world is now consumed by hatred towards anything Russian, and specifically Putin, who has lit the fire against the oppressive USA led world order.

As a last resort, they have now turned to ICC, which is not even recognized by USA, Ukraine and Russia.

The ICC has issued an arrest warrant against Putin on the premise that Russia helped evacuate children from war-ravaged Donbas in order to save them from becoming victims. The truth is Russia evacuated Russian speaking children from eastern parts of Ukraine to Russia for their safety.

The statement issued by the Prosecutor Karim A. A. Khan KC makes a hilarious reading and just highlights ICC’s intellectual bankruptcy and its sealed bondage to Western interest.

Ironically, the Prosecutor Karim A. A. Khan KC has no guts to get arrest warrant issued against Chinese President Xi Jin Ping for what he is doing with Uyghur Muslims in north-western region Xinjiang of China despite USA Secretary of State Anthony Blinken saying on record “China iscommitting genocide and crimes against humanity”!

The same ICC has conveniently overlooked NATO’s war crimes in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Libya, deaths of Iraqi children etc. etc., but has taken the issue with Russia for evacuating Russian speaking children to save them from raging hostilities. This is a height of complete absurdity. Rather Western hypocrisy has touched the abyss.

President Biden claims that ICC warrant against Putin is justified, but conveniently forgets to mention that USA had withdrawn its signature to the ICC accord long back and does not recognize it.

Interestingly, former ambassador John Bolton – a war-hawk – considers ICC as dangerous organization. In 2018, he had even threatened to sanction ICC and its Judges if they investigated war crimes in Afghanistan. He also went to threaten the ICC judges with sanctions and prosecution in American court system. Biden seems to have conveniently forgotten this.

As ambassador correctly stated, ICC is truly a dangerous organization.

It does not matter if a leader in any country is popularly elected and beloved. But what matters is, that the “Rules, or bounds” set up by western world must not be crossed.

If that happens, then such a leader and that country would find itself in the cross-hairs of western block which is ready to heap sanctions after sanctions as punishment until the country acquiesces to the western demands or suffers a “Maidan”.

ICC issuing a warrant against Putin but not against the Kiev regime which is committing acts of terrorism against the Russian speaking population in eastern Ukraine, the institution has just lost all credibility.

It does not matter that this warrant is toothless and lacks legitimacy as Russia does not recognize its jurisdiction, nevertheless the mere issuance of this warrant – an exercise fraught with danger – shows that the ICC has beclowned itself.

One must, therefore thank Ukraine and its backers – the hegemonistic western world – for exposing the true face of these “Global Institutions”. .

A real Clown world!