{"id":26738,"date":"2026-01-07T17:38:01","date_gmt":"2026-01-08T01:38:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/?p=26738"},"modified":"2026-01-20T16:07:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-21T00:07:11","slug":"our-outlaw-nation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/2026\/01\/07\/our-outlaw-nation\/","title":{"rendered":"Our Outlaw Nation"},"content":{"rendered":"

This popped up on Facebook, but I don’t subscribe to the magazine and can only see this much of the article. It’s about the new book by Johan Norberg, which came out in September. It’s on my TBR shelf.<\/p>\n

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The Economist, 1 May 2025<\/strong>: How golden ages really start\u2014and end<\/a>, subtitled “The greatest civilisations of the past 3,000 years were the opposite of MAGA”<\/p>\n

The way to start a \u201cgolden age\u201d is to erect big, beautiful barriers to keep out foreign goods and people. That, at least, is the view of the most powerful man on the planet. Johan Norberg, a Swedish historian, makes the opposite case. In \u201cPeak Human\u201d, Mr Norberg charts the rise and fall of golden ages around the world over the past three millennia, ranging from Athens to the Anglosphere via the Abbasid caliphate. He finds that the polities that outshone their peers did so because they were more open: to trade, to strangers and to ideas that discomfited the mighty. When they closed up again, they lost their shine.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Just in case anyone still has delusions of grandeur concerning MAGA, or Trump.<\/p>\n

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Whereas the US has become an outlaw nation.<\/p>\n

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The Bulwark, Mona Charen, 6 Jan 2026<\/strong>: We\u2019re the Bad Guys Now<\/a>, subtitled “America has become the kind of country it used to oppose.”<\/p>\n

THE EDITORIAL BOARD OF THE Wall Street Journal <\/em>has delivered its share of idiocies<\/a> over the past few years, but its response<\/a> to the capture of Nicol\u00e1s Maduro has set a new standard. Calling the military intervention \u201cjustified\u201d because Venezuela had allied with \u201cRussia, China, Cuba, and Iran,\u201d the board then declared triumphantly that \u201cMr. Trump is pursuing the Bush freedom agenda, at least in the Western Hemisphere. Are we all neocons now?\u201d<\/p>\n

Also living in a dream world is Sen. John Fetterman, who told Fox News that \u201cWe all wanted this man gone, and now he is gone. I think we should really appreciate exactly what happened here.\u201d Fetterman then offered a benediction, saying that he just wanted to \u201cremind everybody that America is a force of good order and democracy, and we are promoting these kinds of values. We are the good guys.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s delusional, and I say that as someone who believed in humanitarian interventions abroad, who supported the Gulf War, the Iraq War, the bombing of Serbia, and the invasion of Grenada. American power has been used for bad ends at times (the Mexican War was unadulterated aggression), but it\u2019s hard to think of a country that has more often extended itself for good purposes around the globe. We had losses and failures\u2014South Vietnam, Afghanistan, Libya\u2014but tens of millions of people in places like Taiwan, Germany, South Korea, Kosovo, Kuwait, Bosnia, and, yes, Iraq owe their freedom and prosperity to American arms. Hundreds of millions more live free from oppression only because the United States armed them against aggressors or threatened to use force if they were attacked. Damn right we were the good guys! As Colin Powell put<\/a> it in 2003: \u201cWe have gone forth from our shores repeatedly over the last hundred years . . . and put wonderful young men and women at risk, many of whom have lost their lives, and we have asked for nothing except enough ground to bury them in.\u201d<\/p>\n

To imagine that Trump is doing anything remotely like those interventions in Venezuela is risible. …<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The writer goes on with examples of what Trump’s said in recent days. And:<\/p>\n

Trump has hardly bothered to offer a reason for his intervention in Venezuela, and when his team has come up with some, they don\u2019t bear scrutiny. Was it drugs? That seems unlikely since Trump just issued a pardon to Juan Orlando Hern\u00e1ndez, former president of Honduras, who was convicted of drug running. Was it communism? Not if Trump is content to leave the regime intact. Was it immigration? Not when the Trump camp is forgoing a clear chance to restore democratic stability in that country, which would reduce emigration.<\/p>\n

The sheer pleasure of bullying seems to be the likeliest explanation, but here again, Trumpland is another planet. None of the reasons that Venezuela is truly guilty seem to interest Trump, but he\u2019s obsessed with the fantasy that they somehow emptied their prisons and insane asylums and shipped the inmates to America.<\/p>\n

This. Is. Not. True.<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And then concludes:<\/p>\n

The United States under Trump is an outlaw nation, threatening excellent neighbors like Canada with economic devastation, blasting people in fast boats to pieces, withdrawing from international agreements, bullying friends and foes alike, and now kidnapping foreign leaders (however evil). We are becoming the kind of nation against which America used to defend others.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Again reflecting the Economist item above:<\/p>\n

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The Bulwark, William Kristol, 7 Jan 2026<\/strong>: MAGA\u2019s Lust for Fascism<\/a>, subtitled “Trump\u2019s ideologues want a smaller, meaner, whiter America.”<\/p>\n

Then scroll down to: The Spirit of Fascism<\/a><\/p>\n

MAGA is a vulgar, cartoonish, cultish, and incoherent movement.<\/p>\n

So, a century ago, was fascism.<\/p>\n

And as today\u2019s MAGA more openly and explicitly embraces the spirit of yesteryear\u2019s fascism, it\u2019s perhaps worth noting that it is the era of the rise of fascism to which MAGA looks back with nostalgia and yearning.<\/p>\n

In her most recent newsletter<\/a>, the historian Heather Cox Richardson reminds us of this 2009 statement by Peter Thiel, who as much as anyone could be considered the theorist of Trumpism as an intellectual movement.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In which Thiel claimed that freedom and democracy are incompatible. And so on, about Thiel, and Stephen Miller (“MAGA’s chief propagandist”). And concluding:<\/p>\n

As the political scientist Nicholas Grossman remarked<\/a>, \u201cImagine looking at the period after WWII and especially after the Cold War as an era of American weakness.\u201d But Grossman sees what lies behind Miller\u2019s complaint: \u201cUnless, I suppose, if becoming the strongest, wealthiest country in history sounds bad to you because some brown people were a part of it, and you\u2019d rather be weaker if it means being whiter.\u201d<\/p>\n

The more liberal nation and the liberal world order that we were able to construct after World War II made us stronger. Miller and Thiel\u2014and MAGA\u2014reject that.<\/p>\n

So MAGA does not want to make America great again. MAGA does not simply want to correct some of the excesses of modern America or the modern world. MAGA embraces what was most<\/em> illiberal<\/em> about the old order. The theorists of MAGA look back longingly to, they yearn for, the ideas and policies that produced the worst of the 1930s.<\/p>\n

Or to put it simply: It is fascism that they yearn for.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yes, the brown people part is the key.<\/p>\n

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Authoritarians tend to rewrite recent history to their own advantage.<\/p>\n

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CNN, 6 Jan 2026<\/strong>: White House rewrites January 6 history and blames police for deadly attack on 5-year anniversary<\/a><\/p>\n

The White House rolled out a new website<\/a> Tuesday with a full-blown recast of the historical record of January 6, 2021, hailing the pro-Trump mob who stormed the US Capitol five years ago as \u201cpeaceful protesters\u201d who were provoked by law enforcement.<\/p>\n

The new site<\/a> baselessly claims the violence on January 6, 2021, was instigated by law enforcement and then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. It recasts the rioters as the victims that day, and depicts President Donald Trump as a hero for granting sweeping pardons for the nearly 1,600 people charged in connection with the deadly attack.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Nonsense, of course — WE SAW IT ON TV, LIVE. But if you repeat a lie often enough, people begin to believe it. Thus has history been rewritten and rewritten through the ages. What of history can we trust? Maybe not very much, except for the broad outline of specific facts. Yet it doesn’t stop the religious, who believe that their holy books are literally true. OK, sure, God did it.<\/p>\n

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Robert Reich looks at the big picture.<\/p>\n

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Robert Reich, 6 Jan 2026<\/strong>: This is the Real Danger Posed by Trump<\/a> subtitled “A direct line connects Trump\u2019s attempted coup five years ago with his incursion into Venezuela last weekend \u2014 and his current threats to Colombia, Cuba, and Greenland.”<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s domestic and foreign policies \u2014 ranging from his attempted coup against the United States five years ago, to his incursion into Venezuela last weekend, to his current threats against Cuba, Colombia, and Greenland \u2014 undermine domestic and international law. But that\u2019s not all.<\/p>\n

They threaten what we mean by civilization.<\/p>\n

The moral purpose of civilized society is to prevent the stronger from attacking and exploiting the weaker. Otherwise, we\u2019d be permanently immersed in a brutish war in which only the fittest and most powerful could survive.<\/p>\n

This principle lies at the center of America\u2019s founding documents: the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. It\u2019s also the core of the post- World War II international order championed by the United States, including the UN Charter \u2014 emphasizing multilateralism, democracy, human rights, and the rule of law.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s a fragile principle, easily violated by those who would exploit their power.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In contrast to Stephen Miller’s view of the world (quoted here<\/a>): \u201cWe live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is the tribalist’s view of the world. The uncivilized, barbaric view of the world. Something the species has been trying to overcome — and has made great progress doing so in the past few centuries — despite the inevitable regressives. They will always be with us; it’s base human nature, absent education.<\/p>\n

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Just the headlines, and brief comments.<\/p>\n

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