And let me tell you something else: these days it\u2019s hard enough to keep the website I still run, TomDispatch<\/em>, in some kind of reasonable shape, while also keeping track of our ever-stranger, more confusing, all-too-Trumpian world. But keeping track of things nationally and globally as an 80-year-old president of the United States<\/a> (with another two-and-a-half years to go) in a world that seems to be coming apart at the \u2014 whoops, sorry, I can\u2019t help it! \u2014 seams? I simply can\u2019t imagine that. Of course, I couldn\u2019t imagine it for Joe Biden<\/a> either, and yet he left the presidency when he was a staggering 82 years and 61 days<\/a> old and will still have been younger than Trump if he truly makes it to January 20, 2029. (And both of them will have beaten the oldest Roman Emperor, Gordian I,<\/a> who at 81 only lasted a few weeks in power.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s hardly news that Donald Trump<\/a> is now the oldest president<\/a> ever to take the oath of office (twice!) and, in that sense, he\u2019s been both record-setting and, in his own strange way, remarkable. But in case you hadn\u2019t noticed, while he\u2019s always had his odd moments, they are indeed getting ever odder and more frequent. After all, how many times has this country had a president who mistook himself for<\/a> (or do I mean confused himself with) Jesus Christ? Oh, wait, how could I <\/em>be so confused? That image wasn\u2019t of Jesus but (as \u201cour\u201d president insisted) of a lookalike medical doctor<\/a>. (\u201cI thought it was me as a doctor,\u201d the president said. \u201cOnly the fake news could come up with that.\u201d)<\/p>\n\n\n\n And meanwhile, of course, in his own ever stranger fashion, \u201cour\u201d president took out after Leo<\/a>, the American pope, himself a veritable youth at 70 years old, calling him of all things, \u201cWEAK on crime\u201d and, of course, \u201ccatering to the Radical Left.\u201d Oh, and while he was at it, Trump also posted<\/a> an image of himself being hugged by (yes, of course!) Jesus. And Leo responded to the president\u2019s abuse by all too accurately deploring<\/a> a world being \u201cravaged by a handful of tyrants\u201d (including, of course, You Know Exactly Whom).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Just in case you hadn\u2019t noticed, as an imperial power (even, historically speaking, the<\/em> imperial power, the only one at its height to control quite so much of the planet in one fashion or another), this country, too, is growing ever older and (again) in its own strange fashion going down (as, of course, all great imperial powers do sooner or later). Phew! That was a long sentence for this old guy, but you can\u2019t get too long and complicated (or do I mean confused?) when it comes to the world of Donald J. Trump. In electing him a second time in 2024, 49.8%<\/a> of American voters clearly opted to go down in style by giving imperial oldness a startling new meaning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n These days, I\u2019m sure you won\u2019t be surprised to learn that Trump\u2019s approval ratings are heading for the planetary basement. As I was writing this piece, for instance, only 31%<\/a> of Americans approved of how he was handling the economy. (Of course, you might wonder, at this point, why it wasn\u2019t 11% or even 0%.) Meanwhile, Vice President J.D. Vance\u2019s approval ratings, too, have been hitting historic lows<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mind you, Donald Trump<\/a> has always given unpredictability new meaning, but these days, a constant version of unpredictability is his aging middle name. Remember the president who was against<\/a> \u201cwarmongers and America-last globalists\u201d and was going to remove them from office in his second term in the White House<\/a>? Remember the president who was going to<\/a> \u201cturn the page forever on those foolish, stupid days of never-ending wars\u201d? Hmmm, well, think again (and again and again!) now that he\u2019s gone to war (or is it to peace, or even to pieces?) with Iran in an all too strikingly destructive fashion. But that\u2019s today\u2019s news and, in the era of the aging Donald Trump, who knows what tomorrow might hold for any of us (or, for that matter, what might happen an hour from now)? Count on one thing, though: \u201cour\u201d president sure doesn\u2019t know and so, sadly, neither can we.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (Phew! Without section breaks, I\u2019m already exhausted, but who can truly take a break when it comes to Donald Trump?)<\/p>\n\n\n\n And here\u2019s what might be the saddest thing of all (not that all of it isn\u2019t sad as hell, and potentially leading the rest of us all too literally into a hell on earth): given this country\u2019s military machine, which \u201cthe peace president<\/a>\u201d seems eager to feed an extra $500 billion<\/a> (and no, that\u2019s not a typo!), which would raise the Pentagon<\/a> budget<\/a> by an exceedingly modest 50%, the United States still has the power to turn this planet into a hell on Earth in a fashion no other imperial power in decline has ever been able to do. (And I\u2019m not even thinking about this country\u2019s vast nuclear arsenal.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, here\u2019s our horrifying reality: in the next two and a half years, if, of course, he doesn\u2019t either keel over tomorrow or somehow grab even more time as president \u2014 remember that, last year in Iowa, which he won in all three of his election campaigns, he asked<\/a> an audience ominously, \u201cShould we do it a fourth time?\u201d \u2014 Donald J. Trump is genuinely capable of preparing to take not just this country but the planet down with him. Phew again!<\/p>\n\n\n\n And I\u2019m not just thinking about his ability (if that\u2019s faintly the word for it) with allies like Israel<\/a> to turn parts of this world into hell zones of war. I\u2019m thinking instead about the climate disaster to come and the president who has called it<\/a> \u201cthe greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world\u201d and a \u201cgreen scam,\u201d and is prepared in his own fashion to heat this planet to the boiling point. (And keep in mind that the U.S. military<\/a> is the largest institutional emitter<\/a> of greenhouse gases, even in peacetime, on Planet Earth.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Honestly, I still find it hard to imagine that a near majority of American voters elected such a distinctly disturbed old man as president yet<\/em> again<\/em>, one seemingly intent on squashing green energy of any sort and potentially taking this planet down with him the second time around. Consider it truly strange, in fact (or do I mean: consider it unstrange beyond words) that the two oldest presidents<\/a> in our history (Donald Trump, Joe Biden, and, yes!, Donald Trump again) have occupied the White House consecutively for the last decade, given that this country is now distinctly an aging, even potentially, fading power on a planet that may itself be aging and fading all too rapidly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m old enough to have experienced 15 presidents<\/a> in my lifetime so far (and that\u2019s not even counting Trump the second time around) and yet he is distinctly, day by day, month by month, year by year, one of a kind in the worst sense imaginable. Consider it odd, in fact, that, as a con artist first class, he may himself turn out to be the greatest con job ever perpetrated on this world of ours and, in his own eerie fashion, a world-ending figure. Worse yet, whether we like it or not, it seems as if we are all now his apprentices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Imagine as well that making war<\/a> and \u201cunleashing<\/a>\u201d ever more coal<\/a>, oil<\/a>, and natural gas<\/a> are the two things he seems to be specializing in during his second term in office, even if, thanks to his conflict with Iran, he actually put a sudden limit<\/a> on the global distribution of oil<\/a> and gas via the Strait of Hormuz and helped (in his own fashion) and with a distinct hand from Iran to clobber the big oil<\/a> producers of the Middle East.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (Whew! If only I could put a section break up right here and take a break myself! Facing such a world and such a president, this old writer finds himself increasingly out of breath!)<\/p>\n\n\n\n You know, if, when I was young and when, in the midst of the Cold War with the Soviet Union, the youthful John F. Kennedy was president, you had even tried to describe Donald Trump\u2019s version of the world to me, I would have thought you not just literally mad, but one of the worst creators of fiction around. Can there be the slightest doubt, in fact, that President Trump has indeed turned out to be among the worst creations of a planet that couldn\u2019t be in deeper trouble?<\/p>\n\n\n\n I wanted to write \u201cfictional creations\u201d there. If only this were indeed a grim dystopian novel, rather than the actual world, and if Donald Trump himself were indeed some mad fictional creation. What a thrill that would be! After all, such a weird and wild version of a Philip Roth noveI would once have seemed to readers like a mad laugh-a-thon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If only\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n But when the voters of your very own country decide to make just such a fiction our reality a second time around in this all too real world, you know that something is truly wrong on Planet Earth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In a sense, Donald Trump could be thought of as the way, after this country\u2019s endless decades of imperial war-making from Korea to Vietnam<\/a> to Afghanistan to Iraq, and now to Iran (and that\u2019s leaving out plenty<\/a> of our warring activities), we Americans decided not just to make war on the rest of the world but on ourselves as well. And by reelecting a man who proudly insists that climate change<\/a> is the \u201cgreatest con job ever perpetuated<\/a>\u201d and a total \u201cgreen new scam<\/a>,\u201d we\u2019re obviously involving ourselves in a big-time fashion in what might be thought of as World War III, the ultimate war on planet Earth itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I mean, you have to feel anxious when you only have to put \u201cDonald Trump, climate change\u201d into your computer search window and up come endless disturbing pieces, including, for me just now, Maxine Joselow of the New York Times<\/a><\/em> writing an article headlined<\/a> (rather mildly under the circumstances) \u201cClimate Change Denial Sees a Resurgence in Trump\u2019s Washington.\u201d It began this way:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \n “Climate change is a hoax perpetrated by \u2018leftist politicians.\u2019 Fossil fuels are the greenest energy sources. More carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will be harmless. These were some of the false claims made at a conference on Wednesday held by groups that reject the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change. What might have seemed like a fringe event in years past this time boasted a prominent keynote speaker: Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency and one of President Trump\u2019s possible choices for the next attorney general.”\n <\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n Tell that, of course, to all of us in New York City<\/a>, who only recently lived through record-breaking 90-degree July weather<\/a> in early April. Consider it strange indeed that, in response to the never-ending news that we humans have long been turning this planet into a fossil-fuelized hothouse, a near majority of us would indeed opt to again elect a president who makes climate-change denial seem like a far too mild term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Of all the things that Donald Trump hasn\u2019t done, he\u2019s worked in what, for him, is a remarkably organized fashion to stall or nix any projects<\/a> that wouldn\u2019t further heat this planet of ours. Utterly unfocused as he so often is, he\u2019s remained strikingly focused on shutting down wind power and solar energy projects, while launching ever more fossil-fuel ones, including opening<\/a> more than a billion acres of coastal waters to oil and gas drilling and paying<\/a> a French company almost a billion dollars not to create two wind farms off this country\u2019s east coast, but instead to invest in oil and gas projects here in the U.S.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Talk about dystopian! Donald Trump should truly be considered a full-scale dystopian nightmare playing out in real time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wait! I have a last urge for this piece. Think of it as a way for me to finally catch my breath. To end it, I want to create one of those missing section heads right here, right now. How about:<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Hothouse President on a Planet Going to Hell<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n [And yes, that is indeed the end of this piece, but not for a moment the end of the nightmare we\u2019re now living through.]<\/p>\n\n\n\n This article is republished from <\/em>commondreams<\/em> <\/a>under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"Tom](\"https:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/media-library\/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8zMTk4NzcyMS9vcmlnaW4uZ2lmIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTgzNzA0ODc1MX0.kwU6xKy65--V8S5b6jo43QePg3S_7GzlT3bWpv9SsD4\/image.gif?width=210\")
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