The dying empire and its teetering Death Star — and why whoever comes after Trump will be worse

Villain of the Year winner: The individual or group whose actions caused the most significant harm or public damage.

As if it was going to be someone else? Look, there are contenders. There are always contenders.

The folks running the genocide in Sudan? The folks running the genocide in Gaza? The fellow who floats along on a war economy in Russia, sending men into a charnel house of his own making?

Yeah, it’s Bastardsville out there these days. But in some way, no matter the original source of the violence or horror, there is always a connection to the dying empire and its maniacally teetering Death Star.

US President Donald J Trump is not the cause of America’s (and along with it, the planet’s) decay. He’s a reflection, a manifestation. That said, he leans into the role with immense glee. Why bomb alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and post the snuff movies on X? Because:

a) People love this shit;

b) It’s funny;

c) It’s fun;

d) Pressing “kill all” from the comfort of an air-conditioned room just feels right.

Over the past months, the dimensions of the Trump era have become gloriously clear: anything for money. Literally anything.

Sailing on the wind created by better men and women, using no tool that they themselves have crafted (because they have crafted nothing, only destroyed), members of the Trump regime reset the global power balance based on their own avarice.

Friends include the Gulf States, Russia, illiberal European ethno-nationalists, right-wing Latin American narco traffickers.

Enemies include democracies. The lies about “white genocide” in South Africa, and the distortions around the country’s (botched) affirmative action policies are now standardised elements of American diplomacy, repeated in different versions for different countries. To some extent, it’s all about how it plays with the Maga base. After all:

a) People love this shit;

b) It’s funny;

c) It’s fun;

d) Pressing “kill all” from the comfort of an air-conditioned room just feels right.

More to the point, however, South Africa can do nothing to enrich the Trump cabal, and must therefore serve as a mirror to reflect policies at home, most notably the death of DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion), while rendering explicit America’s implicit white supremacy.

The ghosts of Confederation soldiers have stormed the Capitol and now inhabit the White House – the spirit of southern slavers now animates America.

Trump’s two terms make equally explicit that America’s search for values after the Forever Wars has resulted in either prissy progressivism or Pete Hegseth – the flip-side of the same coin of the realm that, ultimately, buys nothing.

It’s perfectly fitting that in order to gild the Oval Office, Trump beat two women who represented the liberal establishment and seemed baffled that their slavish adherence to post-Cold War shibboleths didn’t result in the presidency. If American liberalism is dead, and it is (after all, you can’t support liberalism at home and genocide while on vacation), something has to replace it?

I hope we know this now: Trump is not an aberration. He is the natural result of American liberalism being unable to sustain itself without the foe of communism. There was just no there there. Something or someone had to embody the cruelty at the heart of a system that reified money above all else. The emptiness of both the woke and anti-woke brigades, offshoots of American liberalism and conservatism, needs truly vile figures to fill the resulting vacuums. And so, Trump.

Who comes next will be worse, and will likely also win Villain of the Year. For now, the fumes of American power bear immense destructiveness. And remember, they will keep doing it because:

a) People love this shit;

b) It’s funny;

c) It’s fun;

d) Pressing “kill all” from the comfort of an air-conditioned room just feels right. DM

Runners-up

This story first appeared in our weekly DM168 newspaper, available countrywide for R35.