A Degenerate Empire

Bragging about annihilating one country and robbing another.

Atlanta, GA

September 23, 2026

Governments, as Murray Rothbard reminded us, are nothing but “armed criminal bands writ large”. The Trump Administration has done all it can to prove Rothbard right.

The United States ceased being a republic 160 years ago. But its government stopped pretending to rule one much more recently. In the 20th century it became an empire. During this one, it’s been a degenerate one.

Yesterday at the UN, the current emperor personified how degraded it has become. He again threatened “annihilation” of the civilization he “Pearl Harbored” almost eight months ago:

“I have a big decision to make. Will a deal be made with Iran that lets them rebuild and create a far greater country than it ever was before? Maybe one of the greatest in the Middle East or even the world. Or do I annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly, never giving them a chance to kill and destroy people and countries again? Do I drive them into Hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness or generations?”

Leaving aside his reflexive use of the word “I”, as if a president has authority to eradicate “future generations”, what “people or countries” has Iran ever destroyed?

For at least a century and a half, Iran hasn’t launched a war against any country. Nor has it instigated a coup against the U.S. government, installed its handpicked dictator, and surrounded America with Persian military bases.

Before this war, the U.S. had about twenty military installations with almost 50,000 personnel around the Middle East. This century alone, the U.S. government has lobbed more than a hundred thousand bombs and missiles on at least eight countries in that region.

It also backed the brutal Iraq war on Iran, which killed up to a quarter million Iranians. And we wonder why they’ve said mean things about Americans! After what the US government has done this year, Iranians have more reason to voice displeasure.

During the sneak attack that started this war (as opposed to the one he launched last year), Donald Trump assassinated the leadership of Iran and murdered almost two hundred school girls. We’d like to think killing the kids was an accident.

But why should we? The administration never apologized for it. Ludicrously, it tried to blame Iran, and then kept threatening that country with complete destruction.

Why would a president who threatens to “annihilate” 90 million innocent people not be willing to take out some children? He and his supporters would simply excuse themselves by blaming Iran, lamenting “collateral damage”, and shrugging that “War is Hell” (as if that weren’t a reason not to start one).

In his address yesterday, the president wasn’t even asking the UN (much less the US Congress) for a resolution allowing him to commit atrocities. He simply told them he’s mulling whether to wipe out a country whose representatives were in the room.

While most of us are numb to Trump being outrageous, how aren’t more public officials appalled by such depravity? Democrats aren’t widely denouncing him, which again reveals how indistinguishable the parties are regarding most things that matter.

This entire catastrophe is incoherent. The president who (ostensibly) waged war to keep Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons his own intelligence said it wasn’t building now hints he’d use nukes to ensure Iran doesn’t get them. This from a guy who partly justified his war as a way to rescue “the Iranian people”.

If Trump were to turn Iran into an ashtray, then what? Notwithstanding the moral enormity of such an outrage, how does making Iran a chaotic wasteland help the U.S.? It may debilitate proxies and allies such as Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis.

But those organizations are Israel’s problem. None posed a threat to Iowa. They became America’s concern only because the US intervened on Israel’s behalf, which provoked Houthi attacks on U.S. ships in recent years and the 1983 Hezbollah bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut.

Iran is home to about 40% of the 300 million Shia Muslims around the world. How will the rest of them react? Will Americans be “safer” if a bunch of aggrieved Islamists decide to get even?

Will mass destruction open a strait that wasn’t impeded before Trump unleashed this idiocy? Or will it leave the choke point controlled by hostile renegades with an insatiable vendetta, while creating regional vacuums for Israel to fill?

The U.S. president openly boasts about kidnapping and killing foreign rulers, stealing other countries’ resources, and potentially obliterating civilizations that’ve existed for thousands of years.

He bragged about looting Venezuelan oil by telling the UN (which was supposedly established to thwart such thuggery) that “to the victor goes the spoils”.

Why doesn’t this rationale work when Putin attacks the Ukraine or if China took Taiwan? Do Iranian or Venezuelan borders not have the “sanctity” of the ones Russians crossed or that China might erase?

The administration sold the Venezuela invasion as a fight against illegal immigrants and drugs. Now the president admits it was outright robbery, while lying about the value of the loot. And he’s proud of it. But few others are.

Aside from the dwindling cohort of MAGA cultists, most Americans are repulsed by what their government is doing. They never wanted more wars. Along with controlling immigration and taming inflation, ending them and avoiding new ones were among the main reasons they voted for Trump.

Yet as the administration runs roughshod, Congress sits silent. It should’ve impeached, removed, and imprisoned this president for usurping its powers. Instead, the Republican leadership called a recess till the midterms, forfeiting the last month of its worthless majority.

After starting imbecilic wars and passing boondoggle bills that make food, fuel, and housing prohibitively expensive while bragging about a ballroom and renaming bodies of water, the Republicans deserve to be ousted.

Among the worst consequences of their malfeasance is that it’ll return power to a party that’s uniformly awful. But such is the state of our “democracy” that cyanide and arsenic are the only options offered.

JD