Robert Bruce Adolph

Washington is hemorrhaging power across the military, diplomatic, economic, informational, and reputational fronts, and from Beijing and Moscow the spectacle looks less like strategic competition than an opportunity handed to them by a White House they can exploit without firing a shot.

Having surrendered its hard-won title as the “leader of the free world” for a transactional “America First” doctrine, the United States has traded its foundational moral authority for a chaotic, self-absorbed leadership that has moved the international community from admiration to a state of muted horror and pity.

The law was meant to be America’s shield against tyranny, but under Trump it has been bent into a weapon, and if we want that shield back, the only constitutional path is to beat him at the ballot box, take Congress, and use impeachment to force the republic back under the rule of laws rather than the whims of one deeply flawed man.

Many people believe what they wish to believe, and when that impulse hardens into political identity, facts and truth become disposable while anything that flatters “their values” becomes sacred.

America’s widening inequality and pay-to-play politics have left millions feeling trapped in a grinding rat race, and in that anger they handed power to a leader they suspected was corrupt, with consequences that will reward the New Nobility while everyone else gets squeezed.

America is not collapsing from outside pressure but hollowing itself out from within, trading shared civic responsibility for grievance, celebrity worship, and the comforting lies of a cult that mistakes cruelty for strength and ignorance for conviction.

From the shattered bridges outside Kyiv to the hollow eyes of Russian officers who once confessed that their whole lives had been a lie, I have watched the same rotten empire of untruth stagger forward, and I am convinced that Ukraine’s refusal to bow will help bring it crashing down.

If the American Dream is dying, it is because a self-anointed New Nobility has quietly rigged the system to fatten its portfolios while telling the rest of us to admire the yacht.

Mr. Trump has treated his solemn oath as a disposable campaign slogan, shredding constitutional norms and moral standards while his enablers in Congress cower in silence before his vengeful whims.

America lost its footing when unrestrained corporate power, partisan fearmongering, and a billionaire-backed political machine hollowed out the institutions meant to protect the public, clearing a path for a leader who embodies the consequences of that long decline.

In the end, when law is bent to serve a vengeful president, the burden falls on the men and women in uniform to choose conscience over career and remember that their oath is to the Constitution, not to the occupant of the White House.

In a sunlit Kyiv shop three months after Putin’s invasion, a stranger kissed my hand and thanked America, a small human moment that crystallized why Ukraine’s fight for hearth and home deserves unwavering support even amid the Kremlin’s reckless threats.