Some people say Donald Trump runs the United States like a reality show, but his regime is making it more like a horror film. Specifically, “The End of Oak Street.”
Maybe I spend too much time thinking about politics, but I can’t help comparing our country to the movie about a 1980s suburban family that suddenly finds its neighborhood in the dinosaur age.
Two disclaimers: I haven’t seen “Oak Street.” And in interviews I watched, the filmmakers made no political statements; they said their goal was to show relatable characters reacting to a bizarre but deadly situation.
But no one can deny that Trump and his Project 2025/christofascist accomplices are taking us back to the worst of bygone eras and trampling over centuries of progress.
In the MAGAverse, civilization, democracy, education and basic human decency are passé, while barbarism, oppression, willful ignorance and deception are fast becoming norms.
A lethality fetish
I shuddered when Trump renamed the Department of Defense the Department of War. Still, after what happened in Iraq and Afghanistan, I naively thought someone somewhere in his regime would keep him focused on defending our country rather than starting wars for the sake of starting them (or maybe for the joy he gets from breaking things).
But Defense/War Secretary Pete Hegseth said Trump gave him specific instructions: “Your job is to make sure that it’s lethality, lethality, lethality. Everything else is gone.”
Yes, like saving lives through diplomacy or at least thinking before attacking. This warning from the Stimson Center is even more timely today than when the nonpartisan think tank issued it in June 2025: “Hegseth – and, to a lesser extent, Trump – are clear on how America should fight future wars, but less so on when, where, or why. One central lesson from the post-9/11 wars is that lethality divorced from larger strategic considerations is a political and military loser.”
Nor does this unqualified pair recognize lethality as a double-edged sword. Our service members have been killed and wounded, and the destruction the war has caused abroad has only increased the likelihood of an attack at home, one for which we’re now less prepared.
For worse than nothing, Trump and Hegseth have squandered both our weapons supply and whatever moral standing we had.
They’ve also unleashed their lethality in the Western Hemisphere, sinking alleged drug boats and therefore imposing death penalties for noncapital offenses that may or may not have even been committed.
Demonization and persecution
This regime bears more than a passing resemblance to Nazi Germany as it idealizes white Christian nationalist manhood and systematically persecutes anyone who might be an immigrant.
(I’m beyond disgusted that so many police forces in my part of Pennsylvania are helping ICE’s masked marauders. And it’s beyond appalling that we came dangerously close to having to host two facilities for torturing people deemed undocumented, even those trying to navigate the immigration system.)
In another page from the playbook of the Third Reich and other repressive regimes, ours has turned to threats, lawsuits and prosecutions against dissenters while blasting lies and propaganda wherever it can.
In fact, a business, university, think tank or advocacy group doesn’t even have to disagree vocally before Trump and the feds kick and scream over policies to promote diversity, equity and inclusion (which just means giving the historically disadvantaged a seat at the privileged table).
For if there’s one era that the christofascists love, it’s the decades before the civil rights and women’s movements.
De facto royalty
Trump has plowed ahead with vanity projects and wars without regard for Congress or the law.
He’s transforming the People’s House into his personal palace, complete with gilding that evokes the age of robber barons.
Arguably, he falls into that category. In gobsmacking conflicts of interest, his various enterprises last year generated income of $2.2 billion, including $1.4 billion from cryptocurrency, an industry that, before he got into it himself, he appropriately described as facilitating illegal activity and whose value is based on “thin air.”
A war on health
His regime wants to convince and coerce women into having more children even as chief anti-vaxxer RFK Jr. is reviving childhood diseases.
And it’s gone all in for pollution and climate change, bending over backward for the fossil fuel industry while sabotaging clean energy to the extent of using taxpayer funds to cancel offshore wind farms.
These and nearly all of the regime’s other policies have either outlived their usefulness or been proven wrong. They should have become as extinct as dinosaurs.
But carnivorous prehistoric reptiles like the ones in “The End of Oak Street” had to prey on other animals to survive.
Our country’s leaders, on the other hand, are wealthy, well-fed and operating on greed, ego, sadism and a lust for power. And backward as their ideas are, they have access to formidable weapons and technology.
So we can only hope that the November midterms and 2028 presidential election will stop these predators from their mission to silence the chimes of freedom and to end the United States as we have known it.
Canary note: Opinions expressed in any Op-Ed column appearing on this site are the views of the writer and are not necessarily the opinions of Coal Region Canary.
Want to be a columnist with Coal Region Canary? Contact us at newscanary@gmail.com.
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