Trump’s grasp of reality seems increasingly tenuous as egomania devolves to megalomania.

Eighty years ago, when World War II ended, U.S. rulers’ belief in war and empire was understandable. The U.S. had won the war at relatively low cost compared to the carnage and devastation in Europe and Asia. It had the atomic bomb and the only intact industrial plant. Millions of men were returning from the war raring to produce and procreate. The U.S. was the undisputed master of the world, and the U.S. empire was at its peak.

World War II may turn out to be the apotheosis of war. It certainly has been for the U.S., which hasn’t won a war of any consequence since. Empire has been a curse rather than a blessing, except for those who profit from it, win or lose. Widespread acquisition of nuclear weapons has meant that another world war could mean the end of humanity.

Under the shadow of that threat, war has evolved such that in nonnuclear conflicts, increasing amounts of blood and treasure are expended for either minimal gains or outright losses. Fueled by relentless technological development that both lowers the relative cost and increases the effectiveness of resistance, irregular, asymmetric warfare has stymied the designs of those who would acquire territory, resources, and political control via the traditional means of invasion, offensive war, and occupation.

Col. Harry G. Summers Jr. begins his book, On Strategy: The Vietnam War in Context, by relaying the following conversation: “‘You know you never defeated us on the battlefield,’ said the American colonel. The North Vietnamese colonel pondered this remark a moment. ‘That may be so,’ he replied, ‘but it is also irrelevant.’”

“Winning Battles, Losing Wars,” Lt. Gen. James W. Dubick, December 2, 2014

From Vietnam, the U.S. power structure should have learned its lesson—warfare had changed dramatically. That it didn’t, as demonstrated by subsequent history, can be attributed to both stupidity and cupidity. There are always people who can’t detect the obvious, especially in government. However, greed is the more telling explanation. Long, drawn-out wars like Vietnam enriches those who finance and supply them.

That parasitic cabal wouldn’t have minded if the Vietnam War was still ongoing. (If it were, there would be plenty of propagandists claiming to see “the light at the end of the tunnel.”) Fortunately for the cabal, the U.S. keeps repeating its Vietnam insanity (by now, most of us, not being insane, don’t expect a different result) and the funding, size, influence, and power of the military-industrial-intelligence complex and allied institutions—mainstream media, academia, think tanks, etc.—has grown disproportionately.

U.S. insanity is playing out twice again in its wars with Russia and Iran. If a symptom of insanity is an inability to distinguish between reality and one’s self-generated illusions, coupled with an insistence that the world play along with those illusions, then Trump is symptomatic, which makes him quite dangerous.

Ukraine demonstrates the realities of modern war. Putin recognized them before he initiated Russia’s Special Military Operation (SMO). Ukraine as an extension of NATO to Russia’s doorstep was existentially unacceptable. So too was Ukraine’s neo-Nazi dominated government and its treatment of its Russian-speaking citizens, particularly in the four oblasts of eastern Ukraine, which are more Russian than Ukrainian. The SMO’s territorial objectives were initially limited to their annexation. Putin knew that conquering the entirety of Ukraine would entail endless insurgency—encouraged and supplied by the U.S. and Europe—from the anti-Russia western half of the country, a potential quagmire.

Fresh from ignominiously ending the U.S.’s own quagmire in Afghanistan, the Biden administration ignored Putin’s efforts to attain Russia’s goals peacefully. The U.S. had built up Ukraine’s military since the Obama-sponsored Maidan coup in 2014, and the Biden administration welcomed the SMO.

It would use Ukraine to effect a neocon pipe dream: regime change in Russia, Balkanizing the country, and corporate exploitation of Russia’s mineral and natural resources. The assumptions were that proxy Ukraine would inflict military defeat on Russia, or at least embroil it in a long, inconclusive, and debilitating debacle, while sanctions would destroy Russia’s economy and drive Putin from office.

Nothing went as hoped. Biden left Trump with a war that Ukraine and its U.S. and European sponsors are losing. Russia has established battlefield dominance, showcasing best-in-class weaponry and mastery of new cutting edge military tactics, particularly in the use of drones. Its civilian economy has grown despite the ramp up of military production. The ruble has strengthened. Non-Western export markets are thriving. Among the 7 billion global majority, Russia is widely admired and has become a leader of the multipolarity movement.

So far, Trump has shown no ability to deal with the two salient realities: Russia is winning the war, and Putin won’t budge on Russia’s basic demands. Trump’s grasp of reality seems increasingly tenuous as egomania devolves to megalomania. It must drive Trump crazier to confront a man who means what he says and is unmoved by Trump’s fulminations and fury. Trump’s latest ultimatum will meet the same fate as earlier ones.

While the U.S. is getting yet another lesson in the futility of modern war, Ukraine carries the same lesson for Russia. After three-and-a-half years it still has not managed to fully capture the four eastern oblasts. The Russian army advances, but slowly; Ukraine has its own drones, missiles, and landmines. Casualty estimates from the Western press are overstated, but Russia has sustained significant casualties and expended substantial resources on the waste of war. Russia’s eventual victory will be Pyrrhic at best. Which would explain why Putin was so reluctant to wage it in the first place.

Reluctance to wage war has distinguished Russian and Chinese foreign policy from the U.S.’s for the last several decades. They recognize war’s obsolescence and bottom-line futility; the game is no longer worth the candle. There are many reasons for their comparative ascent versus the U.S. this century. Among the foremost: they have not interrupted their adversary while it has made mistake after mistake since initiating the global war on terror in 2001.

Unlike the U.S., Russia and China recognize the Middle East for the tar baby it is, a region where all victories are Pyrrhic. Russia reluctantly invaded Ukraine out of perceived existential necessity. However, it cut and ran in Syria when that country erupted into trademark Middle Eastern chaos and Russian ally Bashar al-Assad was deposed.

The Middle East is a focal point for Russia and China’s multilateral economic and political initiatives, but they tread carefully. Multipolarity’s sovereignty rhetoric, infrastructure projects, and development efforts better secure the loyalty of both rulers and ruled than the U.S.’s bombs, bullets, and intelligence skullduggery. Unlike the U.S., both nations are perceived as honest brokers for mediating the region’s disputes. China mediated a rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Back at Insanity Central, Trump and team are hard at work repeating Middle East mistakes. Perhaps Israel and U.S. Zionists reckon their induced chaos in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Lebanon, Somalia, and Sudan as victories. However, the attempted expulsion or extermination of Palestinians has been a fiasco and after twenty-one months, the Zionists still haven’t attained their final solution.

Even worse for the Zionists, their attack on Iran has backfired. It’s the classic case of the bully running into an opponent who fights back. Netanyahu’s pitch to Trump was that Israel’s surprise bombardment of Iran and its decapitation strikes of important Iranian military and scientific figures would result in quick capitulation.

Instead, Iran regrouped and counterattacked with drone swarms and hypersonic missiles against which neither Israel or the U.S. could defend. Israel censors damage reports, but Iran apparently hit high-value military, intelligence, and economic targets. Israeli civilians found themselves under an attack that destroyed, terrorized, and wreaked chaos. Now they know how the Palestinians feel. Unlike the Palestinians, many Israelis have the option to leave, and an appreciable number of them have done so.

Nobody has ever said that the Jews aren’t smart. Looking at an attritional war against a foe with ten times the population, seventy times the land mass, a chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz, stockpiles of state-of-the-art drones and invulnerable missiles, and close relationships with China and Russia, they concluded that the odds weren’t in their favor. Bibi went to Trump and screamed, “Do something, Donald!”. Trump, an Israel firster and possible Epstein/CIA/Mossad blackmailee, of course complied. The U.S. launched a shock-and-awe bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities that supposedly took out its nuclear program.

For now, Israel and the U.S. are claiming that the program has been irreparably damaged; Trump says it’s “obliterated.” Whether or not that’s true, they are confronted with a daunting reality: they aren’t going to dominate the Middle East with nonnuclear warfare. Iran has demonstrated that it can decimate Israel without nukes or assistance from Russia and China.

This leaves the U.S. and Israel with two options. Their intelligence agencies, along with Britain’s, are the world’s foremost practitioners of sub rosa warfare, ranging from propaganda to assassination and regime change. Israel is particularly good at covert infiltration and assassination, which it once again demonstrated in its attack on Iran.

As destabilizing and successful as such tactics have been in some instances, the degree of difficulty is much greater when attempting to supplant strong governments that have extensive counterintelligence capabilities and enjoy widespread support among their populations. Presumably, Iran will beef up its counterintelligence. There are reports that it has arrested and executed a number of traitors. Support for its government has surged since the Israeli and U.S. attacks.

With intelligence skullduggery unlikely to be effective regime-changing Iran, Israel and the U.S. have one last resort—nuclear weapons. If Middle East conflict remains nonnuclear, Israel is extremely vulnerable. It has no effective defense against Iran’s hypersonic missiles. It doesn’t have the offensive firepower to conquer the Iranian population or achieve control of the Iranian landmass. Any attempted invasion, presumably assisted by the U.S., would quickly exhaust both countries’ armaments, risk closure of the Persian Gulf, and potentially bring in Russia and China.

Unfortunately, insanity is enshrined in Israel’s military doctrine—the Sampson Option—if Israel is going down, it will take the rest of the world with it. Netanyahu and his fellow lunatics can argue that given Israel’s existential vulnerability, it has no choice but to escalate its war with Iran to nuclear, and if that results in the destruction of humanity, so be it. This is unarguably insane, but would win approval among many of America’s Israel firsters, probably including Trump. Insanity often accompanies megalomania.

Nuclear escalation is more likely than not. Such escalation is incomprehensible to anyone who doesn’t understand the nihilistic psychology of many world rulers. Their evil means are their evil end. Utopian rhetoric is a smokescreen; killing and death are all they’re after. They kill because murder is one of the few activities that generate an emotional charge (torturing children—innocents—is another) in psyches corrupted and deadened by the pursuit of wealth, influence, and power.

The correct end point of this line of reasoning, but the hardest to accept, is that they want to kill you because they want to kill themselves. Souls whose only “pleasures” are torture and murder are souls longing for their own demise, and no one is more dangerous than the suicidal. Understand that, and you understand the course the world has taken these many years . . . and what’s to come. Fail or refuse to understand, and you won’t recognize, protect yourself from, nor take action against the world’s insane ruling class as it careens towards its desired outcome—the suicidal genocide of the human race.

https://straightlinelogic.com/2025/07/26/fulmination-fury-and-futility-by-robert-gore/