Has America Gone Mad?
Let’s replace every incumbent in Congress who has defiled the oath of office in November, restoring Congress as a separate and equal branch. Let’s leave Donald Trump the lamest duck in history!
By Tom Debley
(Tom Debley is a retired journalist and public affairs officer in San Francisco’s East Bay Area.)
There are moments in a nation’s life when the unthinkable is no longer whispered at the margins. Instead, it is spoken openly, plainly, and without shame. We are living in such a moment now. And it should strike terror in our hearts as Americans.
Not the terror of panic, but the terror of recognition. It is the cold, historical dread that comes when people realize they have heard this language before, and it did not end well. It is the terror struck when the unthinkable is spoken by our leaders into microphones on the global stage.
Such was the case on Monday (Dec. 5) when Stephen Miller, the White House’s deputy chief of staff for policy and one of the most influential voices shaping Donald Trump’s actions, calmly asserted that Greenland “rightfully belonged” to the United States and that America could seize the semiautonomous Danish territory by force if it wishes.
When pressed in a CNN interview with Jake Tapper, Miller did not deny the possibility of military action. Instead, he offered a governing creed stripped of law, morality, and restraint.
“Nobody’s going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland,” Miller said, after being asked repeatedly whether he would reject military force. “We live in a world, in the real world…that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.” In short, the law of the jungle.
Let us be clear: this was no careless remark. It was a declaration of belief, a philosophy of rule. And it should chill every citizen, especially if we remember this was not a local broadcast meant only for domestic ears. CNN is viewed in 212 countries and territories around the world.
Heads of state heard this. Generals heard it. Intelligence services heard it. Dissidents living under authoritarian rule heard it. One must shudder at what Miller proclaimed globally in America’s name, that the United States covets Greenland and is willing to go to war against a NATO ally to take it if it wants. Let that sink in for a minute.
Remember, Stephen Miller is among the most powerful voices whispering, increasingly shouting, in the ear of Donald Trump. His words matter not because they are personal musings, but because they reveal what is now openly entertained at the highest levels of American government.
This worldview does not arise by accident. It flows directly from the character and conduct of the president himself.
Donald Trump has stripped government of its conscience. Trump mocks constraints. Treaties are dismissed as foolish. Congress is treated as ornamental. The military becomes a stage prop. Force is no longer a last resort; it is a boast.
And here history begins to frighteningly echo Adolph Hitler.
On September 1, 1939, upon invading Poland and starting World War II, Hitler stood before the Reichstag and abandoned all pretense of peace that he had feigned to that point, and declared, “The Polish state has refused the peaceful settlement. I have no other choice than to meet force with force.”
With those words, aggression was recast as necessity, conquest as realism, violence as destiny, and the world would never again be the same.
The resemblance here is not rhetorical exaggeration. It is structural. Then, as now, power was framed as law. Then, as now, force was portrayed as the only language the world understands. Then, as now, restraint was ridiculed as weakness.
The justifications for tyranny changed costumes, but not substance. Americans should feel terror here not because we believe ourselves destined for the same outcome, but because we recognize the same arguments, the same moral surrender, being offered once again.
Contrast this worldview with the words spoken by Secretary-General of the United Nations António Guterres, responding at an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council on Trump’s American military action in Venezuela. On the same day as Miller’s CNN interview, Guterres reminded the world that international law forbids the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.
Foreigners did not write those words to restrain America. Americans helped write them. They were born from the ashes of the global catastrophe of World War II, from the knowledge that when nations embrace law of the jungle instead of law itself, civilization collapses.
The United States once understood this truth deeply. We were not perfect, but we aspired to something higher than empire. We believed, at least in principle, that power must answer the law, that leaders must answer the people, and that unrestrained force destroys those who wield it.
That moral architecture is now being deliberately dismantled. The separation of powers has been hollowed out. Congress, entrusted with war powers and oversight, has abdicated its duty. Oaths to the Constitution have been exchanged for loyalty to one man. Abroad, threats of force are delivered casually, with swagger, now echoing around the globe.
Make no mistake: imperial thinking never stays overseas when a government claims the right to seize foreign land because it will soon claim the right to silence courts, override elections, and crush dissent at home. History teaches this lesson without exception. Empires rot inward before they collapse outward.
Which brings us to the last instrument the people still hold: the ballot.
This is not a partisan moment. It is a constitutional one. What is required is not the victory of one party over another, but the reassertion of the people over lawlessness.
We do not need a blue wave in the midterm elections. We need a red, white, and blue reckoning, a tsunami, if you will, by all voters be they Democrats, Independents, or Republicans who still believe in America. We must reject every incumbent member of Congress who has defiled his or her oath of office. We must elect people who will stand tall to reshape Congress into the separate and equal branch it must be, and to affirm that no president stands above the law.
In short, in the midterm elections we must leave Donald Trump and his minions in the dust as the lamest ducks in American history.
As we approach the 250th anniversary of this nation, the irony is almost unbearable. There will be fireworks. There may be tanks. There will be speeches about strength and greatness. But patriotism is not spectacle. Patriotism is restraint. It is fidelity to principle. It is a refusal to confuse force with virtue.
When Benjamin Franklin was asked what kind of government had been created, he answered with a warning disguised as a gift: “A republic, if you can keep it.”
We are now being told, openly and globally, what replaces that republic if we fail: strength, force, power, and the law of the jungle. If this does not strike terror in our hearts as Americans, then we have already surrendered something precious.
The “whole world is watching,” literally. Whether America has gone mad will not be decided by parades or threats broadcast across continents, but by whether citizens rise to reclaim the republic while it is still ours to keep. Will we reclaim our republic? Or will we revert to Trump’s “law of the jungle.” That is what we must be voting on in November, and what kind of nation we will leave our descendants.