It's always encouraging to read a WSJ columnist who isn't continually propping up the current occupant of the WH with misinformation and malarkey. (Think Holman Jenkins Jr.) So it was gratifying to read Peggy Noonan's recent piece ('The Art of the Self Deal', Aug. 22-23, p. A13) she goes further, articulating in brilliant but painful detail how Rump's endless grifting, self-dealing is at the root of the corrosion permeating the whole society.
As she writes:
"We'll posit what we mean by Trump-era corruption. I see two general areas, personal enrichment, and the use of government to satisfy private goals. The personal enrichment part is based on frequent reports showing how Rrump's net worth and that of his family has surged dramatically."
How dramatically? About $1.4 billion more for Trump, according to a WSJ and FT report two days ago. Probably prompting Ms. Noonan to add subsequently:
"There have been numerous reports --it feels like a new one every day - of bending, testing or getting around the law to make the administration's friends happy and enemies sad. This has included paying people in Trump's orbit to lobby for presidential pardons. Republicans seem generally not to have found this alarming."
Then writing, in reference to the scale:
"And there's the sheer scale. The extraordinary becomes ordinary through repetition. Scandals add up and become a blur, not a call to action. But the c0untry pays a cost for all this. Institutionally, everything happening today sets a precedent. Every abuse we accept widens the range of possible misbehavior for the next administration."
She wonders, of course:
"An odd thing about all this is the absence of furor. There is no public outcry. Why?"
Well, two reasons: first regular citizens are inundated - swamped by the high costs of everything from gas to food to housing. They simply lack the time to allow their attention to veer away from anything other than sheer survival. In other words, any attention to Trump comes at a cost most are unwilling to pay. A comment in the Aug. 25 WSJ column (p. A13, 'May the Post -Trump Era Begin ASAP') by Joseph Epstein kind of summarized the issue:
"For little more than a decade Mr. Trump has used up all the oxygen not only in the room but in public life. He and our national politics have become all but coterminous."
"Coterminous" is right, but more like a co-infection, with the orange fungus infecting not only our politics but eating into the brains of the populace with his incessant lies. That, along with a likely numbing from the barrage of horrors the nation has faced since the maggot was returned to office. A dereliction of the electorate that has left too many unable to process, far less comment or express outrage.
So the nation is trapped in an agonizing process of corrosion starting at the top with a criminal regime - not a government, and not an "administration". So of course such a regime- or 'mobocracy' as Kyle Kulinsky calls it- will be only focused on its own aggrandizement not protecting the nation. Especially if it is led by a malignant narcissist and demented psychopath (and sociopath) like Donald Trump.
This is why he embodies the toxic essence now metastasizing like a cancer at the nation's core: polluting its agencies, its international trade, its highest court and its DOJ (mutated into an arm of Trump's retribution as the authors of Regime Change note). So we cannot be surprised at the whole misbegotten corrosive effects as Noonan summarizes at the end of her piece:
"In a time of corruption , good people who might run for office, don't. They believe they can't survive in this world. Bad people, those with limited ethical or moral structures, however, are encouraged. Politics a la Trump is a way to get rich and famous, to push people around. They are elected, govern badly, corruptly, and the cycle continues....As usual the whole world is watching and what it has seen lowers the esteem in which it formerly held Americans."
And is also why most of the experts in the know see Trump's version of 'Pax Americana' as the last gasp of an Empire now in rapid decline and soon ending. See e.g.
Trump BOND CRISIS Spells End Of US Empire
&
Trump PANICS As Iran CHECKMATES HIM & DOOMSDAY LOOMS!! | The Kyle Kulinski Show
The U.S. is now finally realizing the extent of the 2024 election misfire, after Trump recklessly launched his war on Iran with little forethought, no explanations, and more escalating costs each passing day and an end that may not redound to anyone's benefit. This is what the nation purchased by returning an unqualified megalomaniac and criminal to power. We have one chance only to set things right on November 3rd, and we had better succeed - corrupted Supremes and GOP or not.
“If for any reason a deal is not shortly reached, which it probably will be, and if the Hormuz Strait is not immediately ‘Open for Business,’ we will conclude our lovely ‘stay’ in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating all of their Electric Generating Plants, Oil Wells and Kharg Island (and possibly all desalinization plants!), which we have purposefully not yet ‘touched,’” Mr. Trump wrote on social media early Monday morning.
The president’s ultimatum is a contemptible departure from the restraint that most wartime presidents have strived for. The bombing campaign Mr. Trump described holds the potential to affect millions of Iranian civilians, inflicting long-term consequences on their access to water, electricity and other necessities. Such an attack order should never be given — in public or private.
His proposal, if acted upon, would almost certainly amount to a war crime.
— from Robert Reich's Substack
Friends,
I’m still grieving Dolly Parton. I never met her and always wanted to. She was almost exactly my age and my height and had values I deeply admired. Her death leaves a hole in the firmament.
Which brings me to the person whose values are as far from Dolly Parton’s as any human’s could possibly be and still claim to be human. I’m referring, of course, to the current occupant of the Oval Office.
“I knew her a little bit,” Trump boasted about Parton yesterday on Glenn Beck’s radio show. “She really liked me, I will tell you!” at which Beck laughed out loud.
Trump has become mad as a hatter. Loonier than loony-tunes. Totally nuts. An enraged, engorged child who’s frightened to death of being seen as a loser.
by Robert Reich | August 22, 2026 - 4:59am | permalink
And:
by Tom Engelhardt | August 19, 2026 - 4:48am | permalink
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