Last year's "Donroe Doctrine" is a cheap snark of the 1800's Monroe Doctrine, with no trace of the latter's objective. This year, in addition to two new criminal wars of aggression and regime change, Trump's contempt for real faith leads him to personally post images of himself as Christ, egged on by his deranged "spiritual" guide Paula White. When questioned about the now-deleted post, he lied saying it was a picture of himself as a doctor, making people better, something "he does a lot." Like increasingly noticed US military capabilities, Trump's lies are vapid and hollow.

The US president, without question, wants to take, tax, and control global resources. He doesn't want to pay, because the free market of traders coming to mutually agreeable exchanges is for suckers. Instead, he threatens and applies military, economic and reputational harm to get what he wants. It's a tactic that might work in a rising empire, but is laughable and ridiculous for an empire in rapid decline.

Americans don't think much about empire, but Washington DC and New York bankers do. For the rest of us, Trump's imperialism comes with vague generalities and an enormous price tag. Beyond trillions of dollars in new US federal debt, an exploding military budget and interest payments on past borrowing – much of which was for previously expended fake "defense" – we find Americans are are suffering unstoppable inflation, reduced quality of life, worsening health and the steady abolition of liberty as the state voraciously demands everything we have, in greater and greater portions.