The United States: Trump The Lord Of Chaos, Prince Of Darkness - Friday's Edition

Trump: good or bad for the world?

December 2025 did not arrive with sirens. It came in a spreadsheet. A spreadsheet that set off sirens

The Bureau of Labor Statistics said unemployment had climbed to 4.6 percent, the highest since September 2021. Forty-one thousand jobs gone across October and November. Not vanished in theory, gone in practice. People packing boxes, handing over badges, driving home earlier than planned. Economists noticed what cooks notice when the sauce breaks. Something basic was off. The Sahm Rule recession indicator lit up.

This was supposed to be the moment Liberation Day paid off. Tariffs were meant to land like a knockout punch. America back on its feet, factories humming, someone else finally paying the bill.

Instead, the bill showed up at home. Yale’s Budget Lab put the cost at $2,400 to $3,800 per household in 2025. Groceries, appliances, car parts, all suddenly more expensive. The average tariff rate hit 17.4 percent, a number not seen since 1935. The Tax Foundation called it the largest tax increase relative to GDP since 1993. No ideology there, just math.

From a cultural perspective, this is how failure usually announces itself. Not with speeches or slogans, but with small, cumulative losses that people feel before they understand. By the time the story makes sense, the damage is already done.

While Trump builds up China, assists Russia, and pushes the EU into long-overdue reforms, he’s doing something different with the U.S. He is not some foreign leader blundering into an unknown culture. He represents a strain within American culture that is at war with the rest of America.

Trompenaars’ cultural framework distinguishes between universalist cultures, where the same rules apply to everyone regardless of relationship, and particularist cultures, where rules depend on who you are and who you know.

America has always claimed universalism; the Constitution, ideally, applies to all equally. A contract, in reality, means the same thing whether you’re a friend or an enemy of whoever wrote it. But Trump operates on particularism. Loyalty is rewarded, disloyalty is punished. Friends get exceptions. Enemies get prosecuted. Expertise and competence mean nothing to him.

Russell Vought, Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, told staff that civil servants should be “loyal to the president, not the institutions they work for.” Exactly the opposite of what America’s founding fathers designed: the replacement of universalism with particularism at the heart of American government.

In the first eleven months of 2025, U.S. employers announced 1.1 million job cuts. Moody’s Analytics found 23 states face high recession risk or are already in recession. The top 10% of earners now account for nearly half of all consumer spending, what economists call a “K-shaped” economy, where the wealthy float upward while everyone else sinks.

At the same time, approximately 300,000 federal workers got the shove. DOGE claimed $206 billion in savings, it was a lie. The Treasury data is clear: the federal deficit grew by $76 billion compared to the same period last year.

Masked ICE agents in unmarked vehicles disappear people with no probable cause. California passed a law requiring agents to identify themselves. Federal officials say they won’t comply.

At the same time, roughly 35,000 federal troops have been deployed domestically. The U.S. military is on U.S. soil despite the Posse Comitatus Act, the law that bars military engagement in domestic law enforcement.

Trump told military officials that American cities should serve as “training grounds” for U.S. troops.

Trump is M.J. Hornby’s North archetype at its most extreme, its most corrupt, its most dangerous.

The Lord of Chaos, the Prince of Darkness

The result is predictable.

Higher prices. Fewer jobs. Masked agents. Troops on the streets. Gutted institutions. Global isolation. A government staffed by loyalists, not experts. Chaos.

The end of American prosperity. The end of American power. The end of America.

Not only did America vote for this, twice, but there is no real opposition to Trump.

Is this what the Americans want? Do they understand what is happening?