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Opinion
Trump Delivers Darkest Thanksgiving in US History
A story from the nation's founding to bring us hope in these terrible times. There is a way out of this.
Nov 28, 2025
Yesterday was probably, politically and spiritually, the darkest Thanksgiving for our nation in our lifetimes. So how about a quick story out of America’s earliest history that eerily echoes this moment and may give us some hope?
Donald Trump has told us he’s going to use the 1807 Insurrection Act to declare a state of emergency, which will allow him to round up not only undocumented immigrants but also his political opponents, who he refers to as “the enemy within.” He came to power using Willie Horton-style ads trashing trans people and is happy to demonize anybody else who stands up to his hunger for absolute power.
In an age-old technique usually employed during wartime, Trump regularly uses the rhetoric America has employed against foreign enemies to characterize Americans who disagree with him and his policies. Remember the “raghead” slurs against Arabs from the Afghan and Iraqi wars? Or politicians referring to Vietnamese in the 1970s as “slants” and “gooks”?
My dad, who volunteered to fight in WWII straight out of high school, called Germans and Japanese “krauts” and “Japs” to his dying days; American propaganda during wartime encouraged popular usage of these racist characterizations.
America has been burdened by lying presidents before, and even one who tried to destroy our Constitution like Trump is today threatening to do.
In this regard, Trump’s trying to lie us into two different wars. The first is an external war against Venezuela, using America’s drug problem as an excuse; the other is something very much like a 21st century version of a second civil war. A war by Americans against Americans, with his masked secret-police ICE army at the forefront.
Often history tells us how the future may turn out: Trump isn’t the first American politician to use lies and slanders to whip up a war-like frenzy. Or to use the language of war for political gain.
Bush Junior wasn’t the first president to have lied to us about foreign affairs and war, or to use lies to justify eviscerating the Constitution. For example, Lyndon Johnson lied about a non-existent attack on the US warship Maddox in the Vietnamese Gulf of Tonkin. William McKinley (the presidency after which Karl Rove has said he’d modeled the Bush presidency) lied about an attack on the USS Maine to get us into the Spanish-American war in The Philippines and Cuba.
But most relevant to today's situation were John Adams’ version of Trump’s slanders when Adams sent three emissaries to France and criminals soliciting bribes approached them late one evening. Adams referred to these three unidentified Frenchmen as “Mr. X, Mr. Y, and Mr. Z,” and made them out to represent such an insult and a threat against America that it may presage war.
Adams’ use of “The XYZ Affair” to gain political capital — much like Trump demonizes the pilots of small boats off the coast of Venezuela and anti-ICE protestors in his fantasized “war zones” like Portland for political gain — nearly led us to war with France and helped him carve a large (although temporary) hole in the Constitution. Similarly, much like Trump’s anti-media “enemy of the people” rhetoric, John Adams then used that frenzy to jail newspaper editors and average citizens alike who spoke out against him and his policies.
The backstory is both fascinating and hopeful.
At that time in the late 1790s, Adams was President and Jefferson was Vice President. Adams led the Federalist Party (which today could be said to have reincarnated as the Republican Party), and Jefferson had just brought together two Anti-Federalist parties — the Democrats and the Republicans — into one party called The Democratic Republicans. (Today they’re known as the Democratic Party, the longest-lasting political party in history. They dropped “Republican” from their name in the 1820-1830 era).
Adams and his Federalist cronies, using war hysteria with France as a wedge issue, were pushing the Alien & Sedition Acts through Congress, and even threw into prison Democratic Congressman Matthew Lyon of Vermont for speaking out against the Federalists on the floor of the House of Representatives.
Adams was leading the United States in the direction of a fascistic state with a spectacularly successful strategy of vilifying Jefferson and his Party as anti-American and pro-French. He was America’s first Trump, albeit nowhere near as toxic or psychopathic.
Adams’ rhetoric was described as “manly” by the Federalist newspapers, which admiringly published dozens of his threatening rants against France, suggesting that Jefferson’s Democratic Republicans were less than patriots and perhaps even traitors because of their opposition to the unnecessary war with France that Adams was simultaneously trying to gin up and saying he was working to avoid.
On June 1, 1798 — two weeks before the Alien & Sedition Acts passed Congress by a single vote — Jefferson wrote a thoughtful letter to his old friend John Taylor.
“This is not new,” Jefferson said. “It is the old practice of despots; to use a part of the people to keep the rest in order. And those who have once got an ascendancy and possessed themselves of all the resources of the nation, their revenues and offices, have immense means for retaining their advantage.
“But,” he added, “our present situation is not a natural one.”
Jefferson knew that Adams’ Federalists did not represent the true heart and soul of America, and commented to Taylor about how Adams had been using divide-and-conquer politics, and fear-mongering about war with France (the XYZ Affair) with some success.
“But still I repeat it,” he wrote again to Taylor, “this is not the natural state.”
Jefferson did everything he could to stop that generation’s version of Trump, but Adams had the Federalists in control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate, and pushed through the Alien and Sedition Acts. In protest, Jefferson left town the day they were signed, never to return until after Adams left the presidency.
Jefferson later wrote in his personal diary how it would — like today, with California and Illinois leading the charge against Trump’s neofascist agenda — fall to the states to prevent the loss of American democracy:
“Their usurpations and violations of the Constitution at that period, and their majority in both Houses of Congress, were so great, so decided, and so daring, that after combating their aggressions, inch by inch, without being able in the least to check their career, the [Democratic] Republican leaders thought it would be best for them to give up their useless efforts there, go home, get into their respective legislatures, embody whatever of resistance they could be formed into, and if ineffectual, to perish there as in the last ditch.”
Democratic Republican Congressman Albert Gallatin submitted legislation that would repeal the Alien & Sedition Acts, and the Federalist majority in the House refused to even consider the motion, while informing Gallatin that he would be the next to be imprisoned if he kept speaking out against “the national security.”
Adams then shut down almost thirty newspapers, throwing their publishers, editors, and writers in prison. The most famous to go to jail was Ben Franklin’s grandson, Benjamin Franklin Bache. Within a few months, Adams had effectively silenced the opposition.
Then he went after average citizens who spoke out against him.
Adams and his wife traveled the country in a fine carriage surrounded by a military contingent. As the Adams’ family entourage, full of pomp and ceremony, passed through Newark, New Jersey, a man named Luther Baldwin was sitting in a tavern and probably quite unaware that he was about to make a fateful comment that would help change history.
As Adams rode by, soldiers manning the Newark cannons loudly shouted the Adams-mandated chant, “Behold the chief who now commands!” and fired their salutes.
Hearing the cannon fire as Adams drove by outside the bar, in a moment of drunken candor Luther Baldwin said, “There goes the President and they are firing at his arse.” Baldwin further compounded his sin by adding that, “I do not care if they fire thro’ his arse!”
The tavern’s owner, a Federalist named John Burnet, overheard the remark and turned Baldwin in to Adams’ thought police: The hapless drunk was arrested, convicted, and imprisoned for uttering “seditious words tending to defame the President and Government of the United States.”
It was the darkest moment in our new nation’s short history. But then a new force arose.
When Adams shut down the Democratic Republican newspapers, pamphleteers — that generation’s version of Substack writers not affiliated with national publications — went to work, papering towns from New Hampshire to Georgia with posters and leaflets decrying Adams’ power grab and encouraging the state governments to stand tall with Thomas Jefferson.
One of the best was a short screed by George Nicholas of Kentucky, “Justifying the Kentucky Resolution against the Alien & Sedition Laws” and “Correcting Certain False Statements, Which Have Been Made in the Different States” by Adams’ Federalists.
On February 13, 1799, then-Vice President Jefferson had a courier hand-deliver a leter and copy of Nicholas’ pamphlet to his old friend Archibald Stuart (a Virginia legislator, fighter in the War of Independence, and leader of Jefferson’s Democratic Republicans).
“I avoid writing to my friends because the fidelity of the post office is very much doubted,” he opened his letter to Stuart, concerned that Adams was having his mail inspected because of his anti-war activities.
Jefferson pointed out that “France is sincerely anxious for reconciliation, willing to give us a liberal treaty,” and that even with the Democratic newspapers shut down by Adams and the Federalist-controlled media being unwilling to speak of Adams’ war lies, word was getting out to the people.
Jefferson noted:
“All these things are working on the public mind. They are getting back to the point where they were when the X. Y. Z. story was passed off on them. A wonderful and rapid change is taking place in Pennsylvania, Jersey, and New York. Congress is daily plied with petitions against the alien and sedition laws and standing armies.”
Jefferson then turned to the need for the pamphleteers’ materials to be widely distributed across the states that might resist Adams.
“The materials now bearing on the public mind will infallibly restore it to its republican soundness in the course of the present summer,” he wrote, “if the knowledge of facts can only be disseminated among the people. Under separate cover you will receive some pamphlets written by George Nicholas on the [Alien & Sedition] acts of the last session. These I would wish you to distribute....”
The pamphleteer — today he would have been called a Substack writer — was James Bradford, and he reprinted tens of thousands of copies of Nicholas’ pamphlet and distributed it far and wide. Hand to hand, as Jefferson did with his by-courier letter to Stuart, was how what would be today’s independent progressive writings are distributed via email.
In the face of the pamphleteering and protests, the Federalists fought back with startling venom. It was led by a media machine — the remaining newspapers — largely owned by wealthy Adams backers as the Jefferson-backing newspapers had been shut down and their publishers and editors imprisoned.
Vicious personal attacks were launched in the Federalist press against Jefferson, Madison, and others, and President Adams and Vice President Jefferson were no longer on speaking terms. Adams’ goal was nothing short of the complete destruction of Jefferson’s Democratic Party, and he had scared many of them into silence or submission.
“All [Democratic Republicans], therefore, retired,” Jefferson wrote in his diary, “leaving Mr. Gallatin alone in the House of Representatives, and myself in the Senate, where I then presided as Vice-President.
“Remaining at our posts, and bidding defiance to the brow-beatings and insults by which they endeavored to drive us off also, we kept the mass of [Democratic] Republicans in phalanx together, until the legislature could be brought up to the charge; and nothing on earth is more certain, than that if myself particularly, placed by my office of Vice-President at the head of the [Democratic] Republicans, had given way and withdrawn from my post, the [Democratic] Republicans throughout the Union would have given up in despair; and the cause would have been lost forever.”
But Jefferson in the Senate and Gallatin in the House held their posts and fought back fiercely against Adams, thus saving — quite literally — American democracy. Jefferson and Madison also secretly helped legislators in Virginia and Kentucky submit resolutions in those states’ legislatures decrying the Alien & Sedition Acts. The bill in Virginia, in particular, gained traction.
As Jefferson noted in his diary, between his and Gallatin’s resistance in Washington, DC and several state governments standing up against Adams’ having shut down their newspapers and using the army to threaten their protestors:
“By holding on, we obtained time for the legislatures to come up with their weight; and those of Virginia and Kentucky particularly, but more especially the former, by their celebrated resolutions, saved the Constitution at its last gasp. No person who was not a witness of the scenes of that gloomy period, can form any idea of the afflicting persecutions and personal indignities we had to brook. They saved our country however.
“The spirits of the people were so much subdued and reduced to despair by the XYZ imposture, and other stratagems and machinations, that they would have sunk into apathy and monarchy, as the only form of government which could maintain itself.”
The efforts of that century’s truth-tellers made great gains. The states were fighting back, even challenging Adams’ massive, naked power grab and war-mongering. As Jefferson noted in a February 14, 1799 letter to Virginia’s Edmund Pendleton:
“The violations of the Constitution, propensities to war, to expense, and to a particular foreign connection, which we have lately seen, are becoming evident to the people, and are dispelling that mist which X. Y. Z. had spread before their eyes. This State is coming forward with a boldness not yet seen. Even the German counties of York and Lancaster, hitherto the most devoted [to Adams], have come about, and by petitions with four thousand signers remonstrate against the alien and sedition laws, standing armies, and discretionary powers in the President.”
Americans and several state leaders were so angry with Adams, Jefferson noted, that the challenge was to prevent people from taking up arms against Adams’ Federalists. He worried out loud that the resistance may, if it erupted into violence, give Adams an excuse to declare an insurrection and totally end democracy:
“New York and Jersey are also getting into great agitation. In this State [of Pennsylvania], we fear that the ill-designing may produce insurrection. Nothing could be so fatal. Anything like force would check the progress of the public opinion and rally them round the government. This is not the kind of opposition the American people will permit.”
Like today’s progressive movement led by people like Bernie Sanders, JB Pritzker, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Gavin Newsom, and Elizabeth Warren, Jefferson knew that peaceful protests had greater power than police violence or even threats like Trump‘s war-mongering against Venezuela today.
“But keep away all show of force,” he wrote to Pendleton, “and they will bear down the evil propensities of the government, by the constitutional means of election and petition. If we can keep quiet, therefore, the tide now turning will take a steady and proper direction.”
A week later, February 21, 1799, Jefferson wrote to the great Polish general who had fought in the American Revolution, Thaddeus Kosciusko, a close friend who was then living in Russia. War for political purposes was the great enemy of democracy, Jefferson noted, and peace was its champion. And the American people were increasingly siding with peace and rejecting Adams’ call for war.
“The wonderful irritation produced in the minds of our citizens by the X. Y. Z. story, has in a great measure subsided,” he noted. “They begin to suspect and to see it coolly in its true light.”
But Adams was still President, and for him and his Federalist Party even a “little war” with France would have helped tremendously with the upcoming election of 1800. And in France some leaders wanted war with America for similar reasons.
Jefferson continued:
“What course the government will pursue, I know not. But if we are left in peace, I have no doubt the wonderful turn in the public opinion now manifestly taking place and rapidly increasing, will, in the course of this’ summer, become so universal and so weighty, that friendship abroad and freedom at home will be firmly established by the influence and constitutional powers of the people at large.”
And if Adams’ rhetoric led to an attack on America by France?
“If we are forced into war,” Jefferson noted, “we must give up political differences of opinion, and unite as one man to defend our country. But whether at the close of such a war, we should be as free as we are now, God knows.”
The tide was turned, to use Jefferson’s phrase, by the election of 1800, as Dan Sisson and I document in our book The American Revolution of 1800: How Jefferson Rescued Democracy from Tyranny and Faction — and What This Means Today.
The abuses of the Federalists were so burned into the people’s minds when Jefferson's party came to power in 1801 and he freed the imprisoned newspaper editors, that the Federalists disintegrated altogether as a party over the next two decades.
As may well happen to Trump’s GOP two or four years from now.
All because average citizens and pamphleteers — and a handful of progressive politicians and states — stood up and challenged the lies of a fear-mongering president, and politicians of principle were willing to lead.
America has been burdened by lying presidents before, and even one who tried to destroy our Constitution like Trump is today threatening to do. But in our era — like in Jefferson’s — we are fortunate to have radical truth-tellers and political allies to warn us of treasonous acts for political gain.
If we stand in solidarity with today’s truth-tellers, and more politicians step forward to take a leadership role, then it’s entirely possible that with the elections of 2026 and 2028 American democracy can once again prevail.
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Trump's Threat to Invade Venezuela Is Indeed About Drugs–Oil, That Is
This is not about stopping the flow of dangerous drugs, it is about actually increasing the flow of the dangerous drug some pushers want to keep us all hooked on.
Nov 28, 2025
President Donald Trump’s saber-rattling about potential military action in Venezuela is indeed about drugs, but not cocaine. It is about a far more dangerous drug that former President George W. Bush admitted (in his 2006 State of the Union address) the US is addicted to—oil.
Venezuela has the largest proven oil reserves in the world—300 billion barrels—even larger than reserves in Saudi Arabia. Mr. Trump and his oil industry friends may imagine that by deposing President Nicolas Maduro and installing a friendly government there, the US would have unlimited access to this huge oil reserve, which is five times larger than the proven reserves in the US. Never mind the fact that for any hope of future climate stability, most of this oil needs to stay right where it is, in the ground.
We've seen this tragic play before. The Bush administration justified its disastrous 2003 invasion of Iraq with the pretext that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction which, as it turned out, it didn't. And as US Central Command commander General John Abizaid admitted about the Iraq war at the time: “Of course it’s about oil, it’s very much about oil, and we can’t really deny that.” The invasion killed tens of thousands of people, mostly civilians, and destabilized the broader Middle East region for years.
And now here we go again. A similar pretext—this time “drug interdiction”—is being used to justify a potential US invasion and regime change in Venezuela. But this is not about stopping the flow of dangerous drugs, it is about actually increasing the flow of the dangerous drug some pushers want to keep us all hooked on—oil. As Colombian President Gustavo Petro recently stated on the US-Venezuela threat: “Oil is at the heart of the matter.”
Instead of admitting their addiction, the damage it causes, and committing to recovery, hard core junkies are always desperate for more supply. It seems Mr. Trump and his oil industry friends are the most dangerous narco-traffickers we need to worry about.
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Make Americans Homeless Again: Trump's Intentional Housing Crisis
Trump is causing major damage, and his team at the Department of Housing and Urban Development knows it.
Nov 28, 2025
America’s urban landscapes are cursed with skyrocketing rents, evictions, and tent cities—thanks to President Donald Trump. His administration has launched what can only be described as a brutal, scorched-earth attack on federal housing programs. Trump's Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is slashing billions from successful programs and proven initiatives that keep people off the streets. Trump clearly prioritizes ideological crusades over human lives. This is not a better policy; it is cruelty and it is exacerbating a housing crisis that has left millions of America’s citizens on the brink. Trump’s war on the vulnerable is forcing 170,000 Americans back into homelessness, gutting local efforts in states like California and New York, while ignoring root causes like unaffordable housing and stagnant wages.
At the heart of this disaster is the Continuum of Care (CoC) program, which helps connect homeless people with permanent rental subsidies, shelters, and support services. Under Trump’s HUD, this crucial program is being gutted for fiscal year 2026. More than half of its funding, previously designed for permanent housing, is now being redirected to temporary shelters that come with punitive preconditions such as mandatory drug treatment or work requirements.
Support for permanent housing is now limited to just 30% of the budget, a significant drop from the previous 90% that allowed flexibility for real needs. Local nonprofits will now find it harder to secure grants as HUD is also now imposing competitive bidding on nearly all funds. This means that eligibility is being wielded as a political weapon: Agree with the Trump administration on various issues and receive funding. Disagree on the issues and lose funding. Accountability is not the issue here; it’s all about Trump’s culture-war agenda, punishing progressive districts while rewarding red-state sycophants.
Trump’s claim to be fixing America is, instead, a brutal bulldozing of the safety net that has helped tens of thousands of citizens and families.
Trump is causing major damage, and his team knows it. Internal HUD documents admit these cuts will displace tens of thousands of people across the nation and erase years of progress in reducing chronic homelessness. In California, the epicenter of the crisis, Attorney General Rob Bonta has sued the administration alongside 19 other states and two governors, arguing the changes are illegal. Los Angeles County alone stands to lose subsidies for 5,000 households, including families with children, and veterans. Even some Republicans, like Nebraska's Rep. Mike Flood, are scrambling for a one-year funding extension, a tacit admission that Trump's "reforms" are a recipe for chaos.
New York faces a similar apocalypse. Homelessness has surged amid post-pandemic evictions, leaving thousands of families in need of assistance. Trump's pivot to "shelters and rehabilitation centers" over long-term stability directly sabotages the city's "Housing First" model, which prioritizes rapid placement into homes before tackling addiction or mental health, proven to reduce recidivism and costs. Led by Attorney General Letitia James, the multistate lawsuit filed in Rhode Island's federal court calls this an unconstitutional power grab, as HUD rewrites congressional spending without approval. Over 1,000 organizations nationwide have begged Congress to intervene, while Democrats like Sen. Elizabeth Warren demand answers on how these cuts will fuel tent encampments from Seattle to Boston.
HUD spokesperson Scott Turner has pathetically defended Trump, claiming that the Obama-Biden “Housing First” approach is a failed “homeless industrial complex” enabling addiction without accountability. But the data says otherwise. Housing First programs decreased homelessness by 88% and improved housing stability by 41%, compared to Treatment First programs. But Trump’s “solution” will achieve the opposite, forcing people into transitional housing with strings attached, ignoring that most homelessness stems not from untreated addiction but from poverty. By capping permanent aid and politicizing grants, Trump is inflating costs and dooming the cycle to repeat. Families will fracture even though Trump claims he will make exceptions for those with children, vets, or seniors.
Trump’s claim to be fixing America is, instead, a brutal bulldozing of the safety net that has helped tens of thousands of citizens and families. But as lawsuits mount and bipartisan pleas for extensions grow, perhaps Trump will be prevented from implementing his nefarious plan. By evicting the most vulnerable Americans to score political points, Trump is not draining the swamp; he is flooding the streets. Congress must act now to renew the grants and prevent Trump’s overreach that will affect tens of thousands of needs Americans. Let voters remember that in Trump’s America, there is nothing but evil and despair.
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Ozymandias on the Potomac: American Decline in the Fossil Fuel Age
By the time Donald Trump leaves office in 2029, this country will be distinctly on the imperial decline amid fast-paced changes that will make electric vehicles universal and solar-powered electricity an economic imperative.
Nov 28, 2025
At the dawning of the British Empire in 1818, the romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley penned a memorable sonnet freighted with foreboding about the inevitable decline of all empires, whether in ancient Egypt or then-modern Britain.
In Shelly’s stanzas, a traveler in Egypt comes across the ruins of a once-monumental statue, with “a shattered visage lying half sunk” in desert sands bearing the “sneer of cold command.” Only its “trunkless legs of stone” remain standing. Yet the inscription carved on those stones still proclaims: “My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” And in a silent mockery of such imperial hubris, all the trappings of that awesome power, all the palaces and fortresses, have been utterly erased, leaving only a desolation “boundless and bare” as “the lone and level sands stretch far away.”
Taken too literally, those verses might lead us to anticipate some future traveler finding fragments of St. Paul’s Cathedral scattered on the banks of the Thames River in London or stones from the Washington Monument strewn in a kudzu-covered field near the Potomac. Shelley is, however, offering us a more profound lesson that every empire teaches and every imperialist then forgets: Imperial ascent begets an inevitable decline.
Imperial Washington
Indeed, these days Donald Trump’s Washington abounds with monuments to overblown imperial grandeur and plans for more, all of which add up to an unconvincing denial that America’s global imperium is facing an Ozymandias-like fate. With his future Gilded Age ballroom meant to rise from the rubble of the White House’s East Wing, his plans for a massive triumphal arch at the city’s entrance, and a military parade of tanks and troops clanking down Constitution Avenue on his birthday, who could ever imagine such a thing? Not Donald Trump, that’s for sure.
In a celebration of his “works” that are supposedly making the “mighty despair” in foreign capitals around the world, his former national security adviser, Robert C. O’Brien, has recently argued in Foreign Affairs that the president’s “policy of peace through strength” is reversing a Democrat-induced decline of U.S. global power. According to O’Brien, instead of crippling NATO (as his critics claim), President Trump is “leading the biggest European rearmament of the postwar era”; unleashing military innovation “to counter China”; and proving himself the “indispensable global statesman by driving efforts to bring peace to… long-standing disputes” in Gaza, the Congo, and, quite soon, Ukraine as well. Even in North America, according to O’Brien, Trump’s attempt to acquire Greenland has forced Denmark to expand its military presence, putting Russia on notice that the West will compete for control of the Arctic.
As it happens, whatever the truth of any of that may be, the policy elements that O’Brien cites are certain to prove largely irrelevant to the ceaseless struggle for geopolitical power among the globe’s great empires. Or, to borrow a favorite Trumpian epithet from the president’s “cornucopia of crudeness,” in the relentless, often ruthless world of grand strategy, none of those factors amounts to a hill of “shit.”
Indeed, O’Brien’s epic catalogue of Trump’s supposed foreign policy successes cleverly avoids any mention of the central factor in the rise and fall of every dominant world power for the past 500 years: energy. While the United States made genuine strides toward a green energy revolution under President Joe Biden, his successor, the “drill, baby, drill” president, has seemed determined not just to destroy those gains, but to revert to dependence on fossil fuels “bigly,” as Trump would say. In a perplexing paradox, President Trump’s systematic attack on alternative energy at home will almost certainly subvert America’s geopolitical power abroad. How and why? Let me explain by dipping my toes in a bit of history.
For the past five centuries, the rise of every global empire has rested on an underlying transformation (or perhaps revolution would be a more accurate word for it) in the form of energy that drove its version of the world economy. Innovation in the basic force behind its rising global presence gave each successive hegemonic power — Portugal, Spain, England, the United States, and possibly now China — a critical competitive advantage, cutting costs and increasing profits. That energy innovation and the lucrative commerce it created infused each successive imperium with intangible but substantial power, impelling its armed forces relentlessly forward and crushing resistance to its rule, whether by local groups or would-be imperial rivals. Although scholars of imperial history often ignore it, energy should be considered, as I argued in my book To Govern the Globe, the determinative factor in the rise and fall of every global hegemon for the past five centuries.
Iberia’s Mastery of Muscle
In the fifteenth century, the Iberian powers — Portugal and Spain — manipulated the ocean winds and maximized the energy output of the human body, giving them new forms of energy that allowed their arid lands and limited populations to conquer much of the globe. By replacing the square sail of lumbering Mediterranean ships with a triangular sail, agile Portuguese vessels like the famed caravela de armada doubled their capacity to tack close to the wind, allowing them to master the world’s oceans.
By 1500, Portuguese warships had navigation instruments that allowed them to cross the widest bodies of water, sails to beat into the strongest headwinds, a sturdy hull for guns and cargo, and lethal cannons that could destroy enemy fleets or breach the walls of port cities. As a result, a small flotilla of Portuguese caravels soon conquered colonies on both sides of the South Atlantic Ocean and seized control of Asian sea lanes from the Red Sea to the Java Sea.
For the next three centuries, such sailing ships would transport 11 million African captives across the Atlantic to work as slaves in a new form of agriculture that was both exceptionally cruel and extraordinarily profitable: the sugar plantation. The output of Europe’s free yeoman farmers was then constrained by the limits of the individual body and the temperate climate’s short six-month growing season. By contrast, enslaved laborers, massed into efficient teams in tropical latitudes, were driven year-round to the brink of death and beyond to extract unprecedented productivity and profits from those plantations. Indeed, even as late as the nineteenth century, the U.S. southern slave plantation was, according to an econometric analysis, 35% more efficient than a northern family farm.
After developing the sugar plantation, or fazenda, as a new form of agribusiness on small islands off the coast of Africa in the fifteenth century, the Portuguese brought that system to Brazil in the sixteenth century. From there, it migrated to European colonies in the Caribbean, making that cruel commerce synonymous with the slave trade for nearly four centuries. So profitable was the slave plantation for its owners that, unlike almost every other form of production, it did not die from natural economic causes but would instead require the full force of the British navy to do it in.
The Dutch Harness the Winds
But the true masters of wind power would prove to be the Dutch, whose technological prowess would allow their small land, devoid of natural resources, to conquer a colonial empire that spanned three continents. In the seventeenth century, the Dutch drive for scientific innovation led them to harness the winds as never before, building sailing ships 10 times the size of a Portuguese caravel and windmills that, among other things, replaced the tedious hand sawing of logs to produce lumber for shipbuilding. With giant sails spanning over 90 feet, a five-ton shaft generating up to 50 horsepower, and several sawing frames with six steel blades each, a windmill’s four-man crew could turn 60 tree trunks a day into uniform planks to maintain the massive Dutch merchant fleet of 4,000 ocean-going ships.
By 1650, the Zaan district near Amsterdam, arguably Europe’s first major industrial area, had more than 50 wind-driven sawmills and was the world’s largest shipyard, launching 150 hulls annually (at half the cost of English-built vessels). Many of these were the Dutch-designed fluitschip, an agile three-masted cargo vessel that cut crew size, doubled sailing speed, and could carry 500 tons of cargo with exceptional efficiency.
Through its commercial acumen and mastery of wind power, tiny Holland defeated the mighty Spanish empire in the Thirty Years War (1618-48), then fought the British to a standstill in three massive naval wars, while building an empire that reached around the world — from the Spice Islands of Indonesia to the city of New Amsterdam on the island of Manhattan.
When Coal Was King
As Holland’s commercial empire began to fade, however, Great Britain was already launching an energy transition to coal-fired steam energy that would leave the wind and muscle power of the Iberian age in the dust of history. And the industrial revolution that went with it would build the world’s first truly global empire.
The Scottish inventor James Watt perfected the steam engine by 1784. Such machines began driving railways in 1825 and the Royal Navy’s warships in the 1840s. By then, an armada of steam engines was transforming the nature of work worldwide — driving sawmills, pulling gang plows, and sculpting the earth’s surface with steam shovels, steam dredges, and steam rollers. Between 1880 and 1900, the number of steam engines in the United States would triple from 56,000 units to 156,000, accounting for 77% of all American industrial power. To fuel that age of steam and steel, Britain’s coal production climbed to a peak of 290 million tons in 1913, while worldwide production reached 1.3 billion tons.
Coal was the catalyst for an industrial revolution that fused steam technology with steel production to make Britain the master of the world’s oceans. From the end of the Napoleonic wars in 1815 until the outbreak of World War I in 1914, tiny Britain with just 40 million people would preside over a global empire that controlled a quarter of all humanity directly through colonies and another quarter indirectly through client states. In addition to its vast territorial empire, Britannia ruled the world’s waves, while its pound sterling became the global reserve currency, and London the financial center of the planet.
America’s Petrol-Powered Hegemony
Just as Britain’s imperial age had coincided with its coal-driven industrial revolution, so Washington’s brand-new world order focused on crude oil to feed the voracious energy needs of its global economy. By 1950, in the wake of World War II, the U.S. petrol-powered economy was producing half the world’s economic output and using that raw economic power for commercial and military dominion over most of the planet (outside the Sino-Soviet communist bloc).
By 1960, the Pentagon had built a nuclear triad that gave it a formidable strategic deterrent, as five nuclear-powered submarines armed with atomic warheads trolled the ocean depths, while 14 nuclear-armed aircraft carriers patrolled the world’s oceans. Flying from 500 U.S. overseas military bases, the Strategic Air Command had 1,700 bombers ready for nuclear strikes.
As American automobile ownership climbed from 40 million units in 1950 to 200 million in 2000, the country’s oil consumption surged from 6.5 million barrels daily to a peak of 20 million. During those same decades, the federal government spent $370 billion to cover the country with 46,000 miles of interstate highways, allowing cars and trucks to replace railroads as the ribs of the nation’s transportation infrastructure.
To drive the carbon-fueled economy of Washington’s world order, there would be a dramatic, five-fold increase in the global consumption of liquid fossil fuels during the last half of the twentieth century. As the number of motor vehicles worldwide kept climbing, crude oil rose from 27% of global fossil-fuel consumption in 1950 to 44% by 2003, surpassing coal to become the world’s main source of energy.
To meet this relentlessly rising demand, the Middle East’s share of global oil production climbed from just 7% in 1945 to 35% in 2003. As the self-appointed guardian of the Persian Gulf whose vast oil reserves represented some 60% of the world’s total, Washington would become embroiled in endless wars in that tumultuous region, from the Gulf War of 1990-91 to its present-day interventions in Israel and Iran.
Whether thanks to Britain’s coal-fired factories or America’s auto traffic, all those carbon emissions were already producing signs of global warming that, by the 1990s, would set alarm bells ringing among scientists worldwide. From the “pre-industrial” baseline of 280 parts per million (ppm) in 1880, carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere kept climbing to 410 ppm by 2018, resulting in the rising seas, devastating fires, raging storms, and protracted droughts that came to be known as global warming.
As evidence of the climate crisis became undeniable, the world’s nations responded with striking unanimity by signing the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement to cut carbon emissions and surge investments into alternative energy that soon yielded significant breakthroughs in both cost and efficiency. Within four years, the International Energy Agency predicted that dramatic drops in the cost of solar panels meant that solar energy would soon be “the new king of the world’s electricity markets.” Indeed, as technology slashed the cost of battery storage and solar panels, the International Renewable Energy Agency reported in 2024 that the solar generation of electricity had become 41% cheaper than fossil fuels, while offshore wind was 53% cheaper — a truly significant disparity that will, as technology continues to slash the cost of solar energy, render the use of coal and natural gas for electricity an economic irrationality, if not an utter absurdity.
In the game of empires, seemingly small margins can have large consequences, often marking the difference between dominance and subordination, success and failure — whether the 35% advantage of enslaved over free labor, the 50% cost advantage for Dutch sailing craft over British ones, and now a 41% savings for solar over fossil fuels. Moreover, the day is fast coming when fossil-fuel electricity will cost more than twice as much as alternative energy from solar and wind power.
To assure America’s economic future, the administration of President Joe Biden began investing trillions of dollars in alternative energy by building battery plants, encouraging massive wind and solar projects, and continuing a consumer subsidy to sustain Detroit’s transition to electric vehicles. In January 2025, however, Donald Trump entered the White House (again) determined to roll back the global green revolution. After quitting the Paris climate accord and labeling climate change a “hoax” or “the green new scam,” President Trump has halted construction of major offshore wind projects, ended the subsidy for electric vehicle purchases, and opened yet more federal lands for coal and oil leases. Armed with extraordinary executive powers and a single-minded determination, he will predictably delay, if not derail, America’s transition to alternative energy, missing market opportunities and undercutting the country’s economic competitiveness by chaining it to overpriced fossil fuels.
China’s Green-Energy Ride to Global Power
While Washington was demolishing America’s green energy infrastructure, Beijing has been working to make China a global powerhouse for alternative energy. Ten years ago, its leaders launched a “Made in China 2025” program to storm the heights of the global economy by becoming the world leader in 10 strategic industries, eight of which involved some aspect of the green-energy transformation, including “new materials,” “high-tech ships,” “advanced railways,” “energy-saving and new energy vehicles,” and “energy equipment.” Those “new materials” include China’s virtual monopoly on rare earth minerals, which are absolutely critical to the manufacturing of the key components for renewable energy — specifically, wind turbines, solar panels, energy storage systems, electric vehicles, and hydrogen extraction. In sum, Beijing is already riding the green energy revolution in a serious bid to become the world’s “leading manufacturing superpower” by 2049, while erasing America’s economic edge and its global hegemony in the bargain.
So, you might ask, have any of those seemingly pie-in-the-sky plans already become an economic reality? Given China’s recent progress in key energy sectors, the answer is a resounding yes.
Under its economic plan, China has already come to dominate the world’s solar power industry. In 2024, it cut the wholesale price of its solar panel exports in half and nearly doubled its exports of panel components. To replace its old export “trio” of clothing, furniture, and appliances, Beijing has mandated a “new trio” of solar panels, lithium batteries, and electric cars. And to put what’s happening in perspective, imagine that, in just the month of May, China installed enough wind and solar energy to power a country as big as Poland, reaching an impressive figure that represents half the world’s “total installed solar capacity.” By 2024, China was already producing at least 80% of the world’s solar panel components, dominating the global market, and undercutting would-be competitors in Europe and the U.S. Driving all that explosive growth, China’s investment in clean energy has reached nearly $2 trillion, representing 10% of its gross domestic product, and has been growing at three times the rate of its overall economy, meaning it would soon account for a full 20% of its entire economy.
With similar determination, its electric vehicles (EVs) are now beginning to capture the global car market. By 2024, 17.3 million electric cars were made worldwide, and China produced 70% of them. Not only are Chinese companies opening massive robotic assembly plants worldwide to crank out such cars by the millions, but they are also making the world’s cheapest and best cars — with the YangWang U9-X hitting a world speed record of 308 miles per hour; BYD’s latest plug-in hybrid models, priced at only $13,700 and capable of traveling a record 1,200 miles on a single charge and single tank of gas; the YangWang U8 with a capacity to literally drive across water; and the Xiaomi SU-7 displaying a high-tech driver interface that makes a Tesla look like a Ford Pinto.
Since an EV is just a steel box with a battery, technology will soon allow low-cost electric vehicles to completely eradicate gas guzzlers, enabling China to conquer the global car market — with full electric cars like the self-driving BYD Seagull sedan already priced at $8,000, models like BYD’s Han with a 5-minute charge time that’s faster than pumping a tank of gas, and sedans like the Nio ET7 with a standard range on a single charge of 620 miles. And most of that extraordinary technological progress has happened in less than four years, essentially the time remaining in Donald Trump’s second term in office.
An Agenda for America’s Economic Future
By discouraging alternative energy and encouraging fossil fuels, President Trump is undercutting America’s economic competitiveness in the most fundamental way imaginable. Amid an historic transformation in the world’s energy infrastructure (comparable in scope and scale to the coal-fired industrial revolution), the United States will spend the next three years under his watch digging coal and burning oil and natural gas, while the rest of the industrial world follows China as it pursues technological innovation to the furthest frontiers of the human imagination. Indeed, the latest annual report from the world’s energy watchdog, the International Energy Agency, states bluntly that the transition away from fossil fuels is “inevitable” as the world, “led by a surge in cheap solar power in… the Middle East and Asia,” installs more green energy capacity in the next five years than it has in the last 40 combined.
By the time Donald Trump leaves office in 2029, this country will be distinctly on the imperial decline amid fast-paced changes that will make electric vehicles universal and solar-powered electricity an economic imperative. And just as the Dutch used energy technology to capture their imperial moment in the seventeenth century, so the Chinese will undoubtedly do the same in this century.
After all, how can the United States produce competitive products, even for domestic consumption (much less export), if our costs for energy, the basic component of every economic activity, become double those of our competitors? Simply put, it won’t be possible.
If, however, when Donald Trump’s term in office is done, this country moves quickly to recover its capacity for economic rationality, it should be able to regain some version of its place in the world economy. For once the United States rejoins the green energy revolution, it can use its formidable engineering ingenuity to accelerate the development of this transformative technology — simultaneously reducing the CO2 emissions that are choking the planet and securing the livelihoods of average American workers in the bargain.
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