The president of the United States is insane. His inner toddler, never very well hidden, is now running the show. Trump is proudly smearing the contents of his mental diaper over everything within reach: He has turned the White House into a gaudy homage to his idea of grandeur, while placing mocking commentary under the pictures of his predecessors. He is splattering his name across Federal buildings and functions that he has nothing to do with. Yesterday, he announced plans for the building of “Trump Battleships”. Building a new battleship in an era when Ukraine’s underwater drones have driven the once-vaunted Russian Black Sea fleet into hiding is as pointless as re-building the Spanish Armada.
Yet JD Vance has done nothing to discourage Trump from pursuing his mad vanities, and in fact has encouraged them. Why? Long before he was chosen as running mate, I predicted that Vance would use Trump as a vehicle to power, and would discard Trump when it became convenient to do so. That time has now come: I don’t expect Trump to be President much longer. While Section 4 of the 25th Amendment requires a majority of the Cabinet to acquiesce to Vance taking over, the money people who placed Vance in his position will be able to twist enough arms to ensure that this happens. Or Trump could suffer a sudden health crisis: Given his recent behavior and evidence of physical decay, this seems Vance’s more likely path to power. In any case, J.D. Vance, a man beholden to no one but his financial and intellectual backers, will become the most powerful person in the world.
The title of this post comes from W.B. Yeat’s poem, “the Second Coming”, written in the swirling aftermath of World War I. The old world order was broken, nations and empires that seemed eternal to their subjects and citizens had vanished, and the Spanish Flu pandemic was killing even more members of a generation already decimated by war. The last line of that poem has always haunted me: “And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?” Today, Christmas Eve, 2025, I fear that we may soon find the answer to that question.