Jermaine Fowler: But Would Kamala Have Been Better?

This is an excellent piece. In answering the question — yes. The primary reason is that Kamala is not a malignant narcissist. And that is where there is a substantial difference between Trump and Harris. But that's where the "being better" stops. Without a doubt, she is aligned with imperialism. And Kamala Harris would not have been acting to stop the U.S. government's funding of the ongoing genocide in Gaza. So it depends on who a Harris presidency would be better for — certainly not for the Palestinian people. And she would have remained aligned with the neoliberal capitalist forces which have long taken over nearly all of the Democratic Party. As is true for other neoliberals, Kamala would have continued to serve the donor class connected with the military industrial complex and the fossil fuel industry, Wall Street and the big banks, the pharmaceutical and insurance industries, the prison industrial complex and animal agricultural industries, AIPAC and Israel, and on and on. She would not have prioritized the needs of We the People and the planet over the longstanding status quo which for decades and under both major political parties has had us all on a suicidal trajectory. Kamala Harris would have slowed down the madness of this death spiral that we've been on under the current fascist regime, and she would not be throwing kerosene on the fire that Trump and Project 2025 are. And the trajectory would have remained the same. Would she have been better? Yes. That said, this incredibly low bar that must not be normalized when the cost to all of life on Earth is imperiled. — Molly

By Jermaine Fowler

Millions read it and checked again. Some thought it was AI. Some thought he had been hacked.

It was real.

“Open the F**king Strait, you crazy ba**ards, or you’ll be living in Hell — JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.”

Easter Sunday. The president of the United States.

35%.

That is the share of Americans who approve of military action in Iran. Not a fringe. Not nothing. Thirty-five percent of a nation of 340 million people, which is a great number of people to still be standing in that figure after everything the ledger contains.

At least thirteen Americans dead in a war that began on a timeline Israel set and America funded. On the first day of that war, a missile struck a girls’ primary school in Minab, Iran. A hundred and ten children between seven and twelve years old. Since that morning, the Center on Conscience and War has recorded a 1,000% increase in active service members seeking conscientious objector status — across every branch, pilots and officers included. These are not people afraid of dying. Every one of them has said so. They believe the war is wrong. The school was the moment they could no longer stay silent.

The gas above $4 and climbing — not because of the market, because of the Strait, because of the war, because of the choice — and every Sunday since. The stock market falling as the trade war and the shooting war pull at the same thread. Grocery prices rising as the thread frays: food costs nearly 25% more than five years ago, the war pulling, the tariffs pulling, both running out of thread. Four million Americans losing food assistance this year under the largest cut to food aid in American history: veterans, parents of teenagers, people in their late fifties who cannot find work, the work requirements written into a bill that paid for tax cuts with the grocery money of people who had none. Healthcare premiums that doubled, in some cases tripled. A woman in Fresno canceled her insulin the same week her husband’s food stamps ran out. ICE still moving through neighborhoods before dawn, pulling people from homes, separating families — the apparatus of enforcement never pausing, never short of funds, never overwhelmed.

A $250 million ballroom going up in the White House. A monument to himself planned across from the Lincoln Memorial. On a website, a tumbler for sale. The copy reads: we would’ve made it with salvaged steel from Iranian naval ships, but they’re at the bottom of the sea.

Tariffs that raised the price of everything a family touches. DOGE, which promised $2 trillion in savings and left chaos. A foreign president captured and held. The Strait still closed — the deadline extended once, then again, then a third time, each extension arriving not as relief but as more weight: more days of $4 gas, more days of the market falling, the grocery bill climbing with it. On the other side of the Strait, Iran is striking power grids and oil infrastructure across the Gulf, hitting back at what America hit first.

Bridges. Power plants. Civilian water supply lines.

Trump has threatened Iran’s desalination plants.

The water. He threatened the water.

The world was already behaving wrong before Easter Sunday. The post made enough people look up.

In Crystal Lake, Illinois, the Trump Truth Store has closed. Owner Lisa Fleischmann said sales were dead from the moment the war began. Her customers are afraid to wear it now — afraid someone will come up and ask questions. The store carried ICE ICE baby shirts. DOGE caps. Gulf of America merchandise. Now the lights are off and the door is locked.

And still. 35%.

Still Here

At least three ways to hold that number.

The first belongs to the one buying the tumbler. The one typing blow it all up. The one who sees brown people, Muslim people, the enemy — and feels nothing when the school burns and something close to satisfaction when the ships sink. The weight of the ledger does not reach this person. It cannot. The weight has been converted into fuel. It burns clean and hot. Requires nothing from the one who tends it.

The second carries the full ledger and feels it. Runs every item without flinching — the way a person runs a hand along a wall in the dark, feeling each crack, each gap, each place the plaster gave. The tariffs. DOGE. Maduro. Netanyahu. The war. The school. The gas. The food. The healthcare already gone. Feels every crack. Measures every gap. And then, after the wall has been mapped end to end in the dark, the hand pulls back and arrives at: Do you really think Kamala Harris would be doing better? Yes, he’s a clown sometimes. But nobody will convince me he wasn’t the better option.

The list is complete. Its conclusion withheld. And still the hand pulls back from what it touched. The thing in the dark stays unnamed.

The third is the one who stopped coming into the store. Confirmed it was real — not AI, not hacked, him — and still does not know what to do with it. Is not defending. Is not condemning. Is afraid someone will ask questions. The quiet has become the answer.

Three postures. One number. Beneath all three, the same conclusion, reached and unspoken, because speaking it would mean looking directly at what was chosen, at what it cost, at who has always carried it.

Who It Was For

America has always known how to feel nothing. An old skill. It was practiced when Japanese American families were loaded into internment camps while their neighbors watched from porches and said nothing. It was practiced when the bombs came down on Black Wall Street in 1921, when a prosperous Black neighborhood was bombed from the air and burned to ash. It was practiced through the Chinese Exclusion Act, through the Bracero workers who built the fields and were deported when the harvest was done, through forty years of Tuskegee, through every decade of militarized police moving through neighborhoods that never belonged to the people who ordered it.

The country learned to feel nothing by learning to feel it selectively. By deciding, long before any of this happened, whose suffering required a witness and whose did not. Not in a single moment. In ten thousand small agreements made across generations: that certain people’s pain was a fact of life and certain other people’s pain was a crisis. That certain violence was order and certain other violence was chaos. That the aim mattered. That as long as the suffering moved in the right direction, toward the right people, the floor would hold.

The Muslim ban held. Raids on Hispanic families held. Children separated at the border — held. ICE moving through neighborhoods before dawn, the apparatus of enforcement running clean through the shutdown and the war and all of it, never pausing, never short of funds — that held. Through all of it, the 35% held. They had been practicing their whole lives. They had inherited it from people who had been at it longer.

Then a president typed “Praise Allah” on Easter Sunday and some of them checked their phones twice. Not because the contempt was new. The contempt is as old as the country. Because the aim felt uncertain. Because for one moment the violence seemed to curl back toward the hand holding it, and people who had built their safety around where the suffering aimed suddenly could not feel the floor.

The Trump Truth Store closed because owner Lisa Fleischmann’s customers were afraid to be seen in the hat. They had worn it through everything. They stopped when the aim became uncertain.

What a country will not look at does not disappear. It passes down. It becomes the floor the next generation walks on without knowing. And when that floor shifts — not collapses, just shifts — they reach for their phones. They check twice. They ask if maybe he was hacked.

He was not hacked.

The Strait is still closed. Three deadlines have passed. The gas is above $4. The grocery bill is higher than it has ever been. Food assistance is gone for millions. Healthcare is gone for millions more. The bombs are falling on civilian water supplies. Service members are leaving this war at a rate no one has ever seen. The Trump Truth Store is dark. The tumbler is still for sale.

But would Kamala have been better?

Please go here for the original article and notes & sources: https://thehumanityarchive.substack.com/p/but-would-kamala-have-been-better

Jeremy Scahill: Iran Rejects Temporary Ceasefire, Says It Has Already Laid Out Terms for Agreement

An excellent piece from Jeremy Scahill.

—Molly 

President Donald Trump speaks from the Cross Hall of the White House on April 1, 2026 in Washington, DC. Trump used the prime-time address to update the nation on the war in Iran. Photo by Alex Brandon-Pool/Getty Images.

Senior Iranian official tells Drop Site that Trump is pushing for a deal but the new proposal is “detached from the realities on the ground.”

Jeremy Scahill, Murtaza Hussain, and Jawa Ahmad Tehran rejects any agreement for a temporary ceasefire to end the war with the U.S. and Israel, a senior Iranian official told Drop Site, saying that Iran would only accept an agreement that leads to a permanent end to the fighting. The official, who was not authorized to make public statements and spoke on condition of anonymity, said recent proposals for a temporary pause in exchange for resumption of full access to the Strait of Hormuz were “detached from the realities on the ground.” In the face of new threats by President Donald Trump to escalate the war on Iran, Reuters reported Monday on a Pakistani-led framework to end the fighting that had been shared with both Washington and Tehran. The framework reportedly calls for a temporary ceasefire in exchange for a resumption of traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, with 15-20 days given to reach a final settlement that would address Iran’s nuclear program, sanctions relief, and a regional framework for administering the strait. The senior Iranian official who spoke with Drop Site confirmed that Tehran had received the proposal but reiterated that Iran rejects any agreement based on a temporary ceasefire. “It is our assessment that the Trump administration, owing to legal constraints within the United States concerning the prosecution of the war as well as the need to maintain control over financial markets, requires a short-term pause in the conflict,” said the official. He added that Iran would only accept an agreement that ended the war against Iran conclusively, and which could then be used as a basis for broader talks. The official also pointed to Iran’s February proposal in Geneva that included significant concessions on its nuclear program and a non-aggression pact as a basis for a permanent agreement. “Our assessment indicates that this [new, temporary] proposal has been drafted solely on the basis of the mediators’ perception of the minimum demands of the parties for halting the war,” the official said. “Tehran does not consider a temporary ceasefire to be a logical course of action, inasmuch as the window for the United States’ exit from the conflict has already been delineated. Should the requisite political will exist, the parties are in a position to establish a permanent ceasefire and thereafter concentrate their efforts on diplomacy.” The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. An administration official speaking to CNN on Monday said Trump has yet to sign off on the proposal, and that it is “one of many ideas.” Prior to the outbreak of the war, Tehran proposed unprecedented concessions on its nuclear program during February talks in Geneva that both UK and Omani participants considered sufficient for making progress towards a final agreement. In a dramatic intervention, Omani foreign minister Badr Albusaidi said in an interview with “Face the Nation” that a “peace deal is within our reach” and asked for more time to continue the talks. Shortly after that last round of negotiations, however, rather than engaging with the concessions, the U.S. and Israel launched a surprise attack on Tehran that included the assassination of the country’s head of state and many other senior officials. Special envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner were later accused by nuclear experts of failing to understand the significance of the technical concessions Iran was proposing in Geneva. Notably, while Iran brought a team of technical experts to the negotiations, Witkoff and Kushner did not. The senior Iranian official who spoke to Drop Site indicated that the framework for negotiations in February could still serve as a basis for a durable agreement between Tehran and Washington. “The latest proposal put forward by Iran prior to the commencement of the unlawful US-Israeli war would fully address the United States’ concerns regarding nuclear weapons through a posture of maximum flexibility on the part of Iran, accompanied by extensive monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency,” he said. As Drop Site has previously reported, Iran’s terms for permanently ending the war include a long-term guarantee that the U.S. and Israel will not attack Iran again and that any ceasefire also apply to Lebanon, Iraq and Palestine; reparations for the damages done to Iran during the war; sanctions relief; and that Iran retain control over the Strait of Hormuz. On Easter morning, Trump posted a profanity-laced statement on Truth Social laying out a Tuesday deadline for Iran to capitulate to U.S. demands to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell - JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.” Throughout the war, as global economic harm continues to mount, Trump has repeatedly claimed in public speeches and posts on Truth Social that Iran is “begging” for a deal, only to follow with threats to attack oil and infrastructure targets after Iranian denials. Trump’s recent public statements regarding the Strait of Hormuz reflect a shifting timeline of deadlines and escalating warnings: an initial 48-hour ultimatum on March 21 to reopen the strait was paused on March 23 for “productive” talks—a claim Tehran rejected, labeling it “fake news” intended to manipulate markets. The deadline was later extended on March 26 by ten days, with Trump expanding his threats on March 30 to include oil wells, Kharg Island, and desalination plants . On April 1, he again claimed that Tehran was seeking a ceasefire, despite repeated Iranian denials, issued another 48-hour warning on April 4, and pushed the deadline once more. “This threat isn’t new, and Iran has already made its position clear if such a crime were to happen,” the official said regarding Trump’s frequent threats. Iran has repeatedly said that it will retaliate to such attacks by targeting U.S.-linked infrastructure across the region—potentially including critical energy and water desalination facilities in both Israel and the Gulf Arab states. The Pakistani framework, aimed at heading off the Tuesday deadline, was reportedly developed in the context of messages exchanged “all night long” between Pakistani army chief Asim Munir, Vice President J.D. Vance, Witkoff, and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. The putative agreement would be known as the “Islamabad Accords,” providing a temporary end to the fighting and arrangements for final status talks in the future between the U.S. and Iran. Yet the staged nature of the proposal would leave Iran open to future attacks by the U.S. and Israel—both of which have repeatedly used prior negotiations as a means to prepare assets for attacks against Iran, even targeting and killing negotiators themselves. In late March, the Trump administration reportedly issued a 15-point plan for an agreement with Iran, including a 30-day ceasefire, the total dismantlement of the Iranian nuclear program, limits on Iran’s ballistic missile program, an end to Tehran’s support for armed resistance groups, and immediate reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. That reported plan matched much of what Washington had demanded even before the war started and was dismissed as “extremely maximalist and unreasonable” by Iranian officials. Amid a general lack of trust in Washington’s willingness or even ability to negotiate an agreement, Iran issued its own list of conditions for a peace deal—including guarantees that the war would not resume, an end to attacks in Lebanon, Gaza, and Iraq, reparations for war damages suffered during the fighting, and recognition of Iranian right to exercise authority over the Strait of Hormuz. The issue of the strait has now become a core point of contention between the two sides. While the strategic waterway was open before the U.S.-Israeli attack, Iran has now managed to assert de facto sovereignty over it—controlling access to which ships may transit and even charging fees for passage to those that meet its criteria. Iran has also stated that ships associated with hostile countries will not be allowed to pass. While an accumulating global oil shock has continued to build due to the disruption of energy shipments, the Iranian parliament has already passed measures aimed at normalizing its control of access to the strait going forward. The proposed Pakistani deal calls for opening the waterway immediately in exchange for a temporary end to the fighting—a proposal that Tehran said it rejects. “The reopening of the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for the establishment of a temporary ceasefire is not acceptable. Tehran has finalized a new mechanism for oversight, inspection, and secure navigation in the Strait and will shortly present it to the countries of the region for their participation. At present, Iran’s bilateral arrangements with various states have already established the necessary groundwork for the safe passage of a number of vessels, serving as a pilot project for the exercise of Iranian sovereignty,” the senior Iranian official told Drop Site. The official added that Tehran would be willing to negotiate renewal of access to U.S.-linked ships as part of a broader peace agreement. “Naturally, the passage of vessels associated with the United States can constitute a subject for discussion between the parties within the framework of comprehensive Iran-United States negotiations, wherein a shared understanding on the matter may be reached,” he said. Initially described as a short “excursion” that would be wrapped up within days, the war with Iran has increasingly come to look like a major quagmire for the Trump administration. In addition to asserting control over one of the world’s most vital maritime shipping routes, Iran has managed to maintain a steady rate of fire at Israel and the Gulf Arab states over more than a month of fighting—inflicting increasing damage as limited stocks of missile interceptors have been drained, and forcing the U.S. to transfer critical munitions from East Asia to the Middle East. In addition to killing thousands of civilians, the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran has done tremendous damage to Iranian infrastructure, including recent attacks on universities, bridges, and petrochemical facilities. In the face of repeated threats of regime change, and attempts to cause the dissolution of the country through attacks on civilian infrastructure and support for violent separatist groups, Iranian officials say that they have now prepared for a longer war of attrition and will not accept any agreement that merely serves as a pause to enable Israel and the U.S. to recover and prepare for future attacks. The U.S. “appears to envisage the pursuit of the collapse of Iranian sovereignty by repeating this war-ceasefire cycle until the third year of [Trump’s] presidency,” the senior Iranian official told Drop Site. “For this reason, we consider it probable that President Trump may unilaterally declare a temporary ceasefire, in which event the Strait will continue to be administered by Iran through the new mechanism.” Please go here for the original article: https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/iran-trump-war-ceasefire-pakistan

Pope Leo XIV Calls for Peace in First Easter Mass as Pontiff as Christians Celebrate Worldwide

This Pope's embodiment of truth and justice, integrity and courage, and peace and love deeply touches my heart. Deepest gratitude for his powerful messages to the our nation and the world. 🙏 Molly

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Leo XIV celebrated his first Easter Mass as pontiff with a call Sunday to lay down arms and seek peace to global conflicts through dialogue, but he departed from a tradition of listing the world's woes by name in the Urbi et Orbi blessing from the loggia of St. Peter's Basilica.

Leo, the first U.S.-born pope, emphasized Easter's message of hope as a celebration of Jesus' resurrection after being crucified.

READ MORE: War is reducing international law to 'ashes,' Pope Leo laments in Ash Wednesday liturgy

"Let us allow our hearts to be transformed by his immense love for us! Let those who have weapons lay them down! Let those who have the power to unleash wars choose peace! Not a peace imposed by force, but through dialogue! Not with the desire to dominate others, but to encounter them!" the pope implored.

With the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran in its second month and Russia's ongoing campaign in Ukraine, Leo acknowledged a sense of indifference "to the deaths of thousands of people ... to the repercussions of hatred and division that conflicts sow … to the economic and social consequences they produce.''

Without mentioning the wars by name, Leo quoted his predecessor, Pope Francis, who during his last public appearance from the same loggia last Easter reminded the faithful of the "great thirst for death, for killing, we witness each day.''

Francis, weakened by a long illness, died the next day on Easter Monday.

The Urbi et Orbi blessing, Latin for "to the city and the world,'' has traditionally included a litany of the world's woes. Leo followed that formula during his Christmas blessing. There was no immediate explanation for the shift.

READ MORE: In his first Christmas Day message, Pope Leo XIV calls for 'justice, peace and stability' in war-torn areas

Earlier, Leo addressed some 50,000 faithful from an open-air altar in St. Peter's Square flanked with white roses, while the steps leading down to the piazza where the faithful gathered were filled with spring perennials, symbolically resonating with the pope's words.

He implored the faithful in his homily to keep their hope in the face of death, which lurks "in the abuses that crush the weakest among us, because of the idolatry of profit that plunders the earth's resources, because of the violence of war that kills and destroys.''

Speaking from the loggia, the pope announced a prayer vigil for peace April 11 in the basilica.

Small shifts in traditions

Leo greeted the global faithful in 10 languages, including Arabic, Chinese and Latin, reviving a practice that his predecessor Pope Francis had let lapse.

Before retreating into the basilica, Leo stepped forward out of the loggia's shadow and waved to the cheering crowd below. He later greeted people in the piazza from the popemobile that took him all the way down Via della Conciliazione toward the Tiber River and back.

READ MORE: Pope Leo XIV urges Monaco residents to use wealth for good, reject "idolatry of power and money" fueling wars

During the marathon that is Holy Week, Leo also reclaimed the tradition of washing priests' feet on Holy Thursday, a gesture of encouragement toward clergy, after Francis had chosen a more inclusive path, traveling to prisons and homes for the disabled to wash the feet of women, non-Christians and prisoners.

The 70-year-old pontiff also became the first pope in decades to carry the light wooden cross for the entire 14 stations during the Way of the Cross on Good Friday.

Christians in the Holy Land mark a subdued Easter

Traditional ceremonies at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, revered by Christians as the traditional site of Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection, were scaled back under an agreement with Israeli police. Authorities have put limits on the sizes of public gatherings due to ongoing missile attacks.

The restrictions also dampened the recent Muslim holy month of Ramadan and Eid al-Fitr holiday, as well as the current weeklong Jewish festival of Passover. On Sunday, the Jewish priestly blessing at the Western Wall — normally attended by tens of thousands — was limited to just 50 people.

READ MORE: Pope Leo XIV prays for peace at tomb of Lebanese saint revered by Christians and Muslims alike

The restrictions have strained relations between Israeli authorities and Christian leaders. Police last week prevented two of the church's top religious leaders, including Latin Patriarch Pierbattista Pizzaballa, from celebrating Palm Sunday at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

Gaza's tiny Palestinian Christian community celebrates first Easter since ceasefire

At the Holy Family church in Gaza City, Catholics young and old gathered for a traditional Easter Mass. Singing, they formed a queue in the aisle, waiting for their chance to kiss a sketch of Jesus held by a member of the clergy who wiped the glass frame between turns.

"There is great joy, especially after the ceasefire and after nearly three years of suffering and being unable to celebrate all the holy holidays," said George Anton from Gaza City. "People are somewhat relieved and more stable."

Armenian Christians try to show normalcy by celebrating in Iran

Armenian Christians observed Easter at a church in Iran's capital on Sunday, striving to maintain a sense of normalcy five weeks into the war.

READ MORE: Pope Leo XIV prays for peace as U.S.-Russia summit over Ukraine war gets underway

Families embraced and children exchanged painted eggs at the St. Sarkis Cathedral in central Tehran. Iran's capital has been targeted by daily airstrikes since the United States and Israel launched the war on Feb. 28.

"Whether we like it or not, we have young children who do not understand what's going on," said Juanita Arakel, 40, an English language teacher. "They just need to feel normal."

The Islamic Republic, with a population of around 90 million, is home to some 300,000 Christians, mostly Armenians, and three seats in parliament are reserved for Christians.

"Our calls and prayers are that we will be able to end this war," said Sepuh Sargsyan, the archbishop of the Armenian Diocese of Tehran. "Our calls and prayers are that we will be able to end this war."

____

Barry reported from Milan. Associated Press journalists Josef Federman in Jerusalem, Wafaa Shurafa in Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip, and Bassem Mroue in Tehran, Iran, contributed to this report.

Please go here for the original article: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/pope-leo-xiv-calls-for-peace-in-first-easter-mass-as-pontiff-as-christians-celebrate-worldwide

Cristina Breshears: What Resurrection Really Looks Like

 Thank you, Cristina Breshears. 

Beautiful, prescient, wise, and deeply loving.

💜🙏 Molly

Yesterday, a friend and I walked through the neighborhood park and saw what resurrection actually looks like.

Everywhere I turned, people were emerging from their winter cocoons. I saw heads resting on the laps of their beloveds, families lying on the gentle slopes, and neighbors leaning against the ancient elms to soak in the spring sun. It was a scene of quiet, collective renewal; a neighborhood exhaling together.

Then came today's headlines. A "Bridge Day" defined by threats. A "Power Plant Day" promised for Tuesday. A vision of "living in Hell."

The contrast couldn't be sharper.

To "practice resurrection" is to look at those people on their blankets, vulnerable, peaceful, and connected, and decide that this is the world worth building and protecting and cherishing.

While the headline focuses on the power to destroy infrastructure, resurrection focuses on the power to sustain life. It's to be an intentional bridge-builder. It is the slow, often quiet work of restoring what is broken and choosing the difficult path of peace over the instant gratification of destruction. It is the persistent determination to hold things together.

We practice resurrection when we choose the gentle slope of the park over the steep climb of conflict; when we trade the "Power Plant" of destruction for the quiet energy of spring growth; when we build understanding where there is animosity; when we offer mercy where there is a demand for "Hell" and plant seeds of life even when the forecast says "Tuesday will be nothing like it;" when we protect the "bridges" of our own neighborhoods and the simple acts of resting, leaning, and embracing.

Today, we can choose a different kind of power. We can choose to stay in the sunshine. We can choose to be the bridge. Let’s be the kind of people who make every day a "Bridge Day." Not for tearing down, but for reaching across.

— Cristina Breshears

EXCELLENT — Chris Hedges: Trump Has No Soul

So excellent, well articulated, and chillingly spot on. Illuminated here is the truth of the profound danger that we are all in when those in power are soulless and locked in the tortured prison of self-loathing and the malignant narcissist’s inability to love. Tragically for us all, Trump — and his sociopathic fascist administration — is the embodiment of the root causes of suffering: hatred, greed, and delusion. There is a deep need for this understanding to be spread far and wide and to serve as an impetus to gather together in ever growing numbers of solidarity and dedication to the great universal struggle for peace, equity, sustainability, and a just and caring nation and world.

And deepest gratitude to Chris Hedges for always bringing us the truth. Chris is a national and international treasure. — Molly

The Emperor Has No Soul - by Mr. Fish

Trump is dangerous not simply because of his imbecility and unbridled narcissism, but because he lacks the core attributes of empathy and understanding that define the human soul.

By Chris Hedges

The most profound realities of human existence are often the ones that can never be measured or quantified. Wisdom. Beauty. Truth. Compassion. Courage. Love. Loneliness. Grief. The struggle to face our own mortality. A life of meaning.

But perhaps the greatest conundrum is the concept of a soul. Do we have a soul? Do societies have souls? And, most basically, what is a soul?

Philosophers and theologians, including Plato, Aristotle, Augustine and Arthur Schopenhauer, have all grappled with the concept of a soul, with Schopenhauer preferring to define the mystical force within us as will. Sigmund Freud used the Greek word psyche. But most have accepted, whatever the definition, some version of a soul’s existence.

While the concept of the soul is opaque, soullessness is not. Soullessness means something inside of us is dead. Basic human feelings and connections are shut down. Those without souls lack empathy. I saw the soulless in war. Those so calcified inside they kill without any demonstrable feeling or remorse.

The soulless exist in a state of insatiable self-worship. The idol they have erected to themselves must be constantly fed. It demands a never-ending stream of victims. It demands abject obedience and subservience, publicly on display at Trump cabinet meetings.

Psychologists, I expect, would define the soulless as psychopathic.

I write this not to get into an esoteric debate about the soul, but to warn what happens when those without souls seize power. I want to write about what is lost and the consequences of that loss. I want to caution you that death, our death — as individuals and as a collective — mean nothing to those without souls.

This makes the soulless very, very dangerous.

Those who lack souls have no concept of their own limitations. They feed off a bottomless and self-delusional optimism, giving to their cruelest deeds and bitterest defeats, the patina of goodness, success and morality.

Those without souls — as Paul Woodruff writes in his small masterpiece “Reverence: Renewing a Forgotten Virtue” — do not have the capacity for reverence, awe, respect and shame. They believe they are gods.

The soulless cannot respond rationally to reality. They live in self-constructed echo chambers. They hear only their own voice. Civic, familial, legal and religious rituals and ceremonies that transport those with souls into the realm of the sacred, into a space where we acknowledge our shared humanity, forcing us, at least for a moment, to humble ourselves, are meaningless to those without souls. Those without souls cannot see because they cannot feel.

The soulless, enslaved by narcissism, greed, a lust for power and hedonism, cannot make moral choices. Moral choices for them do not exist. Truth and falsehoods are identical. Life is transactional. Is it good for me? Does it make me feel omnipotent? Does it give me pleasure? This stunted existence banishes them from the moral universe.

Human beings, including children, are commodities to the soulless, objects to exploit for pleasure or profit or both. We saw this soullessness displayed in the Epstein Files. And it was not only Epstein. Huge sections of our ruling class including billionaires, Wall Street financiers, university presidents, philanthropists, celebrities, Republicans, Democrats and media personalities, consider us worthless.

Thucydides understood. Reverence is not a religious virtue but a moral virtue. Woodruff went so far as to define it as a political virtue. Reverence for shared ideals, Woodruff writes, is the only thing that can bind us together. It is the only attribute that ensures mutual trust. Reverence allows us to remember what it means to be human. It reminds us that there are forces we cannot control, forces that we will never understand, forces of life that we did not create and must honor and protect — including the natural world — and forces that allow us moments of transcendence, or what in religious terms, we call grace.

“If you desire peace in the world, do not pray that everyone share your beliefs,” Woodruff writes. “Pray instead that all may be reverent.”

Trump’s celebration of himself is made manifest in his stunted vocabulary of superlatives and his rebranding of national monuments. He tears down the East Wing to construct his gaudy and oversized $400 million ballroom.

He proposes a 250-foot-tall memorial arch, adorned with gilded statues and eagles, in honor of himself, an arch that will be bigger than the Arch of Triumph erected by North Korean dictator Kim II Sung in Pyongyang.

He is planning a “National Garden of American Heroes” that will include life-size statues of celebrities, sports figures, political and artistic figures deemed by Trump to be politically correct, along with, of course, himself. His face adorns the sides of federal buildings on huge, well-lit banners.

He changed the name of the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts to the Donald J. Trump and the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts. He added his name to the headquarters of the U.S. Institute of Peace. He has announced a new fleet of U.S. naval vessels called Trump-class battleships.

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks holding a photos of the new ballroom during a meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in the Oval Office on October 22, 2025. (Photo by Salwan Georges/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

These are monuments not only to Trump, but to a perverted ethic, to the insatiable self-worship that defines the inner void of the soulless. Monuments, houses of worship and national shrines dedicated to justice, self-sacrifice and equality, which demand from us humility and introspection, which require the capacity for reverence, mystify the soulless.

The soulless have no sense of aesthetics. They have no sense of balance, symmetry and proportion. The bigger, the gaudier, the more encrusted in gold leaf, the better. They seek to shut out everything and everyone else, to herd us with offerings to the feet of Moloch.

When the soulless wage war it is part of this perverted drive to build a monument to themselves. When war goes badly, as it is going in Iran, the soulless, unable to read reality, demand greater levels of violence and destruction. The more they fail, the more they are convinced everyone has betrayed them, the more they descend into a tyrannical rage.

Trump, potentially facing a humiliating debacle in Iran, will lash out like a wounded beast. It does not matter how many suffer and die. It does not matter what weapons, including nuclear weapons, must be employed. He must triumph, or at least appear to triumph.

“Fathers and teachers, I ponder, ‘What is hell?’” Father Zossima asks in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s “The Brothers Karamazov.” “I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.”

This is the plight of the soulless. They seek, in their misery, to make their hell our own.

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Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East bureau chief and Balkan bureau chief. He has taught at Columbia University, New York University, Princeton University, and the University of Toronto.

Please go here for the original article: https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/trump-has-no-soul

I highly recommend the work of Chris Hedges to everyone.