@oriskany
Every single post ww2 president ought to be hanged by the standards laid down at Nuremberg. Wars of aggression are the worst crime we have a term for, and they have been a matter of routine. The treaties on human rights and international law have always been ignored by the US when they are inconvenient, but they still loudly accuse others of violations as if the US is the sole occupier of a moral or ethical high ground. The US people are so convinced this is true, that they often cannot conceive of the crimes of state being anything more than strange anomalies rather than the rule. So, successive administrations can commit atrocities with relative impunity.

The only way this president is particularly different in from the others, is he follows the pattern that each one is slightly worse than the last. In a post-truth cultural scenario, when crimes are revealed at the highest levels, a story is crafted, the media cycle moves on, and no one gets more than a reprimand. Whether they crash the global economy, obliterate whole nations illegally, support brutal dictatorships for profit, torture, lie or deliberately inflict poverty on millions, no one can, or is willing to do anything about it. When that is the normal state of affairs, the standard, I suspect it would take some mighty powerful optimism to expect any treaty or promise to restrain empire from putting whatever the heck they like in space whether you find out about it or not.

The pattern of actions from this structure over time, is more telling than the personality and diversion tactics of the latest figurehead. The figurehead just acts as a criticism magnet standing between the public and the actually powerful players who have always had most of the political power. Presidents come and go, the narrative alters a little, but the actions don’t. Many genuinely good folks just can’t bring themselves to believe how bad things have become.