In 1938, five years into Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “New Deal,” the US remained mired in the depths of a “Great Depression.” Real income still hadn’t regained its 1929 level. Unemployment stood at six times at level. The nation languished in economic failure with no end in sight, making even the far-from-free-market policies of his predecessor, Herbert Hoover, look attractive by comparison.

Then, in 1939, a miracle! Europe went to war!

FDR saw that as a way to put America back to work. He instituted a “Lend-Lease” program, spinning up manufacturing to provide England with arms. He instituted the first US peacetime military draft. Americans opposed direct US involvement in a European war, so he went to work antagonizing Japan with oil and steel embargoes, knowing — or at least hoping — he’d get a war on THAT side of the world. Which, on December 7, 1941, he did.

US involvement in World War 2 didn’t end the Great Depression — it merely masked the symptoms for a little while, at the cost of 400,000 American lives.

What ended the Great Depression was widespread destruction across most of the world’s manufacturing capacity, while America’s remained untouched. We didn’t so much create our own fortune as gravy-train on the rest of the world’s misfortune. Global militaristic folly turned the US into an economic, as well as military, “superpower.”

Donald Trump calls himself a “peace president” abroad, even as he does his damnedest to devastate the economy at home with ruinous tariffs and an all-out attempt to deport the immigrants who constitute the backbone of American agriculture, construction, and manufacturing. The resulting dissatisfaction and unrest prompted him, earlier in June, to militarily occupy the country’s second-largest city.

Donald Trump needs two things very badly right now: A distraction from the consequences of his disastrous policies going forward, and some good economic news — even if it’s entirely artificial in nature — to cover up those consequences in retrospect.

His decision to order an unjustified and unprovoked June 22 attack on Iranian nuclear facilities answered that first need, at least for a moment.

Will he try to leverage the matter in pursuit of the second need as well? Time will tell.

As tariffs and deportations continue to decimate our ability to buy food, housing, and other necessities, it becomes more and more likely that he’ll try to pull an FDR.

Even if that temporarily “works,” the price ain’t right. Only freedom can produce prosperity — or peace.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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On June 21, US president Donald Trump ordered airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities. You may have heard. As I write this, we’re in the “boasting about how splendid it all is” phase of Trump’s cyclical foreign policy approach.

Phase One: Pretend to be “anti-war” and feverishly “negotiating” to avoid escalation of this or that long-term conflict.

Phase Two:  Escalate.

Phase Three: Brag about what a genius he is.

Phase Four: Backtrack and maybe whine a little when it blows up in his face — or, rather, in the faces of the troops he puts in harm’s way.

It remains to be seen whether we’ll get the usual Phase Four (a la the ignominious but long overdue US surrender in Afghanistan after his “surge,” the Iranian strikes on US bases in Iraq after his operation to murder Iranian general  Qasem Soleimani, etc.), or whether he’ll really screw the pooch and set the Middle East on fire this time when the Iranians retaliate.

In the meantime, let’s talk about the US Constitution.

This morning, I received an email from Defending Rights and Dissent, a pro-Constitution organization with a history stretching back to the era of McCarthyism.  Subject line: “Trump shreds the Constitution. Bombs Iran. TAKE ACTION.”

DRAD wants you to write “your” US Representative and US Senators, urging them to support a “War Powers Resolution” requiring Trump to stand down, on the clear and irrefutable constitutional claim that only Congress has the authority to declare war and that Trump’s actions are therefore illegal.

Okay, yeah, I did that.

But realistically, Congress isn’t any more likely to reassert its power over US war-making this time around than it did with Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and numerous other belligerent actions/involvements.

We’ve been living in a “post-constitutional” era, featuring an “imperial” presidency, for at least 80 years, with Congress exercising about as much power as the Roman Senate under the Caesars.

How do we know that?  The latest unimpeachable evidence for the claim is that Trump wasn’t impeached on the evening of June 21 and convicted and removed from office on the morning of June 22. The prosecution rests, and the defense has no case.

As Lysander Spooner noted in 1870, “whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain — that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case it is unfit to exist.”

Whether the Constitution was a good idea and whether it ever “worked” are interesting questions, but for all practical purposes, it ceased to exist as anything other than low-quality toilet paper decades ago, if not longer.

Self-help gurus agree: The first step toward solving your problem is admitting you have one.

Until we face the cold, hard fact that the “America” we learned about in high school civics classes is a myth — created by, and maintained for the benefit of, an imperial political class at humankind’s expense — we won’t be able to move on to anything better.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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The “Baker” explosion, part of Operation Crossroads, a nuclear weapon test by the United States military at Bikini Atoll, Micronesia, on 25 July 1946. [Source: Wikipedia]

As I write this, US president Donald Trump seems deep in his usual dither. Trump, according to the Wall Street Journal, “told senior aides late Tuesday [June 17] that he approved of attack plans for Iran, but was holding off to see if Tehran would abandon its nuclear program.”

So, OK, we’re used to that: Tariffs! Wait, no tariffs! Wait, reduced tariffs! Mass deportations! Wait, not farm workers, maids, and waiters! Wait, them too!

War on Iran, though, isn’t so much a matter of changing his mind as whether he’s out of his mind. It’s an evil and risky proposition with no moral or practical up side, and a trigger far more difficult to un-pull than tariffs or deportations. That he’s even considering it makes a strong case for his removal from office via the 25th Amendment.

If there’s any lesson to learn from two decades of US and Israeli pressure on Iran to shut down a non-existent “nuclear weapons program,” starting with economic sanctions and leading inevitably to Israeli airstrikes and open war on the apt date of Friday the 13th, it’s that an Iran with nuclear weapons just might be the best option if the goal is to calm down the Middle East.

Iraq’s Saddam Hussein gave up his nuclear ambitions, after which the US invaded and occupied his country and killed him.

Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi gave up his nuclear ambitions, after which NATO invaded and occupied his country and killed him.

North Korea’s Kim Jong Il and Kim Jong Un saw their nuclear ambitions through to  testing and fielding a nuclear arsenal, after which those who might have otherwise supported invading and occupying North Korea and killing its ruler cooled their jets. Not really “peace,” but clearly a better option than open war.

On the subject of nuclear weapons, the Iranian regime has proven itself not just compliant, but obsequiously so, through decades of broken promises and renewed lies about its ambitions, only throwing up its hands and saying “fine, we’ll enrich uranium to weapons grade purity” after multiple broken promises by, among others, Donald Trump, and only to get its opponents to start holding up THEIR end of the 2015 “Iran nuclear deal.”

The Iranian regime, a theocracy, even observes a religious proscription on building nukes per a fatwa from its “Supreme Leader.”

In return, the Iranian regime got a narrow range of responses, from economic isolation to open war.

Fatwas are merely legal rulings on points of Islamic law. Their authors might reverse themselves. Ali Khamenei should.

If the Pakistani regime announced a gift of three nuclear-armed Shaheen III missiles to the Iranian regime, with one put immediately under Iranian operational control until the others can be moved to and sited in Iran,  the war would likely come to a screeching halt.

Mutual Assured Destruction has its down sides, but at this point it seems like the best option for cooling down US/Israeli war fever and seeking a re-set based on honest dealing instead of threats.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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