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I grew up on sci-fi and dystopian fiction. Brave New World, 1984, Darkness at Noon, Fahrenheit 451, and A Canticle for Leibowitz were all reading for me in my high school and college years. And yet, in truth, nothing prepared me for Donald Trump. He's already left all of that ancient reading of mine in the dustbin of history. Who could have imagined what we're now living through? Not Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, Arthur Koestler, Ray Bradbury, Walter M. Miller, Jr., or for that matter me. Worse yet, had this Trumpian world of ours been put in a sci-fi novel back then, I can guarantee you I would have found it so ludicrous, so unimaginable that I would simply have tossed it aside, half-read.
And yet here we are, all of us, in the distinctly novel year 2025, already a nightmare and a half into Donald Trump's second term. Yes, having lived through his version of sci-fi the first time around, Americans once again put him -- and, don't blame me, I just can't help myself -- in orifice. Truly, doesn't it seem as if all of us are indeed living in some kind of Trumpian orifice? It's your choice as to whether it's a nose, a mouth, or an anus (though I have no doubt which one I would select).
I mean, imagine a world where even Elon Musk, the richest man on Earth (though less so thanks to Donald J. Trump's actions), can't take the Big Man of the Department of Government Deficiency (or DoGD) anymore. And with all of that in mind, let TomDispatch regular John Feffer transport you into an almost unimaginable post-Trumpian world in 2029 and offer you his perspective on just what we're now living through and how it's changing us all. Tom
Approaching the End of Liberal Internationalism
Will America Ever Rejoin the International Community?
By John Feffer
"We're back," I tell the room. It's January 21, 2029, and I can barely contain my excitement. "America is back!"
I expect applause, but there is none.
I try again, louder this time. "After four long years, America is finally back! We're ready to resume our international obligations!"
The members of the U.N. Human Rights Council are looking in every direction -- except at me. I feel a tug on the sleeve of my suit jacket. I glance down and note that the representative from Morocco is passing me a slip of paper.
All I see are numbers. "This is" a bill?"
She nods. "Your international obligations."
"Fifty-two billion dollars?"
"Four years of non-payment of U.N. contributions. We rounded it up."
"That's a lot of -- "
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