By Eric Peters - December 1, 2025

How many who voted for Trump would have voted for him if Trump had told them they’d get more new wars?

We are apparently on the cusp of another one, with Venezuela. It has the ring-echo of Ronald Reagan’s war with Grenada, if anyone remembers that. That war was more like a stomp – of a Caribbean island that was a nation in the same sense that a kid’s lemonaid stand is a business.

Anyhow, Reagan didn’t run on ending wars. Trump did. So why is he starting them – and why with Venezuela?

Two reasons come to mind – and there are probably others.

The first is that Trump sees war – as all Maximum Leader types do – as good because it tends to rouse the manufactured patriotism of the populace, which serves to distract them from the problems besetting them and to get them to forget that the Maximum Leader is the cause of their problems. Herman Goring had much to say about this. The Chimp may have actually read about what Goring said, or had Dick Cheney read it to him.

Republican voters – in the main – are very susceptible to War Fever. This ought not to be especially surprising given the origins of the Republican Party, which was founded by the man who waged war against Americans who foolishly took seriously that stuff about self-government and consent of the governed. Lincoln and the Republicans schooled Americans about the truth of that, to the accompaniment of belligerent, crusader anthems – My eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!

Today’s Republicans favor a mellower soundtrack – I’m proud to be an American! Where at least I know I’m free! – that’s as delusional as it is syrupy. But – then and now – the rank and file rally ’round the flag and what they are told it stands for.

But Reagan’s splendid little wars – there was also the Libyan Business – took place at a time when Americans were able to afford the rah-rah’ing because they could afford groceries as well as new cars and a home in the suburbs. Groceries are becoming a kind of luxury for many and a house something akin to what the idea of someday owning a mansion (and a yacht) was back when having a million bucks’ net worth meant you were rich rather than upper middle class.

Today’s Americans are as sick of war – and paying for them – as they are of the sight of people still wearing “masks.” Yet they discover to their astonishment that they might as well have voted for Biden and put the “masks” back on again – insofar as the wars are concerned. Trump must be either catastrophically unaware of how little the American people – especially his base – want another war, or he is aware and just doesn’t care. The latter – if it is so – suggest that Trump may be on the verge of becoming a Maximum Leader in fact rather than just de facto. Maximum Leaders just do as they please, which is pretty much what Trump has been doing. Maybe he is on the cusp of making it official, as by declaring an insurrection – and then who cares what Americans think?

Project Esther is not a fictional story. Nor is Palantir unreal. Same goes for the new Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism. Did Trump voters vote for that?

Does it matter that they didn’t? might be a better way to ask that question.

There’s another reason why Trump might be taking us to war against Venezuela . . .

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