We’re under invasion from within, no different than a foreign enemy…
It’s a war from within….
…We should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military…
— President Donald Trump at Military Leaders Gathering at Quantico
In 2025, America is at war. It is not a confrontation with other countries but a war with itself.
It is war being contested to see whether this nation will remain a democracy or become an autocracy. It is not a war to determine who should hold office or be in charge of shaping governmental policy or programs. It is a war for the head, heart, and soul of this country.
This “uncivil” war has been going on for some time. As we observed in a blog posted in 2018, it “began near the end of the 20th century; ramped up a little at the beginning of this 21st century; accelerated in the second decade of the century, and, has moved into nearly full-fledged and continuous conflict since Donald Trump took office on January 20, 2017.”
The war did not end in 2020 when Trump lost the presidential election to Joe Biden. Instead, with January 6, 2021 and the ongoing political and rhetorical combat in the following years it intensified. During that period, Trump’s troops planned and prepared to win the next presidential election and overthrow the current system.
They won and took the war to a new level. It became a war for domination. It became a war of revenge and retribution. It became a war to eliminate much of the federal government. It became a war to silence those with differing political, social and cultural values. It became a war of orchestrated chaos.
In September, President Trump renamed the Department of Defense the Department of War. This Department is only one of the departments of war in his administration.
Since Trump returned to office, all of the federal government departments have been remade into potential departments of war. The enemies of those departments include many of those who have historically benefitted from their services and those who have spoken out or taken some action that offended the president in the past.
This war being wrought by the President and his administration has many dimensions. Three central ones are the: War of Words; War on Truth; and, War of Wounds.
War of Words
Trump uses words as weapons. He vilifies or disparages his opponents and those who offend him and encourages his supporters to strike out at those on the other side.
In September, David Graham published an article in The Atlantic titled “Donald Trump’s War of Words” with this opening sentence: “For a man openly campaigning for the Nobel Peace Prize, Donald Trump sure does love the rhetoric of violence.”
Graham points out in his piece that Trump’s calls for violence are not new noting,
During his first campaign, he encouraged rally attendees to beat up protesters. As president, he encouraged police to treat suspects brutally. As the runner-up in the 2020 election, he encouraged supporters to “fight like hell,” and they did, sacking the U.S. Capitol.
John McWhorter, an opinion writer for the New York Times and Columbia University linguist, joins Graham in analyzing Trump’s language and rhetoric. McWhorter doesn’t focus on Trump’s emphasis on violence, but on his infatuation and use of words and language that is war-like.
In his article, written after Trump changed the name of the Department of Defense to the Department of War, he states, “Given how he consistently deploys language as a tool with which to own his opponents, it’s no surprise that he favors “war.”
McWhorter goes on to state,
Even Trump’s most positive-sounding coinages are acts of a certain kind of verbal aggression. I sometimes stop to marvel that the House passed something with the actual official title the One Big, Beautiful Bill Act. That goofy bark of a name is a boisterous clap back against opposing views, an attempt to drown out inconvenient facts with braggadocio.
McWhorter also explains that Trump’s use of capital letters in his Truth Social postings is done not to emphasize, but that “He does it to punch. If something fails to please him it’s not a scam but a Scam, not a fake story but a Fake Story.”
To sum it up, the words and language Trump uses reveal his thoughts and who he is. He himself did this during his eulogy for Charlie Kirk when he declared, “He did not hate his opponents. He wanted the best for them. That’s where I disagreed with Charlie. I hate my opponent and I don’t want the best for them.”
War on Truth
Trump apparently spoke the truth at Charlie Kirks’ memorial in his statement about “hating” and “not wishing the best” for his opponent. That has not been Trump’s leitmotif during his involvement in presidential politics.
Lee McIntyre, research fellow at Boston University and author of Post-Truth, and Jonathan Rauch, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of The Constitution of Knowledge: a Defense of Truth describe Trump’s dominant approach to communicating in a 2021 Washington Post opinion piece.
In that op-ed, titled “A War on Truth is Raging. Not Everyone Recognizes We’re in It,” McIntyre and Rauch assert that during his 2016 campaign: “He (Donald Trump) and his allies in conservative media and Republican politics seized upon Russian style disinformation techniques and applied them to domestic politics.”
They go on to assert further that after Trump lost to Joe Biden in 2020:
…he and his allies unleashed a flood of exaggerations, lies, and conspiracy theories through the White House, conservative media, social media, and even the courts.
#StopTheSteal is not merely Trump’s way of being a sore loser or clinging to relevance (though it is those things). It is the most audacious disinformation campaign ever attempted against Americans by any actor, foreign or domestic. And it has been devastatingly effective.
In their piece, McIntyre and Rauch also observe that:
For years, Americans have been targeted with epistemic warfare — that is with attacks on the credibility of the mainstream media, academia, government agencies, and other institutions and professionals we rely on to keep us moored to facts.
By 2024, the “devastatingly effective disinformation campaign” in conjunction with the “epistemic warfare” were successful enough to help Donald Trump be re-elected as the 47th president of the United States.
They ensured that truth was no longer perceived as the truth and that facts no longer mattered. What mattered was who was speaking and which side they were on.
This made real news fake news, and fake news real. It made possible the news briefing convened by Donald Trump, along with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and others on September 22, to stress the link between acetaminophen (Tylenol) and autism and urge women who are pregnant not to take it.
In that briefing, in spite of the fact there is no evidence that acetaminophen causes autism, President Trump stated, “I want to say it like it is: Don’t take Tylenol. Don’t take it,” “Fight like hell not to take it.”
During the briefing, Trump also seemed to jump on the anti-vaccine bandwagon, by falsely proclaiming,
They pump so much stuff into those beautiful little babies. It’s a disgrace. It looks like they’re pumping into a horse. You have a little child, little fragile child, and you get a vat of 80 different vaccines, I guess, 80 different blends, and they pump it in.
Because of the conditions and needs during the civil rights movement, a well-known saying became “Speak Truth to Power.” Because of the conditions and needs today, the saying should be “Speak Truth from Power.” Sadly, although that is not impossible, it seems improbable when the foremost proponent of the war on truth is the President of the United States.
The War of Wounds
Trump’s victories in the War of Words and the War on Truth have positioned him to be much more consequential in his second term as president, and to use his office and executive powers to wound those individuals and organizations who he perceives as his opponents and enemies.
It is no longer enough just to speak out against or discredit them. It is more important to make them pay a price for being on the other side. Those on that side include those attacked in the war on truth, the mainstream media, academia, government agencies, other institutions and professionals, and many, many others.
Here are just a few examples of the wounds that Trump has inflicted during his new regime:
On the mainstream media: CBS paid $16 million to settle a 60 Minutes lawsuit, and ABC paid $15 million to settle a defamation lawsuit against it and George Stephanopoulos.
On academia: Columbia University agreed to pay a $220 million fine, and Brown agreed to pay a $50 million fine.
On government agencies: The onslaught against virtually all federal government agencies, initiated by the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led hundreds of thousands of federal employees to be discharged or leave their jobs.
On law firms: Large firms such as Kirkland & Ellis and Skadden Arps agreed to provide more than $100 million each in pro bono contributions to Trump-designated activities and areas.
On health care: With Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. at the head of HHS, highly qualified senior staff at CDC resigned in protest after the head of the agency was fired and the CDC advisory panel of experts were replaced by novices and vaccine critics.
On DEI: DEI programs throughout the public and private sectors have been eliminated or drastically cut back.
On immigrants: The Department of Homeland Security reports that more than 2 million illegal aliens have been removed or self-deported in less than 250 days of the Trump administration.
On individuals: The initial round of wounds was removing security details for public servants such as former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley, former Vice President Kamala Harris, and former ambassador to the United Nations and national security advisor John Bolton. More recently, Trump posted on Truth Social calling on the Department of Justice to prosecute former FBI director James Comey, Senator Adam Schiff (D-CA), and New York Attorney General Leticia James. Comey was indicted on September 25.
Add to this list, the government shutdown, which wounds those in the federal government and citizens across this country. The shutdown delivers particularly harmful wounds to the blue states, where billions of dollars in grants will be withheld or withdrawn, and to “Democratic” domestic federal agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency, The Department of Labor, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development, where there will be significant layoffs and reductions in force.
Our American War in Perspective
As stated near the beginning of this piece, this war is being contested to determine whether America will remain a democracy or become an autocracy. At this time, our American democracy is losing in the war of words, the war on truth, and the war of wounds. It is definitely sliding toward becoming an autocracy unless this downward trajectory can be reversed.
Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen did an excellent job of examining the nature of this downward trajectory in their September 23 Axios article, which begins as follows:
Not since America’s founding 250 years ago has a U.S. president expanded power — and punished critics — in more unprecedented ways than Donald J. Trump.
Why it matters: Yes, most presidents stretch the power of the White House and, on rare occasions, blatantly target U.S. critics on U.S. soil. But Trump has veered, often suddenly, proudly and loudly, into unprecedented territory in at least 15 different areas.
Those areas are: 1. Executive power. 2. Free press crackdown. 3. Seizing congressional purse strings. 4. Tariffs. 5. Overriding the Constitution. 6. Purging watchdogs and civil servants. 7. Eroding DOJ independence. 8. Eroding Fed independence. 9. Wartime powers in peacetime. 10. Pay-me capitalism. 11. Targeting big law. 12. Punishing universities. 13. Rewriting health and vaccine policy. 14. Profiteering. 15. Jan.6 pardons.
Vanderhei and Allen look backward to provide a “historical analogy,” and look forward to establish a “new precedent” for each area. The new precedents would lead to a completely re-engineered federal government in the future, in which the executive reigns supreme and essentially can do whatever he or she wants.
Thomas Edsall provides a similarly bleak perspective in his New York Times article, published on the same day that Vanderhei and Allen published their piece. In his article, Edsall provides quotes from an article “How Trump Would Reshape America” by Jack Goldstone and Thomas Homer-Dixon published in the Globe and Mail, a leading Canadian newspaper on October 17, 2016, three weeks before Trump was elected to his first term.
Back then, Goldstone, a professor of public policy at George Mason University and Homer-Dixon a Canadian social scientist wrote:
… U.S. government institutions are not as strong as many seem to believe, because today a significant fraction of the U.S. public thinks that these institutions don’t have a shred of legitimacy. More important, Trump would quickly reshape the context within which his presidency operates by generating a new political and social reality — an “emergency” in America and around the world — that justifies and even demands attacks on democratic institutions.
And, Trump will
…claim authority under either the National Emergencies Act or the Insurrection Act to issue executive orders to deploy troops, federalize the National Guard, or suspend basic rights.
These forecasters were wrong about Trump’s first term, but they were absolutely right about his second. As Edsall states, they have a “legitimate claim to prescience.”
Our democracy is now paying an extremely heavy price for what they foresaw. So, heavy that George Packer, staff writer for The Atlantic, has labeled it “Our Zombie Democracy.”
Packer opens his insightful article with that title, asserting, “We are living in an authoritarian state.”
He proceeds to clarify,
Authoritarianism in the 21st century looks different, because it is different…democracies aren’t overthrown, nor do they collapse all at once. Instead, they erode. Opposition parties, the judiciary, the press, and civil-society groups aren’t destroyed, but over time they lose their life, staggering on like zombie institutions, giving the impression that democracy is still alive.
From there, he goes on to describe in considerable detail why our democracy is approaching a zombie-like state.
We hope that Packer is not prescient because even though we agree with him that America is approaching zombiehood. We don’t think or believe America is a zombie democracy yet.
We do believe, however, that America is at war with itself. And, as we stated at the outset of this piece, that war is being contested to see whether this nation will remain a democracy or become an autocracy. It is not a war to determine who should hold office or be in charge of shaping governmental policy or programs. It is a war for the head, heart, and soul of this country.
This war needs to be won by 21st century citizens who are devoted to continuing this American experiment, not those who would derail it. This will require those being attacked to speak out and push back. It will require reversing the progress that Trump and his Oval Office companions have made in the war of words, war on truth, and war of wounds. It will require correcting the unprecedented actions and restoring normalcy to the fifteen areas Jim Vanderhei and Mike Allen have identified.
We believe wholeheartedly that 21st century citizens are up to that challenge. We believe that because 21st century citizens are: Interested, Issues-Oriented, Informed, Independent, Involved.
Because of these characteristics they will recognize that this country is at war with itself, and that it is their responsibility to win this war for the people. They will understand this because they know that the United States Constitution and our democracy belong to the people, and not a president or a party.
They will heed the advice of former Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, who said, “When you see wrong or inequality or injustice, speak out, because this is your country. This is your democracy. Make it. Protect it. Pass it on.”
They will remember that nearly 250 years ago, on December 23, 1776, during the darkest days of the Revolutionary War, Thomas Paine wrote: “These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from their service; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”
They will not shrink from their service during this time of crisis when our nation’s future is at risk. They will stand and deliver for this nation. They will commit themselves to winning this war and to Making America Whole Again by keeping its head, heart, and soul intact.
The 21st century citizens will give Americans a special reason to celebrate our nation’s 250th anniversary in 2026.