The American Dream, Always an Illusion, Is Now A Nightmare for Much of the WorldDid you know that the United States interfered in 81 elections globally between 1946 and 2000? The USSR and Russia interfered in 36 over the same time period, so says author, researcher, Dov Levin.
The American dream, whatever illusion it might have been, is today a nightmare for much of the world, breeding fear, hate and greed both at home and abroad, seeking to influence elections that favor the global right wing, while demonizing immigrants and Muslims. The U.S. President regularly injects his hateful rhetoric far beyond his borders. As high school students took to the street in France demanding better education and facilities, Trump took to his social media platform to post: “‘What’s happening in France is nothing less than out of control mass migration. This isn’t about schools, this is about Islam wanting to take over a once great Country! President DJT.’” Today the United States traffics in fear, using it to frighten its allies into spending more money on weapons, while deriding their social programs as akin to communism, preferring instead to see big businesses flourish off the backs of the sick. The United States regime today revels in a world that is increasingly moving to the right, blaming immigrants for economic downturns and a multitude of shortages that are most often caused by politicians, who favor the rich and punish the poor, who champion war instead of doing the more difficult, and intellectually demanding, job of seeking peace. But it is war and not peace that is big money for the U.S. weapons industry, which has found friends and allies in both the U.S. and Israeli regimes. The United States sells roughly $238 billion in weapons to foreign governments each year and controls roughly 40% of the global arms market, more than Russia, China, France and Germany combined. Washington’s biggest arms buyer is Saudi Arabia. At home in America, the Trump regime has worked tirelessly to deepen divisions, resurrect and champion America’s white supremacy ideology, while spreading fear of fellow Americans of many faiths and no faith. The Trump regime has viciously targeted Muslims, finding ready allies at home among American right-wing legislators, and abroad from Israel’s Netanyahu regime, which has embraced with frightening vigor the rhetoric, lies and hatred of 1930s Germany. Then it was the Jews who were the ‘other’. In the 1930s, Germany’s Nazis accused Jews of contributing to the cultural and economic decline of Germany. They dehumanized Jews and portrayed Jews as a collective destructive force that would destroy the cultural fabric and very identity of what it means to be German. The same tropes and rhetoric is today being spewed proudly and repeatedly about Islam and Muslims by the Netanyahu regime, his right-wing Cabinet, and, of course the Trump regime. “The Nazis blamed Jews for Germany’s loss in the World War I, for cultural decline, and for economic misery,” says the United States Holocaust Museum. “In Nazis’ minds, the Jews conspired to control the world, and Nazi propaganda spread fear.” Netanyahu has learned well the lessons of Nazi Germany. He has fired up Israel’s frighteningly powerful propaganda machine to paint Muslims, as the ‘other’, a community determined to destroy the so-called “civilized” world, and ravage America’s cultural identity, which seems currently best described as white supremacist. Both Netanyahu and Trump have been aided in their bigoted, and often barbaric rhetoric directed at Muslims, by Israeli and American journalists, who have with the greatest of ignorance spoke and analyzed at length about the threat of Islam and Muslims and how their very presence will bring about a cultural decline and how, through Sharia, they conspire to control the world. Nazi Germany would be proud. Meanwhile, back in the United States of America, Trump, a practicing white supremacist, committed to reviving white cultural purity, increased the 2026 refugee cap for refugees from South Africa, but restricted them to white only South Africans. Trump also took to social media to urge presumably white Minnesotans to turn on their Somali neighbors, portraying them as dangerous and urging residents of Minnesota to “fight back.” “The once Great State of Minnesota is being taken over by Somali Immigrants. There is Violence, Murder, and Mayhem all over the State,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “The people of Minnesota must fight back.” As most often is the case, Trump’s Truth Social is a lie. Up to 90 per cent of an estimated 70,000 detainees in I.C.E. (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) detention centers across the United States have no criminal record. There are also widespread reports of abuse against detainees held in the hundreds of I.C.E. detention centers. Meanwhile, it came as no surprise that the Netanyahu and the Trump regimes responded with belligerence and threats to last week’s announcement that the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to former ICC judge Navi Pillay, who chaired the U.N. Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem and Israel. The commission concluded Israel has committed genocide. “We concluded that the State of Israel is responsible for the commission of four genocidal acts in Gaza with the specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza, as such,” Pillay said in an Oct. 25, 2025 statement. “The Commission also found that the Israeli President, Prime Minister and former Defense Minister have incited the commission of genocide.” U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio responded with sanctions and a call for the ICC to be banned. But the Trump regime is not the first U.S. administration to seek to undermine international law and the ICC. President Joe Biden, before Trump, slammed the ICC after it issued warrants for Netanyahu calling it “outrageous. Hypocrisy is an ever-present theme that runs like a thread through successive American administrations, all of whom have delighted in preaching to others, championing themselves as the torchbearers of truth, democracy and rule of law, even as they unashamedly lie, break laws, cherry picking those to follow and those to ignore. They have interfered in elections worldwide, having worked shamelessly to undermine or overthrow democratically elected governments they don’t like. Political scientist and researcher, Dov Levin in his book, Meddling in the Ballot Box: The Causes and Effects of Partisan Electoral Interventions, says the United States interfered in 81 elections between 1946 and 2000, compared to the U.S.S.R and later Russia, which were found to have interfered in 36 elections. Since 2000 the U.S. and Russia have continued their competition of interference. America, meanwhile, forges forward with its unapologetic hypocrisy. Just days before Pillay’s Nobel Peace Prize win, the U.S. Secretary of Defense announced the Pentagon would live-stream the firing squad execution of the Fort Hood assassin, Nadal Hasan, who shot and killed 13 U.S. service personnel in 2009. It is perfectly plausible that the desire to live-stream the execution is because Nadal is a Muslim. It is barbaric, but then so is the practice of executions done in private. The death penalty is about revenge, which the Trump regime, in particular, relishes. However, the death penalty neither deters nor is it a bargain. The cost of keeping a prisoner on death row is 2.5 to 5 times more expensive than life in prison. U.S. prisons are also disproportionally filled with minorities, whose access to justice, which is very definitely not blind, pales compared to America’s rich, powerful and monied. Note not a single American elite named in the Epstein file is in jail, or even charged. Hegseth, who is also a bigoted Islamophobic, is a radical Christian extremist fundamentalist, who sees himself as part of some bizarre divine mission, an assessment made by many, including the Military Religious Freedom Foundation The Foundation was begun in 2005 by Michael (Mikey) Weinstein, an Honor grad of the U.S. Air Force Academy and a proud U.S. servicemember, from a long line of military personnel. His organization defends religious freedom and fights fiercely for the separation of Church and state in the American military. The MRFF represents over 100,000 military personnel, 90 per cent off whom identify as Christian, but it also includes service members identifying from a vast array of religious beliefs to no religious beliefs. Weinstein has promised his organization “will fight the odious stench of Hegseth’s Christian nationalist bigotry, hatred, and prejudice every second of every day and night until the wretched filth of his fundamentalist Christian religious extremism is forever eradicated from the domain of the otherwise honorable United States military.” Hegseth’s announced live -streaming of Nadal’s execution reminded me of having to listen ad nauseam to American self righteous outrage at the Afghan Taliban’s public execution of convicted murderers and thieves, which occurred particularly often during their first term in power between 1996-2001.. The word most often used to describe the Taliban executions was barbaric. In the case of the Taliban executions, the convicted murderer was shot, not by the Taliban, but by the family member of the person killed. The family member did have the option to forgive and the murderer would be set free. It rarely happened. In the case of the Fort Hood assassin, he will be executed by a firing squad. While most Americans may not want to see this execution live-streamed, although that still remains to be seen, most do support executions. According to a 2026 Pew Research Center poll only 32 % of Americans did not support the death penalty. Barbaric practices carried out behind closed doors, whether they be executions or the brutal sex trafficking carried out by America’s elite, perpetuates among a nation’s majority, an illusion of civility, while hiding a barbaric reality that has to be confronted, if it is to be defeated. Hegseth, and today’s Trump regime, reveal the barbaric side of America. ‘Barbaric” is also most likely the word most Americans would choose to use if Hegseth and this regime ruled another country. But they don’t. The ‘other’ country is the United States of America. © 2026 Kathy Gannon |