The Empire Strikes First: Trump, Putin, and the Global War on Democracy

What happens when the country that once led the free world becomes the enemy of Democracy?

Elon Musk just called for the United States to withdraw from NATO, leaving Europe to Putin’s tender mercies.

Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Hegseth ordered our federal operations to detect and stop Vladimir Putin‘s infiltration of American cyber security — from our nuclear facilities and dams to our news and social media spaces — to cease. As Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer noted yesterday afternoon:

“Donald Trump is so desperate to earn the affection of a thug like Vladimir Putin he appears to be giving him a free pass as Russia continues to launch cyber operations and ransomware attacks against critical American infrastructure, threatening our economic and national security. It is a critical strategic mistake for Donald Trump to unilaterally disarm against Putin.“

This sounds like a dangerously familiar — and ancient— story.

Western literature’s heroic mythic storytelling genres, having emerged during a time when democracies were active and evolving, typically feature heroes fighting for a democracy against an evil empire led by a radically evil, expansionist warlord.

Luke Skywalker against Darth Vader and the Empire; Frodo Baggins and the Free People of Middle Earth against Sauron and the Nazi-like Mordor empire; Dune’s Paul Atriedes and his Fremen against the ruthless Harkonnens, the brutal rulers of Arrakis.

Other examples that came from the early attempts at democracy in ancient Europe include Beowulf, Homer’s Oddyssey and Iliad, and Virgil’s Aeneid. In all of these stories spanning three thousand years, free people or a would-be leader of free people battle the forces of an evil, repressive empire led by violent warlords.

America has, for 250 years, always viewed itself as being on the side of Skywalker, Baggins, and Atriedes — until this past month. Preying on hate, bigotry, and fear-of-the-other, Donald Trump has now aligned the United States with the modern-day Empire’s Darth Vader: Vladimir Putin.

We now find ourselves on the wrong side of both history and three millennia of legends and peoples dreaming of and fighting for democracy.

Both Russia’s Putin and China’s Xi are repressive dictators, and, for Trump and Vance, these men are heroes and role models.

They brook no dissent. They crush freedom. They take foreign lands with violence.

Just in the past week in Russia, for example, as Sarah Hurst reports, Sergei Avtomonov was sentenced to 18 years in a maximum-security prison for treason after being arrested on a charge of “calling for extremism on the internet”; a fellow named Natsarenus was sentenced to eight years in prison for donating $14 to Alexei Navalny’s Foundation for Fighting Corruption; and Viktor Levakov got 3½ years in prison for donating $35 to the same Foundation.

This is the form of government Donald Trump explicitly prefers over the democracy in Ukraine, and apparently aspires to here in the United States. He and Musk are openly flaunting laws and Congress, ignoring the courts, and actively disassembling the protective agencies of our government. This is how evil empires begin.

Now that Trump’s FBI is investigating those people who had looked into his crimes, how long will it be before America sees similar show trials to Putin’s?

Before you and I are held criminally responsible for things we’ve posted on the Internet or for reading or writing newsletters like this?

Trump has already launched hundreds of millions of dollars worth of lawsuits against reporters and news organizations that he feels have spoken against him; Kash Patel, the new FBI director, has openly bragged that he will consider using criminal law to come after people who write about him and his administration.

As we saw with Trump’s cabinet meeting last week, the only kind of rhetoric now allowed is similar to Kim Jong-un’s North Korean sycophantic senior leadership, pathetically sucking up to Dear Leader by constantly and effusively congratulating him for his brilliance and strength.

The larger issue, though, is that the world right now is engaged in an epic battle between the classic forces of autocratic tyranny versus democracy.

Putin wants to reconsolidate his old empire and seize control of much, if not all, of Europe.

Xi wants Taiwan and may well be looking at South Korea, Japan, and even Australia after that.

And Donald Trump is, step-by-step, turning America into a strongman oligarchy, in alliance with autocrats in Nicaragua, Ecuador, Paraguay, Guatemala, Argentina, and El Salvador, to form a third sphere of violent, fascist power ultimately ruling all of the Americas.

While physical warfare like Russia’s daily attacks on Ukraine are the most visible manifestations of this planet-wide effort by a handful of fabulously rich oligarchs to end democracy, the preparatory war is mostly online.

Massive troll farms and disinformation campaigns, being run principally by Russia and China, with help from well-paid rightwingers in the United States and Europe, are actively overwhelming the world’s information spaces with anti-democracy and pro-autocracy propaganda.

Lao Tzu wrote about the importance of defeating the enemy without firing a shot (“The supreme leader is one who wins without fighting.” —Tao Te Ching); Putin and Xi have clearly taken this advice to heart.

Donald Trump and JD Vance dropped the mask last week when President Zelenskyy visited the White House. There can be no doubt any longer that America is no longer the leader of the free world, or, for that matter, even interested in being part of a democratic “free world.”

Will a Luke Skywalker emerge to take on this Darth Vader figure who has seized control of the GOP and America? If so, will that person emerge from within or outside the Republican or Democratic parties?

Thomas Carlyle hypothesized, with his Great Man Theory of History, that at turning points in the stories of the world noble, extraordinary communicators with strong leadership skills often emerge and bend history to their will.

Clearly Donald Trump is playing that role right now, but on the Darth Vader side, along with Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping. But where is democracy’s Luke Skywalker?

In the last great battle between democracy and fascism, Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt stood in the breach against Hitler and Tojo. America is crippled right now from playing that role, however, because our Franklin Roosevelt has been replaced by Benedict Arnold.

Trump has successfully cowed his entire party and turned people like Marco Rubio, who once saw Putin with clear eyes, into pathetic, sniveling collaborators along the lines Joachim von Ribbentrop and France’s Vichy Marshal Philippe Pétain.

Trump and his collaborators strut and preen and brag about their power, masculinity, and ferocity, like when they abused President Zelenskyy in the Oval Office. In reality they are weak, pathetic wannabe strongmen seduced by an autocratic madman — Putin — with visions of empire and riches driving their daily behaviors.

At least, for the moment, England, Germany, and France are willing to stand against this brutal assault, although social media is increasingly poisoned with messages telling their people that autocracy is a much better form of government.

How long will they last, particularly given how Trump has now thrown in with Putin?

It’s anybody’s guess at this moment, as Putin funds the AfD in Germany while JD Vance and Elon Musk pander to the neo-Nazis in England and across Europe and Scandinavia.

Someday, epic poems and sagas will be told about the attack on the free world by Trump, Putin, and Xi, explaining how our country ultimately ended up.

Which way will America go? And will free Europe withstand Russia’s attack that has already claimed our nation’s senior leaders?

To a large extent — while we still have some of our freedoms left and can still speak out — that ultimate fate of our country and worldwide democracy in this new century may well be decided by people like you and me.

It’s time to stand up and speak out.