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Trump—Seeking Revenge for His Mortality—Wages War on Everything That Lives
There are many ways Trump’s actions have killed and will continue to kill. What will each of us risk to stop him?
Mar 24, 2025
Allow me to stipulate that I do not wish to die. In fact, had anyone consulted me about the construction of the universe, I would have made my views on the subject quite clear: Mortality is a terrible idea. I’m opposed to it in general. (In wiser moments, I know that this is silly and that all life feeds on life. There is no life without the death of other beings, indeed, no planets without the death of stars.)
Nonetheless, I’m also opposed to mortality on a personal level. I get too much pleasure out of being alive to want to give it up. And I’m curious enough that I don’t want to die before I learn how it all comes out (or, for that matter, ends). I don’t want to leave the theater when the movie’s only partway over—or even after the credits have rolled. In fact, my antipathy to death is so extreme that I think it’s fair to say I’m a coward. That’s probably why, in hopes of combatting that cowardice, I’ve occasionally done silly things like running around in a war zone, trying to stop a U.S. intervention. As Aristotle once wrote, we become brave by doing brave things.
Remember That You Are Dust
I wrote this on Ash Wednesday, which is the beginning of the season of Lent. The Ash Wednesday service includes a ceremonial act meant to remind each of us of our mortality. A priest “imposes,” or places, a smudge of ash on each congregant’s forehead, saying, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” That action and those words reflect the brevity and contingency of human life, while echoing Christianity’s Jewish roots in the understanding that human life must have both a beginning and an end. Psalm 103 puts the sentiment this way:
As a father has compassion on his children,
so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him;
for he knows how we are formed,
he remembers that we are dust.
The life of mortals is like grass,
they flourish like a flower of the field;
the wind blows over it and it is gone,
and its place remembers it no more.
You don’t need to believe in a compassionate divinity to feel the loneliness of that windswept field, that place that remembers us no more.
I’ve been ruminating on my fear of dying lately, as I contemplate the courage of the people of Ukraine, many of whom would, as the saying goes, rather die on their feet than live on their knees. It’s an expression I first heard in Nicaragua during the Contra war of the 1980s—mejor morir de pie que vivir en rodillas—although it’s an open question who said it first. In the 20th century, it was proclaimed by both Emiliano Zapata, the Mexican revolutionary, and the Republican heroine of the Spanish civil war, Dolores Ibárruri, also known as “La Pasionaria.” I wish I could discern in my own breast that passionate preference for a dignified death over a life of suppression or slavery, yet I find that I can’t make myself feel that way. When I think about death—dignified or otherwise—my mind strays again to that empty windswept field and I am afraid.
It’s odd—and a little disgusting—that I seem to share U.S. President Donald Trump’s horror about the numbers of people dying in Russia’s war against Ukraine. I also want that war to stop. I don’t want one more person to lose his or her chance of finding out how the story ends. Yet I also understand why people choose to fight (and possibly die)—in Ukraine, in Gaza, and on the Jordan River’s West Bank.
The Death of Millions
Here’s an observation often attributed to Russian autocrat Joseph Stalin that was, in fact, probably lifted from a German essay about French humor: “The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic.” Whoever said (or wrote) it first, the point is that, while we can imagine a single death with its personal details of life and extinction, the human brain has trouble truly grasping large numbers of anything, including deaths.
In particular, we’re not good at understanding the numerous deaths of people who live far from us. At the end of February, The Associated Pressreported that six infants had died of exposure in Gaza over the previous two weeks. One father said of his two-month-old daughter, whose body turned cold at midnight on a windswept Mediterranean plain, “Yesterday, I was playing with her. I was happy with her. She was a beautiful child, like the moon.”
The strategy of Musk and Trump is, in effect, to pile the corpses high enough that the numbers overwhelm our capacity for empathy.
We can imagine one child, beautiful like the moon. But can we imagine more than 48,000 babies, children, teenagers, adults, and old people, each with his or her own story, each killed by a military force armed and encouraged first by the Biden administration and now by that of Donald Trump? Indeed, while former President Joe Biden finally denied Israel any further shipments of 2,000-pound bombs (though not all too many other weapons), President Trump’s administration has renewed the transfer of those staggeringly destructive weapons, quite literally with a vengeance. Announcing an “emergency” grant of an extra $4 billion in military aid to Israel, Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently explained the shift:
Since taking office, the Trump administration has approved nearly $12 billion in major FMS [“Foreign Military Sales”] sales to Israel. This important decision coincides with President Trump’s repeal of a Biden-era memorandum which had imposed baseless and politicized conditions [emphasis added] on military assistance to Israel at a time when our close ally was fighting a war of survival on multiple fronts against Iran and terror proxies.
As Reutersobserves, “One 2,000-pound bomb can rip through thick concrete and metal, creating a wide blast radius.” That’s not exactly a weapon designed to root out individual urban commandos. It’s a weapon designed to “cleanse” an entire city block of its inhabitants. And we know that Donald Trump has indeed imagined plans to cleanse the rest of Gaza before (of course) converting it into the “Riviera of the Middle East.” Perhaps Israel can use its new bombs to level the rest of the strip’s remaining buildings to make way for Mar-a-Gaza.
Yes, we can imagine the death of an infant, but can we imagine the permanent displacement of more than 2 million of her fellow Palestinians?
People Are Dying—and They’re Just Getting Started
If you can wrap your head around the destruction of Gaza, you’re ready for an even bigger challenge, one about which the new regime in Washington has said exactly nothing: Sudan, where civil war and famine threaten the lives of 5 million people. Back in 2019, a popular nonviolent uprising dislodged that nation’s long-time dictator President Omar al-Bashir. Sadly, after a brief period of joint civilian-military rule, the Sudanese army seized the government, only to be confronted by a powerful militia called the Rapid Response Forces. The historical origins of the conflict are complex, but the effects on the Sudanese people are simple: murder, rape, and mass starvation. And the new Trump regime has done nothing to help. In fact, as the BBCreported:
The freezing of U.S. humanitarian assistance has forced the closure of almost 80% of the emergency food kitchens set up to help people left destitute by Sudan’s civil war… Aid volunteers said the impact of President Donald Trump’s executive order halting contributions from the U.S. government’s development organization (USAID) for 90 days meant more than 1,100 communal kitchens had shut. It is estimated that nearly 2 million people struggling to survive have been affected.
Nor are Sudan and Gaza the only places where people are already dying because of Donald Trump. The New York Times has produced a lengthy list of programs frozen for now (and perhaps forever) by the shutdown of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Those include “HIV treatment programs that had served millions of people, the main malaria control programs in the worst-affected African countries, and global efforts to wipe out polio.” Even programs that count the dead have been discontinued, so we will never know the full effect of those cuts.
On March 5, a divided Supreme Court ruled 5-to-4 that USAID funds must indeed be reinstated for now. However, two things remain unclear: First, will the case be returned to the Supreme Court for further adjudication? And second, will the Trump administration abide by its decision in the meantime and release the funds that have been impounded? This seems increasingly unlikely, given Secretary of State Rubio’s March 10 announcement that 83% of those USAID contracts will be permanently cancelled.
His comments have rendered the legal situation even murkier. In any case, if, as seems all too likely, the administration continues to stonewall the courts, then we have indeed already arrived at the constitutional crisis that’s been anticipated for weeks now.
It’s not only overseas that people will die thanks to the actions of Donald Trump. While we can’t blame him for the recent measles outbreaks in Texas and eight other states, he is the guy who made Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of health and human services. And Kennedy is the guy who first downplayed the seriousness of measles; then, rather than vigorously promoting the measles vaccine, called it a matter of “personal choice”; and finally suggested that measles can be easily treated with Vitamin A. (In case you had any doubts, this is not true!) To date only two people—an unvaccinated child and an unvaccinated adult—have died, but sadly, it’s early days yet.
I know that certain of us may well be called upon, perhaps sooner than we imagine, to die for liberty here in this country.
Meanwhile, there’s a new pandemic sniffing around for potential human victims: the H5N1 strain of bird flu. It’s already led to the culling of millions of chickens (and a concomitant rise in the price of eggs). It’s also infected dairy cattle, cats, and even a few human beings, including one resident of Louisiana who died of the disease in January 2025. To date there are no confirmed cases of human-to-human transmission, but the strains circulating in other mammals suggest an ability to mutate to permit that kind of contagion.
You might think that Trump learned his lesson about underestimating a virus with the Covid-19 pandemic back in 2020. That, however, seems not to be the case. Instead, he’s endangering his own citizens and the rest of the world by pulling the U.S. out of the World Health Organization, where global cooperation to confront a potential pandemic would ordinarily take place. And Kennedy is seriously considering pulling an almost $600 million contract with the American pharmaceutical and biotechnology company Moderna to produce an mRNA vaccine against bird flu. That’s what I call—to use a phrase of the president’s—Making America Healthy Again.
Kennedy has also postponed indefinitely the February meeting of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s advisory panel on flu vaccines. This is the group that convenes regularly to make decisions about which strain of seasonal flu should be addressed by the current year’s vaccines. Deaths from flu and attendant pneumonias vary across time. During the 2022-2023 season more than 47,000 Americans died of flu or flu-related pneumonia. Estimates of last year’s deaths exceed 28,000. Without effective vaccines those numbers would have been—and perhaps in the future will be—much higher.
There are many other ways Trump’s actions have killed and will continue to kill, including through the suicides of transgender youth denied affirming healthcare; or the deaths of pregnant people denied abortion care; or those of people who come here seeking asylum from political violence at home, only to be shipped back into the arms of those who want to kill them; or even of fired and despairing federal workers who might take their own lives. The list of those at risk under Trump grows ever longer and, of course, includes the planet itself.
As Elon Musk recently told podcaster Joe Rogan, “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.” And the strategy of Musk and Trump is, in effect, to pile the corpses high enough that the numbers overwhelm our capacity for empathy.
People will die and, as was true of the cruelty of Trump’s first term, their deaths are, in a sense, the point. They will die because he has undoubtedly realized that, no matter how long he remains president, one day he himself will die. His administration is, as he has told us, driven by a thirst for retribution. He is seeking revenge for his own mortality against everything that lives.
Rage, Rage Against the Dying of the Light
There is another murder I haven’t even mentioned yet, a metaphorical killing of a particularly devastating sort, one that will doubtless lead to many actual deaths before we’re done. I’m thinking, of course, of the death of our democracy. Many others, including Timothy Snyder, M. Gessen, and Anne Applebaum, have written about that process, already well underway, so there’s no reason to rehearse the details here.
Contemplating this already violent moment in our history, this genuine break with the rule of law and all that’s decent, brings me back to the meditation on death with which I began this piece. I’ve long loved poet Dylan Thomas’s villanelle on old age, “Do not go gentle into that good night.” As I climb higher into my 70s, it speaks to me ever more directly. The first three lines are particularly appropriate to these Trumpian times:
“Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
I’ve always been a partisan of the “rage, rage” faction. I’m not going gentle. Give me all the “heroic measures.” No do not resuscitate or DNR for me. And yet, paradoxically, our rage at the dying of democracy’s light will indeed drag some of us, I believe, burning and raving into that good night.
I know that certain of us may well be called upon, perhaps sooner than we imagine, to die for liberty here in this country. It’s happened before. I doubt I would (or should) kill for freedom, but I hope I would, if put to the test, be willing to die for it.
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'Tipping Point' Feared in Sudan as Atrocities Mount
"Now is the time to renew focus on the human rights crisis in Sudan and take all necessary measures to protect civilians and prevent further violations and abuses," said one U.N. official.
Feb 18, 2025
Warning of potential war crimes including summary executions and deliberate attacks on civilians in Sudan, the United Nations human rights office on Tuesday issued a report calling for an expanded arms embargo and other measures to protect people caught in the crossfire of nearly two years of civil war there.
Volker Türk, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, issued the report on the conflict between Sudanese government forces and the government's former allied militia, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which has left 30 million people in need of humanitarian assistance and protection.
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said forces on both sides of the conflict have used sexual violence as a weapon of war, with at least 203 victims affected by at least 120 documented incidents.
"Cases are likely vastly underreported due to fear, stigma, and the collapse of medical and judicial institutions," said the OHCHR.
More than 12 million people have been forced from their homes as violence has targeted civilian areas and acute food insecurity has spread across the country. Famine was declared in several refugee camps and other areas late last year, with experts projecting it would spread across war-torn northern Darfur.
Nearly 25 million people in Sudan are now suffering from "acute" levels of hunger, according to the OHCHR.
The hunger crisis is spiraling as armed forces attack civilian infrastructure including healthcare facilities, schools, and markets, with hundreds of civilians killed in recent weeks. More than 150,000 people have been killed since the war began, and the U.N. documented more than 4,200 civilian killings last year—noting that the actual civilian death toll is likely far higher.
On Tuesday, the rights group Emergency Lawyers reported that more than 200 civilians, including children, were killed by the RSF in White Nile state over the past three days.
"The attacks included executions, kidnapping, forced disappearance, looting, and shooting those trying to escape," the group reported.
The Sudanese Foreign Ministry said the RSF had killed 433 people in the al-Gitaina area in White Nile, while the Preliminary Committee of Sudan Doctors' Trade Union said 300 people had been killed.
"The continued and deliberate attacks on civilians and civilian objects, as well as summary executions, sexual violence, and other violations and abuses, underscore the utter failure by both parties to respect the rules and principles of international humanitarian and human rights law," said Türk.
Li Fung, who leads the OHCHR office in Sudan, said in a video statement posted to social media that "the situation in Sudan has reached a dangerous tipping point."
"Now is the time to renew focus on the human rights crisis in Sudan and take all necessary measures to protect civilians and prevent further violations and abuses," said Fung.
Ravina Shamdasani, a spokesperson for the human rights office, said Tuesday's report calls for the arms embargo in place for Darfur to be expanded to all of Sudan, and for the entire country to be covered by the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court.
The international community, said Fung, "must stand with the people of Sudan."
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US Declares Genocide in Sudan But Refuses to Acknowledge Genocide in Gaza
One journalist told the secretary of state that all the crimes cited for Sudan are "being committed by Israel in Gaza; the very genocide YOU have been proudly funding, arming, and covering up."
Jan 07, 2025
While welcoming the United States' recognition that paramilitaries in Sudan have committed genocidal acts during the country's devastating civil war since 2023, human rights advocates on Tuesday said the declaration underscored the Biden administration's refusal to acknowledge what experts said is also clearly taking place in Gaza at the hands of the U.S.-backed Israel Defense Forces.
Both the mass killing of civilians in Sudan and Palestinians in Gaza "should be recognized and stopped," said Kenneth Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch.
Biden administration officials reportedly hesitated to move forward with the declaration that the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which is fighting Sudan's military in a bloody civil war, is committing genocide, saying it could intensify criticism of continued U.S. support for Israel.
But U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken signed off on the declaration on Monday, saying the RSF's acts of genocide include systemic violence against the Masalit, a non-Arab ethnic group, between April-November 2023 in the western region of Darfur.
Humanitarian workers reported that they counted 2,000 bodies in a single day during that attack, while the United Nations estimated as many as 15,000 people were killed in one city.
Hundreds of thousands of Masalit people have fled to overcrowded camps in neighboring Chad.
The RSF, said Blinken on Tuesday, has "targeted fleeing civilians, [murdered] innocent people escaping conflict, and prevented remaining civilians from accessing lifesaving supplies."
The paramilitary group has also blocked aid from getting to some areas, contributing to what the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) identified as famine in at least five districts in Sudan last month.
Palestine-based journalist Muhammad Shehada demanded to know how the Biden administration could determine genocide is taking place in Sudan while repeatedly denying the same in Gaza—even as the International Court of Justice has found Israel placed at risk Palestinians' right to be protected from genocide and numerous human rights groups have accused Israel of acts of genocide.
"Literally every single one of the crimes you [cite] to conclude a genocide is happening in Sudan are all being committed by Israel in Gaza; the very genocide YOU have been proudly funding, arming, and covering up," said Shehada.
More than 45,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the IDF began bombarding the enclave in October 2023, with hospitals, schools, refugee camps, and residential buildings among the places targeted. A majority of those killed have been women and children, according to the U.N., even as Israel and the U.S.—the largest international funder of the IDF—have insisted they are targeting Hamas fighters.
Israel's near-total blockade on aid has also pushed parts of the enclave into famine, according to experts.
"Blinken finds genocide in Sudan but not in Gaza," said Mark Seddon, director of the Center for United Nations Studies. "Really, you can't make this crap up."
Along with the State Department's determination, the U.S. Treasury Department announced Tuesday that it was sanctioning RSF leader, Gen. Mohamed Hamdan, and seven companies in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the main international funder of the paramilitary group.
Roth pointed out that while private companies in the UAE were sanctioned, the U.S. did not name the government of the Middle Eastern country.
Last January, U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) led a push to block a U.S. sale of $85 million in military equipment to the UAE, warning the country had "been violating the U.N. arms embargo in Darfur to support the RSF."
"Good to see the U.S. officially determine that the brutal RSF militia is committing genocide in Sudan," said journalist Nicholas Kristof. "But accountability is impaired when the U.S. fails to publicly call out the RSF's backer, the UAE, which enables the genocide."
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