RE: Are We 21st Century Pirates?

Indeed, that was an apt and true reply which was given to Alexander the Great by a pirate who had been seized. For when that king had asked the man what he meant by keeping hostile possession of the sea, he answered with bold pride, "What thou meanest by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, whilst thou who dost it with a great fleet art styled emperor."
—St. Augustine, City of God

For if the bulk of the public were really convinced of the illegitimacy of the State, if it were convinced that the State is nothing more nor less than a bandit gang writ large, then the State would soon collapse to take on no more status or breadth of existence than another Mafia gang.
—Murray Rothbard, Ethics of Liberty

I don't believe Trump is unique in the pantheon of presidents, but he is uniquely bad at hiding the nature of what he is doing and how he perceives his power. The veneer of civility is gone. What Obama did in Libya and Syria is easier to overlook for the uninitiated and complacent willing to swallow more formal propaganda, but Trump seems to revel in the spotlight, and has a pathological need to brag. I will acknowledge that he is brazenly violating the plain text of the Constitution, but again, he differs from his predecessors only in degree, and based in large part on the precedents they set to the applause of their partisans.

Government is a mafia with a flag, the USA is the biggest mafia in the world, and anyone willing to see what has happened just in 2026 with Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, etc. has to acknowledge this reality. Perhaps that is why people hide behind flags and slogans and name-calling whenever anyone tries to point out the obvious. After all, I'm just a crazy anarchist whose dangerous ideas about peace, individual liberty, and consent threaten to somehow undermine society, because... reasons?