Thursday Morning Male Beauty

 

More Wednesday Male Beauty

 

The Felon, Rubio and America’s Global Decline

Since 2015 the Felon's mantra has been "Make America Great Again" yet in his second regime, no one has weakened America more than the Felon and his white nationalist policies that have seen America's soft power through foreign aid slashed if not eliminated, openly racist policies at home - the killing of the Voting Rights Act by the Felon's majority on the Supreme Court yet the latest example - that have sullied America's reputation abroad, and the Felon's alienation of long time allies, particularly in Europe. And then there's the Felon's war of choice with Iran that has depleted America's munitions and cause oil and gas prices to soar - and from which the Felon has no exit strategy.  Ironically, when a U.S. fighter jet was shot down by Iranians, the Felon reportedly was upset over the potential of the airmen being held hostage.  While the airmen were found, the real Iranian hostage is the Felon himself.  The war has shown the limits of airpower against Iran and, more importantly, the Iranian leadership appears to understand that all it needs to do is keep the Strait of Hormuz closed and oil prices high to destroy the viability of the Felon and the GOP on the home front. They realize that high oil prices through November could be catastrophic for the GOP and the Felon for whom a Democrat controlled Congress would be a nightmare.  A piece at Salon looks at America's decline in the world thanks to the Felon's deliberate policies:

Donald Trump’s war of choice against Iran is a strategic failure that has exposed the limits of America’s power and influence in the Middle East and around the world. In a highly unusual move, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has been conspicuously absent from the negotiations with the Islamic Republic that led to a tenuous ceasefire, ceding the diplomatic spotlight to Vice President JD Vance, along with the administration’s “peace envoys” Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, and Steve Witkoff, a billionaire real estate developer and Trump friend. 

A recent New York Times report detailed how expansive Rubio’s absence has been. In addition to missing peace negotiations with Iran in Islamabad, Pakistan, he did not attend meetings in Doha and Geneva. He has not visited the Middle East since last October, nor has he played a direct role in diplomatic negotiations over Ukraine and Gaza.

But the secretary’s absence on the world stage doesn’t mean he has been idle. As the first person to serve simultaneously as secretary of state and national security adviser since Henry Kissinger in the 1970s, for Rubio “less time abroad means more time at the side of an impulsive president prone to making critical national security decisions at any moment.”

While also attending to Trump’s needs, Rubio has been busy remaking the State Department in the MAGA image — an act that is undermining democracy at home and accelerating strategic failures abroad. What the administration calls “America First” is, in practice, white racial authoritarianism and white Christian nationalism that governs who and what is deemed to be in America’s vital interests.

Historically, the State Department has emphasized cultural pluralism, secularism and inclusiveness in its public messaging and other communications — a deliberate choice rooted in the reality that American diplomacy takes place around the world. 

During the Cold War, America’s elites understood that racism at home made America weak abroad. Jim and Jane Crow were an international embarrassment, giving the Soviet Union a powerful counternarrative about American hypocrisy and the color line. How could a nation that oppressed its own Black citizens claim to be the world’s beacon of freedom against communism?

Civil rights activists understood this and used it for tactical and strategic leverage. Presidents from Harry Truman to Lyndon Johnson were forced to see that Jim Crow was not just a moral catastrophe but a geopolitical liability. Ralph Bunche, the Nobel Prize-winning diplomat and civil rights leader, connected the fight against American segregation to the broader struggle for human rights and peace around the world.

These traditions have been largely abandoned under Rubio at the behest of Trump.

On April 1 the State Department announced a series of “reforms” to the foreign service exam with the aim of eradicating “the diversity, equity, and inclusion agenda” that the administration claimed was plaguing the department and diplomatic corps. As Puck’s Julia Ioffe memorably noted, these changes — which included an orientation curriculum centered on “America First” — were nothing short of “ideological screenings” and “political tests,” requiring prospective foreign service officers to “affirm their support for Trump’s executive orders…and demonstrate their ‘fidelity’ at every turn.”

Previous administrations understood that having a diverse State Department was a necessity, given how the majority of the world’s population is not white. Limiting the number of Black and brown diplomatic corps members at a time when China is making great inroads in Africa and other parts of the non-white world through infrastructure development, securing rare earth and other vital resources, and building military bases is a strategic blunder.  

The department has also overseen the systematic dismantling of America’s soft power. The gutting of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and related programs that support public health have already contributed to an estimated 762,000 preventable deaths. Experts estimate that these cuts will lead to 14 million preventable deaths by 2030 if funding is not restored.  

Before Rubio’s tenure, Voice of America (VOA) served for more than eight decades as one of the country’s most powerful tools for exporting democracy and American values to people living under authoritarian regimes. Once a credible voice, under the leadership of Kari Lake, a Republican who served as Arizona secretary of state and ran for governor, experienced journalists have been fired and VOA now amplifies the administration’s talking points and disinformation.

Since Trump’s return to power, the United States has been repositioning itself as an explicitly Judeo-Christian nation — and government departments and agencies are following suit. On Easter Sunday Rubio shared a video on social media in which he passionately described the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The department’s Instagram account has featured images of Christian crosses and references to “Christ’s sacrifice.” As reported by the Intercept, the account has stopped marking Islamic holidays and other widely observed non-Christian religious observances.

Under Rubio, the department is cutting back on student visas, and it has begun monitoring the social media accounts of immigrants and travelers for material the administration defines as “hateful ideologies” and “hostile attitudes” and other thought crimes. 

At White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller’s urging, White South Africans, a group that enforced and benefitted from the white supremacist system of apartheid, are now being given refugee status on the grounds that they now face oppression under Black majority rule. In a cruel historical irony, White South Africans are now working as laborers under the H-2A guest worker program in Mississippi, where they are now displacing Black American farmers whose families and communities survived Jim Crow, America’s own form of apartheid. It is estimated that 25,000 South Africans came to the United States during the 2024-25 farming season alone under that program. 

Refugee status is also being revoked for Haitians and Somalis, communities that Trump and his administration have repeatedly dehumanized with racist screeds that have included calling them “poison,” “leeches” and “invaders.” These and other Black and brown refugees and immigrants now live in a state of existential fear from being deported by Immigration and Customs Enforcement or targeted by racist vigilantes.

In total, the State Department now serves as an enthusiastic enforcer for Trump’s nativist project and fortress America.

In December 2025, the Trump administration announced its new National Security Strategy, which is based on the premise that Europe is facing a common “civilizational erasure,” a lack of economic vitality, “cratering birthrates” and loss of “national identities” from migrants and other non-whites whose values are deemed incompatible with Western values. To survive, the document holds, Europe must move away from its pluralistic and cosmopolitan values. These are far-right talking points evoking racist books such as Jean Raspail’s 1973 novel “The Camp of the Saints” and Madison Grant’s “The Passing of the Great Race.” Previous American leaders would have condemned such a policy as antithetical to America’s democratic norms and values. 

Under Rubio’s leadership, the State Department has abandoned this tradition and strategic vision. As a senator, Rubio was a strong advocate for global democracy. He wanted America to be more confrontational with Russia and backed Ukraine in its freedom struggle. Now, while enduring the president’s humiliation rituals — the public debasements Trump uses to test and bind the loyalty of those around him — Rubio has adopted his values.

As secretary, he now sits fourth in the line of presidential succession, and there is speculation that Trump may see him as a potential successor. According to reports, Trump has taken to asking confidantes if they prefer Vance or Rubio as the party’s 2028 nominee, and focus groups indicate that Trump Republicans are also warming up to the secretary ahead of 2028. Many see him as a stabilizing force, as well as a more presentable and traditional representative for their “America First” nationalism and so-called conservative values.  

Rubio sacrificed his values and the storied institutional legacy of the State Department itself to be in closer proximity to Donald Trump, a chaos agent — and America’s reputation and power are collapsing.

Wednesday Morning Male Beauty

 

More Tuesday Male Beauty

 

Republicans' Youth Voter Problem

While young voters are notorious for failing to get to the polls and voting, in close elections winning the younger voters by a significant margin can be what puts a candidate over the top to victory. In 2024, younger voters swung toward the GOP and the Felon in the insane belief their policies would improve their lot. Now, going on 16 months of the Felon's regime, many of these voters have learned that no one in the GOP, the Felon perhaps most of all, cares about young voters' concerns.  While billionaires and large stock investors may be pleased with the Felon's policies that take from the poor and give to the rich, the needs of millions of Americans are either ignored or outright harmed. The employment market for many younger voters remains harsh and the Felon is gutting clean air and clean water regulations that will long negatively impact the lives of younger voters.  And then there are the Felon's policies of choice which have harmed the economy and driven up consumer prices: the Felon's tariffs  and the war of choice in Iran that continues to have no solution in sight.  New polls are showing just how much the GOP and the Felon have alienated younger voters. Indeed, 81 percent of young Americans rate U.S. economic conditions as bad or terrible. A piece at Politico looks at the current situation:

Two years after young voters swung to the right in 2024, helping return Republicans to unified control of Washington, economic concerns are pushing 18- to 34-year-olds back to the left for the midterms, according to a new national survey of more than 1,000 young Americans.

The poll from nonpartisan outfit Generation Lab, shared exclusively with POLITICO, amounts to a flashing warning sign for Republicans. It shows young Americans planning to vote Democratic in November by a margin of 52 percent to 19 percent. Broken down by party, the data indicates that the GOP has a significant base problem: Just 58 percent of young Republicans say they’ll vote GOP — with nearly a third selecting “neither” or “won’t vote.” By contrast, 85 percent of young Democrats intend to show up for their party at the ballot box.

Just as in 2024, deep discontent with the state of the economy is driving anger at the party in power. Now, 81 percent of young Americans rate U.S. economic conditions as bad or terrible — including 68 percent of Republicans. The younger the age bracket, the more optimism diminishes.

[The Felon] President Donald Trump shoulders most of the blame among respondents, with 41 percent who rate the economy negatively naming him as the top culprit, plus 9 percent who select congressional Republicans. But it’s not just the GOP: Another 31 percent finger corporate greed/large companies. Just 6 percent blame Joe Biden or congressional Democrats.

In many ways, the polling looks like an inverse of Democrats’ struggles in the 2024 cycle, when surveys showed that voters didn’t personally experience the positive economic image projected by the Biden administration.

“We tie this really closely to what people can see and feel and touch in terms of their own personal economic situation,” Cyrus Beschloss, Generation Lab’s founder and CEO, told POLITICO. “Saying that affordability is a ‘line of bullshit’ is definitely not helping — to the extent that young people are clued into that.”

But a caveat remains. “Young people are voting at just obscenely low rates,” Beschloss said. Insofar as this demographic might swing to or from Republicans, “their power’s a lot more concentrated in social force” — as cultural barometers and pace-setters — “than it is electoral force.”

Young people’s social force on GOP politics looks highly negative right now, and not just over concerns about inflation, housing, jobs and gas prices. The survey also finds mass blowback to the U.S.-Israel war with Iran: Seventy-seven percent of young Americans say the U.S. made the wrong decision in striking Iran, and 75 percent say they disapprove or strongly disapprove of Trump’s handling of the military action.

Republicans are keenly aware of voters’ cost-of-living and economic concerns — but they argue that they’re positioned to sway Americans here with a message focused on lower government spending, new tax breaks and blaming Democrats.

The GOP is also addressing bad economic feelings head on by telling voters that they’re cleaning up messes created by Democrats. . . . . But Democrats have built out their own infrastructure to compete, including creator networks for candidates to work with and new resources devoted to communicating via YouTube, podcasts, social media, influencers and Substacks.

And the economic concerns are a lay-up for Democrats’ midterms messaging writ large, they say, which puts affordability front and center — the kind of laser-focused approach that scored the party big wins in 2025. “Young voters’ top concern is affordability, and we’ve been beating the drum on that issue all cycle,” said DCCC spokesperson Aidan Johnson. “Many don’t think they will ever be able to buy a home, or are graduating out of high school and college with not nearly the same kind of opportunities that their parents had.”

Looking beyond the midterms: The Generation Lab also asked young Americans about the 2028 presidential race — and at this early stage, name recognition seems to be paramount. 

Tuesday Morning Male Beauty

 

Monday Morning Male Beauty

 

More Sunday Male Beauty

 

Trump's America: An Empire in Decline

The Felon's campaign throughout his campaigns has been "Make America Great Again."  The reality of the Felon's policies and agenda have had the exact opposite impact: a weakening and declining American empire that find's itself in a disastrous war of the Felon's choosing, long time allies alienated,  and with the undermining of technologies and clean energy sources of the future in favor of fossil fuels even as funding is slashed for research on  the medical research front and technology front, opening the way for China to dominate these elements of the future.   It's unclear if the Felon's destructive policies are the result of incompetence, worsening dementia and delusions of grandeur, or the Felon merely following Vladimir Putin's directions, but whatever the cause, America is anything but great again as it finds itself depleting its military resources, loathed by former allies, and deindustrializing and focused solely on the wellbeing of billionaires as benefits for everyday Americans are slashed. . Some in the MAGA base are slowly waking up to the reality that they were sold a false bill of goods and that the normalization of their prejudices will not bail them out from high gas prices, rising inflation or the closure of their rural hospitals. A column in the New York Times looks at the Felon's orchestrated decline of the so-called American empire.  Here are highlights:

The American-Israeli attack on Iran was more than a bad idea; it has turned into a watershed in the decline of the American empire. Some might prefer the word “hegemony” to describe the world order the United States leads, since its flag does not generally fly over the lands it protects or exploits. But the rules are the same: Imperial systems, whatever you call them, last only as long as their means are adequate to their ends. And with the Iran war, President Trump has overextended the empire dangerously.

A Middle Eastern military misadventure is one of the last ways a casual observer would have expected Mr. Trump’s presidency to go wrong. The problems he alluded to in all three of his presidential campaigns had mostly resulted from our leaders’ governing beyond their means. At home, proponents of wokeness underestimated the costs and difficulties of micromanaging interactions between groups. Abroad, the mighty American armed forces proved to have no particular talent for democracy promotion, and there was the recent debacle in Iraq to prove it.

Mr. Trump, people thought, would be different. For all the grandiosity of the expression “Make America great again,” Trump voters did not expect him to take on new problems. The greatness would be mostly atmospheric — braggadocio, not adventurism. The United States could become greater even if it withdrew to a less expansive sphere of influence. When he proclaimed an updated Monroe Doctrine, refocusing American attention on the Western Hemisphere, retrenchment was what most people thought they were getting.

Britain had to surrender its far-flung system of colonies and protectorates after World War II. . . . . Britain did not try to hold territories it could no longer afford. It wound up on reasonably good terms with its former colonial possessions. Its disengagement was a success, though this can be hard to see because what was being managed was decline. Mr. Trump had a chance of pulling off something similar.

The assumption in Washington over the past decade has been that the world is engaged in a game of geostrategic musical chairs and the music is about to stop. China may soon overmatch us not just in military-industrial capacity but also in information technology. The world will harden into a new, less favorable geostrategic configuration. This is the last moment to reshape it in America’s favor.

The attack on Iran was different. It was not a defensive consolidation; it was the assumption of a dangerous, open-ended responsibility. Yes, it might be better if the mullahs fell. But for the United States, an energy-independent country withdrawing to its own hemisphere, this is not a vital interest. War with Iran was not on the radar screen of anyone in the administration just a few months ago.

That is because the United States lacks the military means to impose its will on Iran in a long conflict. In 1991 a million soldiers from more than 40 countries were needed to reverse the invasion of Kuwait carried out by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, a country less sophisticated than Iran and a fraction of its size. When Iran and Iraq fought each other to a standstill in the 1980s, deaths ran into the hundreds of thousands on each side. The United States would have to send a significant portion of its armed forces — which total only 1.3 million troops — to stand a chance of subduing Iran, and that force, if successful, would have to stay for a long time.

The argument can be made that the United States no longer depends on mustering huge armies: It has sophisticated missiles and other standoff weapons. But those weapons are needed to defend allies and interests in other theaters, and the United States is depleting them. According to reporting in The Times, it has already used 1,100 of its long-range stealth cruise missiles, earmarked for potential conflicts in Asia, leaving just 1,500 in the stockpile, and fired an additional 1,000 Tomahawk cruise missiles, about 10 times as many as the military buys in an average year. American leaders have been scolding their European allies for years about the inadequacy of their fighting forces. But if one measures America’s military might against our pretensions rather than our G.D.P., it is just as inadequate.

It would be wrong to say the United States is trapped in the war it started. It has options. But it is now going to pay a very steep price, no matter which of them it chooses. It can desist in Iran — having demonstrated, for no good reason, that its military is far less dominant than the world had assumed. Or it can draw resources from theaters that are of vital national interest, such as Europe and East Asia, to fund what the president refers to as his Iranian “excursion.” Or it can resort to the extreme military options Mr. Trump darkly alluded to in social media posts starting in early April, which will redound to the everlasting shame of the country he leads. The United States stands to lose its reputation, its friends or its soul.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel urged this war on Mr. Trump . . . . Mr. Trump’s gullibility provided Mr. Netanyahu with a last chance.

It is tempting to ask where in the process of imperial decline the United States now finds itself. It certainly has elements in common with Britain a century ago: deindustrializing, overcommitted, complacent. On the eve of World War I, Britain was dependent on Germany for industrial and even military technology — and unwilling to re-examine the free-trade system on which German supremacy had been built. By the eve of World War II, Britain was essentially bankrupt. There are parallels in America’s dependence on China today.