While We Watch the Circus, the World Burns
Distraction, Abundance, and the Failure of Responsibility
Trump’s continual barrage of headline-grabbing provocations – “flooding the zone,” was Steve Bannon’s phrase – has diverted Americans’ attention from the worldwide existential polycrisis we were beginning to address in previous non-Trump administrations. The many crises that are converging into global catastrophe include climate change, global hunger and inequality, continued population growth, the accelerating loss of biodiversity, toxic chemical pollution, rising superpower tensions, and nuclear proliferation. And that is only a partial list.
None of these threats have receded. If anything, they have intensified. Yet the Trump administration’s depravity – amplified and normalized by the complicity of Congress and the Supreme Court – has rendered the United States incapable of responding constructively to this gathering storm. Rather than acting as a stabilizing force or moral leader, the country has become an obstacle to sane, compassionate, and proportionate responses to crises that threaten not only civilization but the broader web of life of which humanity is a part.
Americans’ fixation on Trump’s chaos is understandable, even warranted. His policies and rhetoric have inflicted unnecessary physical, psychological, and emotional harm on millions, while deepening a bitter fracture in a Union that has been 250 years in the making. What makes this tragedy especially absurd is that the United States possesses extraordinary wealth, abundant natural resources, and unparalleled innovative capacity. These assets are more than sufficient to provide every American citizen with a materially secure life, with ample surplus to assist much of the rest of the world.
Instead, a staggering share of that abundance has been squandered on enriching the already wealthy and on excessive, often counterproductive, military spending. In 2024, total U.S. military expenditures exceeded $2.4 trillion – more than one-third of the $6.9 trillion federal budget. This figure is nearly three times higher than the widely cited Department of Defense budget because large portions of military spending are dispersed across other departments, including Homeland Security, the Military Retirement Fund, and Veterans Affairs. (For a detailed breakdown, see my January 16, 2025 Substack post, The American War Machine Costs Far More Than You Think.)
Now imagine, briefly, that the current administration genuinely wished to “put Americans first” by ensuring that all citizens had access to life’s basic necessities. One obvious place to begin would be to shift some of the bloated military budget to peaceful and humane purposes. The United States could, for example, spend what its closest geopolitical competitor, China, spends on defense. Depending on accounting methods, China’s annual military outlays are estimated at between $292 billion and $476 billion. Let us take the high end of that range and round generously to $600 billion.
That decision alone would free approximately $1.8 trillion of federal monies each year. Suppose those funds were then directed toward the poorest forty percent of American households by income, many of whom live in poverty. (Why 40%? See Endnote 1 below).[i] To help the poorest Americans live a minimally secure and healthy lifestyle, pay all households in the bottom forty percent (measured by income) about $35,000 a year. (Why 35K? See Endnote 2 below).[ii] It is difficult to imagine a policy more likely to improve Americans’ safety, housing security, nutrition, health, and overall well-being far more than the current use of those funds.
Of the many humane ways to redistribute a portion of national wealth, this approach offers two distinct advantages. First, it does not penalize wealthier Americans, who might otherwise resist policies that require personal sacrifice. Second, it aligns with core principles of capitalism and American hyper-individualism, in which individuals’ self-interest is seen as a more effective driver of economic activity than direct state control.
The need for such investment is not hypothetical. In the United States today:
More than 47 million Americans live in food insecure households, meaning they lacked access sufficient nutrition for an active, healthy life.
Seventy-four percent of adults (nearly 200 million people) are overweight, including 43 percent (about 114 million) who are obese.
Nearly 800,000 people are homeless on any given night, and close to twice that number rely on shelters over the course of a year.
Some 27 million people remain uninsured, even as most of the world’s 195 nations provide universal health care.
Roughly six million people are incarcerated or under correctional supervision, about two million of whom are behind bars. The world’s wealthiest nation imprisons more people than any other country, more even than China, which has four times the U.S. population and is widely regarded as one of the world’s most repressive states. Only El Salvador, Cuba, and Rwanda have higher incarceration rates per capita.
Each year, approximately 18,000 people are killed in gun homicides and another 27,000 die by gun suicide. Among wealthy nations, the United States is a stark outlier, with gun-related homicide rates many times higher than in countries such as Canada, Australia, and Norway, all of which also have high levels of gun ownership.
The tragedy confronting the United States is not a lack of resources, ingenuity, or capacity, but a failure of moral imagination and political will. While Americans are rightly consumed by domestic turmoil, the larger, interconnected crises threatening humanity continue to accelerate beyond our borders and beneath our notice.
When Americans are materially secure, they are far more likely to have the emotional capacity to care for and assist others beyond their borders. Therefore, reordering national priorities away from domination and towards care would not only alleviate immense human suffering at home but restore the possibility of constructive global leadership at a moment when civilization can least afford distraction, denial, or squandered abundance.
[i] There are about 128 million American households, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The medium American household income is about $84K. The income of the bottom quintile and second quintile of households average 18K and 49K, respectively, per year. A quintile (1/5 = 20% of a group) = 1/5 of 128 million households = 25.6 million households.
[ii] To raise everyone in the second quintile to the American average $84K would require $35K per household (49K + 35K = 84K). And, paying those households in the bottom quintile 35K would raise their income to 53K per household (18K + 35K = 53K), potentially providing a far more secure and healthy lifestyle. $35K/household x 51.2 million households = almost $1.8 trillion.