“Impunity is the belief that strength cancels responsibility. Every empire that adopted it mistook fear for loyalty—and paid in collapse.”
- adaptationguide.com
The Logic of Coercion: America’s Descent Into Impunity
An unfiltered, controversial op‑ed on power, decay, and the politics of domination
For the past year, the world has lived inside a geopolitical panic room. The United States—under a leader who treats power like a personal stimulant—has imposed tariffs, lifted them, threatened allies, embraced adversaries, walked back threats, then repeated the cycle with the attention span of a man convinced consequences are for other people.
At first glance, it looks like chaos. But chaos is rarely random. A pattern is emerging. And it is not strategic realism, nor economic nationalism, nor even the crude logic of deal‑making.
It is the logic of domination.
When Power Becomes Entitlement
Donald Trump has never hidden his worldview. He told us plainly that powerful men are entitled to take what they want. The American electorate knew this when it returned him to office—even after a jury found him civilly liable for sexual abuse in the E. Jean Carroll case. That was not a disqualifier. It was absorbed into the brand.
What we are watching now is that same worldview scaled up to the level of state power.
In this moral universe, strength is not a means to protect rules; it is proof that rules do not apply. Consent is irrelevant. Resistance is the point.
Some American commentators have dressed this up as “coercive diplomacy.” Strip away the jargon and what remains is naked force: do what we want, because we can make you.
Greenland and the Pleasure of Refusal
The now‑paused plan to take Greenland by force is instructive. Before the threats, the United States already had everything it reasonably needed: NATO alignment, security cooperation, diplomatic goodwill. Denmark was not an adversary. It was an ally.
But alliance was not the goal.
The appeal lay precisely in Denmark’s refusal. In the violation of sovereignty. In demonstrating that even a democratic partner’s will could be overridden.
Polls show that fewer than ten percent of Americans support seizing Greenland by force. That, too, is part of the attraction. This administration does not merely want to dominate foreign governments—it wants to prove that domestic opposition is meaningless. That the public can be dragged along, humiliated, and made complicit.
A System Past Self‑Correction
In The Next Civil War, I described the United States as a political order in advanced decay: extreme inequality, institutional rot, collapsing trust, and normalized political violence. What the past year has clarified is something even darker—the system no longer possesses internal brakes.
The Constitution is not restraining this decline. Courts hesitate. Congress postures. Norms evaporate. What remains is an aging strongman visibly deteriorating in public while the machinery of the state continues to move on his impulses.
For allies who still believe the U.S. system provides predictability or security, this is a dangerous illusion. There is no longer a reliable mechanism to forecast American behavior—not economically, diplomatically, or militarily.
The Ideology of Impunity
Listen carefully to the rhetoric coming from this administration.
Stephen Miller declares that the world is governed by force—“the iron laws of power.” Scott Bessent urges other nations not to respond at all, warning that resistance itself is the real danger. America, he suggests, is simply too powerful, too desirable, too strong to be meaningfully challenged.
This is not realism. It is the moral logic of impunity.
It is the argument that strength erases accountability, that attractiveness nullifies harm, that victims should remain calm and grateful because escalation would only make things worse.
History has a word for systems that operate this way. They do not end peacefully.
Sovereignty Is Not a Commodity
Europe is slowly relearning an old lesson: some values cannot be priced into markets. Sovereignty is not a tariff. Freedom is not a trade concession. It is better to be poorer and self‑governing than wealthy and subordinate.
The moment Europe threatened to use its anti‑coercion instrument, Washington backed off. That response revealed the truth beneath the bluster: domination depends on the expectation of submission.
When resistance becomes credible—legal, economic, collective—the spell breaks.
Distraction, Decay, and the Politics of Noise
The constant churn of threats, conflicts, and sudden kinetic actions serves another purpose as well: distraction. Saturation. Confusion. An endless present that leaves no oxygen for accountability.
Americans should ask themselves what requires this level of permanent crisis. What truths remain buried while attention is dragged from outrage to outrage? What would happen if the noise stopped?
A Reckoning, Not a Deal
This is not a negotiation problem. It is a legitimacy problem.
The United States, as currently governed, has become one of the most destabilizing forces in the world—not because it is strong, but because it has abandoned the idea that strength must answer to law.
Freedom and democracy are not bargaining chips. They are defended through collective resistance, institutional courage, and the refusal to normalize abuse—whether personal or geopolitical.
And to the American public, the final truth is the hardest: this did not happen to you. It happened through you.
You were warned. You voted. You excused. You minimized.
History will not ask whether you were tired, angry, or misinformed. It will ask whether you accepted domination as entertainment—and whether you were willing to clean up the consequences.
yours truly,
Adaptation-Guide
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