Our family just returned from a trip to Egypt where we learned a lot about Pharaohs who were the divine rulers, heads of state, and religious leaders of ancient Egypt, seen as gods on Earth who maintained cosmic order (Ma’at) and governed through vast bureaucracies. The title means “great house,” referring to the palace, and was used for rulers from the first dynasty (around 3100 BCE) through Cleopatra, the last pharaoh. Famous pharaohs include Narmer (unifier), Hatshepsut (female pharaoh), Akhenaten (religious reformer), Tutankhamun (King Tut), and Ramesses II (the Great).
Pharaohs had total power. They owned all the land in Egypt and in conquered territories, so if you didn’t help build their pyramids, slave or not, you were up shit’s creek without an oar. Pharaohs were the deciders who launched wars, grabbed the land they wanted to have, were rewarded with obedience and bounty, took slaves and ordered everyone else around. Pharaohs were the ultimate unitary executive.
This is what Donald Trump not only wants but is getting because our Republican-led congress has rolled over and is playing dead, and we have a Supreme Court that keeps expanding Trump’s excessive power way beyond the check and balance system created by our founding fathers. This right wing Court seems to be all in on the idea of an all powerful “unitary executive”. (Although, it looks like the Supremes might not let Trump remove Lisa Cook from the Fed which would tell us that the financial community understands the danger of a unitary executive king or pharaoh running this country when it comes to installing loyalists instead of independent decision makers in key government agencies that impact THEM.)
A lot of MAGAs, tech bros (including Curtis Yarvin, JD Vance and Elon Musk) and the rich and powerful fossil fuel industry mavens might think that an all-powerful head of state who gets everything his heart desires is a good thing because that means that if they stay on the good side of Trump THEY will get whatever they want too. But Egyptian history has some important lessons for us. A lot depends on WHO that leader is and how sane, fact based and balanced he or she is. Trump is getting stranger and crazier by the day.
What happens to a country and the world when a king, a pharaoh, has immense power and is…., let’s face it…crazy and unmoored to reality and truth, uses bad judgement, seeks retribution and demands everyone live in a paranoid alternate reality with him? The short answer is when a person like this has total control, you risk the tragic downfall of the entire kingdom because the bad decisions of an all powerful destructive leader damage the economy, create social unrest and turn other countries, who had been allies, into enemies instead.
FIRST THINGS FIRST: WE NEED TO FACE IT–TRUMP IS OFF HIS ROCKER
Here is what Trump has been up to just in the last few days.
Politico reports:
In a series of extraordinary late night statements, the president doubled down on his threats to take over Greenland — and Canada — while at turns mocking, threatening and humiliating the European leaders who have resisted his advances. This crisis feels like it’s spiraling out of control.
FIRST UP: Speaking in Miami after attending last night’s college football national championship game, Trump confirmed he has invited Russian President Vladimir Putin to join his Gaza Board of Peace. You can imagine the reaction in Europe, where Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has cost hundreds of thousands of lives. Only last night, Putin’s military was bombing residential areas across Kyiv as thousands of freezing people cowered without water or power.
Trump then threatened to slap France with a 200-percent tariff on wine and Champagne after learning French President Emmanuel Macron is snubbing the same board over fears it seeks to ape and overshadow the U.N. — concerns widely shared around Europe, per the FT.
After boarding Air Force One, a still-rankled Trump published a private text message from Macron showing the French president reaching out to him in friendly terms. In the text, Macron offers to work closely with Trump on Middle Eastern projects and to host emergency G7 talks in Paris later this week. “I do not understand what you are doing on Greenland,” Macron writes. A French official told POLITICO the text is genuine.
By 1 a.m., Trump was busily posting AI-generated images to illustrate his designs on Greenland — one showing him planting a U.S. flag on the island, a second of him showing a modified map of the Americas to European leaders in which the U.S. owns Greenland, Canada and Venezuela.
Trump then revealed a conversation on Greenland with NATO chief Mark Rutte, and confirmed he’ll hold talks “with the various parties” in Davos. “Greenland is imperative for National and World Security. There can be no going back,” Trump wrote. (The president also leaked a fawning private text message from Rutte for good measure.)
Trump then spoke in Davos, Switzerland. He did not change his mind about the US needing to acquire Greenland. But, at least for now, he said he would not resort to force to get it. Instead, he threatened economic pain for Europe. Trump’s aggressive stance has shocked our allies and is upending the accepted world order that countries agreed to maintain post World War II . Trump has joined Putin and Xi when it comes to a new world order which is really an old world order: namely, Might makes right. Just like the pharaohs in Egypt.
PARALLELS BETWEEN EGYPT’S FALL AND THE US TODAY
While the pharaohs were seen as divine rulers, their power was ultimately grounded in the strength of the Egyptian economy and the stability of their society. As internal pressures began to mount, the foundations of their rule began to crumble.
a) Economic Instability
Egypt: Egypt’s prosperity was built on the agricultural wealth of the Nile Valley. However, over time, economic disparities grew, and the pharaohs, often driven by grand building projects and wars, struggled to manage resources effectively.
Corruption within the government also played a role, diverting funds from essential services and weakening the economy. As resources dwindled and the economy faltered, discontent grew among the populace.
United States: Donald Trump, like the Egyptian pharaohs, is into expansive building projects that satisfy his ego and glorify himself. They not only include his overly grand ballroom addition on the East Wing but his aggressive expansionistic designs on Greenland, Venezuela, Panama, Cuba and Canada, which will lead to war not peace if he continues to pursue them. As with Egypt before the fall, many of Trump’s ventures create economic instability. His tariff policies, for example, add to the economic disparities between the haves and have nots in America.
Tom Fairless of the Wall Street Journal reported that, contrary to Trump’s repeated assertions, U.S. consumers and importers—not foreign countries—are the ones who have paid for Trump’s tariff war. The Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a German think tank, echoed the findings of Yale and Harvard Business School economists, confirming that American consumers and importers have absorbed 96% of the cost of Trump’s tariffs.
That added expense is a heavy burden on American consumers, many who are already losing their health care coverage because of the big ugly bill passed by Republicans makes it too expensive for them. In addition, Americans face a job market disrupted by AI technology which is eliminating numerous white collar jobs, at least in the short run. American consumerism brought our country economic power and our strong post war alliances brought us stability. But, thanks to Trump, economic INstability is on the horizon, along with a loss of trust that we had built up over decades with our global allies.
The New York Times reports that: The S&P 500 dropped over 2 percent for the first time since October, as investors reacted to Mr. Trump’s increasing threat of higher tariffs on European allies unless they supported his plans for America to take control of Greenland. The Vix volatility index, known as Wall Street’s fear gauge, rose to its highest level since November.
Even if Trump does not pursue Greenland right away, he is not going to give up this goal. We might see him send those 1500 Alaskan troops into Minnesota using the Insurrection Act only to send them afterwards into Greenland. Trump has a track record of pretending he is complying and then doing what he wanted to do all along. He did that with Venezuela, for example. I don’t think anyone should have a party to celebrate that Trump has given up on acquiring Greenland.
Corruption of the pharaoh and his administration was another destabilizer. Trump is shockingly corrupt. He is estimated to have gained over 4 trillion dollars through a variety of corrupt actions that includes lawsuits against entities that are forced to pay him to avoid negative consequences from the government- extortionate practices. And invitations for countries and rich guys to give him deals that allow him to gain vast wealth as president. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/07/trump-corruption-foreign-regimes/683487/
b) Political Instability
Egypt: Power struggles within the royal family and court led to instability and weakened the pharaoh’s authority. The influence of powerful officials and religious leaders also challenged the pharaoh’s centralized control, creating a complex web of political intrigue that undermined the stability of the state.
United States: There are differing ideas about what America First really means. The Economist has an article that reports that there are MAGA divisions in its approach to foreign policy. Donald Trump is an enigma when it comes to his need to possess and dominate large land masses like Greenland. What is behind his urgent need to grab land? How does it benefit Americans First? And what in the world does it have to do with the Nobel Peace prize that Trump claims Norway should have given him when Norway doesn’t even determine who gets that prize?! Let’s face it. Trump really seems to have gone off the deep end. The man seems to lapse in and out of crazy and turns into a spoiled rich kid who has been denied his candy when he doesn’t get his way. And yet he is the all powerful pharaoh leading us. We are stuck with him.
Future historians may well write about how our country became a 3rd world country because we elected a man voters thought would give them greater stability but whose need for domination and retribution was vast and his inability to apply good judgement and listen to reason created overwhelming instability in America and the world. The United States has been able to absorb a lot of uncertainty in the beginning of Trump 2.o, but the longer Trump stays on as our mad king with an inept cabinet carrying out his every whim, the closer we get to our own downfall.
c) Social Tensions
Egypt: The gap between the wealthy elite and the common people continued to widen in Egypt before it fell. Peasant farmers, the backbone of the Egyptian economy, bore the brunt of the economic hardships, facing increasing taxes and the threat of forced labor. Their dissatisfaction with the pharaohs’ rule eventually brewed into unrest and even uprisings, further destabilizing the nation.
United States: Social tensions in our country have not been this bad since the Civil War. Trump’s draconian, unhinged, vicious immigration efforts are direct assaults on American citizens not only immigrants, causing anger and shock in formerly safe, well-functioning American suburbs and communities. ICE and border patrol agents egged on by Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem are upending American life. As a result, Americans are rising up against Trump and his administration. What were formerly a positive issues for Trump: immigration enforcement and the economy, have turned negative.
The Associated Press finds that just 38 percent approve of how Trump is handling immigration. His deportations are also seeping into the U.S. economy by raising prices on groceries as farms lose their workers. The vast majority arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement also have no criminal records, according to the Migration Policy Institute.
The Economist also reports that Trump’s approval numbers are cratering.
At the beginning of Mr Trump’s second term his net approval rating was 2. It has now fallen to -19, the lowest it has been this term. A week into Mr Trump’s term 37% of Americans thought the country was headed in the right direction while 50% thought it was on the wrong track. Those numbers are now 31% and 61% respectively.
d) External Pressure From Other Countries
Egypt: As Egypt’s power waned, neighboring empires emerged as formidable foes, challenging its dominance in the ancient world.
United States: What Trump is doing on the world stage will empower China and Russia and undermine our longstanding European alliances. Europe, seeking a stable partner for trade, has entered into trade agreements with China. Canada is doing the same thing. The more Trump insults and mocks our allies, the more our country will stand alone on the world stage, friendless, forsaken and failing, thanks to Trump and our spineless congress and Supreme Court.
WHEN WILL THE WORLD SAY WHAT IS OBVIOUS?
THIS IS NOT NORMAL. FACE THE TRUTH.
The leader of the strongest country in the world with the most powerful military is a demented, rapidly aging man who has no guardrails or minders. He is paranoid, hateful, demanding, aggrieved, sadistic, corrupt, self-centered and domineering. He is also thin skinned. He gets triggered by everyone who does not bow down to him (for obstructing his will) and triggered by those who do bow down to him (for being weak). He demands the world conform to the vision HE has constructed in his mind through rose tinted glasses- but it is a world that never really existed except in his mind.
Trump will continue to torment our country and the rest of the world as long as he is unopposed in his power as president. He is like those Egyptian pharaohs who were exulted in power as their empires collapsed.
The only answer to this is push back. Europe just tried that at Davos and it worked- at least for now. Trump pulled back. But the push back has to be as relentless as Trump is. Universities, Democrats, and any Republicans with guts, corporations, media, law firms, community groups and average Americans all have to pull together and unite in opposition.