Everything Everywhere All At Once

By Ross Bogen

Do the events of the last year, particularly those involving the federal government, remind you of a movie you might have seen a little while ago? Or maybe just the title. In truth, little of the content of the 2022 Oscar-winning A24 film is directly related to our current situation, although there are many underlying resonances: existential angst, nihilism, surrealism, and the whole parallel-reality thing.

But mainly, it is the cognitive overload, not to mention dissonance, permeating recent events that feels so familiar.

In response, many social observers, political commentators, and pundits have tried to identify underlying patterns in the chaos, to explain it at least partially, if not fully understand it.

One useful example is Robert Reich’s proposed Four Axioms for Interpreting Trump. Beyond their explanatory value, Reich uses the fourth axiom, “Whenever he attacks an information source, it contains some truth he fears,” as a springboard to highlight the Administration’s declining poll numbers, an effective application.

Reich also invited readers to share additional axioms, and as it happens, I have one that I think helps frame what we have learned over the last year.

Axiom #5: The Transactional Imperative.

Trump has no ideological orientation. Everything he does either benefits him directly, or benefits someone he wishes to control by indebting them to him, or both.

Corollary: The “benefits” that motivate Trump are either money, or props for his fragile, inflated ego.

Take the Gaza “ceasefire.” It offered Trump a token to use with Netanyahu, and perhaps a point toward a “Nobel” Peace Prize, or at least he thought so. His Board of Peace (sic) appears intended for the same purpose, though it may also carry a financial return. What do you suppose will happens to the $1 billion initiation fee he is reportedly charging?

Once you apply the axiom, the pattern becomes easier, even perversely fun, to spot. Try it with DOGE, the Kennedy Center, RFK Jr., tariffs. It works with almost anything.

Which brings us to Venezuela.

The official justification, drugs, terrorism, smuggler speedboats, was laughable, but sufficient for an audience willing to suspend critical thinking. It served as pretext for the real objective: the attempted extraction of Maduro.

While Maduro is undeniably a brutal dictator, the operation carried extraordinary risk. Potential charges included murder, piracy, unlawful use of military force, and violation of sovereignty, not to mention the risk of failure itself. What possible return justified that exposure?

The second justification, regime change, quickly revealed itself as hollow. The regime remains intact, but newly “cooperative.” The price of that cooperation appears to be oil.

Trump initially framed the move as returning assets to U.S. oil companies displaced by nationalization, a tidy way to reward allies. But those companies largely declined, for good reason. Venezuelan crude is expensive, dirty, politically risky, and requires massive long-term investment.

In the short term, however, Trump appears to have benefited by appropriating already-extracted oil, including from tankers on the high seas. Piracy, in plain terms, in addition to the charges above. Proceeds are reportedly sitting in Qatari banks. The grand favor to fossil-fuel interests fizzled, but Trump and “Lil’ Marco” may still be laughing all the way to Doha.

Rubio, meanwhile, may be the clearest beneficiary, strategically if not financially. Weakening Venezuela also weakens Cuba, a long-held objective of his. In the end, it really was about oil, just not in the way advertised.

Next came Greenland.

At first, it felt like a punchline, a remnant of Trump’s Canada fixation and fodder for late-night comics. But the idea resurfaced, complete with familiar pretexts: national security and rare-earth minerals. Both arguments collapsed under scrutiny. The U.S. already enjoys military access under treaty, and Greenland would gladly accept outside investment without ceding ownership.

So what was the point?

Here is the corollary I initially left out: distraction.

Greenland diverted attention from the Epstein files. Before Trump’s Emily-Latella-style “never mind” in Davos, that issue had dominated coverage. Greenland also helped eclipse the Renee Good murder, perhaps intentionally.

But distractions eventually run out.

When Alex Pretti was killed by ICE in Minneapolis, Trump defaulted to the one ideological pillar that has supported his political career: demonizing immigrants. The administration overreached grotesquely, attempting to vilify Pretti as they had Renee Good. The narrative collapsed under its own absurdity, alienating both critics on the left and gun-rights absolutists on the right.

And so we may be approaching what some hope is a turning point.

ICE rhetoric has softened, Democrats secured a tactical win during Federal Shutdown II, and the administration appears increasingly reactive. Still, New Yorker columnist Susan Glasser cautions against premature optimism, noting that Trump has survived countless “endings” before. Damage control, she reminds us, is his native state.

Yet cracks are visible. The DOJ’s botched Epstein file release, redacted so sloppily it exposed survivors, reignited outrage. A federal judge ordered ICE to release a detained five-year-old and his father, issuing a blistering rebuke the administration conspicuously did not attack. And in Texas, a Democrat flipped a deep-red state senate seat by a margin swing exceeding 30 points.

So we watch for more signs. We press where we can. And we hope that those opposing this chaos recognize the narrow footholds we have carved, and use them.

Which brings to mind another movie title, just as disconnected in plot but oddly fitting all the same.

I wonder if Silver Linings Playbook is on Netflix...