I was impressed by Brett Stephens’ column in the New York Times today. I read this in conjunction with a news article that described the schizophrenia of the Trump administration about Russia. Trump is eager to be Putin’s friend. Trump admires Putin. Trump will do nothing to offend Putin. But the rest of his administration treats Putin and Russia as the greatest threat to American security. Trump treat the Mueller indictment, still, as a “rigged witch hunt,” but Dan Coats, the conservative Director of National Intelligence, and James Mattis, Secretary of Defense, take it seriously.

All of this confirms my sense that Trump is either a loose cannon, a fool, or Putin’s puppet. Whatever it is, it frightens me for the future of the world, the future of democracy, the future of our nation, and the world my grandchildren will live in. I’m sorry to devote so much space to this foul man who somehow became president, despite the fact that he did not win a majority of the vote. I’m worried. Education issues pale in comparison to the future of the world.

This is what Stephens wrote today.

“Some near-forgotten anniversaries are worth commemorating. One hundred years ago — Bastille Day, 1918 — Theodore Roosevelt’s youngest son, Quentin, was killed in aerial combat at the Second Battle of the Marne. Twenty-six years later, Quentin’s oldest brother, Ted, also died in France, after landing at Utah Beach on D-Day.

“Quentin and Ted are buried side-by-side at the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial in Colleville-sur-Mer. It’s a moving sight for everyone who still believes in the cause for which they and their brothers in arms fought and died — above all, the idea, possibility and preservation of a free world, anchored and inspired by America but not subservient to it.

“In other words, the things that Donald Trump has spent his presidency trashing under the historically sordid banner of “America First.”

“That trashing reached some sort of climax this week with the president’s excruciating tantrum against Germany at the NATO summit in Brussels, followed by his gratuitous humiliation of British Prime Minister Theresa May via an interview in a Murdoch tabloid. Maybe next he’ll propose that Vladimir Putin rejoin the Group of 7 — except he already did that in Canada more than a month ago, right around the time he launched a trade war with Canada, Mexico and the European Union.

“What does all this achieve?

“No doubt just what Trump intends: the collapse of the liberal international order, both in its animating commitment to open societies as well as its defining international institutions — the G-7, NATO, the European Union, the World Trade Organization. Seen in this light, the president’s wretched behavior isn’t — or isn’t merely — the product of a defective personality. It’s the result of a willful ideology.

“So much should be clear by the president’s negotiating style, guaranteed as it is to elicit “no” for an answer.

“It’s fair to expect that other NATO members should spend more of their gross domestic product on defense; and fair to expect, too, that they should reach the 2 percent benchmark sometime sooner than 2024. It isn’t fair to demand, as Trump does, that they reach the 2 percent mark by January, and then increase it to 4 percent.

“It’s fair to say that the U.S. could use its leverage to negotiate more advantageous trade deals. It isn’t fair to insist on politically untenable trade concessions he knows other countries won’t make — a sunset clause for Nafta, for example — in order to destroy these agreements permanently while blaming the other side.

“It’s fair to say that it will be difficult for Britain to negotiate an independent trade agreement with the U.S. if it maintains E.U. rules on trade in goods. But Trump’s goal isn’t to help steer May through Brexit. It’s to bring her government down and replace her with Boris Johnson, because the former foreign secretary “obviously likes me and says very good things about me.”

“Above all, it’s fair to prod and cajole and quarrel with our core allies — in private. But Trump is out to embarrass them in public, putting them to the choice of becoming enemies or toadies, breaking up or sucking up. That’s no doubt fine with him: America First is America Feared. But it is also America hated, and hated with justification. Where’s the upside in that?

“For Trump, the upside is the substitution of a liberal order with an illiberal one, based on conceits about sovereignty, nationality, religion and ethnicity. These are the same conceits that Vladimir Putin has long made his own, which helps explain Trump’s affinity for his Russian counterpart and his distress that Robert Mueller’s investigation “really hurts our relationship with Russia,” as he remarked Friday.

“It also explains his undisguised contempt for contemporary European democracy and his efforts to replace it with something more Trumpian: xenophobic, protectionist and truculent. This is the Europe of Germany’s Alexander Gauland, France’s Marine Le Pen, Britain’s Nigel Farage, Hungary’s Viktor Orban, Poland’s Jaroslaw Kaczynski, and Italy’s Matteo Salvini. Note that the last three are already in power.

“All this must be gratifying to Trump’s sense of his historical importance. For America, it’s a historical disaster. The United States can only lead a world that’s prepared to follow.

“But follow what? Not the rules of trade that America once set but now claims are rigged against it. Not the democratic ideals that America once embodied but now treats with disdain. Not the example of fighting bullies, after it has now become one.

“This will suit Americans for whom the idea of a free world always seemed like a distant abstraction. It will suit Europeans whose anti-Americanism predates Trump’s arrival by decades. And it will especially suit Putin, who knows that an America that stands for its own interests first also stands, and falls, alone. Surely the dead at Colleville-sur-Mer fought for something greater than that.”

The Washington Monthly notes that Trump has done everything that Putin has dreamed of doing in and to Europe and the Western Alliance.

It is true that there will never be a trial of Mueller’s charges against the 12 Russian Military Intelligence officers.

But it does seem strange that we now have–for the first time since World War II–a president determined to derail NATO and the Western Alliance, a president who showers praise on Putin. It is puzzling to our allies, as it is puzzling to many Americans. It is also puzzling to see the Republican party, once the great foe of Russia, heaping scorn on anyone who criticizes Trump and his fondness for Putin. Perhaps Putin has become the great champion of white nationalism, in Russia and elsewhere.

Trump is being met with demonstrations against him wherever he goes. He has spoken out bluntly against the kind of multiculturalism and diversity that we in America used to consider a strength. He seems to be warning Europe that its immigration policies are letting in too many Muslims and too many people of color. Strange words from an American president.

Martin Longman writes:

Donald Trump’s audition seems to be going well. By the time he sits down with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki next week (with no witnesses present) he will have ticked off an impressive list of tasks. Beginning in Brussels, he so disrupted and threatened the NATO alliance that the Pentagon had to go into immediate damage control mode.

All of these things advance Putin’s goals. He wants to discourage the West’s defense spending, undermine NATO and force border states back into vassalage. He wants a weakened European Union, and a thorough cleaving of the U.K. from the E.U. accomplishes that more effectively than anything else could. He wants weak and distracted governments in London and Berlin. And he wants America alienated from their traditional allies so that Europe will be less willing to stand in the way of his plans. All that’s really left is for Trump to cut a deal with Russia over Syria that will facilitate their unfettered control over the country.

Forget the media hype about the transformation of the schools of New Orleans. As Mercedes Schneider writes in this definitive report, the stories are propaganda and, well, lies.

The best scharter schools in the new New Orleans are mainly white. The lowest performing charters are overwhelmingly black. Forty percent of the city’s charters are rated D or F. Most of their students are black.

This is an important read.