This post first appeared at TomDis­patch.

Our peace president, the only one who has ever called for nuclear “abolition,” is now presiding over the early stages of a trillion-dollar modernization of that very arsenal.

Recent­ly, sort­ing through a pile of old children’s books, I came across a vol­ume, That Makes Me Mad!, which brought back mem­o­ries. Writ­ten by Steve Kroll, a long-dead friend, it focused on the eter­nal­ly frus­trat­ing every­day adven­tures of Nina, a lit­tle girl whose life reg­u­lar­ly meets com­mon­place road­blocks, at which point she always says… well, you can guess from the title! Vivid parental mem­o­ries of anoth­er age instant­ly flood­ed back — of my daugh­ter (now read­ing such books to her own son) sit­ting beside me at age five and hit­ting that repeat­ed line with such mind-blow­ing, ear-crush­ing gus­to that you knew it spoke to the every­day frus­tra­tions of her life, to what made her mad.

Three decades lat­er, in an almost unimag­in­ably dif­fer­ent Amer­i­ca, on pick­ing up that book I sud­den­ly real­ized that, when­ev­er I fol­low the news online, on TV, or — and for­give me for this but I’m 72 and still trapped in anoth­er era — on paper, I have a sim­i­lar­ly Nina-esque urge. Only the line I’ve come up with for it is (with a tip of the hat to Steve Kroll) ​“You must be kid­ding!”

Here are a few recent exam­ples from the world of Amer­i­can-style war and peace. Con­sid­er these as ran­dom illus­tra­tions, giv­en that, in the age of Trump, just about every­thing that hap­pens is out-of-this-world absurd and would serve per­fect­ly well. If you’re in the mood, feel free to shout out that line with me as we go.

1) Nuk­ing the Plan­et: I’m sure you remem­ber Barack Oba­ma, the guy who entered the Oval Office pledg­ing to work toward ​“a nuclear-free world.” You know, the pres­i­dent who trav­eled to Prague in 2009 to say stir­ring­ly: ​“So today, I state clear­ly and with con­vic­tion Amer­i­ca’s com­mit­ment to seek the peace and secu­ri­ty of a world with­out nuclear weapons. … To put an end to Cold War think­ing, we will reduce the role of nuclear weapons in our nation­al secu­ri­ty strat­e­gy, and urge oth­ers to do the same.” That same year, he was award­ed the Nobel Prize large­ly for what he might still do, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the nuclear realm. Of course, that was all so 2009!

Almost two terms in the Oval Office lat­er, our peace pres­i­dent, the only one who has ever called for nuclear ​“abo­li­tion” — and whose admin­is­tra­tion has retired few­er weapons in our nuclear arse­nal than any oth­er in the post-Cold War era — is now pre­sid­ing over the ear­ly stages of a tril­lion-dol­lar mod­ern­iza­tion of that very arse­nal. (And that tril­lion-dol­lar price tag comes, of course, before the inevitable cost over­runs even begin.) It includes full-scale work on the cre­ation of a ​“pre­ci­sion-guid­ed” nuclear weapon with a ​“dial-back” low­er yield option. Such a weapon would poten­tial­ly bring nukes to the bat­tle­field in a first-use way, some­thing the U.S. is proud­ly pio­neer­ing.

And that brings me to the Sep­tem­ber 6th front-page sto­ry in the New York Times that caught my eye. Think of it as the icing on the Oba­ma era nuclear cake. Its head­line: ​“Oba­ma Unlike­ly to Vow No First Use of Nuclear Weapons.” Admit­ted­ly, if made, such a vow could be reversed by any future pres­i­dent. Still, report­ed­ly for fear that a pledge not to ini­ti­ate a nuclear war would ​“under­mine allies and embold­en Rus­sia and Chi­na … while Rus­sia is run­ning prac­tice bomb­ing runs over Europe and Chi­na is expand­ing its reach in the South Chi­na Sea,” the pres­i­dent has backed down on issu­ing such a vow. In trans­la­tion: the only coun­try that has ever used such weapon­ry will remain on the record as ready and will­ing to do so again with­out nuclear provo­ca­tion, an act that, it is now believed in Wash­ing­ton, would cre­ate a calmer planet.

You must be kidding!

2) Plain Old Bomb­ing: Recall that in Octo­ber 2001, when the Bush admin­is­tra­tion launched its inva­sion of Afghanistan, the U.S. was bomb­ing no oth­er large­ly Islam­ic coun­try. In fact, it was bomb­ing no oth­er coun­try at all. Afghanistan was quick­ly ​“lib­er­at­ed,” the Tal­iban crushed, al-Qae­da put to flight, and that was that, or so it then seemed.

On Sep­tem­ber 8th, almost 15 years lat­er, the Wash­ing­ton Post report­ed that, over a sin­gle week­end and in a ​“flur­ry” of activ­i­ty, the U.S. had dropped bombs on, or fired mis­siles at, six large­ly Islam­ic coun­tries: Iraq, Syr­ia, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, and Soma­lia. (And it might have been sev­en if the CIA hadn’t grown a lit­tle rusty when it comes to the drone strikes in Pakistan’s trib­al bor­der­lands that it’s launched repeat­ed­ly through­out these years.) In the same spir­it, the pres­i­dent who swore he would end the U.S. war in Iraq and, by the time he left office, do the same in Afghanistan, is now over­see­ing Amer­i­can bomb­ing cam­paigns in Iraq and Syr­ia which are loos­ing close to 25,000 weapons a year on those coun­tries. Only recent­ly, in order to facil­i­tate the fur­ther pros­e­cu­tion of the longest war in our his­to­ry, the pres­i­dent who announced that his coun­try had end­ed its ​“com­bat mis­sion” in Afghanistan in 2014, has once again deployed the U.S. mil­i­tary in a com­bat role and has done the same with the U.S. Air Force. For that, B‑52s (of Viet­nam infamy) were returned to action there, as well as in Iraq and Syr­ia, after a decade of retire­ment. In the Pen­ta­gon, mil­i­tary fig­ures are now talk­ing about ​“gen­er­a­tional” war in Afghanistan — well into the 2020s.

Mean­while, Pres­i­dent Oba­ma has per­son­al­ly helped pio­neer a new form of war­fare that will not long remain a large­ly Amer­i­can pos­ses­sion. It involves mis­sile-armed drones, high-tech weapons that promise a world of no-casu­al­ty-con­flict (for the Amer­i­can mil­i­tary and the CIA), and adds up to a per­ma­nent glob­al killing machine for tak­ing out ter­ror lead­ers, ​“lieu­tenants,” and ​“mil­i­tants.” Well beyond offi­cial Amer­i­can war zones, U.S. drones reg­u­lar­ly cross bor­ders, infring­ing on nation­al sov­er­eign­ty through­out the Greater Mid­dle East and parts of Africa, to assas­si­nate any­one the pres­i­dent and his col­leagues decide needs to die, Amer­i­can cit­i­zen or oth­er­wise (plus, of course, any­one who hap­pens to be in the vicin­i­ty). With its White House ​“kill list” and its ​“ter­ror Tues­day” meet­ings, the drone pro­gram, promis­ing ​“sur­gi­cal” hunt­ing-and-killing action, has blurred the line between war and peace, while being nor­mal­ized in these years. A pres­i­dent is now not just com­man­der-in-chief but assas­sin-in-chief, a role that no imag­in­able future pres­i­dent is like­ly to reject. Assas­si­na­tion, pre­vi­ous­ly an ille­gal act, has become the heart and soul of Washington’s way of life and of a way of war that only seems to spread con­flict further.

You must be kid­ding!

3) The Well-Oiled Machin­ery of Pri­va­tized War: And speak­ing of drones, as the New York Times report­ed on Sep­tem­ber 5th, the U.S. drone pro­gram does have one prob­lem: a lack of pilots. It has ramped up quick­ly in these years and, in the process, the pres­sures on its pilots and oth­er per­son­nel have only grown, includ­ing post-trau­mat­ic stress over killing civil­ians thou­sands of miles away via com­put­er screen. As a result, the Air Force has been los­ing those pilots fast. For­tu­nate­ly, a solu­tion is on the hori­zon. That ser­vice has begun fill­ing its pilot gap by going the route of the rest of the mil­i­tary in these years — turn­ing to pri­vate con­trac­tors for help. Such pilots and oth­er per­son­nel are, how­ev­er, paid high­er salaries and cost more mon­ey. The con­trac­tors, in turn, have been hir­ing the only avail­able per­son­nel around, the ones trained by… yep, you guessed it, the Air Force. The result may be an even greater drain on Air Force drone pilots eager for increased pay for grim work and… well, I think you can see just how the well-oiled machin­ery of pri­va­tized war is like­ly to work here and who’s going to pay for it.

You must be kidding!

4) Sell­ing Arms As If There Were No Tomor­row: In a recent report for the Cen­ter for Inter­na­tion­al Pol­i­cy, arms expert William Har­tung offered a stun­ning fig­ure on U.S. arms sales to Sau­di Ara­bia. ​“Since tak­ing office in Jan­u­ary 2009,” he wrote, ​“the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion has offered over $115 bil­lion worth of weapons to Sau­di Ara­bia in 42 sep­a­rate deals, more than any U.S. admin­is­tra­tion in the his­to­ry of the U.S.-Saudi rela­tion­ship. The major­i­ty of this equip­ment is still in the pipeline, and could tie the Unit­ed States to the Sau­di mil­i­tary for years to come.” Think about that for a moment: $115 bil­lion for every­thing from small arms to tanks, com­bat air­craft, clus­ter bombs, and air-to-ground mis­siles (weapon­ry now being used to slaugh­ter civil­ians in neigh­bor­ing Yemen).

Of course, how else can the U.S. keep its near monop­oly on the glob­al arms trade and ensure that two sets of prod­ucts — Hol­ly­wood movies and U.S. weapon­ry — will dom­i­nate the world’s busi­ness in things that go boom in the night? It’s a record to be proud of, espe­cial­ly since putting every advanced weapon imag­in­able in the hands of the Saud­is will obvi­ous­ly help bring peace to a roiled region of the plan­et. (And if you arm the Saud­is, you bet­ter do no less for the Israelis, hence the mind-bog­gling $38 bil­lion in mil­i­tary aid the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion recent­ly signed on to for the next decade, the most Wash­ing­ton has ever offered any coun­try, ensur­ing that arms will be fly­ing into the Mid­dle East, lit­er­al­ly and fig­u­ra­tive­ly, for years to come.)

Blessed indeed are the peace­mak­ers — and of course you know that by ​“peace­mak­er” I mean the clas­sic revolver that ​“won the West.”

Put anoth­er way…

You must be kidding!

5) The Race for the Gen­er­als: I mean, who’s got the biggest…

… list of retired gen­er­als and admi­rals? Does it sur­prise you that there are at least 198 retired com­man­ders float­ing around in their gold­en para­chutes, many undoubt­ed­ly still embed­ded in the mil­i­tary-indus­tri­al com­plex on cor­po­rate boards and the like, eager to enroll in the Trump and Clin­ton cam­paigns? Trump went first, releas­ing an ​“open let­ter” signed by 88 gen­er­als and admi­rals who were brave­ly stand­ing up to reverse the ​“hol­low­ing out of our mil­i­tary” and to ​“secure our bor­ders, to defeat our Islam­ic suprema­cist adver­saries, and restore law and order domes­ti­cal­ly.” (Par­tial trans­la­tion: pour yet more mon­ey into our mil­i­tary as The Don­ald has promised to do.) They includ­ed such house­hold names as Major Gen­er­al Joe Arbuck­le, Rear Admi­ral James H. Flat­ley III, and Brigadier Gen­er­al Mark D. Scra­ba — or, hey!, one guy you might even remem­ber: Lieu­tenant Gen­er­al William (“Jer­ry”) Boykin, the evan­gel­i­cal cru­sad­er who made the news in 2003 by claim­ing of a for­mer Soma­li oppo­nent, ​“I knew that my God was big­ger than his. I knew that my God was a real God, and his was an idol.”

Some­how, those 88 Trumpian mil­i­tary types assumed­ly crawled out of ​“the rub­ble” under which, as The Don­ald informed us recent­ly, the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion has left the Amer­i­can high com­mand. His crew, how­ev­er, is undoubt­ed­ly not the ​“embar­rass­ment” he refers to when talk­ing about Amer­i­can gen­er­al­ship in these years.

Mean­while, the Clin­tonites struck back with a list of 95, ​“includ­ing a num­ber of 4‑star gen­er­als,” many direct­ly from under that rub­ble, and with­in the week had added 15 more to hit 110. Mean­while, mem­bers of the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty and the rest of the nation­al secu­ri­ty state, for­mer pres­i­den­tial advis­ers and oth­er offi­cials, drum-beat­ing neo­cons, and strate­gists of every sort from America’s dis­as­trous wars of the last 15 years hus­tled to line up behind Hillary or The Donald.

If noth­ing else, all of it was a reminder of the bloat­ed size and ever-increas­ing cen­tral­i­ty of the post‑9/​11 nation­al secu­ri­ty state and the mil­i­tary-indus­tri­al com­plex that goes with it. The ques­tion is: Does it inspire you with con­fi­dence in our can­di­dates, or leave you saying…

You must be kidding!

6) Con­flicts of Inter­est and Access to the Oval Office: Let’s put aside a pos­si­ble pre­emp­tive $25,000 bribe to Florida’s attor­ney gen­er­al from the Don­ald J. Trump Foun­da­tion to pre­vent an inves­ti­ga­tion of a scam oper­a­tion, Trump ​“Uni­ver­si­ty.” If that ​“dona­tion” to a polit­i­cal action com­mit­tee does turn out to have been a bribe, no one should be sur­prised, giv­en that The Don­ald has long been a walk­ing Ponzi scheme. Thanks to a recent superb inves­tiga­tive report by Kurt Eichen­wald of Newsweek, con­sid­er instead what it might mean for him to enter the Oval Office when it comes to con­flicts of inter­est and the ​“nation­al secu­ri­ty” of the coun­try. Eichen­wald con­cludes that Trump would be ​“the most con­flict­ed pres­i­dent in Amer­i­can his­to­ry,” since the Trump Orga­ni­za­tion has ​“deep ties to glob­al financiers, for­eign politi­cians, and even crim­i­nals” in both allied and ene­my coun­tries. Almost any for­eign pol­i­cy deci­sion he might make could hurt or enrich his own busi­ness­es. There would, in essence, be no way to divest him­self and his fam­i­ly from the inter­na­tion­al Trump brand­ing machine. (Think Trump U. writ large.) And you hard­ly need ask your­self whether The Don­ald would ​“act in the inter­ests of the Unit­ed States or his wal­let,” giv­en his pri­or sin­gle-mind­ed pur­suit of self-enrichment.

So much for con­flicts of inter­est, what about access? That, of course, brings up the Clin­tons, who, between 2001 and the moment Hillary announced her can­di­da­cy for pres­i­dent, man­aged to take in $153 mil­lion dol­lars (yes, that is not a mis­print) for a com­bined 729 speech­es at an aver­age fee of $210,795. That includes Hillary’s 20-minute speech to eBay’s Wom­en’s Ini­tia­tive Net­work Sum­mit in March 2015 for a report­ed $315,000 just a month before she made her announce­ment. It’s obvi­ous­ly not Hillary’s (or Bill’s) gold­en words that cor­po­rate exec­u­tives tru­ly care about and are will­ing to pay the big bucks for, but the hope of acces­si­bil­i­ty to both a past and a pos­si­ble future pres­i­dent. After all, in the world of busi­ness, no one ever thinks they’re pay­ing good mon­ey for nothing.

Do I need to say more than…

You must be kidding!

Of course, I could go on. I could bring up a Con­gress seem­ing­ly inca­pable of pass­ing a bill to fund a gov­ern­ment effort to pre­vent the Zika virus from spread­ing wild­ly in parts of this coun­try. (You must be kid­ding!) I could dis­cuss how the media fell face first into an SUV—NBC Night­ly News, which I watch, used the video of Hillary Clin­ton stum­bling and almost falling into that van, by my rough count, 15 times over four nights — and what it tells us about news ​“cov­er­age” these days. (You must be kid­ding!) I could start in on the con­stant polls that flood our lives by con­fess­ing that I’m an addict and plan on join­ing Pollers Anony­mous on Novem­ber 9th, and then con­sid­er what it means to have such polls, and polls of polls, inun­date us dai­ly, teach­ing us about favorable/​unfavorable splits, and offer­ing end­less­ly vary­ing snap­shots of how we might or might not vote and which of us might or might not do it day so long before we ever hit a vot­ing booth. (You must be kid­ding!) Or I could bring up the way, after five years of assid­u­ous research, Don­ald Trump grudg­ing­ly acknowl­edged that Barack Oba­ma was born in the Unit­ed States and then essen­tial­ly blamed the birther move­ment on Hillary Clin­ton. (You must be kid­ding!)

I could, in oth­er words, con­tin­ue wel­com­ing you into an increas­ing­ly bizarre Amer­i­can land­scape of war and peace (with­out a Tol­stoy in sight).

Still, enough is enough, don’t you think? So let me stop here and, just for the hell of it, join me one last time in chant­i­ng: You must be kidding!