Most of the world is breathing a big sigh of relief right now, while wondering to themselves: "What the heck was that all about?" Well, your guess is as good as mine, since answering that involves plumbing the shallows of Donald Trump's psyche (which is always fraught with uncertainty).

Personally, I am leaning towards: "It was all performative; it was just Trump making sure that all eyes were on him during the Davos conference at the expense of all others," since this fits in perfectly with his own planet-sized ego. He caused a crisis so everyone would freak out, then he "solved" the crisis by backing down. In the meantime, the world's eyes were upon him and his every utterance -- which is exactly what he wanted.

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Rahm Emanuel has apparently launched his 2028 presidential bid. A wonky story about him appeared prominently in today's Washington Post, on the subject of his ideas for fixing education in America. He also recently tossed out a different provocative idea during a recent speech, which further indicates he is in the process of building a political platform to run on. Rahm Emanuel is one of those politicians with an outsized opinion of his own popularity and a strong conviction that the country is ready for him to lead it. That's nothing new -- people like that are a dime a dozen in Washington -- but his new idea is certainly an interesting one: instituting a mandatory retirement age for everyone in the federal government.

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Today marks the end of the first year of Donald Trump's second term in office. One down, three to go.

Looking back, the most notable thing about Trump's first year back was how he has thrown himself fully into the Silicon Valley maxim to "move fast and break things." Trump has indeed moved fast, and he has indeed broken many things -- some of which will take a very long time to put back together and some of which may just stay broken forever.

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Our president's crazy
Did you hear what he said?

-- The Talking Heads
"Making Flippy Floppy"

It seems like the time has now come to at least begin the discussions about invoking the Twenty-Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to remove a president who has, quite obviously, lost all touch with reality.

Some people, when they reach an advanced age, enter into a period some mental health experts call a "second childhood." This is where they lose all adult sense of what is right, wrong, and allowable, and start behaving like a cranky toddler once again. However, it's not accurate to say that Donald Trump is entering into a period of second childhood himself -- but only for the reason that he never seems to have left this cranky toddler phase behind at any point during his entire life. With him, there's nothing "second" about it, in other words.

Most of us learn, somewhere around the age of two or three years old, that sometimes the world says "No," and we have to accept that -- even though we really, really want the answer to be "Yes." When toddlers demand: "Gimme, gimme, gimme!" sometimes adults have to smack their hands down and tell them that no, they can't have that (whatever it is). This is typical human learning and socialization -- a child having to accept the reality that yes, there is a whole rest of the world outside of them; and no, it is not set up to grant your every wish on an immediate basis. Trump never learned this lesson (again, quite obviously).

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In another four days, we will have survived the first full year of Donald Trump's second term in office. That's right -- one down, only three more to go!

(Sigh.)

The defining feature of this past year has been -- just like it was in his first term -- the continuing cycle of being so aghast at Trump's planet-sized ego, flailing insecurities, and toddler-grade tantrums and thinking to oneself: "Well, it surely can't get any worse than this!" -- only to wake up the next morning, read the headlines, and find out that yep, it sure can get worse, in ways you would never have imagined in a million years, pre-Trump.

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Donald Trump is approaching his own Rubicon, it seems. The phrase "crossing the Rubicon" is a metaphor for crossing a line that, once crossed, cannot be uncrossed. "Burning your bridges" is a slightly-different metaphor with a similar meaning. For Trump, the Rubicon he is contemplating crossing is invoking the Insurrection Act to send in U.S. armed forces to an American city.

Once crossed, this will likely become a favorite response for Trump to any protests he doesn't like, which is why I see it as his Rubicon. The Act places not just total control but all decision-making in the hands of the president. He doesn't have to consult Congress or any governor or mayor, the president instead just decides on his own to send in the Marines (or Army or anyone else he feels like) to occupy American territory. Martial law may or may not be invoked in a de jure way, but it will be instituted in a de facto way no matter what. Soldiers armed with weapons of war will patrol the streets and decide what is allowable and what is not.

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The Democratic Party -- and liberalism in general -- needs to take a stand. So far, they have mostly been reactive, fighting back against Donald Trump and his administration. Trump will do something outrageous, and Democrats then react to it. But there's no cohesive plan to any of it -- nothing that ties it all together into an actual political agenda. So it would behoove them to steal a page (actually a whole lot of pages) from the Republicans, and come up with a "Project 2029" document that lays out what their vision of the federal government would be, if they win the White House and Congress.

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Last week, I wrote an article noting that Republicans in Congress were showing signs of life, by standing up for themselves instead of just allowing Donald Trump to do whatever he feels like doing at any particular moment. I ended by wondering if this would prove to be a trend, since Republicans in Congress will have to face their voters later this year in the midterm elections -- meaning their own self-interest (in getting re-elected) might become more important to them than appeasing Trump. Several developments that seem to point to Republicans being more willing to contradict Trump have appeared since then, although none of them were as dramatic as actually voting against Trump's wishes (as happened last week). But they're still worth pointing out.

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Metaphorically, you could go with either pigs or clocks. Take your choice: "Even a blind pig can sometimes find an acorn," or: "Even a stopped clock is right twice a day." But perhaps that's too dismissive, since Donald Trump suddenly championing an issue that originated among progressive Democrats is not really just random chance. Trump is doing so for his own political benefit, plain and simple. But in this particular case, progressives should still try to work with him to see if some sort of deal could actually be achieved. Because the biggest beneficiary could be the American people.

Right now, Trump is worried -- and he has every right to be. He is worried about Republicans' chances in the midterm elections, and he deeply fears Democrats retaking control of the House (or perhaps even the Senate, too). He knows Congress won't continue to act as his doormat for the final two years of his term if that happens. And Trump also knows he is most vulnerable on the economy.

Trump campaigned in 2024 on how he would magically bring down prices on everything "on Day One." We are approaching the milestone of his first year in office, however, and prices on all sorts of things remain high -- and they've gotten worse due to Trump's tariffs (which are nothing more than a tax on American consumers). So he is floundering around seeking some quick fix that will make him more popular on the economic front. He's recently latched onto a number of ideas, and this weekend floated a new one: a one-year limitation on credit card companies to charge no more than 10 percent interest.

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It has been a week of stunning events and dangerous rhetorical excesses. Currently the political debate is divided over the question of when government officials can use deadly force against people who are protesting or ignoring orders from those officials. This question is steeped in politics, as it so often is. Whether a person deserves death at the hands of the state almost always has a political element to it, which is not exactly a new thing.

Here's a quick test, just to prove the point. If there is an unruly crowd of people hurling not just verbal abuse but physical objects -- snowballs loaded with ice, chunks of rock pried up from the street, frozen horse manure, and anything else they can get their hands on and throw -- at a contingent of government officers, some of whom were being knocked to the ground and injured by the incoming rain of projectiles, would they be justified if they shot into the crowd in their own self-defense -- and killed some of the crowd?

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