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.

Donald Trump entered office with a flurry of executive orders, mandating many things that he had no power to actually mandate. But some of these decrees did have the power to either destroy or disassemble things the government had spent decades building up trust in.

Then Trump brought in Elon Musk to hyperactively wave a chainsaw around and destroy things he and his tech bro team had absolutely no understanding of whatsoever. Mass firings happened across the federal government, with no thought given to which jobs were extraneous and which were core functions that would be sorely needed in a crisis. This often led to people being hastily hired back again after getting rude notices that they had been fired.

Since Trump got tired of Musk and sent him packing, he has been doing all the work of breaking things on his own. He's assisted in this by a team of sycophants who delight in outraging people who actually care about government as a force for good, and so far none of them have managed to get on Trump's bad side at all (there have been no high-level firings or resignations in Trump's cabinet or inner circle to date).

As a result, the United States is now approaching pariah nation status among the rest of the civilized world. We are now seen as not just a rogue nation but as a rogue superpower, which is a frightening thought indeed. Trump is unconstrained by anything -- U.S. law, international law, the laws of war, diplomacy, public opinion -- none of it matters to Trump, who is now operating on one principle alone: "Who's going to stop me?" So far, no one has.

Domestically, Trump has operated as a thugocracy (with a giant helping of kleptocracy on the side). Either you bow down and kiss his feet and sing his praises to the skies, or else Trump will sic the full power of the federal government upon you. His enemies list includes: Democratic-led cities and states, Democratic politicians, Republican politicians who dare to question him on anything, scientists, lawyers, universities, corporations, banks, protesters, leftists, immigrants, church leaders, the press, police that dare to question his (sometimes illegal) orders, actors, musicians, late-night comics, other entertainers, Hollywood, the entertainment industry, sports figures, judges that don't rule the way Trump wants, doctors, economists, pollsters, wind and solar farms, electric vehicle manufacturers (except Elon Musk), Federal Reserve board members who don't do what Trump wants, pundits and other political commentators, and just about anyone else who even hints that everything is not just wonderful with the Dear Leader at the helm, but in fact the most wonderfulest world ever in the history of all mankind.

There are no "adults in the room" in the White House any more. They have been replaced by toadies, sycophants, and other assorted ass-kissers -- most of whom are woefully unqualified for the jobs they have been given, but all of whom are slavishly loyal to Trump in all things. Trump's cabinet meetings are a competition to see who can praise Trump the most, even to ridiculous and laughable heights of rhetoric. You have to think, while watching one of them, how much Joseph Stalin or Chairman Mao would have approved of the fawning obeisances and kowtowing.

The White House press spokespeople offer such fulminating praises of Trump (in response to any question) it resembles the official news channels from North Korea. It wouldn't surprise me a bit, at this point, to hear Trump's press secretary announce: "Our Dear Leader shot a round of golf today and his score was 18. That's right -- he shot a hole-in-one on every hole on the course, even the par-5s. As a result, we have adapted a new title for him: Golf God. Any article which mentions Donald Trump's golfing from now on should speak of him as 'Golf God,' or else the Department of Justice will soon be knocking at your door. You have been warned."

That's a little over the top, admittedly, but not by much (as anyone who has heard a White House press conference or seen a quote from an official administration spokesperson over the past year can testify).

Internationally, Trump has set out to make enemies of our longtime allies and buddy up to our longtime adversaries. Trump promised to end the war in Ukraine on "Day One," and here we are at "Day 365" and nothing has been accomplished (other than routinely humiliating the leader of Ukraine in front of the world's cameras). Donald Trump is right now creating a crisis that may just result in the collapse of NATO, which would be the biggest gift any American president could ever have given to Vladimir Putin.

Trump bombs who he feels like bombing, kills who he feels like killing, and sends the U.S. military to do anything he feels like doing. His "Who's going to stop me?" philosophy is completely unchained in this regard. Right now the world is waiting, aghast, to see if Trump is actually going to forcefully invade and occupy Greenland. What seemed like a joke when it was first reported is now deadly serious.

Trump also has used tariffs to completely destroy any economic goodwill any of the rest of the world ever felt towards America. He uses them as threats, plain and simple. Coupled with the fact that he has completely gutted foreign aid (causing hundreds of thousands of needless deaths all around the world), Trump has dismantled the "soft power" that America has so successfully wielded ever since the end of World War II. Nobody trusts America any more, and they have good reasons for that distrust. American products are being boycotted on a global scale, because nobody wants to have anything to do with us or any company that is based here.

Trump rules by whim. He gets an idea into his head and he demands everyone around him make it happen. It doesn't matter if it is a good idea or an insane idea, once Trump latches onto it he refuses to let go. The only hope (for the really stupid ideas) is that eventually Trump might just forget all about it (which does sometimes happen).

Trump is deteriorating before our very eyes. He cannot manage to stay awake in meetings with dozens of people around him. He has no clue what his own minions are doing, for the most part. And, as always, he absolutely refuses to admit any fault, ever.

Trump's polling numbers are way down, because the American public can see for themselves that everything is nowhere near as rosy as Trump and his apologists keep insisting they are. Trump essentially got elected on two big campaign themes: deporting all immigrants he could find, and bringing the cost of everything way down. He has followed through on the first promise, but the tactics being used are so brutal and inhuman that Trump has turned off many people who supported the general idea of getting immigration under control. Trump has sent in the National Guard to cities where people have the temerity to protest the brutality of ICE, and in one case he even sent in the U.S. Marines. He seems on the brink of doing so again, except this time he will be using the Insurrection Act to do so. Anyone who protests anything Trump and his thugs do is immediately labelled a "domestic terrorist" and is smeared and demonized as an enemy of the state.

Meanwhile, Trump has utterly failed at taming the economy. His trade war has kept inflation roughly at the same level it was when he entered office a year ago, and his tariffs have made certain goods a lot more expensive. Trump promised over and over again on the campaign trail that gasoline prices would be cut in half within the first year, but he's nowhere near that. Gas prices started around $3.10 a gallon (nationwide average) when he took office and stubbornly stayed there for months. Recently they have fallen a bit (hovering around $2.75 or so), but that's a long way away from the $1.55 Trump was promising (where they'd be if they had been cut in half, as Trump promised).

Everything else has gotten more expensive. Especially such staples as food, housing, health insurance, and electricity -- all of which have gone up. Trump is being forced to face this reality, since it has emerged as the biggest issue for the midterm congressional elections, but he still insists that it's all some sort of hoax being perpetrated on Americans by wily Democrats. Trump has quite obviously never set foot in a grocery store in his life, but everyone else does -- and they can see with their own eyes how prices continue to spike.

Even though Republicans tried as hard as they could to rig the midterm elections (by mid-decade redistricting), the safe bet at this point is that Democrats will at least take back control of the U.S. House of Representatives this November. If (and it is a big "if" indeed, sad to say) we actually have free and fair elections this year. Trump is already tossing the idea around of just not holding elections, and who knows how many American cities will have troops patrolling their streets by November? Even if the election is allowed to take place, what will Trump do if the results show a big Republican loss? Will he gracefully admit defeat and congratulate Democratic leaders and politicians for their victory? Or will he fly off into a tantrum of rage and bring the full weight of the federal government down on overturning the election results by any means necessary? That is also a frightening thought, but it's certainly not out of the question with Trump.

It brings up another scary question as well. There are some very big cases that have worked their way through the judicial system and are now before the Supreme Court. The one that scares Trump the most, at this point, is whether the high court will rule that his use of tariffs is unconstitutional (since Congress is supposed to be the one who levies such taxes). During oral arguments in the case, it certainly seemed like a majority of the court wanted to rule against Trump, but so far a decision has not been handed down. What's going to happen if the court does rule against Trump? If the vast majority of the tariffs Trump has imposed (or threatened) are thrown out by the court, it is going to tie Trump's hands in a big way. So how is he going to react? By gracefully admitting defeat and working hard to dismantle all the tariffs he has imposed (and refund all the money he has collected under them), or is he going to fly off the handle and openly defy the Supreme Court?

That's where we are, as a country, folks. Nothing is certain anymore -- not the sanctity of elections, not the balance of powers between the branches, not our constitutional rights to disagree with the government in power. Donald Trump has moved fast, and he has broken more things than can be accurately counted -- some of which will never be fixed again.

And we're only one year in.

One down, three to go.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant