US under Donald Trump is already in Stone Age
If we look closely at the current United States landscape under the Trumpian ‘MAGA’ era, a very obvious realization emerges: America has already gone back to the Stone Age
As NASA’s Artemis 2 was lifting off from a launchpad in Florida on its way to the Moon, down below on Earth, US President Donald Trump was threatening to bomb Iran back to the ‘Stone Age’. That is, if they didn’t agree to his terms for a deal.
It was a classic American trope — the idea that modernity on our planet is a fragile glass ornament held in place by the grace of U.S. power. And that, with enough high-explosive ordinance, they can physically relocate any nation several millennia into the past.
But then, ‘Stone Age’ isn’t just a lack of Wi-Fi or the absence of a Starbucks on every corner; it is a state of mind, a set of values, and a specific mode of human interaction.
And, if we look closely at the current American landscape under the Trumpian ‘MAGA’ era, a very obvious realization emerges: America has already gone back to the Stone Age. They didn’t need a single bomb to get there; just a change in management.
To bomb someone back to the Stone Age requires physical destruction. To lead someone back to the Stone Age only requires the destruction of their values. Without a single missile being fired, the U.S. has seen its civilizational gains — rationality, equality under the law, scientific pre-eminence, and the rejection of autocracy—wiped out in a flurry of ego, greed, pettiness and resentment.
It is now a nation governed by superstition, led by a man who views the world as a zero-sum struggle between rival clans, and supported by a band of sycophants, who have traded their conscience for a seat near the fire. To understand how a nuclear superpower can become a Neolithic tribe, we must define our terms. The Stone Age isn’t just about flint knapping and animal skins. It represents:
- Survival of the Fittest: A brutal meritocracy of muscle where power is the only currency; truth is a luxury for those who can’t swing a club.
- The Absence of Law: Where ‘justice’ is whatever the local chieftain says it is this morning.
- Tribalism: An ‘Us vs. Them’ mentality where anyone outside the immediate kinship group is a subhuman threat.
- Superstition Over Science: A reliance on magic, omens, and the charismatic whims of the shaman.
When you hold this checklist up to the current American political climate, the resemblance is more than a little uncanny.
In the actual Stone Age, survival depended on your tribe. If you weren’t with the ‘Cave Bear’ clan, you were an enemy to be bludgeoned. Fast forward to contemporary America, and Trump has successfully dismantled the concept of a ‘United’ States in favour of a hyper-tribalized landscape.
The US President today doesn’t govern a nation; he leads a faction. His rhetoric isn’t designed to build a ‘shining city on a hill,’ but to fortify the cave entrance against the ‘invaders’ and ‘vermin’ from the neighbouring valley. In this prehistoric political ecosystem, policy is irrelevant. What matters is the display of dominance — the ritualistic chest-thumping at rallies that serves as the modern equivalent of dancing around a fire before a hunt. The US has reverted to a state where the ‘Other’ is not just a political opponent with a different tax plan, but an existential threat to the tribe’s survival.
What is Stone Age?
The Stone Age was defined by a lack of objective understanding of the world. If it thundered, the gods were angry. If the hunt failed, someone had cursed the tribe.
Under the Trump administration, the US has witnessed the systematic dismantling of the Enlightenment—the very period that birthed America. It has traded the scientific method for the ‘gut feeling’ of the Great Leader. Expert opinion from epidemiologists, climate scientists, and economists is dismissed as ‘fake news’—while rumour and speculation are elevated to the status of facts.
When the President suggests injecting bleach to cure a virus or claims that wind turbines cause cancer, he isn’t just being ‘unconventional.’ He is performing the role of the tribal shaman, offering magical solutions to complex problems. In this Neolithic America, ‘truth’ is whatever the Chieftain tweets. If the Chieftain says the sun is rising in the west, the tribe nods in agreement, for to question the shaman is to risk exile from the cave.
The greatest civilizational gain of the last 250 years was the transition from the Rule of Men to the Rule of Law. The world, with the US in the lead at that time, decided that even the King or President must answer to the same rules as the peasant.
However, the current US administration operates on the purely Stone Age principle that power is the law. Justice is not blind; it is a tool used to reward the loyalists of the tribe and punish its enemies. The world can today see the pardoning of war criminals and political cronies, the intimidation of judges, and the dismissal of constitutional checks and balances as mere ‘annoyances.’
The thuggish nature of this governance is purely prehistoric. If you have the biggest club or the loudest megaphone, you define what is legal. The US has regressed to a pre-Magna Carta state where the whim of the leader is the only statute that matters.
Now, let us turn our gaze to the nation that is the US is threatening to ‘de-modernize.’ Iran is frequently labelled a ‘theocracy’ by the West, a term used to imply a backwardness that justifies condescension. Yet, if we look at civilizational character, the roles seem to have reversed.
While the U.S. executive branch behaves like a chaotic warlord, Iran—despite its internal complexities and restrictive government—maintains a level of institutional stability and intellectual rigour that puts the current White House to shame.
- Valuing Education: While the U.S. is busy debating whether math is ‘elitist’ or if libraries should be burned, Iran produces some of the world’s most brilliant scientists, engineers, and mathematicians. Their respect for true expert is the reason for their ability to fight back so powerfully against Israel and the US – missile for missile and drones for fighter aircraft.
- Infrastructure of Mind: You can bomb a bridge, and you can bomb a power plant. These are the physical markers of the modern age. But in its essence, ‘modernity’ is actually an internal state of being and behaviour. If you bomb Iran’s infrastructure, they will still be a people who value poetry, history, and scientific inquiry. They will possess the civilizational software to rebuild.
- Governance and Ritual: Even within its religious framework, the Iranian state operates with a degree of bureaucratic predictability and long-term strategic thinking that is utterly absent from the impulsive, Twitter-driven ‘policy’ of the Trump administration. It is this ability to calmly respond to the greatest of existential threats that sets Iran out as a far superior nation to Trumpian America, which now resembles a headless chicken (though the ‘head’ somehow keeps posting on Truth Social).
If the bombs fall, Iran might lose its electricity. But America, under its current leadership, has already lost its soul of both modernity and common decency. Who is truly in the Stone Age: the nation with broken bridges but which shows great courage and has a functioning intellect, or the nation with golden ballrooms, weak knees and a primitive, atavistic soul?
[The writer, Satya Sagar, is a journalist and a public health worker who can be reached at sagarnama@gmail.com]
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