When the empire goes off script — Abbi Kanthasamy
JUNE 7 — There was a time when America felt like a machine. Cold. Calculated. Efficient. It dropped bombs with spreadsheets, toppled regimes with boardroom precision. Even its madness felt managed — orchestrated behind the curtains of Langley and the Pentagon. We grew up thinking Kennedy was taken out by the CIA. Ask a hundred Malaysians, and ninety-nine will nod solemnly. Of course lah. That's how the empire works.
But now?
Now the madness is out in the open. Undeniable. Almost beautiful in its rawness.
It's like watching a Lamborghini spin out at 200km/h — all carbon fibre and chaos. Because for the first time in modern history, America feels human. It feels real. Flawed. Fallible. Vulnerable.
And terrifying.
People walk with umbrellas past a United States flag as it rains in Times Square in New York November 17, 2014. — Reuters pic
At the centre of the circus stands Donald Trump — real estate huckster turned political wrecking ball. The man tried to reorganise the US federal government like he was redoing the plumbing at Mar-a-Lago. You don't just gut and retrofit the largest bureaucracy in the world in one term. It takes ten years to fix a Fortune 500 company — and that's with consultants, quarterly reports, and CEOs who aren't under criminal indictment. Trump? He barged in with gold drapes, vendettas, and Twitter.
And now, he's back. Almost certain to be the Republican nominee. Facing 88 felony charges and somehow still holding court like a cult leader with Wi-Fi.
Then there's Elon Musk. Once hailed as a technocratic messiah. A man who could've been Trump's golden child. Today? He's trash-tweeting the former president like a scorned ex. Musk vs. Trump is no longer a subplot — it's a main event. SpaceX vs. Spray Tan. Mars vs. Mar-a-Lago. Billionaire bloodsport.
This isn't the America we were taught to admire or fear. This is America unfiltered. The circus has come to town — and the elephants are armed.
So what does this mean for the rest of us?
For South-east Asia, the implications are seismic.
We've built decades of growth on the assumption of US stability. Trade deals. Security umbrellas. Tech partnerships. Hell, half our supply chains are threaded through Long Beach and LAX. We've trusted that while our own governments may wobble, America stood tall — the North Star of liberal democracy and global order.
That illusion is dead.
Trump's failed tariff wars already rattled Malaysian electronics and Vietnamese footwear exports. Now he's threatening to bring them back. The US Trade Court may have rejected them once, but the man is relentless. He doesn't listen to judges. He doesn't even read. If he finds a workaround, we're looking at a second wave of economic body blows.
And the scary part? The chaos is metastasising.
Courts are backlogged with lawsuits. Civil discourse is shot. Institutions are bleeding credibility. And the lines between reality TV and reality are gone. Trump doesn't just dominate the Republican Party — he's puppeteering the entire American psyche. Every indictment, every insult, every incoherent Truth Social post — it all feeds the machine.
Even the Democrats, supposed defenders of sanity, seem paralyzed. Like they're trying to fight a flamethrower with a cucumber sandwich. Biden, noble as he is, feels like the last man holding a clipboard while the Titanic orchestra plays on.
Why should we care?
Because chaos in Washington doesn't stay in Washington. It spills.
It hits us in shipping lanes. In currency markets. In semiconductor blacklists and TikTok bans. It hits our students trying to get visas. Our exporters trying to find freight slots. Our governments trying to balance between Uncle Sam and Big Brother Xi.
In a region where China is getting more aggressive and Asean is still trying to find a spine, we used to rely on American clarity. But when the sheriff is drunk, and the deputy is posting memes, you start locking your own doors.
And maybe that's the point. Maybe the era of Pax Americana is ending not with a bang, but with a retweet.
So what do we do?
We grow up.
We stop outsourcing our geopolitical compass. We start building redundancy — in trade, in security, in ideology. We stop waiting for the Empire to save us and start preparing for the Empire to implode.
Because what we're witnessing isn't just an election season. It's not even just Trump.
It's the US soul on trial — and the whole world's watching the verdict.
Somewhere deep in Putrajaya or Phnom Penh, a finance minister is refreshing the news, wondering if the US dollar can still be trusted. Somewhere in Johor, a factory manager is wondering if the next tariff list will include her product line. And somewhere in the mind of every South-east Asian strategist, a thought is growing louder:
What if the Americans aren't coming? What if they're never coming back?
* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.
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