I was born on July 20, 1944, in the last year of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s presidency, just over a year before World War II ended in a global triumph of the first order for my country. It’s been a distinctly long and strange road ever since then, leading to the genuinely unnerving world of Donald J. (for John, as in toilet) Trump. In the years after Roosevelt died, there was no question that the United States, armed with the nuclear weapons it had used on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end World War II, was the distinctly rising power on Planet Earth. Looking back, then, consider it an ominous development that, in 1950, almost five years after its remarkable global victory in that world war, as the planet’s greatest power, the US would become involved in a conflict in Korea that, three years later, ended in—yes, a draw.

And that would, of course, be only the first of numerous wars this country, almost uniquely in the history of great powers, would continue to provoke and fight against distinctly lesser powers without ever winning one of them. Not one! The four major conflicts were, of course, Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq and none of them proved even faintly successful—and don’t think that turning Venezuela into an oil colony will be either.

Historically speaking, it was strange that the US proved so incapable of beating even minor states (or forces) on this planet, while still rising to ever greater prominence and power. In the end, of course, it did—“beat” would perhaps be the wrong word to use, but outlast that other great power of the era, the Soviet Union, which collapsed from internal stresses and fractures in 1991, leaving this country alone when it came to such powers on Planet Earth. In some sense, there had, historically speaking, never been anything quite like it.

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Sooner or later, however, all powers do decline. That, too, is history. But here’s the thing: There’s imperial decline and then there’s imperial decline (!)—and perhaps never in the history of great powers on this planet (or at least in my memory of them) has decline been quite so personalized and personified as in the era of the distinctly aging 79-year-old Donald John Trump.

Hey, give him credit, though! (Or do I mean, given that middle name of his, give him a flush?) Is there anyone on planet Earth he hasn’t alienated by now (except for a few Latin American right-wing autocrats)? Whether you live in the 51st state (aka Canada) or on the distinctly American island of Greenland, whether you happen to be hanging onto the edge of a shattered boat in the Caribbean Sea or are a villager in Nigeria, you just can’t be pleased. Perhaps the only person he’s truly pleased recently is Chinese leader Xi Jinping (despite the $11 billion in weaponry, from drones to mobile artillery systems, he’s recently agreed to sell to Taiwan), since he’s been paving the way in such an impressive fashion for China’s rise.

Unfortunately, we’re living through a moment when history, as least as we humans have known it all these centuries, is itself imperiled, no matter whether you’re in a country that’s rising, falling, or anything in between on this ever more unnerving planet of ours. After all, for the first time in the history of humanity, it’s not just this planet’s greatest power (or powers) that is (are) in decline, but the planet itself as a habitable place for us. Once upon a time, that would have been quite literally unimaginable. But no longer. Anything but, in fact.

And give Donald J. Trump credit there, too. He seems remarkably intent on paving (or do I mean carbonizing?) the way not just for his country’s imperial decline but this planet’s, too. The “drill, baby, drill” president’s determination to stop anything from coastal wind power to solar power that might possibly help us cope with a coming hell on Earth, not to speak of his never-ending urge to enable the ever-greater American production and use of fossil fuels in any fashion imaginable, adds up to what, once upon a time, would itself have been truly unimaginable—an outright national policy of ultimate self-destructiveness.

No longer, that’s for sure.

What was once known as “the American century” now has every possibility of becoming the American Century from Hell. And Trump’s presidency seems remarkably, even uniquely focused on ensuring that that will be so. It’s hard even to imagine a president working quite so assiduously or in such a—to bring into play a word not commonly used in relation to Donald J. Trump—focused way to ensure that this planet will all too literally go to hell in a handbasket.

The only possible exception to that scenario I can think of is China, since America’s president is also distinctly paving the way for that country’s rise. (Or course, what any country’s rise might truly mean on a planet visibly going down remains to be seen.) At least its leaders, while still opening new coal plants, are also focused in a major fashion on creating a greener country and a greener planet (and, of course, making plenty of money globally by doing so), while becoming Earth’s renewable-energy superpower.

Still, on such a planet, Donald Trump twice? How could that have even been possible?

I must admit that, at almost 82 years old, when I spend time with my grandchildren, I shudder to think of the planet they’re likely to inhabit. And I find it hard to imagine how, in this world of ours, a near-majority of Americans could ever have voted not once but twice to put Donald J. Trump in the White House.

Once, OK, I can see it (sort of). After all, we all make mistakes, right? But twice? Really? A leader whose presidency might be thought of as a global version of Murder, Inc. (and I’m not just thinking of the slaughtering of Nigerians, Syrians, or Venezuelans but, in the longer climate-change term of things, of the citizens of his very own country)?

Consider all this a reminder of just how eerily self-destructive we humans can truly be. Sometimes I try to imagine an alien arriving from outer space to assess what we’re now doing to this planet of ours. And I suspect it would seem like incomprehensible madness to such a stranger from another universe, perhaps even a global version of the urge to commit suicide.

Given my age, of course, I won’t be around to see this planet itself go down (if it does) in the fashion that, once upon a time, great empires indeed always went down sooner or later. Unfortunately, if something doesn’t change reasonably soon, I fear that my grandchildren or their children will be witnesses to an all too literal hell on earth. And what a fate, what a future, to hand them!

I mean, you know that when someone like Donald Trump is chosen, not once but twice, to lead the most powerful country on planet Earth, something must be desperately wrong with us. And you have to wonder just how so many past leaders of this country and on this planet prepared the way for him and, as he does his damnedest to heat this world of ours to the boiling point, where we might truly be heading from here.

I must admit that sometimes I have the urge to just close my eyes. But that will only help ensure that my grandchildren are left bereft on this distinctly overheating planet of ours in the age of Donald J. Trump. And I so wish for something better for them than that.