Evil Has Left the Building

by Rob C.
Art by David Horsey

TL;DR: Dick Cheney, the dark wizard of the War on Terror, may be gone—but his disciples are still here, now wearing red hats instead of power suits. The architect of endless war handed the keys of empire to a reality TV host who wants to be both king and warlord.

Dick Cheney is dead. And somewhere, a drone just fired a salute.

The man who famously told us “deficits don’t matter” and that the Iraqis would greet us as liberators has finally left the stage—leaving behind a trail of destruction so vast it would make Attila the Hun pause and say, “Dude, maybe tone it down.”

For those who need a refresher, Cheney wasn’t just the vice president. He was the unelected emperor of the post-9/11 world, the dark beating heart of the neoconservative project—a group of true believers who saw the U.S. military as a divine instrument of global domination. These were the people who thought spreading democracy meant bombing the living hell out of anyone who looked at us sideways.

Cheney’s crowning achievement? The Iraq War—a trillion-dollar catastrophe built on lies, hubris, and oil contracts. Hundreds of thousands of civilians killed. More than 4,000 American troops dead. Entire regions destabilized for decades. He didn’t just break the Middle East; he privatized it.

As Jeremy Scahill documented in Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army, Cheney’s war machine outsourced combat, intelligence, and torture to private contractors and war profiteers. It was the free market’s ultimate field test: Can capitalism kill more efficiently than the Pentagon? Spoiler alert—it can.

And when the blood started flowing, so did the money. Pallets of cash—literal pallets—were flown into Iraq, disappearing into the pockets of warlords, mercenaries, and “reconstruction” companies with Halliburton logos. The war wasn’t a failure. Not if you owned stock in the right companies.

But Cheney’s real legacy isn’t just the bodies or the balance sheets—it’s the playbook. The normalization of endless war. The belief that America’s power is measured in missiles, not morals. He cracked open Pandora’s box and called it “national security.”

And now, his ideological offspring have traded in their briefcases for baseball caps. Donald Trump may not read memos or understand strategy, but he understood Cheney’s prime directive: never apologize, never retreat, always double down on the lie.

Trump picked up where Cheney left off—blurring the line between government and grift, surrounding himself with loyalists and profiteers, and declaring war not on foreign dictators but on democracy itself. Cheney wanted empire abroad; Trump wants one at home. Both men saw the Constitution not as a safeguard, but as an obstacle.

The old neocons dreamed of remaking the world in America’s image. The new ones are content to remake America in theirs.

So yes, evil has left the building. But don’t get comfortable. It didn’t die—it just got a spray tan and a Truth Social account.

❤️‍🔥 If this made you rethink, rage, or laugh darkly at the absurdity — hit ❤️, share it, and subscribe. Democracy doesn’t defend itself.

👁️‍🗨️ Robert Cain — author of Democracy for Sale — continues his ongoing series exposing the decay of American democracy and the billionaires who bought it.