Academic types (I plead guilty) like to explain that reality is complicated and it isn’t always easy to determine just what causes have produced just what effects. When it comes to relatively complex policy issues, that’s (usually) true. But sometimes, we humans find ourselves in a situation that is far simpler to describe than the pundits and political scientists acknowledge.
Jason Linkins recently reminded us that there is a very simple explanation for why we are in an insane war in Iran.
What can be said about Trump’s war with Iran that isn’t already abundantly obvious? The answer: not much. It is not going well, and it probably won’t end well. But having spent time in the salt mines of Trump punditry, I can tell you that we’re going to endure a difficult round of think pieces purporting to explain How This Happened. So maybe this is the best time to assert the obvious, using my favored rubric of Trump analysis: Imagine if the dumbest person in the world and humanity’s biggest asshole were the same person, and that guy was president. Then imagine he started a war with Iran. Now check the news. One look, and here’s what you should be thinking: “Yep, that tracks.”
As with all of Trump’s presidential exploits, success is always constrained by two factors: The aforementioned sharp limitations of his intellectual capabilities and the fact that he is perpetually surrounded by an inner circle made up of clowns somewhere on the spectrum between “rampantly evil” and “thoroughgoing dipshit.”
Lnkins reminds us that the purported goals of this exercise shift with the days of the week–sometimes it’s regime change, sometimes a nuclear threat that knowledgeable folks discount…the story changes with the weather. (Like me, Linkins thinks the “wag the dog” thesis deserves consideration–the more we learn about the Epstein files, the more likely it becomes that full disclosure would confirm what most of us already believe about this sorry excuse for a human being.)
Whatever the actual motivation–and it sometimes seems as if both Trump and Hegseth confuse war with a video game–we’ve seen Trump ask for help from the allies he has consistently demeaned and threatened. Trump seems amazed that countries he has routinely spit on, countries upon which he has imposed shifting levels of punative tariffs, countries that are now facing the consequences of his third-grade understanding of how the world works–are now uninterested in saving his behind.
As Linkin notes, it is especially maddening (at least to sentient beings) to see the administration react to Iran’s clampdown of the Strait of Hormuz
as if it’s some unfair trick the Iranians pulled and not one of the most singularly obvious strategic choices the regime could make under the circumstances—the other being Iran’s decision to attack other Gulf states, knowing that it would be a pain point for the U.S. both economically and diplomatically. But by Trump’s own admission, the very fact that Iran retaliated in any way has caught him completely flat-footed. “They weren’t supposed to go after all these other countries in the Middle East,” he told reporters on Monday. “They hit Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait. Nobody expected that. We were shocked!” Right now, there are 13-year-old kids about to invade Kamchatka in their first-ever game of Risk that look like Carl von Clausewitz compared to Trump.
America may rid itself of this disaster of an administration. We may–may–reform some of the obvious structural flaws that got us here. (Curing the deep racism and White Christian nationalism of the MAGA cult is, unfortunately, less likely.) But the rest of the world will never again trust a United States that elevated so demonstrable a moron/asshole/lunatic to the Presidency. As Paul Krugman recently put it, Americans are now watching scenes from the death of Pax Americana.
At this point, we face a variety of consequences–all bad–including a not insignificant threat of worldwide economic disaster. And it will be our fault.
A few days ago, I had breakfast with a former colleague, who shared his fury with the people who he reminded me are ultimately to blame for the demise of American hegemony: the voters who supported a man who wasn’t simply obviously and clearly unqualified, but who was a convicted felon, an adjudicated rapist, a highly-likely pedophile, a demostrable ignoramus and a certifiable moron.
Actually, it’s a toss-up between those voters and the would-be free-riders who didn’t bother to cast ballots.
Somehow, “told you so” doesn’t seem satisfactory….
In a sense, “I told you so.” does apply. Professional behaviorists have told us for a decade, or so, that Trump presented psychopathic tendencies and behaviors. Sure, malignant narcissism is a mouth full of syllables, but when seen shamelessly in the public eye, it becomes normalized.
Yes, we all have a variety of nouns and adjectives to throw at Trump and his collection of miscreants masquerading as professionals attempting to govern. But it does no good. What seems like moronic behavior to me might be utter idiocy to somebody else. Same behavior, different terms.
Trump voters and the non-voters have shared a variety of terms used in this essay, but does it matter? Are they all psychopaths like Trump? Can they all be clinically defined with some sort of pathology like Trump’s? Nope. Mass hysteria comes close, though, along with things like cultish blindness.
Todd and others will blame the media and the media owned and operated by the oligarchs. He’s correct too, but not completely. There are Trump voters who don’t use media. There are non-voters who ignore everything associated with society. How does all that change before all the deep-woods militias come roaring out of their huts with guns blazing?
Who or what will save our Constitution and our democratic republic from name calling and the obvious pathology of our politics?
In all reality I haven’t understood how we got manipulated about this war.
I found this video interesting even though I listen with a grain of salt. It is in the nature of political science and worth watching
https://youtu.be/i1qa3MyJXyo?si=IG9ImaceiIMFFrDI
Copy and paste.
Most of us have a difficult time with what is going on.
A caveat: I have not been well the past few weeks, and it may be affecting what I think. See, I’ve been wondering when all this stupidity started. I have been thinking that we will do to the Iranians what we did to the Hungarians in 1956. Which left me thinking our bad thinking goes back to the Fifties. Nor do I think we can blame a break with the elites. Ivy Leaguers were at the forefront from Allen Dulles to JFK to Kissinger to the Bushes. We have thought and been told to think that our might makes right for a very long time. All I am left with is Gore Vidal – that we are incompetent imperialists. If I did not think China would fill any political vacuum, I would say the loss of our hegemony is a good thing for the world. If we were competent, we would be finding a democratic alternative to our departure from leader of the free world.
We were manipulated by the Trump “administration” to get us to believe that the Iran threat to the US was “imminent”. The JNS analyst in the video shocks us with her insight that reporters choose their words in their reports. Interestingly she was only critical of our “liberal-leaning” outlets. No mention of Fox News or other similar outlets. And she makes her argument by choosing her words and “when she started her story” while criticizing those other outlets for doing the same.
I try to read any news story w a critical eye, probably like most posters here. My analysis of her opinion piece on JNS is she is just using and omittting certain information to support her opinion and attract clicks and new subscribers.
She is just another influencer.
One can blame the voters… Instead of blaming a supposed ally for blackmailing the US president. One could also simply ignore that Trump was bought and paid for with millions from the Adelsons.
One would also be cognizant if one were to question why the president of the US is nothing more than a bitch for the PM of Israel.
Yes,it’s always easy to blame the voters instead of the systemic corrupting influences that has brought forth the interesting times we find ourselves living in at the moment.
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Correct, Ian, the voters are given two sets of critters and told that if they pick the right ones, their lives will improve. And the Einstein Theory of Insanity postulates that if we keep doing the same things over and over again while expecting different results, we’re the ones who are insane.
As we learned from Joe Kent, Israel was behind the death of Charlie Kirk. No shit! As we look harder and harder behind TPUSA, we’ll learn that Israel and American Billionaire Zionists were behind that whole operation mainly for nefarious reasons until Charlie said, “This I will not do.” #boom #next
Wait until the “Club America” curriculum leaks out and is paid for by our tax money to set up “patriotic” clubs in every high school in Indiana, you’ll see why the pedophile in the WH does what he does. While the rest protect him, that’s the moral question of our time. His inner bible circle should all be gathered and burned in front of the WH on cable TV.
Those of us in learned professions or academia (or both) suffer from a lack of deeply appreciating that those average people we interact with are well above average. Most of the questions about how we got here are answered by a very simple fact – the average IQ in the United States is below average. And we so rarely interact in any depth with the average American that we are constantly surprised by their proud ignorance. How did we get here? The average IQ in the United States is below average. That’s how.
The first and biggest change might be to reverse the “Citizens United” problem that allowed big money to take over the US government. What could go wrong? now we know. Everything.
“The average IQ in the United States” can not be below average, mathematically speaking! But, as Eisenhower was surprised to learn, 50% of us have below average IQ’s…that’s how it works.
Daleb, to say that “We were manipulated…” is inaccurate. Were you? Was i? Was anyone who regularly visits this wonderful blog? I doubt it.
Trump said it, and then acted upon it, period. Were the Faux news watchers manipulated? Most probably, but they were irrelevant, he just went and did what he wanted to do.
The “simple truth” is that we do have too many fools who still think that the Civil War was won by the wrong side, who think that their god-thing chose Trump, a man who is nothing but godless, but not an atheist because that would require a working brain.
Tribalism got us here. Why does Trump keep putting Somalis in the crosshairs, because he knows how stupid so many of us are. “Oh, that’s the wrong tribe!!”
We can blame the people that voted for Trump, but it has taken a congress full of enablers to give him the green light. The good news is that the Republicans lost another house seat in the district Mar-A-Largo is in. The majority in the house it getting really slim.
Trump’s life long pattern: screw something up, then screw something else up to distract us from the first thing he screwed up, repeat. He learned early that most of his critics would dance to his tune, blindly following him from one disaster to the next. And it is still working for him so why would he change now? Of course, his disasters have to keep getting bigger or they would fail to distract from the previous ones. He apparently can’t see that he is on a downward spiral or is just too stupid to figure out a way to get out of it. Ditto for his sycophants in Congress. As for blame, there is plenty to go around!