Short Takes
Old Stories
So, What about Iran? I’ve been asked by friends why I haven’t written about the Iran war since a couple of posts fairly early in that conflict. After all, a war is a pretty big deal, isn’t it? Indeed it is, but my inactivity reflects the fact that really, nothing new has been happening for quite a long time . The fundamental realities of this conflict remain unchanged: Donald Trump started an illegal, dumb war without knowing what he was getting into, and hasn’t been able to find a way out, because there is no good way out for him. So, in the absence of any clear strategy or vision of an end game, he’s bombing again. Nothing new. Joe Cirincione provides a fine, concise summary of where things stand. His subtitle tells it all: “In a spasm of anger and humiliation, Trump flails, restarting a war that never really ended.”
The Big Lie Redux Trump got on TV last night to spout a characteristic litany of lies and fantasies about how he was robbed of a splendid landslide election victory in 2020. Again, nothing really new. Rep. Jamie Raskin described Trump’s speech as “gibberish,” “drivel,” and “almost self-debunking,” I’ve always believed that Trump’s election lies were more than sore loser whining, and Raskin agrees. Trump, he says, is “trying to set the predicate for different kinds of attacks on the electoral system.” What kinds of attacks? The vote suppression act he’s trying to foist on Congress is one, of course. (It’s not clear to me that all the provisions of this bill would actually help Republicans, but Trump thinks they would.) More ominously, I can imagine a surge of ICE agents swarming around polling places in Detroit, Atlanta, Cleveland and other Democratic strongholds come election time this November. They’ll claim to be searching for illegal aliens trying to vote. With its well-deserved reputation for mayhem, ICE might well succeed in intimidating significant numbers of the “wrong” people from voting. With luck, somebody will get killed, there will be demonstrations, and Trump will call in the National Guard—maybe even declare martial law, invoking the Insurrection Act—in order to plunge the elections into chaos restore order..
Nothing new? The United States capacity to project force around the world is diminished. The force of AIPAC and Israel in U.S.politics is degraded. China’s power is substantially enhanced. And on and on. All of this has to be qualified until more defined outcomes occur, but changes are afoot and the international economic consequences have not unfolded yet
DJT lives inside our heads so much that it’s easy to forget that the world does not live in his head.
Trmph can't control his emotions or mouth. Another forever war has started