Hispanic Fanatic

You know that phrase “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer”?

Our illustrious president has taken this advice to mean, “Piss off your friends and give people who want to destroy your country a big hug.”

You see, it’s bad enough that our butterfly-brained chief executive does pretty much whatever Putin wants him to do. But ever since he reclaimed the White House, this former best friend of Epstein has “gone out of his way to antagonize our allies and partners, warning them that the United States will act alone and working to undermine the international alliances the U.S. has shaped since World War II.” The twist is that ever since instigating “a regional war in the Middle East after ignoring what virtually everyone said would be the result of attacking Iran a second time, Trump is begging other countries to come to his aid.”

To the surprise of absolutely no one (except the Trump Administration, which is constantly surprised when their moronic plans explode into chaos), our allies are saying, “Not my problem.”

The president of the United States has been reduced to the status of a blubbering nine-year-old upset that nobody came to his party. 

“Fine, I didn’t want them to come anyway. It was just a test.”

Sure it was.

There is one key difference, however. The dysregulated kid can be given cake to soothe the pain. 

But a power-hungry narcissist with a bottomless pit of a black heart will not be happy until everybody suffers.

And the suffering is coming.

This botched excursion, unique in American history in that nobody can say exactly why we’re at war, has already killed thousands of people. Here in the well-insulated United States, this idiotic campaign could raise the price of food, gas, plane tickets, and those cheap toys you get your kids as stocking stuffers for Christmas.

Yeah, pretty much everything. But I guess inflation is patriotic now.

In any case, the “window for Donald Trump to end the Iran war by simply declaring victory and walking away is rapidly closing.” Soon, the man who cannot be bothered to read anything and rarely stays on one topic for more than a minute will have to “face a stark choice: He can take greater risks in pursuit of a decisive tactical success, prepare the country for a prolonged conflict that could last for many months, or seek a negotiated settlement that involves a real compromise with Tehran.”

It should be perfectly obvious to all but the most delusional that America’s reckless, childish leader “does not think strategically… historically, geographically, or even rationally.” The man “does not consider the wider implications of his decisions [or] take responsibility when these decisions go wrong.” This wildly unpopular president “acts on whim and impulse, and when he changes his mind—when he feels new whims and new impulses—he simply lies about whatever he said or did before.”

We are at the tipping point where the US will either get dragged into yet another horrific ground war in the Middle East, or we will slink away in embarrassment after unleashing death and destruction for no discernable reason.

How’s that for winning?

There is something mathematically pure about the Republican Party. For the past 30 years, they have insisted that once they have the presidency, everything will be great, but the exact opposite — i.e., massive chaos — always occurs.

This predictable political formula of A plus B equals C would be charming enough. But it’s the specifics that amaze and astound.

Consider that the last three GOP presidents (Bush Sr., Bush Jr., and Trump) all began their terms with solid economies and ended their terms with recessions. Although Jr.’s was the worst, Trump 2.0 has the potential to create a definite trend of economic downturns intensifying with each Republican administration.

However, the most amazing mathematical formula, too precise to be coincidence, is that the last three GOP presidents have waged an unnecessary war in the Middle East, with the rationale for each one becoming more ludicrous than the last.

We’ve gone from defending Kuwait to imaginary WMDs to… well, nobody really knows why we’re bombing Iran. It could be one of a dozen vague, contradictory reasons or no reason at all.

This latest round of GOP warmongering in the Middle East looks to end the trilogy with a full-blown scene of total Armageddon. Seriously, we have religious zealots who are eager to kill us all for the glory of Jesus (which theologians would tell you is not something Christ would actually want). But hey, if the apocalypse comes, at least we would be spared another GOP president.

In any case, I have long wondered about voters who insist that Republicans are better for the economy, despite a century of evidence that this is not true. However, now I have to ponder why any sane adult would look at Trump during the 2024 election, listen to the GOP’s shrieked bloodlust, and think “They are the party of peace.”

Yeah, Trump said he wouldn’t start any wars, but it was a minor miracle that he didn’t launch one during his first term. He was too busy golfing and denying Covid to attack anybody. Only a child would believe that our luck would last. Trump and his right-wing acolytes are happy only when Americans are dropping bombs on people.

Invading Venezuela was just too easy and didn’t deliver the carnage that conservatives love and the distraction that Trump needed. And that is why “the most powerful man on Earth is cavalierly bombing and reshaping one of the most geopolitically explosive regions in the world — and has offered nothing even approaching a coherent explanation for why he’s doing it or what he’s aiming to achieve.” We all know that it was horrific enough “for America to have a mad king, [but] now the world is seeing the rise of a mad emperor.”

Our lunatic president — who has really shot to hell his chances of winning that elusive Nobel Peace Prize — “is telling liesabout the war that not only contradict one another, but contradict themselves internally.” We have to ask if this misbegotten war is “about a nuclear program that doesn’t exist” or a regime change “that we haven’t thought through” or “an imaginary Iranian threat to elections.” Our befuddled commander in chief “has claimed both that he already destroyed Iran’s nuclear program and that he is now destroying it,” which makes it a Schrodinger’s cat of atomic weaponry.

This conflict — which has yet to gain a catchy name, so we will likely go with the Iran War — has been launched “without explanation, without Congress, without even an attempt to build public support, [and] without a coherent strategy.”

Of course, that’s not entirely true. Because according to the GOP ideology, “the dominance itself is the point; there is no other endgame.”

As for the war itself, at some point, America “may be forced to choose between an escalation or an embarrassing climbdown.”

Assuming that this campaign doesn’t end in a disaster that makes the Iraq War look like a mighty victory, our best hope is that our easily distracted president just gets bored with the war and impulsively calls it off. That would not be the first time he creates a cataclysm, leaves a mess for others to clean up, and declares victory.

If we tell him that America has won the war already, will he tweet himself congratulations and go back to ranting about paper straws?

Sounds like a coherent strategy to me.