I just had to get this out of my system and off my chest, quickly…
Against all odds, the United States and its titanically awful president keep coming up with new ways to set the bar even lower. Every week brings a new horror, a new level of chaos and criminality, a new empty shelf in America’s ever-dwindling warehouse of credibility as a sane and moral member of the global community.
The recently launched war in Iran is a case in point. There is no reason in the world the United States should have launched attacks against Iran or gotten itself neck-deep in a widening Middle East conflict. No reason at all. Yet here we are – just like two decades ago, when we got mixed up in a similar affair in Iraq for no good reason, and found ourselves mired in a prolonged and bloody clusterf**k half a world away.
Some of the bombs dropped this week reportedly hit an Iranian school and killed dozens of children. This is the purest form of evil and recklessness you can conjure up. I can’t think of a single justification for it. Anyone who can is sick and subhuman and can go screw themselves.
Another person who died in the attack was Iran’s former Supreme Leader, who reigned over the country for nearly four decades. By all appearances, he was an oppressive despot who ruled with an iron fist and vengeful heart.
His government reportedly killed thousands of Iranian dissidents prior to the U.S./Israeli attack. That’s sad and tragic, and I wish it hadn’t happened. But Iran is an ancient country with lots of smart people, so let them work it out on their own. It’s their problem, not ours. I doubt many Iranians care that American protestors have also been murdered by our own oppressive regime in recent months.
In a world filled with grief and want, sometimes you need to focus on problems near at hand rather than those in far-off lands. And the fact is, America wouldn’t give two shits about Iran if wasn’t an oil-rich country in an oil-rich part of the world.
Personally, I don’t care about Iran’s oil. I don’t care about any of the oil in the Middle East. Most people don’t care about it. The only ones who do care about it are the same rich, greedy assholes who would slaughter half the world’s population if it meant the black gold kept flowing. They’d let the other half die if there were no oil to be gained by saving them.
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The U.S. administration keeps making up lies about why we are involved in the Iran war. First, they said we launched the attack because we wanted to encourage dissidents there to install a new regime, purportedly to bring more stability to the region. That’s hilarious. Just hilarious.
I’m not old enough to remember when there actually was stability in the region — and I’m a pretty old dude. I’m not sure there ever has been. Geopolitical and religious tensions in the Middle East date back decades, centuries, millennia. These tensions are not going away, no matter how much we pretend they might. What’s more, by bombing the crap out of Iran, the dissidents there now hate us as much as they hated the regime they protested against.
Next, the U.S. administration said it needed to attack Iran because Iran is working on nuclear weapons. That was the same excuse we used when we invaded Iraq in the early 2000s. It was bullshit then, and it’s bullshit now. When that excuse didn’t stick, they changed the narrative to Iran’s ballistic missiles.
Next, one of the administration’s endless roster of soulless toadies said the reason the U.S. got involved was that Israel was going to attack Iran, anyway, so the U.S. president wanted to preempt Iran’s counterattack, or some such thing.
There may be the tiniest grain of truth in that. The U.S. president is nothing if not eager to suck up to Israel’s prime minister, a murderous, criminal thug who wants to keep launching military attacks to draw attention away from his own unpopularity and lawlessness.
The U.S. president can relate on a personal level, considering that he’s a convicted felon who’s desperately trying to deflect attention away from an ever-widening pedophile/sexual abuse/child rape scandal that involves both himself and some of his billionaire buddies and sycophants.
The leaders of Israel and America are horrible men – corrupt, arrogant, criminal, power-mad. They’re killing innocent people in weaker countries because they can’t bear the thought of living in a world where chaos doesn’t fill every moment.
They know, as we all know, that chaos might be the only thing keeping them out of prison.
If it takes a war, then they’re perfectly fine with that.
Image: AI
Vance Cariaga 
The shameless mendacity, thuggery and corruption of Trump and his vile administration are beyond breathtaking, as are the gaslighting and hypocrisy. As you point out, every week brings new horrors that almost dwarf those of the previous week. I continue to hope and pray that perhaps this time the tide will change.
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I feel like we’re racing against time. Trump & his band of misfit fascists seem determined to do as much damage as possible before the midterms. It’s up to the people and courts to try to keep them in check. Normally the media and Dems would be the first line of resistance, but they seem clueless and/or cowardly and/or willing to bend the knee.
So much is riding on Dems winning back the House and maybe the Senate. They are heavily favored to win back the House, but we’ll see. This is the most important midterm election ever and quite possibly the last as we know it if the GOP holds onto power or the administration succeeds in undermining the whole election process, which they no doubt are already trying to do.
We just need to keep fighting and pushing back.
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Vance, you’re missing the most simple explanation of all. “They’re bad guys.” You don’t need hours of analysis and endless discussions when your leader put it in terms a 3-year old could understand. And when the 3-year old grows up, hopefully they’ll understand that “bad” means anyone who doesn’t give us what we want, and “good” means anyone who bows down to our demands.
These two ‘leaders’ have shown that bullies win and everyone else loses.
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Hi Yacoob. Yes, as I wrote in the third-to-last paragraph:
“The leaders of Israel and America are horrible men – corrupt, arrogant, criminal, power-mad. They’re killing innocent people in weaker countries because they can’t bear the thought of living in a world where chaos doesn’t fill every moment.”
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I think there’s a mix up here. Yes – while he and his conspirator are undoubtedly bad, I meant the endless lies about why the invasion is happening doesn’t need analysis for the gullible followers… Trump very simply said, the other day, that they (the Iranian leadership) are bad guys. Very bad guys.
And if the big boss says it, the hordes of followers must believe it.
I will be interested to see what the reactions will be from them when this hits their pockets, though, given the fuel and general inflation that may skyrocket worldwide because of this madness. It’s easy to blindly support a cause based in emotions and rhetoric, but when that cause cripples your day to day life, the real level of commitment is shown.
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Here’s the short answer: The majority of Republican voters (his party, about 77%) seem to support the invasion, according to one poll. Nearly all of the opposition party (Democrats, about 90%) oppose it. Most independent voters with no party affiliation (60%) oppose it. So, most Americans oppose it by a fairly decent margin. That’s not usually the case so early on in a war.
The more interesting thing is that quite a few far-right/MAGA influencers have launched tirades against the invasion. These are the “America First” folks who supported Trump in part because of his campaign promises to end foreign wars. Of course, he was lying about that, just like he lies about everything. So a certain part of his base are very unhappy about it.
The fact is, Trump is too stupid to have come up with this on his own. He’s an increasingly demented old man who probably couldn’t locate Iran on a map. His strings are being pulled by certain cabinet members as well as Netanyahu, who needs U.S. support and found the perfect useful idiot in Trump. There’s also a certain faction of the American public who believe this is some kind of religious war foretold in the Bible, which is the scariest thing.
But in America, money speaks the loudest. The stock markets are taking a pounding because of the war (at least for now), and the economy might soon follow. It sounds perverse (and it is), but our best hope of walking away from this stupid war is that the moneyed elite start pushing back against it.
We really just need the Democrats to retake control of Congress during the November mid-term elections so they can put the reins on Trump. The Democrats are heavily favored to win at least one branch of Congress, and Team Trump knows it. They are desperate to do anything to distract from that and undermine elections in any way possible — including starting a war.
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I don’t really know much about the political system, but even if the Democrats dominate, as president, doesn’t he have the power to just override them with executive orders to continue doing whatever he wants?
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He does, yes. He has veto power. The difference is, with Democrats in control of half of Congress, they won’t approve legislation that he initiates. It works both ways. He can veto Congress’ ideas. But Congress can also effectively veto his ideas. What’s more, Congress can initiate investigations into all the corruption happening on his watch, which will keep his administration tied up in knots for all the world to see.
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