Too much to endure

The latest news that I have seen on Trump’s war in Iran is that a two-week ceasefire has been negotiated. What this could mean in the long term, I don’t know. In the short term, I am grateful that some of this insanity shall ebb, though having seen what a “ceasefire” looks like in Gaza, I can’t say that I am confident that people will stop dying in Iran. Two weeks, alas, can fly by.

Nevertheless I am relieved, at least for the moment. I have been dreading the arrival of any news all day, since I woke up and read about Trump’s most hideous social media post to date:

A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will. However, now that we have Complete and Total Regime Change, where different, smarter, and less radical minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen, WHO KNOWS? We will find out tonight, one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World. 47 years of extortion, corruption, and death, will finally end. God Bless the Great People of Iran!

This post was somehow even worse than the previous worst post he had ever made, just two days ago:

Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it. Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in hell-JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.

I don’t know how individual Trump posts come into being. I don’t know if he’s hunched over his own personal phone tapping out individual letters with his own stubby thumbs, or if he has since outsourced that job to a ghoulish nineteen-year-old who either writes down the most inflammatory things that spill out of his mouth, or uses a chatbot to make up new insane drivel on the model of what has outraged us before. It doesn’t really matter, because Trump publically represents these words as being his own, and Trump has authority over the use of the deadliest arsenal of nuclear weapons on the planet.

If these quotations represent the true inner workings of a human mind, then that mind is both hopelessly untethered from reality, and heedlessly cruel. They reek with a sadistic sarcasm that betrays any principle beyond self-aggrandizement. Trump can swing back and forth between calling Iranians “animals” who “belong” in the stone age, and whistling idly about how much they want him to blow up their infrastructure so they can be “free,” because the only thing he really cares about is looking like a tough guy who wins all the fights he picks.

As I said, I am relieved—relieved that for the present moment, the risk that my government might commit what could become one of the most awful and barbaric crimes in the history of geopolitics has abated. Somebody who understands what death is has dangled the keys in the old man’s face and successfully distracted him from ordering a genocide.

That being said, we have nearly three more years of this to endure. The 25th Amendment will not be invoked by Trump’s sycophantic cabinet until the day Trump literally (literally) cannot string two coherent words together. An impeachment trial cannot come earlier than next year, and it will not successfully remove him as long as the Republicans in the Senate remain as craven and cynical as they have repeatedly proven themselves. Electing a Democratic majority in Congress for next year may take the edge off, but it will not prevent him from behaving lawlessly. The best remedy, in a system as sclerotic and broken as ours, to having a vengeful and bloodthirsty maniac as Commander-in-Chief is to not elect him in the first place, and that was simply too much to ask of us. This is the bed we made, and this is the bed we lie in.

The sad fact is that while the American people do not like high gasoline prices, they are not especially bothered by rhetoric that dehumanizes foreigners. The typical shit-kicking MAGA lowlifes are in fact delighted that the President of the United States believes, as they do, that the solution to every problem in foreign policy is macho posturing and abusive belligerence. The moderates are a little more genteel in their sensibilities, but they are most acutely concerned with the gas prices.

Trump’s war in Iran is being waged by a fanatical Secretary of Defense who apparently does not believe that an American soldier can be guilty of a war crime. He has made it abundantly clear that he believes establishing rules of engagement in warfare to minimize civilian suffering is for pussies. He’s not going anywhere either, unless by cocking up the fight so badly that it annoys his boss. This is, once again, what the collective we call the American people asked for, or otherwise lacked the foresight to muster the necessary effort to reject. It amounts to the same thing.

Still, I feel relieved. Fewer people will die over the next two weeks than otherwise might have. The nuclear taboo remains unviolated for the time being. Maybe gas prices will even go down a little.

A couple of weekends ago, I stopped by the No Kings protest in Salem, Oregon to show my support and take a few pictures. I meant to share them here and write something about the many, many reasons there are to oppose all of the horrible things that Trump is doing to enrich himself and beggar our nation. But I never got around to it—I have had a lot on my mind lately. Let me make up for it now: