Man O' War

 

No matter what one thinks about Trump joining the Israel/Iran war, no matter the outcome, it was impressive proof of American military technology, capability, planning, and, notwithstanding Tulsi Gabbard as DNI, intelligence-gathering. As Bibi said, it’s unlikely any other nation could have pulled it off. If nothing else, it triggered a Big, Beautiful Gloat. 

Here, from the New York Times, with no paywall, is a comprehensive, behind-the-scenes background on the runup. Both “sides” will find items of interest.

Impressive as it was, we must wonder: had Trump’s dreamed-of, watch-this-Vlad-and-Kim military parade not been so humiliating, had it not made him look so embarrassingly weak, would he have rushed to enter the war? Given skin thin as single-ply tissue and his need to appear superhero strong, who knows? For context, Trump once bleated, “Now that Obama’s numbers are in tailspin, watch for him to launch a strike in Libya or Iran. He is desperate.”

According to that NYT article, he was impressed with how Israel’s attack was “playing” on Fox “News.” Was that his metric? How am I playing? Slurping Kool-Aid like lemonade under a heat dome, Little Marco said it’s “irrelevant” whether we had intelligence indicating intent to make nukes. That’s alarming.

Has Iran’s nuclear capability been “totally obliterated,” as Trump said, “degraded” as Joint Chief’s Chairman Caine said, or, as JD Vance put it “delayed.” (Vance wins). The regional and global ramifications remain to be seen. It could turn out to be the best decision Trump has ever made, or, like George Bush’s, another Iraq. Let’s hope for the former.

Unlike ill-considered tariffs, threatened, deployed, reversed, and reversed again, wars can’t be undone. The plans were brilliant, but can we trust that it wasn’t another incidence of Trump’s “gut” telling him what to do? Did he take talk-show host Pete Hegseth’s advice? (See that NYT article, above.) Would the generals he fired have urged a different path?

Nothing about Trump’s prior behavior (Covid!) instills confidence that his decision reflected deep thought and thorough consideration of options and consequences. We’ll never know the outcome, had he pursued the diplomacy to which he once seemed committed; returning, in essence, to the Obama-brokered agreement he reflexively ended on Day One the first. Because Obama.

Iran claims to have moved all nuclear material and equipment away before the attack. According to that NYT article, some insiders felt Trump’s blabbery gave them reason and time to do it.

Before the attack, Trump produced dishonestly edited testimony by DNI Gabbard, on the outs for casting doubt on whether Iran was making nuclear weapons; inaccurately implying she said they were “weeks away.” This is how it works: tell Trump what he wants to hear or become gone. Praise, don’t challenge. When it comes to making decisions about war, that’s hypo-optimal.

Nor is it desirable, assuming it’s ideal for Americans to be behind a war of choice, to have a “president” who makes it clear that he cares about only half the country, calling the other half America-hating “lunatics,” punishing them at every opportunity. It makes impartial reflection difficult.

To those saying Trump broke his promise not to be a war president, based on which many voted for him, JD Vance, doppleganging Bill Clinton, said, “It depends on what the definition of war is.”

The risk of increased attacks on America, cyber and living flesh, has undoubtedly risen after Trump’s military action, and the timing isn’t good. He’s disbanded the team responsible for cybersecurity and put in charge of counterterrorism a 22-year-old with zero experience who, until his appointment, had been a gardener and grocery clerk. That ought to worry even the most MAGA of MAGAs. It’s almost as if Trump intentionally tore down the wall, if not for Khamenei, then for Putin. It would explain the inexplicable.

The final words of Trump’s post-strike speech were somewhere between his suborning of election interference “Russia, if you’re listening ...” and a tipsy toast at a wedding. “I want to just thank everybody, in particular, God. I want to just say we love you God and we love our great military, protect them...”

From the least godly president ever, who nevertheless has managed to convince Christian supporters of the opposite, it was unconvincing and weird. But, as someone who all but admits he doesn’t pray privately, he must have no idea how to do it. “God, if you’re listening...” But maybe he deserves a pass on that, too. He was talking to MAGA, not God.

If the announced ceasefire between Israel and Iran is lasting and becomes a model for the Middle East, Trump might get that Nobel Peace Prize after all. A day after its announcement, it was looking shaky. “PLEASE DO NOT VIOLATE IT,” he posted. We’ll see. If I knew how, I’d pray for lasting peace.

Donald Dud

Like Trump, I bailed from his birthday parade early. I, however, could turn it off and watch clips later. He had to stay for the whole thing and didn’t look happy about it. Having gone from standing and saluting, grim-faced and look-at-me leading, he ended up slumped, dejected, fighting sleep while those around him looked equally sad. Little Marco failed to suppress a yawn. Hegseth seemed to want to disappear.

Will whoever selected the music lose their job? Was playing Creedence’s “Fortunate Son” a deliberate snark against the draft-dodger in chief, or, like playing a gay anthem at every Trump rally, unintentionally clueless? 

We can be sure Trump fantasized a North Korea-style show of military might and fawning fealty, thousands of troops marching in lockstep precision, turning as one to salute him, amongst wave after wave of mighty weapons of war. Instead, he got impassive soldiers, many looking bored, walking unsynchronized as corporate sponsors were announced. Some saluted, some didn’t. Some turned their faces to him, some didn’t. Smiling to the thin crowds, mechanized troops waved and made heart signs with their hands. That was nice. Hoping instead for menace, Trump thought otherwise.

In the bleachers, empty seats outnumbered the filled. If the event was intended to intimidate our adversaries and portray Trump as a powerful leader, it was a Donald Dud. The flyovers were impressive, though, like Seafair. And the robot dogs were cool. Perhaps the research behind them will survive Trump’s anti-science agenda.

Hewing to their disinformation-spreading business model, counting on audience credulity, Fox “news” spoke of the “energy” and enthusiasm of the parade. Black, they assured us, was white. Down, they insisted, was up. It appears they even added fake cheering to drown out the silence. Trump’s Joseph Goebbels, Steven Cheung, said 250,000 people attended and the country-wide protests were “miniscule.” Such is Trumpworld’s view of their voters’ intelligence.

Did Trump see images of the millions of citizens who turned out in hundreds of cities, including in red states, to protest his “king”dom? Evidently. That night, he took to “Truthless Antisocial” to demand law enforcement redouble their intimidation in blue-state cities, using rhetoric that made undeniable his dictatorial politicization of the DOJ. Or, as he calls it, “running the country.”  That those millions marched peacefully, providing no excuse for violent reprisals, must have been disappointing. There was, however, a favored MAGA tactic, blessed by Ron DeSantis, of attempted vehicular homicide.

The weekend held other horrors: As awful as the murders in Minnesota were, more portentous for our future was the MAGA response, including from sitting US senators, Elon Musk, and, predictably, Foxians. Despite the murderer’s manifesto and hitlist attacking Democrats, despite his roommate’s confirmation that he’s a staunch Trump supporter, right-wingers insisted the man was a liberal, a Marxist, blaming the murder on “the extreme left.” There were even suggestions on Trumpic media that Governor Tim Walz hired the man to off a political enemy. 

We may argue over which party has most lost its mind (though the answer is as obvious as the aforementioned and Mr. Cheung’s lies), but when the divide between them is this unbridgeable, the adherence to truth so unequal, prospects for joining together in commitment to democracy are dim.

Changing subjects again, to the missiles flying between Israel and Iran: In concert with the wishes of the Western world, Israel’s intent is to keep Iran from building nuclear weapons. As the Middle East threatens another conflagration, let’s remember that, if not for Trump, this wouldn’t have happened. Calling it “the worst deal in the world,” reflexively undoing President Barack Obama’s most beneficial initiatives in his first “presidency,” he pulled out of the tough nuclear agreement with Iran that Obama’s team had forged. The deal included regular, expert inspections, with which Iran was complying.

Iranically, the currently disrupted negotiations between the US and Iran would return to the status established by President Obama’s “worst deal.” Bringing things back to how they were before Trump ruined them is also a fair description of the ephemeral trade agreement, supposedly in the works, with China.

Speaking of bad things that happened because Trump was president, he’d have us believe that some world events happened because he wasn’t. Like Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which, because of his unmatched leadership skills and plenary power over Putin, he’d be ending the day after he was elected. It follows that if Putin had been afraid to invade while Trump was president, he’d certainly be acceding to Trump’s demands to end hostilities, of which there’ve been many, after every one of which, Putin, playing Trump like a balalaika, escalated his attacks.

Were I to claim my columns prevent Trump from imprisoning everyone who opposes him, no one could prove it false; but I’d put that assertion alongside Trump’s about Russia and Ukraine. And it’d be fair to call me megalomaniacal and nuts.

Protest Is Bravery Now

America’s history is dotted with instances of civil (and uncivil) disobedience that moved public opinion and changed our country for the better. Knowing that, by assembly and by voting, citizens are the ultimate protectors of freedom, the creators of our Constitution placed protection for the right to assemble and speech first in the Bill of Rights. Civil rights, women’s suffrage, voting rights, ending wars, – these markers of American greatness only occurred after massive, nationwide demonstrations. Even more so when the government reacted brutally: the Boston Massacre, the march on Edmund Pettis Bridge, Kent State.

The importance of unsuppressed protest in free, democratic countries can’t be overstated. Which is why it’s so maddening, so outrageous, so antithetical when they turn violent. They destroy the message; they make the violence the only thing people remember. They justify shutting them down. It’s as if the rioting is arranged by governments against which the protests are mounted. As if?

It’s a truism that when Trump or Trumpists accuse someone of doing something dire, it’s they who are doing it. So when Trump suggested the violence in Los Angeles is at the hands of paid protestors, it might prove the rule; also the one that when Trump speaks off-script, nonsense ensues. Why would he want to imply that the violence didn’t come from the protestors but from paid agitators? Back when the DOJ wasn’t in the tank for a corrupt president, we learned that much, if not most of the violence associated with BLM demonstrations came not from Antifa, whatever that is, but from white supremacist groups from all over, intent on discrediting the movement. 

It’s not conspiratorial to recognize the benefit to Trump when legitimate protests of illegitimate government acts turn violent. Thinking Trumpists are behind it might be. Or might not.

The people feeding Trump his thoughts are smart enough to understand history, which is why they’re rewriting or expunging it wherever they can. And they understand the power of the people when organized, which is why they want to suppress it. Using US military personnel to do so required ignoring the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which makes that use illegal except in the case of insurrection.

Excepting the January 6 riot, the violent perpetrators of which Trump has pardoned en masse, confirming the hypocrisy of his current actions, protests are not insurrections. Not even when cars are alight and stores are looted by students whose teams win national championships. Nor are protests against unlawful arrests and deportations by masked ICE agents, disappearing people they call moochers looking for work at Home Depot or actually at work. Or protesting raids on elementary school graduations, terrorizing children and their parents.

The silence of MAGA Republicans, who dislike liberals as much as they dislike democracy, voting by mail, science, vaccines, and help for poor people, see Trump’s use of the National Guard and, now, the Marines, and love it like they love autocracy. They’re afraid to dissent, so the less they see it in others, the better they feel. ICE raids, no matter against whom, even US citizens or residents who’ve been here and working for decades, are fine with them, as is knowing that most of the migrants deported to the El Salvador gulag had no criminal records.

California is no stranger to protests. Its leaders haven’t shied away from arresting violent perpetrators. The only reason for Trump’s use of troops, overriding state governors’ wishes, is to intimidate anyone who dares to disagree with him and to fulfill his tough-guy neediness and consolidate his quest for absolute power.

The same is true for the North Korea/China/Russia conjuring military parade he ordered the willing Pete Hegseth to put on for him. If there won’t be goose-stepping and head-turned salutes to him, they’ll be happening in his mind. If you don’t hate this, you don’t love America and everything for which it has always stood. Even more, you should hate Trump’s promise that demonstrations against it will be met with “very heavy force.”

As much freude was schadened by the brief breakup of Trump and Musk, the lesson is how far those two, abetted by our ideological Supreme Court, have brought us toward the end of democracy. Money is speech, they found, buried somewhere in the Constitution, giving people like Musk untold power over elections. A president can do no wrong, they concluded, so Trump is free to do whatever he wants; especially since our Republican-controlled Congress has abandoned its role as a checker and balancer. At the height (or low point) of their feud, Musk threatened Republican Congress-dwellers with financing Democratic challengers. Trump promised “very serious consequences” if he did. Musk, who has billions in government contracts, backed down.

Since before he was ever elected, Trump has expressed his love of dictators and desire to be one. It’s almost here. Protests need to continue. Whoever is behind the violence needs to think thrice about the implications. Meanwhile, everyone should think hard about California Governor Newsom’s response to Trump’s pretensions.

Veritas

 

In the year 50 B.T., I was awarded a seven-year scholarship to Harvard, one given, back then, to only fifty applicants per year. Had I done well enough, it included acceptance to grad school. To my grandmother’s chagrin, I turned it down. It wasn’t because of Ivy League stigma. It was because I was sure they’d made a mistake. Imposter syndrome, I guess. From the right, that stigma is gospel. I attach none to Harvard graduates, though, and not just because I married one.

Notwithstanding MAGAfied asperity, Harvard, like many other storied universities, has contributed immensely to our nation. If successful, Trump’s Id-iotic need to take them down would cloud the future of all of us. Turning away or deporting foreign students who come to partake of American scholarship already has. Whether they stay or return home, those students become positive representations of America, wherever they are. The US and the world need them. Typical of the current administration, shutting them out is short-sighted ignorance.

Trump, who lies about everything, denies being rejected by Harvard. Which means it’s true. Given daddy’s war bucks, a consequential qualification in decades past, that says a lot. In Trump, imposter isn’t a syndrome, it’s a definition. His native-born narcissism compels him to say he knows “more than anyone” about everything, voluminous evidence to the contrary. His birthright insecurity demands he “gets even” with any critic or institution that reveals the truth. That, he doesn’t deny. He’s proud of it. 

From this thin-skinned, partial president, having, as his niece tells us, “absolutely no redeeming qualities,” unchecked vengeance is ominous. Like his embarrassingly false Harvard accusations. Antisemitism is promoted there? From a guy who surrounds himself with de facto Nazis? Whose eponymous “university” scammed people out of millions? That guy wants to dictate how and what to teach in America, and who can do it.

For Stephen Miller and the Project 2025ers skulking around 1600, enfleshing their resentment of “the other” and fear of the educated, Trump’s attacks on universities are a perfect match. Aware that small-ell liberal education is a disinformation repellent, Republicans have pushed anti-intellectualism for decades. But it’s only with Trump that it’s come to reside so openly in the White House. Yet millions of voters observe Trump’s inability to carry an off-script thought to completion and consider it laudable.

The danger to democracy of Trump’s Projectile 2025 attacks on universities and public education can’t be overstated. That includes his whisperers’ desire to control what courses are taught, which words are acceptable, and to expunge books that refer in positive ways to anyone not white and Christian. Even in the Library of Congress. 

MAGA’s un-Christian priorities, manifested in their “Big Beautiful Budget Bill,” make their aims copiously clear. As everyone not sitting to the right of Congressional aisles knows, their tax cuts for wealthy donors, etched in reaganite, are “balanced” by cuts to every program that, for decades, has helped the less fortunate have a shot at dignity and overcoming poverty. Dismissed by Trumpists as moochers. But they’d in-your-face the Ten Commandments, to which none adhere, into all public buildings.

The BBBB not only doesn’t balance the budget, it REALLY doesn’t. insisting it doesn’t increase the national debt, Holy Mike Johnson, whom God has on speed-dial according to Mike, bears false witness. This, despite calculations by the Congressional Budget Office and conservative and liberal economists, all of whom predict increases in the trillions. Surely the Bible-brandishing Speaker knows Revelation 22:15. He must think doing what he considers God’s work excuses all transgressions. That the bill will lead to more hunger and disease, pollution and poverty, he must assume, is included in the absolution. If he were capable of it, he’d be ashamed.

But none of them feel shame. Shame at America’s foundational values and basic decency being discarded like Trump’s first two wives. Shame at defunding vital research, causing scientists to abandon their work, halting nascent discoveries. Shame at ceding intellectual leadership to geopolitical adversaries, at cutting disaster aid and weather warnings, because who cares? Shame at the emergence of a police state, in which ICE agents, enthusiastically cruel, wear masks to hide their identity, like criminals. In which elected members of the opposing party are arrested, their staff zip-tied “for their safety.” Shameless, America-rejecting MAGAs love what they see, incurious about what they don’t.

Trump’s vengeful attacks on Harvard are crimson lib-stick. Trump’s voters, made unable to look beyond their cultish glee, are blind to the dire implications for America. Which is precisely the point of his pre-dawn bleats and ill-conceived executive orders: feed them the phobic satisfaction they crave, while he enriches himself with paid-for pardons, bitcoin scams, and other shameless corruption. And while his gang of anti-democratic oligarchs, the ones actually in charge, destroy constitutional governance, brick by bricolage.

But why worry? As Senator Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) reminded us, defending her party’s cruelty, “We’re all going to die.”