This Carbon Based Life

By David Glenn Cox

We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming to bring you this totally unimportant message you’ve probably already heard a dozen times before from the president. There was a reason for the president’s speech last night. Maybe someday we’ll find out what that reason was. Generally, in a war, an American president will go on TV to explain the situation to the people and explain America’s goals in the war.

Buried inside the president’s messages to the people are messages in diplomatic code for our adversaries’ consumption. Messages of consolidation or aggression (we would be willing) hinting at an off-ramp away from war. But I’ll be damned if I can figure it out. So how could the Iranians possibly figure it out? If there was a message out there last night, it was well disguised. Mr. Trump is too inarticulate to pass along the subliminal message. It calls the questions of competence.

King Midas Muffler is stuck in a tape loop, a skip on the record. Repeating the same contradictory lies and made-up talking points. And is this the best the administration can do? If you want to know about the competence of those behind the scenes, check out the end product. A tape loop talking while saying nothing, as if the porch light is on but no one is at home. “Must watch Wapner at three o’clock.” And as if they’re losing even that. The speech will go down in history as the speech that wasn’t. The opportunity squandered.

Admittedly, it’s never easy to surrender. Trump is just going to declare the war is over? “Yeah, we’re going to keep bombing for a little while longer, just to make it look good, and then we’re leaving! Yep, just wash our hands and go home! What about the straits of Hormuz? Not our problem! Hey world! If you want your oil, you had better fix this Strait of Hormuz thing right away. The United States, the former leader of the free world, not only resigns from the chessboard but scatters the pieces in anger. Then Trump resigns from the free world.

Like a petulant geriatric child throwing a tantrum because Europe didn’t want to help him commit war crimes. Trump fell into the latrine and he’s angry Europe didn’t want to soil themselves helping to get him out. This is the product. The end result. An unfocused dolt and his staff of unfocused dolts. Making it explicitly clear it is not just Trump alone. His staff is responsible for helping the president to form policy. There was supposed to be some sort of important message in there last night. Instead, we got the unintended message that the old boy is losing it. Burning out a brain bearing in the mainframe.

In between the gibberish comes the message: The United States will just walk away from Iran and the Strait of Hormuz. The war is over! We won, it’s official! Bye! I hope you’ve learned your lesson. But Mr. Trump has been telling us for weeks about these friendly Iranians he’s been talking to and how they’re eager to sign a peace deal. Where did they go? They evaporated like smoke and totally discorporated into phantoms. Then it hits you like a bucket of cold water.

What Trump is telling us now has no relevance to whatever he told us before. Yes, he told us Iranians were anxious to capitulate and recant their sins. Now? What Iranians? We’re just going home. War is over! Everybody go home now! The old adage says, if you break it, you’ve bought it. Mr. Trump is trying to put the war he started back on the shelf, hoping no one will notice.

The eighty-year-old four-year-old red faced and ready to throw a tantrum on the carpet. Mr. Trump misunderstands the NATO charter. They’re only obligated to help if someone attacks us. Not in any military adventurism we decide to engage in on our own. Trump is angry about it and it’s stuck in his craw. He’ll show them what happens when they won’t help him. He’ll just walk away, that’s what he’ll do, and let the chips fall where they may!

If King Midas muffler is forced to surrender, he’s leaving behind a poison pill for Europe. Mr. Muffler sees himself as the victim here because NATO wouldn’t help him cut the Gordian knot. NATO has been dead for a while, only now, it’s official.

Mr. Trump had been having a rough day. In the morning, Mr. Trump attended the Supreme Court oral arguments on birthright citizenship as the first President ever to do so. Fat Tony, the mob boss coming to stare down the justices in an overt act of intimidation, found out why no president had ever attended oral arguments before. When the arguments didn’t go as planned, King Midas Muffler and the mufflerettes angrily scuttled off. Birthright citizenship was the wrong hill to die on.

It goes back to that disorganization thing I had mentioned. Has the king’s madness now become unmanageable? Or can the blame for the madness be placed on the muffler’s staff? He can’t be this incompetent by himself, you know. It’s clever, don’t you think? Declare victory as you surrender. None of the war’s adjectives have been met except for the administration’s made-up ones. No peace conference and no treaty signing. We win! Call Tehran and tell them we won, and tell them we are going home now.

Troublingly, there is a disconnect between what Trump says and what he does. Tomorrow, Trump could say the exact opposite. We are either bombing Iran back to the stone age or we’re going home. Either the friendly Iranians are ready to surrender or they don’t really exist. The US is anxious to leave and will forego all the fruits of victory as long as it doesn’t have to suffer the indignity of defeat. The US will accept defeat provided Iran doesn’t make a big deal about it.

This administration has worked middling hard to control situations and expel troublesome reporters and news agencies. Suing the networks for millions of dollars until they get the news product they want. But this Trump war has exposed the limits of that control. A president vacillating from hour to hour. We’re winning! We’re way ahead of schedule! We’ve destroyed their obsolete air force! We’ve sunk their tiny fiberglass navy! The war will be over in a few days, or a few weeks, or months. Can we have 200 billion dollars? The war will be over in two weeks, and then we’re going home. Mission not accomplished!

I suppose that’s good news. The end of a war is always good news. But the exposed incompetence of the administration is not good news. They can’t be seriously considering creating a world crisis and then, just walking away, can they?

It’s his staff! If they can’t control or cajole Mr. Trump, they must remove him. Just walking away is not a viable option. Just walk away, sure, it’s brilliant. The world doesn’t want to help the toddler Trump. So he will just pick up his toys and go home leaving the world in complete and total disarray. I suppose it should have been  expected, that a man who can’t admit he lost an election, surely couldn’t admit to losing a war.

“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’

’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’

’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.”
― Lewis Carroll,