The Negotiator

I spent the past week in sunny Calistoga, touring various local spots of interest, and generally avoiding all but the most peripheral "news" coverage. Funny how walking several miles a day (without looking at a damned phone the entire time) and visiting wineries and local small museums and such will clear your head like nothing else.

And yet, now that I spent some part of the weekend "catching up" as it were, acquainting myself with this week's round of interchangeable nonsense, the thing I keep coming back to is how dreadful our corporate media is. I mean it. They really suck bloated rhino balls. This Iran debacle is just the latest example.

By now, everyone knows the arsonist-firefighter dynamic of Shithead's "negotiating style":  create a problem where there wasn't one, puff up and act like the tough guy you know he really never was, pretend that a crisis has been averted thanks to his steady statesmanship, move on to find something else to fuck up. I mean we just went through this earlier this year with Venezuela, and people seem already to have forgotten.

Then, of course, there's North Korea. Can't wait for the homoerotic mash notes from Maduro, or the Iranian mullahs, for this jabbering dupe to start crowing about, like something was accomplished.

But what's pathetic is how corporate media dipshits like George Stephanopoulos and Chunk Toad persist in their delusional questioning of this fucking monster, as if he has anything legitimate to say or point to, on anything aside from racking up another trillion dollars of debt to give billionaires another tax cut. That's it, that's all he's done. Any temporary economic stimulus we might be experiencing from that will come to an end at some point, sooner rather than later.

This Twitter thread from Rita Konaev --  get this, someone with actual knowledge and expertise in a difficult area, so manifestly unqualified for the claque of simpering toadies and chickenhawks currently "advising" Grampa Walnuts -- captures the Iran situation nicely. As with North Korea and Venezuela and Syria before, we have been counting on Trump's manifest stupidity, impulsive behavior, and sheer incompetence to muddle through these foreign policy crises that he creates and then pretends to resolve. We're depending on this doddering asshole's insecurities, his bone-deep mommy and daddy issues, to keep us out of yet another war.

But that can also backfire. It is entirely possible for Trump to blunder his way into a real shooting war with Iran. His psychotic butt-buddies in Saudi Arabia and Israel would love nothing better. So far it's Russia and China who have been the voice of reason in this, and that alone should be a real cause for concern.

(Speaking of Russia and China, and backtracking to North Korea for a moment, it went practically unnoticed but within the past few weeks, Putin and Xi have each met separately with Kim Jong Un to reaffirm their mutual friendships with North Korea, and they have met with each other to essentially affirm a strategic alliance against us. And why not? We have revealed ourselves twice in less than twenty years to be superficial, short-sighted, and bugfuck stupid and crazy when it comes to selecting chief executives. Even if we manage to shed ourselves of Trump -- and even McConnell and Graham, and take back the Senate and all that -- there is no getting around the fact that forty percent of this country hates the majority, wants the confederacy back, and would round up everyone darker than them in a heartbeat.)

I think the odds are somewhat against us ending up in an actual shooting war with Iran. But if we do, it will be at the behest of the Saudis and Israelis. It should be clear by now that they own his fat ass.