The Reign of Error
Can our rickety political system survive the rule of nincompoops elected by an ignorant minority?
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This week’s feature in the Theater of Performance Politics is the Senate Republicans’ reprise of the multi-authored “53 Characters in Search of Legislation”. Their rendition of Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill is the pinnacle of Dada on stage, a triumph of nihilism. It is nothing less than we’ve come to expect from this kakistocratic juggalo show of an Administration. Long ago, in a galaxy far away, the GOP was the party of fiscal discipline, the home to deficit hawks and small-government right-wingers who pined for a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution. Now they’re prepared to add trillions of dollars to the government’s debt burden by cutting taxes on the rich and slashing safety net programs for everyone else. In doing so, they are scuttling their ship, at least as far as polls are concerned.
Now that the laughable excuse for a legislated budget bill has passed the Senate with the tie-breaking vote of Vice-President JD Vance, it returns to the House. The differences between the House and Senate versions must be reconciled, opening another can of worms. As the AP reported after today’s Senate vote,
The difficulty for Republicans, who have the majority hold in Congress, to wrestle the bill to this point is not expected to let up. The package now goes back to the House, where Speaker Mike Johnson had warned senators not to overhaul what his chamber had already approved. But the Senate did make changes, particularly to Medicaid, risking more problems ahead. House GOP leaders vowed to put it on Trump’s desk by his Fourth of July deadline.
But, wait: that’s this week. Last weekend, the US bombed three sites in Iran that were suspected locations of an Iranian program to develop a nuclear weapon. We are not at war with Iran: a declaration of war is the Senate’s job. The President did this on his own… Sort of. It appears he may have been manipulated into the attack by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Claiming that Iran was “months away” from having a bomb, Israel began preemptive missile strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities and air defenses in early June, prompting retaliatory strikes by Iran. However, the Israelis lacked the weapons- the ‘bunker buster bombs” and the means to deliver them- to destroy underground facilities.
So it is possible that Netanyahu convinced Trump to launch the strike. It would be very much in Trump’s narcissistic self-image to see the bombing as a sign of his strength as a leader. Recall that, in April 2017, he ordered a missile attack on a Syrian airbase after the Syrians had used chemical weapons against a rebel-held town. Like last week’s Iran strike, Trump acted without asking Congress for approval. It was also a one-off military action. We should be thankful if the attack does not precipitate a wider Middle East war: the specter of Trump as a wartime President would be unsettling to America and the world. It is a curious paradox that the one-time draft dodger enjoys playing soldier-in-chief.
Of course, there is a catch to this whole kerfuffle. While Trump quickly made statements that the attack “obliterated” the Iranian nuclear program, a leaked intelligence assessment indicated that, at most, the Iranians were set back a few months. It will realistically take weeks, if not months, to obtain a thorough analysis of the attack’s effect.1 And there is also the matter of the US and Iran being involved in negotiations to get the Iranians to abandon their quest for the bomb. It is ironic- a word no one on Trump’s team seems to be able to spell- that Trump in his first term withdrew the US from the JCPOA, the agreement to limit Iran’s nuclear program that was negotiated during the Obama Administration. Now, Trump’s foreign policy team is attempting to negotiate a similar deal.
The hits keep on comin’ in Donald Trump’s America. Keep in mind that we are only 163 days into this clusterphuck: there are 1297 more days of chaos. Weird juxtapositions are assaulting our perceptions: Unidentified masked men are grabbing people off the streets, US Marines are patrolling Los Angeles, and Administration officials are defying court orders. Meanwhile, when Trump’s not playing golf,2 he’s hawking mobile phones, fragrances for men and women, and crypto meme coins.
Is it too late to remind everyone about the meaning of caveat emptor?
(If you need a lighter take on the state of the nation, check this out.)
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As is his wont, Trump cannot resign himself to using terms like “effective” or “damaging” to describe the results of the strike: he is compelled to invoke the over-the-top “obliterate” without clear evidence. Bless his soul, the man is consistent.
Trump has played golf 38 times in his first 163 days in office, according to https://trumpgolftrack.com/