Deflecting your Attention and Curing your Tension
Just can't win for all the Losing
For starters, and to deflect attention from the inhumane war our youngers have to fight at the behest of a highly incompetent man so out-of-touch with the real reality world that he can dismiss the present gas shock as mere ‘blips’ that should bother no one compared to what we’re gaining by killing hundreds of people for reasons he can’t articulate beyond ‘it’s a good thing.’
That was an incomplete sentence. To DEFLECT attention, stop feeling your feels. You really need to stop thinking about those dead people. Like the 175 schoolgirls that incompetent man killed. How did it happen? The US & Israel militaries were likely using using an outdated map. Also, stop thinking of the 1700 dead people in the past 12 days. Men. Women. Children. Grandchildren. Babies. Their lives are ‘blips’ to ignore too.
And the new leader of Iran saw his wife, kid, father, father’s wife, his sibling (and the sibling’s husband and 14 month old daughter) die in the initial attack. He was injured too, but survived. And our Dear Leader thinks Iran will just surrender after all that. Just another ‘blip’ in the Wall. Thinking things through isn’t his strong suit.
Now we hear he acted on the advice of Marco and Pissedoff Pete, plus his son-in-law, the one Saudi Arabia invested $2 billion in. Jared. The one without an official title but in charge of talking to Prince Bonesaw and passing his messages back to King Bonespur.
Intel analysts say Iran was not weeks away from having a nuclear missile and wasn’t threatening the US. And where was our intel chief Tulsi Gabbard on this supposed threat? It sure seems like Bonesaw is calling the shots here, even more than Netanyahu.
And in the first 6 days of this war, our GOP leaders have spent more than $11 billion. DOJ head Bondi touted the fact in February that the Dow was above 50,000. Today it’s nearing 47,000, the lowest it’s been since December 1st.
BBC:
»»On 10 March, the US-based Human Rights Activists in Iran (HRANA) group reported 1,787 people had been killed in Iran - including 190 military personnel and 1,262 civilians, of which at least 200 were children.««
So 6 out of 7 of the dead people are civilians. And while more than 300,000 Iranians have been displaced, in Lebanon, more than 780,000 have been displaced by the relentless shelling. It sure seems like we’re creating bigger immigrant problems for other countries than the ones we’re deporting from here.
But again, to deflect attention from the war (Corporate media stop calling it a conflict, a military exercise, an excursion, etc. It’s a WAR) Here’s the latest WWW (Whiny White Web) guy. whose appointment was blocked by Republicans…..
Okay, back to the stupidest war in memory. On the (only) plus side, attacking Iran has reduced Dear Leader’s willful attacks on American cities.
Meanwhile we’ve learned Dear Leader’s war decisions left more than 50,000 Americans in the Middle East vulnerable to attack, that he didn’t expect Iran would attack American bases in Gulf countries, didn’t expect the Strait of Hormuz would be shut down, didn’t expect oil prices would rise this much (from $2.65/gal mid January here in Oregon to $4.05 now, a buck-forty increase in 8 weeks.
Dear Leader is instead mad that the oil tanker captains lack the ‘guts’ to plow through the Strait in spite of the dangers. Guts like the ones he uses when he attacks sand traps on golf courses while American troops are fighting and dying.
I wonder when one of his advisers will tell him the uranium can’t be seized without boots on the ground.
So now a third aircraft carrier is on its way there. Will it deliver the American soldiers to Iranian soil? How many will die or get seriously injured?
And the latest intel assessment today (March 12th) says we’re not winning. I’ve maintained from the outset that Trump will lose this war.
Marcy Wheeler in Emptywheel:
»»But even NYT’s far more sophisticated piece allows Trump’s people to frame this as about oil prices, still the symptom rather than the underlying cause.
Of course, there are far more products that are being choked off in Hormuz: fertilizer (and food products coming into the Gulf), aluminum, helium, sulphur. Various kinds of petroleum products, like jet fuel and diesel, are being affected more quickly than others, and both of those create immediate downstream problems in the transportation industry. Then there are the other impacts of Iran lobbing cheap drones at its Arab neighbors, on flights connecting through airports still being targeted, on tourism, on data centers. Plus, for a variety of reasons, the US is less exposed to this crisis than much of the rest of the world, so measuring it in terms of the impact on November’s midterms in the US won’t really measure its full effect.
The longer this crisis goes on, the longer it’ll take to recover from it.
Trump and his advisors think this is just about gas prices — that same NYT article even describes him claiming Venezuelan petroleum could replace what is lost in the Gulf! — which may be one reason they seem incapable of understanding the problem they’ve created.
And even assuming they could find a way to reopen the Strait, there will be no putting this genie back in the bottle: because of Trump’s recklessness (abetted by Bibi Netanyahu), the Iranians were able to endanger the economic security of Gulf states that have relied on the US for decades, shatter the illusion of utopia the Emirates has tried to sell, and in the process disrupted markets around the world.
They did so using cheap weapons that forced the US to renege on reckless promises of protection. The power of asymmetric resistance against US might was laid bare in both Afghanistan and Iraq. But that was about sovereign state power. This is about global power.
By claiming it had existential control over Iran, the United States provided Iran an opportunity to demonstrate how limited the United States power really is (particularly when that power is being wielded by fucking incompetents), and the Mullahs obliged.««
And:
»»Yet the Trump Administration wanted to replace hegemony with something else: Unconstrained power, with no commitments. That was never achievable in any case; America’s commitments in the Middle East go well beyond the unquestioning support of Israel that dragged the US into this.
And what Iran has demonstrated already is that that power is every bit as vulnerable to asymmetric strikes as US power in Iraq was. Indeed, it may be some time before Trump’s advisors understand how badly they are misunderstanding the dynamics here, and by then the rest of the world will have had to find their own solutions.
The US may yet find a way to subjugate Iran. Hormuz will be reopened, even if it means others force US capitulation to Iran (and the longer this goes on, the more likely that becomes).
But the damage that Trump’s flailing and his advisors’ ignorance are doing to the rest of the world will forever change how US power is viewed.««
So our foreign policy cred will be shot. It’s become a feature of this twenty first century. It should be a feature of Republican presidencies but the inability of the Democratic minority to rein it in - and their unwillingness to challenge the support of a crooked and vicious Netanyahu - means both parties own it now.
Put yourself in the shoes of NATO leaders or leaders of other countries we have treaties with. Would you buy a treaty from a used-treaty lot run by an American? It’d make more sense to invest in a casket company.
Meanwhile in Africa, some folks were providing an important vaccine to half the babies, a shocking reminder of the 40 year Tuskegee Experiments … till a science group intervened.
And they rightly point out the difficulty of obtaining truly ‘informed consent’ from mothers in a country with a high right of illiteracy.
Our country’s ethical standards are being eroded on multiple fronts. And for what? Where is there a positive result for anyone?
So here’s some serious questions and considerations for all readers.
Is our greatest problem in the US the lack of trust in information due to deliberate lies by politicians, propagandists, advertising execs, algorithm engineers, photoshopping and artificial intelligence fakes?
Or are those of us motivated to understand politics and science as a means to develop a better more civilized world just fooling ourselves because only a miniscule percentage of our population views the world we’re seeing through a different lens?
I observe a lot of distress online from people exhausted by the ratmospheric river of lies and atrocities we witness or endure. Unless something tells me the problem(s) I see require my immediate attention and responsive action, I shut down all the electronics for 2 or 3 days to give myself a ‘weekend’ away from the threats and worries. Temporarily uninformed for a bit of downtime works really well for me and articles like this pair are great reality checks about our perceptions and how to address the stressors: shut it down and be more civil to yourself, as well.
( If that doesn’t work for you, the signs are absolutely clear that the tide is turning. And turning even faster now.)
Also note: I haven’t forgotten one of the biggest - if not THE biggest - reasons for this war is the ongoing coverup of the Trump-Epstein files. And Rachel And The City has dug up a lot more that is quite consistent with my assertion that Epstein was also an intel asset or a spy.
Her ongoing reports are a treasure trove too.