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It’s been just two days since our authoritarian regime started a full-scale bombing campaign on Iran, blowing up a good chunk of their authoritarian regime. Trump and the GOP have been spraying incoherent nonsense all over social media and the news to explain why we are doing this now.
We’re there to stop Iran’s nuclear program. Which we totally destroyed last year. We’re actually there to liberate the people of Iran. But we blew up a school filled with little children. We’re definitely not doing regime change. We are doing regime change. Iran has been attacking us for decades, so this is actually self-defense. Argle Bargle Operation Epic Fury! ‘Muuuuurika! Fuck yeah!
In reality, there are several real reasons we’re attacking Iran, none of them legitimate, and absolutely none of which the regime (our regime) can explain to the public without immediately being dragged out into the street and lynched by their own base.
Among the more immediate goals:
Boost Trump’s rock-bottom popularity with a little wag the dog action
Change the nation’s attention away from the Epstein files
Set up a “national threat” narrative to seize control of the midterms
Pay back the massive bribes from several Gulf states
Boost the price of oil to help Russia’s war effort
Soothe Trump’s fragile ego after being slapped down by “his” SCOTUS last week
There’s also the whole “Fulfill the biblical prophecy of war in the Middle East and the destruction of Israel” yadayadayada that the Evangelicals frenetically masturbate over on a daily basis. That last one is not really high on Trump’s list of things he gives a shit about, but there are more than enough theocratic neo-cons in his regime that do, and they are whispering in his ear how tough blowing up brown people in the Middle East will make him look. Trump is a moron who believes anything he is told as long as he’s told it will make him look tough and manly.
The problem is that our would-be dictator has surrounded himself with equally stupid people who are wildly out of touch with even their own base, much less the rest of the public. While MAGAland is dutifully obeying and making mouth noises in support of the Dear Leader, there has not been the intense “rally around the flag” effect the regime was looking for:
Poll Finds No Rally Effect After Iran Strikes
Morning Consult: “Trump approval (44% to 53%) and his foreign policy approval (43% to 52%) are unchanged from pre-strike baselines. The strikes have not moved his numbers immediately.”
The country is split: “41% of registered voters say strikes necessary vs. 42% who prefer diplomacy.”
What happens when you throw a war and no one rallies to your flag?
It’s not really all that hard to understand why this didn’t work. The regime looked at how George W. Bush’s popularity surged during the Iraq War and assumed they could replicate it. Things were awesome back then. The press fell in line. Dissent was crushed. The regime had a free hand to do any illegal thing it wanted, no questions asked.
But, again, these are very stupid people who are only looking at the end result and want to take shortcuts to get there. Regardless of whether you think our decades of heavy-handed “diplomacy” in the Middle East justified 9/11 or not, we were attacked. We were hit harder than we have been in over half a century. The Bush regime followed that up with months of carefully planned and planted lies and propaganda to justify a war of aggression against Iraq after we had, not unreasonably, invaded Afghanistan.
All of that combined allowed the Bush regime to launch a war of choice with a lot of public support, even as it kicked off the largest anti-war protests in history. Protesters were smeared as “terrorist-lovers” and silenced by the press because everyone was afraid of the right’s “toxic patriotism.”
But the Trump regime doesn’t have a terrorist attack to weaponize and they were too lazy or stupid (or both) to bother with a coordinated propaganda campaign. They quite literally cannot settle on a single lie about why the fuck we’re attacking Iran. It changes from day to day, sometimes from hour to hour.
There was never going to be a boost in public support under those circumstances, and a first-year PR graduate would have been able to explain that. Hell, I don’t have any PR training at all, and even I knew that.
Meanwhile, even though the Epstein files are not currently the front-page headlines, that’s not going to last long. There are millions of files still being pored over, and we know the DoJ tried to hide dozens of pages, describing in graphic detail, how Trump sexually assaulted a little girl. That story is just one of many that haven’t run their course yet.
There are also still millions of files being illegally withheld, and one can only imagine how much worse those revelations will be when we finally get them. Maybe they’ll be leaked. Maybe someone will post them by accident. Maybe the courts will force the regime to obey the law. Regardless, they won't stay hidden forever, and the cover-up guarantees we will continue to talk about Donald Trump being a pedophile.
So, while Trump is paying back his Middle East benefactors and helping out his good friend Vlad while also making himself feel like a Big Boy playing with his military, Trump’s main goals have already failed. Honestly, though? He’s probably made things worse.
As the weeks drag on and more Americans are killed, Trump’s already precarious popularity will dwindle. When gas prices spike and inflation spikes with it, his base will become enraged. They won’t abandon him, because that will never happen. But they will vent their anger on their elected Republican officials, and their already low enthusiasm will dry up even further. The midterms, already a trainwreck for the GOP, will start to resemble the kind of wipeout you read about in history books and wonder how it could possibly be real.
That means Trump’s plans to seize control of the elections will be thwarted on the spot. With no public support from anyone, including his own base, his regime of fascists will not have the juice to seize control of elections anywhere. Not in blue states, red states, or blue cities in red states. Nothing. Nowhere. Maybe if the regime had waited to attack until closer to the election or maybe not told everyone their plan to issue an executive order claiming China Iran was attacking our elections, they might have pulled it off. But, again, they were too lazy or stupid to plan this properly.
I’ve said this before, and I will definitely say it again (probably a lot): When the history books are written about this period, they will note that the thing most responsible for bringing down Trump’s fascist regime was their own monumental incompetence. Thank god for idiot Nazis.
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