Trump has only been in office for five months, but he has quickly managed to smash up a bunch of things. One of those things is the relationship with Europe, which has been in place since the end of the Cold War. By walking away from Project Ukraine, he is putting the world on notice that things will never be the same between the United States and the rest of the NATO countries.
Something similar seems to be developing in the Middle East. He went for the homerun shot against Iran, but that failed, leaving the region on the edge of war and Israel scrambling to avoid Iranian missiles. Trump is left with two terrible choices, either of which probably breaks the old order in the region. He can launch and attack that probably fails or cut a deal, either option looks like a loss.
There is the third option to commit to a long air war against Iran, but you do not win wars with just air power. That was the lesson of Iraq. It took a million-man army to topple the regime. Iran is bigger, tougher, and more stable than Iraq under Saddam, so toppling the government will be much more difficult. The long air war would most likely be a very expensive failure.
The way things currently sit, the end result of this Iran – Israel war will be a new security arrangement in the Middle East. Israel will not be able to threaten her neighbors, expecting the United States to cash the checks she writes. That will be a revolutionary change in a region that needs it. Whatever it looks like in the end, it will be the result of Trump smashing and breaking things.
That is the show this week. As with so many other things, Trump is not the man with a plan, but a man with a hammer. He breaks the old stuff, often by his mere existence, but this opens the way for new stuff. He has broken the political order in Washington and now that he has real power, he is breaking the order abroad. He is the Mule, the destroyer of worlds, bringing the end of empire.
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This Week’s Show
Contents
- Intro
- Trumps Foreign Policy
- Project Ukraine
- Israel
- China
- Fast Versus Slow
- Trump’s Legacy
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In one of his lesser-known titles, Nietzsche employs the metaphor “philosophizing with a hammer.” In this case, he’s not proposing breaking stuff. Instead, he alludes to the practice of tapping a barrel with a mallet and from the resultant sound, one may judge how full or empty the container is. Applying that to Trump: even though he may not be able to break everything, even a tap with a hammer can reveal how empty are many established beliefs and structures. Very well, perhaps even a loud rap can break an illusion, at least for those who listen carefully.
You know you’re living in strange days when Bernie Sanders, of all people, is tweeting that, “….Netanyahu is not the President of the United States….”
Even stranger is that, while nominally correct, you not really sure it effectively is
As discussed before, the bungling of Trump 1.0 revealed the limit of his abilities. He clearly made some deals to get back behind the resolute desk. The first 100 days, the DOGE stuff, the gutting of USAID, and ICE raids are all results from a team that was most likely assembled to help him. Now the loudest voices in the oval office are steering him towards disaster. Back in March when Trump greenlit airstrikes against the Houthis, no one in the administration expected the op to turn into an international embarrassment. 2 F-18s flopping off the USS Truman deck (missile… Read more »
Even though I am pretty much off the President TACO train at this point, I have to respect Trump’s ability to create a lot of pressure for his opponents with seeming ease.Doing the 2 more weeks thing on the Israeli’s is going to put a ton of heat on the Netanyahu regime since Tel Aviv is getting hammered a lot worse than the news is letting on right now. Every day of “maybe” that Trump uses is going to be another night of rockets for the Israelis.Israel likes to play tough but how much of that is actually real vs.… Read more »
“He is the Mule, the destroyer of worlds, bringing the end of empire.”
That’s exactly what I voted for. Yeah, it may be in the end my undoing as well, but really—there is only so much one can take these days from the old establishment. Odd how so many here blame us Boomers for all the ills of current society and then decry us yet again when we install the “Mule”.
Sit back, detach, enjoy the show.
it’s ironic that trump i so capable of breaking things, and so incapable of building anything (other than actual buildings)
Those generally go bankrupt, give it time 😉
Iran comes out ahead in the long run. Let’s war-game this: 1) Israel and the U.S. jointly attack Iran with air power. 2) Neither can or will put troops on the ground, so the air attack ultimately fails. 3) Iran rebuilds and now, rightly fearing invasion, has total justification to obtain a nuclear weapon as a deterrent, as the U.S./Israel attack had been an unprovoked act of aggression. 4) Iran gets this deterrent, maybe with Russian or Chinese help. Maybe they are allowed to have a limited, WWII-style uranium bomb or a tactical nuke, but not MIRVed thermonuclear weapons. 5)… Read more »
“Maybe they are allowed to have a limited, WWII-style uranium bomb or a tactical nuke, but not MIRVed thermonuclear weapons.”
Once they successfully build a plutonium based bomb, they have a thermonuclear weapons capability shortly thereafter as it’s simple engineering. MIRV’d weapons I’m not sure can be prevented either, but they are more complex to be sure. In any event, Israel is only a short distance away.
trump broke the political power in washington?!! … is this a joke? he was allowed to come back for war with iran, that’s why elections weren’t rigged. democrats are still in washington(not in prison), they’ll be back and they can’t wait to spill some white blood. republicans focus on israel’s enemy abroad(middle east), democrats focus on Israel’s domestic enemies(white race), this is basic stuff. if by some miracle trump doesn’t want war with iran he’ll get ousted. white americans should really get ready for post trump era cause a demoncrat coup is coming(whites don’t fight back) a or a civil… Read more »
I fear that @sshole is going to end up breaking America and possibly Europe too. People who still think he’s “our man” are in denial
The big question would involve the circumstances concerning Netanyahu’s decision to go all “Pearl Harbor” on the Iranians. Was Trump informed beforehand that Netanyahu had decided on a “Pearl Harbor”? Might Trump & Netanyahu have engaged in any dialogue, beforehand, concerning the “Pearl Harbor” option? Or was Trump completely in the dark when he learned that Netanyahu had launched a “Pearl Harbor”? A wise & experienced & brilliant leader would NEVER agree to a “Pearl Harbor” gambit. The “Pearl Harbor” gambit is always far too dangerous of a risk for any nation. My guess is that Trump did NOT know… Read more »
There was a complete failure to control the leader of a very small country before he got everyone into trouble. And it’s not just this incident. Trump is a serial screw up who somehow comes out on top. Not so much his “friends”. The second I hit the post comment button I knew there would be angry pushback for this. But there always is when you tear the scales from other people’s eyes. People lash out against contradictions to what they need to believe. Trump is an arrogant, pompous, shallow narcissist. He has the right enemies but that does not… Read more »
Moran ya Simba: Trump is an arrogant, pompous, shallow narcissist. Yeah, but Netanyahu is many many orders of magnitude worse in every regard. Apparently some Mizrahic Rebbe has declared Netanyahu to be the Mashiach, and Netanyahu is all aboard the Cluster B Express to Hell. tl;dr == These days we got way way way too many different folks trying to Immanentize the Eschaton. If I were the king of the world, attempting to Immanentize the Eschaton would automatically induce the Death Penalty. No pardons & no paroles whatsoever. All Immanentizers of the Eschaton would be immediately dispatched to the gallows… Read more »
No argument about netanyahu there. He even has a disturbing trait I don’t think Trump has, bloodthirst. But Trump takes orders from him. What does that tell us?
On other issues Trump is on board with the total ai surveillance state, run by a private company. And on and on it goes. He is not a good guy. That’s nothing but a comforting fantasy. I regret that good people, men and women who understand how crazy this has all gotten, balk at reading the multiple hints at trump’s character
men and women who understand how crazy this has all gotten, balk at reading the multiple hints at trump’s character Admitting that to oneself would cause more harm to the person than to Trump. In fact, it wouldn’t affect Trump at all, unless the person was able to convey their disappointment in his character to Trump personally. It would be an admission that one is not a good judge of character, and on the highest of levels — that would be very difficult for most people to do. Descartes says somewhere that men are envious of every other man’s possessions… Read more »
Any leader who allows and in fact facilitates what is happening in Gaza, is evil. His higher “goal” is “great beach front resorts” however the truth is it is genocide by any other name.
By the time the Iran situation is over more hundreds of thousands of innocents will be killed, starved and/or die of exposure or disease. All of this due to lies and false assumptions that are being fed to him. Worse he wants to believe those assumptions.
Trump is not in any way a thoughtful man and he is not the man his supporters think he is.
What makes you think both aren’t already broke?