I see that I haven’t posted anything this year. Thus far, at least, I also haven’t run a marathon or an ultramarathon. The dearth of both of those things at the same time may well be unprecedented since I started this bloggy project a week or so after 9-11 back in 2001. Perhaps I sensed that the subterranean existential angst I was feeling [and many others were feeling] had just made things like my various adult projects just not worth it, particularly when coupled with a pretty damned unpleasantly cold and snowy winter in New York, at least weatherwise. Maybe. I’m just guessing. On my next point, I’m not.
With that out of the way, let me just post a quote of a social media post issued by the alleged president of the United States [spoiler alert, he’s promising a nuclear attack on Iran, his murder of hundreds of children and a good part of the country’s ruling echelon already not sufficient to satisfy both his bloodlust and his need for “a win,” any win]:
“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will. However, now that we have Complete and Total Regime Change, where different, smarter, and less radicalized minds prevail, maybe something revolutionarily wonderful can happen, WHO KNOWS? We will find out tonight, one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World. 47 years of extortion, corruption, and death, will finally end. God Bless the Great People of Iran!” Posted on April 7, 2026.
Where does one even go from here? I suppose one can be absurdly pedantic and suggest that “Iran started it,” either on November 4, 1979, when “students” stormed the American embassy compound and took dozens of American diplomats hostage, and held them for 444 days until a few minutes after St. Ronald Reagan was installed as President, or at latest, on October 7, 2023, when hundreds or perhaps thousands of Hamas terrorists stormed out of Gaza into Southern Israel, resulting in the deaths of well over 1,000 Israelis (and some foreign nationals), and kidnapping hundreds of Israelis, all of which “could only have been authorized by Iran.” [Israel responded by leveling Gaza and killing tens of thousands of women and children along the way in what many have termed a genocide.] The claim that Iran started this is obviously nonsense: the alleged American president felt unduly emboldened by an obviously well-planned (complete with a complicit local vice-president) kidnapping of the leader of a foreign state in South America, and perhaps the successful “rescue of a downed American pilot.” I try not to read to much into what comes out of the mouths of dementia patients. Anyway…
We of course have Israeli PM Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu, a man who has told us Iran is two weeks away from a nuclear bomb for decades; indeed, he might very well have been on this shtick when I saw him live at NYU Law (he was Israel’s ambassador to the UN back them… Lord knows it’s been his shtick through his entire political career). So it seems that Bibi has finally pushed whatever button (as it were) that was necessary to get the alleged American president to launch the most ill-conceived military “excursion” in American history, against armed-to-the-teeth Iran.
That said, despite his bullshit, what Israel is doing makes sense for it, given that its actual existential threats (Egypt and Jordan) are off the table as threats because of massive American bribery following the Camp David accords, but nonetheless Israel has faced less existential annoyances, mostly in the form of terrorist proxies Hezbollah, Hamas and others (such as the former Assad regime in Syria), sponsored by Iran as its own force multipliers against “the little Satan.” So, brushing back Iran (who conveniently has a civilian nuclear program and really good ballistic missiles and drones), and diminishing its ability to be a pain in the ass, makes sense for it.
Enter the United States. A vast global empire, whose economy (at least since the 1970s) has been based on “petrodollar recycling,” to wit, the petroleum producing states of the Persian Gulf (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the UAE and others) agreed to price their oil exports in U.S. dollars, and said petroleum producing states would then invest their “surplus” U.S. dollars into the U.S. economy. As part of this package, the American empire was provided basing rights in the Gulf to “protect” said petroleum producing states, mostly from Iran.
Fast forward to the end of February, 2026. Our friend “Bibi” had never given up on his dreams of his hand-picked American President (the current alleged president) doing his bidding to the point of not merely greenlighting Israeli direct aggression against Iran (and its alleged nuclear weapons program), but American participation in same, as happened in 2025 during the so called Twelve Day war, culminating in American bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities at Natanz and Isfahan on June 22, 2025 to support whatever the fuck Israel was doing. Despite the alleged American president’s repeated insistence that Iran’s nuclear ambitions had been “obliterated,” Bibi continued to insist (as ever) that Iran was two weeks away from having a nuclear bomb (and always would be). So supposedly in the middle of February, Bibi visited the White House situation room (supposedly under the rubble of the East Wing of the White House that the alleged American president demolished to build a New Jersey style wedding palace), and Bibi communicated with the alleged American president as one would to a spoiled toddler, with a video full of shit blowing up setting forth how easy attacking Iran would be, and how quickly it would surrender without ever doing anything unpleasant like shooting back at the Gulf petroleum producing countries or shutting down shipping in the Straits of Hormuz, despite, you know, every single adult whoever studied the issue concluding that Iran would do both of those things. You have to admire Bibi’s patience: having cultivated this dolt for at least a decade, and even managed to get a whole lot of Jews (specifically the right wing ones including the allegedly very religious) to go along with voting for the alleged president, he played on the moron’s vanity and apparent need for a win, in light of the Supreme Court basically telling the alleged president that his economy-destroying-tariffs were not merely stupid policy, but unconstitutional policy on February 20, 2026. And so, said alleged president, desperate for a win (any win) and still cocky about the Venezuela thing, announced on February 28, 2026 that he (in conjunction with Israel) had not only begun a large scale aerial attack on Iran, but had actually managed to assassinate that country’s Supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khameini, along with most of his family, and it turns out, most of the likely successors including some that the U.S. had been considering supporting.
And then shit got real, really fast. In a surprise to no one except the alleged American president and his lackey the [alcoholic and quite mentally disturbed] alleged Secretary of War, Iran did not fold. Instead, Iran began attacking ship traffic in the Straits of Hormuz, through which around 20% of the world’s crude oil transits, and began firing missiles and drones at various targets throughout the Middle East, especially American military targets, and Israel. It was quickly discovered that despite the hype, the Americans and their allies had a very limited supply of extremely expensive interceptor missiles, and that Iran seemed to have an endless supply of drones (and a whole lot more missiles than anyone anticipated). And so, with a shooting war in place that every single American president (including the first iteration of this one in 2017-2021) understood would have disastrous global consequences, strategically, economically, politically, you name it, the markets responded by sending the price of a barrel of oil way up over $100/bbl (with attendant U.S. gasoline prices going from $2 something a gallon to over $4 something a gallon) and attendant stock market losses, the alleged American president watched his already anemic approval ratings hit hitherto unknown lows.
For their part, the Iranians started playing favorites, and began allowing ship traffic in the Straits of Hormuz to pass if they paid a toll (around $2 million) and were from favored countries (most notably NOT the USA or Israel). Further infuriating the alleged American president.
So… when the going gets tough… the grifters get insider trading. And thus, every Friday, just after financial markets closed, the alleged American president would announce some fanciful progress in negotiations that would result in the war being over within hours, and of course, the Iranians would then deny everything, in the interim, large trades would mysteriously be placed on various financial markets, and then, come Monday, profits would be taken, lather, rinse, repeat. Until Mr. Market stopped playing. And the Iranians stopped playing too. The Iranians also got really good at posting mocking Lego-movie videos, featuring the alleged American president and his humiliations at the hands of the Iranians (whom he kept insisting lost their navy, their air force, their air defenses…)
At which point, the alleged American president began to truly panic, and start posting shit on his proprietary social media platform that was unhinged even for him. This was his Easter Sunday posting:
Kind of weird that his first term was dominated by failed contentions of “Infrastructure Week,” when after four years, he managed to barely build sections of his Medieval border wall. But wrecking Iran’s infrastructure… definitely on the table.
And despite all of his bluster, Iran continued to fight back, forcing the U.S. to abandon most of its bases in the Middle East, its embassy in Iraq, and forcing two of its supercarriers to sail hundreds of miles away from the Persian Gulf to be out of range of Iranian drones and missiles.
And so, the alleged American president who was supposedly obsessed with nuclear weapons during his first term (largely because he is a moron) has decided to double-down on the threats of violence, by having one of his psychopathic aides (I would guess Stephen Miller) draft his latest social media posts suggesting that “a whole civilization will die tonight.” The alleged president has backed off of his threats so many times thus far that an acronym (“TACO”) has been developed to suggest he “always chickens out.” Perhaps humanity’s future is dependent on “TACO Tuesday” actually coming to pass.
I don’t know. I just know that enough American racists just loved the idea of one of their own back in power, notwithstanding that his last go-round resulted in the gross mismanagement of a healthcare crisis that resulted in over a million Americans dying and tens of millions infected with a debilitating disease, possibly for life, to decide to bring this senile moron back. But this ill-mannered imbecile who now suffers from age related dementia (including vile diet and exercise habits) has access– exclusive access– to the American nuclear codes, and has clearly threatened to use them against a nation that presented no threat to us until he unilaterally attacked it. It’s possible that enough senior members of the military haven’t been purged who will refuse to follow blatantly illegal orders; it’s also possible that they will go through with what the commander in chief tells them.
I don’t know anymore. There were and are things I’d still like to do. One of which is see the Loquacious Pup continue to prosper, as she pursues an advanced degree (unfortunately out of state so I can’t be with her now). I’m sure the same is true for most of you. We all have unfinished business. But unless something I am not anticipating steps up and thwarts the imbecile who can now kill us all in the name of his petty racist hatreds, all of our business may be finished for us in days, if not hours.
I would just like to tell the Loquacious Pup, Mrs. TD, TD Mom, TD Brother and Sister and their kids, and my late TD Dad, and all of my friends and my comrades, I love you all. I don’t know how much that means to you, but it means everything to me. If those in charge were capable of love– and there is no evidence that they are– maybe we wouldn’t be facing what might be the end of everything.
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