Desperate to bomb Iran so he can be seen to “kick ass”

On Monday Oliver Willis of Daily Kos offered possible reasons why the nasty guy authorized bombs to be dropped on three Iranian nuclear sites over the weekend. Perhaps it’s because Republican leaders pushed it, as they have doing for many conflicts over the years. Or perhaps Fox News kept pushing for the attacks. The network seems to be the nasty guy’s most influential advisor. Willis listed the praise the network gave Israel’s military operations. Then he listed several network hosts who pushed US involvement. We should also remember the number of Fox News personalities who are in his cabinet and administration – Pete Hegseth, Sean Duffey, Pam Bondi and 20 others. In Tuesday’s pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Bernd Ulrich of the German weekly Die Zeit (translated by Irene Caselli):

It is not the fault of some mythical traits — real or imagined — of the “Orient.” No, there is another reason that things in the Middle East tend to turn out differently than expected, that actions produce unintended and often overwhelmingly negative consequences. It’s not a mirage, nor the shimmering heat, nor the buzzing bazaar that’s to blame — it’s the West itself, repeatedly falling into the same traps. It has interests in the region, but no real interest in the region.

The image at the top of Kev’s post shows a satellite image of line of vehicles outside a building with the caption, “Satellite imagery showing that Iran may have moved significant amounts of enriched uranium prior to Saturday's American strike on Fordo.” In today’s roundup, Greg Dworkin quoted two sets of tweets by Phillips O’Brien:

So the US air campaign against Iran seems to have gone like this. 1) Trump does not want to get involved 2) he is told that Israel is having lots of success 3) he becomes desperate to join so he can be seen to “kick ass” 4) He bombs Iran one night 5) The results of the bombing [6 is not mentioned] Now we have moment 7 7) Trump slaps down Israel because the campaign was really about his personal glory. Ps. Trump does not care a win for Iran or Israel, it’s all what it means for him

And...

There is a chance that Trump's bombing of Iran might turn out to be the most ludicrous use of military force in US history. Not the worst or the most destructive--just the most absurd. A failed attempt by a weak man desperate for glory. Maybe the only good thing to come out of this was that the American people, by a large majority, saw these strikes for the self glorifying gestures that they were, and disapprove. What’s the opposite of rallying around the flag?

Yesterday was the primary election for mayor in New York City. Much to the surprise of many Andrew Cuomo lost to Zohran Mamdani, who has described himself as a Democratic Socialist. He ran on making NYC affordable. Dworkin quoted Mike Madrid on Threadreader:

One of the interesting things to look for is how working class Black and Brown residents voted. If these voters break left after moving towards Trump there’s a lot of water thrown on the ‘racial realignment’ narrative. These voters are becoming more populist NOT more conservative. Voters are absolutely sick and tired of establishment politics. It’s not ideological and that’s what the parties, pollsters and politicians are missing.

A tweet by David Dayen:

It will be tempting to analogize from one idiosyncratic municipal election that the old guard of the Democratic establishment has been wholly discredited and should be dismantled to make way for new leadership. Tempting, and also correct.

In the comments is a cartoon posted by paulpro and created by M. Wuerker to mark the three year anniversary of when Roe v. Wade was overturned. It shows a man in a MAGA hat with a sign saying, “No Masks” and a t-shirt saying, “My body my choice.” Looking at him is a woman with a sign saying, “Pro choice” and also with a t-shirt saying, “My body my choice.” Alexandra Bowman posted a cartoon with characters from Star Wars, Sound of Music, and Indiana Jones. They ask, “Did all those anti-fascist movies teach you nothing?” Alex Samuels of Kos, in a weekly column looking at polls, wrote:

A new Reuters/Ipsos poll reveals significant frustration among Democratic voters who believe their party is too focused on social issues—like transgender rights—and not nearly focused enough on the economy. That disconnect between what voters want and what they think party leaders care about could spell trouble, especially with a critical midterm election map approaching. Sixty-two percent of self-identified Democrats indicated the party’s leadership should be replaced. Just 24% disagreed.

Samuels lists a few issues – taxing the rich, focusing on everyday needs, reducing corporate influence in politics – get high support from Democrats with noticeably fewer saying they think the party leadership feels the same way. On the flip side, only 17% of Democrats feel transgender women competing in women’s sports is a priority while 28% feel the leadership think of it as a priority. I’m with the voters on this one. As much as I believe transgender women need to be allowed to play in women’s sports I agree it is a low priority. The other issues listed above, plus all the things needed to be done to secure our democracy are a much higher priority. Overall, voter mood says Democrats should stop playing nice with the nasty guy and Republicans. Samuels discussed views on how concerned people are of far-right and far-left extremism. 55% are very or somewhat concerned about the far-right and 49% are very or somewhat concerned about the far-left. Not a great deal of difference. Then Samuels noted since 9/11 far-right extremists have killed at least 130 people in the US. Samuels doesn’t list a body count from far-left extremists – perhaps it is zero? – though notes far-left violence does exist. Lisa Needham of Kos reported that the nasty guys judicial picks are now more terrible – nominees are now asked whether Biden won the 2000 election. They quickly learn the correct answer, used by other types of nominees, is: “Joe Biden was certified as the winner of the 2020 presidential election and served four years as president.”

There’s no question that Trump’s first-term nominees were bad in some spectacular ways, eager to help the wannabe autocrat eradicate rights and regulations. But when it came to the wide variety of election conspiracy cases Trump filed in his failed bid to overturn the election, even his own appointees did not sign on, ruling against him. Trump isn’t going to make that mistake again. He doesn’t just need conservative ideologues in the federal courts: He needs judges who won’t stop him no matter what he does, and agreeing to the farce that Biden didn’t win in 2020 is a pretty big tell that these nominees see their primary job as ensuring Trump gets his way, no matter what the law says. ... None of these nominees will act as a check or balance on Trump. It’s pretty obvious they would not have gotten the nod if they believed the judiciary had any authority over the president. So, instead of normal judicial candidates, we’re going to get a motley mix of true believers crawling over one another to prove that they are the most committed to the Big Lie and the most eager to let Trump do whatever he wants. That is going to be terrific for Trump, but terrible for democracy.

Kiley Price of Inside Climate News, in an article posted on Kos wrote that climate change is making protests against climate change harder. The example is the recent No Kings demonstrations where in El Paso, Texas temperatures passed 100F (38C). Protests in such high heat carries public health risks. It can also galvanize climate protesters. Many protests are also in urban areas, which tend to have higher heat and poor air quality.

So how can people stay safe during an outdoor protest? Many tips are fairly simple, such as using sunscreen, wearing sunglasses or a hat and drinking copious amounts of water. As Wired points out in their guide to safe protesting, these supplies can also be used to guard yourself from other threats; sunglasses can shield your face from surveillance while water can be used to clean wounds and flush your eyes if you are pepper-sprayed or hit with chemical gas. Public health experts say it is also crucial to recognize the signs of heat stress, which include heavy sweating, dizziness, cramping and headaches.

A health professional at the Denver protest put it this way:

“Best case? We just hand out water, treat a few heat injuries and eat pizza at the med tent,” Jake Paul, the group’s medical coordinator, told CBS prior to the demonstrations. “If we’re bored, that means everyone’s safe.”

Two weeks ago Nineteenletterslong of the Kos community reported:

Southern Baptists have endorsed a ban to end same-sex marriage in America marking the first time the group has officially opposed the ruling in Obergefell v Hodges, the case which legalized it in 2015. The vote on the motion came during the annual Southern Baptist Convention in Dallas, Texas, attended by over 10,000 church representatives this past Tuesday. The Southern Baptists' resolution does not use the word "ban" directly. Instead, it calls for the "overturning of laws and court rulings, including Obergefell v. Hodges, that defy God's design for marriage and family" (something something something, separation of church and state though...). The motion additionally calls "for laws that affirm marriage between one man and one woman".

The denomination’s values are shifting to align with the far-right. A reversal would not automatically lead to a nationwide ban of same-sex marriage (as was the case with abortion rights). Same-sex marriage had already been legalized in 36 stated when the Supremes ruled in 2015 and nearly 70% of Americans support it. Alas, Michigan is not one of those 36. It passed a state constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage in 2004, when several other states did (part of a bid to bring Bush II voters to the polls). The federal decision overrules it for now, but if that is overturned Michiganders would lose rights. There is the start of movement to overturn that amendment.

War frightens citizens into giving up rights

There is still a lot of news about the nasty guy ordering “bunker buster” bombs to be dropped on nuclear facilities (especially since I’m a couple days behind in reading the news). In what I’ve read and heard so far there isn’t much I want to emphasize, beyond the strangeness of dropping bombs, then seeming to declare a cease-fire before the enemy can retaliate. I’ll admit I probably haven’t heard the full story. If you’re still curious there is an Associated Press article posted on Daily Kos about the bombing and another AP article about the spin the nasty guy’s goons are trying to give the story. Of more interest to me is an article by Mark Jacobs on Stop the Presses pleading with media to not turn the war into entertainment. He lists eight things journalists should keep in mind. 1. Don’t sanitize the impact on humans. Saying people don’t want to see dead and wounded with their cornflakes is a terrible way to judge what to show. 2. Put events in a complete, honest historical context. The question “Why does Iran hate us” and most of the answers are shallow. The full answer includes how the CIA helped a coup in Iran install the Shah, which was seven decades ago. 3. Hold politicians accountable. Too many headlines imply politicians have no agency, that things just happen. 4. The peace movement is patriotic too. Dissent is lot disloyalty. 5. Lying politicians are more dishonest in war. Be extremely skeptical of the wins they claim. 6. Don’t act like you’re “in the know” when you’re not. 7. Beware of optimism, such as the vice nasty claiming the war won’t be a long one. 8. War allows governments more easily take away liberties. Authoritarian governments use war as a reason to control citizens. They frighten citizens into giving up rights. From 1984 by George Orwell, “The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous.” In his conclusion he adds one more: Don’t let the war engross you so much you miss the domestic misconduct. I first heard of Sarah Kendzior through her work on Gaslit Nation. She is no longer a part of that and now had her own newsletter on Substack. I hadn’t checked it in quite a while. What I found was a post with a long list of perceptive questions from readers and Kendzior’s answers. She does this monthly and this one was posted June 13. I picked several questions and answers to include. Be wary of the “feud” between Musk and the nasty guy.

Dictators seek to be the sole star of a spectacle state. Doing so drains public imagination, making it difficult for citizens to conceive of a politics beyond the demagogue.

And we had two demagogues trying to be the sole star. Beyond that the feud doesn’t matter. Kendzior doesn’t trust Gavin Newsom, governor of California. At times he seems to want California to secede from the rest of the country (part of the idea that rich people want to break it up) and being the president of California instead of its governor might sound pretty cool. One reason for gutting Medicaid (and Medicare) is “a sick and scared populace is easier to control.” But note that for a long time health care has been tied to jobs to prevent our independence. A surprise of the nasty guy’s second term:

That pundits and politicians treat Trump’s first term as if it never happened and as if there’s not a template to these crises. They’ve done that before (they ignored his entire organized crime career) but, like, we were there! He was the president and we saw the whole four years! This bizarre selective amnesia is a big part of why people do not trust the media or the Democratic party.

Kendzior is wary of politicians, even Democrats, “because of the lack of accountability for sedition.” The Department of Justice under Biden was obligated to prosecute that and didn’t. Every state crime should be treated seriously, even if the perpetrators are old news. Not doing so make containing new operatives who use the same illegal and destructive tactics. This prosecution could bring the country together, since there were perpetrators in both parties. Why did the DoJ refuse to prosecute? Because Merrick Garland was nominated by Biden to make sure it refused. In the past an authoritarian would let protestors go for a few months to exhaust them and the public’s attention before calling in the national guard. By acting fast the nasty guy energized the opposition. But in the digital and AI world speed is more important. Algorithms control attention and curtail choice, so people don’t know what is happening. The nasty guy needs a military willing to fire on Americans. The more time soldiers have to see through his propaganda the less likely they are to fire. He needs his soldiers frenzied and frightened. The nasty guy may get around a possibly reluctant military by also using “deputized” civilians. Also, the nasty guy is more of a mob boss than a dictator. He doesn’t care if the US collapses. Pat attention to who is labeled a “resistance fighter” and who is called a “terrorist.” Keep in mind that in the past Native Americans and Blacks had their righteous rebellions portrayed as barbaric violence. “Palestinian terrorism” was accepted description until smart phones showed Israeli violence. Watch out for sadism hiding behind a uniform. In response to a question about tipping points in a country facing the loss of democracy, Kendzior wrote:

Protests are good ways of showing dissent and noncompliance with immoral orders, but they should be strategic when dealing with a regime that seeks the collapse of the state. The tipping point is different for each country. I actually think the US reached our tipping point in January/February 2021, and then Biden DOJ tipped it back through inaction. The inaction confused much of the public, leading them to conclude that Trump must be innocent, or else he’d quickly be punished. The refusal of the Democrats to examine why that happened is keeping the whole country from moving forward and reaching a new tipping point. People need to have confidence that if they bravely confront the Trump administration, they will have the backing of powerful officials. They have no confidence now, due to the abandonment of accountability by Biden administration, and that is a shameful thing.

The confidence has begun to grow again. Republicans abandoned the idea of trying to win people to their ideas and they would not win in a fair fight. So they cheat. They also see that the instigators of the Capitol attack were never punished and the participants have been pardoned. They could do it again without consequence. Cutting the staff of National Parks – the beloved federal workers – reminds people the federal government can do great things, not just corruption. That might be a mistake in all the slashing of federal jobs. After getting to the end of Kendzior’s Q&A session I followed a link to another one of her posts, this one from last November, about a week after the election.

I warned you for nine years, because I wanted you to be prepared. Biden was a Placeholder President designed to fill the four years between two terms of Trump while plutocrats shifted American political culture sharply to the right. Media gutted, Twitter decimated, activism destroyed, books censored, minorities demonized, public health annihilated, victims blamed, empathy scorned. That is the main thing they are after now: your empathy. They want you to hate each other so you don’t hate them first.

They want us to hate each other so we agree to their plan to tear the country apart for the rich to plunder. There is a larger plan and we are merely a pawn. Though we can’t vote out the mafia our “power lies in refusing to abandon each other or abandon the truth.” As for that election:

The most important thing about the election is not that Trump was proclaimed the winner, but that he was allowed to run. The second most important thing is who paid for it.

To see that look at the nasty guy’s donors and to who he pardoned. Look at who procured the pardons and the name Jared Kushner, the pandemic prince, comes up a lot. Kushner is relevant to Israel’s wars, yet he has vanished from punditry. Whether the US is in a mafia state centers on Kushner. Over the years I collected browser tabs, intending to use a particular tweet or cartoon when the subject came up elsewhere. That tended to not happen. So here are some old and unrelated tweets as I go through old tabs. Back in November 2022 (I did say “years”) Leah McElrath (who has now switched to Bluesky) wrote:

One problem with many well-intentioned efforts over the years to provide housing to the unhoused has been that the programs have difficulty getting funded without including a lot of moralistic conditions for the housing. Just. Give. People. Housing. THEN offer other services.

From Prof. Feynman, posted September 2022:

SCIENCE: If you don't make mistakes, you're doing it wrong. If you don't correct those mistakes, you're doing it really wrong. If you can't accept that you're mistaken, you're not doing it at all.

In August of 2024 Jeff Danziger posted a cartoon on Kos. It shows a college finance officer telling a student “Here... Sign this. Won’t take a moment.” The student looks down at a bin that is encasing her feet in concrete coming from a mixer labeled “College debt.”

Isn’t this the time to hide Anne Frank?

I finished the book Blackouts by Justin Torres. The first is a mental blackout experienced by the narrator (never named), which prompts him to visit Juan. The two originally met when the narrator was about to turn 18 and Juan was much older and they are briefly together in the “nuthouse,” an asylum. The reasons they were there are never stated. I wondered if they were there because they were homosexual, but this was the 1990s. After that blackout and a decade after their first meeting, the narrator goes to visit Juan, now in a group residence of some sort, well past its prime. Juan is near death. He wants he narrator to receive his books and papers and do something useful with them. The second blackout concerns a two volume set of books where on most pages the text is blacked out, leaving scattered words that create a description or small story quite different than the original text, which is never shown. The books are Sex Variants: A Study of Homosexual Patterns from 1941. Who did the blacking out and why is a mystery. Once together the narrator describes his time as a hooker. Juan tells the story of his life and of the books. The core of the research in the books was done by Jan Gay, longtime partner to Zhenya Gay (these are not the birth names of either women). Jan wants to get the research published but no publisher will touch it without the backing of a (male) doctor. And very few doctors will touch it. All that was interesting and enjoyable to read. It was also curious. At the back of the book are endnotes that give copyright info on the books whose blacked out pages appear through this book. It looks like the two volumes are real. Jan and Zhenya are real historical figures. Zhenya also illustrated children’s books and they’re given copyright info and some of those illustrations are in this book, showing they are real. There is a fun scene where Juan gives a very gay reading of one of the stories Zhenya illustrated. In other endnotes the narrator discusses Juan as a real person. Yet, this book is described as a novel. Was Juan real? That question is so obvious the author talks about it in what he calls “A sort of Postface.” He refuses to answer the question and says again the book is fiction. My Sunday movie was Ideal Home. I see it is on a variety of streaming services. I saw it on Kanopy. Erasmus is the star of a food show, his longtime male companion Paul is a producer. They live in a big house in Santa Fe (lots of great panorama shots). They’re very good at partying and bickering. Then Bill shows up claiming to be the grandson or Erasmus. Bill has come to stay while is father serves a jail sentence. Neither Paul nor Erasmus wants to interrupt their partying lifestyle to take care of a kid. And Bill annoys his grandfather because he only wants to eat Taco Bell. Of course, all that changes. Eventually. IMDb notes the gay couple at the center of the story are played by straight actors (Steve Coogan and Paul Rudd) and many of the straight characters were played by queer actors. It was very well done and I enjoyed it. In today’s pundit roundup for Daily Kos Greg Dworkin quoted part of a thread by Juliette Kayyam posted on X in response to the nasty guy ordering the dropping of a “bunker buster” bomb on underground nuclear facilities in Iran.

I don't know if this was successful or just attacks on surface level access. But there are consequences and so here are issues to discuss beyond tactics @CNN + Strait of Hormuz: reporting suggests about 50 oil tankers are scrambling to get out, so there may be fears that it can not be navigated soon and that will impact global economy; + American and American interests as a target abroad, including troops, European targets, or US targets/people abroad; + homeland security threat with our entire DHS apparatus now focused on ICE and the evisceration of counterterrorism and countercyber capacities there; + would be nice to have confidence in our intelligence but the last few days suggest our own – let alone our allies – is being ignored.

Aaron Rupar and Thor Benson of Public Notice:

“Performative public lying is a hallmark of far right authoritarian parties.” “Neither our media nor our political system is designed to deal with a far right authoritarian party.” If you’re familiar with these phrases, you’re probably aware of Mark Copelovitch, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has popularized them on social media. Both expressions capture something profound about American politics in the age of MAGA. Not a single day goes by without performative lying from Republicans — consider the truth-resistant sales pitch they’re currently making for Trump’s big bill — or without fresh demonstrations from the press and/or the political opposition that they’re unequipped to deal with a major party that has abandoned democracy for the sake of smash-and-grab mobsterism.

A bit of a thread on X by Jeff Timmer in response to the nasty guy saying the Iran nuclear sites were obliterated.

Trump’s bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites needs to be evaluated based on what we know about Trump: he never has a strategy, he is impervious to reading, learning, or understanding, and he lies. Lies all the time. About everything. Big or small. Trump has forfeited the benefit of the doubt. We should be deeply skeptical of yesterday's mission and any information or further action to come. Trump is a liar and an idiot. Incompetent and inexperienced people surround him.

In the comments Art Garfunky posted a full-page ad The Onion put in the New York Times. The ad looks like the front page of an edition of The Onion. The main headline:

Congress, Now More Than Ever, Our Nation Needs Your Cowardice

And the top headline for a side article:

Entitled Child Expects to Eat Lunch Every Day, Girl Literally Wants Food to be Handed to Her on a Plate

The Onion also sent that latest edition to every member of Congress. Dworkin remided us that just below its banner The Onion has a motto in Latin, “Tu Stultus Es” and of course I went to Google Translate, which gave me, “You are stupid.” Further down samanthab posted a tweet by Catherine Rampell with links to an article in the Wall Street Journal:

As I have argued for months: The person calling the shots in this admin was never Musk or Bannon or Susie Wiles. It's always been Shadow President Stephen Miller. Anything Trump says on e.g. immigration is cheap talk; Miller is the decider.

In Saturday’s roundup Dworkin quoted a tweet by Ruth Ben-Ghiat discussing the recent arrest of Democratic politicians. She included a headline (source not identified) that says:

For Democrats, handcuffs are the latest symbol of resistance to Trump.

Ben-Ghiat responds:

Only in America would the press treat the opposition party getting arrested as a "symbol," rather than as a concrete sign of descending authoritarianism.

Dworkin quoted a column by Jonathan Last in The Bulwark that asked an intriguing question that Dworkin’s quote wasn’t large enough to answer. So I looked up the full article. Last quoted an email from a friend:

Are you absolutely sure that as Christians this isn’t the time to hide Anne Frank? Shouldn’t I be willing to help migrants avoid deportation/detention at whatever legal perils await me? If not now then when ... when it gets twice as bad or three times as bad or ten times as bad?

Last at first says we’re not close to that, but then he thought through the logistics: If an immigrant, perhaps with spouse, is snatched, what happens to the children, the assets, the home? Alas, that’s all I can see without subscribing. I’m sure it all led to Last concluding hiding immigrants in the attic really is an important thing to do. Dworkin also included a tweet by Micah Erfan, but I couldn’t see the whole chart within the roundup. So I looked at it directly. Erfan wrote, “Y’all I’m beginning to think that Trump tearing up Obama’s nuclear deal actually had consequences.” Below that is a chart from the Financial Times and shows the number of installed uranium enrichment centrifuges across all sites in Iran. Just before 2001 the number starts to rise to about 1,000 and stays there for a while. When Obama signed the nuclear deal in January 2016 the number dropped to zero. It stayed there until about 2019, a year after the nasty guy withdrew the US from the deal. Then the number of centrifuges rose rapidly until May this year when it was just under 15,000. johnbeske of the Kos community posted an image of a sign he created that he would like to see posted on every building where immigrants might be. The first half of the sign is:

Notice Anyone purporting to be an agent of ICE or federal agency who enters these premises with the intent of arresting or detaining any person or persons within: Must wear clothing that accurately displays the agency they represent. Must not wear a mask or anything else concealing their identity. Must possess an official warrant that has been signed by a federal judge and agree to show it to anyone who asks to see it.

Mitch Perry, in an article for the Florida Phoenix posted on Kos reported that Central Florida Democratic U.S. Rep. Maxwell Frost introduced a bill that would require ICE facilities to publicly list all who were detained along with where, when, why, plus age, nationality, legal status, use of force on arrest, when they were transferred to another facility or deported. This is good to see. Alas, in this Congress it isn’t going anywhere. Kos of Kos discussed men and their votes for the nasty guy and what we can do about it. He first reviews voting stats – including the nasty guy won married men by 60-38 prercent. On to examining the global problem. For example:

In Poland, rural men used to count on marrying women who’d handle domestic duties. But those women are moving to cities like Warsaw to become lawyers and professionals. That “loss of status” has fueled support for right-wing nationalist parties, making feminism the enemy and “traditional values” the solution.

From an article in The Economist:

In democracies, many politicians on the right are deftly stoking young male grievances, while many on the left barely acknowledge that young men have real problems.

Those real problems include being taught they are to be a provider. That becomes a core of their identity. Yet unstable economies threaten their ability to do that role – half of men believe home ownership is out of reach. There is also a “Man Box” in which masculinity is defined around “dominance, and self-reliance.” Men have a mental health crisis. We need an intervention to redefine masculinity beyond economic provision and the Man Box. Social media and its influencers promoting masculinity makes younger men feel inadequte, unvalued, and unwanted. They look for control – as in authoritarianism – or declare nothing matters. What can we do? These men are looking for purpose and connection. They want to be caregivers (they support policies that care for children). So lets promote a version of manhood based on caring and men’s mental health. These men are not fringe. Their numbers are growing. And their despair is being weaponized. Let’s understand how to fight back.