Appetite for Self-Destruction
7.24.26
Everybody knew this was coming. Donald Trump’s tenuous ceasefire with Iran lasted just three weeks before he tore it up and restarted his illegal war — and now he’s dug himself and the country even deeper into an inescapable quagmire that threatens to, among other things, obliterate any remaining hopes the GOP had for a respectable midterm showing.
Time to log on.
The Chinese military general and master strategist Sun Tzu once wrote, “If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
Donald Trump appears to take this not as a warning but a directive: know nothing, succumb, repeat.
In the two weeks since Trump restarted his illegal war in Iran, we are right back to square one. US service members are dying, US bases are being pummeled, Pentagon officials are leaking to the media about how Pete Hegseth’s strategies aren’t working, the Strait of Hormuz has been closed by Iran (again), and the Red Sea is now under threat by Ansar Allah. Oh, gas prices are way up again, too.
The only thing that’s really changed is the American people’s opinion of the war, which has now gone from bad to absolutely abysmal — even among the MAGA faithful.
In just two months, MAGA’s approval of the Iran war has dropped by 13 points, from 50% to 37%. Polls show that 65% of Americans think “we should make a deal to end the war as quickly as possible,” and 48% say the US should end the war immediately, even without a deal, which, frankly speaking, would be tantamount to defeat.
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The war was never very popular in the first place because in its nihilistic hubris, the Trump administration never bothered to articulate any kind of credible justification for launching it, assuming that the Iranian regime would be toppled in the space of a few days.
With the resumption of hostilities, all Trump can do now is hoot and holler about the need to stop Iran’s nuclear program, which falls flat because that is a problem of his own creation since he tore up President Obama’s very successful nuclear peace deal out of sheer spite. Also, didn’t we already completely obliterate their nuclear program last summer?
So it’s a pretty tough sell to the American people to argue that we need to sacrifice more American lives and give the military $1.5 trillion to fight a war we started for no clearly defined reason, to resolve a problem of Trump’s own creation, with no end in sight.
But let’s be honest here. More important than any of that is the end-all-be-all of American politics: the price of gas. And boy is it about to get even more expensive!
Oil is already back above $100 a barrel. The national average for gas is already up nearly 5% in just the last week, while the lifeblood of the American economy — diesel — just experienced its largest price jump since the first week of the war in March.
Trump was able to artificially keep gas prices under control at home during the first half of the war by draining our Strategic Petroleum Reserve — but the SPR is now at its lowest level since 1983 and will not be able to sustain America’s insatiable appetite for fuel indefinitely.
As the price of gas rises, so too will the price of everything else. And the price of everything else is ALREADY much higher than it was before thanks to Trump’s senseless tariffs — about 3.5% higher than last year, in fact.
“The longer the war is in place, at this current level of intensity, the worse it is for consumers,” said Olu Sonola, the head of US economics at Fitch Ratings.
But surely the president is concerned about the well-being of the American electorate and is taking responsibility for the suffering he’s heaping on them, right?
LOL. Of course not. Trump has spent the past two months either outright lying to voters about how fast prices are dropping or outright mocking concerns about affordability, calling it a “made-up word” invented by Democrats. Sure, Donnie.
All this adds up to a nightmare scenario for congressional Republicans, who are beginning to openly panic.
The House just passed its SECOND war powers resolution to end the conflict in Iran, which was immediately blocked in the Senate, but allowed a good number of House Republicans to try to distance themselves from this debacle.
Slowly but surely, the behind-the-scenes hand-wringing is becoming public. “We’re preparing for the bottom to fall out,” said one GOP operative to POLITICO’s Playbook. “Republicans are running out of runway here to improve their political fortunes before November.”
“Nobody can really defend it…It’s never great for the party in power when the commander-in-chief is going to Dover to accept the bodies of American soldiers,” he added.
Another unnamed source close to the White House flatly admitted, “They don’t have a plan here… This is a classic escalation trap.”
Iran is locked in an existential crisis for its own survival and knows all they have to do is outlast an impatient United States. Trump, on the other hand, is drowning in a morass of his own making and dragging his party — and the country — down with him while time on the clock dwindles.
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The average American cannot fill up his truck or make the mortgage payment with videos of Iranian bridges burning, and widows cannot dry their tears with empty promises of vengeance on Truth Social.
It would be a grim irony if Donald ‘Art of the Deal’ Trump’s hubris became the architect of his own defeat. Time will soon tell.
Why can't any of these spineless fools invoke the 25th amendment? They may not care that American lives are on the line, or that the demented madman may reach for the nuclear codes, but their own careers are about to come to an ignominious end! 25th him, drag him out of the WH if necessary, tell Vance to sign a peace treaty and GTFO of there, and limp through to 2028 as best they can. Project 2025 is showing about as much sign of life now as Mitch McConnell.
Equal parts stupidity, cruelty, revenge, senility, arrogance, cowardice