So Donald Trump – as befits a total narcissist, found the time while strolling around a golf course to set the USA war machine on an Iran’s most senior soldier Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani via a drone strike at Baghdad airport. Other presidents have weighed foreign policy more carefully but this isn’t about foreign policy – its about domestic supremacy.
If Michael Moore is to be believed, Trump faked his initial run for the presidency as a wheeze to wrangle more money out of NBC. Trump was peeved that Gwen Stafani was on a higher salary, he figured that if NBC could see how good he was at improv in his fake rallies, they would pay him more money.
Trump was so bad at pretending to run for President Of The United States, so incoherent and offensive, that NBC sacked him instead – his gambit blown, Trump lowered his sights and decided to run for President after all and thus he found himself recently strolling around a golf course pondering how to win a second term at The White House…
…the key of course would be the ongoing loyalty of his base – cracks have started to emerge recently in the vital loyalty of the religious right – how to unite the base…how to fan the flames of political tribalism…
You can almost hear the cogs turning. How about assassinating a senior Iranian military guy? Everything about the aftermath of the killing will help Trump. The left wing up-and-at-em, blogosphere, podcast, auto-bicker, whinge-meme, hate-o-matic, Facebook splutter tsunami will be unleashed – all the people that Trump supporters love to hate will be on a moral crusade of condemnation – everybody will be nicely back in their grooves – any vestige of nuance or common sense chased away on both sides. Nuance and analysis are not kind to Donald Trump – his cartoon outrage and kindergartner politics depend on red faced hysteria – so he has supplied a handy re-fuel for both sides.
There will be lots of extraordinarily helpful (for Trump) footage of grim faced mullahs promising revenge, demonstrations in Iran that burn US and UK flags, anti-war protesters will remind Trump’s base just how much they hate pinko leftish self righteous city dwellers.
The hyperbole of the corporate media and the left wing commentariat is predictably ridiculous and little thought has been given to what might be behind this move – every left wing feed I am subscribed to has donned Churchillian gravitas to warn of the consequences of Trump dialing golf for murder.
Let us all calm down. Yes extra troops will be dispatched and the rolling news hacks will have a field day but what objectively has changed? Foreign Policy for Trump has always been a vehicle to boost his ego and the public perception of his ‘strong man’ schlock. Yes, Iran will be angry but they can realistically do nothing about US power in the region. The idea that it will draw in other ‘global players’ is fanciful – all the usual suspects will be able to figure out for themselves that this is mostly a play for American domestic political capital.
Do we believe that Trump is venal enough to whistle up murders just to boost his own popularity? Of course. Sometimes the simplest explanations are the right ones.
Grotesque though it is – this is an attention seeking teenage prank from a self obsessed sulky and embittered man who happens to have the largest military machine ever assembled with which to play attention seeking teenage pranks.
The best thing to do is to dial down the rhetoric – there will be no war with Iran, the grown ups will see to that – though they may allow him to throw a few more toys out of the pram.
The left must not play the role that Trump would have them play – so if you feel yourself slipping into the grooves, step back and deny him the bombastic outrage and hyperbole he craves.
So Trump ‘… play[s] attention seeking teenage pranks’ using ‘… the largest military machine ever assembled…’.
In the end, is there any difference between playing teenage pranks and whatever motivated every President since WWII to wage wars resulting in millions of deaths and destruction of entire countries.