I can recommend the recent season of AppleTV’s Tehran as a worthy next installment, although I’d strongly recommend going back and starting at the beginning. This season brought Hugh Laurie onboard as a South African international arms inspector, and he is not the only memorable new character.
The unplanned obsolescence of the show’s modern-day feel, however, was summarized in one episode’s single, peaceful panorama shot of the city itself. Which leads us to the U.S. State Department sending yet 20,000 more bombs to Israel.
How/why? Because U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has power to cite an “emergency” requiring override of normal congressional authority. Whether it’s tariffs or starting wars of choice, “emergency powers” have been this administration’s calling card for power grabs and bypassing checks and balances. A war generated by two criminals-in-chief lurching from one crisis to another to stay out of their respective court/prison systems was never going to be an exception.
Then again, abusing emergency loopholes seems quaint when we realize that more than a few members of our government would just as easily requisition the bombs because Jesus says so.
As JCO wrote here recently, one deeply unsettling part of this “military action” for anyone who cares about the U.S. as a concept is the glee coming from the Christian Nationalist within. They see this war as an opportunity to hasten the end of the world as they know it, and they feel fine. Jamie covered the situation, and I just want to provide a few handy quotes in one place as a postscript.
Military commanders are spouting the end-of-times destiny crap to their soldiers at over two dozen installations, describing participants as “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson (Bootlicker – La.) didn’t need to be asked twice to jump on this bandwagon, finding any nearby microphone to mention Iran’s “misguided religion.”
Senator Lindsey Graham gagged at least a couple in his own press gaggle when he entered the chat with “This is a religious war,” and went on to frame the conflict as shaping the region for 1,000 years. Is that some radical cleric shit, or what?
Basic American principles, oaths sworn to the Constitution, any actual sense of WWJD? … way too many influential figures are choosing now as the time to chuck all that out the window.
If you think we’re better off ushering in the deaths of innocent millions to satisfy your Biblical interpretation, that’s fine (sort of … seek help). But once you take that worldview from private conversation to public forums, it shouldn’t be controversial to say that you should also be kept 200 yards from any levers of actual American military influence.
As it stands, High Warmonger Hegseth will egg on this crowd privately and support them publicly, while the useful idiot Chosen One in the Oval Office — who somehow is considered Christian without ever having prayed for forgiveness — will continue to look for the big-payout angles.
We got a fat hint all this was coming when Mike “you were spared death to start this war, Mr. President” Huckabee was tapped as our ambassador to Israel. A lot of us chose to turn a half-blind eye and hope for the best. Now it’s getting too bad to look away.
And that smoothly dovetails the last word to Radiohead and their own slow-motion car wreck.
In the next world warIn a jackknifed juggernautI am born again …