Notes from Underground
By 
Noah Berlatsky has a good summary of what would be obvious in most countries most of the time, but can’t be in America because America doesn’t lose wars (except for the ones where we are stabbed in the back by our internal enemies. There ought to be a German word for that).
On May 18, President Trump posted some fan fiction about his ill-fated war against Iran and got pre-mad at the “Fake News Media” for not covering his imaginary victory in a sufficiently fawning manner.
Eight days later, still locked in the same spiral of self-pity and spite — and with an actual Iran peace deal apparently no closer — Trump posted the exact same thing again.
Did Trump just forget he’d posted his self-aggrandizing thought experiment and pull it out of drafts to post it again? Was he so impressed with his own flight of whimsy and penetrating sarcasm that he just wanted to see it on his screen again? There’s no way to know.
But whatever his reason for repeating himself, one thing is clear: the reiterated nonsense posts accurately reflect Trump’s current Iran policy, which is locked in a doom loop of stasis and failure.
Berlatsky points out that Trump has three options now in Iran, all of which are a disaster for him personally:
(1) Enter into a deal with the Iranian regime, which will be perceived correctly by everybody outside his cult and even some within it as a humiliating defeat, because that’s what it will be. The Iranian regime is perfectly well aware that they’ve won this war in every way that matters, and therefore it has no incentive or desire to enter into a deal that doesn’t reflect this fact.
(2) Escalate with a ground invasion. This is so wildly unpopular (14% support) that it would be an utter political disaster unless it resulted in an unambiguous immediate military victory, which any competent person left in the Pentagon would assure him it almost certainly would not.
(3) Maintain the status quo:
Trump doesn’t want to be perceived as losing a war. But he doesn’t want to escalate either. So he is stuck insisting that his deal will be awesome and then scurrying away when details emerge that reveal the truth that he lost a war. That’s why, after getting pushback, he retreated into his safe space on on Truth Social to burble: “I have informed my representatives not to rush into a deal.” He also dropped more bombs because he wants the Cruzes and Wickers of the world to think he’s tough and to stop telling everyone that he lost a war.
Trump has trapped himself in a cul de sac of humiliation with no feasible way out. He may well keep posting his same delusional grievances (“If Iran surrenders … ”) once a week, every week, until his term ends or the heat death of the universe, whichever comes first.
But no matter how often Trump posts the same whiny bilge, no matter how often he claims he is making the best deal ever, and no matter how deeply he spirals into his own narcissistic orange skull, he can’t change the facts on the ground.
He lost. Iran won. His polls are going to keep dropping because he is a loser and everyone hates losers. There is no solution — only a singularity of bluster, rage and failure dragging Trump, the country, and the world inexorably towards the next disaster.
I filled my father in law’s van with gas a couple of days ago — he’s a general contractor so he needs the vehicle for work — and I watched with rapt fascination as the price at the pump crossed into three digits. A Dostoevskian smile crept across my face as I contemplated the rage that millions of similar experiences are producing all across America every day now,
The Iranian war is going badly? Well, let it get worse. Only a sufficiently humiliating defeat will produce the sort of catharsis that might put this country back on the road to some sort of sanity. There’s probably a German word for that, too.