IRAN.

The nuclear threat has been eliminated and we are all now able to get a good night’s sleep.

For some reason, Iran located its country right next to dozens of American military bases. It’s a mystery why its leaders thought Israel or American might try to attack them and change their regime.

Any effort to compose an essay where the author takes an unpopular position is probably an exercise in futility. Four days into the Iran War (if it’s okay to call this a “war”), I already know I’m not going to change anyone’s views on the necessity of our military’s recent non-stop bombing exercise.

Still, I am the proprietor of a Substack newsletter and I do think this is a potentially historic event and I do have a few opinions and maybe original observations … so here goes.

Adding a New Maxim …

I’m, perhaps, fairly well-known for composing more than a dozen New Abnormal Maxims.

I need to add another one: Once a “Narrative” is set in stone, it’s too late to change it. Or: It takes many years to change an accepted, widely-believed Narrative.

For example, at one time most Americans thought America should start a war with Iraq because this regime had “weapons of mass destruction.” That narrative, belatedly, did change, but the Iraq regime - a grave threat to American “national security” - was changed anyway.

That is, as far as I can tell, The Authorized Narratives always work as planned.

I write today because we’re still only four days into this military operation and maybe the current Narrative isn’t fully set in stone. Maybe a corpus of dissidents can influence the narrative going forward?

Nah. I think I’m pretty good at gauging the power of Narratives and I can already tell the usual suspects have done enough to cement the operative narrative, which is:

“Iran could nuke us any day and what’s happening right now has to happen to preserve our ‘national security’ and give the citizens of Iran a chance to enjoy the democracy and freedoms our government protects and cherishes.”

The other key narrative - as infallible as the “deadly, contagious virus” narrative - is that Iran is bound and determined to be the first nation to commit national suicide and, thus would use its nukes a couple of days after acquiring them. This is the “92-Million Martyr Narrative,” a variation of the Jim Jones’ cult lesson - plus 92 million suicidal followers.

There’s no point listing all the statements President Trump once made, proclaiming he was against unnecessary wars.

I think one of my more provocative recent columns was the one I wrote about the key theme of the popular movie “Wicked.” In the movie, the Wonderful Wizard of Oz told the “Wicked Witch,” she could do anything she wants to try to expose his villainy and lies; it wouldn’t matter. The people of Oz are still going to support him.

Oz might as well have been Donald Trump and the people of Oz might as well been the MAGA army.

MSM must be flummoxed …

It’s interesting to observe the reaction of the MSM, which is dominated by people who practice the Jewish religion and, thus, are big supporters of Israel’s “right to exist.” To continue to exist, Israel has to vanquish all of its enemies. For Israel (and thus for America), Iran is the Wicked Witch of the West.

While the leftist media despises Donald Trump, they’re having a hard time criticizing this particular Trump executive decision, which jibes with what Israel wants, which is what our corporate media also wants.

With most MAGA members waving the flag and supporting this war for freedom … and the organizations that establish the mass media Narratives also finding little to criticize, I don’t expect to see any major anti-war protests on the streets of America any time soon.

ICE agents killing two innocent protestors - yes, protests are in order. America’s military killing 185 school girls - no, that’s just unfortunate collateral damage in a war that had to happen.

(The counter narrative is that Iran accidentally killed its own school girls with an errant anti-missile missile. However, even if true, the reason this missile was fired in the first place was because Iran was being bombed by America and Israel … so America, at least indirectly, caused those deaths … right?)

Lynyrd Skynyrd lyric comes to mind …

“Watergate does not bother me. Does your conscience bother you? Tell the truth.”

In the last couple of days, I’ve been thinking about this lyric from “Sweet Home Alabama.”

I can’t help but wonder how many people’s consciences are really bothered by the death of more than 100 Iranian girls aged 7 to 12.

Since we’re telling the truth, I don’t think many people have a guilty conscience about this event - at least among the huge cohort of Americans who are avid supporters of this war.

My conscience is bothering me …

Speaking of a conscience perhaps gnawing at you, my conscience has been bothered recently because I realize I should have written more strident anti-Trump essays sooner.

One of the points I’ve made repeatedly is too many people self censor because they’re afraid if they say what they really think something bad might happen to them.

I’m probably guilty myself as I no doubt pulled my punches on my real views of President Trump, primarily because I knew I would lose even more subscribers if I criticized a leader who is probably beloved by many of my readers.

If I was once a hypocrite, I’m going to try to rectify that going forward.

While I’m probably going to lose many more subscribers, the positive trade-off is my conscience is going to be clear.

I’ve also decided that whatever I write - even my pieces where I defended President Trump - I’m going to now lose subscribers. So, if my Substack is “going down,” it’s going to go down with me writing what I really think.

History can judge if I was right or wrong.

This might be another strategy that will work

In wars and in political battles, “Divide-and-Conquer” is a strategy that works often. In Covid, this strategy has divided the “freedom” writers or “contrarians” in myriad ways.

For example, some of my favorite writers are intensely divided on the question of whether viruses are real or whether Dr. Robert Malone is a hero or a captured prevaricator and controlled opposition.

Today, “our side’s” troops are further divided on whether we should rally around President Trump’s Iran Gambit or break ranks with a politician who finally showed his true colors. All one can do is say, “well played, Opinion Manipulators.”

What do the children think?

Today, while taking my 4th grade son and 8th grade daughter to school, I asked them if any of their classmates were talking about the Iran War on Monday.

Jack: “Nobody even knows about it.”

Maggie: “No.”

School - or students - have changed since I was an 8th grader in 1979. The smart kids I hung around with would have been talking about an event that even at this young age we knew was big and significant.

A Local Anecdote - War Pays

I live in Troy, Alabama, which is home to a Lockheed Martin missile plant that makes missiles like the Hellfire and the THAAD. (Joe Biden once visited this plant because it makes so many of the weapons that are defending Ukraine from the Russians).

Today, I’m pretty sure Lockheed Martin employees are working around the clock making new missiles. It’s true, then, that wars can help certain local economies, probably even Troy’s … except for the rising gas prices.

A few quick observations:

• I’ve noticed that the “Epstein files” are no longer Page-1 news.

• I also noticed that the price of silver … plummeted by $13 (14 percent) in the past two days.

• And the stock market went … up.

• And oil prices haven’t gone through the roof yet.

Question: Am I the only Substack pundit who thinks all “markets” are completely rigged?

I have a pet theory:

I might be wrong, but I don’t think HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy, Jr. really supports this war or any regime-change, neocon military attacks.

Per my theory, besides Israel using America’s military might to change the regime in Iran, the Powers that Be are most interested in getting rid of RFK, Jr. because they know, truth be told, he is anti-vaccine.

Alas, so far, no plots to get rid of RFK, Jr. have worked. Per my theory, RFK, Jr. must be employing all the self-discipline he can muster to refrain from criticizing the boss who appointed him to such a potentially important position.

RFK, Jr. knows any positive developments he might make happen on the vaccine front won’t happen if he is fired and goes back to being just another kooky trial lawyer.

Personally, if I was RFK, Jr., I might resign from the cabinet in protest of Trump and Netanyahu’s unconstitutional war. Before leaving, I would also pen a “strongly-worded letter” explaining why I resigned.

My theory is that an ulterior goal of the Big Pharma Complex (which also supports Israel and the Military Industrial Complex) might be to force RFK, Jr. to resign in protest.

So far anyway, Kennedy hasn’t taken “the bait” and is staying right where he is, which IMO is still a bad look as this says that Trump can do anything that repulses Kennedy and Kennedy is going to bite his tongue and continue to support the president.

I think Kennedy is playing 3-D chess, but at some point we’re going to have to have a showdown between President Trump and his most formidable (and I hope) principled cabinet member.

Put it this way: If some Trump action did make Kennedy resign in protest, the Big Pharma lobby would definitely be “dancing in the streets.”

I’m for regime-change too …

Judging from Substack, many of the Substack Contrarians - and most Substack subscribers - apparently support “regime-change” operations in Iran.

As it turns out, I’m also a staunch supporter of “regime-change operations” - but the regimes I would like to change are in Washington D.C. and Tel Aviv or Jerusalem.

While I’ll lose even more subscribers for saying this, I would point out that Donald Trump once got elected president primarily on a (very popular) “regime-change” political platform.

Trump called regime change “draining the Swamp.”

But I don’t think the Swamp has really been drained. At a minimum, many Trump supporters at least thought all the neocons would be disgraced and banished … and then Trump morphed into the most avid neocon in U.S. history.

The views of Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, Bill Kristol, Dick Cheney have never been more solidified or mainstream. Needless to say, Bibi Netanyahu found the president he’d always been looking for.

Like a growing number of citizens, I’ve speculated that MAGA was co-opted by MIGA. I also perturbed many of my subscribers when I wrote a favorable column about APAIC’s Enemy No. 1, Cong. Thomas Massie.

One of numerous tells about The Real Donald Trump was when he identified Massie as his No. 1 political enemy, someone that his MAGA Army must defeat back in Kentucky.

Here again (and IMO), Trump was simply doing the bidding of his “pro-Israel” supporters.

Massie is the political successor to Ron Paul, one of my few political heroes. (I can’t think of any prediction Ron Paul ever made that turned out to be wrong.)

To reference another maxim of mine, I say pay attention to the contrarians with principles, courage and the intelligence to speak taboo thoughts that are right.

In the days and weeks to come, it will be interesting to see if Thomas Massie is going to be the one key dissident politician who is drained from the Swamp or, perhaps, in an upset, becomes the leader of a formidable political resistance movement.

Predictions on what’s to come …

It’s also interesting to speculate on what will happen in Iran in the coming days and weeks.

Since Trump and his secretary of state and war seem to know that the American public is not in favor of “boots on the ground,” I doubt a couple of divisions of American troops will pour into Iran from Kuwait or Saudi Arabia.

From studying past wars, I know that ground troops are a pre-requisite for most regime-change wars especially in a nation as vast in size as Iran.

To myself, this seems to suggest the Iranian regime will not be changed. (Iran has plenty of other mullahs to replace their dead ayatollah).

My prediction is that, at some point, America will just declare victory and stop the bombing.

President Trump will - again - say that Iran’s nuclear capability has been “obliterated.”

A further guess is that the Democrats will take control of both houses of Congress and President Trump will face even more impeachment proceedings, which won’t work as the neocons and “vaccine”-lovers will once again rally around their heroic, under-siege leader.

The Iranian school girls will still be deceased and not get to live the final 70 years of their lives. An unknown number of American service members will be deceased and suffer grave life-altering injuries.

I hope I’m wrong, but I imagine more solo-actor Muslims will take revenge on America by killing more Americans at bars, malls or other public gathering places.

But, as our attorney general recently noted, the Dow Jones Average will still be doing great and will probably soar past 55,000.

Nobody implicated in the Epstein files - most conspicuously no Israel Intelligence Operation - will be prosecuted or fully exposed.

Unless Mr. Kennedy takes my advice and plays the embalmers’ clots card, we will no doubt get more mRNA vaccines and all the people who have “died suddenly” will keep dying suddenly.

No thermo-nuclear truth bomb will detonate, but inflation will get much worse and the Democrats and Republicans will join forces to green-light digital currency and digital ID, which President Trump will no doubt support.

The wheels of the Swamp will continue to turn on greased axels.

***

And when Iran, again, gets two or three days from acquiring nuclear weapons, we will do this all over again.

At this time, a few non-neocon, regime-change opponents might have a few paid subscribers left, but we’ll all be labelled as terrorist lovers and a threat to democracy and our reach will be about the same as an Iraqi Scud missile.

On the plus side, tens of millions of people who haven’t gotten a good night’s sleep in decades because of their terror of an Iranian nuclear attack are finally sleeping through the night. I do feel good for them.

(Who knows? Maybe a few Glenn Greenwald, David Stockman or Meryl Nass subscribers might replace the legions of subscribers I’ll now lose).

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