Wars and Rumors of Wars

See that you are not alarmed, such things must come to pass

A few days ago, I posted a note on the current war in Iran, wherein I stated that I would refrain from commenting on anything related to it for a few days as I observed what was happening and learned more about the broader situation. I noted my pride in my country and in the technical competency shown by American forces, while also praying and hopefully urging others to pray for the people of Iran, whom I admire. My goal was to encourage others to also wait and see. I believe this to be both the ethically correct and most practical stance, as in a fast-moving media environment where everyone is competing to establish a narrative- especially when it involves Donald Trump- it’s easy to have one’s personal algorithm signals activated and respond unthinkingly.

[GAYLIB] If TRUMP-> Dumb and Wrong sequence
[TR00NLEFT] If TRUMP-> Evil and White sequence
[BOOMCON] If TRUMP-> Good and Israel sequence
[YTNAT] If TRUMP-> Bad and Israel sequence

I don’t know if the code is any good, but the guys I hired to write it all had PhD’s from Calcutta Tech, so I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt.

Given that latter reality, a number of people simply jumped ahead and argued with the position the modem noises in their heads told them I held, rather than what I’d explicitly written. I’ve been called a shill- though it’s not clear for whom- and lambasted for a “send in the troops” stance that perhaps only one with advanced Straussian training can decode from my text. Some people were offended that I was praying or that I hoped Iran would turn to Christ. Many e-ranted about my once more missing the big JOOOOO conspiracy. It would be easy to say something like “well that’s just how the internet is” save for the fact that the vast majority of my commenters understood where I was coming from and supported me. I have an informed and broad-minded readership for which I am grateful. It’s actually heartening to see that most people, at least in my circle, aren’t blinkered idiots.

It has been interesting to see how things have broken down online, however. Very few people in right wing internet spaces wanted any kind of conflict with Iran before the bombings started- I being among that number- but then a lot of people within that sphere also valorize the specter of American power at home and abroad. The capture of Maduro from Colombia Venezuela (I always confuse those most mustachioed of Latin nations) seems to have been widely popular, as has the aggressive action domestically taken against illegal immigrants and the rebellious jurisdictions that harbor them. I don’t think it would be too much to say that there is a kind of chaotic ambivalence on the right at the moment when it comes to the use of state power to impose the will of the administration.

I say that, and then this commie doesn’t even have the decency to sport a decent ‘stache at his own inauguration.

This has led to some interesting splits and strange bedfellows. I had someone taunt me with the prospect that Academic Agent (The Forbidden Texts) was totally vindicated by recent events. For my part, I’m just glad that Neema Parvini and Matt Walsh seem to have reconciled, and that the former is now retweeting the latter as someone who shares his views. I hope I had a hand in that; blessed are the peacemakers and all.

And NO, I’m not going to call him ‘Jordan Jeeterson’ because that’s wrong.

Regarding the latter, and Charles Haywood, who I admire as a thinker, and a great many others, the consensus seems to be that- while the Venezuela operation and punking out Canada and Denmark are valid goals for American foreign policy, the Iran attacks are not what we voted for, not in our interest, and the energy and political capital devoted to overthrowing the Ayatollahs is better spent domestically. I think those are all very valid points, with which I have sympathy, but which I also think require a bit more nuance. I also think there is an angle that I’m not yet seeing anyone mention, but which I believe will have the greatest long-term implications.

In the first place, it is true that no one on the right- again, including myself- was jumping to attack Iran or even wanted that as the hundredth item on the list of priorities. I thought it was a bad idea before and I’m not really behind it now. Had Iran attacked the US, it’s fair to say the right would have prescribed a brutal response, but the mere specter of Iran’s existence and the threat it posed to Our Greatest Ally was not any kind of motive force for war. It’s thus easy to feel betrayed by Trump’s initiation of hostilities following the unlikely prospect of success in negotiations with the regime, and with the refreshingly frank but seemingly tone-deaf explanation on the part of Secretary of State Marco Rubio that the attack took place because Israel was going to move whether we liked it or not, so it made sense to join in. That is not, indeed, what any of us voted for.

Now, the crew at The Bulwark has been voting for this war since the 90s, right up until Trump launched it, at which point they began denouncing it.

But that’s us. It’s easy to forget that the true right is first of all relatively young and secondly very online, and that a large segment of Trump’s electoral coalition are neither. I mention seemingly tone-deaf framing because, while the notion of doing the whole Schwarzenegger-Weathers hand-holding meme with Israel plays very poorly with those of us on X and Substack, the NormieCon Boomers who are just as major a part of his constituency absolutely love hearing that narrative as they listen to OAN while they read about it in the local newspaper. Israel and Iran mean very different things to that generation than those that came after; the former conceived of as the plucky nation that brought freedom and democracy to the Middle East after their own Greatest Generation dads stopped Hitler from holocausting everyone, the latter being the land of bearded nutjobs who inexplicably hate America and humiliated it at the tail end of the decade of disgrace that formed the period of the Boomers’ mature adulthood. They like Israel and tend to support it and they hate Iran and tend to want it bombed. Matt Walsh might not like it, and I might not like it, but unless the ongoing war interferes with this year’s Jimmy Buffett Ultimate Margaritaville Red Sea Cruise, it’s going to play well in The Villages.

I originally thought I was making a joke, but it turns out that’s a real thing.

War is an extension of politics and in a managerial state that means assembling the pretense of popular support for executing the will of the managerial elites. Trump is our guy, but he also has to be the Boomers’ guy- indeed, fundamentally, he’s one of them more than us. To that point, there is no Trump without those people, and there is no us (politically speaking) without Trump, us being the Ascendant Right. While the forms of democracy are still being obeyed, the prospect of abandoning that coalition and striking off in a direction where the Boomers hold no power will result in President Kamala and an America that might as well be England (I’m done picking on Canada). It’s not ideal, or even good, but it’s the right direction for the time being.

Above: Phil Donahue cries tears of joy after his posthumous induction into Canadian High Command.

But of course the bigger question is: is the war in Iran a good thing for America, or put more aptly, is this putting America first? That in turn requires a clear idea of what is good for America in the short and long term and what the nation’s priorities should be. There is also the fact that any war is the result of a decision made on the part of a state that killing and dying are better than the status quo, in anticipation that some better situation will result. One’s intentions can be known at the outset, but results are inherently unpredictable; war, like religion, can’t be put back in the box once it’s unleashed until its energy is exhausted.

I have no doubt that President Trump means well, and he can argue- quite correctly- that Iran is essentially a bandit state, a modern Corsair kingdom causing havoc throughout a region that inhibits American freedom to act there in significant ways. The traditional response throughout history to pirate nests is brutal eradication- it’s something the Romans would have done and even the otherwise pacific Thomas Jefferson wouldn’t abide the Barbary Deys during his presidency. Regarding the latter, it’s doubtful very many American’s during his time would have experienced the Barbary Wars as anything especially useful or beneficial other than as a demonstration of American power and force projection. But that ounce of prevention made for a pound of cure, and it’s impossible to quantify the havoc that wasn’t unleashed on American travel and commerce as a result of the successful campaigns in North Africa. It’s still possible, I think, to make the case for what the administration is doing along those lines, though Trump, for some reason, has yet to do so.

The memesmiths, as usual, have spot-on messaging.

The right gets that, but the obvious objection to that line of reasoning is the far more recent example of the War on Terror, where two decades of good intentions (at least as publicly expressed) resulted in bad outcomes in every conceivable metric. It began with invasions of Muslim countries and resulted in being invaded by Muslims in turn. We fought them there and now we have to fight them here. No one wants a repeat of the last twenty (or really fifty eighty) years, and the current campaign can easily be interpreted as more of the same.

But beyond the Newsmax Huckabee high-fiving and superficial parallels to past debacles, I believe something else is taking shape, a new approach to both foreign and domestic policy that is at the same time a reversion to something more traditional and perhaps more beneficial, in the long term, for the right, and thus, for civilization as a whole. Consider first the character of the messaging. While the Trump administration has encouraged Iranians to rise up and liberate themselves, there is nothing like the universalist liberal messianism of the Bush years. Trump has clearly decided the Ayatollahs need to go, but is largely indifferent, for now at least, concerning what replaces them. The US and the IDF are more or less just blasting away at one tier of Iranian government after another until they get to the layer where someone is holding a white flag.

These aren’t the actions of a liberal republic ideologically committed to the spread of freedom and democracy as universal solvents of political dysfunction, but an imperial power killing the chicken to scare the monkeys. One might say that Bush was essentially doing the same thing, but that effort was fatally compromised by an attempt to impose an ideology that was already in crisis where it originated. Trump is showing no such pretensions, and the stark and brutal realpolitik of the whole thing, I believe, is for a purpose. People have downplayed the notion that all of this is really about China, but the PRC gets (or got) close to 20% of its oil from Iran and previous American stomping ground Venezuela, about what it gets from Russia. The success of this campaign in Iran is bound up with the future of the petrodollar and the ability of the BRICS to construct an alternative reserve currency and oil economy. If Trump is successful, the latter will be far less feasible. In the short term, this looks like higher oil prices and longer term a move to shore up the dollar against any incipient threats.

杀鸡儆猴 Honestly, the monkeys don’t look that scared. Like gunpowder, the Chinese invented this, but don’t seem to grasp its full potential.

Regarding Russia, no one to my knowledge has yet made the connection that the fighting in Iran is also perhaps about positioning the US in a far stronger negotiating position apropos the War in Ukraine. With Iran neutralized, America necessarily has more pull than it otherwise would have after nearly five years of feckless support for Kiev as it has lost a fifth of its territory. Invading Venezuela and bombing the Iranian government into hummus sets the tone for an agreement that acquiesces to Russia’s territorial expansion, which is anyway a forgone conclusion, while demonstrating that the US is still the dominant power in terms of force projection on Earth. Dugin is correct that the world to come will be multipolar, but Trump means to show that America pitches the biggest tent.

I’m theorizing a bit here, necessarily extrapolating from public information to try to discern some deeper notion of the president’s motives. But that’s all any of us can do. I voted for him, I watched him take a bullet and keep going, and I stand by him. That said, intentions matter, but results are what shape history. If the outcomes are what the administration seems to assume, as noted above, I predict that the actions taken will be considered good for the American people. If the whole thing goes south, which it well could, it might go down as the final straw that broke the camel’s back- ironically, in a region where that is a major worry for the average person. But none of that can be known at the moment.

Iran is still home to large numbers of both the dromedary and Bactrian camel subtypes, provided Trump is not drone striking them as well.

As for the final consideration- why do this rather than focus on domestic issues? I believe there are more interesting considerations than others have noted. Just today, Matt Walsh asked why mass deportations are deemed impractical, while the war in Iran proceeds smoothly and with great energy? I have said before that I like Matt Walsh, and he’s hardly the only person I respect asking this question, but- to be blunt- everyone already knows the answer. To get things done domestically, Trump has to run a gauntlet of enemies and traitors who sandbag his efforts at every turn. His own party is slow-walking the passage of the vital SAVE Act, seemingly waiting out the clock in order to throw the midterms and enter the minority status they so love, raising streams of cash while promising that this time they’ll do something when they’re the majority again.

Contrast this with Trump’s campaigns abroad, characterized thus far by focus, decisiveness, ruthless energy, and technical competence. People see that Trump can topple the Iranian government, but can’t get similar results at home. There he can call the shots and get things done; here he has to contend with political opponents abetting a foreign invasion and the human speed bumps of his own party. I don’t think Trump is deliberately trying to draw attention to the dichotomy, but sooner or later it will dawn on people that the part of the system that works does so under the command of one man. Roman parallels are done to death, but looking at the late Republic, one is struck by the similarities between our situation and theirs- a feckless Senate, grown fat with the riches generated by exploited foreign peons, unable to change or act in the public interest, and the series of charismatic generals who built followings through conquest abroad and patronage at home. Caesar had his faults, but he knew what he was doing, and in a systemic crisis, that’s what people look for.

Trump is no Red Caesar. He’s a Boomer, as noted, and understands that he will shape the future, but not be there for it. But someone will. Neoliberalism and the managerial system it undergirds are in a death spiral. Reality is reasserting itself against the hubris of men who thought they could shape it according the narratives. At its core, being a rightist is nothing more than the acceptance of reality, of fixed, transcendent truths that cannot be changed. The force being shaped to instantiate the return to that awareness is a man, out there somewhere.

I should say in closing that my fondest hope is for peace. I admire the Persian people, fellow Sons of the Steppe alongside the men of the West. I don’t want to see people bombed and hurt and rendered homeless and impoverished, either there or here. I’m not convinced there weren’t better ways to handle this. I also understand that we live in a fallen world, and that leaders have to make hard decisions that result in the death of good people, where often no positive end is achieved despite the best wishes of wise and honest men- and that such men are few on the ground.

I wrote about the greatest Iranian in American history in the above article. F*** you Caillou. JABRONI.

I should also note that I give Trump the benefit of the doubt, but I’m not uncritical of him. I think that while in the short term, for some of his constituents, going all in with Israel makes sense and suits his temperament, in the long run it’s bad optics and alienates the next generation, especially those rightists who have already put up with a lot. When you’ve got Daily Wire hosts aghast at your over-the-top Zionism, perhaps it’s time to rein it in. In the same vein, he needs to be forthright with the American people about his goals. Specifying that he only plans on a campaign of a few weeks is a good start; keeping that promise will be even better.

Provided all continues to go well, I could see this being the sort of success that’s the most characteristically Trump- audacious, over the top, slathered in shameless mendacity, and yet somehow triumphant in the face of universal doubt. He’s been written off a thousand times by people who should know better by now, and while he may still Alcibiades it up, for now, I’m willing to hope things work out with minimal further death and destruction. I can see a path forward for the right in this, at home and abroad, where the new multipolar landscape creates a need for men attuned to the deeper realities noted. I don’t think Trump understands all this or thinks in those terms, but he’s always been able to intuit more than he comprehends or articulates. He’s opening a door. It remains to be seen who walks through it.