It’s hard to avoid the religious aspect of the current war, and its roots in thousand-year disputes over how best to suck up to the deity at the heart of it all. The deity who, for a chuckle, put vast quantities of petroleum under the Middle Eastern lands, added geographical pinch points and political instability, and seeded three fightin’ religions that are basically fairly minor variations on each other. What a guy!
When Pete Hegseth has Crusader symbology tattooed on his pecs (though I thought at first it was a German Iron Cross) and Deus Vult on his arm; when Trump hosts those (fucking weird) performative anointing sessions in the Oval Office, I wonder what non-mad Christians – and Jews – make of all this.
I always understood Christianity to be a peaceful, neighbourly religion. Thou shalt not kill, love thy neighbour, that sort of thing. “The religion of peace” is the eye-rolling sneer directed at Muslims following some atrocity. We’re the good guys. But this administration is exulting in – essentially – state-sponsored, religiously-inspired, terrorism.
Don’t get me wrong; Islam has a massive image problem. When some dickhead blows himself up on a bus or at a pop concert, I share the revulsion of my in-group. They do far more harm than good to their cause. I don’t understand the brutality. But Muslims are no more responsible for these actions than the Archbishop of Canterbury is responsible for Pete Hegseth.
These religions are, as I say, variations on a theme. Their holy books contain similar moral strictures, similarly ignored by fanatics, along with some dubiously contradictory aggression and brutality. They pick consecutive days to represent God’s Seventh Day Off, they all start with Adam and Eve. Mary appears seventy times in the Quran. They all have weird dietary restrictions (God looks favourably on people who make life unnecessarily hard for themselves). But those guys over there – they’ve got it wrong. Though entered largely by accident of birth. my religion is the right one. What a stroke of luck.
Muslim Medics at a hospital in Barrow, half an hour down the road, got together and initiated a faith centre in nearby Dalton. I can hear the howls from here. “We’re a Christian country!” from people who only see the inside of a church at weddings and funerals. Numerous protests have taken place, with more to come as right-wing figures attach themselves. People have suddenly developed an interest in the minutiae of planning regulations, and building aesthetics. Local papers looking for a bit of online engagement post ‘what do you think?” clickbait as commenters hilariously suggest they will go down and wave bacon sandwiches, or smear pig shit on the doors (forgetting that Jews, with whom we are temporarily allied, also reject pork products). Disappointingly, several friends have indicated, by ‘like’, support for the campaign. The hospital, meanwhile, is struggling to recruit and retain staff, and closing departments. A place of worship would not hurt recruitment, but the hatred being poured out might. I trust protestors will enjoy, or at least survive, the trip to Preston to sort out their bacon-clogged arteries.
Are this naive? Why?
Is wanting someone else’s territory religious or ideological? Or maybe just greed, or the lust for power? Trump has no ideology, and he sure isn’t religious.
Allan:
Minor variations to a heathen like you, but deathly important to those concerned. It made me think of this Emo Philips joke:
keiths:
J-Mac:
Because I’ve been practicing my entire life.
Can you point to anything coming out of the White House that can compete with the Iranian propaganda videos that Allan and I linked to? (Here’s the other one.)
Meanwhile, this is the kind of crap the White house is producing.
Allan Miller,
keiths,
Hi Allan Keiths
I thought this might stimulate some discussion.
https://x.com/JasonJournoDC/status/2042987757987856866?s=20
If you don’t know what that cause of the problem is, always follow the ….???
colewd,
You mean that Trump has earned the Nobel Peace Prize yet again? Why do you think this is any sort of discussion starter?
The situation is that before the war the strait of Hormuz was open. Now it is held by Iran. Can you figure out from this who won? I know: You can’t. You can’t even figure out who started the war. And you do not remember that Trump already had a war with Iran last year where he claimed he obliterated everything.
colewd,
I too fail to see what is worthy of discussion in that post, unless you sincerely believe a ceasefire with record high oil prices was the hidden goal of this illegal war.
I have no idea what will happen in the long run, but in the short run, the US is starting to fill in as an oil supplier.
Just something to watch.
For most of my life it was assumed that the Middle East had a stranglehold on energy.
What if they don’t?
China seems hell bent on going solar. What happens if they reach saturation and have excess manufacturing capacity for solar panels? Cheap.
What happens if the world can survive without middle eastern oil?
One word: Tariffs. It happens to be Trump’s favorite word, remember?
What happens if USA becomes as unstable as Middle East? This leadership has managed to take a giant leap in that direction…
What happens if the earth is swallowed by a giant space dog?
The long term stability of the world is threatened by demographic shifts. Everything else is noise.
China knows this. They have been preparing for it.
I think Erik’s claim deserves a little more serious contemplation. The Trump administration has turned out to be a hostile, arguably fascist, regime and is rapidly becoming a political, economical and military threat, even to nations that considered themselves allies. For this reason, many countries are now trying to reduce their dependency on US American resources, products and services. I wouldn’t be surprised if the energy transition will soon receive an extra impulse to prevent countries from becoming dependent on US gas and oil.
Exactly. Why should Europeans buy more oil from fascist USA* as compared to dynastic Middle East or dictatorial Russia? Between these options, Europe will simply pick the closest and most reliable supply, which USA is not. And suppose European countries fall into worse disarray than USA – well, such countries are not in condition to buy from USA even if they wanted to.
* Let’s be clear: USA under Trump is fascist. The regime came to power literally Sieg Heiling, switched its alliance in the Ukraine war to Putin, began an immediate battle to rewrite the American Constitution, and has de facto dispersed NATO. Enough evidence.
I fail to see how Russia is benefiting from Trump.
Cuba has been a Russian client state since I was in high school. And Venezuela was a de facto puppet of Cuba.
Iran was a major supplier of arms to Russia for the Ukraine war. Not to mention an advocate for Russian interests in the Middle East.
Ukraine lost four provinces under Obama and Biden. They have lost nothing since January, 2025.
You mean you failed to see the Alaska summit. Trump offered to Putin everything – all of Ukraine, mineral deals and whatever. Putin for his own reasons did not accept any of it – because, face to face, Trump is Putin’s slave and dog, whereas for Russian domestic propagandistic purposes, the “collective West” (including USA) is the arch-enemy. Putin has chosen to keep this dynamic as it is. Trump showed total servility, Putin showed total dominance.
Iran war has shown USA as a weak dummy – a very much welcome event for Putin after Trump’s swift kidnapping of Maduro (which was the kind of operation that Putin wanted to do to Zelenskyy but failed). This Maduro kidnapping left Putin jealous at Trump for a while, but now Trump fixed this problem with the Iran war. Also, the Iran war has doubled oil prices, very much welcome for both Iran and Russia, especially since Trump dropped sanctions on Russian oil.
You just fail to see, period. Ask yourself: Which AMERICAN goal or interest did the Iran war serve? ETA: To help you out, the correct answer is none. Therefore the war is entirely serving somebody else’s goals, most obviously Israel’s.
What I see is that Ukraine lost four provenances under Obama and Biden, and none while Trump has been President.
So you are as dumb as Trump, for whom the Ukraine war is strictly a real estate dispute – and an American domestic partisan bone. And hence he deserves Nobel Peace Prize, right?
Have you seen at least that, since 1990s, Trump has wanted to set up a Trump Tower in Moscow?
ETA: Why bother with you. You definitely did not see Putin’s interference in American elections in Trump’s favor either. Because Putin told to Trump in Helsinki very strongly that he did not interfere, therefore he did not, USA’s own intelligence reports be damned.
My guess is that European countries will try to become autonomous and will diversify their suppliers whenever this is not possible. Isolationism is back.
Then you have not been paying a lot of attention. NATO has been severely weakened by your presidents open disdain for his allies.
According to the Trump cult, NATO has only been ripping USA off, not paying its fair share, not giving Greenland to USA etc. Right now, NATO is not obeying Trump’s orders to secure the strait, therefore NATO must die. Weak NATO is a good thing. Trump is infallible like Easter Bunny and savior of the world like Jesus and he should be on the throne of the pope.
Looks like Vance’s visit and Trump’s endorsement sealed Orbán’s fate. He lost. Europe is not Trumpite.
https://www.stuttmann-karikaturen.de/karikaturen/2026/viktor_kol.jpg
Erik:
Fantastic! Let’s hope his team isn’t hard at work on a Hungarian Jan 6.
Corneel, to colewd:
Bill is so desperate at this point that he’s thrilled to see someone arguing that his orange hero isn’t insane.
More on the Smerconish piece later.
petrushka:
Are you kidding? Trump has been a godsend to Russia. They’ve benefitted enormously from Trump’s presidency (in his first term, too). Not only did he fail to impose new sanctions on Russia during the first nine months of his presidency, despite his hollow threats, but the only sanctions he did impose were recently lifted so that Russian oil could help ease price pressures. Trump actually lifted Iran’s sanctions too, for the same reason, giving them a huge source of income for fighting the US. Make that make sense.
But had already ceased to be, before the Iran war. Russia relies very little on Iranian arms because they produce Shaheds and other drones domestically now.
Which they will continue to be.
Do you actually credit Trump for that? He’s been nothing but bad news for Ukraine. The US has granted zero military aid to Ukraine during Trump’s term. At this point the US is merely selling to European countries who are buying on Ukraine’s behalf. Trump has pressured Ukraine to accept shitty terms for peace, and the Trump administration actually consulted Russia to ask what terms they should try to impose in a peace deal. I read that the terms in the US proposal appeared to have been translated directly from the original Russian.
Then, as Corneel mentioned, there’s the impact Trump has made on weakening NATO. Trump is such an idiot that he actually relies on Putin’s opinions regarding NATO:
Russia loves Trump, and that’s why you see Russian state media praising him all the time.
The Speaker of the Iranian parliament is trolling the White House over Trump’s harebrained decision to blockade the Strait of Hormuz, which incidentally gave me a way to test AI’s ability to interpret the trolling. This comment has the details.
Orban conceded quickly. I think his next move is to retire. But the election winner announced immediate plans to launch investigations against the hitherto foreign minister for treason, which is such a high aim that Orban cannot remain comfy. The opposition’s election victory is so thorough that the new prime minister can reform the constitutional framework that Orban earlier tweaked in his own favour.
My reading was that Orban was corrupt, or allowed corruption to flourish.
I’m still noting that Ukraine lost 20 percent of its territory under Obama and Biden. And Ukraine has a corruption problem at least as bad as Hungary.
Virtue signaling is not the same as results.
Europe criticizing Trump over Ukraine is like Eric Swalwell bloviating about Epstein. It was Europe becoming dependent on Russian gas that allowed Putin to think he could take Ukraine without an effective European response. This was explicitly foreseen by Mauldin, the political cartoonist, in 1980. This doesn’t Make Russia a good guy, but if you have rats in your house, it’s your problem for feeding them.
NATO does not exist as a military force. it’s not even Seven Dwarfs. The Dwarfs at least did useful work.
Your premise is that Obama and Biden gave Ukrainian territory to Putin, while Trump has not given. In reality, Trump’s peace proposal last year was exactly to agree to give all gains to Russia – officially on paper, openly in broad daylight – something where Obama and Biden did not budge.
So, wrong premise. Also, you think that Ukraine is a forever war that Obama started, instead of a war that Putin started. You got everything messed up in your specific brainwashed factless MAGA propaganda Trumpite cultish way.
Virtue signalling is what you do. Don’t project.
Trump does the same trick, alternately pretending that NATO is a nothingburger, then an enemy, and then suddenly calling NATO to help him out of his self-caused predicament on the ocean that is not the Atlantic. He does it because he is insane. Can you stop acting like him?
ETA:
Yup, everything in the world is inseparable from American domestic partisan politics to you. You’re always virtue signalling for the Republican party, even when the Repub in power is an open worshipper of Putin, not to mention documentedly the closest friend of Epstein immediately after Maxwell.
petrushka:
Corrupt and antidemocratic. He replaced the Constitution, packed the courts, and gerrymandered the hell out of Hungary. He and his allies controlled 80% of the media and turned it into an echo chamber. You can see why Trump loved him, endorsed him and sent Vance to stump for him. Orbán is Trump’s brother from another mother.
And I’m still noting that Trump should get no credit for that, since he has been actively harming Ukraine for the entirety of his term and is pressuring them to cede territory to Russia. The mistake you’re making is exactly the one I pointed out in my presidential efficacy thread.
Right. No one in Europe actually fears Russian encroachment. They’re just pouring money into Ukraine because they want to look good. It’s all virtue signaling.
Right. Europe has been trying to harm Ukraine in exactly the same way as Trump. They’ve cut military aid, coddled Putin, and pushed Ukraine to accept terrible peace terms. There’s no difference. Your geopolitical analysis is spot on.
petrushka:
Right. That’s why Putin is perfectly fine with Ukraine joining NATO, and why Trump didn’t ask NATO for help in the Iran war. They both understand that NATO does not exist as a military force. Right?
Good grief, petrushka.
Can either of the resident Trump cultists tell who Iran’s “new regime President” is? According to Trump, he was earlier making good progress with Iran’s new regime president who had given him a very big present worth a tremendous amount of money which proved to Trump that he was talking to the right people. Whatever happened to those right Iranians?
Trump cannot lie, so who was he having those earlier negotiations with? And why is he having negotiations with a different set of Iranians now?
Corneel,
This was from a left leaning media organisation CNN. Looking for comments on the claims of strategic coherence to administrations policies. High oil prices are possibly a short term issue. Are you ok with the Iranian government as they are today?
Trump said he was negotiating with a “new regime President” of Iran. You missed this talking point from your Fuehrer.
Are you ok with Trump starting wars? He promised to not start them. He has started at least two within less than two years and done more attacks and invasions. He also promised low fuel prices, but the Iran war increases fuel prices and pirating around the strait increases them even more.
Is it possible in USA to get rid of a clear lunatic in top office or is it a theocratic dictatorship where discussion must follow the playbook of government propaganda?
CNN a left leaning media organisation? Who are you fooling besides yourself?
When Westerners are taught history, they study Crusades as a subchapter of medieval history.
In the Muslim countries, however, Crusades are the same topic as Western colonisation of Africa, Americas and Asia, all the way up to UK/French carve-up of the Middle East and USA’s post-WWII wars in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan etc. In the Muslim world, all these wars are seen as continuation of Crusades.
For example in Turkey it is common knowledge – everybody knows it because they learn it in school – that the goal of Western countries – to this day – is to divide Turkey into five parts and Turkey must be always vigilant and ready to fight back. This is in Turkey, the most moderate of Muslim countries. In every other country the sentiment is less moderate.
Just FYI.
colewd:
Lol. Smerconish is not a leftist, Bill. He’s a former Republican who now considers himself a centrist.
The Iran policy has been an incoherent mess. I’ll say more on that tomorrow.
Even your orange hero admits that they’re not going to be a short-term issue, despite claiming earlier that they would be. Here’s what Trump told Maria Bartiromo:
Bartiromo:
Trump:
colewd:
No, but Trump thought they were great and was ready to go into business with them, charging tolls for ships passing through the Strait. He also lifted the sanctions so that they could sell their oil, because of course he did. If you’re a dipshit like Trump, you allow your enemy to sell oil in order to finance their war against you. And now he’s done a 180 and is blockading the Strait to prevent the Iranians from selling their oil. Encourage them to sell their oil and then block them from selling their oil. Makes perfect sense.
Meanwhile, he’s trying to take credit for regime change, when the old regime is still in place, the IRGC is still in control, and Ayatollah Khamanei’s son, who is even more hardline than his father was, is now the head of state. Trump made it worse.
That Smerconish piece is odd. He thinks Trump is only pretending to be crazy as a negotiating tactic and that he’s actually sober and rational behind the scenes. 25th Amendment talk is therefore absurd, in his opinion:
And:
His evidence? Trump had meetings with his advisers on whether to attack, and they gave their opinions, and Trump didn’t destroy any furniture. Also, a ceasefire materialized after Trump’s “a whole civilization will die tonight” post. Therefore, Trump isn’t a madman. That’s basically it, believe it or not — that’s how Smerconish reached his conclusion.
Smerconish:
That’s naive. Smerconish actually seems to believe that if you aren’t throwing tantrums or breaking furniture all the time, you’re not mentally ill. It’s a total caricature of mental illness. Crazy people can and do sit through meetings without exploding, as any psychologically savvy person knows.
Second, he’s wrong when he says “there’s never been any reporting of Trump like that behind closed doors.” It’s well known that Trump does throw extreme tantrums, and often:
Contrary to what Smerconish believes, it wasn’t an act.
The article continues:
If you can’t calm down unless someone plays Broadway tunes for you, you aren’t sober and rational.
Then there’s Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony at the January 6 hearings.
Here she relates what Secret Service agent Tony Ornato told her after the President returned to the White House:
Later in her testimony, she offered more examples of Trump’s uncontrollable temper.
Liz Cheney:
Hutchinson:
Cheney:
Hutchinson:
Cheney:
Hutchinson:
Then there was Trump’s reaction when the mob at the Capitol was calling for Mike Pence’s death:
Cheney:
[Begin videotape]
Jonathan Karl:
Trump:
[End videotape]
Cheney:
[Begin videotape]
Hutchinson:
Trump was volatile, out of control, and thought the Vice President deserved to die. He is even more deranged in private than he is in public. Smerconish is sanewashing him.
Smerconish is a pundit, and I can’t imagine that he slept through the Jan 6 hearings, so he must have heard all of this. It was major news at the time. Did he just forget?
Trump is an unstable man who attacks Secret Service agents, throws plates against the wall and pulls tablecloths off of tables, needs to be calmed down with Broadway music, sat in the White House doing nothing for more than three hours as he watched the insurrection unfold on TV, and was happy that the mob wanted to kill the Vice President. When a man that unhinged threatens to obliterate an entire civilization, you take the threat seriously, and you definitely start talking about the 25th Amendment.
I don’t know what Smerconish is smoking.
This administration is really bad at coordinating their lies. They couldn’t keep their story straight about the reason for the Iran war, and now JD Vance is contradicting Trump’s lie about the Trump-as-Christ image.
Vance:
Trump:
If they’re gonna lie — and we know they will, forever — then they should at least try to do a better job of it. I think they should send out a “Today’s Lies” notification to the entire administration every morning so they can lie in unison.
keiths,
Thanks for commenting. Obviously different than what you are smoking.:-). I am a wait and see on Iran but am interesting in how your predictions will pan out.
colewd:
Of course you are. You immediately credit Trump if he does something you think is good, but when he does something foolish, like the tariffs or the Iran war, it’s always “let’s wait and see” or “history will judge.” Anything to postpone admitting that your hero is incompetent.
What predictions? Everything I described in that comment has already happened. My judgment…
…is based on what he’s already done, not on what I suspect he’ll do.
keiths,
I think Trump has faults and I stated them before. You appear to accept nothing short of extreme contempt for him. Here I disagree with you as I think your bias is potentially fogging your judgement. My current thinking is you will be shown to be wrong on Iran and the CNN commentator will be right. Again I have been wrong on politics in the past so we will see.
colewd:
Your criticisms have been the mildest possible. You don’t get credit for being unbiased if you deny that a serial killer has murdered people but acknowledge that he said something mean once. You don’t get credit for being unbiased by denying that Trump is dishonest but acknowledging a single Trump lie — the one about not riding on Epstein’s plane — when he’s told thousands more, including many we’ve discussed here.
How you feel about Trump is up to you. You’re a cult member, and cult members are irrationally devoted to their cult leaders, so adore him you will. It’s in bad taste (extremely bad taste) to adore someone so pathetic, but that’s your choice. All I ask, knowing that you won’t comply, is that you acknowledge the truth. You may be perfectly fine with Trump’s lying, for instance, and that’s up to you, but you aren’t entitled to assert that he isn’t lying when it’s obvious that he is and obvious that he has told thousands of lies in and out of office. Ditto for the other unsavory facts about his behavior. The truth is the truth.
In the other thread, Allan wrote:
Like Allan, I’m curious: do you acknowledge what is obvious to us, which is that Trump was lying when he said “I did post it and I thought it was me as a doctor”?
Yet once again, like every other time you’ve leveled the bias charge, you won’t be able to point to a single fact that I got wrong in my comment. If I’m so biased, why do I always have my facts straight? Why, in a full year of discussion, haven’t you been able to point to a single factual or logical error in anything I’ve written about your orange demigod?
I’ve already shown you that Smerconish is wrong, based on known facts. He thinks Trump is sober and rational and only pretends to be crazy. I’ve shown that no, Trump is just as bad (and worse, in fact) in private. That was obvious long ago and remains true. I have receipts, and the ones I shared in that comment are just the tip of the iceberg.
“All lies and jest/
Still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.”
–Paul Simon
You’re a wait and see on anticonstitutionality and international war crimes. You’re insane like your Fuehrer wants you.
An exposé of the hypocrites in Trump’s administration, in their own words:
Before they sold their souls
keiths,
You have asserted he is wrong but the evidence at this point is not supporting your claim. How well or poorly do you think the US and Israels military executed so far in reducing the Iran threat?
There was no threat to begin with. Also, in domestic terms the war was started unconstitutionally, and it is illegal aggression in international terms. And neither USA or Israel have presented the war criminals with any charges. And none of the stated goals have been achieved, be it unconditional surrender, regime change, or stop to uranium enrichment. So it’s a total fail in every way.
ETA: By the way, how do you like the name given to the war, Epic Furry? Remind you of something or someone?
colewd:
Of course it does. Smerconish says Trump only pretends to be crazy and is sober and rational behind the scenes. I presented evidence above that this is false, and you’ve refuted none of it. There’s plenty more where that came from, and in fact there is an entire thread here full of evidence that Trump is mentally ill.
This isn’t just my amateur opinion. Psychologist John Gartner collected 60,000(!) signatures in response to this, in 2017:
Smerconish is sanewashing Trump.
colewd,
I’m still interested in your response to this:
Video:
I thought it was me as a doctor…
Trump repeats that he ended eight wars (down from an earlier claim of ten or more). Still not lying?
keiths,
I think you guys think almost everything he says is a lie. While I agree he speaks in hyperbolic language I disagree that almost everything he says is a lie. This case is no exception. You have found one case you can support. The rest is based on your personal bias.
colewd:
Amusingly, that’s a lie. Well, at least you’re emulating your Dear Leader in that respect. You’re going to have to step up your game if you want to match his pace, however.
Also amusing is that you didn’t actually deny that Trump lied about why he posted the image. Let’s get you on the record. Do you think he was being honest when he said “I thought it was me as a doctor”?