Donald Trump's Sitzkrieg
And, yes, another phantom "peace deal"
BREAKING: Donald Trump said early Friday a “peace deal” with Iran will be signed in Europe this weekend. But he won’t be going because it’s his birthday and he has to attend the UFC fight instead.
By mid-morning he was lashing out at the Iranians, calling them “very dishonorable people to deal with” and with whom “there is no such thing as good faith.”
We’ve been here before, haven’t we? Donald Trump threatens fire, fury, and the destruction of whole civilizations. And then backs down.
Then he does it all over again. By one count he’s claimed that a peace deal with Iran was right-around-the-corner, any-minute-now 38 times. Make that 39.
On Thursday, the winner of the coveted FIFA Peace Prize declared (again) that he would hit Iran “VERY HARD TONIGHT” and that the U.S. would be “taking Kharg Island” and other oil infrastructure.
Hours later — and stop me if you’ve heard this story before — he announced that the strikes were cancelled, because he had this peace deal — a new “great settlement of the war with Iran” —which Iran promptly announced had not been agreed to.
On Friday, Iran’s Mehr news agency released a draft of a Memorandum of Understanding that reads more like an instrument of US surrender than a peace deal. The 14-point proposal includes the creation of a $300 billion slush fund for Iranian reconstruction, an immediate $24 billion cash transfer, and the withdrawal of US forces from the Mideast.
Trump said the reported deal was “fake news,” and called the Iranians “very dishonorable people” with whom “there is no such thing as good faith.” See details below.1
So on Day 105, the War Formerly Known as “Epic Fury,” is back to being a Sitzkrieg. (For you students of history, the term — which means “Sitting war” in German —dates back to the lull in WWII known as the “phony war.”)
For a while, Trump tried to play the “President of Peace,” But when he inexplicably failed to win the actual Nobel Prize, decided he would rather cosplay at being the God of War.
But now he’s bored and nodding off.
Trump clearly wants the war in which nothing much is happening — except for wrecking the world economy — to just go away. He doesn’t even want to call it a “war” anymore (it’s a “skirmish”, an “excursion” an “operation” a “slap and tickle”.) Over and over, Trump has declared his war of whim won and done. But he just can’t manage to scrape it off his shoes.
As a result, we are all stuck in this endless cycle of bombastic ALL-CAPS threats followed by his weekly TACOs and claims of phony peace deals, punctuated by an occasional war crime — and Trump’s epic, endless Sitzkrieg.
Happy Friday.
Note:
The knee-bending by billionaire media moguls and the enshittification of social media by the broligarchs has transformed the media landscape... and made independent outlets like Substack more vital than ever.
To the Contrary is a reader-supported publication. No oligarchs. No billionaires. No weak-kneed corporate overlords. No paywalls. No ads. Just you.
Please consider supporting us.
To receive new posts — and the podcast — consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. (And I’m immensely grateful for your generous support.)
The Age of Impunity
The world apparently has its first trillionaire; and it is Elon Musk.
Via the Guardian: “Think Musk the billionaire was bad? Brace yourself for Musk the trillionaire.”
Of course, the big issue here isn’t what his imminent trillionaire status is going to do to Musk’s inner psyche, it’s what it’s going to do to democracy. You think Musk-the-billionaire was bad? A trillion dollars is going to afford the rocketman a whole new level of impunity and give him even more power over our lives.
It is hard to wrap your head around how big a billion is, let alone a trillion, so it’s worth pausing to really take in just how obscene this sum is. We’re talking 12 zeros; one million million dollars. If you spent $1m every single day it would take you more than 2,700 years to spend a trillion dollars.
Another way of looking at it: if you are worth $1tn, then $1m is 0.0001%, or one ten-thousandth of 1%, of your net worth. The median net worth in the US is about $192,700; $1m has the same value to a trillionaire as 19 cents has to a median-net-worth American. To a trillionaire, $100m feels like $19.27 to the median American. About the cost of a large pizza.
**
Ed Luce writes: “Elon Musk is a real-life Bond villain.” In recent days, he notes, the world’s newest trillionaire “has been devoting many of his waking hours to stoking up racial hatred in Britain on his social media site.”
In the ten days since British police released video footage of Henry Nowak’s dying moments, Musk has posted or reposted more than 100 attacks on British multiculturalism and in support of extremists like Tommy Robinson and Rupert Lowe, leader of the Restore Britain party.
For those unaware of the Nowak tragedy, he was an 18-year-old white boy on his way home one night in Southampton last December when he was fatally stabbed by a British Sikh, Vickrum Digwa. The culprit’s brother called the police to say that Nowak had attacked and racially abused him — a story that turns out to have been invented. The police believed Digwa’s account and handcuffed Nowak as he was dying on the doorstep of his home.
The footage is unbearably tragic. Police negligence — and the existence of alleged two-tier policing — should be investigated and fixed. The police have to be held to account.
But here is the thing: Nowak’s parents called on the public to respect their grief and not to politicize his murder. Musk, on the other hand, wants to turn Nowak into a white George Floyd.
**
Nota Bene
Happy Birthday, Don. “Judge indefinitely blocks Trump $1.8B slush fund for his allies.”
Friday’s injunction from District Judge Leonie Brinkema extends a previous order that prevented the government from “taking any further action pursuant to the creation or operation of the Anti-Weaponization Fund” — including transferring money to it, considering any claims and mailing any checks while a legal challenge plays out.
Maybe this is something we should worry about. “College Students Are Rapidly Losing the Ability to Read.”
In a new essay for The Chronicle Higher Education, university-level literature and writing instructor Tyler Jagt recalls how not a single one of his students could get through an assigned 20-page article, something that he had read “without complaint” as an undergraduate a decade ago.
One student confessed that the reason they didn’t finish was that they kept losing track of what the paper was about. And there’s no doubt that they’re not alone.
Jagt cites the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress reading assessment results released last year. It showed that 12th grade reading scores were at the lowest level since the assessment began in 1992. Nearly a third of those 12th graders scored below the assessment’s “basic” level in reading, meaning they likely “cannot draw general conclusions based on concepts presented explicitly in a text.” Younger children aren’t better off: a recent report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation found that 70 percent of fourth graders, or around two million kids, can’t read at a proficient level.
“What I am seeing in my classroom is no longer a hunch,” Jagt writes. “There is a measurable, generational collapse in sustained reading and writing, and the academy is responding to it with improvisation and exhaustion rather than the structural overhaul it requires.”
Exit take: If only we had been warned.
**
Friday dogs
Eli likes hiding under his mom’s piano during thunderstorms. The music really does sooth his savage breast.
“By mid-morning he was lashing out at the Iranians, calling them ‘very dishonorable people to deal with’ and with whom ‘there is no such thing as good faith.’”
The Convicted Felon, who famously stiffs vendors and has broken just about every alliance, is complaining about dealing with people with whom there is no such thing as good faith. The hypocrisy is off the charts.
Just wondering, once Musk is a trillionaire are we going to continue to give him government handouts??