In a move that surprised no one but a few bewildered goldfish, the White House's Iran policy has split Congress quicker than a cheap suit in a downpour. And who should wade into the fray but the Man Who Would Be King of Mar-a-Lago, our very own Cheeto-in-Chief, Donald J. Trump.
From his gilded toilet, Trump issued a statement so dripping with hyperbole it could have been penned by a drunken spider with a thesaurus. "The House vote was unpatriotic," he thundered, his syntax mangled beyond recognition. "These people are trying to destroy our country. They should be locked up!"
But let's step back and gaze upon the wreckage with the clarity of a man who has had one too many gins. Congress, that august body of bipartisan bickering, has been torn asunder by the Iran situation. On one side, we have the warmongers, salivating at the thought of bombs and oil. On the other, the peaceniks, clutching their copies of 'How to Hug a Terrorist'. And in the middle, a president who couldn't find Iran on a map if you drew a big arrow saying "Iran is here" and maybe added a picture of a camel.
Now, I am a satirical correspondent, not a geopolitical strategist. My job is to stand on the precipice of reason and scream into the void. And what do I see? I see a nation so divided that if we were a sandwich, we'd be a mouldy, stale baguette with a side of existential dread. The House vote was a mere formality, a theatrical performance for the cameras. The real game is being played in back rooms and whispered over cigars. The old men with their war machines and their pocket-lining cronies.
Trump's outburst is just the cherry on this grotesque sundae. He calls the vote "unpatriotic" while simultaneously tweeting about his approval ratings. Patriotism, it seems, is a flexible concept. When it suits him, it's waving a flag. When it doesn't, it's a nuisance. This is the man who once said he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose a vote. He's testing that hypothesis with Iran.
But let us not forget the absurdity of it all. We are at the mercy of a man whose foreign policy strategy appears to be based on late-night television and whatever his son-in-law reads on Wikipedia. The Iran policy is just another cog in the machine of chaos. It is a policy that has been re-written so many times it now reads like a Choose Your Own Adventure book, except all paths lead to disaster.
The splitting of Congress is merely a symptom of a larger disease. The disease of tribalism, of us versus them, of the utter inability to find common ground. We have become a nation of shouters, not listeners. And our president, our dear leader, is the shouter-in-chief. He doesn't want unity. He wants adulation. He wants a mirror, not a Congress.
In the end, what does this all mean? It means we are sleepwalking into another Middle Eastern quagmire. It means our representatives are more interested in party lines than actual lines of diplomacy. And it means that somewhere, in a smoky bar in Washington D.C., a lobbyist is laughing all the way to the bank.
I need another gin. The world is too loud, too stupid, too much. But I'll keep writing, keep satirising, because if I don't laugh, I'll cry. And crying stains the pages of my notebook.
So, cheers to the Orange Oracle and his unpatriotic cohorts. May your reign be as short as your attention span, and may the historians of the future have a field day with the wreckage you leave behind.
