More Unreality
Right in front of our noses, in fact.
As I noted yesterday regarding the reflecting pool debacle, Trump is constantly trying to create his own reality. This can have effects in the broader population because, as we know, partisan allies have deep motivations to rationalize what their team’s leader is saying. Plus, most people don’t have the tools to effectively evaluate what they are being told, and use elites and party affiliation to filter what they accept.
I keep thinking about Jason Stanley’s book, How Fascism Works. Does this sound familiar? From pages 58-59:
Fascist politics exchanges reality for the pronouncements of a single individual, or perhaps a political party. Regular and repeated obvious lying is part of the process by which fascist politics destroys the information space. A fascist leader can replace truth with power, ultimately lying without consequence. By replacing the world with a person, fascist politics makes us unable to assess arguments by a common standard. The fascist politician possesses specific techniques to destroy information spaces and breakdown reailty.
Here’s a doozy from this morning.
The whole thing is a mess, but the lie that jumped out at me this morning when I heard this reported on NPR was the bit about “The Money and/or Sanctions” (why the caps?) being used to buy food and medicine “exclusively” from the US is just not in the MOU and, thus far, in no a formal agreement of any kind.
Also: “This is a humanitarian crisis, and I feel it is necessary to help,” said the arsonist who burned down the neighborhood.
Fox News provides the whole MOU here: READ IT: The full text of the US-Iran Memorandum of Understanding. The outline is pretty clear that Iran is supposed to get total sanctions relief (a huge win for them, BTW) as well as a $300 million reconstruction fund. There are no strictures on those funds and nothing whatsoever about food and medicine.
Barring some formal agreement that is far stronger than the language in the MOU, Iran is about to have a lot of money it can use to rebuild whatever it wants, including military capabilities.
It should be noted that, in terms of what they have said, Iran has already committed to not pursuing a nuclear weapon. It seems worth noting that, at least in terms of making declarations, Iran has previously stated it would not pursue a nuclear weapon. Whether one believes them or not, the reality is that it was not necessary to go to war to get them to make such a declaration.
It also seems worth noting that there was a robust inspections regime under the JCPOA. While Trump will now, no doubt, go on and on about “Nuclear Honesty,” the reality (as opposed to the unreality he tries to spin) is that currently, there is nothing concrete in place.
It seems worth noting that the JCPOA took roughly two years to negotiate. Color me skeptical that Vance, Kushner, and Witkoff will be able to whip up a better replacement in 60 days.
Allow me to remind us all that this was the same core brain trust that was negotiating before the bombing started.
I know a lot of supported and casual observers will fall for Trump’s unreality, but the truth remains that the US is massively worse off than before we attacked, and any “deal” we get will be worse than what we could have gotten before the war, which would have been worse than what we had with the JCPOA.
Elect incompetents, get incompotence.
That’s just reality.
Billion. $300 billion.
The NPR reporter I heard said something like, well, yeah, they COULD use some of that money to buy agricultural commodities from the US. They could also use it to rebuild their military, because the MOU says nothing about what it can/should be spent on, so…
Happy accident typo?
Maybe it should be capitalized.
@Jen:
Maybe they could buy some All-‘Murikan F-35s to replace their aging F-14s
This is an Israeli source who is considered from the right politically, but that does not make him necessarily wrong:
“Amit Segal”
…
@Jen: Typo. Will fix. Thanks for nothing that.
It seems counterintuitive, but the felon’s follies, while a defeat, is also an opportunity. The Times this AM has an op ed making that case (free link).
With the diminished support for Israel in both parties, the Iran hawks from both parties are pretty much isolated and restricted to bleating that is being ignored. While in the Gulf, Arab trust in US defense structures has been badly shaken.
The conditions are in place that if a future American president were simply to walk away from the Middle East, the reaction of the voters could be a collective shrug.
Beyond Israel, the major driver of US interest in the ME has been petroleum. While from a production standpoint we may or may not have reached a peak, we are likely to have reached peak demand. Renewables, hydro and nuclear will become the baseline of electric power production and electric will eventually dominate transportation. That will leave chemicals as driver of demand for oil and that demand can be met outside the troublesome ME.
I must confess that I didnt realize that the JCPOA left a lot of sanctions in place. I think it was conventionally pictured in the media, or maybe it’s my memory, as relieving Iran of all sanctions. If the new agreement gets rid of all sanctions plus adds the $300 billion however, that money is going to be used, it’s a real financial bonanza for Iran especially since they weren’t going to build nukes anyway. However, the war was started at Israel’s insistence much more over Iran retaining its ballistic missiles and supporting its proxies. Not seeing much on that changing.
Steve
Steve
@Sleeping Dog: I agree in much larger part with you. I have a quibble: gasoline will remain the fuel of choice for aircraft for a long, long time. Because it’s energy value per weight is so very, very favorable. But if surface transport moves away from it decisively, there isn’t going to be as much pressure on prices for such use.
You know Trump did not write that tweet. Who is crafting all this nonsense propaganda BS on a daily basis and presenting it to the President? Comparing his speech and all caps tweets to these long drawn out posts….Just has me curious as to who are his close handlers? “I feel it is necessary to help” are words this President would never say. I think we are dealing with an aged fascist leader in mental decline surrounded by sycophant fascist enablers trying to keep the “movement” going. It’s all really bizarre
@Jc:
I’m not too sure he didn’t write this tweet. It has his signature random capitalizations.