Fuck Absolutely Everyone

Children Of Israel Are Never Alone

Hey, beloved tribe.

I must say I’m relieved that yesterday was TACO Tuesday, with Trump postponing the execution of his threat to bomb all the civilian infrastructure in Iran for the third or fourth time.

And I’m also livid about the near-universal response to yesterday’s New York Times article, How Trump Took The U.S. To War With Iran.

It feels as if nearly every non-Jew in my newsfeed is treating that piece as proof that Trump’s decision to enter the war is Israel’s fault.

I’ve read that Netanyahu “maneuvered and cajoled and convinced” Trump into doing his bidding.

That Israel was the tail wagging the American dog.

That the prime minister lied and misled and deceived the president.

That the Jewish nation dictates our foreign policy.

And every other conceivable antisemitic trope implying nefarious, scheming, all-powerful Jewish control over an exponentially bigger and more powerful nation.

I don’t fault the article itself. Even in its title, it places the responsibility squarely where it belongs: with our pedophile-in-chief.

Then it goes on to detail how Netanyahu flew to Washington and made a persuasive pitch for a joint war against the IRGC. And it reports on how Trump’s advisers responded to this presentation.

For a brief summary of the four-part plan laid out by Bibi and the response of Trump’s own intelligence experts, here is an excerpt of the article:

The intelligence officials had deep expertise in U.S. military capabilities, and they knew the Iranian system and its players inside out. They had broken down Mr. Netanyahu’s presentation into four parts. First was decapitation — killing the ayatollah. Second was crippling Iran’s capacity to project power and threaten its neighbors. Third was a popular uprising inside Iran. And fourth was regime change, with a secular leader installed to govern the country.

The U.S. officials assessed that the first two objectives were achievable with American intelligence and military power. They assessed that the third and fourth parts of Mr. Netanyahu’s pitch, which included the possibility of the Kurds mounting a ground invasion of Iran, were detached from reality.

When Mr. Trump joined the meeting, Mr. Ratcliffe briefed him on the assessment. The C.I.A. director used one word to describe the Israeli prime minister’s regime change scenarios: “farcical.”

The article goes on to elaborate how much skepticism was expressed at this meeting by nearly everyone in Trump’s inner circle.

Vice President J.D. Vance made the most forceful case against going to war, but assured Trump that he would support the decision to do so.

General Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, expressed grave concerns about this course of action and repeatedly cited its risks. But, the article goes on to say, he was so careful not to take a stand, repeating that it was not his role to tell the president what to do, that he could appear to some to argue all sides simultaneously. Mr. Trump, in turn, would often seem to hear only what he wanted to hear.

Marco Rubio, too, voiced his preference not to go to war. But then the article goes on to say:

Mr. Rubio, however, did not try to talk Mr. Trump out of the operation, and after the war began he delivered the administration’s justification with full conviction.

Advisers raised the likelihood that Iran would close the Strait of Hormuz, and Trump dismissed this possibility.

He could not be convinced that taking out the regime in Iran would not be as quick and easy as taking out Maduro in Venezuela.

The article focuses on how thoroughly Trump has surrounded himself with yes-men. It reveals how deferent they are to his gut instincts, no matter how much those impulses fly in the face of expert assessment. It notes his greed for foreign policy-related notches in his belt and his expectation that these will come as easily to him as most everything else — and that he will be as shielded from the attendant consequences as surely as he almost always is.

And yet the overarching takeaway from this piece that I’ve seen every freaking place I look is the triumphant declaration that yes, Israel dragged the US into war.

And this sentiment is favored by the whole horseshoe of far left to far right, in a way it never is in any other scenario.

In case the public hasn’t noticed, every politican at every level — local, state, national, and global — makes pitches for their agendas all day every day.

Candidates create the most persuasive pitch they can for why they should be elected — and once elected, why they should be kept in office.

Lobbyists create the most persuasive pitch they can for why their high-paying clients should get what they want from the government.

Legislators create the most persuasive pitch they can for the bills they hope to convert into legislation, the measures they want to pass, the projects they want to execute on behalf of their constituents.

Every country creates the most persuasive pitch for the collaborations they hope to enact with other countries.

That’s their job. That’s what they’re elected and paid to do. It’s what all of them do.

The president fields persuasive pitches all day long. It’s his responsibility to determine whether they’re credible and how to respond.

I have never seen another entity blamed for Trump’s decisions in the past.

In 2016, US intelligence agencies determined that Russia had a hand in turning the presidential election against Hillary Clinton, with a state-authorized campaign of cyber attacks and false news items circulated on social media. When asked about this assessment in a news conference in Helsinki two years later, Trump stated that Putin had assured him otherwise and he believed the Russian dictator.

I didn’t see anyone posting that Russia dragged Trump into turning on the FBI.

When Trump accepted a $400,000,000 plane from Qatar, I didn’t see anyone accusing the latter of dragging Trump into taking a bribe.

When Trump declared of dictator Kim Jong Un: “He wrote me beautiful letters and they're great letters. And then we fell in love,” no one accused North Korea of seducing the president.

In every case up until this moment, whenever Trump has been susceptible to the manipulations of any other heads of state, the disgust has been aimed at him: for his corruption, his insatiable ego, his admiration for thugs, his greed, his folly.

Except when it’s the Jewish nation.

Then Trump’s decisions are all the Jews’ fault, just like absolutely everything else: 9/11, Covid, police violence, American food insecurity, wealth inequality, oligarchy, natural disasters, the weather, and literally every other scourge in the world.

Fam, there’s not a thing we can do about the global wildfire of antisemitism except refuse to internalize it. Refuse to co-sign it. Refuse to bow to it. Refuse to be cowed by it.

We have each other, and that is everything.

We will outlive them. We always have.

That’s all I’ve got — that and my fierce and abiding love for our people, which burns hotter every day.

For now, it will have to be enough.

Am Yisrael Chai.