Birds are singing, buds are swelling, days are getting longer. Spring is here, and it is welcome—even to godless heathens who see this change as just another predictable result of the laws of celestial mechanics.
For Christians, of course, this is Easter time, when the ineffable mysteries of their faith are in full bloom. We can only presume, then, that it must have been a shock for that subset of Christians who have chosen to yoke their religious beliefs to their political proclivities when the President observed Easter by posting on Truth (sic) Social, “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah, President DONALD J. TRUMP”.
The president’s state of agitation may have been amplified by the situation in Iran. According to the official Pentagon line, an A-10 Warthog and an F-15 had been shot down on Good Friday. Two pilots had been rescued fairly quickly, but the F-15’s weapons officer was on his own for two days in enemy territory. Had he been captured by the Iranians, the consequences would have been terrible for the president.
The weapons officer, too, must have been relieved, not to mention grateful for his SERE [Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Evasion] training. One can only hope that, during his debriefing, he’ll be counselled not to burden himself with feelings of guilt over the half-billion dollars his rescue cost.
These being cynical times, some are doubting the Pentagon’s official “successful rescue” line. Noting that the action took place just thirty miles from Isfahan, the site of Iran’s nuclear facility, it may have been a failed attempt to grab Iran’s enriched uranium: an ignominious remake of Jimmy Carter’s failed Operation Eagle Claw.
That would help explain why Pete Hegseth—self-styled Secretary of War, and, by inclination, the Pentagon’s top-ranking Sky Pilot—put on an Easter celebration second only to Pope Leo’s at the Vatican.
According to The New York Times—the Department of War, perhaps fearing the wrath of God, did not post a transcript—Hegseth described the airman’s ordeal as follows: He was “shot down on a Friday—Good Friday.” The day of the crucifixion. He then hid “in a cave, a crevice, all of Saturday,” and was “flown out of Iran as the sun was rising on Easter Sunday.” “A pilot reborn, all home and accounted for, a nation rejoicing, God is good.”
Why is blasphemy like pornography? You know it when you see it.
Apparently invigorated by the knowledge that a significant part of the human race was anxiously awaiting his next move, Trump tweeted on Tuesday, April 7: “A whole civilization will die tonight.” Specifically, he would order the Department of War Crimes to destroy civilian infrastructure such as bridges and power plants.
Then, later that same day, as is his wont, he chickened out. He vowed yet again that he would do something in—you guessed it—two weeks. For the record, we take no comfort in the knowledge that we share with this president a deeply-held fixation on fourteen-day spans of time. We’re just relieved his limited vocabulary skips right from fort to fortune.
Matthias Risse, of the Harvard-Kennedy School, explained the next day that Trump’s threat itself constituted a war crime, citing Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions, which prohibits “acts or threats of violence whose primary purpose is to terrorize civilians.”
It was a war crime too far for Tucker Carlson. Once one of the president’s leading sycophants, Carlson echoed the Democratic Congresspersons who, five months earlier, advised service members not to follow illegal orders. Carlson said they should tell #47, “[T]his is insane. If you give the order, I’m not carrying it out. Figure out the codes on the [nuclear] football yourself.’”
The president’s ecumenical capacity to blaspheme was revealed on Orthodox Easter. He posted an AI-generated image of himself wearing Christly robes, healing the sick with light-emitting hands. Further tokens of his might included a huge American flag, eagles, fighter jets, the Statue of Liberty, and a few ghostly figures apparently ascending to Heaven. Naturally, people were outraged. These days, not being outraged is broadly recognized as a pathological disorder. Karoline Leavitt, the president’s New Hampshire-born Propaganda Muppet, said the image had been “doctored.” The president then explained it portrayed him as a doctor. He is like a doctor—namely, Florida Dr. Thomas Shaknovsky. Instead of removing a patient’s spleen, he took out his liver instead—then tried to convince his colleagues the dead patient’s liver was a spleen.
The IMF now says the Iran war may cause a global recession. Will the business-friendly GOP take the hint and engineer a 25th Amendment solution? Don’t get your hopes up that will help much. Vice President Vance, a Catholic for all of six years now, has started lecturing the Pope on theology.