Category: Uncategorized (Page 83 of 1031)

What the FUCK is happening, man?

You freaking out?

I’m freaking OUT, man.

Good instinct. This is the time to panic. Throw papers in the air, run around waving your arms, gibber incoherently: panic like no one’s watching. The odds that World War III has started are six-to-five and pick ’em.

Is there any good news?

World War III will not take place here, maybe.

Maybe?

Boca won’t be shelled. No foreign military will occupy us. Lincoln said something about it.

“From whence shall we expect the approach of danger? Shall some trans-Atlantic military giant step the earth and crush us at a blow? Never. All the armies of Europe and Asia…could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River or make a track on the Blue Ridge in the trial of a thousand years.

Guy had a way with words.

He did. But he wasn’t done talking.

Oh.

No, if destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men we will live forever or die by suicide.”

That changes the tone of the quotation.

It does, doesn’t it? Like I was saying, there won’t be Iranian tanks columnading down Fifth Avenue, but a scenario in which the populace is whipped into a nationalistic fervor, divided into Real American and Fake American, and then comes the sod for the killing fields.

That wouldn’t happen.

You’re right. Americans wouldn’t kill each other on fields. There would be professional facilities run by publicly-traded corporations.

You’re depressing.

If you’re not depressed, you’re not paying attention.

How did this begin?

We begin with the Achaemenid Empire.

No, we most certainly do not. Fast forward a few thousand years.

Aw, but I wanted to talk about Umayyad Caliphate. That’s my favorite caliphate. Noobs always go Abbasid, but Umayyad was the headiest caliphate.

No caliphates.

What about the Safavids and the Afsharids?

You’re clearly just browsing Iran’s Wikipedia page and picking out goofy names.

I am. I won’t lie. In my defense, Iran has a staggering amount of history. I can barely keep America’s bullshit straight, and there’s only a few hundred years of it. I’m pretty good with the Post-War Years, though.

Skip to there.

After the Second World War II, in which Iran was rampaged through by both the Allied and Axis Powers despite declaring neutrality, a great philosophical question was raised: To whom does the oil in Iran belong to? The Iranians believed that it was theirs; a British/American company called Aramco begged to differ. The western stakeholders held legal claim to the oil, you see, by right of the Anglo-Persian Treaty of 1919. Bleeding-heart liberals and fancy-pants lawyers may point to the fact that the Anglo-Persion Treaty of 1919 was never signed by the Persians, but that’s just nitpicking.

Was a reasonable solution, profitable to all and arrived at without violence, sought.

You realize we’re talking about human beings, right?

Sorry.

This fellow Mohammad Mosaddegh becomes Prime Minister.

Man, Fox News would love his name.

Yup. And they’d call him a commie.

Was he?

Nah. The Marxists hated him. He was for a well-regulated free market. Big on land reform, worker’s rights, modernization. And oil. Remember how Goldfinger loved gold? Mosaddegh loved oil that much. Should’ve called him Oilfinger, but no one did because it’s vaguely pervy-sounding. And also the movie Goldfinger wouldn’t be released for a decade. So he nationalized the oil.

What precisely does “Nationalized” mean?

He hit the West with a stick while shouting “MINE! MNE!”

Like Yoda.

Just like that.

How did the West take that?

Britain sicced the Royal Navy and The City of London on Iran: blockade and boycott. America sent the CIA, led by Kermit Roosevelt, Jr.

Just how much of history has been caused by the idiot progeny of great men?

Quite a bit. Some would argue “most.” Anyway, people who say it takes government forever to accomplish anything should check out Operation Ajax. Less than two years from Masaddegh seizing the oil fields to Britain and America seizing ’em right back and re-installing the old Shah in the palace.

I bet he was a monster, right? A vicious thug and a tyrant?

He gave women the right to vote, built schools, and everybody got rich.

Oh.

For a little while. Then the giant portraits started going up.

That’s a red flag.

Yeah. And the secret police were killing dissidents left and right (with help from the Shah’s good buddies at the CIA).

The regular police are bad enough, but secret police are so much worse.

No good argument can be made for a secret police force. Some folks believe dropping the Bomb on Hiroshima was a necessary evil, as it saved millions of lives that might have been lost during an American invasion of the Home Islands; I don’t know if I buy that argument, but it is a valid one. There can, however, be no legitimate defense of a secret police force. If you have one, you’re the bad guy.

So the Shah gets ousted?

Everybody hated him by the 70’s, but especially the religious wackjobs. They considered him decadentic, and pussificated. Add in a sudden economic downturn and you got yourself a revolution fomenting. In ’79, the Ayatollah took over.

The Ayatollah of Rockyrollah?

No. Not that cool. Not cool at all, in fact. So uncool he took hostages.

While robbing a bank to raise money for John Cazale’s sex change operation?

No. You’re thinking of Dog Day Afternoon.

Right,

Iranian students stormed the U.S. Embassy and took 52 Americans prisoner.

On what charges?

Being agents of the Great Satan.

Did we ever get those folks back?

Eventually. 444 days, five Airmen, three Marines, and multiple helicopters later.

That sounds like the opposite of the Raid on Entebbe.

Jimmy Carter never met a pooch he couldn’t screw. The hostage crisis and Peanutfucker’s all-thumbs response to it directly led to Reagan’s election in 1980. Fun fact: Dutch might have been secretly negotiating with the Iranians before he became President. Similarly Fun Fact: Nixon pulled that same treasonous bullshit with the Vietnamese in 1968.

Jesus, we’re still in 1980? What happened in between then and Monday?

The quick version: Iran went to war with their next-door neighbors Iraq for all of the 80’s, but then we took over the “having wars with Iraq” business and Iran was all “You fuckers take a spin,” and waited for everything to go tits-up so they could take advantage of the chaos, all the meanwhile funding proxy skirmishes and terrorists all around the Middle East.

Why?

Because the Great Game is still being played. In terms of foreign policy, Iran isn’t doing anything that Russia or China isn’t doing.

Do we do that stuff?

Oh, no. Americans behave like angels.

Lucifer and Michael are angels.

There you go. The cruel assholes in charge of Iran and the cruel assholes in charge of America have competing interests. But until very recently, naked and direct aggression made little sense.

What changed?

We elected a man without any sense. Our anus-faced President’s political crimes have now led, as the more cynical of us have always predicted, to war crimes. So on Monday, Mayor McSleaze took out one of their generals with a drone strike. It should be noted that this Iranian general was in Baghdad, which is not where an Iranian general should be in the slightest. It should also be noted that this guy was a true twat.

Why must that be noted?

If you don’t, conservatives will accuse you of loving terrorists. Even if you do, they probably still will. But you want to get it on the record that the Butcher of Aleppo was a bad hombre

Was there a specific reason given for the timing of the killing?

Several. None were very specific, though. And they all canceled each other out. The answer you received was almost entirely dependent upon whom you asked.

How did Iran react?

Imagine how Americans would react if Iran had assassinated a general in the U.S. Army.

The country would go rip-shit.

Rip-fucking-shit. The Ayatollah is forced into a military response. Iran doesn’t want a shooting war with America–it would get thrashed–but insults like this cannot stand. A government that doesn’t shoot back after this sort of attack gets overthrown. But no one wants a shooting war, and so the dozen missiles launched at US bases in Iraq produce no casualties. This is by design.

You sound sure.

The Iranian military has more than twelve missiles. Twelve is actually not very many missiles.

So they want to back the hostilities down?

Openly, yeah. Again: Iran desperately does not want to be in a shooting war with America. If the U.S. Navy ever went berserker in the Persian Gulf, it would turn into a red sea. In an all-hands war, America takes the oil fields back again. Iran does not want that.

Oh, good. They don’t want war.

What are you, a slaphead? They absolutely want war. They want asymmetrical war, proxy war, cyberwar, economic war, thumb war, all the different kinds of state-sponsored violence except the “your tanks versus my tanks” kind of war.

I can live with that.

Well, you don’t have an election to win, do you?

Are we doomed?

Of course, always.

 

Dear Iran,

Hi. How are you? We’re fine. Well, “fine.” Mostly, we’re inured. There’s an old experiment that comes to mind: surgically attach electrodes to a puppy and shock the little fucker at random intervals. Eventually, the puppy will just get used to living in Hell. It’s call “learned helplessness.” So, when I said “fine,” I guess I really meant “there’s no way to stop the train at this point.” But, hey: the Super Bowl is coming up, so that’s lovely for us.

Anyhoo, I’m writing about the soft-dicked, wet-brained sponge-that’s-been-sitting-in-diarrhea who, according to the rules made up by long-dead slavers, is in absolute command of our military. Maybe you’ve heard: he’s desperately trying to start a war with your country to distract from his impeachment. (You see, when Americans want to remove their leader, it’s nigh-on-impossibly difficult. When we want to remove your leaders, we just do it.)

In addition to the assassination of your military leader Qasem Soleimani–whom it should be noted was an absolute wang–Basketball Head has threatened the destruction of 52 important cultural and religious sites across Iran. You might be asking, “Does Donald Trump know 52 places in Iran?” ZZZAAAAAPPP! That was the electrode. I just shocked you like that poor, doomed puppy. Stop asking intelligent questions, Iran. They only make things worse nowadays.

For the past three years, most of Anus Eye’s worst impulses have been tamped down by the slightly-more-sane people surrounding him, but this appears to be the endgame, so if Turnip actually does go through with the whole “bombing 52 cultural sites” thing, then here are the 52 most important American cultural sites you may target in return:

1. Statue of Liberty.
2. World’s Largest Ball of Twine.
3. Oprah. (Oprah is mobile, but usually in the Chicagoland area.)
4. That cornfield with the dead baseball players.
5. The sidewalk outside the White Horse Tavern where Dylan Thomas dropped dead.
6. Spann Movie Ranch.
7. The line for Dippin’ Dots at Schilitterbahn.
8. The line for overrated donuts at Voodoo Donuts.
9. The line for whichever pastry is hip this year at Magnolia Bakery.
10. Walla Walla, Washington.
11. Cheesequake State Park, New Jersey.
12. Truth Or Consequences, New Mexico.
13. That house with all the windows on the side of the cliff that lets you know the movie’s taking place in Los Angeles.
14. Monument Valley.
15. Grand Canyon. (Although if I’m honest, I have no idea how you could blow up the Grand Canyon. Dropping explosives into the Grand Canyon would just make the canyon grander.)
16. Everglades. (Again: you most likely could not blow this up. The Everglades is a 100-mile-long, 60-mile-wide swamp. Fucker’s simply vast. Maybe you could poison it? I don’t think so, though. Lotta filtration plants in the ‘Glades. If you had a few decades and a trillion dollars, you might be able to drain it, but that’s just pie-in-the-sky nonsense. You could kill some people who lived there, but it’s all poor swamp trash in there and no one in America would care.)
17. The Squire in Revere, Massachusetts, where every Tuesday is two-for-one lap dance night.
18. Buzzy’s Roast Beef, also in Revere, Massachusetts, where every Tuesday is also two-for-one lap dance night.
19. The Taos Hum.
20. Graceland.
21. The grease trucks on College Avenue outside Rutgers.
22. The beach where Wilbur and Orville Wright made their first flight. (Once more, I’m at a loss in re: the plausibility of destroying the target. It’s a beach. Blow it up, and it’s still a beach. Ever see Normandy Beach? That got the shit blown out it, and it’s a damned beachy beach to this day.)
23. Nassau Coliseum.
24. Jones Beach.
25. Billy Joel’s birthplace.
26. Billy Joel’s current home.
27. Y’know what: just level all of Long Island.
28. That statue of Rocky Balboa that Philadelphia put up even though Smokin’ Joe Frazier, an actual heavyweight boxing champion, came from the city.
29. Dealey Plaza.
30. Cadillac Ranch.
31. Jumbo’s Clown Room.
32. Ford’s Theatre.
33. Mitchell Brothers O’Farrell Theater.
34. A country music festival in Las Vegas. (There’s no reason to think Americans won’t ignore it a second time.)
35. Original Famous Ray’s Pizzeria.
36. Famous Original Ray’s Pizzeria.
37. Ray’s Original Famous Pizzeria.
38. Somewhere in, like, Indiana because if you don’t blow up some shit in the Midwest, all the goobers will start bitching about “elitism” and “coastal bias” as if it’s our fault that where they live sucks.
39. Dollywood. (WARNING: if you blow up Dollywood, you’re getting nuked. I’ll press the button myself. Leave Dollywood alone.)
40. Miss Rosa’s Cathouse in Cascabel, Texas.
41. The Wayside Inn in Little Aleppo, California.
42. Hearst Castle.
43. Watts Tower.
44. One of those dreadful Calder sculptures sitting outside various government buildings.
45. Louis’ Lunch in New Haven.
46. Ben’s Chili Bowl in D.C.
47. Canter’s Delicatessen in LA.
48. Any random storefront that used to be a local joint run by the family that lived upstairs and is now a fucking drug store.
49. Mississippi River. (Y’know what? Go back and remove all the natural landmarks from the list. None of them can be destroyed. I mean, we’ve probably irrevocably fucked the Ol’ Miss through climate change, but there’s not much you could do to her with cruise missiles. Silly idea to include the natural landmarks. I wasted your time. My bad.)
50. Independence Hall.
51. Boston Harbor.
52. Ah, fuck it: Plymouth Rock.

I hope you don’t, Iran. Gosh, I hope you don’t. My wish is for nothing at all to blow up which is not proceeded by a series of whistles and the donning of OSHA-required protective gear. Let us forge a world free of unexpected explosions, Iran. Failing that, could you at least hold off on committing to a shooting war until November? Maybe the situation will look much different when the sun comes up on the second Wednesday in November. Or maybe not, in which case we’ll deserve it.

Sincerely,

Kermit Roosevelt, Jr.