During Donald Trump’s first run for president, the sentence “‘Idiocracy’ was a documentary” was a funny meme. In his first administration, that reference to the 2006 satire about a bleak anti-intellectual future became a well-worn cliché, losing its comedic punch. In his second administration, the movie actually feels so much like a documentary — and so little like satire — that it’s definitely not funny.
We’re almost certainly at an inflection point in world history now that the United States has directly struck three Iranian nuclear facilities — officially joining Israel’s war, not merely supporting it, and potentially sparking a wider regional conflict. Trump — whose "America First" supporters have long praised him for "not getting America into any new wars" — has now unilaterally struck a sovereign nation without congressional approval. And though a small number of congresspeople are demanding the president seek the advice and consent of Congress, without a major, shocking reset of Republican priorities, Trump may continue making war on his own terms.
Those responsible for leading U.S. military and intelligence services are, respectively, a former Fox News co-host and a sympathizer of Vladimir Putin and Bashar al-Assad.
Just as disquieting is the fact that this president — unstable, impulsive, immune to facts, incapable of admitting to a mistake or conceding a failure and currently running a lawless administration trampling on the rights of both Americans and immigrants — is being advised by incompetent, unqualified television personalities and admitted bigots. This is all happening just as the administration has gutted anti-terror programs and intelligence agencies in the name of fighting the “Deep State,” even as it has simultaneously tasked masked, badgeless secret police to brutally arrest both citizens and noncitizens with impunity.
Those responsible for leading U.S. military and intelligence services are, respectively, a former Fox News co-host and a sympathizer of Vladimir Putin and Bashar al-Assad. Try to imagine Pete Hegseth, whose department is reportedly in shambles, and Tulsi Gabbard as Cabinet members advising the president through something like the Cuban Missile Crisis. Worse, imagine such a world on the brink of nuclear war and some of the top thought leaders influencing Trump’s foreign policy are split between the self-described “proud Islamophobe” Laura Loomer and the ultranationalist MAGA ideologue Steve Bannon.
Whether you grew up anywhere between the Cold War or the War on Terror, the idea of a hot war with Iran was always understood to be existentially risky. But it’s at these moments when expert opinion and rational analysis of data and intelligence are required. We don’t appear to have anything approximating that in the Trump administration.
And as Joseph Cirincione noted on these pages last week, U.S. intelligence and military officials have warned for years of the potential consequences of a U.S. attack on Iran — which include Iran’s taking its nuclear program underground, racing to build a nuclear weapon to ward off (or avenge) regime change and attacking U.S. military targets in the Middle East. There’s also always the risk that a half-decapitated Islamic Republic, one of the world’s leading state sponsors of terror, retaliates with more lo-fi methods — say, a simple conventional bomb exploding in a major city’s mass transit system or a cyberattack that cripples air travel.
That’s the thing about war: It never goes as planned. Even now that the U.S. has dropped bunker-busting, 30,000-pound GBU-57s on Iran’s Fordo nuclear plant, that’s unlikely to be the last word.
Intelligence reports indicate Iran already has enough weapons-grade uranium to produce a nuclear weapon. And if the regime is as hell-bent on suicidal apocalypse as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claims, why wouldn’t it attempt a nuclear terror attack if faced with its own demise? On the other hand, if the regime is just talking tough, values its own survival and prefers to fight its dirty wars via proxies like Hezbollah, the Houthis and Hamas — then wouldn’t we all feel a bit safer if the president and his advisers weren’t extremist chaos agents, feeding red meat to their online armies, or political commentators with little to no experience in their current fields?
That’s the thing about war: It never goes as planned.
Though America’s slide into authoritarianism quickens by the day, there is nominally a group of people who could at least attempt to hit the brakes on the drive to war — and demand that more qualified voices on the matter be heard. We call these people Republicans in Congress.
They could remind the president that they took an oath to defend the Constitution — the same document that endows them with America’s warmaking powers. They could signal to Americans that they work directly for the people, not their party’s leader.
But you’d see something like that — Republicans defying Trump — only in a satire.