Lol what a strange stretch. I’m not Christian, I’m an atheist socialist annoyed at how the US government has historically worked to overthrow socialism everywhere in the world.

NYPD has offices all around the globe. Because… 9/11 or something.

Socialism has failed every time it’s been attempted, for one very good reason.

I fully expect the CIA to get involved. Probably before the general election even happens.

I don’t want to accuse Trump or his administration of having rational or intelligent decision-making processes, but it’s hard to really have any productive thought or conversation about theit decisions if I just assume they are irrational or stupid. So bear with me as I try to make sense of something that might be senseless.

There have been a handful of odd discrepancies from the Trump administration piling up. Mueller, for all his flaws, did prove that a good chunk of Trump’s campaign in 2016 had illegal ties to Russia and Putin. Even though Trump avoided direct consequences and pardoned some of them, they were still convicted and the ties to Putin are solid. Heck, there were ties between Trump and Russia going back to the 80’s.

Musk also has ties to Russia and Putin. So it was not all that surprising to see Musk throw his full support behind Trump last summer and then do the whole DOGE thing. It was a bit odd to see someone so thoroughly tied to electric cars support someone so pro-fossil fuels, but I could see Musk deciding that defense contracts for SpaceX, Starlink, and other businesses might outweigh reduced EV subsidies for him.

Allegedly, Trump and Musk had a falling out. The back-and-forth on social media, Musk stepping back from DOGE, and later walking back some of his statements. Speculation as to whether that was real or not. Was it really over the spending bill? Was Musk really leaving DOGE? Was this all a ploy to manipulate the stock market and do some insider trading? Was this just Musk on drug-induced psychosis?

Then the tensions between Israel and Iran flare up again. Trump sides with Israel as the US traditionally has, Putin sides with Iran as Russia traditionally has. There was the recent Tucker Carlson interview of Ted Cruz, and we’ve seen some discord among the far-right over whether to support a US war against Iran or not. The US struck Iran and didn’t appear to do a whole lot of damage, and Iran struck back in the most polite way possible and did pretty much no damage.

Other wonderful folks have dug up old Trump tweets from the Obama years, speculating that Obama was appearing weak and would strike Iran as a show of strength.

So was this all just political theater? Trump doesn’t actually care whether Iran has nukes or not. He wants Trump to appear strong and willing to go to war. He wants to show his support for Israel and reaffirm America as the World Police.

So my guess is that Netanyahu keeps pushing what he can get away with. Allegedly, there was tension between Netenyahu and Biden over the line between counter-terrorist operations and genocide. Biden, the consummate centrist neoliberal, allowed the genocide as long as it didn’t hurt businesses, but seemed to have been pressuring Netenyahu to keep restrictions on it. Trump abandoned those and Palestine seems to be suffering far more since he took office. Then you add the Israeli strikes on Iran on top of that- I don’t think they had anything to do with new intelligence Israel received, just that Netenyahu felt he could get away with it while still maintaining US support from Trump, which he could not have done under Biden.

Where I start to really speculate- I don’t think Trump cares about Iran. He doesn’t care about of they have nukes or not, he doesn’t care about Islam vs Judaism vs Christianity. He care about the media narratives, especially in the US. Same thing with the tarrifs- it was more about appearing powerful to his base than actually being powerful.

I never said EVERYTHING is real. In fact, I would agree that the vast majority of the internet is not. I just think TV news sources don’t have any reality left at all.

With how bad TV news has gotten this might be a good thing.

Social media allows for all sorts of disinformation and misinformation, yes. But there’s also real people talking about real experiences. Primary sources spreading their eyes and ears across the world.

TV news is owned by billionaires like Murdoch and Bezos and are basically just propaganda outlets for them. And while I’m sure Zuckerberg and Elon are influencing their social media platforms just as much, at least on the internet there are places like Lemmy where the truth at least has a chance to exist.

Kinda sad how fascists seem to be so much better at taking down fascists than anti-fascists are.