In 2016, many Republicans - when faced with the grotesquerie that is Donald Trump - assured themselves that the "adults in the room" would restrain his worst, most venal impulses. Every time Trump did something egregious, this concept of "adults in the room" was widely mocked.
When he ran again in 2024, many warned that Trump 2.0 would not have even those few voices of reason that had apparently constrained him during his first term.
What we are seeing in Iran is a vivid example of what happens when you put people like Pete Hegseth in charge of a massive bureaucracy like the Pentagon and then have him running around doing workouts with the troops rather than soberly (ahem) considering the impact of military policy. Trump Unleashed was catnip to his cultists, but it's already resulted in the murders of three Americans by state security forces, crashing the post-Covid recovery with tariffs and macroeconomic uncertainty, measles outbreaks, widespread, staggering amounts of corruption and the wrecking of a global system of alliances that has largely prevented Great Power conflict.
This was, of course, predictable and predicted.
I'm going to be moving around a bit, not sure how much content I'll be providing for the next week.
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