Scrutable

Fishnut wrote: Wed Apr 08, 2026 5:52 am In the last few months he's threatened to take over an ally country, abducted a head of state and his wife (something that seems to have been forgotten about remarkably quickly) and started bombing another country without provocation.

At no point has he had any meaningful pushback, nationally or internationally. The press has spent the last few months trying to sanewash his increasingly erratic and dangerous actions and heads of state have been doing the same (whether out of incredulity, fear of what happens if they don't or what, I don't know).

Honestly I'm not surprised this is where we've ended up. The only thing I am surprised at is that both sides actually blinked. Trump needs to go but so does the entire system that has propped him up and allowed him to feel like he can act with impunity. We know there's going to be no meaningful punishment for him or anyone who's facilitated him and so does he which is why he's escalating like this.

Absolute power corrupts absolutely, even more so when you start out corrupt.

Martin Y wrote: Wed Apr 08, 2026 11:49 am Everyone (US, Pakistan, Iran) says the ceasefire includes Lebanon, except Israel. It will be interesting to see if Trump can fix that.

Also, I was as alarmed as anyone else was until yesterday. I was also thinking of the Cuban missile crisis, though that was before I was born. It was when I remembered how many generals he had recently fired (presumably removing anyone who might demur) that I got seriously afraid.

The thing is though, now that Trump has announced this ceasefire, saying it's because Pakistan asked him to, it occurs to me he had that request in his back pocket all along while making his blood-curdling genocide threats. TACO had already decided to back off before he started threatening war crimes.