Thursday
While Donald Trump has yet to satisfactorily explain why he’s launched a war with Iran, we’ve gotten one possible rationale from Secretary of State Marco Rubio: Trump knew that Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu was going to begin a war and figured that, as Israel’s ally, U.S. forces would be targeted. The bombing was to forestall those anticipated attacks. Are you clear now?
In addition to a war of choice being in blatant violation of international law, it’s also proof that we have Rufus T. Firefly in the White House.
Firefly (Groucho Marx) is the president of Fredonia in the late 1933 comedy Duck Soup. Tensions have arisen with neighboring Sylvania, leading to high stake negotiations. The following internal monologue by a paranoid leader is painfully on the mark for our present circumstances:
Firefly: I’d be unworthy of the high trust that’s been placed in me if I didn’t do everything in my power to keep our beloved Freedonia in peace with the world. I’d be only too happy to meet with Ambassador Trentino and offer him on behalf of my country the right hand of good fellowship. And I feel sure he will accept this gesture in the spirit of which it is offered. But suppose he doesn’t. A fine thing that’ll be. I hold out my hand and he refuses to accept. That’ll add a lot to my prestige, won’t it? Me, the head of a country, snubbed by a foreign ambassador. Who does he think he is, that he can come here, and make a sap of me in front of all my people? Think of it—I hold out my hand and that hyena refuses to accept. Why, the cheap four-flushing swine, he’ll never get away with it I tell you, he’ll never get away with it.
[Trentino enters]
Firefly: So, you refuse to shake hands with me, eh?
[slaps Trentino with his glove]
Trentino: Mrs. Teasdale, this is the last straw. There’s no turning back now! This means war!
Firefly: Then it’s war! Then it’s war! Gather the forces. Harness the horses. Then it’s war!
For comparison, check out Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s explanation:
“There absolutely was an imminent threat,” Rubio said. “And the imminent threat was that we knew that if Iran was attacked, and we believed they would be attacked, that they would immediately come after us, and we were not going to sit, sit there and absorb a blow before we respond.”
“If we stood and waited for that attack to come first, before we hit them, we would suffer much higher casualties,” Rubio went on. “We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action. We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn’t preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties.”
There are other lines in the film that are similarly relevant. Trump, when he disparaged fallen warriors as “suckers” and “losers” to White House chief of staff John Kelly, may have been channeling the following Firefly remark:
You’re a brave man. Go and break through the lines. And remember, while you’re out there risking your life and limb through shot and shell, we’ll be in here thinking what a sucker you are.
And then there’s this moment, which brings to mind Kuwaiti friendly fire downing two American jets. Like Trump, Firefly wants to give himself a medal for his performance:
Firefly: Where’s my Stradivarius?
Officer: Here, sir.
Firefly: I’ll show ’em they can’t fiddle around with old Firefly!
[he pulls a tommy gun out of his violin case and opens fire]
Firefly: Look at ’em run! Now they know they’ve been in a war!
Roland: Your Excellency!
Firefly: Hahahahahaha, they’re fleeing like rats!
Roland: But sir, I’ve got to tell you…
Firefly: Remind me to give myself the Firefly Medal for this!
[he fires again]
Roland: Your Excellency, you’re shooting your own men!
[Firefly fires again]
Firefly: What?
Roland: You’re shooting your own men!
Firefly: Here’s $5, keep it under your hat.
[holds out his hat to take the $5 back]
Firefly: Never mind, I’ll keep it under my hat.
The Iran invasion is like a mash-up of Duck Soup and 1984, which is to say, between comic ineptitude and authoritarian horror. Just as Trump invades Venezuela one day and Iran the next (with Cuba perhaps waiting in the wings), Oceania alternates between warring with Eurasia and with Eastasia. The reasons are as murky as those Trump has offered the American people:
At this moment, for example, in 1984 (if it was 1984), Oceania was at war with Eurasia and in alliance with Eastasia. In no public or private utterance was it ever admitted that the three powers had at any time been grouped along different lines. Actually, as Winston well knew, it was only four years since Oceania had been at war with Eastasia and in alliance with Eurasia. But that was merely a piece of furtive knowledge which he happened to possess because his memory was not satisfactorily under control. Officially the change of partners had never happened. Oceania was at war with Eurasia: therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia. The enemy of the moment always represented absolute evil, and it followed that any past or future agreement with him was impossible.
When Winston attempts to awaken Julia to this insanity, her response is not unlike those Americans who feel beaten down by Trump’s incessant assaults on the truth:
In the end he succeeded in forcing her memory back until she did dimly recall that at one time Eastasia and not Eurasia had been the enemy. But the issue still struck her as unimportant. “Who cares?” she said impatiently. “It’s always one bloody war after another, and one knows the news is all lies anyway.”
At one point in 2012, Trump predicted that Barack Obama would start a war to distract from his domestic challenges. Although Obama did not in fact do any such thing, we’ve learned by now with DJT that everything is projection and often prediction. It’s also how Big Brother uses supposed war victories to distract from food shortages:
Bad news coming, thought Winston. And sure enough, following on a gory description of the annihilation of a Eurasian army, with stupendous figures of killed and prisoners, came the announcement that, as from next week, the chocolate ration would be reduced from thirty grams to twenty.
In our case, Trump may be using foreign adventures to distract from rising inflation and his involvement in a pedophile ring.
All of this is so grim that we could use a little comedy. I therefore end with a song sung by President Firefly:
If any form of pleasure is exhibited,
Report to me and it will be prohibited!
I’ll put my foot down, so shall it be…
This is the land of the free!
The last man nearly ruined this place,
He didn’t know what to do with it.
If you think this country’s bad off now,
Just wait till I get through with it!
The Marx Brothers came out of a tradition of dark Jewish humor that helped this relentlessly persecuted people to psychologically handle pogroms and other forms of oppression. Duck Soup, however, missed its moment as Depression-era America in 1934 was looking for more optimism, such as Shirley Temple, Ginger Rogers, and Fred Astaire. Although arguably the Marx Brothers’ greatest film, it did poorly at the box office and probably would have fared better in 1931 and 1932, when the public was finding its rage and disillusion captured in violent monster and gangster movies. The cynicism of Duck Soup would have fit right in.
We today, on the other hand, can make 1984 references for only so long before becoming thoroughly demoralized. Black comedy was made for such moments.
And from another Marx Brothers’ movie: In Horse Feathers Groucho, as college president Professor Wagstaff, sounds like Trump in his singleminded determination to undo Obama and Biden’s accomplishments (including the agreement with the Iran nuclear agreement). Here’s the song he sings:
I don’t know what they have to say
It makes no difference anyway
Whatever it is, I’m against it.
No matter what it is or who commenced it.
I’m against it!
Your proposition may be good
But let’s have one thing understood:
Whatever it is, I’m against it.
