Monday
So let me see if I’ve got this right: Donald Trump, only belatedly realizing that his war of choice against Iran would send oil prices skyrocketing in an election year, has decided to allow Iran to sell oil sitting in tankers to bring prices down. He is also lifting the oil sanctions placed on Russia because of its Ukraine invasion, even as Russia helps Iran locate and fire at American targets. We are, in short, in a Milo Minderbinder moment.
Minderbinder is the amoral capitalist in Catch-22 who will make deals with any side that will pay him money, including Germany. When Yossarian protests, “Can’t you understand that we’re fighting a war? People are dying,” Minderbinder shakes his head “with weary forbearance”:
“[T]he Germans are not our enemies,” he declared. “Oh I know what you’re going to say. Sure, we’re at war with them. But the Germans are also members in good standing of the syndicate, and it’s my job to protect their rights as shareholders. Maybe they did start the war, and maybe they are killing millions of people, but they pay their bills a lot more promptly than some allies of ours I could name.
At one point, Minderbinder’s own version of Trump simultaneously attacking Iran while allowing it to sell its oil involves contracting with the Americans to bomb a German bridge and contracting with the Germans to defend the same bridge:
Milo’s planes were a familiar sight. They had freedom of passage everywhere, and one day Milo contracted with the American military authorities to bomb the German-held highway bridge at Orvieto and with the German military authorities to defend the highway bridge at Orvieto with antiaircraft fire against his own attack. His fee for attacking the bridge for America was the total cost of the operation plus six per cent and his fee from Germany for defending the bridge was the same cost-plus-six agreement augmented by a merit bonus of a thousand dollars for every American plane he shot down.
In this instance, Minderbinder doesn’t have to do anything given that
there seemed to be no point in using the resources of the syndicate to bomb and defend the bridge, inasmuch as both governments had ample men and material right there to do so and were perfectly happy to contribute them, and in the end Milo realized a fantastic profit from both halves of his project for doing nothing more than signing his name twice.
Minderbinder’s profit-making isn’t always so harmless, however, as when the Germans pay him to bomb his American comrades:
[O]ne night, after a sumptuous evening meal, all Milo’s fighters and bombers took off, joined in formation directly overhead and began dropping bombs on the group. He had landed another contract with the Germans, this time to bomb his own outfit. Milo’s planes separated in a well coordinated attack and bombed the fuel stocks and the ordnance dump, the repair hangars and the B-25 bombers resting on the lollipop-shaped hardstands at the field. His crews spared the landing strip and the mess halls so that they could land safely when their work was done and enjoy a hot snack before retiring. They bombed with their landing lights on, since no one was shooting back. They bombed all four squadrons, the officers’ club and the Group Headquarters building. Men bolted from their tents in sheer terror and did not know in which direction to turn. Wounded soon lay screaming everywhere. A cluster of fragmentation bombs exploded in the yard of the officers’ club and punched jagged holes in the side of the wooden building and in the bellies and backs of a row of lieutenants and captains standing at the bar. They doubled over in agony and dropped. The rest of the officers fled toward the two exits in panic and jammed up the doorways like a dense, howling dam of human flesh as they shrank from going farther.
I don’t know how many of the American casualties (now well over 200) can be chalked up to information passed from the Russians to the Iranians, but I can imagine Minderbinder giving a response similar to the one Trump gave to Fox reporter Peter Doocy when asked about the matter: “I have a lot of respect for you; you’ve always been very nice to me. What a stupid question that is to be asking at this time.”
Of course, even as Trump plunges the world into the worst oil crisis since 1973, he is attacking renewable energy sources such as wind and solar. While this is proving a boon to Big Oil, the beneficiaries are not Americans but the companies since oil prices are determined globally. Oh, and Trump of course gets a cut.
The Trump family is finding other ways to profit from the war as well. Don Jr. and Eric, for instance, have been investing heavily in the drones that the U.S. military may start using in Iran. As Associated Press reports,
Among dozens of companies competing for Pentagon contracts to supply attack drones, one stands out. Powerus is flush with cash and ballooning in size as it buys up rivals and has one other advantage: It is partly owned by President Donald Trump’s two oldest sons.
There is also evidence that, on the world betting markets, insider information on when and where Trump will strike has netted bettors large sums. The Independent reports,
Now there are suspicions that other insiders used the Iran strikes to get rich. Six accounts on Polymarket reportedly won approximately $1.2 million by predicting the U.S. would launch a strike on Iran on February 28, according to CoinDesk.
Apparently this occurred as well with the kidnapping of Venezuela’s president:
It’s not the first-time gamblers have made major money by betting on Trump’s military actions. When the U.S. captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in January, an individual with a relatively new account pumped $30,000 into a bet that Maduro would be ousted. Hours later, the Trump administration captured Maduro, earning the gambler more than $436,000.
I won’t even get into the president’s son-in-law’s conflicts of interest as he seeks billions in investment from Arab countries as he works as Trump’s special envoy to the middle east. Let’s just say that Heller understands such corruption well:
Milo had been earning many distinctions for himself. He had flown fearlessly into danger and criticism by selling petroleum and ball bearings to Germany at good prices in order to make a good profit and help maintain a balance of power between the contending forces. His nerve under fire was graceful and infinite. With a devotion to purpose above and beyond the line of duty, he had then raised the price of food in his mess halls so high that all officers and enlisted men had to turn over all their pay to him in order to eat. Their alternative—there was an alternative, of course, since Milo detested coercion and was a vocal champion of freedom of choice—was to starve. When he encountered a wave of enemy resistance to this attack, he stuck to his position without regard for his safety or reputation and gallantly invoked the law of supply and demand. And when someone somewhere said no, Milo gave ground grudgingly, valiantly defending, even in retreat, the historic right of free men to pay as much as they had to for the things they needed in order to survive.
Although it appears, in this instance, that Minderbinder will finally be called to account, he proves as slippery as our president. “Milo had been caught red-handed in the act of plundering his countrymen,” Heller reports, “and, as a result, his stock had never been higher.” Has Trump’s stock risen with his supporters for all the ways he has monetized the presidency, from (unconstitutional) foreign emoluments to crypto schemes to pardons-for-sale to bribes from tech and media companies to various forms of merchandising to God knows what else? Does MAGA just regard him as a successful businessman?
My wife’s stepfather, an Iowa farmer, was with the air force during the World War II Italian campaign, so when I first met him I asked him whether he had read Catch-22. Although some people see the novel as comic over-the-top satire, his reverend response was, “That book is so true!”
It also continues to be unnervingly relevant.
