UNZ: 23-06-2025,
I have heard many unhinged speeches by American presidents over the years, but — no risk of exaggeration here — Donald Trump’s as he declared “a spectacular military success” after seven B–2 bombers attacked three nuclear sites in Iran Saturday night is the barmiest of my lifetime.
“The nuclear threat posed by the world’s No. 1 state sponsor of terror?” “The bully of the Middle East?” There was this by way of a plunge into the crowded precincts of American paranoia:
“They have been killing our people, blowing off their arms, blowing off their legs with roadside bombs. That was their specialty. We lost over a thousand people and hundreds of thousands throughout the Middle East and around the world have died as a direct result of their hate.”
And for the good people out in Peoria, a decisive majority of whom, the polls say, oppose American aggression against the Islamic Republic: “I want to just say, we love you, God, and we love our great military.”
Let me remind readers, as rhetoric this base makes it easy to forget: The speaker of these words is the 47th president of the United States. Yes, the commander-in-chief.
It is difficult to take Trump’s four minutes in front of the microphone late Saturday evening the slightest bit seriously. But we must, precisely because what Trump had to say to his nation was so utterly unserious.
Donald Trump, to put this point another way,