The Friday Brief
Donald Strangelove Goes to War
Inside
Donald Strangelove Goes To War
The Death of the Old Order
Florida. Florida? Florida!
Bio-Horror In The Valley
The Robed Insurgency
The Kremlin’s Chaos Playbook
The Algorithm of Regret
The Democratization of Lethality
What I’m Reading
Scenes From The Home Front
The Big Picture
Donald Strangelove Goes To War
We might go to war this weekend. We might not. Donald Trump could TACO or he could simply ratchet the tension, turning the dial until the global economy really starts to scream.
My money is on the war.
Not because of some grand, Clausewitzian strategic necessity. Not because the “intelligence is clear.” We’ve been down that road before, and it usually ends with a decade of “nation-building” and a trillion-dollar bill. No, if the Marines land on Kharg Island this weekend, it’s because of the singular, fractured psychology of the man in the Oval Office.
For Donald Trump, war isn’t the “extension of politics by other means.” It’s the ultimate season finale. It’s the highest-rated show on earth, and he’s the only one with the remote.
Trump’s psychology of war is built on a foundation of deep-seated insecurity masked by weird performative hyper-masculinity. He spent a decade being told by the Adults in the Room…the guys with the stars on their shoulders and the Ivy League degrees, that he couldn’t do certain things.
Well, the adults have been purged. The guardrails have been melted down to make commemorative coins. The current iteration of the National Security Council is less a strategic body and more a collection of taint-kissing MAGA influencers who think Call of Duty is a training app.
