I have a confession to make.
I am an ex-wingnut. I voted for W twice.
I’m sorry I did that.
I’m trying to make good.
I was a big fan of Bill O’Reilly. To me, he was an acceptable substitute for Morton Downey Jr., the king of the shoutdown. Bill took on the lefties. He yelled. He cut mics off. Talking Points made all the sense in the world. Then I discovered my true self; I became a critical thinker and re-discovered the values I always had but didn’t nurture.
O’Reilly has calmed down since his heyday; he has become just another slow-witted winger who mouthpieces for the Right. But every now and then, a blind pig finds a truffle. He has come out supporting “the deal”. But he can’t go without being bombastic for very long:
(Iran is a)bad country, but we’ve negotiated with bad people in the past,” O’Reilly responded (to Gtretchen Carlson). “It’s a bad country. So the thing is, do you destroy the bad country? We could do that, but that would be a world war.
Oh, really, Bill? Such a student of realpolitik. Maroon. This is why we are a global joke. Bill is a slave to the idea that there are Good Guys and Bad Guys. But being a good jingoist, it never occurs to O’Reilly that we have been “the bad country” quite often. We invade countries whenever we want. We have our nose in just about every trouble spot in the world. What has Iran done? Saddam Hussein started the Iran-Iraq war and he invaded Kuwait. Iran has not been an aggressor in the region. Now, it is said that Iran fights proxy wars with Israel in places like Lebanon by supporting aggressive militias like Hezbollah. I have yet to see evidence of this. It is always asserted, but never proven. But back to Bill. There will be no world war over Iran. If we haven’t touched off a powder keg of ressentiment on the global stage yet, then we never will. We do what we like. Even if Iran does emerge with a nuclear weapon, the mullahs are not stupid enough to fuck with Israel because the retaliation would be the vaporization of every major city in Iran.
Perhaps I am wrong. The Middle East and Africa are fucked the fuck up. But that’s nothing new under the sun. If there is a World War 3, we would be guilty of starting it. Bill may be accidentally correct in this. NATO is spreading like MRSA in The East, and it is pissing the Big Bear off. Quelle suprise. The war with Russia is still cold in nature…Ronald Reagan didn’t end it.
But I grow tired of the “world on fire” crew. To quote O’Reilly, “Everybody should just take a deep breath, step back, and say, ‘Let’s hope it’s a decent thing.’”