It's a tough world out there: and now a drumbeat for war on Iran.

Papa Heinlein promised us interesting times during what he forecast as "The Crazy Years." And boy are we in it.  I'll have more, later, about Heinlein's creepy-on-target prescience. But today, let's focus on International affairs.

= The scariest thing ==

Of course the thing to dread is misuse of the powers of the state, either turning them against us or else spasmodically flinging them about in ways that do us harm… perhaps even more harm than the Bushites did with their loony Iraq Wars. Maybe even existential harm. It’s not untoward to imagine the very worst -- as I did in The Postman -- when some of the men being appointed over our armed forces are as gung-ho about using them as were George W. Bush’s pack of raving neocons.

This article suggests that “the one connective tissue between all the people (Trump) is choosing, whether it's Flynn or Mattis, or any of these guys. They all want to attack Iran in some form or another. And so do the Saudis.”

Now, in some ways, this is just standard Republican dogma. The Bush family was, and remains, little more than a cadet branch of the Saudi Royal House. (See pictures of GWB holding hands with the Saudi King and kissing a prince on the mouth.) Yes, the first Iraq War served Saudi purposes to a T. 

The second, under Bush Junior, had unexpected side effects, dramatically enhancing Iran and a Shiite axis that’s allied with Moscow. Subsequent GOP saber rattling at Tehran is supposedly aimed at correcting that mistake.  

To be clear, I do distinguish between Gen. Flynn and Gen. Mattis. The latter may prove more mainstream and possibly much more sane than Mr. Trump currently bargains for. Mattis might, indeed, dig in his heels when the president starts attempting an Erdogan-style purge of the Officer Corps.  He has already forced a change in Trump’s adolescent fixation on torture. We can hope. 

== The Iran-Moscow Great Game ==

Okay, so Donald Trump has packed his cabinet with saber-waving Iran haters. Men who never mention Riyadh in their jeremiads against terrorism -- or in Muslim travel bans -- ignoring the blatant fact... that those terrorist attackers who actually harmed us have nearly all been rooted in the Saudis, not Iranians. Why should they mention such inconveniences, when the Saudis were recent masters of the GOP (before Moscow snatched the reins) and still business partners of Rupert Murdoch.

In fact, as Obama and anyone sensible knew, Iran is a complex and highly educated society, with half the populace so eager to join the democratic world that they could plotz. See Children of Paradise: The Struggle for the Soul of Iran, by Laura Secor.) 

Fostering that transition was a sought-after benefit from the Iran nuclear deal, but also deeply feared by the Iranian theocrats, who have done everything in their power to quash their people’s rising secular-western movement.

Why do you think they rattle their own sabers, at us? Indeed, the mullahs would like nothing better than for histrionics to pour from Washington, driving more of the Persian polity back into their arms.

Then why do it? For domestic consumption. And to bolster the Saudi cause (which has included the spread of hate-fest madrassas all over the world, which created both Al Qaeda and ISIS.)  

But there’s more. Nothing delights Donald Trump’s best pal — the Kremlin — more than the U.S. driving someone else into their growing anti-western alliance. That axis now includes Edogan of Turkey, Assad in Syria, many elements of the Shiite regime in Baghdad… and the mullahs in Tehran. When Trump and his team screech at Iran, you can be sure Putin will be chortling with glee, as this helps to eliminate reformers in Tehran and will cement his alliance with the mullahs.

Indeed, that is probably the very reason why – on Moscow’s orders – there are so many Iran haters sweeping into Trump's cabinet. That plus the alluring fantasy of taking Iranian oil off the world market and driving prices above $100/barrel. Yum!

The Saudis are watching all of this, and despite their dream of higher oil prices, one has to wonder… are they truly silly enough to be glad that Trumpists are waving sabers at Tehran? And get the Persians back to work on their bomb?

Not if the princes are half as smart as their publicity flacks claim. Alas, like most inheritance lords, the Princes are likely much less bright than they believe. If they have three brain cells among them, they would see that driving the Iranian people into the mullahs’ arms, and driving the mullahs into Putin’s, will not ultimately go well for them. But a secular democratic Iran (Obama’s goal) would be harmless to Saudi interests. Are the Saudis perhaps wringing their hands with uncertainty?

One is tempted by schaedenfreude, to enjoy their pain at having created this situation, when they were the puppet masters with strings into the Bush White House. (Today those strings lead to Moscow.) Still, the Saudis have it in their power to prevent all this, by one simple means. Stepping up to finance what they prevented for 70 years, peace between Israel and the Sunni Arab world. 

They could do this, though it would take real imagination and grit (and a lot of cash.) And it would transform the Middle East, making it a safer place… yes, for them, as well.

== Ponder extreme up- and downside possibilities. ==

Try this exercise. Map our best and worst case scenarios. The best we can hope for, from a Saudi alliance is some slight tempering of the Wahabbist propaganda, teaching millions of young Sunnis to wage terror on the West. Ain’t much, and I doubt that Trump will even ask for that.

The worst? If we walk away from Riyadh? Nothing. Their era of relevance is over, since America recently (under Obama) achieved practical energy independence. Indeed, without the press or politicians noticing, we have withdrawn all our carriers from the Persian Gulf. Because it simply isn’t our “lifeline” anymore.  A strategic victory of stunning magnitude – that's gone unnoticed.

So. What is the upside, if we make friends with the Iranian people and work with them to render their mullahs impotent? Spectacular benefits, huge. Picture what the Ayatollahs fear. Prosperous middle class Iranian women in... pants? A vast, educated middle class taking charge of their own fates? Oh, how the mullahs wanted Trump! (Note that this upside is completely unavailable in Saudi.  There is no such secular-yearning, vast middle class over there, eager to join us in modernity, as there is in Iran.)

Oh, the downsides of turning the Iranians back into a raving, bomb-building theocracy are just as large, in the opposite direction. But expect no such complex thinking in this White House.

The picture I just painted… is so sad. Both Bush presidencies, puppeted by Riyadh, and a Trump regime puppeted from Moscow, actually helping the Iranian mullahs by yelling at them.  And they call these “strong fathers”?

 "Even the power of the presidency has considerable limits inside US borders. It’s the rest of the world I’m more concerned about, because it may look very different very quickly with Trump stomping around. If he continues this “America first” claptrap, regional powers like Russia, China, and Iran will grab the chance to expand influence, including militarily. The European Union may fall apart, and the far right may continue to make advances across Europe." 
                         - former world chess champion Gary Kasparov (@Kasparov63)

== A rough world ==

Here's one area where I kind of agree with Donald Trump.  Our News Media aren't very smart. 

Oh, they try hard to champion truth!  In fact, only scientists are so badly maligned, by the fact hating right. Still, so caught up are even our best reporters, in breathlessly reporting the latest Trumpian lie volcano, that they cannot step back and counter it all with big picture perspective.

Take the gigantic setback to Russian policy that happened when Vladimir Putin's pal and viceroy in the Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, was ousted by pro-western protesters on 22 February 2014, and thereupon he fled the Ukrainian capital city of Kiev. Just three years ago, it was the worst setback to Moscow's hegemonism since the collapse of the USSR. Moreover Putin himself laid that whole event at the feet of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

How dumb of the press and the democrats to let the right call Obama and Clinton "feckless victims of Putin-cleverness," when theirs was the far greater coup!  Rather, Putin called them clever, machiavellian devils and he railed about the west having "stolen" Ukraine... yet our press made almost nothing of it, playing up Putin's subsequent nibble-backs of Crimea and the Donbas, feeding the calumny that Obama was "feckless" or "impotent." 

Putin attributed Obama with plenty of "feck." Go look at a map. Compare Crimea (which was never Ukrainian in the first place) to the huge Ukraine, and tell us your "feckless" narratives. 

== Demographics is friendlier to our nation of immigrants ==

Yes, the puppet strings from the Kremlin are disturbing. Only there is solace to be found in basic reality.

Lacking an empire, the prospect of a Russian titan, that seems so attractive to Trump supporters, may hit a wall. A demographic wall. 

"Without remedial action, Russia’s population could shrink to 113 million by 2050, a decrease of more than 20 percent from today’s population of 144 million." 

While the picture has grown slightly better, the last two years, Moscow's priorities (according to this report) aim at other perceived problems, like reviving the appearance of superpower status:

"Russia is in the midst of a massive military spending boom. Many of the increases in defense spending, the news agency reports, are in the “black budget”: expenditures authorized by Putin but not publicly announced, often due to opaque national security concerns."  And "...military expenditures have increased by a factor of 20 since Putin became president 15 years ago, and defense and security now account for some 34 percent of Russia’s budget. That is nearly double the proportion of the U.S. budget." 

Well, that is one way to hold onto Siberia, in the face of a resurgent China. Still, it makes one wonder about the cult of Putin idolatry on the American right. 

Sure he's smart. And good looking. And testosteronic. And one of the few "strongmen" who seems actually strong. So? I suspect another somewhat admirable trait that no one else seems to figure on. I think there's a chance that Vladimir Putin is sincere, and still loyal to the things he swore devotion to, at age 18.

No, I don’t blame him. I blame an American cult-of-the-strong-father that lets itself be talked into slavish admiration for a Slavic regime whose arms buildup is aimed -- along with thousands of nuclear weapons -- directly at us.

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Addendum: Sorry but it has to be said again, our news media are dumb! They zero in on the stupidities of the "Muslim Immigration Ban"... fine.  They show the recent lie spewed by the Trump White House - that terror attacks went under-reported (there are no actual examples.) Fine. But do they connect the dots?

Dig it. The Trumpists are terrified someone with guts will say "What terrorism?" 

Seriously, our parents in the Greatest Generation suffered more losses in any single week of WWII than we have across decades of "Islamic Terror."

 If there's a case for increasing the vigilance of "vetting," then fine: we'd all love to see your plan. Tracking exit status of visa holders is long overdue, for example. Obama was already doing all of that.

 But to issue screeching, blanket, ill-considered directives that take all our departments by surprise, banish legit Green Card holders and leave babies unable to get surgery? Justifying it as an "emergency"? After President Obama reigned over the safest period in the history of the republic?

Now you can see why DT had to rail that there really is more terrorism!  It just went unreported!!

Alas, when this narrative collapses, there will be left for him just one option. And we are counting on our skilled professionals to beware. To catch it in time.

A Reichstag Fire.

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Further Addendum:  “Russia and the United States have effectively switched roles in Afghanistan: In the 1980s, American CIA officers supplied weapons to anti-government rebels who were fighting the then-Soviet backed government and the Soviet troops supporting it. Today, 15 years after the American invasion, Russia has begun helping the Taliban against a weak American-backed government still supported by NATO troops and airpower.” - reports NPR.

Fox News and the alt-right media and the insane US Confederacy have talked millions of our fellow citizens into adoring Vladimir Putin and Moscow, shrugging off the thousands of nukes aimed at us, the repression of democratic neighbors, the meddling in our own elections… and now, interventions to assist the same Taliban that helped Osama bin Laden to attack us on 9/11.

Let’s be clear here.  The nation that helped make Donald Trump president and that is best buds with not only Trump but a dozen cabinet officers, is helping the Taliban to destabilize the flawed but elected government we helped to foster over there, at huge expense in lives and treasure. And yes, they are helping the Taliban to attack our men and women serving there.

Oh, the German newspaper Die Zeit also reported that Russia is recruiting mercenaries to fight abroad.

The 1860s Confederacy never got major allies in its war against the United States of America. This time, they have. And they conquered Washington. But you traitors will be remembered. The Union shall rise.