Fear, Loathing, and Catering Carts: Old McDonald's Walk of Shame from the Strait of Hormuz to the Arctic Tundra

Old McDonald had a war
EIEIO
And in that war, we all got poor
EIEIO
With a grift, grift here, and a grift, grift there
Here a grift, there a grift, everywhere a grift grift
Old McDonald had a war
EIEIO

And the war isn’t going well, of course. Iran is trolling Old McDonald relentlessly, playing the ultimate Uno Reverse card, per Majid Shakeri, advisor to Parliament Speaker Ghalibaf: “Trump will not reach an agreement with us. We will go along with him until his term ends. The path to victory is neither fighting nor a deal — it is managing the process of neither war nor peace, up to the point of victory. Publicly confirming negotiations with the U.S. is sheer folly. The winning approach is denial, ambiguity, and strategic patience.”

Iran knows exactly what it wants: a withdrawal of U.S. forces from the Middle East, $300 billion in compensation, an end to the naval blockade, permanently ending the war against Iran and her allies, the release of all its frozen assets and “never threaten nor insult Iran in any language”. That’s completely unacceptable to Old McDonald, but he is staring down the pesky fact that our interceptor missile stockpile is already down to 20%. And he knows damn well that Bibi’s going to continue his genocide-loving ways in Gaza and fuck with Iran because Bibi needs war or he goes to prison. Bibi is the late-night drunken hookup that seemed quite attractive with beer goggles on; you go home, you have some fun, and you wake up as the star of Fatal Attraction 2: Electric Boogaloo wondering where the fuck your rabbit is.

Faced with the rapid decimation of the nation’s defensive stockpile, this particular national nightmare might be heading toward a humiliating whimper. The Wall Street Journal reports that Trump is considering just declaring victory, opening the Strait, and slinking out of Iran with his tail between his legs. It would mean leaving with not a single goal achieved and certainly no nuclear deal—the very thing he stated, over and over again, was the reason for this whole debacle. All along, though, he never did define what victory actually looked like. He banged on about preventing a nuclear weapon (he didn’t), decimating their military (we didn’t), and forcing a regime change (also didn’t happen).

Instead, we are left looking at a historical walk of shame. After billions of dollars spent and countless American and Iranian lives lost, Iran now holds the ultimate geographic leverage: the Strait of Hormuz. All they have to do is close it. Old McDonald is trapped in a vise of his own making: accept Iran’s terms, or keep fighting a losing battle while the Strait stays choked off for at least two more years.

Checkmate, you preening pendejo.

Yet, to watch the daily dog-and-pony show in the Oval Office, you’d think he was coasting to a win. He casually brushed off the crisis yesterday morning with his usual brand of public bravado: “We control the Strait, 100%. Now, can they [Iran] make trouble? Yeah, they can make trouble. But they’re broke, they have no money, you know Iran is broke.” Then, right on cue, the reality of his exhaustion caught up with the rhetoric. He babbled some more, drifted off, and fell asleep. Straight up fell asleep. Slumped-over-because-this-sermon-is-hella-boring asleep.

But behind that sleepy, dismissive facade lies pure, unadulterated panic. Look no further than the recent reports of his defense mechanisms, which have devolved into literal Spy v. Spy measures to evade alleged Iranian threats. Remember when he took Qatari-made “Bribe Force One” to NATO, but suddenly couldn’t fly it home because of a security scare? The public was told he took the old Air Force One home, but no, kittens, it was the classic clown car trick. He boarded Bribe Force One in Turkey, walked right down the service stairs on the opposite side, and hid in an airline catering cart. Staff rolled the cart across the tarmac to a waiting military cargo plane, leaving his own press corps and aides to fly home on the target of an assassination plot. That’s a cold shot, baby. Yeah, that’s a drag.

When I picture the President of the United States hunched over in that dark catering cart, chins quivering on the rough tarmac, suffocating under the smell of stale cabin food and egg farts, amidst the miasma of broken spirits, I can’t help but think of a child hiding from his mother in a department store, wedged deep inside those round racks of clothes. How they got him out of the cart is apparently a state secret but I hope those dudes are good at Tetris.

And just like a cornered kid trying to change the subject when a mess gets too big to conceal, Old McDonald knows when it’s time to manufacture a brand-new distraction. If things are rotten in Iran, it’s time to make sure something is rotten in Denmark.

Enter Greenland. A Trump-linked company is currently moving on the territory, importing oil drilling equipment without a shred of permission from the Danish government. The company has already dropped off about a dozen containers off the coast, just daring those brave Danes to do something about it. This sudden Arctic desperation makes perfect sense when you realize Iran has threatened to cut off the Western oil supply completely if a ground invasion occurs. Rumors of a land war have been flying for weeks, though there are still no boots on the ground as of this writing. At least it’s not a land war in Asia. Watch out where the huskies go and don’t you eat that yellow snow.

But if an international oil grab doesn’t dominate the news cycle long enough to bury the Epstein Files, there is always the reliable domestic culture war to fall back on.

Despite the many vicissitudes under which this poor, beleaguered leader of the free world suffers, he stayed busy yesterday, signing an executive order dropping the number of recommended childhood vaccines from 18 to 11 and ordering the MMR shots to be split up. He indulged in a little bit of revisionist history, proving that Bobby Brainworm has been whispering directly into his ear: “Decades ago, children received only a small fraction of the vaccines required today. In those times, people were much healthier and of course the high rates of autism now observed did not exist.”

You know the vibe: I’m not just a dictator, I’m also a doctor.

He conveniently forgets that life expectancy was vastly lower then, and infant mortality skyrocketed, back when late-night television equivalents would have told you to ask your local plague doctor if leeches were right for you.

But he wants you to believe you’re in safe hands: “[This administration] is recognizing gold standard childhood vaccine recommendations for only 11 core vaccinations against the most serious and dangerous diseases… We’re reducing them. It’s not only that you’re doing fewer vaccines, or jabs, as they say, but you’re doing them in a series of visits to the doctor.”

This man will do anything to fuck children, won’t he?

That’s all I have for you today, kittens.