As Iran Fired Missiles, I Slept Very Well: Having a very good president in the White House

It was over before it even started as I announced in earlier articles. Trump had destroyed Iran’s “queen” in the great chess game and the war was over even as Fox News broke into its coverage to show missiles in the air headed for American occupied bases in Iraq. Every station had in fact started covering the revenge from Iran on live television and the situation looked ominous. I laughed to myself and went to bed. I was not at all surprised to wake up the next morning with a text from President Trump saying all was well, no American lives were lost. As a matter of fact, as the day evolved, we learned that the Iranians had been telling us that they were firing missiles essentially to appease their political base, but they weren’t aimed at any Americans. And they told us when they were done. They really didn’t want any action from America, that was obvious. They just wanted to show some missiles in the air flying around to show on State television to save some face after the embarrassing end to one of their top military minds. It’s not that I didn’t care about the results, but I can do math. Iran as I have said over and over again cannot fight a war. They do not have the resources for anything beyond regional terrorism. So, they weren’t going to sign their own death warrant. I slept well even as the missiles where in the air flying around in the desert.

The media was caught red handed on this one because the fuel of the entire exercise was their coverage, made up as they went along. Like many of us have been saying for decades, the media has ran many of these wars covering movements, reporting them on air, then forcing presidents and generals to adapt to the broadcasts as if it were a sporting event. This has been going on since television became a common thing. And now that we have a president who understands the game, he doesn’t get played by it, but he certainly plays the players. The drums of war were being beaten by the media for an event that couldn’t even take place if the Iranians even wanted it to. They simply don’t have the resources, which left all the broadcasters reeling to justify their panic driven coverage in the aftermath.

If you are a reporter, or a network executive, you should at least be a little intellectually curious as to the nature of war and strategy, and to know that Iran only has about 200 to 300 Scud missiles and about 100 Shahab-3 medium range ballistic missiles. Their entire strategy is to use terrorism as a leverage point to show power, because they don’t actually have any power. They have an unstable government hanging on to an old communist idea that has eroded away into Islamic ideology leaving them with very little in financial options. And without finances they can’t even buy new weapons or think about building nuclear ones. They have nothing to work with, so no possibility of a war with anybody. The energy and cost to fire off those few missiles they did in revenge of their slain leader cost them a fortune that they didn’t have, and they have no appetite to do it anymore. We aren’t talking about kids firing off Nerf guns in their back yard, it costs a lot to fire off any kind of missile and Iran just doesn’t have the financial resources to conduct a war of any kind. That is why I went to bed, because what the news was broadcasting was pure nonsense. It was a ruse from the start and any news organization should have known that. What they were broadcasting was a fiction, and they likely knew it. If they didn’t know it, they were incompetent and shouldn’t even be on the air.

I slept well because for the first time in my life I knew there was a guy in the White House who could see through the illusions and to not allow a bunch of panicky generals and advisors to poke him into war with an enemy that was about as harmful as a common house fly. Now a house fly can land in some shit and then land on your food and cause trouble, but in all reality, their intent is pretty iniquitous but not very dangerous. And Trump’s speech to the country was along those lines. Be careful with flies landing in shit and crawling on you, but for now, we will leave them alone by keeping the door shut. Trump’s speech addressing the issue was the best that I can remember. He shut down the drums for war quickly and addressed the truly minimalist situation for what it was properly, giving people an honest assessment for what was one of the few in history. Most of these kinds of things are draped in drama meant to add a fearful narrative that has a big government subtext to it, letting people know that government will keep them safe. Not in Trump’s speech. He essentially said, nothing to worry about. Its cool. Go enjoy your families. Only with him, it wasn’t a lie meant to lull people back to sleep, but to get them back to living good productive lives without the worry of some flies landing on their food with feet dripping in shit.

This is what competency looks like, it doesn’t need to fear the actions of losers. Losers do not rule the world, as the media would like you to believe. To properly reflect this new age of living, the media is going to have to adjust, they’ll have to get better. They’ll need to figure out how to cover a 24-hour news cycle without talking about war, impeachment, or some FBI scandal against our president. Eventually they’ll have to come up with fresh content all on their own that doesn’t rely on scaring everyone to death to stay relevant. I would say that time has passed, but there is no time like the present. For myself, it was the first time I went to bed when some national incident was occurring, because I have learned the falseness of it all well and could see the signs from the very first moments. And the next day, most of the country had to admit the same, even CNN. As we all learn to be more competent, and focus our efforts on productive things, the news will have to grow with us and that will be a real challenge for them. The same old tricks will not work in the future as they have since the advent of televisions into our living rooms. They could all learn some lessons from Trump himself who is the Master of Media. He was before he became president, he won because of his knowledge. And now as a president, he only has sharpened that mastery. I trust him more than I trust television executives, so I went to bed until I heard from Trump. I didn’t want to hear from all the lesser people covering things they didn’t know just trying to frighten people into staying tuned. And that not just for me, but for many people, is a very new thing.

Rich Hoffman