Arthur E. Sowers is a resident of Harbeson.
One of the hottest topics in any neighborhood these days is the rising price of gas. Gas prices started spiking right after Donald Trump expanded his war on Iran. The details and history about how Trump’s military attack may have been coordinated with Israel is publicly uncertain and open to speculation. But my simplistic and preferred explanation is that Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, both being swell-headed authoritarians, are in competition with each other to see which one is the bigger, badder, bully-er, bulldozer-er of the two. And, since Trump has the bigger military, bigger ego and insists on bragging rights — as well as the right to overbrag about the bragging — Trump had to “go bigger” on bombing Iran (thus distracting from all that bombing that Netanyahu was doing, as well as swapping out the Epstein talk).
While a shaky and unstable cease-fire is officially in effect, most of the articles say that any return to normal gas prices in the U.S. will not happen for many months and could take up to a year or more. Less mentioned is the possibility that things could get much worse. Reports also say that many countries import much more of their energy than the U.S., and their economies are already being hit hard. Internet searches say the present shrinks in economies will be 3%-14%, depending on the country. At least one state of emergency was declared, in the Philippines, because of the Iran oil and gas shortage. If you want a good, detailed story on all this, read the CNN article: “Red lights are flashing on the scarcity of oil.”
The consequences for the U.S. might be more than higher fuel prices. There will be decreased farm harvests because 20% of the world’s fertilizer comes through the Strait of Hormuz, and that means all the farmers who need those fertilizers are going to pay more or their crop yield will suffer, too. Importers will buy less of our exports because their economies will be shrinking, and therefore, there will be less money to buy our exported products. All this could be an additional factor pushing us into a recession.
Trump seems to get a lot of his energy to do the things he does from his “Make America Great Again” far-right, radicalized extremists, who always cheer him no matter what he says or does. And that seems to me to be mostly because Trump can stomp his foot and make more noise and shock waves than anyone else stomping their feet. And MAGAs are impressed by that. But an important new MAGA trend is a breaking up of their solidarity. One recent Axios article is titled “MAGA media’s great unraveling.” The article says that big-name MAGAs — such as Tucker Carlson, Alex Jones, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Joe Rogan, Theo Von, Tim Dillon, “Sneako” (Nicolas Kenn De Balinthazy), Matt Walsh, Mike Cernovich and Megyn Kelly — have all, in one way or the other, started dumping on Trump. I don’t follow any of them unless they get into mainstream news. But one of the impressions I get is that they see Trump’s attention to various foreign “projects” as a betrayal of his “America First” promise. Read the article for further details.
Here are some other recent articles on MAGA unravelings. Paula White, official spiritual adviser to Trump, was comparing Trump to Jesus. This MS NOW article is secular and gives the details, but the title makes the point: “Paula White sparks MAGA backlash after comparing Trump to Jesus.” Then, in the following “spiritual” article from The Christian Post, you will see a lot of tacky fawning and conspicuously inappropriate name-dropping. All this led to very serious fireworks in this very spiritual article on a Christian website. The article is titled: “Paula White-Cain likens Trump to Jesus during Easter lunch, stokes firestorm of backlash: ‘Insanity.’”
In yet another article, it was my impression that some pretty convoluted thinking was being used to promote corruption of the Christian religion. The title of that CNN article is: “Agriculture secretary’s religious Easter message to all employees sparks internal backlash and a formal complaint.” Then, the mother of all bombshells flooded the newsfeeds around April 12-13, when Trump posted a fake image, which everyone took as Trump’s face on the body of Jesus. Here is just one of the many articles with the details and the images, from The Independent: “Trump slams Pope Leo as ‘weak’ and posts picture of himself as Jesus healing the sick.” Within one day, Trump took down that image after all the backlash it caused.
In contrast, Pope Leo’s recent messages were all exceptionally benevolent, uplifting and full of simple, pro-peace advocacy, clarity and general wisdom. Here is the title of just one of the articles I have seen, from CNN: “Not in God’s name: How Pope Leo is pushing back on divine justification of war.” And this Gallup poll shows that the people appreciated the pope’s message a lot more than any of the other people in the ranking, including Trump. The title of the article is: “Pope Leo Most Favorably Viewed of 14 Newsmakers.” The pope’s popularity was at the top of the list of 14 names while Trump’s popularity was fourth from the bottom! The three who were below Trump were, in descending rank, Marco Rubio, Benjamin Netanyahu and Elon Musk. Further, as this Axios article explains, numerous other cardinals and clergy are backing up Pope Leo: “Iran war tips Trump-Pope tension over the edge.”
Reader reactions, pro or con, are welcomed at civiltalk@iniusa.org.
