Gobbledygook

The Witness Chronicles, 4/20/26

— U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Mike Waltz on what happens to the Iran ceasefire if a deal isn’t reached this week, on ABC’s “This Week”: “That’s ultimately a decision for the president, but I think the outcome of these talks will be incredibly consequential, and as the president has stated, he is prepared to escalate, to de-escalate. … Any agreement that comes out will have to be verifiable and enforceable.”

Could someone please explain what any of that means?

He is prepared to escalate, he is prepared to de-escalate? Say what? No, actually. Say something that means something. Here’s the problem Waltz and Trump’s other apologists face when questioned about the war, the negotiations, the economy, or the President’s health and mental acuity: They have no idea, just like the rest of us.

Or they have a pretty good idea but saying it would mean political ruin and facing the ferocious retribution obsession that consumes the man to the exclusion of everything else. It’s the Devil’s choice, so you simply resort to speaking in tongues and meaningless platitudes.

The problems here are many but the big one is that we are not going to accept this junk anymore. The existential blunders the President and his Party are making are too in our faces, all of our faces, everyday. In blue states, red states, and purple states. We don’t want meaningless gobbledygook, we want real answers that convince us that these guys have a plan that can fix things.

They obviously don’t. A reckless President with a razor thin Republican majority at his back and not one Member can vote against this war that is destroying the global economy for months, if not years, to come.

I think the real issue here is that this Congress has forgotten how to legislate, if they ever knew. Instead they stall, block, speak nonsense, say one thing then vote the opposite, or simply close the government down, hoping to blame Democrats. And it no longer works. We have real problems and we need leadership to do the hard work, which includes reaching out to the other side of the aisle.

Or risking the anger of a President who in reality is extremely unpopular and mindbogglingly incompetent. Where is the risk in taking a stand? It seems to me that the odds are pretty good that resisting him might be a good career move. But that would require perspective and forward looking thinking, something in very short supply in DC these days.

I would like to write about something positive and uplifting instead of chronicling the days of a petty man like Donald Trump, but two things stand in the way. He is President of the United States, and the issues we face are existential. War and money are two things we think about if we read the news. So many of us do not, or we choose a propaganda network like Fox that tells us what we want to hear.

But even Fox is showing resistance. It may be that some of the hosts and guests were true believers when Trump campaigned on lowering prices and ending forever wars and now they are realizing they were conned. Or maybe the wind has shifted and they need to pull back from Trump to save their futures. Who knows?

The numbers change with each of Trump’s bombastic claims but they is starting to make Republicans very uneasy about their chances of keeping the Senate, something they had been taking for granted until recently, back when we were not at war and gas prices were coming down. Formerly safe seats may be up for grabs now and key demographic groups are drifting away from the President in bigger and bigger quantities. The Gen Z vote, Latinos, farmers and rural residents, seniors facing healthcare increases, and many disenchanted Trump voters.

It doesn’t help when Trump makes it clear that we can’t afford day care relief, Medicaid, food assistance, and other social programs, because we need billions for war and tax breaks for the very rich. The very fact that he says things like that out loud tells us how he really thinks of us.

The poll numbers are there and politicians live by the numbers on a daily basis, to the point of obsession. That is a big part of the problem. If you are in fear of the immediate reaction to your actions you will be paralyzed by that fear to the point of inaction, stasis. And that appears to be where we are.

Donald Trump has survived by creating uncertainty, knowing that it helps keep those politicians paralyzed. One of his indicators he follows closely are the stock market numbers, but those are almost entirely rumor based and driven by pure speculation these days. Kneejerk day trading.

They do not reflect the long term lookout for anything, not these days. But Trump needs some imagined great success to crow about daily. So he manipulates that kneejerk reaction by making bold statements with no basis in reality, counting on the markets to jump in a positive direction, only to watch them drop as the truth emerges.

And it appears there are those in the White House who may be profiting by inside knowledge, betting on prediction markets when they have a good idea of what Trump will say next. It’s likely the members of Trump’s own family are doing so because that is their modus operandi and they know Trump considers those types of actions as benefits of being President.

Remember, traders can make money on both good news and bad news. And these days those two extremes exist on a daily or hourly basis.

All of this represents a kind of feedback loop we find ourselves in as a country and we are dragging the entire world with us. Allies distrust us, people across the Middle East are dying and finding themselves homeless, and over an estimated 800 cargo ships are trapped in the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a place many had never heard of just a few weeks ago.

The problem with feedback loops is they are difficult to escape. It requires decisive action, not appearing on TV to say meaningless things. That kind of waffling is the driver of that loop, not an answer to the real day to day issues we are dealing with.

That is so obvious to any observer that one can only conclude this stuff is entirely intentional and that the President and the Republican Party really think we are clueless stooges.

I don’t know about you, but I am not a clueless stooge and I doubt you are. Even the most devoted true Trump believer is starting to doubt, finally. I hope that spreads as it appears to be doing. Hope spring eternal.

It took sixteen years but Hungary finally kicked out their dictator Orban, a Trump ally, so decisively that even he had to concede. I doubt Trump has the backbone to backtrack and save himself. It will be his downfall and he is out to take down everything with him.

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