Who would trust Bojo or Trump

[Wonderfulspam]

I was listening to a geopolitical commentator who said the way to judge whether the war is going Americas way or not is if the shipping continues. The shipping is at a complete halt for the US & it's allies, so it looks like Iran are winning.

[Vertigo Swirl]

Greenland is in a strategic position with regards to Russia. The idea of acquiring Greenland has been floated before Trump came in to office.

In the 19th century.

[Vertigo Swirl]

I was listening to a geopolitical commentator who said the way to judge whether the war is going Americas way or not is if the shipping continues. The shipping is at a complete halt for the US & it's allies, so it looks like Iran are winning.

Iran and Russia.

[Wonderfulspam]

Iran and Russia.

& China!

[Wonderfulspam]

Anyway VS. Make sure you fill your tank & your fridge. Releasing oil from the strategic reserves was just a sticking plaster over a wound that requires surgery IMO. The true price of oil, plus the inflation it will bring, hasn't been seen yet imo.

[Vertigo Swirl]

Anyway VS. Make sure you fill your tank & your fridge. Releasing oil from the strategic reserves was just a sticking plaster over a wound that requires surgery IMO. The true price of oil, plus the inflation it will bring, hasn't been seen yet imo.

thanks for the advice.  I don?t drive much.  Car did under 500 miles last year.  I don?t eat much either.  I?ll be fine.

[Vertigo Swirl]

oh yes!  From an account I follow on social media -  s'cuse the language but it is bang on the money in every respect....

Right. Strap in folks. It's a biggy but worth your time.

I need you to picture this. The East Room of the White House. Crystal glasses on white tablecloths. The Kennedy Center board sitting there like extras in a hostage video. Pam Bondi. Mike Johnson. Susie Wiles. Ric Grenell on his way out the door. All of them arranged around Dollcrump like furniture in a display home nobody's buying.
And Dollcrump is talking.

He's been talking for a while now. He's supposed to be talking about renovating the Kennedy Center. But he's not talking about the Kennedy Center. He's talking about himself. Because of course he is. The Strait of Hormuz is closed. Oil exports from the Gulf are down 60%. Ships are getting hit with drones and missiles. Fuel prices are through the roof. Half the world's energy supply chain is in a chokehold. And Dollcrump is sitting in front of crystal wine glasses doing a psychological strip show for the cameras.

Let's walk through what just happened. And I mean really walk through it. Because this is a masterclass in how a broken brain processes rejection in real time.

48 hours ago, Dollcrump went to the Financial Times. The Financial Times. Not Truth Social. Not Fox. He went to the grey paper of record for global finance and he said, and I quote: "If there's no response or if it's a negative response, I think it will be very bad for the future of NATO."

Read that again. That is a threat. That is a man who needs something and is leveraging the most powerful military alliance in human history to get it. You don't threaten consequences for inaction unless the action matters to you. That's not a suggestion. That's not a thought bubble. That is the President of the United States publicly telling the world: I need warships in the Strait of Hormuz and if you don't send them there will be consequences.

So what happened?
Germany said no. Not a soft no. A German no. Which is a regular no but with engineering precision. Their chancellor said: "This war has nothing to do with NATO. It is not NATO's war. The question of how Germany might contribute militarily does not arise. We will not do so."
Their defence minister went further. "What does Trump expect a handful of European frigates to do in the Strait of Hormuz that the powerful US Navy cannot do? This is not our war. We have not started it."
Japan said no. Australia said no. Spain, Italy, Poland, Greece, Sweden. All said no. The EU foreign ministers met in Brussels and the bloc's top diplomat came out and said there was "no appetite" for expanding operations. Even the UK, America's most reliable poodle for the last 80 years, basically said "we'll get back to you."
Canada is playing Switzerland. Not revealing their hand. Which, given the current state of Canada-US relations under Carney, is probably a f..king no as well. Just a polite one. The Canadian kind. Where they don't say no, they just never say yes and hope you stop asking.
Every single one of them. No.

Now. Here's where the psychology gets dark.
Because a normal leader, a functional human being with an intact ego, absorbs that information. They recalibrate. They go to their advisors and say, okay, Plan B. What are our options. That's what adults do when the world tells them no. They adjust.
Dollcrump does not adjust. Dollcrump rewrites.
He walks into the East Room. Cameras rolling. Crystal glasses gleaming. And he says this:
"We don't need anybody. We're the strongest nation in the world. We have the strongest military, by far, in the world. We don't need them."
And then. Then. He says:
"I'm almost doing it, in some cases, not because we need them, but because I want to find out how they react. Because I've been saying for years that if we ever did need them, they won't be there."
Read that again and let it sit in your chest for a second.

The man who 48 hours ago threatened the entire NATO alliance with a "very bad future" if they didn't send warships is now standing in the East Room telling you it was a test. A loyalty exercise. A vibe check.
He wasn't asking for help. He was running diagnostics on the alliance. Like a man who gets rejected at a bar and turns to his mates and says "I wasn't even into her. I just wanted to see what she'd say."

Every psychologist on earth has a name for this. It's called retroactive reframing. It is one of the most well documented narcissistic defence mechanisms in the clinical literature. When a narcissistic personality makes a demand and gets publicly refused, the refusal creates what clinicians call narcissistic injury. The ego cannot process the rejection as real. So the brain does something automatic. It rewrites the story. The demand becomes a test. The rejection becomes validation. "See? I told you they wouldn't help." The loss becomes a win. In real time. On camera. In the East Room of the White House.

And he pre-loaded the escape hatch. Listen to the language again: "I've been saying for years that if we ever did need them, they won't be there."

That's not analysis. That's armour. If they help, he's powerful. If they refuse, he was right all along. There is no outcome in which Donald Trump loses. There is no scenario in which he is wrong. The framework is airtight. And it is completely, profoundly, dangerously disconnected from reality.

But here's the thing that makes my blood actually boil.

They won't be there? They've NEVER been there? Is that what we're doing now?
Let me tell you about a little thing called September 11, 2001.
When those towers came down, the entire world came running. NATO invoked Article 5 for the first and only time in its history. Not for Europe. Not for some faraway conflict that had nothing to do with America. For America. For you. The world looked at the United States of America and said we are with you. And they meant it.
They went into Afghanistan. Every single one of them. They sent troops. They sent money. They sent equipment. They bled. More than 1,100 coalition soldiers from NATO countries died in Afghanistan. Died. Not "stayed a little back, a little off the front lines" as Dollcrump said in January. Died. On the front lines. In Helmand Province and Kandahar and places most Americans couldn't find on a map. Canadians. Brits. Danes. Australians. French. Germans. They came because America asked. And they paid for it in body bags.

And then. THEN. The United States turned around and said hey, we need you again. Iraq. Weapons of mass destruction. Exposed brick. Yellow cake uranium. Colin Powell at the UN with a little vial of white powder like the world's worst show and tell. And what did the allies do? A lot of them came again. Against their better judgment. Against the protests of their own people. They followed America into Iraq on a lie. A fabricated, manufactured, intelligence-agency-approved lie. And they bled there too.

So when Germany says "I would like to remind you that the U.S. and Israel did not consult us before the war, and that Washington explicitly stated at the start of the war that European assistance was neither necessary nor desired" you need to understand what that actually means. That's not cowardice. That's a country that remembers being dragged into the desert on bullshit intelligence 23 years ago and being told to go f..k themselves on the way in and clean up the mess on the way out.

Is it any wonder? Is it any wonder they're hesitant to run into another burning building on behalf of the United States of America? On behalf of a president who didn't consult them before he started this war? Who told them explicitly he didn't need their help? Who spent years telling them NATO was obsolete and they were freeloaders and they owed America money like it was a protection racket?
You spent a decade kicking the dog and now you're confused it won't fetch.
They won't be there. They've never been there. Mate. They're the only reason you had a coalition at all. Twice. And both times you left them holding the bag.

And while we're at it. While we're talking about who shows up and who doesn't.
Vietnam.
You want to talk about who's there when it counts? You want to stand in the East Room with your bone spurs and your crystal wine glasses and your five draft deferments and lecture the world about who shows up? 58,000 Americans died in Vietnam. And Donald Trump's contribution to that war effort was a letter from a podiatrist saying his feet hurt.

Go f..k yourself.
Seriously. Go f..k yourself with your loyalty test. You dodged the biggest loyalty test your generation ever faced. You let other people's sons go to the jungle and die while you were learning how to part your hair. And now you're standing in the White House questioning whether the allies are loyal enough? Whether they'd show up if you needed them?

You didn't show up. When your own country needed you. You didn't show up.

And here's the broader concern from a psychological standpoint. A leader who cannot absorb rejection without rewriting reality is a leader who cannot learn from failure. If every setback gets immediately recategorised as a secret win, there is no feedback loop. No course correction. No adaptation. The Strait of Hormuz is still closed. Ships are getting hit. Iran is still firing. The US Navy has been refusing near-daily requests from the shipping industry to escort tankers because the risk is too high. Two American minesweeper ships that were supposed to be in the Persian Gulf were spotted over the weekend in Malaysia. 3,500 miles from where they're needed.
That's reality. And the Commander in Chief just told the world, on camera, with crystal wine glasses in the foreground, that the whole thing was a personality quiz.

That's not strategy. That's not diplomacy. That's not leadership.
That's a man managing his feelings in real time on television.
And every person sitting at that table knows it. Pam Bondi knows it. Mike Johnson knows it. Susie Wiles definitely knows it. They're sitting there with their napkins on their laps watching the most powerful man on earth tell them that rejection is actually victory and failure is actually foresight and nobody can help him because nobody is needed because he is the strongest and always has been.
But sure. It was a test.
f..king w........

[Vertigo Swirl]

And this is a more measured, less emotional take on the Donald's failings but perhaps even more insightful and evisceratingly accurate than the previous post

There is something almost impressive about the speed with which Donald Trump can turn swagger into panic while insisting, at full volume, that nothing is wrong. One minute he is chest-thumping about total victory, claiming the war is effectively over, implying that Iran has been flattened, that the United States has everything under control, that nobody else?s help is needed, and that he alone has once again bent world events to his magnificent orange will. The next minute he is threatening NATO, whining about allies, and demanding that other nations send ships to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz, because apparently the war he already won now requires an international rescue mission.
This is the part where the contradictions stop being mere hypocrisy and become a form of performance art. Trump spent years insulting NATO, undermining allied unity, sneering at the sacrifices of countries that actually stood beside the United States when Article 5 was invoked after 9/11, and generally behaving like a man who thinks alliances are just protection rackets with nicer stationery. He belittled the British dead from Afghanistan as if they had spent the war lounging somewhere comfortably ?off the front lines,? because cruelty and ignorance are the twin engines of his political personality. He spent years feeding the same lies and resentments that animated Brexit, Farage, and every other useful idiot who mistakes Kremlin propaganda for independent thought. And now, after lighting a match in one of the most strategically sensitive waterways on earth, he is demanding that the very people he has insulted come running with buckets.
Blessedly, no one seems especially eager to do it, which may be the most reassuring fact in this entire grotesque spectacle. Britain says it will not be drawn into a wider war. France is keeping its distance. Germany is hesitant. Greece has ruled out joining military operations in Hormuz. Japan is not charging forward to become an accessory to Trump?s latest act of geopolitical vandalism. Even the countries that understand perfectly well how important the strait is to global energy markets appear to have grasped the obvious point that Trump himself cannot: there is a difference between protecting shipping and being dragooned into cleaning up the consequences of a reckless war of choice launched by a man with the strategic patience of a toddler in a casino.
This is where James O?Brien, the British talk-radio host who has made a minor art form out of exposing political nonsense in real time, exasperation feels so familiar, because what he is really giving voice to is not just anger but disbelief. Not disbelief that Trump is dangerous, or that he lies. The disbelief is that the contradictions are now so naked, so clownishly circular, and yet still spoken aloud by officials with straight faces as if they do not expect anyone to notice. The logic on offer is something like this: we had to attack because Iran might retaliate if attacked; now Iran has retaliated because we attacked them, which proves we were right to attack them; but also we did not expect the retaliation; but also we planned for it; but also we need help because it is everyone else?s problem. It is a foreign policy doctrine that resembles a snake eating its own tail all while shouting at Europe.
That is what makes the current posture so absurd. Trump and his cronies want to have it every possible way at once. To boast that they have crippled Iran while simultaneously claiming they urgently need allied assistance to deal with the fallout. To sneer that NATO is freeloading while also threatening the alliance if it does not show up to rescue them. They want to claim complete control while betraying something very close to panic, and to declare the war a triumph and then explain away every consequence of that triumph as a reason why more nations must join in. It is the foreign policy equivalent of driving your car into a lake and then blaming the passengers for not rowing.
And then there is the economic clock ticking beneath all of this, which is where Matt Randolph, an oil-and-gas veteran and online energy commentator known as ?Mr. Global?, starts to make the picture even uglier. By warning us about the ?three-week window,? Matt Randolph is talking about the rough danger zone in which emergency reserves, rerouted shipments, and strategic stock releases can still mask the full impact of a Hormuz disruption. It is not a magic number so much as a warning that you can only fake normal for so long when a waterway carrying roughly a fifth of the world?s oil is in trouble. After that, the stopgaps start looking less like stabilization and more like triage. The precise number matters less than the underlying reality: you cannot choke off or severely disrupt a passage that handles a massive share of the world?s oil and gas flows, throw some emergency reserves at the problem, reroute a few cargoes, lean harder on storage, and pretend that means you have solved it. What you have done is buy time. That is not the same thing as fixing the problem. It is just a slightly more expensive way of postponing the bill, and the bill always comes due.
That is what makes Trump?s sudden demand that other countries send ships feel less like imperial confidence and more like the sweaty onset of realization. He knows, or at least the people around him know, that energy markets are not moved by his social media posts. Tankers do not reopen sea lanes because he growled at Keir Starmer. Commodity traders do not take comfort from the fact that Karoline Leavitt can explain a disaster with the poise of a malfunctioning Roomba. Oil prices may wobble on hope, on panic, on rumor, on emergency reserve releases, on selective exemptions, on markets talking themselves into one more day of denial, but none of that changes the basic math. If too much supply stays trapped or threatened for too long, the world economy begins to feel it everywhere. Markets stop treating the crisis as theater and start pricing it as reality.
That is why Trump?s language has changed. It is why the boasts are now threaded with threats. It is why the administration?s story keeps lurching between ?we knew exactly what we were doing? and ?who could possibly have foreseen geography.? One official seems to suggest that the disruption was anticipated and manageable. Another sounds as though the location of the Strait of Hormuz came as startling new information, like discovering halfway through a burglary that the house has walls. The same people who cannot tell a coherent story for six consecutive minutes now want the world to trust them with an expanding conflict in the Gulf.
No wonder allies are hesitating. The real question is not why they are reluctant. The better question is why anyone would be foolish enough to rush in.
Let us be clear about what Trump is asking. He is not invoking some noble principle of collective defense. NATO is a defensive alliance, not a concierge service for impulsive wars launched to satisfy one man?s ego and then repackaged as a shared Western obligation once the consequences turn out to be real. He is asking allies to enter a crisis he helped create, under terms he has not clearly defined, for objectives he keeps changing, with legal and strategic rationales that appear to shift by the hour depending on who last spoke to him. This is a man setting his own trousers on fire and then demanding that everyone else form a bucket brigade while he lectures them on responsibility.
The satire almost writes itself because the reality is already ridiculous. Trump spent years telling his followers that alliances are for suckers, expertise is for weaklings, diplomacy is for losers, and any problem can be solved by chest-beating, threats, and the magical incantation of his own name. He gutted institutions, glorified ignorance, and filled the room with sycophants who nod like dashboard ornaments every time he mistakes bluster for strategy. So now here we are, in a world where the most powerful country on earth seems to have stumbled into a crisis whose central objective is no longer winning anything grand or historical, but merely reopening the shipping lane that got snarled because they decided to start smashing things. Truly, the art of the deal.
The most revealing thing about this moment is not even the chaos itself. It is the refusal of others to indulge it. Britain declining to be pulled into the wider war matters. France keeping its distance matters. Germany?s hesitation matters. Japan?s refusal matters. Even if all of them are acting partly out of caution, self-interest, or exhaustion, that still counts as a form of sanity. The world does not owe Donald Trump an escort service for his own recklessness. It does not owe him a face-saving coalition. It does not owe him the chance to rebrand a strategic blunder as an allied mission.
What seems to enrage Trump is that other countries are not volunteering to play supporting roles in his fantasy. They are not pretending that his contradictions are coherent, or saluting his improvisation as genius. They are looking at the mess and, for once, saying: no, actually, this one is all yours.
Pressure is mounting from both directions. Politically, Trump needs other countries to legitimize and absorb the burden of his decisions. Economically, he is running into the hard reality that emergency measures can stretch the runway but cannot abolish the landing. That is why the mood has shifted and why the threats sound shriller. Underneath the macho posturing is a simple and humiliating truth: for all the bombing, boasting, and breathless declarations of victory, he may have created a problem that neither intimidation nor propaganda can solve.
It is the whole Trump story in a nutshell. He breaks things he does not understand, demands applause while they are breaking, and then blames everyone else when gravity resumes its ancient work. The only difference now is that the stakes are measured not just in headlines and court filings or campaign slogans, but in global shipping lanes, oil flows, market stability, and the possibility of a wider war. This happens when a man whose entire life has been a pageant of fraud, vanity, and inherited impunity is allowed to treat foreign policy like another branding exercise. The slogans come first. The disaster follows. And then, eventually, comes the desperate hope that someone more competent, more serious, and preferably previously insulted, will step in and save him from himself. This time, at least, it looks like the answer may be no.

[faithlilly]

oh yes!  From an account I follow on social media -  s'cuse the language but it is bang on the money in every respect....

Read this recently. As you say, absolutely spot on.