Hidden fees or “junk fees” are on the rise, as companies work to bring in more money while keeping prices looking low. U.S. consumers pay more than $65 billion in fees each year.
May 26, 2026
But first, something a 21st Century Jew knows nothing about:
Being poor in America often means paying more for the basics of survival. From unaffordable housing and overpriced groceries to overdraft fees and payday loans, the cost of simply existing without wealth is nearly impossible to escape.
“If you’re lower income, you do realize how much of the system is working against you in so many ways,” said Trudy Shuravloff, the executive director of Whatcom Dream, a program that offers free and paid financial empowerment courses in Bellingham.
According to Whatcom Dream, 45% of households in Whatcom County fall below a budget that covers just the essentials of housing, childcare, food, transportation, and healthcare. High interest loans, unstable housing, limited access to credit, and daily financial obstacles all add up.
“It’s like a snowball effect,” said Yousef Tirhi, a peer financial coach for Western’s Merriman Financial Literacy Program. “Not paying your credit card often will get you a lower credit score, a lower credit score will get you worse loans, and it goes on.” It can really hurt someone who’s already struggling financially, he said.
These structures aren’t accidental; they’re built on profit models that depend on people staying desperate.
“They’re charging crazy amounts of fees for accounts with low balances, or if you go over your credit limit, you’re going to get charged a penalty or fee,” said Tirhi, “It’s just kind of, you know, hurting America.”
For many students, this struggle is personal.
“I work part-time and budget carefully, but it still feels like I’m always one step away from falling behind,” said India Sanborn, a psychology student at Western. “You try to be responsible, but the system doesn’t make it easy.”
The less you have, the more you pay. The boots theory perfectly illustrates this. The concept argues that poverty is expensive because low-income individuals are forced to buy cheap, low-quality items – for instance, poor work boots – that must be replaced more frequently. This is compared to someone who can afford to buy one pair of high-quality shoes that would last longer, spending less in the process.
America’s broken system punishes people not for how they manage their lives, but for the circumstances they can’t escape.
Hidden fees, convenience charges, and add-on costs disproportionately impact low-income households, creating a regressive “poverty penalty”. Because these costs are flat rates rather than percentages, they consume a much larger share of a limited budget, making it harder to escape the cycle of financial struggle.
Taxes on food, alcohol, tobacco and soft drinks hit the pockets of the poorest the hardest.
A new report from the Institute of Economic Affairs shows that poorer households pay up to ten times more in sin taxes than richer households as a share of their income. With the exception of air passenger duty, all sin taxes take a greater share of income from the poor than from the rich.
Here, from NPR — National Petroleum-Pesticide-Patronizing Radio:
It started out innocently enough: lazy Monday, working late, nothing in the fridge. I decided to splurge and order a burger and fries for delivery.
Subtotal for my meal? $14.07. A little pricey, but it’s a good burger and $14 seemed like a totally acceptable price for dinner, especially when it’s delivered to my door.
Then came the fees:
Delivery fee: $5.49
Service fee: $3
Tip: $4
Tax: $1.25Grand total for my delivery burger: $27.81
My lazy Monday went from costing me $14 to almost $30. The price had doubled. What was going on?
The not so hidden costs of being a Jewish Dominated Fucking Cuntry, and the cost of Judaism in the world at large:
The Hebrew version of the Israeli newspaper Ynet, the online version of one of Israel’s largest newspapers, Yedioth Ahronoth, put out a shockingly blunt article written by its U.S. correspondent, Tzippy Shmilovitz, boasting that “the lobby is embarking on an all-out war to oust rebellious politicians on both sides of the fence”.
The article not only admitted that the Israeli lobby was behind Thomas Massie’s loss in Kentucky, but also behind primary campaigns against Israel-critical progressives in the Democratic Party, such as Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman.
Referring to the primary against Thomas Massie, the article wrote, “Massie did indeed lose easily; in fact, he had no chance. Not only because when Trump decides to destroy a Republican’s career, that career does indeed end, but also because Massie got into trouble with one of the most powerful political organizations in Washington history: the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC”.
“Massie, one might say, represented for AIPAC the beginning of a challenge – still very small – even among Republican elected officials. And it was very important for AIPAC to stop the drift on this side as quickly as possible,” the article added.
So, basically cock off or fuck yourself for ANY motherfucker who thinks antisemitism exists, really, inside the core of a radical and revolutionary and fucking writer like me. Calling these fucking neuroperverse cunts Toxic and Dangerous, well, well, have your cake and fucking matzah ball testicles and suck them too.
Sin taxes, un? Not just the direct money given to the Jews of Israel, but the trillions we lose because of the fucking AIPAC and the White Man’s Minyans, and alas, can it be any more plainer?
[Photos that will never come back? Biden speaking at the 2016 AIPAC conferenc]
Since the 2022 midterm elections, AIPAC has spent more than $221 million in Democratic primaries. The organization sometimes hides behind obscure groups with different names, realizing that AIPAC’s brand has become toxic in some quarters. Democrats on Capitol Hill have also begun to cut ties with AIPAC, including some who relied heavily on the organization’s support: Congressmen Morgan McGarvey of Kentucky (to whom AIPAC was its largest donor in 2024), Debra Ross of North Carolina, and Valerie Fouche of North Carolina, who was defeated in 2022 by a progressive opponent with massive help from AIPAC. In addition, most Senate Democrats have voted in recent months to end arms sales to Israel. This is something they would not have dared to do just a few years ago.
How much does this SINNING fucking Religion and Perverse Culture (sic) force down our throats?
[“I have not received and will not receive funds from AIPAC.” Newsom]
A recent New York Times poll found that 57% of Democrats support the Palestinians, compared to just 17% who support Israel. Among Republicans, the gap is huge in favor of Israel, at 66% to 9%. Among independent voters, the situation is 44% in favor of the Palestinians, compared to 29% for Israel. According to the poll, nearly 75% of Democrats oppose military aid to Israel, up from 45% just three years ago. Nearly half of Democrats said the party supports Israel too much.
And if that weren’t enough, an NBC News poll found that 57 percent of Democrats view Israel unfavorably. Shortly after October 7, that number was just 35 percent. A Quinnipiac University poll found that 62 percent of Democrats believe the United States is “too supportive” of Israel.
These figures are freeing many Democrats from the sense of commitment they onc
In Israel Many People Think It’s Time to “Get Out of Dodge.”
Life in a country whose warmongering genocide and violent ethnic cleansing has turned the entire world against it, including now even most Americans, is not, it seems, what it was cracked up to be.
And he cites +972 Magazine, and that outfit just names these people using first names, or made-up names:
I don’t want to sound over the top, but it’s good. As retirees, we don’t need to build a career or find a livelihood. All we need to do is choose from the infinite supply of cultural events,” Arye said. “My wife knows German; I don’t. I’m trying to learn, but it’s not easy.
“I know I’ll never be German — that I’ll live in exile until the end of my days. But I’m not the first,” he continued. “And for exiles, we’re living in the most privileged way possible. Our income hasn’t changed: We had two pensions in Israel, and as senior citizens we receive old-age allowances from Israel’s National Insurance Institute. We also rent out an apartment in Jerusalem. As long as the Israeli economy doesn’t collapse, we’re fine.”
“I couldn’t be part of that society, and I don’t want my children to grow up in it,” Noga added. “We’re raising our children inside this, and we’re not even discussing it. I felt completely alone, like I couldn’t say anything. I was forced to participate in this fake normality.”
[Israelis block the Ayalon Highway during a protest against the Israeli government’s planned judicial overhaul and in response to the removal of Tel Aviv District Commander Amichai Eshed in Tel Aviv, July 5, 2023.]
Who gets to leave?
It is important to emphasize that most of the Israelis interviewed for this article are Ashkenazi Jews — members of the country’s ruling hegemony. Many hold dual citizenship, often obtained through European ancestry tied to families who survived the Holocaust. Those who do not have a second passport have nonetheless been able to create exit routes through higher education, professional mobility, or a spouse’s citizenship.
At the same time, it is also crucial to note that large segments of Israel’s Jewish population, mostly Jews of non-Ashkenazi origin, lack any realistic option to emigrate. This group, which constitutes roughly half of Israel’s Jewish population, consists largely of descendants of Jews brought to Israel by state authorities in 1949–50 from the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. In Israel’s early years, they were used as pawns to boost the Jewish demographic share of the population, and have since been subjected to persistent and well-documented social and economic discrimination.
Fucking Jews leaving Israel with bank accounts and dual and triple citizenship and networks. ANd so, again, once fucking again, the world will be polluted by these people. They lived and worked in Israel, and I very much doubt that there are many who support Palestinian liberation and a two-state solution, let alone a one-state solution called fucking PALESTINE.
Israel’s ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) population is rapidly growing, with family sizes averaging around 6.5 children per woman.
Fucking Handmaids and child rapists!
Israel has long taken great pride in its having the highest birth rate—even among secular Jewish women—of any country in the OECD. We take great pride that this country of some 9,000,000 people started out with 600,000 Jews in 1948.
As great as this achievement has been—and it has been truly extraordinary, like everything in life, “it’s complicated.” There are concerns about the long-term sustainability of this upward trend and the impact it will have on the country’s resources, infrastructure, and economy.
Another fucking Jew on Substack!
Ahh, the fucking Jewish fee?
Study after study shows that when we make buying decisions, we only look at the listed price.
“Fees are not part of the thought process in choosing the product,” says Galak. “If you sneak a fee in, customers might not notice, and the data’s pretty clear that they don’t notice.”
These fees go by many names: processing fee, booking fee, service fee, even “inflation fee.”
But when you do notice these fees on your receipt, you’re probably locked in.
“By the time the fee is tacked on, it’s too late,” says Galak. “It’s either actually too late, like ‘I’m standing at the hotel check-in desk, I don’t have a choice anymore.’ Or it’s apparently too late. You’re not gonna hand a coffee back to a barista if you see a 20% service charge, right?”
The cost of genocide: Israel’s war on Gaza by the numbers
Billions of dollars have been spent, directly and indirectly, by Israel since it started its war on Gaza in October 2023.
The costs are so so much higher with this flood of Talmudists and Israelis dancing on rooftops and messing with everything — education, medicine, science, engineering, finance, banking, AI-VR-MR-AGI, health care, data gulags, the tools of Gazafication-Pacification.
+—+
The costs of Jews — Oppen-Monster-Heimers by the millions, man.
The gap between what people believe they would do and what they actually do, under the pressure of legitimate authority, is the central empirical finding of Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View, published in 1974 by Stanley Milgram
[At his Bar Mitzvah in 1946, he specifically spoke about the plight of European Jews and global anti-Semitism.
Academic Inspiration: Milgram noted that the Holocaust “energized my interest in obedience” and shaped how he examined it in his famous 1961 Yale University obedience experiments.]
…and drawn from research conducted at Yale between 1960 and 1963. Across nineteen variations and more than a thousand subjects from every walk of life in New Haven and Bridgeport, the pattern held. Replications in Munich, Rome, Princeton, South Africa, and Australia produced figures at least as high — Mantell in Munich found eighty-five percent fully obedient.
Milgram was a social psychologist at Yale, later at the City University of New York, and a former classmate of Philip Zimbardo at James Monroe High School in the Bronx. His mentor was Solomon Asch,
Solomon Asch was a prominent Polish-American Gestalt and social psychologist who was born to a Polish-Jewish family. His Jewish heritage and early cultural experiences deeply influenced his worldview, his curiosity about human behavior, and his ultimate academic career in the United States
…whose conformity studies had demonstrated that intelligent college students would deny the evidence of their own eyes when a group around them did so. Milgram set out to study something more direct — not the indirect influence of group pressure on perception, but the immediate impact of one authority’s commands on another person’s conscience. He worked under National Science Foundation grants, with a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1972–73 to complete the book. He died of a heart attack in 1984 at the age of fifty-one. His research was attacked on ethical grounds, defended on its merits, replicated extensively, and has remained the most representative and generalisable body of work in social psychology — heavily cited, frequently misunderstood, rarely read in its full nineteen-variation form.
JEWS: Trial Question: Can Sex Crimes Victims Love Their Abusers?
Is it possible for child sex abuse victims to truly love their molesters? Enough to continue wanting to see them years after? Even with their wife and kids there?
Two experts who took the stand this past week in Rabbi Daniel Greer’s criminal trial in state Superior Court to try to explain the complicated psychology of sexual abuse differed in their conclusions.
Greer is facing charges of sexual assault and risk of injury to a minor.
A former Yeshiva of New Haven student, Eliyahu Mirlis, testified earlier this week that Greer repeatedly raped him during his high school years from 2002 to 2005, and another former student, who went by the initials R.S.A., testified Greer came on to him too in 2009.
Greer’s defense attorney, Willie Dow, has focused on why it took so long for Mirlis to go to the police, implying that he’s making the accusations against Greer to get rich or fix his marriage.
He repeatedly asked why Mirlis continued to return to the Yeshiva of New Haven, where Rabbi Greer presided over religious ceremonies, almost monthly up until about 2014, despite arguments with his wife that lasted most of the two-hour car rides from New Jersey.
In presenting the case for the defense Friday morning, Dow put David Mantell on the stand. Mantell has been evaluating kids for the Connecticut Department of Children & Families since 1976, said those visits struck him as unusual too.
“I have never seen that pattern,” he said.
Dow asked if Mantell knew about any research that could explain why a child sex abuse victim would keep going back, to “even have meals and participate in services led by that individual.”
Mantell said that he couldn’t find anything, after about that 50 hours of searching databases for “post-abuse patterns,” both within families and institutions.
“I did not find any research confirming that experience had been identified by any others or a single case example, which is sometimes given in the professional literature,” Mantell said.
“What I found i my research is an occasional reference to a small number of children abused in institutional settings reporting an ongoing sexual relationship, so that [at that point] it is mutual. It’s a very tiny percentage of the cases,” he went on. “But there was not one in which the student leaves the institutional setting, has no more contact and then returns and resumes without a sexual relationship between them.”
Mantell added that would also run counter to a widely accepted concept of “avoidance,” where many survivors try to avoid anything that might remind them of the sexual assault.
But on cross-examination, Mantell admitted that part of the reason he might not have found anything is that there are not many research papers at all about child sexual abuse within Judaism. An Orthodox Jew himself, he said that the research is “delayed” compared to the extensive studies done within Christian parishes.
An expert witness for the prosecution had earlier testified that Orthodox Judiasm, in particular, comes with its own fraught power dynamics between rabbis and students that make reporting abuse especially difficult for survivors.
Karen Roberg, a state prosecutor, also asked Mantell if there might be understandable reasons why the relationship would continue. Do sex abuse abuse survivors ever “love” the perpetrator? she asked.
Mantell said he’s definitely seen that, especially when another family member’s behind the molestation.
“They love their parent or sibling or grandparent who’s an abuser, despite knowing that they’re being improperly treated in so many of those cases,” he said.
Mantelll added that it can be more complicated when sexual abuse happens in other settings, like a boarding school.
“I think children like to be be treated and regarded positively,” he said. “As a general statement, I think children want affection.”
Other experts who testified for the state earlier in the week said they didn’t see a discrepancy.
Lisa Melillo, a school psychologist in Monroe who interviews children when they first report sexual abuse to law enforcement, said survivors often say they feel “love and respect and loyalty” to the perpetrator.
They can see the perpetrator as “an essential person in their life,” even as they wish the sexual abuse would stop, she said.
“Oftentimes, the abuser is well known to the child,” Melillo said. “We think about ‘stranger danger’ from a random person, but more often than not, it’s a person known to them, who has access to them. That can be a parental figure.
“The sex abuse, in itself, is just one aspect of a relationship,” she went on. “It’s not defining their whole relationship. That’s where loyalty comes in.”
“Participating at a christening or a bris — being invited by the complainant to attend — would that be consistent” with those feelings? Dow asked.
“I think, as I testified before, this could be an indication of how much love and respect they have, even though there’s been an abusive part,” Melillo said.
“Or not?” Dow asked. “There could be no abusive relationship and a valid invitation?”
“It could be,” Melillo admitted.
“How about an honored position, holding a baby?” Dow asked.
“Is that consistent with a valid claim?” Melillo wondered aloud. “Sometimes a person can have love and respect for their abuser: It’s only one aspect of their relationship.”
Many victims of childhood sexual abuse wait years to report what happened — especially when that occurs in an insular community.
Forensic psychologist Gavriel Fagan — an Orthodox Jew who works with other Orthodox Jews who experience abuse — made that case Wednesday in the criminal trial of accused child-rapist Rabbi Daniel Greer.
Fagin was one of two forensic psychologists who testified on day three of Greer’s trial in Superior Court on Church Street, addressing a central issue in the case.
Greer faces charges of sexual assault and risk of injury to a minor.
Fagin argued that it would have been extra difficult for a yeshiva student who’s been abused to turn in his rabbi over to the police.
Prosecutors brought those two experts — who have each interviewed hundreds of people who said they were molested as minors — in to explain why Eliyahu Mirlis waited a decade before coming forward with allegations that Greer raped him repeatedly from 2002 to 2005.
That question had been hanging over the fourth-floor courtroom all this week. Willie Dow, Greer’s defense attorney, has hit on that point again and again in his cross-examination. He left up timelines in the courtroom that showed Mirlis continued to visit Greer in New Haven until 2014 and didn’t meet with a detective until 2016.
Even Mirlis’s wife, Shira, testified on Wednesday morning that she’d often been “confused” that her husband couldn’t cut Rabbi Greer out of his life for so many years after the abuse.
When they made near-monthly trips to New Haven, she said, she fought with him the whole two-hour ride, trying to show him the whole community was “twisted.” When he let Greer hold their firstborn son in a circumcision ceremony, she said, she found his presence “very upsetting.” And whenever she urged her husband to go to the police, she said, he shut down the conversation.
Previous coverage of this case:
• Suit: Rabbi Molested, Raped Students
• Greer’s Housing Corporations Added To Sex Abuse Lawsuit
• 2nd Ex-Student Accuses Rabbi Of Sex Assault
• 2nd Rabbi Accuser Details Alleged Abuse
• Rabbi Sexual Abuse Jury Picked
• On Stand, Greer Invokes 5th On Sex Abuse
• Rabbi Seeks To Bar Blogger from Court
• Trial Mines How Victims Process Trauma
• Wife, Secretary Come To Rabbi Greer’s Defense
• Jury Awards $20M In Rabbi Sex Case
• State Investigates Greer Yeshiva’s Licensing
• Rabbi Greer Seeks New Trial
• Affidavit: Scar Gave Rabbi Greer Away
• Rabbi Greer Pleads Not Guilty
• $21M Verdict Upheld; Where’s The $?
• Sex Abuse Victim’s Video Tests Law
• Decline at Greer’s Edgewood “Village”?
• Rabbi’s Wife Sued For Stashing Cash
• Why Greer Remains Free, & Victim Unpaid
• Showdown Begins Over Greer Properties
• Judge: Good Chance Greer’s Wife Hid $240K
• Sex Abuse Too Much For Many Jurors
• Potential Greer Juror Grilled On “Truth”
• Greer Jury Finalized
• Greer’s Accuser Recounts Sexual Abuse
• Attorney Grills Greer Accuser
Israel has been identified as a “haven” for sex offenders primarily due to the Law of Return, which grants automatic citizenship to Jewish individuals worldwide. While the law prohibits citizenship for those who “endanger public welfare,” a lack of clear definitions and thorough background screening has allowed accused or convicted offenders to exploit the system as an escape route from justice in their home countries.
The Noahide Code: Traditional Jewish teachings suggest a framework for non-Jews known as the Seven Laws of Noah, which focus on universal ethics such as establishing courts of justice, prohibiting bloodshed, and avoiding idolatry.
The fucking lawless Jews and law-breaking rapist and pedophile Trump.
Following a tradition established under President Jimmy Carter in 1978, Donald Trump has signed presidential proclamations designating the Rebbe’s birthday as “Education and Sharing Day, U.S.A.”.
- The Legislative Link: The foundational congressional resolutions behind this day explicitly invoke the Seven Noahide Laws as the “cornerstone of society since the dawn of civilization”.
- Trump’s Policy Focus: In his signing ceremonies alongside Chabad-Lubavitch delegations in the Oval Office, Donald Trump’s text generally focuses on the Rebbe’s instruction that education must encompass moral excellence and character development rather than just academic achievement.
2. Appeals from Religious and Geopolitical Groups
Because of Donald Trump’s distinct foreign policy alignments in the Middle East—such as relocating the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem and brokering the Abraham Accords—several religious factions have actively linked his presidency to biblical prophecy and the Noahide framework.
- The Nascent Sanhedrin: In 2017, a self-convened religious court in Israel called the nascent Sanhedrin sent an open letter to the administration. They praised Trump’s defense of values and called on him to embrace the Noahide Laws to help build a “just framework for all mankind”.
- Orthodox and Conservative Commentators: Pro-Trump religious columnists and activists have frequently pointed to the administration’s platform of “law and order” as a modern enforcement of the seventh Noahide commandment, which mandates establishing reliable systems of justice.
God is coming with liposuction, Ozempic, and a fucking turbo treadmill, and yet, you are still a dirty supremacist!
Stanley Migram, uh? “After October 7, More and More Americans and Britons Are Choosing Judaism. Why?”
[Naomi with Ruth the Moabite and Orpah in a painting by Henry Nelson O’Neil. A new way of seeing the world.]
Why More Jews Are Moving to Israel After October 7
Instead of scaring us, October 7th really only just hardened our resolve.
Ariel is one of a growing number of non-Jews who were drawn to Judaism in the aftermath of the October 7th [Hamas jail break and the rise in righteous hatred of many Jews in the world.]
“I’m not the only one, because when I speak to other people, instead of scaring us, October 7th really only just hardened our resolve.”
And of course, all those Epstein tapes, the Mossad, the other deceptive Jewish Squads working for Israel and Jews, nah, all those moving images of Trump humped over and sweating on a 13-year-old girl, nah, nothing of the sort will move the needle anymore.
The most fucked up part of all this is that the thing potentially slowing a wider catastrophe may not be morality, international law or humanitarian concern. It may be egos.
Israeli media is now openly reporting that Netanyahu privately acknowledges Israel’s ability to influence Trump has become limited. Channel 13 reportedly described growing difficulty in steering the U.S. president as disagreements emerge over Iran and regional escalation.
At the same time, pressure is growing inside Israel itself. Talk of early elections continues to circulate as Netanyahu faces growing anger over Gaza, the hostages, the economy, judicial battles, and Israel’s deepening international isolation.
Which raises a dangerous question:
What happens when a political project that spent decades building enormous influence in Washington suddenly realises the man at the centre of the empire may no longer be fully controllable?
Because this is bigger than Netanyahu.
There are entire ecosystems tied to Israel’s power structure: lobbyists, billionaire donors, think tanks, intelligence networks, media figures, evangelical blocs, political operatives, defence industries, and ideological hardliners who spent decades making sure Washington and Tel Aviv moved almost as one.
And now suddenly there are signs of friction.
And if Trump’s ego starts getting in the way, what happens next?
Because Trump has always been obsessed with the image of himself as the ultimate dealmaker. The man who brought peace where others failed. The leader who could walk into impossible situations and force outcomes nobody else could.
He has spent years bragging about bringing “peace” to the Middle East, preventing wars, and succeeding where the political establishment supposedly failed.
Which is why another endless regional war with Iran may clash with the legacy he wants attached to his name.
Trump does not just want to dominate. He wants to be remembered.
Do they try pulling him back into line through donor pressure, media pressure, and political pressure?
Do they surround him with more compliant foreign policy figures?
Do they intensify fear around Iran until confrontation becomes politically unavoidable?
Because we know what follows that path:
more fear, more division, more paranoia, more manipulation, more pressure to control public opinion and suppress dissent.
Do they work around Trump entirely through Congress, intelligence institutions, and military networks?
Or are we starting to see something else emerge: The early stages of Netanyahu being quietly sacrificed in order to preserve the larger system itself?
Because systems of power survive by isolating blame once the political cost becomes too high.
And after Gaza, the political cost has become enormous.
That does not mean the machinery disappears. Sometimes it just changes faces.
Which is why the growing discussion around early elections matters. Not because Israel’s underlying structures suddenly transform overnight, but because parts of the establishment may recognise Netanyahu himself is becoming strategically radioactive internationally.
Or do some factions quietly recognise something even bigger:
that perception management after Gaza failed catastrophically, and that the old model of limitless escalation backed by automatic Western legitimacy may no longer be sustainable forever?
Because that is the deeper fracture sitting underneath all of this.
Some will probably believe the answer is to pull back strategically, soften rhetoric, and repair legitimacy before the damage becomes irreversible.
Others will likely conclude the opposite: that international outrage changes nothing, legitimacy no longer matters, and overwhelming force should continue regardless of global disgust. That power alone is enough. They may go all in.
Of course, this is also Trump. His politics constantly swing between escalation and restraint, threats and dealmaking, ego and calculation. Today’s friction could disappear tomorrow if his interests, image or alliances shift again.
Especially now, with fresh U.S. strikes on southern Iran happening in the middle of negotiations, raising the same old question again: who actually benefits every time diplomacy starts getting close?
But the fact that visible cracks are appearing at all inside what was once treated as an unshakeable alignment is significant.
Because once a movement stops needing moral approval, raw power becomes the only language left. And once that happens, the line between restraint and brutality starts disappearing.
And perhaps the most fucked up part of all this is that the thing potentially slowing a wider catastrophe may not be morality, international law or humanitarian concern.
It may simply be competing egos inside the empire itself.
As humans always have been.
Paul Haeder, Author 