I know the polls show that MAGA is all in on the Iran war. But let’s remember that those folks hear the question the same way they hear every other question: “Are you ready to admit the liberals were right about Trump all along?” So we can’t expect their answers will be super honest. 

A better measure of how things are going may be how clearly demoralized Republicans are these days. It’s not just the infighting over the war in MAGA media. At CPAC, the right’s annual weirdo-gaggle, journalists report the mood was subdued. Many of the people you might expect to be speaking, including Trump himself, JD Vance and Tucker Carlson, skipped the whole event. Stuff is just too toxic right now. Trumpism is a sinking ship and Iran is the iceberg. 

OK, that’s just a theory. But there’s plenty of circumstantial evidence. I’m not feeling a lot of rah-rah energy from the MAGA base for this war, regardless of what they’re telling the pollsters.

We know that Vance wanted this war to be over, like, yesterday, because his people keep leaking to the press over it. Unfortunately for him and for pretty much everyone not named Lindsey Graham, it increasingly looks like we’re in this for the long haul. Despite Trump’s obvious lies about Iran crying mercy and begging to surrender, all the reality-based reporting shows that the Iranians believe they’re winning this thing. Now it appears likely that Trump is escalating to the ground invasion we were promised he was simply too smart to try. (Never bet on any promise based on the premise that Trump is smart.)

The reason for this is simple and elegant: Iran has a better hand. Already, the war has been lost on the home front. It’s driving up oil prices and will soon cause even greater economic damage, which may become devastating if this conflict drags on as long as it looks like it will. Trump never even tried to offer a plausible explanation for the war, so there’s no way to spin those high gas prices and soaring inflation as a necessary sacrifice. 

Also, Iran holds the single biggest card that Trump wants: a way to save face. Declaring victory and going home won’t work, not while the Iranians still hold the Strait of Hormuz. He needs them to give up something he can pretend counts as a surrender, and he’s so desperate that he keeps making up concessions that the Iranians haven’t offered. Sometimes these lies can work for him, but not this time. Not with an actual war. Not when even his own people can see that, no, Iran is not surrendering. 

Why should they give up, when they control the one thing Trump wants? His problem is that the more he escalates this war, the worse things get for him back home. The U.S. has bigger bombs, but what matters once again is who’s got the cards. 

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One reason you know that patriarchy is stupid is that it tends to create situations where everyone involved is miserable, but because of the Rules of Toxic Masculinity, no one’s allowed to say “fuck it.” That’s true of miserable gender relations in sexist communities. It’s true of the male loneliness crisis. And it’s true with the Iran war. 

There are credible reports that Trump himself is getting “bored with Iran,” and is eager to return to the culture-war antics that are his happy place. But admitting that would be wimpy and emasculating, so instead he’s raging on Truth Social about how he’s absolutely killing it with this war, and desperately posting praise from people who are trying to manipulate him into further escalation. 

I wish I had better news for you, because this war is going to keep on killing innocent people and causing economic damage that will be damaging for all of us. But Trump can’t win this and he also can’t admit defeat and bail out, because of toxic masculinity. So, like every two-bit imbecile who keeps chasing his losses at the poker table, I expect he’ll keep doubling down. 

The silver lining is that this debacle led to what looks like an even bigger turnout at the latest No Kings day, this past weekend. The momentum of those protests is starting to show. More people are running for office as Democrats. And Democrats keep on winning, even in places that seemed completely untouchable. I just wish we could get to a better outcome without the massive destruction ahead, which will probably get much worse before it gets better.

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