Notes on the "Excursion"
March 12, 2026
“Storm on the Bunchgrass straits” (2017)
Life in our uneasy republic, between patriots and sociopaths
Before we had our 9/11, the Argentinians had theirs.
It was 9/11/73, the day Argentina’s democratically elected leader, Salvador Allende, was driven to suicide, surrounded by armed insurrectionists during a CIA-backed coup in Buenos Aires. Allende was forcibly replaced by Augusto Pinochet and a military junta that lasted 17 years, murdering nearly 3,000 dissidents and torturing tens of thousands. It’s one of the darkest chapters of American history, still nauseating to read about—the avarice of American complicity. Sting would write an anguished, passionate song about it, “They Dance Alone” (Cueco Solo), that’s soaked in the tragedy and intimacy of loss for the mothers of the disappeared.
It also happened that 1973 was a good year for my father. He had progressed from being a coach and physical education teacher to being the head of the Science faculty at Curundu Jr. High School, and then to be the school’s assistant principal. Among other things, he had to defend the school’s science curriculum which included sex education and evolution—subjects that were under a concerted attack from fundamentalist Christians, including a priest down the road in Balboa. Even though he was a devout Catholic, he defended secular education without equivocation, underscoring the First Amendment and small “d” democracy.
I’ve had to remember that, of late, just to nurture my own sanity. I’ve had to remind myself that America is a living, breathing, mud-wrestling contradiction, pledging allegiance to “liberty and justice for all” while too often electing undisguised bigots and charlatans. I’ve had to remind myself of the Rev. Martin Luther King’s consolation from 1968: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
This would be justice in spite of people who pledge allegiance to the flag, but who really have no interest in justice or the values underlying American democracy. People like Republican Congressman Andy Ogles from Tennessee who—despite his having sworn an oath to defend the Constitution—now proclaims that “pluralism” is a lie and “Muslims don’t belong in American Society.”
I’m not a violent person by nature, but some days I feel like I want to box somebody, some thing, other than my shadow. A decade ago, on the front-end of Trumpism, I was driving through Dayton, WA, one of my grandfather’s favorite towns, when I noticed a Trump-supporter had erected a large sign condemning the “fake news.” Being a properly conscientious and hard working reporter it really rankled me and I said a couple words, ending with “u,” I would not have said if I were driving with children.
We’ve had ten year of this, now, and my son reminds me that this hot mess of a chapter in our history overlaps with his coming of age. It’s what he’s grown up with, and he’s rather disgusted by it. As he should be.
As we all should be.
I don’t know what I could write about “The Excursion”—Donald Trump’s euphemism for bombing (or destroying with long range missiles) more than 5,000 “targets” in Iran—that you’ve not already heard, seen, or read.
I have bullet points I could offer that go down the list of lies that attend operation “Epic Fury.” With one exception, I’m going to skip that today because even if there were something on the list you hadn’t noticed it would just be making the rubble bounce so to speak.
There is nothing we have gained this week—expending more than $11 billion in the first six days of bombardment—that we could not have had by simply remaining as one of six nations who signed onto the 2015 Iran nuclear accords. The accords required access to Iranian nuclear facilities by trained inspectors, to ensure Iran wasn’t enriching uranium to an extent it could be used in a nuclear warhead. When the accord was in effect the Iranians complied, and the world was a safer place. But that wasn’t good enough for Trump. It wasn’t good enough because it was signed by an African-American U.S. president, Barack Obama, whom Trump despises. Trump thinks he’s the best deal maker in the history of the world, so any deal by Obama couldn’t possibly be good enough for him.
So, at Bibi Netanyahu’s prodding, we go to war, or we go to “excursion,” or as Trump recently told a reporter, we go to “both.”
From the New York Times
And on the first day, an apparent targeting error results in a U.S. Tomahawk missile striking a school for young children, reportedly killing more than 175. Trump initially said ‘(i)t was done by Iran” despite the fact that Iran doesn’t possess Tomahawk missiles and none of the other countries that do are involved in the conflict, such as it is. Reporting in Pro Publica connected the error to Trump budget cuts that put an end to a Defense Department Civilian Protection program.
It seems all of a piece, considering the oft-repeated complaint from Trump’s Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, who has castigated the military for becoming too “woke” under his predecessors and blames “stupid rules of engagement” for tying the hands of the warriors.
The Republican Congress is nowhere in sight, save for Sen. Rand Paul and Congressman Thomas Massie, who has also rebelled against Trump’s efforts to shut down the probe into the Epstein scandal. According to the Center for American Progress, the daily cost of the Iran “excursion” would be enough to restore Medicaid cuts to more than 150,000 of those who lost their coverage under the Big Beautiful Bill.
While polls show a continuing downward slide in Trump’s approval rating it’s actually the resilience of his popularity that is more striking. Let’s face it: this is a debacle unlike anything the country has experienced, in terms of the outright lies, the open racism, the abyss of corruption. And now a pointless war, unconstitutionally waged, and devouring well over $1 billion a day with no end in sight. The fact that Trump—for all his vice and clownish self-indulgence (i.e. persuading the winner of last year’s Nobel Peace Prize to hand it over to him)—still has millions of followers, and a core of zealots, is not remotely healthy. He has no interest in democracy, and neither, apparently, do they. Thus, open efforts to manipulate the vote—such as the recent confiscation of records in Fulton County, Georgia—are just part of the show.
The best explanation I’ve heard, of late, comes from Jordan Klepper. Most people who know of Klepper, know him from Comedy Central where, for years now, he has gone to Trump rallies—including the assault on the Capitol in 2021—to take the pulse of the Trump faithful. It’s funny because the exuberance is a vibe. It’s not from calculations of economics, or justice, or trust, but of Trump being a chaos agent who reliably conveys their cultural grievances, like a torch to a bonfire. In a recent interview with Jessica Tarlov, he explained it this way.
“A lot of the people I talk to are in the MAGA movement because it is their identity. That is more important to them than what politics means to them. It’s almost insincere to debate politics with so many people who are in the MAGA movement because the politics is just almost the gibberish used to portray and perform their allegiance to an identity, to being a part of something…Their experience of being a MAGA supporter is actually separate from the effects of government. They don’t see those as connective. In fact, the thing they get most out of MAGA is not the policies from MAGA but the identity that they get within their community.”
I am not one to begrudge people the sustenance they get from being in community. We all need connection to be healthy. And, yet, a problem with Trumpism is the utter lack of interest or compassion for people beyond the movement. Ask a Capitol police officer about 1/6/21, how the chest thumping for “law and order” doesn’t apply to MAGA rioters.
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I think of those children in Tehran who had no grief with you, me, or the MAGA faithful that pour into Trump rallies to validate and cheer on a convicted fraudster and adjudicated sexual predator. And I know that the MAGA faithful have zero empathy for the dead Iranian children and their families, just as they have no empathy for Renee Good, Alex Pretti and their families. It’s not a faith community; it’s a bad faith community, and it has already cost us dearly.
—tjc
