egg

Landman

A great Ausi take again. Worth the read imo. '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 fucking 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 fuck 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 fuck yourself. Seriously. Go fuck 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. Fucking wanker.'

I think it's hard to be ecstatic or devastated about it - there's no right decision imo, and there are solid arguments for and against. On balance, I'm still against it.

Vincent

Ha!! The expectation, and entitlement of gen z is unreal. I have a degree, I should get the job I want. Behave. They should all be made to watch Layer Cake and understand the way of the world.

Expectation, and entitlement, they're small things that annoy me.

Yep. The idiot has said he'll "take Cuba" next. It's only been a year and a bit.

Sisters

As long as they don't try to find it, or be anywhere that I am, I can live with that.

Magnificent 😁

Yep. The only way the attacks on the Gulf states have a chance of stopping is for the US to withdraw. It'll then be a slug fest between Iran and Israel, who'll carry on smashing up Lebanon with impunity, steal south Lebanon, Hezbollah will be armed to resist that, Iran will be hit more in response, rinse and repeat. Fortunately the wider world are starting to see the issue, and refusing to be coerced into joining the party.

Bless him. We don't need you, you're shit, where are you, we need you, we never needed you, the war is won, we haven't won yet...feck knows what winning looks like, how do I get out of this mess... He's absolutely lost it.

That's only acceptable when it conincides with the Cheltenham festival. The Guinness village on Paddy's day is brilliant.

Controlled

Jo is lovely, but not on often enough. Lucy Verasmy has disappeared though.