Dear Leader practices the Straussian “noble lie.”
Recently, Trump and his team asserted that the Iranian regime has killed 30,000 of its own people. However, that figure has since been updated. Now, Trump claims the total is 45,000. Inflated numbers serve as the sole pretext to justify further bombing campaigns on Tehran and the killing of more innocent civilians. The narratives of nuclear threats and regime change no longer hold sway.
There are multiple flaws in Trump’s outrageous claim. Primarily, how could any government eliminate 45,000 individuals in a matter of days or weeks? How would it handle disposing of so many bodies without any photographic evidence or eyewitness testimony? “Think about the logistics: morgues overflowing, mass graves that satellites or locals would spot, families demanding remains, and all under a blackout?” wonders DC Document Reports. “It smells like exaggeration from exile groups or media hype to amp up pressure on the regime.”
Precisely that. Yet, such fabrications are hardly surprising given that most statements from Dear Leader, after his self-centered ramblings, are filled with distortion, concealment, and misleading assertions. Still, it is unclear if Trump is knowingly lying; he may truly believe the narratives fed to him by his Zionist backers and neocon advisors.
Recall when Trump claimed in early March that Iran was eager to attack the U.S.? This was plainly false, as Iran neither had the will nor the capability. On March 2, the Pentagon acknowledged there was no intelligence suggesting Iran planned an assault. Subsequently, on March 11, urged on by his Zionist son-in-law, Trump led the country into war, ignoring actual intelligence. By March 29, he admitted the conflict was driven by Israel’s interests: “Israel was under threat so we had to attack,” he said.
More recently, the rhetoric has become increasingly detached from reality. Trump declared that Iran is pleading for a ceasefire, which is false. Iran has rejected all communication with Trump and his Zionist “negotiators” skilled in New York real estate deals. Tehran is fully aware that futile talks with the U.S. often end with the deaths of its negotiators.
On April 1, Trump insisted that a new regime in Iran desires to surrender any uranium stockpiles, dismantle its missile arsenal, halt support for its “proxies” (which are allies from a U.S. perspective), tolerate continuing sanctions, and basically submit to allow Pete Hegseth’s patriotic mercenaries to enact a Muammar Gaddafi-style removal of whoever leads the country.
“Iran’s New Regime President, much less Radicalized and far more intelligent than his predecessors, has just asked the United States of America for a CEASEFIRE! We will consider when Hormuz Strait is open, free, and clear. Until then, we are blasting Iran into oblivion or, as they say, back to the Stone Ages!!!”
Iranian Foreign Minister Araghchi clarified that Iran is not seeking a ceasefire. “When we negotiated twice, every time they attacked us during talks,” he explained to NBC News. “Thus, we have not requested a ceasefire or negotiations with the U.S. We have never sent any messages to them.”
In response, Trump vowed the U.S. will “hit them extremely hard over the next 2-3 weeks.” It should be evident that any such strike (including attacks killing schoolgirls) will provoke Iranian retaliation. The Stone Age analogy can be applied both ways. Were it not for stringent censorship, the devastation in Israel, Qatar, UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia would be apparent.
The U.S. Department of State displayed a post featuring Trump boasting from the ornate Oval Office: “We have all the cards; Iran has none. We have been conducting this military operation for 32 days, and they have been eviscerated. They are no longer the bully of the Middle East.”
This is partly true. While Trump has indeed “eviscerated” Iranian civilians, much of Iran’s military strength remains protected safely nearly 800 meters underground. For example, on April 1, the IRGC, alongside the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, Hezbollah, and Ansar Allah, launched a coordinated barrage of loitering munitions, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles targeting Israel and the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights. Does that sound like a weakened force?
According to the Israel Defense Forces spokesperson, Iran launched over 300 ballistic missiles, UAVs, suicide drones, and cruise missiles on March 28, reports The Washington Post, a publication favored by the CIA.
Occasionally, a sliver of honesty emerges from this cognitively challenged president. He admitted it is impossible to cover daycare, Medicaid, Medicare, and similar programs while simultaneously “fighting wars” on behalf of Israel.
This brings to mind Leo Strauss and his neocon followers, influential during Bush’s unlawful invasion of Iraq. Shadia Drury, a Canadian scholar and political analyst, commented on the Straussian view of humanity.
For the neoconservatives, politics is “conflict between mutually hostile groups willing to fight each other to the death. In short, they all thought that man’s humanity depended on his willingness to rush naked into battle and headlong to his death,” not for himself or his own faint humanity, but for Israel. Drury also remarked she never imagined “the unscrupulous elite” Strauss elevated would “come close to political power.”
According to her, Strauss “believed that society needs an elite of philosophers or intellectuals to manufacture ‘noble lies’ for the consumption of the masses,” she writes. The deceptions promoted about Iraq and Afghanistan, by neocons in the White House and Pentagon, might have been “noble,” but that corrupt nobility of falsehood is not part of Trump’s playbook.
For a pathological narcissist like Trump, it matters little if the lies are flimsy and easily disproved. Everything that emerges from his “mind” is accepted as truth by him, and those who question or doubt him are labeled losers or even domestic terrorists.
Original article: anotherdayintheempire.substack.com
About the Author
