THE CASE FOR LIMITING GOVERNMENT.

Last week, John Puri entertained National Review readers with "A List of Things Democrats Might Do If They Retake Power."  I think it was seasoned with postmodern irony, and his concluding "Truly frightening stuff. Obviously, any party that would do such things should never be given complete political power" should have been the tell.  Scroll through the list, dear reader, and put yourself in the position of a nodding donkey braying "Trump did that, Trump did that."

POLITICS DIVIDES.

Election Day commences in about six hours up in the White Mountains, and an Associated Press report breathes a sense of gathering gloom.

Voters across the United States are getting their word in, too, as they determine which party controls the Senate and the House and takes charge of governors' offices, legislatures and state leadership posts in the final two years of Republican Donald Trump's presidency.

What many of them see is that the America they've known is slipping away.

They see lawlessness coming from those who create the laws. They see hate stirred by politicians among neighbors, corruption at every turn, billionaires ruling the roost and a culture that doesn't speak to how they live — in short, American bedrock at risk of crumbling. Not to mention those crazy gas prices.

In dozens of Associated Press interviews with people who cast ballots at advance polling places or drop boxes across the country, the angst was palpable, most sharply from those who oppose Trump but also from many who support him.

Just another first Tuesday in November for libertarians, argues Reason's Nick Gillespie.

As someone who has never voted for a winning candidate at any level, nothing would please me more than to be able to cast a ballot for a major party politician who might actually have a chance at victory. I'm a principled small "l" libertarian, but that doesn't mean I'm a tough vote to win. All you have to do is be in favor of limiting the size, scope, and spending of government. But it turns out that neither major party ever seems to nominate politicians at any level who come close to following that groove. Which is depressing as hell.

It doesn't do his peace of mind, or mine, any good to contemplate that whoever secures a majority in a legislative body will immediately claim some sort of mandate to implement their plans, nevermind that the electorate are in the manner of old William Buckley, straddling history and yelling "Stop!"

HOW DARE THEY CRY WITH THEIR MOUTHS FULL?

This morning, James Joyner with Outside the Beltway characteristically quoted at length from the usual coastal establishmentarian sources covering the latest French call for a visit from the Prussians and then posed a question or two.

While immigration is a longstanding target of right-wing populists, with the exception of Italy, none of these countries experienced a significant influx of refugees from the Syrian civil war. France, of course, has long had a large population of migrants from the Middle East and North Africa, resulting from its colonial policies.

The protests continue to baffle me. All of these countries have considerably more generous social welfare programs—from health care to education subsidies to unemployment benefits to childcare support to retirement pensions—than the United States. Most of them have more representative political systems, allowing niche parties to gain representation in the legislature. The justification for rioting in the streets is hard to fathom.

The sarcasm is strong in this one.  The previous day, he summarized a roundup of quotes from the same sort of sources thus:

Politicians are loath to tell voters things they don’t want to hear. Telling them that they can have all sorts of wonderful things and someone else will pay for them is a surefire crowd-pleaser.

And that’s just when the penalty for telling them the truth is that they’ll vote for the demagogue. Add to that a political culture where they’ll riot in the streets for weeks on end, and you get, well, France.

Perhaps, in time, the proprietors of Outside the Beltway will figure out that no matter the institutional arrangements, governance, in addition to being hard, ought be attempted sparingly.

LET THE THING BE PRESSED.

According to Curt of Flopping Aces, "Iran Is Losing Its Missiles, Its Money, and Its Nerve … And the World Is Already Planning What Comes Next."  The opening paragraphs suggested that fixed fortifications remain monuments to the stupidity of mankind.

The Islamic Republic’s president has admitted that 1,500 personnel stationed at its missile launchers were killed, confirming devastating losses inside the regime’s most important military force.

Masoud Pezeshkian said some of those personnel had remained inside launcher shelters for months without returning home. He intended to praise their sacrifice and shame what he called “freeloaders” in society.

These were not ordinary infantry losses. Personnel stationed at ballistic-missile launchers include crews trained to transport, erect, prepare, fuel, arm and fire the weapons that form the backbone of the regime’s conventional deterrence.

They also coordinate targeting data, prepare launch sites, operate inside underground missile facilities, conceal equipment and relocate mobile launchers before they can be detected and destroyed.

Those skills take time to develop. Missiles and damaged vehicles can eventually be replaced. Experienced crews capable of operating them under attack cannot be regenerated quickly.

The admission also reveals the effectiveness of American and Israeli intelligence. Mobile launchers are designed to disperse, hide and move rapidly. Underground “missile cities” were presented as nearly untouchable. Losing 1,500 personnel around launcher operations indicates that launch sites, shelters or crews preparing to fire were repeatedly located and struck.

Pezeshkian’s description of personnel remaining underground for months exposes the operational strain. Crews were living under constant threat, with limited rotation and little confidence that leaving their shelters was safe.

That helps explain why the Islamic Republic’s launch tempo declined as the conflict continued. The regime was not merely consuming missile stocks. Its launch infrastructure and the trained personnel needed to operate it were being depleted.

The Islamic Republic has spent decades presenting its missile force as the untouchable foundation of regional deterrence. Pezeshkian has now provided an official number showing that the force was penetrated and suffered heavy specialized losses.

He intended to deliver a speech about sacrifice and unity. He instead admitted how deeply the war damaged the military capability the regime depends on most.

Good.

DOING EVERYTHING BUT SOLVING THE PROBLEM.

Today's levity from Common Dreams is Michael Waldman's "The One Issue the Midterm Victors Must Solve? Corruption."  The secondary headline continues, "If they do not, we will be sentenced to one election after another where parties club each other with populist anger, alternating in power with little changing."  That might be an opportunity to caution partisans not to treat their temporary majority as a mandate to implement their full wish list, the way things have gone throughout this century in these United States.

I suspect both major parties are more interested in playing to the hopes of their bases than in coming up with policy tweaks that would attract some voters who are choosing the least unappetizing prix-fixe dinner being doled out.  What the voters seem to be doing is gridlocking the national government to gum up the swill-cooking, and relocating to more convivial states or localities within states.  But the communist coalition within the Democrat caucus still hasn't gotten the memo.  "If that means the national Democrats pay more attention to the interior of the country and less to the aesthetic preferences of Hollywood, Silicon Valley, and the Northeast Corridor, that might be for the good."

But after Donald Trump handed the Democrats a gift in those Georgia runoff elections, the Democrats thought they had an opportunity for Christmas by July.  "A common observation this week is that Joe Biden cannot pass Franklin Roosevelt- or Lyndon Johnson-scale legislation without first having Franklin Roosevelt- or Lyndon Johnson-scale Congressional majorities."  Which they don't have, and whatever schmoozing skills the president might have once had don't work so well.

Mr Waldman recognises that changes in the control of a Congress, and sometimes of the party holding the White House, is the only tool the voters have to stop the current government from implementing their wish list in full.  "Political scientists call this a thermostatic election. Voters adjust the temperature by turning the dial away from perceived overreaches."  He could, at that point, have suggested a change in the apportionment of Congress in order to provide a policy bundle less unpleasant to median voters.  There are serious suggestions circulating in formal and informal ways.  That's not where he wants to go.  "But at times candidates have an agenda, detailed or implicit. Those are the years that produce the biggest change."  Yes, the Silent Generation's Watergate Caucus, the Boomers' Contract with America, and what he interprets as the early Millennials' social-democratic-populism.  But, it being a Common Dreams column, it has to be about "But Trump" rather than about working the perceived discontent voters have with corruption.  In so doing, he misses the opportunity to work the problem.

A survey by the Brennan Center earlier this year found an unusual and wide revulsion against corruption. It also found that voters blame Democrats as well as Republicans.

As they should.  Corruption is the natural outcome of bipartisan consensus and compromise, which sounds nice as it generates rents for the political class to share.  Suggest that a massive rollback of federal powers, say to the enumerated and limited powers the Federal Constitution spells out, though, and you probably don't get published on Common Dreams any more.

LET THE THING BE PRESSED.

At CNN, David Goldman argues, "Trump backed Iran into a corner. The regime isn’t blinking."  That might be for the benefit of the Never Trumpers and the remaining sane Democrats.

The US-led blockade and sanctions against Iran are working. Their success could determine the next phase of the war.

Iran's remaining oil for sale is nearly exhausted. Its crude production has been cut in half. The regime's primary source of revenue is drying up. Hyperinflation has left the economy in ruins.

Meanwhile, the flow of oil from other Gulf nations through the Strait of Hormuz, over which Iran had once wielded considerable influence, has effectively returned to normal.

But Iran shows no signs of folding yet. The regime isn't willing to give any concessions on its nuclear program, and negotiations on freedom of transit through the Strait of Hormuz have repeatedly stalled.

Why, when Iran's government acknowledges its economy faces a historic catastrophe, is the regime refusing to give in?

Iran has been here before. Five decades of operating successfully through punishing sanctions have taught the Iranian regime a thing or two about how to cope. Its brutal and ongoing crackdown on protests has quelled a public revolt. And the high cost of America's ongoing operation has made the status quo politically toxic for Iran's enemy.

That's why the regime may be in a far better position than it seems.

It's the Middle East, and people playing double games means it must be Tuesday.

Iran's lack of willingness to bend suggests sanctions evasion is still taking place, said Michelle Brouhard, head of policy and geopolitical risk at Kpler.

"The Iranian regime is really good at managing their country without resources," she said. "I don't think Iran is at a tipping point. So they must be receiving funds from somewhere."

Where there's smoke, there may be fire, but detecting sanctions evasion is tricky.

Iran may be transporting oil over land to Khazakstan and Russia, or by water via the Caspian Sea, suggested Brown, who noted Iran has routinely disguised its exported oil as Iraqi, and it has transferred oil to other nations' ships to get crude out of the strait. And the regime has trustees in many surrounding nations who secretively conduct transactions for the regime in the form of US dollars, cryptocurrency or other means to avoid detection, according to Brown.

Among the most intriguing possibilities, Brouhard said, is that Gulf nations exporting oil are surreptitiously paying Iran fees in exchange for safe transit through the Strait of Hormuz – even as they're secured by US military escorts. No hard evidence of such an arrangement exists, but Mazarei and Brown also said they heard rumblings that oil producers were delivering Iran a security toll to ensure safe passage.

Iran has continued to attack some tankers shuttling oil through the strait – but those could be ships that refused to pay a toll, Brouhard suggested.

News accounts suggest eleven ships hit by something explosive over the weekend.  There are no news accounts of the Iranians losing 33 ships as Our President has threatened.  It could be the mullahs and their True Believer enforcers are waiting past the Israeli and United States elections.  "That unsustainable status quo could be why Iran has been patiently waiting out the Trump administration. It may have lost its leverage in the oil market, and its economy has been battered, but Iran may be able to outlast the United States' willingness to stay the (expensive) course."  Or it might be True Believers with matchbooks and sections of gas main to play with.  Perhaps clarity will soon come, or perhaps Israeli and United States intelligence analysts are counselling forbearance, refraining from bombing that might make Iranian civilians less unfavorably disposed toward their facsimile of a government.

That's one way for the thing to be pressed.

NUTS!

"Iran indicates it's received an official US response to its latest offer on ending the war."  That response might have been framed more politely.

Iranian officials indicated Wednesday they have received an official U.S. response to Tehran's latest proposal to end the seven-month war, which U.S. President Donald Trump had publicly rejected just days earlier.

The officials did not say what the response contained and whether it was a rejection.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi presented the U.S. response to President Masoud Pezeshkian at a Cabinet meeting, government spokesperson Fatemeh Mohajerani told the state-run IRNA news agency.

"We will make every effort to bring the agreement to fruition and will firmly stand up for the rights of the Iranian people," Pezeshkian said. "The agreement must now be based on a win-win strategy."

Not that it matters in any case, as Messrs Araghchi and Pezeshkian are figureheads.  Once their diplomatic courtesy visit to New York for the opening of the United Nations fall session timed out, Secretary of State Rubio asked them to leave.

There is literally no reason to allow these people to remain in the United States. The regime, no matter who it sends to any meeting, is not, will not, and never has negotiated in good faith. They will not keep any agreement struck. They will lie to the American negotiators and they will lie to their own people. It is becoming increasingly apparent that the only way out is through; that the only way we will see a real end to this problem is with the final ending of the Islamic Republic.

In the waiting game, the United States Navy escorting shuttle tankers through the Strait of Hormuz is preventing crude oil prices from rising to levels the doomsayers were anticipating last spring.  But refining capacity outside the Gulf is under strain, and ferrying refined product, even heavy distillates, rather than crude, is asking for trouble as long as there are True Believers with sections of gas main and a box of matches.

The war has become an economic endurance test. Iran has tried to push world energy prices higher with attacks on the region's oil shipping routes; the United States, in turn, has aimed to wreck Iran's economy by blockading its ports since June and slapping it with increasingly tough sanctions.

As election seasons in Israel and the United States come to their end, perhaps will come clarity.

CHOKE ON IT.

Last week, the mullahs' travelling stooge complained, "It cannot be the case that everyone benefits from the Strait of Hormuz while we are denied access."  One of Iran's military leaders, Amir Hatam, sought to raise the pressure.  "If Iran cannot trade, if Iran cannot live, no one will be able to trade or live."  Pretty big talk from somebody with little leverage.

That article also quotes Our President, perhaps correctly evaluating the correlation of forces.  "They want to make a deal to open the Hormuz Strait immediately because they're losing so badly."  He's still teasing a deal.  "Iran is seeking sanctions relief, access to frozen assets and an easing of U.S. pressure before making its biggest concessions. The Trump administration says there will be no agreement unless Tehran first makes concrete progress on its nuclear program."

The correlation of forces have never been more favorable for an end to the mullahs' nuclear ambitions, their terrorizing of the civilian population, and the end of their financing of assorted delinquents wrapping themselves in theology throughout Asia Minor and the rest of the world.  Let the anaconda's coils continue to tighten.

TAKE THE MULLAHS' STOOGE UP ON HIS OFFER.

"In defiant speech, Pezeshkian calls out Trump and says Iran will fight 'until our last breath'."

Because of course he did.

Iran's president said Wednesday that his people have been "victims of terrorism" by the United States, delivering a rare wartime speech at the U.N. General Assembly a day after President Donald Trump said he may "annihilate" the Islamic Republic if a deal isn't reached soon to end the nearly seven-month war.

The defiant speech by President Masoud Pezeshkian marked a striking instance of a foreign leader addressing the world body while their country is at war with the host nation. While defending his country, Pezeshkian held up large photos of the late Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and the more than 150 Iranian schoolchildren killed on the first days of the war.

"We have only defended ourselves. We are not terrorists," Pezeshkian said at the General Assembly. "Our innocent people have been the targets of cowardly attacks and aggressions imposed upon our country. And we defended ourselves with utmost strength. America and Israel attacked us."

Gee, you think riling up your starveling base to yell "Death to Israel, death to America" for nearly a half century is a good way to win friends and influence people?  Reap what you sow, stooge.

Our diplomats are having none of it.

He added of the United States: "Yes they did hit us, but we did not bend the knee." Toward the end of his speech, Pezeshkian called out Trump by name.

"It must be understood by Mr. Trump and those who seek to bully us that we are ready for dialogue and diplomacy and negotiations without accepting the language of force," he said.

Shortly after, both U.S. and Israeli officials blasted the speech, saying that it was hypocritical for the Islamic Republic to present itself as the victims of the world.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters: "I don't know what standing Iran has to lecture anyone on human rights or the international system when they habitually violate it."

The stooge had to posture that way because his political masters in Teheran speak their own language of force.  "Iran has presented the US with a roadmap to end the war that echoes the two countries' June agreement — a 60-day ceasefire, the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, and groundwork for further talks — The National reported."  Same nonsense, different talking head.  Renounce the nukes, Iran, and stop funding those proxies, and then we can lift the sanctions and let your leaky ships sail.

THE UNITED NATIONS, FAILING AT ITS CORE MISSIONS.

It's long been a useless debating society contributing to traffic jams in New York.

A look at the resolutions passed by last year's General Assembly—often nonbinding, unlike those of the U.N. Security Council—shows an organization that meddles in the domestic politics of its members while failing to pursue its stated mission to "maintain international peace and security."

Active wars rage in Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Middle East, with internecine conflicts erupting yearly in Latin America and the Caribbean. Yet the previous General Assembly passed five times as many U.N. resolutions directed at Israel as any other nation, including countries with notorious human rights records like Cuba, Iran, and Myanmar.

Thanks to its unwieldy organizational structure, the U.N. is highly susceptible to waste, fraud, and abuse. It can't enforce the policies it adopts, and its actions often depend on the whims of the Security Council, whose five permanent members opportunistically exercise veto power. Unable to do much to curtail global conflicts, the U.N. has focused on issues better handled by domestic governments, like environmental laws and racial justice.

The incongruent nature of its mission and what happens in practice are perhaps best seen in the U.N.'s Human Rights Council, which is currently presided over by a representative of Indonesia, whose government sanctions arbitrary killings, torture, and crackdowns on dissent, according to the State Department's 2024 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices.

That might be about as well as any international organization can do.  Each country gets one vote in the General Assembly.  That's obviously less than democratic, if you apportion by population.  Five permanent members of the Security Council can gridlock anything they don't like.  Its continued existence at least gives the sort of process-worshipper who sees value in a rules based international order as something to invoke, or perhaps an opportunity to write position papers.

BUCKLE IN.

It's the opening week for the United Nations in New York, with many leaders of member countries showing up to preen for the cameras and use their diplomatic immunity to make Manhattan traffic even more gridlocked.  After that, Noah Rothman suggests, things could get tense.  "At that point, the Iranian regime will not be flat broke, but it will be strapped enough that it will have to triage its resources or further inflate the currency — putting salaries in the pockets of regime officials, soldiers, and proxies at the expense of the rial’s value."

THE THOUSAND DESCRIPTIONS OF RENT SEEKERS.

In The Daily Economy, Vincent Geloso comes up with an infelicitous new one, "beefsteak socialists," brownish on the outside, red on the inside, that brown referring to a shirt, to describe a Rube Goldberg-esque accretion of reform upon reform that provides plenty of work for bureaucrats and rent-seekers, each accretion further reducing allocative efficiency.

Two problems immediately emerged. First, this enlargement of government power raised the value of possessing government. Second, government interventions produce unintended consequences. As a result, rather than repeal the original measure, governments frequently respond with another intervention, followed by another. The unintended consequences multiply, and so do the interventions. Growth grinds down to a halt.

There is a risk in blowing all the interventions up and starting over.  Mr Geloso uses the accretion of interventions in Chile leading to a quasi-Marxist government gaining control over a corpse, after which a military coup and shock therapy might have been the most extreme form of starting over.  On a smaller scale, abolishing the Interstate Commerce Commission and privatizing Conrail might have done some good, that is, until the regulatory state started adding on again.

That, Mr Geloso argues, is the nature of public choice: rent-seekers and careerists in the saddle.

The danger for the United States is not that it has reproduced Chile in 1973. It plainly has not. (Yet.) The danger is that American politics is beginning to reproduce the underlying dynamic: rival movements encouraging one another to abandon liberal restraints.

By "liberal restraints," he means modestly ambitious governance with enumerated, separated, and limited powers.  That's not how one makes a name in "public service," and that's how things go wrong.  "There must first be a long process of politicization of every aspect of social and economic life. Reverse that politicization and you halt the weakening."

THE NOT-SO-COLLATERAL DAMAGE OF LIBERATING TOLERANCE.

There's something of a Mark J. Perry Venn diagram to be contemplated featuring "People who denounce white Christian extremism" and "People who denounce people who denounce radical Islamic terrorism."  The good news: one of the family members reading names in New York this morning denounced "radical Islamic terrorism" to the applause of the crowd.

A 9/11 widow just rent rogue in NYC…

She read her husbands name and then called out Islamic terror and Saudi Arabia.

She called out Bush, Obama, Biden and JD Vance/Trump while they sat right in front of her. The entire crowd at ground zero cheered. pic.twitter.com/xICEZL6FOv

— Geiger Capital (@Geiger_Capital) September 11, 2026

She's undoubtedly getting grief from the usual suspects.

The first step in undoing the deleterious effects of liberating tolerance, and its obnoxious manifestations in cancel culture is to recognize that it exists, and it is wrong.  Consider, dear reader, the Katyn massacre.

Herbert Marcuse might have been early into his exile, and the 1950s, 1960s attempts by leftist thinkers to distinguish revolutionary from reactionary violence were a few years away.  The institutional left of that era, however, involved cancel culture.  As long as the Hitler-Stalin, Ribbentrop-Molotov agreements to carve up Poland were in place, nobody in the American left would dare say what they ought to have been saying about Nazi Germany.  During the carve-up of Poland, it was Soviet organs of state security murdered those Polish officers, and it was Soviet propagandists who asserted those dead officers were simply another day at the ditch for the Einsatzgruppen.

LET THE POSTURING CONTINUE.

Trust a quartet of Washington Post reporters to put the most favorable spin on it.  "Under pressure, Iran lashes out and ramps up rhetoric."  I suspect they're running out of gas mains to dig up and pack with propellant.  But whatever.  "Amid economic pressure and a fight to retain diplomatic leverage via control over the Strait of Hormuz, Tehran is lashing out with increasingly bellicose rhetoric and, on Thursday, a strike on U.S. forces in Kuwait."

CONFLICT CREEP.

Outside the Beltway's James Joyner, who knows a few things about international relations (countries boffing each other, mostly), suggests that what goes on across the Berezina might be worth paying attention to.

Whether this is “state sponsored terrorism” really depends on the nature of the attack. If it was simply aimed at a cargo plane transporting materiel to Ukrainian forces, it is a legitimate military target and any incidental loss of civilian life would be collateral damage. If, on the other hand, it was intended to destroy civilian infrastructure to send a political message, it’s terrorism.

Regardless, it represents an escalation in the proxy war with Russia. While we’ve supported—rightly, in my view—Ukraine against Russia’s illegal invasion, supplying intelligence support and ever-more-lethal weapons, we’ve been careful not to directly participate in hostilities against Russia. Until now, Russia has assiduously avoided kinetic attacks into NATO territory, although there have been violations of NATO airspace and some stray shots that have made it across the border into Poland.

A direct attack on a core NATO ally could certainly trigger enforcement action under Article 5. There will be little appetite for a direct war with Russia, but this may result in further lengthening of the leash put on Ukraine’s use of Western assets.

The dogs of war have been given longer leash for some time, possibly for nearly twenty years looking back to that color revolution in Ukraine that put the current government in power.  Arguably, the War was festering for many years prior to 1939, considering the Spanish civil war, Japan's imperial ambitions in China, and the colonies of the nineteenth century empires changing hands.  Buckle in.

LET THE THING BE PRESSED.

Over the weekend, United States Central Command claim to have destroyed drones or rockets carrying mines (or perhaps trash bags or beachballs) in order to effect some kind of closure of Hormuz, or at least the spooking of energy traders.  In retaliation, the mullahs flipped some flying gas mains toward United States bases in Jordan, apparently without effect.  We'll see what Our President orders up.

EXCESSIVE COMPLEXITY PRODUCES DIMINISHING RETURNS.

Anyone who has suffered through endless faculty meetings knows that.  The Credentialed Experts who worship process are beginning to figure it out.

All these ways of seeing our world converge dynamically in the current historical moment: this Fourth Turning, or Long Emergency — however you label it — in the arc of our techno-industrial order of things. A lot of these things are coming apart now, and in astounding ways, and it remains to be seen what we will do with these broken and discarded parts, and whether any of it can be put back together in a satisfactory way.

Saecular entropy, properly understood, cannot be reversed.  The saecular order to come will hold surprises.

YOU AND WHOSE NAVY?

"Iran threatens 45 tankers with fines, confiscation in Hormuz escalation."  Regime dead-enders think they've identified the ships participating in the shuttle operation transloading Gulf Arabian product to ships sheltering well away from the mullahs' putative blockade.

THE GAS PUMP PAIN ARISES MAINLY IN UKRAINE?

The Establishment's Narrative^(TM) on higher summer gasoline prices is "It's All Trump's Fault."  These are the same fear-mongers who were sounding off about crude oil prices north of $175 per barrel in the aftermath of rogue Iranian elements attempting to close the Strait of Hormuz.

YOUR SCOLDING IS NO LONGER EFFECTIVE.

I'd really rather the culture warriors types leave Sophie Cunningham be, to sink those trilighters and protect her teammates. But the po-faced common scolds, such as supposed sports pundit Jason Page, have to contextualize her celebrating a milestone birthday at a country bar in downtown Indianapolis and energetically delivering that boot, courtesy of the Red White and Blue.

And again… tell me exactly what you are about without telling me exactly what you are about.

Just own who you are and stop talking about “loving everybody”. https://t.co/bSAUDTD3Mk

— Jason Page (@TheBackPage) August 15, 2026

He ran out of ripostes faster than Iran ran out of missiles, and well down the thread somebody posted, "They're bodying you in the comments and you deserve it."  Maybe the ratio came in a boot.

Any day we discover the Anointed losing their power to scold is a good day.