Everybody loves a good war, don’t they?

Sure they do!

Real explosions (strangely not as spectacular as the CGI stuff) and mangled bodies (they always blur out the really disgusting stuff, which they never blur in the movies) are back on the 24/7 news cycle for a while. For a while. And since the tastiest new Yay! War! is always happening somewhere else — not where you are — you can watch it with some emotional detachment. Or, of course, if you just happen to be a moral and sensitive human, you can choose to empathize with the victims the corporate media is allowed to show you. You know, the bodies of the children belonging to “our allies” while the child corpses of the “others” are not shown, just the massive destruction caused by the weapons of “our allies.”

Yay! War! For a while. For how long?

Depending on the cost, Yay! War! doesn’t usually last too long.

Oh! Not the actual cost of the war. That is irrelevant. Any old country can always afford a good war. In fact, the war itself can go on for years (Ukraine, Congo, Libya, Sudan, Yemen, Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Iran, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Central and South America, etc.). The only cost the most important people are interested in comes when “war fatigue” sets in at the upper reaches of the corporate structures that sell both the products you consume and the means to continue the killing. When it becomes noticeable (the number-crunchers tell you) by certain executives (those who answer to the CEO) that viewers are tuning out, no longer interested in buying steamy cheesy pizzas or massive new trucks that careen over inaccessible off-road landscapes, no longer watch the ads flashing between the gore, the ads that are calculated to entice the overworked and underpaid to fly to a vacation resort in a tropical destination on an airline that loves you and will care for you and treat you like an oil billionaire, even if you have to fly economy in those sleek new money-making jet-powered machines.

If the debt-ridden underclass and upper middle class wannabes have to be sold these items (and many more) while watching rockets hit, watching buildings collapse and fires rage in deserted streets for more than a few days and nights, they tend to turn away and flee to their natural habitat, the ever-loving couch, and binge a series on Netflix or Amazon Prime. These are the same consumer addicts who eventually, in every personal or national crisis have one thing that they do for certain: they drive a gasoline-powered 2-ton mass of metal, plastic and rubber to their local Ralphs or Safeway and stock up on half-a-dozen pizzas, a couple of gallons of cola, plenty of ice cream, and then drive (on average) 1.7 miles back to their cave to hunker down on their beloved (should I remove the plastic covering?) couch for an extended weekend of drama and comedy interspersed with sport (seasonal preferences), reality TV and trips to the shitter to get rid of the crap they have been ingesting.

The reporters and news anchors for the blood-thirsty media (left, right or center) love Yay! War! and are disappointed to see coverage of it end. As any good anchor person will tell you: Reading reports of massive destruction and recounting tales of human suffering makes you feel, well, alive!

Yay! War! is soon relegated to the seven seconds after commercial #3 and before the weather.

The real work, as people in the infotainment business will tell you, is to shape the Six-O’clock or Eight O’clock Eyewitness News so that it contains a variety of items that hold the short attention span of viewers until its time for the next commercial. The smiling (always smile) news team is obliged by the station owners to first of all stir your fear (the easiest emotion to generate) and show you how unsafe your neighborhood/city really is, and how the police (your angels in black or very dark blue) have put out a BOLO (be on the lookout) for a criminal you might actually know or have seen or imagine you saw: “The offender is described as a white male in his 30s or 40s. He is approximately 6 feet tall with a medium build and broad shoulders. He was reported to have tobacco-like staining on his right fingertips, indicating he is a possible smoker.” (Hmmm, white skin, do you think I put that in there to annoy supremacists? No. No. As much as I love to jab those idiots, the quote was from an actual BOLO: Here.)

Anyway, meanwhile, the current Yay! War! (choose from the list above) rages on in some remote place, indicated by blue and red areas outlined on an incomprehensible map the station flashes for three long seconds on the green screen behind your smiling host (male or female, they all smile) during what is referred to as the World News segment. After 10 seconds of World News and a fresh commercial about a possible medical emergency you might experience unless you take the drug being offered (dangers explained in six seconds by a voice going at incredible speed). Then it’s back to the daily grind: robbery, a murder or two, a car chase, a drug bust, the latest celebrity gossip provided to you by E!, and the cute closer about a lost cat or dog returning home after years on the road, or how a couple over 100 years old got married at their retirement facility.

Oil. Yeah, oil. I didn’t mention oil.

Yay! War!

On what will go down in history as Day 61, the first call the Orange Monster made (after listening once again to his favorite tune Wooly Bully by Sam the Sham and the Pharos) was to his good friend and family (Jarod) benefactor MBS (Master Bone Snipper), assuring him and the other sheiks in the region that oil was not on the agenda — well, the destruction of oil fields or the strangulation of the oil trade in the Strait of Hormuz was not on the agenda because (as every American president knows) high oil prices are bad for elections (if you plan on actually having new elections), and anyway it wouldn’t look good for his image because not even he could successfully lie $10 per gallon gasoline down to $1.50 per gallon. He knows you can’t squeeze a Big Lie into a sardine can. Into a 500g Lavazza coffee can, maybe.

Without going too deeply (difficult job for him to refrain from) into the possible name changes for the Gulfs in that region (Persian Gulf to Gulf of Saud; Gulf of Oman to Gulf of Qatar, as thanks for the jet), the Orange Monster kept his calls rather business-like, emphasizing that the price of oil would remain stable, yet mentioning by-the-way how pleased he was with the efficient way the Ayatollahs had been dealt a blow and how he would now be able to coerce them into any deal he wanted. He might also have by-the-way mentioned that what his friend did for him was very similar to the way his hero (John Gotti, the Teflon Don) was able to use physical incentives to further negotiations: Burn down one of their bars and then ask them if they would like to buy some fire insurance. Ha ha!

Yay! War! seems to be working well in the Middle East, but it didn’t work so well at home.

Los Angeles is Burning was originally a theatrical/documentary/action production planned and choreographed by Stevie “Little Goebbels” Miller. He had recently come across the title of a play called The Iceman Cometh and his hate-filled brain grabbed it as an inspirational moment. So, without reading the play or knowing anything about it, he called Kristy (Boy! He’d like to get into her pants one day!) and Tommy the Czar, and in a conference call they told bald-headed “Lil’ G” that he should go ahead and stir the pot and they would provide any kind of verbal backup he might need.

He then called DUI-hire Pistol Petey and told him that on Day 2 of the production he would need actual military backup so Fox Noose would have some military shit to put on display before his boss’ big birthday parade on Saturday.

It was conceived to be an incitement to violence, with the hope that some dusky-skinned fellows would wield machetes and cut the heads off of a few of the ICEmen. Fox Noose would find the right tone of indignation to go with the — hopefully — Mexican cartel-inspired severed heads rolling across the white stripes of the downtown streets of Los Angeles. (Unfortunately, the traceable budget cash and the uncertain nature of the underground right-wing killer force could not be used to do the job.)

The “Lil G” original plan was to have the riots begin in Hollywood by ordering ICEmen to attack the Home Depot on Sunset Boulevard. But after reconnaissance by plainclothes agents, it became quite clear that the majority of customers (lots of costumed street entertainers and off-duty cops from the Hollywood Division) and employees (Korea Town is just around the corner) at the Sunset Home Depot were not of the desired skin color and race (besides, the Sunset Boulevard terrain is complex, not flat and smooth, and the high ground — the hills — could conceivably be occupied by protesters). So the location was shifted to a place closer to the federal detention centers downtown, where there are lots of homeless encampments that would play well as colorful background visuals for the roaming reporter teams from Fox Noose.

Despite the best efforts of “Lil’ G”, Kristy and Tommy the Czar — with a little help from Pistol Pete — Los Angeles did not burn to the ground. The Marines arrived from Camp Pendleton (my military school sent me there for an indoctrination weekend when I was 11), but after getting bored walking around in full gear downtown, where there is really nothing interesting to see, the Hooyah! (or is it Booyah!) boys began some internal discussions about whether or not they should ask permission to go to Universal Studios (in civvies) and on the following day go to a taping of Jimmy Kimmel (without of course identifying themselves as marines). But Call of Duty is Call of Duty and so that talk came to nothing.

Baby Huey got his Quack-a-Doodle-Doo moment on Saturday, gave a royal wave to the news teams and a meaningful wave to Kim and Boris from behind the largest bullet-proof glass box ever constructed in the United States, as various costumed extras sauntered past his bleachers (“We’ll just put some bleachers out in the sun/And have it on Highway 61”) in a variety of military uniforms (unpaid advertisement) the army has worn through the 250 years of its official existence.

The Birthday Baby was so happy that he actually stood and saluted the grunts he has absolutely no respect for and refers to as suckers and losers. Warrior Pistol Pete was forced to sit close to his slump-shouldered employer as punishment for putting the Project 2025 putsch program at risk with his Loose Lips Sink Ships folly on Signal.

Despite the parade and display of affection for old tanks and muskets, Yay! War! was not getting much traction from the upper echelons of the regime currently in power. This is unheard of in a regime modeled on the stone-faced “we are never wrong” North Korean monolith of the Kim family.

Who knows how it will proceed from here?

Could there be a palace coup brewing? Is the elongated muskrat really going to crawl back into the woodwork and be content with unrealized ketamine-induced fever dreams of lording it over DJT and Boris? Are there plots and plans, insidious maneuvers in the works to finally and forever bury the Orange Monster? Obviously the cannons fired during the parade didn’t aim in the right direction, and the tanks didn’t turn their turrets to salute the supreme narcissist with the salvo he might have deserved.

Maybe we’ll soon have Yay! War! as a “Lil’ G” production in Washington D.C., which then devolves into a Red vs. Blue civil conflict — the Blue Team aided by “our neighbors to the north” and the Red Team aided by Bukele’s Salvadoran gangs and “the cartels” from the south.

Still, even a really good Yay! War! conflagration like that wouldn’t last long on American TV. It’s baseball season. Summer vacation. Everybody is at the beach. Nobody stays in New York City during the sweltering days of July and August. Chicago gangs have other agendas and are still fighting their turf wars. Atlanta is still trying to cope with the cancellation of The Resident, a medical drama that made the city look like a place worth living in, not-dying in, because of the Chastain Park Memorial Hospital and its hot young staff of doctors. Miami is still in the iron grip of the Cuban Mafia and their star supporter Ronaldo El Magnifico. Boston? Boston only cares about when the Red Sox beat the Yankees or the Celtics win a championship. The rest of the country can go blow.

Los Angeles did not burn to the ground. San Francisco is too cold and too hilly and too full of rich people to ever risk a revolution or civil disturbance. Seattle? They can’t produce a team that actually wins championships regularly (except maybe the WNBA Seattle Storm). San Diego. Ha ha.

Yay! War! has no future in the USA.

Well, not on TV anyway.

Over here we have our own Yay! War! just down the road in Ukraine and maybe not all that far from our future.

Yay? War?