The United States has two options on the table. One requires killing roughly a quarter of Iran. The other requires admitting we started a war we couldn’t finish.
I can't argue with anything you've said. America has been declining for a long time and this regime just accelerated it. Sharing with my subscribers tomorrow.
Everything you say is spot-on, though my own timeline is a bit shorter than yours, driven by the November mid-terms
Sooner is better, in real economic terms; the question is whether Trump’s ego would allow it
To one of your later points - I saw most of this coming (I didn’t predict the Iran war because I assumed that even Trump would listen to knowledgeable advice and refrain- my bad 🤦♂️).
I took the opportunity to retire a bit early and move out of the “dollar zone”.
That move happened three weeks to the day after my retirement party, and two days after Trumps second inauguration
It was the single best decision I’ve made in the last 30 years
On Nov.6 of 2024, Donald Trump publicly stated: “Many people have told me that God spared my life [from two assassination attempts] for a reason. And that reason was to save our country and to restore America to greatness.”
The institutional ‘Christians’ who still vocally and politically support Donald Trump tend to see him as literally Godsent. Many also perceive Trump’s presidency as divinely-intended punishment against liberals. If anything, he's evidence of a great evil being unleashed onto a largely powerless world. If Trump's presidency does end up boding well for the world overall, I believe it will have been accidental.
Last year, American comedian/actor John Mulaney compared the Trump presidency to a horse that has broken loose inside a hospital: “It’s never happened before. No one knows what the horse is gonna do next, least of all the horse. He’s never been in a hospital. He’s as confused as you are."
The analogy is very funny, however legitimately worrying. Trump is the very unstable, vengefully angry and self-centered/-serving type willing to take the world for a most brutal spin, perhaps even for the sake of him making it into the historical-'greatness' books.
Trump, himself, may not have really known what he was/is trying to accomplish with attacking Iran. Meanwhile, his lame and immoral idea of creating peace is compelling one side or party that: “You’re not holding any cards.” However, human beings, both individualistically and collectively, want to feel a sense of self dignity, and therefor Trump’s you’re-not-holding-any-cards likely won’t work.
Yet, many Trump fans still admire him as some sort of genius that resists/challenges the Deep State, etcetera. And there's “the swamp” that Trump claims he'll drain — although he himself is a part of it. Since both Trump administrations kowtow(ed) to big fossil fuel, mostly via the recklessly significant loosening of environmental protections, he, far from genuinely trying to “drain the swamp”, actually wallows in it.
And then he wades even deeper into the filth by siding with big-money military industrial interests and Netanyahu's Israel in un-provokedly bombing Iran last summer and again now. ... Then again, is Donald not the first aspartame-abusing U.S. president to have also tried smoking pot but never exhaled?
I have just ingested this for the first time. Later i will bring it back up and chew through it like a savored cud. My daily reading on these subjects reinforces your conclusions. We are in for very difficult times. Meanwhile, dump dozes off as Coondick rambles on about sperm counts. I see only two options as to the position of this Junk Drawer: they either really truly dont understand the problem or any of the solutions, or they don't a round rats rump. Maybe both are true. Dump and Co: easily the worst thing to ever happen to this country.
Thank you for another trenchant and meticulous assessment of how fabulously fucked up the not-a-war war with Iran is. That felt just great. Seriously, your experience and expertise continue to be excellent wayfinders in the current political morass.
Another sober reminder that the US has not learned from the harsh, real lessons of history, as outlined in the post. We have then seen a deterioration of real leadership by both parties, past presidents and Congress, now accelerated by Trump, his incompetent regime, and the cowardly Congress. We (including me) need to stop blaming, demand competent leaders with the courage to do the hard right, and fix our country.
Good sober analysis. But haven’t you presumed the US military cannot unilaterally reopen the straight of Hormuz (as the Admin claims it can do)? Obviously it would not be easy, but IF the Straight is open to (non-Iranian) commercial shipping, the longer term economic damage you describe could be mitigated, and time might become the enemy more to the Iranian hard liners. Wouldn’t that open up other possibilities?
If the US Military could establish shipping lanes in the Strait, it would have happened already.
The challenge is, we have to be right every time. Iran has to be right only once. The asymmetry favors Iran, not the US. We would have to destory all of Iran's capabilities so that their drones and their missiles were out of range of the Strait. We'd have to occupy that land and control it. We'd have to defend it. We'd have to have extensive shipping convoy protection in the Strait itself.
If it was something we could bring about at a reasonable political cost, we'd do it.
Again, we can win, or we can lose. Trump is clearly "tired of the winning."
I fear you are correct: IF it could be done within practical constraints, “it would have happened already”.
But since I have no access to classified military briefings and intel, and can’t be a fly on the wall in conversations between Trump, his advisors, Bibi, MBS etc., I can only speculate which “experts” have been portraying the situation accurately.
Well, I do think there's a fair amount of "telling the boss what he wants to hear" in these meetings. That said, I think the US Military, CENTCOM, in particular, has probably stood up and made a statement similar to what I made in this briefing. I suspect they've also said, "our ability to ensure traffic through the Strait is limited if we employ seapower alone."
Now, let me be clear, if I was directed by the President to achieve this goal? To have free flowing of shipping through the Strait?
Yeah, I could make that happen.
I suspect I'd also say, "I need 40 divisions of men. I need at least three full-time expeditionary combat groups in the region. I need the US Air Force on 15 minute alert to bomb targets. And I need to commit those resources until rapture... or the surrender/defeat/negotiated peace of the Iranians."
That's where everyone chokes. I"m talking about deploying roughly 80% of our combat forces to Iran to hold the territory around the Strait, havinga good chunk of our strategic air forces ready to bomb whatever pop-up installations they attempt to deploy, and I'm talking roughly 50% of our Navy is there to provide combat air patrol, missile defense, etc.
That totally ignores the other element in all this, which is, "Oh and I need a shit load of munitions, so it's round the clock manufacturing from here on out."
I mean, basically, this "plan" for Iran was "let's go climb Mount Everest in our underwear with no clue, supplies, or training."
It's not surprising what happened.
Opening that strait probably requires 40 divisions. Probably requires three ESGs. Probably requires a fleet of strategic aircraft out of Diego, Ramstein, Al Udeid, Al Dhafra, Al Salem, Muwaffaq... and that's just to start. Ideally, we'd want to ramp up capability at Erbil & Al Asad, in Iraq, which means of course then we need improved garrisons in Iraq generally and around those bases.
I mean... yeah, I could come up with a plan... so can those Generals and Admirals.
I think everyone chokes when they realize that to really make this happen, requires us to leverage 70-80% of our combat capability.
We are not the country we were in the late 1980s. We are not capable of fighting wars of attrition all that easily. The Iranians would fight a harassment war, we'd have to fight denial.
As a JPMorgan Investment VP noted, as far as boots on the ground, the temperatures are now far too high. Radar and other electronics the military relies on cannot function, and soldiers would overheat and die within their vehicles. Maybe next winter? And that’s just boots on the ground…
Next winter with what army? 😂 The ground combat component of the US army is currently totally 120,000. Irans armed forces total min 1.2 million, and in the event of an invasion, would have a reserve potential of millions. Good luck with that. 👍
The IRGC owns the strait. The US can do absolutely nothing to change that, that does not involve a land invasion with 3million conscripts, and the loss of a large part of the US Navy supporting them. The very idea is just risible, because the options Iran possesses for keeping it closed, are legion, and cannot be degraded to any great extent. There are reports starting to trickle out that Iran now has a larger missile and drone stack than it had on 27Feb. Nobody can know whether thats true or not, but it’s certainly within the bounds of possibility. Considering the scale of this calamity for the US Empire, the best course of action might be to a) offer Trump immunity, and get him out on medical grounds, b) Vance becomes President, blames Israel, and walks away, having reached a covert understanding with Iran, that they operate the strait going forward, but allow all gulf shipments out (with fees), and c) Vance will have to waive secondary sanctions so that third countries can trade with Iran, cos if they don’t they will have to do without Gulf oil and gas. This situation is an unmitigated catastrophe, and (as Mearshiemer repeatedly says) it very hard to see how US decision makers didn’t avoid it like the plague.
Thing is, we simply cannot do that. Iran currently does, can, and will remain a credible threat. They don’t have to sink a single ship to do so - just damage one often enough to keep the insurance risk coverage at or close to current levels.
The Navy cannot *guarantee* safe passage to every ship, absent assigning a destroyer or frigate to sail between the ship and the Iranian cost all the way to and from port. And even at that, there will likely be at least a few successful Iranian strikes
Credible threats and insurance premiums are doing all the work just now, with just enough missile and drone launches to act as a reminder
The regime was already 70% or more destroyed. If the blockade continues, there is no way the IRGC can sustain itself, let alone withstand renewed military strikes. They have already started dumping the oil into the Gulf...
It is wishful thinking to claim that the United States has already lost. The reason that the Iranian regime has not surrendered is that it believes Trump may not be able to sustain the pressure come from within the United States—particularly from left-wing political forces, along with similar ideological forces throughout the West. In other words, the regime still sees hope in these political and ideological divisions. Otherwise, it would have surrendered already.
You guys are loud and powerful, and your noise is the music to the IRGC's ears. I am a Chinese American, and I am very sad - more than sad - to see that a barbaric regime like Iran has your support.
The US citizen doesn't have any real read on the situation inside Iran. 70% destroyed? The US government is lieing. They have now obliterated them twice in 12 months. Citizens are not being told the whole story about the level of destruction of US mideast military bases. Both sides are spreading their propaganda but as a US citizen I can only judge our sides story. Our leaders have been lieing about an unauthorized war, where nothing has gone the way we were told it would, and they are committing war crimes. It's hard to support.
My advice? Wean yrself off the kool-aid. This horrible loss was baked in from the moment that girls school was double-tapped. That is barbarism for you.
The little flowers grew from cracks in sidewalks, broken basketball courts, abandoned lots, rusted fences, and corners where shadows stood longer than sunlight. They did not know forests. They only knew buildings, smoke, loud music, arguments, helicopters, and the smell of burned powders floating through the night air like ghost pollen.
The older flowers called it “normal weather.”
The younger flowers believed them.
Every morning the humans walked over them without looking down. Hard boots. Expensive shoes. Blood stains. Church shoes. Uniforms. Construction boots. High heels. Jail slippers. The flowers learned humanity through footsteps.
Some humans watered flowers.
Some crushed them.
Most never noticed them at all.
The flowers had names for everything they could understand.
The fast black cars were called Night Bees. Police lights were called Red-Blue Storms. Powders were called Sleep Dusts and Fire Dusts. The corner stores were called Glow Caves because their lights never shut off. The men in suits were called Paper Carriers because they moved entire neighborhoods using invisible sheets.
But the flowers only understood pieces.
That was the problem.
They saw flowers disappear every day.
One flower vanished into powders. One flower vanished into prison walls. One flower vanished into money dreams. One flower vanished into sadness so deep their petals folded inward forever.
The flowers blamed each other because that was all they could see.
The red flowers blamed the blue flowers. The blue flowers blamed the gold flowers. The poor flowers blamed the addicted flowers. The addicted flowers blamed the law flowers. The law flowers blamed the criminal flowers.
Every flower thought another flower was the problem.
But no flower asked:
“Who keeps changing the weather?”
At nighttime, the elders sat near the train tracks whispering old stories.
They spoke of a time before the Concrete Garden became hard.
Back when seeds carried life naturally.
Back when food tasted different.
Back when flowers danced more.
Back when humans still looked into each other’s eyes while speaking.
The younger flowers laughed at those stories.
“Old flower tales,” they said.
Because the younger flowers were born into noise.
They thought advertisements were wisdom. They thought powders were freedom. They thought addiction was culture. They thought survival was living.
And above them all, giant screens glowed day and night.
The screens told the flowers: BUY. CHASE. FIGHT. CONSUME. COMPARE. ENVY. REPEAT.
The flowers obeyed without realizing they were obeying.
One night, a small black flower named Benson grew beside an old rusted newspaper machine near the edge of the Garden.
Benson watched everything quietly.
He noticed strange things.
The same stores selling sickness also sold medicine. The same humans preaching peace sold violence on glowing screens. The same powders destroying flowers arrived protected by invisible systems. The same politicians promising sunlight kept the Garden covered in smoke.
None of it made sense.
One evening Benson asked an elder flower:
“Why do flowers keep fighting each other if something bigger keeps hurting all of us?”
The elder became silent.
The trains roared overhead.
The city lights flickered against puddles filled with oil and rainwater.
Finally the elder answered softly:
“Because the flowers only see the streets.”
“They don’t yet see the garden.”
And for the first time in his life…
Benson became afraid.
Not of the streets.
Not of the powders.
Not of the lawmen.
But of the possibility that the entire Concrete Garden was operating by rules the flowers had never been taught to see.
President Donald Trump said today that he will “hold off” on plans to attack Iran on Wednesday, explaining that he has a morning golf round scheduled and a doctor’s appointment later in the afternoon. However, Trump stressed that Thursday remains “very much on the table” if Iran does not completely surrender by then. Pentagon officials are reportedly standing by for final authorization sometime between the back nine and dinner at Mar-a-Lago.
This article got you another paid subscription.
I can't argue with anything you've said. America has been declining for a long time and this regime just accelerated it. Sharing with my subscribers tomorrow.
Everything you say is spot-on, though my own timeline is a bit shorter than yours, driven by the November mid-terms
Sooner is better, in real economic terms; the question is whether Trump’s ego would allow it
To one of your later points - I saw most of this coming (I didn’t predict the Iran war because I assumed that even Trump would listen to knowledgeable advice and refrain- my bad 🤦♂️).
I took the opportunity to retire a bit early and move out of the “dollar zone”.
That move happened three weeks to the day after my retirement party, and two days after Trumps second inauguration
It was the single best decision I’ve made in the last 30 years
On Nov.6 of 2024, Donald Trump publicly stated: “Many people have told me that God spared my life [from two assassination attempts] for a reason. And that reason was to save our country and to restore America to greatness.”
The institutional ‘Christians’ who still vocally and politically support Donald Trump tend to see him as literally Godsent. Many also perceive Trump’s presidency as divinely-intended punishment against liberals. If anything, he's evidence of a great evil being unleashed onto a largely powerless world. If Trump's presidency does end up boding well for the world overall, I believe it will have been accidental.
Last year, American comedian/actor John Mulaney compared the Trump presidency to a horse that has broken loose inside a hospital: “It’s never happened before. No one knows what the horse is gonna do next, least of all the horse. He’s never been in a hospital. He’s as confused as you are."
The analogy is very funny, however legitimately worrying. Trump is the very unstable, vengefully angry and self-centered/-serving type willing to take the world for a most brutal spin, perhaps even for the sake of him making it into the historical-'greatness' books.
Trump, himself, may not have really known what he was/is trying to accomplish with attacking Iran. Meanwhile, his lame and immoral idea of creating peace is compelling one side or party that: “You’re not holding any cards.” However, human beings, both individualistically and collectively, want to feel a sense of self dignity, and therefor Trump’s you’re-not-holding-any-cards likely won’t work.
Yet, many Trump fans still admire him as some sort of genius that resists/challenges the Deep State, etcetera. And there's “the swamp” that Trump claims he'll drain — although he himself is a part of it. Since both Trump administrations kowtow(ed) to big fossil fuel, mostly via the recklessly significant loosening of environmental protections, he, far from genuinely trying to “drain the swamp”, actually wallows in it.
And then he wades even deeper into the filth by siding with big-money military industrial interests and Netanyahu's Israel in un-provokedly bombing Iran last summer and again now. ... Then again, is Donald not the first aspartame-abusing U.S. president to have also tried smoking pot but never exhaled?
US demand for Australian beef is up 75% in the first half of this year.
Meanwhile the US cattle herd has shrunk to its lowest level since 1950.
Trump's behaviour is doing the opposite of making Anerica great.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-07-27/beef-trade-with-china-slow-but-united-states-buying-big/104136078?utm_source=abc_news_app&utm_medium=content_shared&utm_campaign=abc_news_app&utm_content=other
reality - ugly, infuriating
I have just ingested this for the first time. Later i will bring it back up and chew through it like a savored cud. My daily reading on these subjects reinforces your conclusions. We are in for very difficult times. Meanwhile, dump dozes off as Coondick rambles on about sperm counts. I see only two options as to the position of this Junk Drawer: they either really truly dont understand the problem or any of the solutions, or they don't a round rats rump. Maybe both are true. Dump and Co: easily the worst thing to ever happen to this country.
Thank you for another trenchant and meticulous assessment of how fabulously fucked up the not-a-war war with Iran is. That felt just great. Seriously, your experience and expertise continue to be excellent wayfinders in the current political morass.
Another sober reminder that the US has not learned from the harsh, real lessons of history, as outlined in the post. We have then seen a deterioration of real leadership by both parties, past presidents and Congress, now accelerated by Trump, his incompetent regime, and the cowardly Congress. We (including me) need to stop blaming, demand competent leaders with the courage to do the hard right, and fix our country.
Good sober analysis. But haven’t you presumed the US military cannot unilaterally reopen the straight of Hormuz (as the Admin claims it can do)? Obviously it would not be easy, but IF the Straight is open to (non-Iranian) commercial shipping, the longer term economic damage you describe could be mitigated, and time might become the enemy more to the Iranian hard liners. Wouldn’t that open up other possibilities?
If the US Military could establish shipping lanes in the Strait, it would have happened already.
The challenge is, we have to be right every time. Iran has to be right only once. The asymmetry favors Iran, not the US. We would have to destory all of Iran's capabilities so that their drones and their missiles were out of range of the Strait. We'd have to occupy that land and control it. We'd have to defend it. We'd have to have extensive shipping convoy protection in the Strait itself.
If it was something we could bring about at a reasonable political cost, we'd do it.
Again, we can win, or we can lose. Trump is clearly "tired of the winning."
I fear you are correct: IF it could be done within practical constraints, “it would have happened already”.
But since I have no access to classified military briefings and intel, and can’t be a fly on the wall in conversations between Trump, his advisors, Bibi, MBS etc., I can only speculate which “experts” have been portraying the situation accurately.
Well, I do think there's a fair amount of "telling the boss what he wants to hear" in these meetings. That said, I think the US Military, CENTCOM, in particular, has probably stood up and made a statement similar to what I made in this briefing. I suspect they've also said, "our ability to ensure traffic through the Strait is limited if we employ seapower alone."
Now, let me be clear, if I was directed by the President to achieve this goal? To have free flowing of shipping through the Strait?
Yeah, I could make that happen.
I suspect I'd also say, "I need 40 divisions of men. I need at least three full-time expeditionary combat groups in the region. I need the US Air Force on 15 minute alert to bomb targets. And I need to commit those resources until rapture... or the surrender/defeat/negotiated peace of the Iranians."
That's where everyone chokes. I"m talking about deploying roughly 80% of our combat forces to Iran to hold the territory around the Strait, havinga good chunk of our strategic air forces ready to bomb whatever pop-up installations they attempt to deploy, and I'm talking roughly 50% of our Navy is there to provide combat air patrol, missile defense, etc.
That totally ignores the other element in all this, which is, "Oh and I need a shit load of munitions, so it's round the clock manufacturing from here on out."
I mean, basically, this "plan" for Iran was "let's go climb Mount Everest in our underwear with no clue, supplies, or training."
It's not surprising what happened.
Opening that strait probably requires 40 divisions. Probably requires three ESGs. Probably requires a fleet of strategic aircraft out of Diego, Ramstein, Al Udeid, Al Dhafra, Al Salem, Muwaffaq... and that's just to start. Ideally, we'd want to ramp up capability at Erbil & Al Asad, in Iraq, which means of course then we need improved garrisons in Iraq generally and around those bases.
I mean... yeah, I could come up with a plan... so can those Generals and Admirals.
I think everyone chokes when they realize that to really make this happen, requires us to leverage 70-80% of our combat capability.
We are not the country we were in the late 1980s. We are not capable of fighting wars of attrition all that easily. The Iranians would fight a harassment war, we'd have to fight denial.
It's ugly.
And minesweepers the USN doesn't have. It's much easier to drop mines off of a dhow in the dark than it is to sweep them up.
As a JPMorgan Investment VP noted, as far as boots on the ground, the temperatures are now far too high. Radar and other electronics the military relies on cannot function, and soldiers would overheat and die within their vehicles. Maybe next winter? And that’s just boots on the ground…
Next winter with what army? 😂 The ground combat component of the US army is currently totally 120,000. Irans armed forces total min 1.2 million, and in the event of an invasion, would have a reserve potential of millions. Good luck with that. 👍
And abandoning Taiwan so completely that they’ll be taken.
Taiwan will be peacefully absorbed back into China, when the stars align. That is set in stone.
Taiwan can never be taken until the mainland discovers its own harmony.
"let's go climb Mount Everest in our underwear with no clue, supplies, or training."
lol.
That certainly sounds like a more feasible idea than starting a war against Iran. 😂
I’m watching Robert Kagan on PBS News Hour right now… pathetic.
“Next up, we have Bryan Del Monte with a thorough, no bullshit analysis…”
The IRGC owns the strait. The US can do absolutely nothing to change that, that does not involve a land invasion with 3million conscripts, and the loss of a large part of the US Navy supporting them. The very idea is just risible, because the options Iran possesses for keeping it closed, are legion, and cannot be degraded to any great extent. There are reports starting to trickle out that Iran now has a larger missile and drone stack than it had on 27Feb. Nobody can know whether thats true or not, but it’s certainly within the bounds of possibility. Considering the scale of this calamity for the US Empire, the best course of action might be to a) offer Trump immunity, and get him out on medical grounds, b) Vance becomes President, blames Israel, and walks away, having reached a covert understanding with Iran, that they operate the strait going forward, but allow all gulf shipments out (with fees), and c) Vance will have to waive secondary sanctions so that third countries can trade with Iran, cos if they don’t they will have to do without Gulf oil and gas. This situation is an unmitigated catastrophe, and (as Mearshiemer repeatedly says) it very hard to see how US decision makers didn’t avoid it like the plague.
Thing is, we simply cannot do that. Iran currently does, can, and will remain a credible threat. They don’t have to sink a single ship to do so - just damage one often enough to keep the insurance risk coverage at or close to current levels.
The Navy cannot *guarantee* safe passage to every ship, absent assigning a destroyer or frigate to sail between the ship and the Iranian cost all the way to and from port. And even at that, there will likely be at least a few successful Iranian strikes
Credible threats and insurance premiums are doing all the work just now, with just enough missile and drone launches to act as a reminder
The US dare not send a warship thru the strait. Talk of escorting tankers is simply hilarious.
It doesn’t matter to Trump if anyone wins. He’s doing what he’s told:
https://substack.com/@jeffreypurdon/note/c-245598518?r=6iskea&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
The regime was already 70% or more destroyed. If the blockade continues, there is no way the IRGC can sustain itself, let alone withstand renewed military strikes. They have already started dumping the oil into the Gulf...
It is wishful thinking to claim that the United States has already lost. The reason that the Iranian regime has not surrendered is that it believes Trump may not be able to sustain the pressure come from within the United States—particularly from left-wing political forces, along with similar ideological forces throughout the West. In other words, the regime still sees hope in these political and ideological divisions. Otherwise, it would have surrendered already.
You guys are loud and powerful, and your noise is the music to the IRGC's ears. I am a Chinese American, and I am very sad - more than sad - to see that a barbaric regime like Iran has your support.
false equivalence.
Saying that "the US cannot win without massive escalation" is not the same as "supporting a barbaric regime like Iran".
It's simply fact & history-based analysis of the situation looking at the politics, economics and military capabilities of the combatants.
The US citizen doesn't have any real read on the situation inside Iran. 70% destroyed? The US government is lieing. They have now obliterated them twice in 12 months. Citizens are not being told the whole story about the level of destruction of US mideast military bases. Both sides are spreading their propaganda but as a US citizen I can only judge our sides story. Our leaders have been lieing about an unauthorized war, where nothing has gone the way we were told it would, and they are committing war crimes. It's hard to support.
My advice? Wean yrself off the kool-aid. This horrible loss was baked in from the moment that girls school was double-tapped. That is barbarism for you.
I'm rereading this - it's still spot on!
Concrete Flowers
Story One:
The Flowers Only Saw the Streets
The flowers woke up every morning to sirens.
Not birds.
Not rivers.
Not wind moving through trees.
Sirens.
The Concrete Garden had trained them that way.
The little flowers grew from cracks in sidewalks, broken basketball courts, abandoned lots, rusted fences, and corners where shadows stood longer than sunlight. They did not know forests. They only knew buildings, smoke, loud music, arguments, helicopters, and the smell of burned powders floating through the night air like ghost pollen.
The older flowers called it “normal weather.”
The younger flowers believed them.
Every morning the humans walked over them without looking down. Hard boots. Expensive shoes. Blood stains. Church shoes. Uniforms. Construction boots. High heels. Jail slippers. The flowers learned humanity through footsteps.
Some humans watered flowers.
Some crushed them.
Most never noticed them at all.
The flowers had names for everything they could understand.
The fast black cars were called Night Bees. Police lights were called Red-Blue Storms. Powders were called Sleep Dusts and Fire Dusts. The corner stores were called Glow Caves because their lights never shut off. The men in suits were called Paper Carriers because they moved entire neighborhoods using invisible sheets.
But the flowers only understood pieces.
That was the problem.
They saw flowers disappear every day.
One flower vanished into powders. One flower vanished into prison walls. One flower vanished into money dreams. One flower vanished into sadness so deep their petals folded inward forever.
The flowers blamed each other because that was all they could see.
The red flowers blamed the blue flowers. The blue flowers blamed the gold flowers. The poor flowers blamed the addicted flowers. The addicted flowers blamed the law flowers. The law flowers blamed the criminal flowers.
Every flower thought another flower was the problem.
But no flower asked:
“Who keeps changing the weather?”
At nighttime, the elders sat near the train tracks whispering old stories.
They spoke of a time before the Concrete Garden became hard.
Back when seeds carried life naturally.
Back when food tasted different.
Back when flowers danced more.
Back when humans still looked into each other’s eyes while speaking.
The younger flowers laughed at those stories.
“Old flower tales,” they said.
Because the younger flowers were born into noise.
They thought advertisements were wisdom. They thought powders were freedom. They thought addiction was culture. They thought survival was living.
And above them all, giant screens glowed day and night.
The screens told the flowers: BUY. CHASE. FIGHT. CONSUME. COMPARE. ENVY. REPEAT.
The flowers obeyed without realizing they were obeying.
One night, a small black flower named Benson grew beside an old rusted newspaper machine near the edge of the Garden.
Benson watched everything quietly.
He noticed strange things.
The same stores selling sickness also sold medicine. The same humans preaching peace sold violence on glowing screens. The same powders destroying flowers arrived protected by invisible systems. The same politicians promising sunlight kept the Garden covered in smoke.
None of it made sense.
One evening Benson asked an elder flower:
“Why do flowers keep fighting each other if something bigger keeps hurting all of us?”
The elder became silent.
The trains roared overhead.
The city lights flickered against puddles filled with oil and rainwater.
Finally the elder answered softly:
“Because the flowers only see the streets.”
“They don’t yet see the garden.”
And for the first time in his life…
Benson became afraid.
Not of the streets.
Not of the powders.
Not of the lawmen.
But of the possibility that the entire Concrete Garden was operating by rules the flowers had never been taught to see.
https://substack.com/@theverticaldispatch/note/p-198430940?r=1pgr4n&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
President Donald Trump said today that he will “hold off” on plans to attack Iran on Wednesday, explaining that he has a morning golf round scheduled and a doctor’s appointment later in the afternoon. However, Trump stressed that Thursday remains “very much on the table” if Iran does not completely surrender by then. Pentagon officials are reportedly standing by for final authorization sometime between the back nine and dinner at Mar-a-Lago.