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Poised on the brink of a wider war and economic collapse, the leaders of the US empire and their lackeys have doubled down and re-confirmed their fealty to unreality and delusion like a evangelical couple renewing their marriage vows at a mega-church revival.
I’ve been writing about the shared commitment to unreality on the part of Americans and our leaders since 2025 and the increasing difficulty of maintaining our shared delusions and it doesn’t look like I can stop now.
Part of the madness is the delusion that if the Democrats were just back “in charge” then everything would be fine, I addressed that yesterday at my Substack, calling out Barack Obama in particular and applying the test that Jesus of Nazareth prescribed for evaluating prophets.
Surprise, no Surprise: Obama fails.
But today let’s look at Mad King Donald and those following him into the land of fey and faerie.
Trump in ‘Deciding Mode’ on Iran
On the same day that his Truth Social feed featured the following bit of imperialist derangement:
POTUS Trump told Fox News’ Trey Yingst, “…my question is, if and when do I blow the entire nation up? They better behave.”
Per the NY Post’s summary of the call:
Trump said “very big things are going to be happening” soon — as he left a retreat at Camp David a day early so he could return to the White House.
In a call with Fox News’ Trey Yingst, Trump laid out three possible paths for Iran: they make a deal with the US or Trump will choose between “letting them rot economically,” or wiping the regime out entirely.
“He tells Fox News he’s in a ‘deciding mode’ and that very big things are going to be happening in the not so distant future,” Yingst recounted.
Fortunately, the crisis came on a Sunday and not a Friday, so…
Just Kidding Trump TACOs Again
The New York Times has the deets:
The president vacillated but decided on Sunday not to join Saudi Arabia, for now, in joint strikes against the Houthis in Yemen. But he also needs the kingdom’s cooperation in his war against Iran.
Trump put on a master class in rudderless dithering:
But things came to a head on Thursday: Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s de facto leader and a major ally in the Iran war, called the president to implore him, again, to step in to help blunt the rapidly advancing group, administration officials said.
Mr. Trump had met with advisers just the day before and told them he did not favor strikes. But after speaking with the Saudi crown prince, he reversed himself and told the Pentagon to prepare for airstrikes against the Houthis.
But by midday Sunday, the president appeared to have reversed himself again. There would be no U.S. airstrikes against the Houthis — at least not for the time being, according to administration officials. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss military planning.
I also have to call out The Times for always calling Ansar Allah “the Houthis” and blaming them for re-starting the conflict with the Saudis:
The president had wavered for weeks over the Saudi appeals for help in fighting the Houthis, who took advantage of the instability in the Middle East and reignited their war with the kingdom this summer.
But things came to a head on Thursday: Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s de facto leader and a major ally in the Iran war, called the president to implore him, again, to step in to help blunt the rapidly advancing group, administration officials said.
Ok, enough about their family blogging.
It’s not just Trump who’s delusional. His military commanders are crazed too.
Raisin’ Caine Deeply Deluded, but Hedging His Bets
On the 16th Gen. Dan Caine, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke to the AFA Air, Space & Cyber Conference and said (quote at 14:03):
“We must continue to ensure that the United States of America can strike anywhere on the globe at the time and place of our choosing, and sustain that force.”
Although Raisin’ Caine might not be completely disassociated from reality based on some of the other quotes from the same speech:
Future conflicts will demand that we operate without the assumptions of uncontested access, secure rear areas, or uninterrupted or uncontested sustainment.
…
We have to assume from now on that our formations will be hunted by autonomous systems, jammed across the spectrum and tracked in real time.
…
Today’s modern battlefield operates from the seabed to cislunar space.
…
“The window to build the force that we need is closing. We can buy almost anything in life, but we cannot buy time.
I’ve got to contrast Caine’s comments about “sustaining that force” with the estimated actual status of US forces in West Asia (I should note that US officials have disputed the stockpile reporting):
Item
Figure
What it means
THAAD interceptors
~80% expended
Against pre-war inventory
Patriot interceptors
~50% expended
Since the war began
Munitions, first 16 days
6,000+
Offensive and defensive combined
Patriot replacements
~3.5 years
FY27-budget rounds to the front line
Tomahawk replacements
~4 years
Contract-to-delivery lag is 2–3 years
Virginia-class subs
1.1–1.2 / yr
Funded at 2 per year since FY2011
DDG-51 destroyers
+25 months
Delay growth over three years
Golden Dome, as sold
$175bn
Operational by 2029, per Trump
Golden Dome, per program manager
$185bn
“Way out into the 2035 timeframe”
Golden Dome, per CBO
up to $1.2tn
Over 20 years; CBO says a true cost is “impossible” to get
Interestingly, Caine’s statements about modern war have very little to do with the tactics behind Ansar Allah’s breaking of Saudi and Emirati-backed mercenary defensive line in South Yemen which took place over 6 days, ending on the 16th, the day of his speech.
Per History Legends, the offensive was a stealthy infantry infiltration, not a mechanized fight. Six-to-seven-man assault squads on foot, drone recon overhead, machine guns on suppression, moving along narrow paths through the mountains between Hays and the Ma’afir heights that overlook Mocha and the strait — terrain thin on defenders precisely because it looked impassable. The first line of outposts barely held. Once it was breached, the assault detachments bypassed strongpoints and ambushed the columns coming up to reinforce. The Khalid ibn al-Walid base 3km west of Al-Ma’afir fell in hours; Hays fell with almost no reported fighting. Captured at Mocha: Emirati MRAPs, US Oshkosh M-ATVs, hundreds of pickups.
Meanwhile the PLC’s own advertised offensive — a 180km drive from Marib across open desert toward Sanaa — stalled in the hills at Sirwah on 9 Sep under ATGM fire, with pickups picked off one at a time at the Houthis’ second defensive line.
I wonder if anyone’s told General Dan that the force that closed Bab al-Mandab did it on foot, climbing rocks, and totally pantsed their a US-equipped opponents.
If History Legends isn’t your style, maybe the latest from Explosive Media is more your speed.
From Al Mokha to Bab el-Mandeb.
a Lego retelling of Yemen’s battles and victories.
A new chapter of history, rebuilt brick by brick 🇾🇪🔥
Our latest video is out now. pic.twitter.com/tsyOIh3cDk
— Explosive Media (@ExplosiveMediaa) September 19, 2026
Zero Chance Pete Hegseth Follows the Tactical Deets
In contrast, as if to show he has no brakes on his crazy train, Secretary of Defense War Pete Hegseth decided to distort a passage from the Book of Isaiah on the 19th in a speech given at Texas A&M:
.@SECWAR “This is our first stop on what we are calling the SEND ME TOUR.
If you know your Book of Isaiah, Chapter 6, Verse 8, the Lord said, ‘Whom shall I send?’ Isaiah says, ‘Lord, I AM HERE. SEND ME…’
For 250 years of this country, there have been men and women who RAISED… pic.twitter.com/inmpL5Dm6D
— DOW Rapid Response (@DOWResponse) September 19, 2026
The DOW also dropped this gem featuring Jake and Logan Paul, YouTube influencers turned combat sports (boxing and pro wrestling respectively) professionals speaking to the military:
Last Thursday, we welcomed Logan and Jake Paul to the Pentagon to meet with our warriors. pic.twitter.com/NiRJVWb2Rc
— Department of War 🇺🇸 (@DeptofWar) September 20, 2026
Really brings one to mind of Bing Crosby rallying the troops in WW2 (podcast audio link), doesn’t it?
Explaining the Irrational
Kit Klarenberg of Grayzone and Bryce Greene of American Exception guested on Professor Karim Bettache’s BettBeat Media show for an episode titled ““The Empire Is Speedrunning Its Own Collapse” yesterday and offered some insights I found explanatory:
Bryce Greene: The American military-industrial complex is something that it’s largely designed to enrich a few guys in Northern Virginia and get them yachts, get them fancy houses… It’s not designed to actually build weapons that will be effective on a battlefield, especially on a battlefield against people who know how to fight.
…
Kit Klarenberg: People have internalized this notion that the US is this kind of invincible hegemon when it really, really, really isn’t.
Greene: We’re kind of at the edge of a cliff, and people are starting to grasp it, but the reality of just how far that cliff goes down hasn’t yet set in.
….
Everything that consists of this unraveling of empire — it’s fully self-inflicted.
…
Klarenberg: In attempting to achieve those deranged objectives, Israel and the Western states that undergird its existence are speedrunning their own destruction.
There’s also a pricelessly insane anecdote from Klarenberg about Neil Bush (son of former POTUS George HW and brother of fomer POTUS George W) arriving in Kosovo in the 1990s. Klarenberg sets it up by describing how mentally colonized Kosovarans are by the USA including a popular chain of bakeries named for George W Bush and numerous statues of George HW Bush dotting the landscape.
Per Klarenberg, Neil Bush was baffled that people there called themselves Albanian, and having to be told they were Muslim:
Klarenberg: “Can you imagine visiting a foreign country where your relatives are on the par of gods, in the spirit of almost like a cargo cult — and you don’t know anything about it, like at all? I think that kind of sums up the imperial mindset.”
But Greene and Klarenberg warn that the most influential minds inside the Trump military leadership might be the most desperate and deranged.
The Pentagon is drafting a nuclear strategy built around expanded options — shifting emphasis from strategic weapons aimed at an adversary’s arsenal toward tactical nuclear weapons usable in a regional conflict. Elbridge Colby, undersecretary of defense for policy, has argued for more than a decade for the capability to fight a limited nuclear war, and is running a relook at nuclear employment guidance with StratCom’s Adm. Richard Correll, seeking “rationally employable, limited options.” The review will not be released publicly.
It’s not just the American elite though. Our vassal states are led by batshit crazy elites as well.
What Exactly Does MBS Think He’s Doing?
That’s the question that’s been plaguing my mind since the Saudis broke their four-year truce with Ansar Allah following the Ayatollah’s funeral.
Lebanese journalist Laith Marouf joined former UK diplomat Ian Proud to discuss Yemen’s successes against the Saudis, and he shares my bafflement at the seeming delusional nature of Mohammed bin Salman al Saud, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia.
Marouf argues that a rational sovereign would have ended the Yemen war to save Red Sea oil and gas exports, and instead Riyadh is “poking at the hornet’s nest” at the exact moment of American exit (note that this interview took place before the US apparently re-committed to attacking Yemen), restarting a direct war “when there’s no one to defend them.” His verdict — “not an act of a rational player in charge” but of “a total vassal that has no ability to prioritize their own national interests or survival.”
Laith Marouf: The Saudi regime is going to feel the consequences of this war even more than any of the other vassal regimes, and that’s for one main reason. The population sizes in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Emirates are so minuscule that the oil export means they still have some money reserved that they can spend on their national population to keep them subdued in this moment.
The Saudis have a 40 million (person) population. Saudi Arabia already has poverty and homelessness before this war. It looks like one of the richest nations, which it is, but it has a huge population — and suddenly now, with all the investments they made in Western economies through orders of their masters, they can’t reach that money that is in the West. They can’t turn the tickets of the Arsenal soccer team into food to feed their population, or money to pay the salaries of their public employees.
So I think the internal cohesion of the Saudi kingdom right now is the weakest, because you had all those crazy projects that MBS built — NEOM: The Line, and that big cube — where they forcefully displaced hundreds of thousands of people at gunpoint to build these projects that now collapsed.
So you have the whole northwest of the country that’s been alienated for years now. You have the whole east of the country, where the Shia are and where the oil is, also alienated. You have the whole south that is Yemeni, occupied since 1934. And you’ve got the north that are basically Syrian people and Iraqi people. And so how can this regime survive this moment? It’s going to be much harder for them than, let’s say, Bahrain, with 400, 500,000 citizens that it can control and monitor and give basic services to in this dire moment.
And even if you’re acquainted with just how loathsome MBS’ climb to power was, even I can muster a tiny bit of sympathy for the dude, because he’s certainly put enough money into the Trump family vending machine:
What
Amount
When
Status
Saudi-financed lobbying firm books ~500 nights at Trump’s DC hotel fighting JASTA
$270,000
2016–17
Paid
Saudi government payments to Trump properties, first term (House Oversight)
$615,422
2017–18
Paid, a floor
PIF commitment to Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners, six months after Trump left office
$2,000,000,000
Jun 2021
Committed
— management fees on it, at 1.25%, through Dec 2024
$87,500,000
2021–24
Paid
— further fees scheduled through the Aug 2026 term end
~$90,000,000
2025–26
Contracted
LIV Golf hosting fees at Trump courses, every season since the league launched
~$6,000,000
2022–26
Forbes estimate
Dar Global licensing fees booked by DT Marks KSA, the Saudi-specific entity
$15,900,000
2025
Disclosed to OGE
Announced value of the Trump-branded Saudi pipeline (Diriyah, Jeddah, Wadi Safar)
$10,000,000,000
2025–26
Project value
Fees and payments traceable to the family — excludes the $2bn principal and the project values
~$200,300,000
2016–2026
Sum of rows above
Announced
Headline
What it was
Status
May 2017
$110bn / $350bn
Arms “immediately” and over ten years. ABC found about $25bn in the actual pipeline; the rest were letters of interest.
Mostly wish list
May 2025
$600bn
Four-year commitment. Reported tallies of the itemized list reach about $283bn, including $142bn of arms.
Pledged
May 2025
$20bn
DataVolt, for US data centers and energy infrastructure. Its own first facility goes live in Saudi Arabia, Q2 2026.
Announced
Nov 2025
~$1 trillion
MBS raises the $600bn in the Oval Office. No timetable given.
Pledged
17 Sep 2026
$24.3bn
48 F-35s and 49 engines cleared — the first Arab operator. Congressional review still to run, deliveries years out.
State Dept clearance
But of course there’s one problem with all these deals from Trump’s perspective, the Saudi 2026 budget projects a 165 billion riyal ($44bn) deficit. Oops.
Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, the leader of Ansar Allah mock-sympathizes with MBS:
😭 He cooking Saud pic.twitter.com/ovm9KkgolT
— COMBATE |🇵🇷 (@upholdreality) September 20, 2026
Transcript of English translation:
The milk cow — they’ve milked her so much,
her udder now aches, it pains her.
For milking, that is one brutal grip.
How their king would look at Trump with those broken eyes
the day he visited Saudi Arabia.
He looks at Trump like this — that same broken look.
He forces and strains himself to get up and dance for him.
And at times he prays to Allah seated,
yet he forces himself up on his feet to dance for Trump.
What a strange state of affairs.
Prof. Bettache pointed out one aspect of MBS’ mental state that Marouf is overlooking:
I just keep seeing discussions in the independent media sphere about why is MBS so irrational. Why does he keep fighting with the Yemenis? If he just makes peace with them, maybe he can save his own ass. And I always say the guy is so deeply involved in US imperialism, he cannot make peace. If he did, Washington would kill him. And even if Washington would not kill him, he would lose his palaces. He would lose his harems. He would lose everything — if he would even legitimize a group like Ansar Allah, because everybody in his own country would start to revolt as well. He just can’t do it. There are too many — to speak in Marxist terms — too many materialist pressures for him to act so-called rationally.
But that’s enough about MBS for now, let’s talk about a paler and possibly even more craven set of US vassals.
What Planet Are European Elites Living On?
Simplicius dropped a magisterial piece titled “War Mania: Security Crisis Announced” on Saturday. He argues:
Another cycle of world-war scare-mongering has begun, as Europe gets whipped into a panicked frenzy.
…
The security situation of Europe is now described as “deteriorating”, with the sirens of war growing louder.
…
Most of the stir-up happened as consequence of two European summits this past week, the NATO Military Committee Conference and Zelensky’s new “Carpathian Eight” Summit, featuring Poland’s Tusk and other leaders.
…
The newly coordinated psyop campaign is planned around a phony false flag which would feature Russian “hybrid attacks” on NATO’s so-called “eastern flank”.
this map from Politico
Virtually every Western MSM publication has joined the infernal chorus of sensationalist warmongering, despite most such “attacks” being falsely attributed to Russia with Ukrainian drones or saboteurs behind it each time—a fact naturally swept under the table…
It is the classic mark of military genius: when your country is collapsing and losing a major conflict, as Russia is said to be doing against Ukraine, the best thing is to promptly invade the largest military alliance in the world to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. This is what European sock-puppet leaders are selling to their gullible hoi polloi…
Again, this is just nuts. None of the European countries in NATO has anything like the necessary military, industrial, or moral capacity to fight Russia in any sense of the word.
What are they thinking?
Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, former Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell in the George W. Bush administration explained why European leaders in the 2020s are so weird to Glen Diesen in August:
Col. Lawrence Wilkerson: I know what we did to Europe. I know how painstakingly the agency — CIA — how painstakingly SIS, MI6, and to a certain extent Mossad, though they weren’t in the beginning willing partners, they became partners because they saw how much money was going into it. How we, in this Asian scholar’s words, taught the dogs to bark. We bought newspaper editors. We bought labor union heads. We bought parliamentarians. We bought two secretaries general, Jens Stoltenberg and Mark Rutte. We bought whole countries in terms of their political apparatus and what influences them, starting in 2002, really putting the rubber to the road, as in billions of dollars to the CIA and others. USAID was an instrument. They weaponized liberal democracy.
Wilkerson has previously explained that the American motivation to more directly control European leaders came following France and Germany’s refusal to support George W. Bush’s illegal invasion of Iraq in 2002-2003.
He has also explained that there is an entire web of think tanks, sinecures, scholarships, foundations, conferences, and when needed, blackmail and kompromat, with which to ensnare aspiring European leaders early and ensure that they do not even consider straying from supporting the US and NATO.
There you have it, they’re not batshit, they’re bullied and bought.
The explanations for the fealty to unreality on the part of Trump and company are more profound, I guess.
What do I know? I’m just blogging these atrocities.
Y’all stay safe.
Follow and support my work at NatWilsonTurner.com.
Related Posts:
- Interregnum of Unreality 2008-???
- The Twin Pillars of the Interregnum of Unreality Are Under Stress
- The Mask of Unreality Slipping?
- Delusion, Deception and Dipshittery: Hasbara on the 8th Front
- Who’s Delusional, Who’s Drugged, Who’s Disinformed? It’s Hard to Tell
- Doomsday Delusions, Iran Eschaton Edition
- Narrative Wars as US Media Struggles to Manufacture Consent
- Censorship, Surveillance, and Spin: EU, UK, and Ukraine Try to Drive the Narrative
- Self-Dealing and Self-Deluding Two Sides of Trump and His Ilk
- Iran War: Ansar Allah Takes Mocha and the Bab el-Mandeb Islands, Putting Both Chokepoints in Play
- Iran War: Narrative Dissolution as Ceasefire Continues Except in Lebanon
- Iran War: Fraying Nerves, Nonsense Negotiations, Psyops, and Ominous Notes
- Iran War: Trump in China, Ship Seized in the Strait, War Powers Vote Comes This Close, Saudis Make Peaceward Moves
- Iran War: Inflation Hitting the U.S., More to Come, Don’t Tell Mr. Market
- Hegseth, Altman and Zuckerberg, Elite Impunity Run Amok
