We're All Mandrakes Now.
Hello.
Something has been nagging at me for the last few days and I’ve finally got it to shut up by sticking its head in the toilet and flushing. I’m going to be doing it right here.
Aeons ago — three days in Trump time, which is 71 hours taking into account daylight savings — a disturbing story soared right past us, immediately overwhelmed by the rush of even more dreadful news: It was a report about the things some American top military commanders were telling our combat troops. Remember?
One serviceman reported that one commander told non-commissioned officers at a briefing that the Iran war is part of God’s plan and that President Donald Trump was “anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth.”
This was one of 110 similar complaints about commanders filed to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation by soldiers in every branch of the military.
One person, speaking anonymously on behalf of high-ranking officers that he or she said included at least 11 Christians, one Muslim and one Jew, said that their commander “urged us to tell our troops that this was ‘all part of God’s divine plan’ and he specifically referenced numerous citations out of the Book of Revelation referring to Armageddon and the imminent return of Jesus Christ.”
Other complaints describe a sense of “unrestricted euphoria” from some commanders regarding the predicted “graphic” and “bloody” nature of the battle. Armageddon is supposed to be a bloodbath, you know. Revelations 16:16 prophesizes it to be a profoundly bloody and violent final conflict, a “mountain of slaughter” where God wreaks his wrath on the forces of evil.
These, by the way, are the sort of things that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, a proselytizing religious lunatic enthusiast, believes.
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Anyway, I remember reading this and thinking it sounded eerily familiar. Then, trying to imagine myself in the role of a mid-lever commander hearing this crap from a superior — suddenly, it hit me like a ton of bricks, the kind of bricks you shit when things are looking really scary. I felt like Group Captain Lionel Mandrake. You know, this guy on the left …
… played by Peter Seller in Dr. Strangelove, the funniest movie — and the greatest anti-war movie — ever made. On Mandrake’s right is General Jack D. Ripper, played by Sterling Hayden. And Mandrake is just realizing that the stolid, maddeningly manly general has gone stark staring mad, oozing oodles of whackadoodle, and has just initiated a sequence of events that will lead to the nuclear incineration of the planet. All because of concerns about his semen.
I bet most of you have seen this movie. If not, or if it’s been a long time, I urge you to watch the very short clip at the top of this column.
Here it is again, as a simple non-embedded link.
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So. We’re all Mandrakes now.
Here’s the end of the movie, featuring the great Slim Pickens, a former rodeo rider, delivering the coup de grace to an injured planet Earth:
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Today’s Gene Pool Gene Poll:
Just one question from today’s mailbag:
Q: Who the heck are the 20 percent of people who voted, in your poll, that Markwayne Mullin’s stupid first name was off-limits to criticism?
A: You know, substack polls are anonymous but it is a little known top secret fact that a host can penetrate the system and learn the identity of the voters, one by one. Well, it so happens I did that with this poll. The first three identities in that group whom I identified were named Toilet Weatherbee, Toecheese Schlittler, and Poopalot Brown. Then I stopped looking.
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