The Atlantic: Why Trump Didn’t Plan for the Strait of Hormuz

In wartime, the enemy always gets a vote.

(These people are deeply unserious. I mean, they *must* be old enough to remember the 1980-88 tanker war and the vital role the Straits of Hormuz played back then, right?)

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/03/hormuz-strait-iran-oil/686365/

Why Trump Didn’t Plan for the Strait of Hormuz

In wartime, the enemy always gets a vote.

The Atlantic
@cstross
Part of the Christofacist Revelations cosplay is "The eagle will fall"; it's a death cult, after the wars, plagues, & famine, the ultimate collapse of the USA is part of the plan.
@HighlandLawyer @cstross
I get the feeling that apocalyptic Christian extremism is basically Christianity-as-a-cargo-cult. They have a story of Rapture and Reward that they do not (are not allowed to) understand the deeper meaning of, being literalists. That story tells them that their savior and his kingdom will return after some series of events. Ergo, if they make these events occur, Jesus will come back and give them their due. It can't be a prediction, it has to be an instruction manual.

@stingraz @HighlandLawyer @cstross Civil Rights and the loss of public moral supremacy broke their existing coping mechanisms and sent them overtly nihilistic; anything so depraved as to insist they not be white supremacist in public had to be destroyed.

And of course this narrative splashed everywhere; that the sinful world deserves destruction is a core part of Christian thought. (Not historical doctrine, but thought.) The novelty lies mostly in the ubiquity of craving an apocalypse.

@graydon @stingraz @HighlandLawyer @cstross Boomers crave an apocalypse because the oldest ones turn 80 this year. They're railing against the dying of the light. They refuse to go quietly, and wish to actively PREVENT the world continuing on without them.

This is a problem the actuarial tables will address: 1955 is the boomer/jones cutoff, actuarial tables say pre-pandemic US average lifespan was 79, 1955+79=2034, hence boomer extinction burst.

What will be left to salvage, I couldn't say...

@cstross @graydon @stingraz @HighlandLawyer Younger half of the boomers have collectively noped out of the group.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_Jones

They insist they got screwed over by the older boomers too, and the sane-ish third do seem to be in the younger half.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_Jones

I used to say 1955 was the midpoint of boom (half of all boomers born before then). Character limit made jones easier. (2034 is ld50 of 50% but how much is needed to lose political power? Nursing homes, institutions)

Generation Jones - Wikipedia

@landley @graydon @stingraz @HighlandLawyer That'd be me, then. (I'm 61, wear all-black and trainers, listen to techno and industrial music, and vote SNP/Green (both to the left of Labour).)

@cstross @graydon @stingraz @HighlandLawyer I'm firmly genx and even match a lot of the stereotypes, but it's been specifically the leading edge boomers causing the most damage.

Hank Green pointed out that bill and hillary clinton, george w bush, trump, mitt romney, and al gore were all born within three years of each other.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=IwgzuSqb7ys

So far the _only_ president we've had younger than that was Obama (born 1961), and the Boomers responded with https://theonion.com/after-obama-victory-shrieking-white-hot-sphere-of-pure-1819595330/

Why Was Every President Born in the Same Year?

YouTube
@landley @cstross @graydon @stingraz @HighlandLawyer It’s like the Saudis, who have had 6 kings in the last 75 years all from the same generation of brothers.

@eliterrell @landley @cstross @graydon @stingraz @HighlandLawyer

It reminds me of the 1970s when the Soviet Union kept selecting premiers of a certain generation who kept dying in office.

I took it as a sign of a system fighting change as hard as it could, until mortality beat it and they got Gorbachev - and the collapse of the Soviet Union.

USA is feeling very collapse-y right now too.

@Phosphenes @eliterrell @landley @graydon @stingraz @HighlandLawyer Prediction: if Vance succeeds Trump, then that's their Bizzaro-world Gorbachev moment. He'll change things—he can't not—and it will break.
@Phosphenes @eliterrell @[email protected] @cstross @graydon @stingraz @HighlandLawyer I thought Gorbachev was part of Andropov's plan to fix the economy

@jonpsp @eliterrell @cstross @graydon @stingraz @HighlandLawyer

I saw Gorbachev as given an unwinnable situation. The plane was on fire and his best job would be to control the crash.

@jonpsp @Phosphenes @eliterrell @graydon @stingraz @HighlandLawyer He was. And Gorbachev tried! But he was basically too honest, told the apparat that things had to change, and they didn't like the message. So in the end things changed a whole lot more than he intended …
@landley @cstross @graydon @stingraz @HighlandLawyer When we finally broke the decades-long streak of boomer presidents, we didn't do it by electing our first gen-x president, but with Biden, who's too old to be a boomer
@cstross @landley @graydon @stingraz
The handy UK rule of thumb to distinguish between boomers and gen x is "Janet & John, or Peter & Jane?"