What is frightening about this moment in history isn’t the madman with the nuclear codes threatening to destroy a civilization but the failure of the political, legal, media, business establishment to stop him.
I was a witness when the monster took the stage.
My latest:
substack.com/home/post/p-…

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— Charlie Angus (@charlieangus104.bsky.social) April 7, 2026 at 5:09 PM

According to the NYT, Trump just announced a “two-week ceasefire” – in other words, he is declaring victory and leaving. He thinks he can avoid impeachment or Article 25 by trying to put the genie back into the bottle – I hope he doesn’t succeed.

— Cathie from Canada🍁 (@cathiecanada.bsky.social) April 7, 2026 at 5:14 PM

Tuesday night the US and Iran finally took an off-ramp, apparently constructed by Pakistan with an assist from China. Sort of.

It’s taco Tuesday all over again!

— Tea Pain (@teapainusa.bsky.social) April 7, 2026 at 4:51 PM

Some commentary about today:

This is why I try to protect words for when they are needed to convey the immediacy and threat they represent.

What Trump is threatening in Iran is *genocide*, pure and simple.

Of course, that word doesn’t land the way it used to.

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— Tom Nichols (@radiofreetom.bsky.social) April 7, 2026 at 1:33 PM

Paul Krugman

…All of this is made possible by the lockstep slavish obedience of Republicans. Nonetheless, Democrats have a role here, too. And this is not a time to attack Trump’s war because it costs too much money or to attack it because it’s bad for energy markets or raises the price of groceries. I mean, it does do all of that. All of that is true. But we’re way past that point now. We’re at the point where you need to unambiguously condemn the immorality and criminality of what’s going on. No mincing of words.
Damned if I know what’s going to happen. I mean, at some level, I think that the civilization that may be destroyed tonight is our own….

Timothy Snyder

…Around the president there will be people, sadly, who work deliberately to normalize the language of genocide. There will be other politicians who find the right words to reject it. One can hope that there will be politicians who find the courage to remove the man who speaks genocide from office. And these words should lead to resignations by everyone who works closely with the president.
But we cannot count on politicians. This is ultimately up to us, the citizens: for our own sake, for the sake of the future of the country, for the sake of a possibility of new beginnings, we need to say something, to someone else, to ourselves: this is simply wrong…

Wesley Wark

…About the only thing that can be certain is that a peace deal will not be hammered out in two-weeks. Negotiations with hit walls built by both Iran and the US. There will be no trust between them. The talks will show determination on both sides to claim victory very publicly, and deny anything that might spell a climb-down. They will get under each other’s skin, and Trump’s is notoriously thin. Both parties are very far from any psychological understanding of the mind of the other, and neither will have good intelligence to assist them in fashioning a peace.
If the outcome of the US-initiated war is an Iran left with an uranium enrichment capacity and stronger control of the Strait of Hormuz, this would not come close to a publicly sellable deal for the US president. He would have to look elsewhere to proclaim victory, and might well look to controls on the Iranian military and on some kind of Middle East non-aggression pact that would, from a US perspective, have to be seen as protecting Israel and offering a shield for the Gulf States.
So, breathe one sigh of relief, but one only.

I’m not sure this is true, but I guess we’ll find out eventually:

So the state-of-play here as I understand it is that the USA and Iran both agreed to a two-week ceasefire, but understand themselves (or claim to) as agreeing to a ceasefire on different terms re: the strait of hormuz, so it is a kind of ‘clap your hands if you believe’ sort of ceasefire.

— “Online Rent-a-Sage” Bret Devereaux (@bretdevereaux.bsky.social) April 7, 2026 at 5:15 PM

ISSUES WITH THE NEW CEASEFIRE

1. Israel is not a party and cannot be trusted.
2. It is not locked in until the Strait is open.
3. The BBC reports a soft mutiny inside the Pentagon that could complicate Trump efforts to break or violate the ceasefire.
4. Lebanon is not covered.

— Seth Abramson (@sethabramson.bsky.social) April 7, 2026 at 5:13 PM

this is the ceasefire agreement that trump agreed to, which to me looks like an insane strategic defeat for the US

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— onion person (@junlper.beer) April 7, 2026 at 6:21 PM