Stop Your Chirping!

Trump is bored and wants everyone to leave him alone

The picture above shows bodies of U.S. troops lying on the beach after the terrible first day of the Battle of Tarawa in 1943. This and other horrifying photos were released to the American public soon after the fighting. As the New York Times explained in 2023, these images

were barely censored before being shown to American audiences, and prompted outrage at home. Instead of scenes of victory, the American public was confronted by haunting images in which, as [one of the war photographers] described it, “riddled corpses formed a ghastly fringe along the narrow white beaches, where men of the Second Marine Division died for every foot of sand.”

Just a few months after the landings, a full-length documentary containing gruesome footage, “With the Marines at Tarawa,” was released in theaters.

In other words, in the middle of a desperate, existential war, the U.S. government believed that citizens had a right to know what was happening — up to and including seeing graphic images of ugly setbacks.

But that was another America.

Today Donald Trump, who now says that talks with Iran are “very boring,” insists that anyone questioning how his war is going is unpatriotic:

We used to be a serious country. Not anymore.

I’m bored with my job busy with personal errands today, so no full post.