“Trump has tipped the Middle East into a massive war that could last weeks” — or months, or years

Reuters

{Sky News 28 February} US and Israel attack the Iranian capital with the goal of regime change.

The nefarious Iranian regime hath long courted precisely this sort of escalation; yet the orange-stained regime in Washington is scarcely less reckless, and no less morally compromised. It is difficult to avoid the suspicion — more to the point, certainty — that these strikes are being exploited as a convenient diversion for Donald Trump: a spectacle designed to distract the #Murican masses from the fact they are being ruled by a paedophile. And, to that end, it will work: in a country so coarsened and credulous, any resistance in earnest to the laundering of what is beyond grotesque and indefensible is practically non-existent.

Israel’s position is more complex, of course. Its security concerns regarding Iran are real and severe, and long-standing. Twenty years ago, we were talking about the likelihood of a bloody conflict. Even so, it is entirely plausible that Bibi Netanyahu, too, may welcome a crisis that shifts the focus from his internal political troubles, and his reliably deferential posture towards Trump hath been dispiriting to anyone who supports both Israel and democratic, egalitarian governance in this world. Going along with Trump on this is a high-stakes gamble; as I write, reports are emerging that Tehran hath launched retaliatory strikes on Tel Aviv. However one parses it, the outlook is bleak — extremely bleak. And, remember, the Iranian bear nukes. 

Copyright 2026, Arthur Newhook.

#Azumeria: a Valentine's Day lament for the most aloof girl I've ever known

#Azumeria Happy Valentine’s Day. Alas, my erstwhile punk rock princess ranks lowly in the annals of girls I’ve loved before. Over the span of nearly twenty years — beginning in that accursed, long-shuttered record shop on the Middlesex Turnpike in Burlington, MA, and then intermittently thereafter as thou drifted from one corner of this country to another — thou didst move in and out of my life with restless inconsistency.

When last we spoke, it was during the year of the pandemic. I had resolved to visit thee in Reno, Nevada, clear across the continent. Tickets were purchased; arrangements carefully made. And yet, in thy customary fashion, thou unravelled the plan entirely. And I lost hundreds of dollars on it, which I really could not afford to lose. Still waiting on reimbursement from thee for that.

Thou wast ever among the most distant and inscrutable souls I have known — and I have known a fair number, myself included at many junctures, none too proud to say. In the final reckoning, it amounted to little more than wasted years and misplaced investment.

I can only hope that the little girl thou bore at, what, 42 — and to a baby Daddy barely out of high school, a spoiled little rich boy with a most punchable face that thou meet in the halls of Alcoholics Anonymous (do not even get me started on that cult) — is not suffering unduly. The one I was looking so forward to meeting, but never shall. But, she probably is suffering, and is still quite young. Nothing I can do.

Copyright 2026, Arthur Newhook.

#Enchantra A Valentine Day's lament for a girl in East Tennessee

#Enchantra Happy Valentine’s Day. Didst thou remember to send a card to the child-raping, nation-killing demagogue whom thou worshippest as Lord and Saviour, whilst giving lip service to Jesus — the one whose name is now bound to scandal, secrecy, and redacted files, and whose Department of Justice hath seen fit to obscure more than it hath revealed?

I lament that thou once possessed a heart of gold, and then didst allow political, familial, and societal pressure to harden it when that orange demagogue emerged and told ‘y’all’ precisely what ‘y’all’ had long been waiting to hear. And somehow, in all of this, thou didst choose to blame me for thy heart and soul turning sour.

Well, I thank thee kindly for wasting more than eight years of my life — eight years invested in someone who surrendered her judgement to a cult of grievance and cruelty, along with the rest of the yahoos living around there. (It was a long-distance affair, though I visited her and her family in East Tennessee and became well acquainted — to say nothing of the countless hours she kept me on the telephone most every night, for years.)

Someday thou shalt fall to thy knees — not in worship, but in reckoning — and plead with God for having held so fast to the support of so obvious a con-man and horrifically evil entity. Someday thou shalt seek my forgiveness, and the forgiveness of every soul oppressed in the name of thy Lord and Saviour, Donald Trump.

Make no mistake: I am not pining for thee, nor do I care much any longer about the private relationship issues we endured; but I am eternally furious that thou wouldst betray every principle thou once upheld in order to support a tyrant — and for what gain? To the contrary, he robs us all of everything. Wake up, grow up, and repent.

—‘Christopher Robin’

Copyright 2026, Arthur Newhook.

#Enchantra: a lament for a kind lady lost to the scourge of Trumpism

I remain perpetually angered that the woman with whom I shared more than eight years of my life — let us call her Enchantra, once the gentlest and kindest soul I had ever known — hath now devoted a decade to the cult of Donald Trump, QAnon, and sundry other manifestations of embittered, reactionary dogma. I told her so — plainly and without ornament — as recently as last week. The pallid, evasive reply I received this time sufficed: somewhere in the deep chambers of her conscience, she knows I am right. Yet she holdeth fast.

Part of the problem lieth in her upbringing, the gravitational pull of familial and societal appeasement, the ideological climate in which she dwelleth, limited formal education, years of severe health struggles, and an ever-shifting regimen of medication that inevitably clouded her cognitive equilibrium. Yet these are but tributaries. The primary reason is that she — and the millions similarly poisoned — were granted permission to transmute grievance into identity, to sacralise resentment, and to dwell perpetually in a theatre of persecution and self-pity. I devoted countless hours unto hearing her sorrows — many, it must be acknowledged, not without justification; the manner in which this disabled woman was treated by health professionals and certain of her kin often enraged me. Yet once aggrieved, she possessed an inexhaustible capacity to rehearse and elaborate those injuries at prodigious length. Trust me on that.

She cleaveth to Trumpism with a fervour nigh unto self-deification, insisting upon its righteousness, even its sanctity. What I behold is not merely a political allegiance but a corrosive moral inversion — an ideology that hath disfigured public discourse, estranged friends, families, and lovers, and debased the civic spirit. Such darkness, however entrenched, cannot endure indefinitely; history is unsparing with movements that mistake grievance for virtue and cruelty for strength.

I do not claim to have been a perfect angel in this matter; I did make grievous mistakes, though not nearly so grievous as she would have one believe (she is given to hyperbole in all matters). Nonetheless, damn Donald Trump and every person who hath propped this criminal paedophile up for ten years. Damn you to the pits of Hades. Thou art a destroyer of the lowest order, and our country is unlikely to survive thy treachery. The woman I loved for many years, who once loved me more than any other human being ever hath, is practically unrecognisable. I shall neither forget nor forgive this. Not at the barrel of a gun shall I ever give my assent to this nation-killing madness, not at any price.

—Arthur Newhook (pen name), 13 February 2025.

Copyright 2026, Arthur Newhook.