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| Cardinal Blasé Cupich |
A tip of the mitre goes to Cardinal Blasé Cupich for his strong statement condemning the Trump administration’s bid to turn the Iran war into entertainment.
He zeroed in on the White House’s video that has scenes from action movies spliced with footage from the carnage in Iran. The video is captioned: JUSTICE: THE AMERICAN WAY.
Cupich wrote on March 11: “A real war with real death and real suffering being treated like it’s a video game—it’s sickening. Hundreds of people are dead, mothers and fathers, daughters and sons, including scores of children who made the fatal mistake of going to school that day. Six U.S. soldiers have been killed. They are also dishonored by that social media post. Hundreds of thousands displaced, and many millions more are terrified across the Middle East.”
The Chicago archbishop believes the moral crisis we are facing is not just a matter of the war itself, but also how we, the observers, view violence, for war now has become a spectator sport or strategy game.
“Our government is treating the suffering of the Iranian people as a backdrop for our own entertainment, as if it’s just another piece of content to be swiped through while we’re waiting in line at the grocery store.
“But, in the end, we lose our humanity when we are thrilled by the destructive power of our military. We become addicted to the 'spectacle' of explosions. And the price of this habit is almost unnoticeable, as we become desensitized to the true costs of war.
“But the longer we remain blind to the terrible consequences of war, the more we are risking the most precious gift God gave us: our humanity.”
Amen to that. Who else in the faith community will speak out against the trivialization of the cost of Iranian war? What's up, Pope Leo?
What’s an “excursion”? Most people connect the world with short and often leisurely activities. An excursion is a visit to the Bronx Zoo, or a day hiking in the Catskills.
The Oxford American Writer’s Thesaurus lists trip, outing, jaunt, expedition, journey, tour, day trip, day out, drive, run, ride, junket, spin and hop as synonyms for excursion.
Carrying out a massive bombardment of Iran is definitely not an excursion as our former “president of peace” is so fond of saying.
At the March 9 gathering of Republicans at Trump’s Doral golf club, the president said: “We took a little excursion because we felt we had to do that to get rid of some evil,” he said. “And I think you’ll see it’s going to be a short-term excursion.”
The carnage began on Feb. 28. That little or short-term excursion is taking longer than expected.
Trump is taking a page from his buddy Putin’s playbook. The Russian president came up with the euphemism “special military operation” to describe his full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
He unveiled that gem during his Feb. 24, 2022 speech announcing the invasion. Claiming Russia acted in self-defense, Putin said his goal was the "demilitarization and denazification" of Ukraine. He flat out denied any plan to occupy Ukrainian land. Putin’s special military operation has resulted in 1.2M Russian casualties since he launched the assault on Ukraine.
Trump’s excursion has taken the lives of seven American servicemen and wounded 140 others, so far. Let’s pray his excursion doesn’t evolve into a US quagmire.
And you are no Grant… Trump chided British prime minister Keir Starmer for his initial reluctance to provide base access to US aircraft for their deployment over Iran. “This is not Winston Churchill that we're dealing with,” he said to German chancellor Friedrich Merz.
Echoing Civil War hero Ulysses S. Grant, Trump is demanding the “unconditional surrender” of Iran.
The union general in 1862 demanded the “unconditional and immediate surrender” of Fort Donaldson, which was held by Confederate forces. Rebel general Simon Bolivar Buckner complied with Grant’s demand, which opened Tennessee to federal forces.
After issuing the ultimatum and capturing the fort, Grant earned a reputation as a strong and decisive leader. Trump will never be mistaken for US Grant.
Sign of these troubling times. The Ig Nobels, satirical prizes to promote public engagement with the scientific community, will take place in Zurich this year rather than Boston, where the ceremony has been held every year since 1991.
They celebrate the sillier side of science, achievements that make people laugh and then think. Ig Nobel winners in 2025 went to the inventor of an odor-resistant shoe rack, an experiment to see if alcohol ingestion hampers a bat’s ability to fly, and a 35-year study charting fingernail growth.
The awards are handed out by Nobel prize winners and come with a monetary prize in the form of a single banknote in the amount of 10T Zimbabwean dollars, which is the equivalent of 40 cents.
Ig Nobel organizers have decided there’s no time for fun and games in the US this year.
“During the past year, it has become unsafe for our guests to visit the country,” said Nobel founder Marc Abrahams said in a March 9 statement. “We cannot in good conscience ask the new winners, or the international journalists who cover the event, to travel to the US.
His plan is to conduct the awards festivities every other year in Zurich and rotate the event through other European cities.
Trump knows all about the Ig Nobels.
He was a co-winner of an 2020 Ig Nobel in the medical eduction category for “using the Covid-19 viral pandemic to teach the world that politicians can have a more immediate effect on life and death than scientists and doctors can.”
He shared the prize with enlightened leaders UK’s Boris Johnson, India’s Narendra Modi, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Belarus’ Alexander Lukashenko and Russia’s Putin.
The US president may scoop up his own Iggie later this year in Zurich for his boffo execution on the Iranian war.
Donald Trump served up his tastiest TACO on April 7 when he postponed his threat to wipe out Iran’s civilization for the blocking of Strait of Hormuz.
Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian yanks privileges from Congress that is more interested in saving puppies from Sharia law than in paying TSA agents... Responders to RFPs will soon have to spell out their AI plans... France's TotalEnergies totally caves to Trump's pathetic fixation on strangling the offshore power business in the US.
New York’s 34-year-old mayor Zohran Mamdani recovered nicely from the rookie PR mistake that he committed on the eve of St. Patrick’s Day.
Kudos to Joe Kent for resigning his position as director of National Counterterrorism Center because he feels Iran posed no threat to the US. But he diminished his point by over-the-top attack on Israel and its American lobbyists... Pope Leo urged media not to turn their war coverage into a video game... Dissed by European allies, Trump should beg his Board of Peace members to send ships to Strait of Hormuz.
Trump promotes Kristi Noem because he can't fire her. That would be an admission that he made a bad move in hiring her in the first place... The White House website maintains that the US "obliterated" Iran's nuclear capacity. So why are we currently turning it into rubble?... Americans overwhelmingly hate Trump's ballroom gambit.
