The Situation: Meanwhile

The Situation on Sunday commented on the shocking paucity of detail or evidence in the government’s effort to issue subpoenas to the Federal Reserve Board—a paucity that grew more dramatic when the government filed a five-page motion for reconsideration in Chief Judge James Boasberg’s court.

Meanwhile, the United States proceeded with its war against Iran. And the president threatened European countries that they’d better join in or NATO was in trouble. And yet the European countries in question seemed oddly unmoved.

And so the president cast his wandering eye on Cuba. It’s close by, after all, and Iran turns out to be complicated. And Cuba is more like Venezuela—being close by and Spanish speaking—than is Iran. Iran, as we have all learned, is far far away and Farsi-speaking.

And meanwhile, while nobody was looking, Pakistan conducted airstrikes on Kabul and seems to have killed a lot of people.

And meanwhile, while everyone was looking, the Israelis claimed they killed the de facto Iranian leader, Ali Larijani—a claim the Iranian government has now confirmed.

And, as you know, the Oscars were awarded, and a lot of people got dressed up in formal wear and made speeches.

And there were storms in Washington, D.C. that fell somewhat short of catastrophic, as weather in Washington tends to do.

And Ric Grenell lost his job running the Kennedy Center into the ground.

And Peter Thiel gave lectures about the Antichrist near the Vatican.

And Joe Kent, the head of the National Counterterrorism Center, became the first administration official to resign in protest over the Iran war.

And a meteor exploded over Cleveland—because it was the time in this particular drama when a meteor should for some reason explode over Cleveland.

And the Supreme Court agreed to hear cases on whether the president can terminate temporary protective status for Syrians and Haitians.

And a federal judge in Boston blocked the administration’s changes to the country’s immunization schedule for children.

And meanwhile, the president outed a member of Congress for having a terminal illness. And the president’s chief of staff outed herself for having breast cancer.

And the guy charged with planting bombs at the DNC and RNC headquarters back in January of 2021 claimed that he is covered by the president’s Jan. 6 pardon.

And the Department of Homeland Security remains unfunded. And nobody seems to care except for the many employees of the Department of Homeland Security who are not getting paid.

And, as I write this column, U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth finds the shutdown of the Voice of America unlawful and orders 1,000 of its employees reinstated.

And I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking: What does any of this have to do with Judge Boasberg, or Jeanine Pirro, or the subpoenas to the Fed?

And you’re thinking: Hold on hoss. You can’t make a column out of a series of events bound together by nothing more than their having appeared prominently in major newspapers in close proximity in time to the Boasberg-Pirro spat, when some of those events have nothing to do with The Situation or the rule of law at all but involve third party wars, the weather, or even random astronomical events. 

And if that’s what you’re thinking, you are very much wrong. Because I can make a column out of such a list.

The very essence of The Situation is a bewildering, disorienting blizzard of stuff being thrown at you all at once. Yes, it’s flooding the zone with shit, but it’s not all shit. Some of it is war and death and some of it is illegal stuff, and some of it is policy craziness, and some of it you can’t even tell if it’s related to The Situation at all. And some of it is other actors doing other-actor things. And some of it is the weather. And some of it is a meteor blowing up over Cleveland. And it all happens at the same time.

And so you experience the news as a kind of panic attack, a breathless list of things that are happening that may or may not be connected, but they—individually and collectively—make you breathe faster, make your pulse race. And critically, they make you angry.

And depending on who you are, they may make you angry at different people. You might be angry at the president. You might be angry at the Israelis. You might be angry at the president’s enemies or those Europeans who seem strangely unmoved by the president’s demands that they get involved in his war. Or you might be mad at the media, for hyping the storm that fell somewhat short of apocalyptic. But you’re mad at somebody about something. Because in The Situation, you’re always mad at somebody about something. Because that is part of the experience of The Situation.

And part of the reason you’re angry is that you know it will continue tomorrow—because knowing that The Situation continues tomorrow is also part of the essence of The Situation. It doesn’t stop. The torrent, the blizzard, the unending stream of bullshit—some of it trivial (who cares if Grenell lost his job?), some of it deadly serious—didn’t start yesterday or the day before or the day before that, and it won’t end today or tomorrow or the day after that.

The list of meanwhiles has no beginning and no end.

The Situation continues tomorrow—because of course it does.