LET A THOUSAND ALGAES BLOOM!!!

Donald Trump, in his haste and corruption, has wrecked the historic reflecting pool that spans the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial.

In this episode, Matt and Brian discuss:

• How this lazy and corrupt endeavor went to shit so quickly;

• Why it serves as a useful metaphor for Trump’s Iran war, and just about every initiative he’s undertaken autocratically;

• Whether this should also be a cautionary tale for Abundists, who often see the appeal of sweeping aside red tape and process to Get Things Done Fast.

Then, Brian briefly ventures into amateur architecture and engineering with some proposals for fixing the reflecting pool for all time. (Surely no one’s thought of THIS before!) But we mostly assess the damage done by Jewish-American Iran hawks, via their effort to make Israel an appendage of the GOP (currently controlled by a corrupt con artist) and steer the U.S. into a losing war. Will they ever reflect on the harm they’ve caused? Is schadenfreude the order of the day? Or is that just whistling past the graveyard? And are there lessons here for leftists who are now tempted to make common cause with Trump against Israel?

Answers are available in full to paid subscribers—just upgrade your subscription and pipe full episodes directly to your favorite podcast app via your own private feed.

Further reading:

• Brian on the self-righteous, right-wing American Jews who were being cavalier with Jewish lives all along.

• Matt on how Trump’s (autocratic) war on state capacity is coming home to roost.

• Brian again, on how Trump switching sides in the war he lost doesn’t make him a Palestinian liberationist.

• Matt, again, on how Trump’s “reflecting pool” foreign policy is “violent and cynical and bad.”