American Football

 I have long said that the Trump administration's crudely chauvinistic rhetoric, about their various wars and extrajudicial killings, reminds me of nothing so much as the speaker in Harold Pinter's satirical 1991 poem about the Gulf War, "American Football." 

But at his latest press conference today, Hegseth made the comparison seem even more inevitable. 

Pinter's poem satirizes the sadism and cruelty of the American war juggernaut—and its apologists—by adopting the voice of a triumphant schoolyard bully: 

Hallelullah!
It works.
We blew the shit out of them.

We blew the shit right back up their own ass
And out their fucking ears.

It works.
We blew the shit out of them.
They suffocated in their own shit!

Hegseth's press conference today makes the poem sound less like a satire than a straightforward transcript of American public officials. 

"Iran will be able to do nothing about it. B-2s, B-52s, B-1s, Predator drones, fighters controlling the skies, picking targets, death and destruction from the sky all day long. We're playing for keeps," he said. 

"They are toast and they know it, or at least soon enough they will know it. And we have only just begun to hunt, dismantle, demoralize, destroy and defeat their capabilities," he said. 

Hegseth had no solemnity or compassion to offer for the six Americans who have already lost their lives in this war—let alone the hundreds of Iranians, including civilians and children. 

The Daily Beast describes this performance, not inaccurately, as "chest-thumping." And—as if Pinter's poem were not already apt enough—it even came complete with "football analogies." 

"American Football" indeed. 

"I liken Iran's predicament to a football team who scripted the first 20 plays of a game," said powder-puff Pete. 

"The team knew what plays to run because their first few drives were scripted. But now that the game has started and the blitz is on, they don't know what plays to call, let alone how to get in the huddle and call those plays."

What a fucking idiot. He'd be hilarious if his need for masculine compensation were not right now causing the death and murder of hundreds of people in an illegal war of aggression, with no end in sight. 

I wish we didn't live in a world in which Pinter's pitch-perfect parody of American jingoism and militaristic machismo was still so accurate. But we do—right down to the psychosexual aspects of it all. 

Pinter ended his poem:

We blew their balls into shards of dust,

Into shards of fucking dust.

We did it.

Now I want you to come over here and kiss me on the mouth.