The war is continuing to play itself out and Trump is slowly but surely running out of rope as the tension between his words: "We're winning!", "Iran will surrender!", "The Strait of Hormuz will open soon!" and the reality that, in fact, none of these things are true, continues to stretch towards a breaking point.
I find myself shocked that after 10+ years of Trumps constant lying that now the entire worlds economy is being propped up by the idea that maybe this time he is telling the truth.
It can't last though, the Strait remains closed, the ceasefire remains a ceasefire in name only as Israel continues to brazenly annex Lebanon, flattening every square inch of housing so that no one can return. They aren't even bothering to make up excuses, they don't have to because the crisis they duped Trump into manufacturing is sucking all of the air out of the room and providing Israel with all of the cover it needs.
I'm worried about what happens next.
A lot of the economic damage has already been done, we can't plant fields now that were left unplanted due to the high cost of fertilizer. If the Strait opens tomorrow tankers won't magically appear in American ports. I'm sure you're reading the same headlines that I am.
Kitchen table conversations at my house lately keep coming back to whether we should plan our summer vacation knowing full well that by early July gas might be $7 a gallon. Or will we be glad we held onto the cash during the coming economic storm? Will this be the last vacation we can afford for a couple of years?
I'm sure we're not the only family having this debate, booking late, quietly impacting the economy downstream from us. The little cottage we've been staying at for the past three summers had maybe just gotten to the point where they could count on seeing us, now maybe they are delaying expenditures of their own.
There's no taking any of that back, it's no longer a question of if it's going to hurt, people are already feeling the pain. The only questions left are how much it's going to hurt, and for how long.