Them or Us?

For Whom the Bell Tolls on Ultimatum Day

I hear it, and you hear that ticking sound—a clock on the mantelpiece, in the hallway, or on the church tower.

Tick tock, like a metronome keeping a pianist to exact time, until 8 PM, tonight.

Then, at the toll of eight bells, in the dusk of the Eastern Time Zone, according to Donald Trump—who has taken on the role of Yahweh—the Iranian civilisation ends.

There is a cinematic urgency to all of this.

Tick, tick, tock—the way clocks in old Western films built suspense before a showdown.

On this day, this Tuesday in April, it’s not the Dalton Gang that the world waits to ride into town at sundown.

It’s something else approaching—far more existential, far more diabolical—perhaps even world-ending in its repercussions.

It’s Trump and all of his fascist chickens coming home to roost.

It’s America, finally dropping the pretence and openly wearing a black hat as it prepares to lay waste to Iran, the way Israel laid waste to Gaza.

Evil begetting evil, begetting evil forever and ever, two nations geopolitically acting out their natural born killers inclinations.

The rest of Western society stands frozen—nihilistic, neoliberal—incapable of standing up to fascism as it did in 1939.

It can’t, because our great liberal order has more in common with Myra Hindley than the Western leaders of WWII.

The governing class has spent the last few decades profiting from fascism and the overreach of the billionaire class.

Their moral qualities resemble those of the mobsters portrayed in Martin Scorsese’s film Casino.

On Sunday, Trump wrote on his Truth Social account, “Open up the fuckin’ strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in hell—just watch.”

On Monday, he didn’t back down from his threat to obliterate Iran.

His Minister of War, Mike “dipsomaniac” Hegseth, even compared a shot down American pilot to Jesus’. It seems his journey to be rescued in Iran occurred from Good Friday to Easter Sunday and thus warranted to be described in resurrectional terms as if he was the Christian god.

Biblical words and biblical wrath from a nuclear superpower are not to be taken lightly.

Now, on Ultimatum Day, Trump still hasn’t backed down or offered some measure of de-escalation.

All his chips, all of Israel’s chips, all of the West’s chips are on the table.

It’s not unlike the terms Hitler used against the Soviet Union after invading in 1941.

Fight and be annihilated, or surrender and be annihilated, but enslaved you will be.

We should be prepared for what follows, because Trump hasn’t cloaked his words in euphemism.

He is willing to commit every war crime imaginable to destroy Iran, including the nuclear option.

The West sits uneasily on two legs of a geopolitical chair that Trump is going to push over tonight.

Tick, tick, tick—tock.

When the hands reach 8 o’clock EST tonight, our breath will be held.
We will hear the peal of bells as they count out the time—one, then two, until the final bell, the eighth gong is struck. Then there will be silence for a heart beat, a frozen moment.
We wait for what happens next.
But it won’t be Iran’s civilisation that ends at 8 P.M on the eastern seaboard, at the hour when, for its television networks, America’s Prime Time once began . It will be ours that is finally gone.

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