You’ve surely seen or read about the video the White House put out last week that interspersed bombing footage from Iran with punishing hits from NFL and college football games, over AC/DC’s "Thunderstruck." You can see it here. You will also see that it was posted on X from the official White House account, which added one word to the visuals: "Touchdown."

Football can be an ugly business, but it does not as yet involve the bombing of schools and the killing of innocent schoolgirls. Fortunately, several of the players highlighted in the White House post have decried the use of their images in this way. Former Baltimore Raven Ray Lewis told HuffPost: "I did not approve my image or football highlights being used to compare football to war. The game I love is about discipline, brotherhood, and respect. War is something entirely different. Lives are at stake. God bless our troops and their families." His old teammate Ed Reed, after being alerted to the use of his image by journalist and Ravens fan Ben Jacobs, wrote on X: "I do not approve this message." And former Nebraska Cornhusker Kenny Bell told The Washington Post: "For that play to be associated with bombing human beings makes me sick. I don’t want anything to do with images like that." The cowardly NFL has yet to speak.

You may say it’s just a 30-second video and it’s about what we’d expect from these people. And you’d be right on both counts. But it seems to me this video is worth a little more exploration than that because it reveals a lot about what these apes are doing to our country. Actually, that’s insulting to apes, who live in quite sophisticated and empathetic societies. Let’s just call them vermin, although that’s probably insulting to rats too, but since it’s one of their favorite insults, let’s just turn it around on them.

Imagine being the juvenile White House staffer who came up with this idea. Imagine thinking that that was cool. How can that even happen? You have to have a love of gladiatorial violence. You have to believe that the lives of the people you’re killing have no value whatsoever. You have to revel in causing death. You have to see it all as a big joke. And you have to subscribe to a view of the world in which power, the ability to dominate and to rain down violence in extreme cases, is the only thing that really matters. And then you run it up the flagpole for approval, and everyone else thinks it’s cool too. How did we get here?

This has been the Trump ethos from the start. It would be funny, coming from such a weak and sad man: a draft dodger, a serial abuser of women (and maybe girls), a nonstop liar who’s spent 40 years hiding behind slick lawyers. But this weak and sad man, who probably couldn’t do five pushups if he had a gun held to his head, has convinced a third of the country that he’s a tough guy, and his propaganda outlets and the even weaker and sadder men in his party (the disgraceful Senator Lindsey Graham) have reinforced this hideous image.

Democracy is supposed to exist in conjunction with certain moral values. One core idea is that might does not make right. This is an old, old notion that goes all the way back to Plato’s Republic. The Sophist Thrasymachus argues that justice is nothing more than "the advantage of the stronger." Plato has Socrates responding that this is wrong and defining justice in the ways most of us understand the word today—as believing and doing the right thing, irrespective of power relationships. Remember: This is the foundational text of Western philosophy. Thrasymachus was the bad guy. There’s a reason history has chosen to venerate Plato and Socrates, and not him.

You don’t need me to tell you which regimes in the history of the world have subscribed to Thrasymachus’s definition. It’s an ugly roster—to which we must now add the government of the United States of America.

The Trump regime has proven over and over that this is its morality. The DOGE cuts that have resulted in the deaths of poor children in Africa (as many as 700,000 a year). The repulsive cruelty that Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem and Tom Homan and ex–Border Patrol head Gregory Bovino have imposed upon people living law-abiding lives. The lawless and amoral murders of the people on those boats in the Caribbean.

And now, the prosecution of this war. It’s not that so far, we’ve killed "that many" civilians—around 1,300, although the killing of those schoolgirls will be a historic blot on this country’s escutcheon for the ages. It’s the certain knowledge that this crew will do anything it decides it needs or wants to do because, for them, justice is exactly the advantage of the stronger, nothing more and nothing less. And that’s how people can decide that war has no more gravity to it than a football game, and that equating the two is funny. What a sick bunch of people.

Last week’s quiz: "Black gold … Texas tea." A timely quiz about oil.

1. The old wives’ tale about oil coming from the decomposed bodies of dinosaurs is just that—it isn’t true. So where does oil come from?

A. The bodies of early mammals like mastodons and such

B. The flora of prehistoric forests

C. The remains of microscopic marine organisms that settled on the ocean floor

D. The cocktail of gases that existed in prehistoric oceans

Answer: C, microscopic marine organisms. No, really. Not very exciting, is it? Question. There were, I presume, such organisms everywhere there was ocean water. So why isn’t there oil near or in, say, Japan? Australia? Chile? Weird.

2. The ancient Chinese used oil for lamps and other purposes, but where and when did humans first broadly start using oil as an energy source?

A. In Persia in the 1500s

B. In England in the 1600s

C. In France in the 1700s

D. In the United States and Canada in the 1800s

Answer: D, in the U.S. and Canada in the 1800s. In the early 1800s, the world mainly used whale oil. Then, in 1846, Canadian geologist Abe Gesner came up with kerosene, which was cheaper and cleaner. But the big change came in 1859, when Edwin Drake led a group that struck a gusher in Titusville, Pennsylvania. The dawn of the age of oil was upon us, teeing the world up for, well, question 3. 

3. The birth of the modern petroleum industry is generally agreed to have happened with the discovery of a huge oil reserve at a place called Spindletop in Texas. What year was this?

A. 1882

B. 1893

C. 1901

D. 1912

Answer: C, 1901. Here’s the story. All a bit later than I might have thought. 

4. When was oil first struck in Saudi Arabia?

A. 1922

B. 1930

C. 1938

D. 1949

Answer: C, 1938. Story here. Incidentally, before this, the main source of income for the kingdom was apparently fees charged to pilgrims to Mecca. Kind of like tariffs, in a way.

5. During the OPEC oil crisis of 1973–74, how much did the price of a gallon of gas rise in the United States?

A. From 39 cents to 53 cents

B. From 27 cents to 49 cents

C. From 51 cents to 77 cents

D. From 56 cents to 62 cents

Answer: A, 39 to 53 cents. Here’s a chart for you. Doesn’t sound like a lot, but in 2023 dollars, that’s an increase from $2.58 to $3.15. Not peanuts. If you weren’t around, you can’t imagine the extent to which nobody gave one second’s thought to the price of gasoline before this happened. My father’s car then was a 1974 Chrysler Imperial LeBaron. Look at it. It got 11 miles to the gallon.

6. Based on current consumption rates and known reserves, how long from now will the world run out of oil?

A. About 30 years

B. About 50 years

C. About 100 years

D. About 220 years

Answer: B, 50 years. Well—good! Let’s find something else.

This week’s quiz: "Wait, where’s Qatar, exactly?" A quiz about the geography of and around Iran. Cuz you ought to know, that’s why!

1. Iran is bordered by seven countries. Which two of the following are not among those seven?

A. Armenia

B. Bahrain

C. Turkmenistan

D. Georgia

2. What is the sea north of Tehran on which Iran has about 400 miles of shoreline?

A. Black Sea

B. Aral Sea

C. Caspian Sea

D. Sea of Baku

3. Incidentally, one of the above bodies of water is about one-tenth the size it was in the 1960s. Which one is it?

A. Black Sea

B. Aral Sea

C. Caspian Sea

D. Sea of Baku

4. While researching this quiz, I noticed for the first time in my life that one country that borders Iran is cleaved into two pieces by another country that juts out. The much smaller, western piece of the divided country even has a name—the Nakhchivan Exclave (also the first time I’ve encountered the word "exclave," but—sure, makes sense!). What is the country that is divided, and what country occupies the land mass in between the two parts of the split country?

A. Georgia/Azerbaijan

B. Afghanistan/Turkmenistan

C. Iraq/Turkey

D. Azerbaijan/Armenia

5. The Strait of Hormuz is just below south-central Iran. North of the strait is the Persian Gulf. What body of water is below the strait?

A. Gulf of Baluchistan

B. Gulf of Arabia

C. Gulf of Oman

D. Gulf of Muscat

6. Match the country near Iran to its capital city.

I’m guessing you know three of the six and will guess at the others. If you actually know more than three, that’s impressive. Answers next week. Feedback to fightingwords@tnr.com.

—Michael Tomasky, editor 

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