How’s your wallet suddenly feeling, folks, following yesterday’s refill at the Exxon? Uh huh. I know that’s right. Nonetheless, here we find ourselves entangled and stranded, yet again in the Middle East’s unknown and unknowable. We’re fully engaged now inside the most unpopular war in American history, ignited on the last day of the second month, void of congressional approval, mandated by a madman in between golf rounds.
What a shocker: Our Orangutan L’Orange, congenital liar that he is, insanely assured he’d never lead us into war. Yes, well: “Hey, hey, Donnie J. How many kids did you kill today?”
Well, 175 elementary school children, for starters; apparently, the Pentagon had been relying on “outdated data,” which begs the question, “Why?”
Nobody has an answer to that. But on the heels of already boiling hotspots Venezuela, Cuba and Greenland, L’Orange’s latest intended regime change went straight for the jugular, immediately followed by air strikes on Iran’s cultural heritage sites. The iconic, turquoise-tiled Jameh Mosque came crashing down and shattered 14th century Golestan Palace’s hall of mirrors is shattered. This after both had managed to survive centuries of wars’ upheavals.
Anyone who thinks Iranian sleeper cells here in the U.S. don’t already have The Liberty Bell and The Statue of Liberty in their crosshairs, for only two bucks and fifty cents I can promise you a freshly fired brick with your name on it shall be installed in the dazzlingly gilded new Arc de Trump. And driving your family to its grand unveiling will only cost you a month’s rent in gas to get there!
I’m sure that no American (outside of, possibly, a geography bee) ever in their lives had heard of the Strait of Hormuz until this past week. Of course — to the surprise of absolutely no voters — Trump “misjudged” the Iranian reaction toward his unprompted slaughter of their ayatollah. And when Tehran began launching retaliatory drones at American troops, viewing them as nothing less than an existential threat, clueless Pete Hegseth, our “Secretary of War,” said, “I think it was a demonstration of the desperation of the regime.”
No shit, Sherlock?
Thus, we now enter week four of Trump’s latest war that was “going to be over in just days,” and with an unconditional surrender. Just like Russia’s war against Ukraine would be over with and kaput on Day One of Trump’s flag-waving return to office. All hail, Gloriana! There’s no telling what grimly-wrecked carnage our nation will have become for this Fourth of July’s 250th anniversary jubilee. Will anybody even still be around to write its celebratory anthem?
So much for staying out of foreign wars. I’m even beginning to ponder whether L’Orange isn’t actually some experimental AI human prototype gone terribly haywire. TMI rumors run rampant about his, er, digestive tract hurdles. Certainly, gorging 24/7 on a diet of ultra-processed Mickey D’s can’t possibly be helping that pickled-persimmon skin tone of his, either. Somebody needs a good soul-cleansing. So let’s just get all spiritually-hydrated/kung-fu-Neo right to it, shall we?
Dear Howard: I feel like I’m living trapped inside some sort of invisibly-omniscient surveillance maze. Everything seems almost scripted nowadays. You know: narratives, social pressure, psychological looping, predictive systems shaping our behavior. The pressure is overwhelming: fear cycles, constant vigilance, the sense that the system is trying to make you collapse into its script. How do you fight back against something so repressively big as this panopticon?
— Feeling Observed in Oak Lawn
Dear F.O.O.L.: Panopticon? Whoa! Is this the biodigital quickening? I knew there was a reason I’m the only person on planet Earth who hates with a passion The Matrix, Neo and Keanu Reeves, equally.
First off, take a deep breath. Now exhale. Slowly. That’s it. The last thing those invisible bureaucrats of the universe want is for you to calm down and look equally fabulous while doing it. After all, the oldest trick in the Control Handbook is fear. And panic is terribly efficient once a person begins spiraling through anxious narrative loops and the brain morphs into a self-operating hamster wheel of dread. The System just loves it!
I know just how itchy you are, F.O.O.L., to fight back against the machine and rail about the injustice of it all. But this ain’t the analog era or even the dark web’s dankest corners. We’re in the AI wonderland of zillionaire wonderfucks, each with pockets deeper than the next, and all loathing one another maniacally. It’s a no-holds-barred new world, and nobody’s coming out ahead in the end.
Our only objective is to ride it out as inconspicuously as possible and leave behind as few untraceable fingerprints as you can. It’s high time to get the fuck off social media. Everything. Cold turkey. Anyhow, it’s impossible to broadcast one’s true, inner fabulosity via Instagram.
You still haven’t grasped this by now?
Well, hold onto your pencils and stop chewing those erasers. Because guess what time it is?
That’s right, it’s time for Howard’s multiple choice, grand finale question, aka, Pop Quiz Time!
Q: Which section of Howard’s “Gasoline & Gaslighting” column here was written entirely by AI? A. Howard’s Strait of Hormuz intro? B. Howard’s foreign wars jab at Donnie J? C. Howard’s F.O.O.L. question? D. Howard’s response to F.O.O.L.
If you know the answer, feel free to write me. Or write Chat GPT, instead — wherever that hellish cloud is, with all its monitors and euphemisms of technocratic politeness that convincingly have one believing authoritarian systems are just customer service features.
Fuck, you know, it could be that I’m not even a real person anyhow. Or maybe I once was real, but then The System decided they could do me one better and had me raptured. Who can tell, now that we’re all squirming inside our own matrixes?
But the true secret to refusing the script? Hell, that’s easy! All you’ve gotta be is yourself. And if the cameras that are watching, the more the better. Just be sure to give ’em a good show.
—Howard Lewis Russell
Next up arrives our cruelest month of the year. So please send all those chillingly pertinent April queries to your resident oracle of existential fabulousness, with affection, indignation and a perfectly arched eyebrow: AskHoward@dallasvoice.com.