The application of political pressure and pain and the expenditure of political capital form the dimensionality of the the geopolitical gamesmanship that runs the world, for better, and often for much, much worse.Whether they understood it or not, the passionately loyal Donald Trump base has been given their most strenuous test to date about the realities of those pressures, and with very revealing and very interestingly revealed schism lines in what some might have considered a monolith of MAGA support.

We now know it to be anything but monolithic.

For now on the Iranian question, history reads that Donald Trump took a massively dangerous gamble, risking hundreds of unknowns and unintended consequences, things like downed civilian airliners and errant missiles for example, for the liquidation of a single terrorist mastermind who in an earlier war might have ranked as a five or six of clubs. Saddam Hussein, as you may remember, was the ace of spades, and came out little worse for wear.

But a peek behind the curtain gives inside accounts that a massive pushback by antiwar Trump supporters, betrayed and besmirched by the President’s sudden lovemaking session with neoconservative warhawks in his ramshackle cabinet of disloyalists, displaced Bushies, Cheney lovers and folks who just like to bomb stuff and go to cocktail parties, combined with the the spot-on messaging of one particular FoxNews host is being credited for steering Trump back in the direction of the non-interventionist, Constitutionalist military bedrock of his 2016 base–by pushing Trump back from the table of a potential all out ground war in Iran. And thank God for small miracles. And Tucker Carlson.

The day after the drone-fired missile sent General Qassem Soleimani to his next destination, presumably searching for 72-virgins and a stiff drink, Fox host Tucker Carlson delivered a caustically strong dose of reality on the topic, eviscerating the operation as an obvious incongruity with the rest of Trump’s thus far understated and at times brilliant foreign policy, that has included the removal of troops from Syria and most emblematically, his firm but fatherly generosity with North Korea’s spoiled millennial dictator, Kim Jong Un that has undeniably erased tensions in an Asian-Pacific region pestered for decades by flying missiles and saber rattling braggadocio. (In light of recent events, I’ve pondered more than once what that transaction might have looked like, had Trump chosen then to listen sooner to the ‘nuke’em if ya gottem’ wing of the annoyingly unenlightened neoconservatives that informed his actions this past week. If he had, you’d very likely be reading this on stone tablet, if at all.)

But back to Tucker Carlson and his succinct, at times brutally sarcastic and scathing critique of what amounted to a lobbed Halliburton-Raytheon turd into the ever bubbling punchbowl of Middle Eastern tension and intrigue. And the tens of millions of dismayed and even disillusioned Trump loyalists Carlson was speaking to, but mostly for, incredulous that Trump had so obviously caved to the paucity of interests, anti-American agendas and players that have come to be known in this era as the Deep State.

Folks like ex-CIA Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, Vice President Mike Pence, Nikki Haley and disgraced former National Security Advisor, John Bolton.

Added to those, Carlson performed bloody vivisection on warhawking needle-nosed Nebraska Senator, Ben Sasse, openly mocking the Senator’s gushing rejoice over the Soleimani strike, calling Sasse sarcastically, “a former consultant and a ‘very tough character,” and destroying Sasse’s imperialist assertions that “Americans are now safer because Soleimani is dead.”

Chortle.

But Tucker saved his most scathing critique for Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the man we now know had begun gunning for the killing of Soleimani in March of 2019, pressuring Trump to seek designation of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization, to open legal pathways for an outright assassination. And generally making nuisance of himself, tugging Trump’s pantlegs and begging to go weapons hot on the Iranian General that fewer than 2/10 Americans had even heard of prior to last week.

Carlson was quick to note the similarities in Pompeo’s posture and rhetoric on Soleimani and those of the infamous Colin Powell WMD moment before the United Nations, where Powell told the mother of all lies in order to gain approval for the Iraq war.

“Same liars,” Carlson quipped. “Only now, you want to believe them because Trump is in charge and we’re ready to go kill some bad guys.”

“Same liars,” Carlson quipped. “Only now, you want to believe them because Trump is in charge and we’re ready to go kill some bad guys.”

According to reports published Wednesday, President Trump watched Tucker Carlson Tonight and other conservative voices critical of escalated military tensions with the Islamic Republic of Iran, and used the information presented and the obvious disgruntlement of his anti-war supporters to inform his decision. And again, thank God for that.

It’s always a good thing when World War III or IV are averted. I’ve lost count.

But the scars remain. As with other Trump moments out of character and contrary to form–things like bump stock bans and talking up the virtues of Red Flag preemptive gun confiscation without due process, or the banning of all flavored vapes “to save the children,” Trump’s Iranian gambit laid bare to the bone key differences in wings of his support that likely won’t be speaking to each other for a while. On one side, the fatuous sycophants who believe that if you take exception or voice dissent with Trump policy even a single iota, “YOU ARE NOT A TRUE TRUMP SUPPORTER.”

Yes. Stunning analysis.

And on the other side, those of us who simply do not give a damn about cult of personality or the immense heft and significance of the Trump populist movement in America, if it fails to retain the policy distinctions, adherence to principle and savvy to political entrapment for a Deep State war we hired Trump to honcho.

Those of us who understand that even with the political figures we champion, admire and support, we do them absolutely no favors by sitting silent while they do policy equivalent emulations of Thelma and Louise at the edge of the Grand Canyon.

Evidence suggests that once again, being willing to speak the critical, multidimensional truth of a policy blunder loudly and even unpleasantly into the administration earhole, gave Donald Trump the political wake up call to remain true to his base, avert a wider war and deny his neoconservative lot of saboteurs, manipulators and fools their long lusted for objective of an Iranian invasion.

Let’s hope it holds.

Lastly, for those of you who see “disloyalty,” in the passionate voicing of policy dissent, even against a man who is the beloved champion of the American populist renaissance, no apologies, and certainly no goddamned Kool-Aid.

Just a primer on the indispensable value of the timely application of political pain and even jarringly rude invective against the irksome lot of America’s neoconservative wasteland, to keep an indispensable prizefighter upright and punching. Not coopted and laying useless on the canvass.

Class dismissed.