- 'America has the military power to do whatever it wants anywhere in the world'
- immediately loses war to Iran.

April 08, 2026 - 19:43 UTC

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This delusion of omnipotence has been a load-bearing pillar of the American psyche for decades.
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More like Eldritch Colby, amirite?
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Iran's terms are unacceptable. We can fight now, or fight at a disadvantage later --- against Iran and China; while the world is frozen in Findlandization.
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Scary, really scary. bsky.app/profile/markallanweaver.bsky.social/post/3miz6agc27s27
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Trump this evening: "Friday will be Vatican day. There will be Nothing like it!! Shut your fuckin' mouth, you crazy Pope! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President Donald J. Trump."
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USA be like:
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Genuinely the thing I have been passing around to my friends to explain the details of all of this. It's mindboggling
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Quite simply, Leo knows that he’s going to outlast Vance et al
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Plot Twist : The US wanted to lose to Iran
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I've had several interactions with this guy on Xitter back in the day and he's the perfect combination of evil and very stupid, for the Trump adminstration.
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Perhaps you missed our many successes with double-tapping speed boats in the Caribbean....
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How revolting the lot of them are.
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Our antipope will be some Fox News jackass or an Arby’s franchise owning mega donor who golfs with Trump
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Oh, Elbridge, go back to the country club.
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This is the stupidest administration EVER!
EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM!
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They're less of an Administration (they don't know how to make anything, you know, work) and more of a cabal, a not-so-little conspiracy to dismantle the government.
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America's military power is usually buoyed by a lot of planning, a lot of money and a lot of allies, none of which were present here.

There are actually limits to what we can do alone via conventional methods without the nation switching to a war footing.
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To be fair it's not like the French monarchy was doing particularly hot for much of the 14th century either
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Lose war to Iran, decides to take on the Vatican, still plans to take on China…
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Paraphasing Jesus; "Fuck these fuckin' fuckers".
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The American military can deploy a fully operational Burger King within 16 hours so I see why he thought they were more effective than they ended up being
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Maybe this is more an argument for American cultural supremacy than American military supremacy
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What if we combined the "check this shit out motherfucker" and the "masterful gambit sir" posts into one incredible foreign policy manoeuvre
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look, yes, iran rinsed us (again), but we can still beat the italians
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Instructions unclear, San Marino granted the right to charge tolls on the Strait of Gibraltar
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Can we tho?
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"The weak suffer what they must, and the strong... *checks notes* trip over their own scarf and break their nose. Is this right?"
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except it's not their scarf they're stepping on...
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Wenamun also has an extended riff on what happens when ideology runs headlong into reality:

bsky.app/profile/huwtd.bsky.social/post/3map3riciqc27
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It's been said before but the USA hasn't won a war since the 40s. The fact we THINK we have is a testament to the propaganda machine.
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Picking on countries that can't fight back and not calling them wars doesn't count as not winning wars
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I mean this is very obviously not true; off the top of my head the US extremely clearly won Gulf I, Kosovo, and the Cold War, and we're not even counting the small country wars like Grenada and Panama. And if anything, the U.S. lingers *more* on its failures than most countries.
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Immediately STARTS and loses war with Iran so badly they make 2 million US fees on every tanker that passes through
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insane.

Thanks to the vainglorious hubris of Trump and Hegseth, the United States gave Iran the tools to weaponize the Strait of Hormuz to its advantage, thereby maximizing its geopolitical footprint in the Middle East.

Iran loves the smell of American Exceptionalism in the morning.
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Taliban:
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Looks like it's also going to lose to the world's smallest country, the Vatican.
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I would simply threaten the Catholic Church with the power of the sword, a problem it has never previously confronted.
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Don't make Leo go all Julius II on your ass.
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The Pope may not have as many divisions but the last guy who checked the number didn’t last past 1953 and a later Pope was a significant part of the downfall of the USSR
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Tbf they weren’t exactly on the side of the righteous in the 1940s so they have form for accepting this kind of thing
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I knew those 20' thick walls were still warranted
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Pope Leo's namesake faced down Atilla the Hun and made him back off from invading Italy!
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Canossamaxxing
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It is an interesting thing about an institution with 1700+ years of recorded institutional history, that it has faced and somehow survived a very wide range of problems indeed.

We'll see if the US can deal with the 'mad Leader with mad followers' problem the Papacy has survived a few times
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I've been waiting for a Vatican/Pentagon showdown since Leo chose his papal name and I'm not disappointed
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JD should send a letter calling the Pope "not Bishop but false monk" and calling on him to resign in the name of the President and the US bishops.

This is a foolproof strategy which definitely works and has never backfired before.
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It’s bill Colby’s grandson! A man who ran the Phoenix program and maybe got got in revenge like thirty years later! Amazing.
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It’s such a poor understanding of the Avignon papacy too. Which of course the White House doesn’t care about, but … it’s a very poor understanding.
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Threaten the Catholic Church with the power of the sword and then somehow be surprised that the Pope doesn't accept invitations to the US.
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Who knew taking multiple Church History classes in seminary would be so relevant?
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These guys really got high on their own supply after Venezuela.
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If the US has the power to do whatever it wants, what does the US care whether the Catholic church likes it or not? How many divisions does the Bishop of Rome have?

This lecture wouldn't have happened if they weren't scared of something.
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"One official reached for a fourteenth-century weapon" Wait, what??
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Kind of insane how the whole “reality-based community” thing keeps coming back, huh?
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Charlemagne wore this look a LOT better.
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Stupid heretic!
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Strategy Cheese left making empty threats to the Pope, huh
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Chalk it up to divine intervention
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Christian Nationalists - who break every basic "be decent human beings" rule in the book that was left for them by early Christians - think they're the only ones that God likes.

Whatever one's belief system, the Nationalists' arrogance and hypocrisy are pretty astonishing to behold.
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If I scream any harder internally, my brain is gonna blow a lung.
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I mean, on the plus side, someone in the administration has heard of the Avignon Papacy?
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TradCaths.
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I'm guessing because he's in a discord server with a guy using a Roman bust pfp and the username 'AvignonPapacy1488'
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Fuck you Christian Nationalists, you are a fleeting blip on the timeline of the world
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RIP to all those whose empires crumbled because they took on the Catholic Church but I'm built different. And better. And maybe better than the Catholic Church.
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All those Opus Dei freaks furiously googling 'Conflicts of Interest'

See also - "how many divisions has the Pope" and the longevity of the Soviet Union vs the time period Stalin said that.
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Best of luck to them.
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Snopes is skeptical. www.snopes.com/news/2026/04/09/pentagon-threaten-vatican-claim/
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