I

April 20, 2026

The day after Trump dropped “tactical” nuclear bombs on Tehran and a couple of other targets I asked one of the former Trump voters at work what he thought. “Man, that’s crazy!” he said. Then he got really outraged. “I can’t believe the price of gas went up so quick! You know, it’s already up 25 cents a gallon. I had to spend almost 100 bucks to fill up my tank. I should have topped it off yesterday when I had the chance. I had to tell my son our fishing trip is off ‘cause I can’t afford the gas. I never should have voted for that asshole.” He was fuming.

“Hold on,” I said. “Trump just dropped a nuclear bomb. He’s destroying an entire ancient civilization, murdering millions of people, and your main thought is the price of gas?”

“They should have overthrown that aytolla or whatever he’s called a long time ago and then this never would have happened. Anyway, I can’t afford to worry about those Muslims over there. I have my own problems right here, specially with gas where it’s at.”

“That is the most anti-union thing I ever heard,” I told him.

“John, what the hell are you talking about? What the hell does this have to do with the union?” he asked me.

I was so mad, I just walked away.

There was another guy who’d been listening. A few minutes later he came up to me and said quietly enough that nobody else would hear, “John, you were right.”

“Why are you telling me that?” I asked. “Why don’t you tell him?”

He was taken aback. “I don’t want to get involved. I got my own problems,” he said.

“You know what Martin Luther Kind said,” I told him. “It doesn’t take bad people for bad things to happen. It just takes good people to say nothing.” I knew it wasn’t an exact quote and I wasn’t sure it was MLK who’d actually said it, but it was the best I could come up with on the spur of the moment.

“Man, you ain’t ever satisfied,” he said before walking off.

That same day, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries issued a strongly worded statement denouncing Trump for his “lawless action” but when asked about impeachment Jeffries said “let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. We’re still in the minority.” Bernie Sanders went even further. He said that at this rate workers won’t even be able to afford the price of soup, never mind gas and people are going to hate us all around the world. New York City Mayor Mamdani declared a city-wide day of mourning for the people in Iran.

There were street protests throughout the country. All sorts of militant speeches were made, even denouncing Trump as a war criminal. In Oakland, the executive secretary of the Alameda County Labor Council spoke from the platform. “We represent 135,000 union workers here in Alameda County, and we stand with you,” she said to loud cheers. “I’m happy to have this proud contingent for SEIU 1021 alongside of me,” she continued, turning to the five or six 1021 staffers standing alongside of her in their purple t shirts. The crowd went wild. Nobody noticed the contradiction in what she’d said – that the labor council “represents” 135,000 union members but the number of participants in the union contingent could be counted on the fingers of two hands. One speaker actually had the temerity to call Trump a war criminal, to even louder cheers.

However, when one member of congress traveled to the Hague to file war crime charges against Trump and Hegseth, she was detained by Customs when she returned to the United States. The press made a big flap over it, but then when the price of gas crossed double digits that detention left the news.

Far from having quelled the fighting in Iran, in South West Asia North Africa (SWANA) the bloodshed increased. Attacks on US bases throughout the region multiplied, with dozens of US soldiers killed or wounded, not only by drone attacks from Iran but also by homegrown “terrorists” in the country where the US bases were located. This was greeted with outrage in the US. CNN’s Jake Tappert offered his thoughts and prayers for the families of US soldiers who’d lost their loved ones serving out country in that dangerous part of the world. All his panelists, including Van Jones, sagely nodded their heads. The only exception was Republican commentator Scot Jennings, who was outraged. “We don’t need thoughts and prayers,” he fumed. “We need strong action to let these terrorists see that they cannot toy with the lives of our brave service men and women without facing consequences,” he asserted. For once, his customary smirk was replaced with a scowl.

The savage horror that the US and Israel had unleashed on the people of Iran continued and the effects of the radiation from the US bombs started to be felt within 48 hours. A little bit of that news filtered into the news in the United States, although a lot more was actually carried by Hasan Piker and Joe Rogan. Their audiences increased several times over. The Pope denounced the use of nuclear bombs, but another wing of the Church hierarchy increased its rebellion while still a third wing remided the membership that Catholicism is a religion not a political movement. Many evangelicals seemed to welcome the horror Trump and Netanyahu had unleashed as a sign of the coming return of Jesis and End Times. Hegseth gave another speech in which he invoked “the name of Jesis Christ, our lord and savior”. Secretary of State Marco Rubio gave a slightly more veiled comment along those same lines, while Trump issued a Truth Social meme of himself sitting on the throne, godlike, before the pearly gates of heaven.

Try as they might, however, most people in the United States could not completely erase from their consciousness the historic crimes their country had committed. However, in trying to ignore it, actual savagery become even more acceptable here at home. Neighbors fought neighbors, coworkers fought coworkers, while other tens of millions remained cloistered in their homes scrolling through their cell phones.

Then an absolute disaster struck: In a coordinated attack on cell phone towers throughout the United States, people’s cell phones went dark. What to do, what to do? Thousands of people, tens of thousands, actual millions flooded out onto the streets across America! For some it was the first ime in their lives that they actually made eye contact with their neighbors.

And here we return to that worker who’d stood silently by while his coworker showed no concern for the horror his country was unleashing. He, too, came outside with his 10 year old daughter. They looked around at the breakdown of society and through one of those weird connections that the human mind makes they also thought about the nightmare for which their country was responsible in SWANA. “Yeah, dad,” his daughter said. “But what did you do to stop it?”