March 15, 2026

By Stephen Stofka

This week I watched the blinking numbers on the fuel pump as I filled up with gas. $1 per gallon more than it was on February 26. Last year we had to get used to paying higher prices because of the Trump import tax. Now there is the Trump gas tax. I look over at the diesel pump. Almost $5 a gallon, up from $3.80 a few weeks ago. A semi holds about 150 gallons, far more than my Subaru. That gas tax will factor into price increases for groceries each week. The higher price for oil has been a boon for Russia, whose oil revenues had been declining in 2025. Russia produces 10% of the world’s daily consumption and exports 80% of that (Source). For those of us filling up at that gas station, it was like we were putting money in Putin’s pocket, ammo for him to kill more Ukrainians.

I hung up the gas nozzle and got in the car. On the radio, a reporter asked, “Senator, can you comment on the rising price of gas and the effect it has on the budgets of everyday working Americans?” The senator answered with a mantra “short term pain for long term gain.” Some clever marketing geek in Republican Spin Central thought up the slogan, then broadcast it to every conservative media outlet. Republican politicians downloaded the phrase into their brains so that they had a quick answer to an uncomfortable question. Democrats have a similar mechanism but are not as disciplined in their messaging.

In the 2015 and 2016 Republican debates, Trump was the outsider candidate. His every response broadcast skepticism and anger at the political system. Obama had made a bad deal when he negotiated the Iran nuclear deal, or JCPOA (Source). Trump had made deals all over the world and he would get a better deal. The Iraq war was a huge mistake. He attacked candidate Jeb Bush for supporting his brother’s bonehead decision to go to war and the lies he told in the lead up to the war (Source). Trump, the greatest Presidential liar of all time, calling out a former President for lying. We need a younger Trump to debate the old Trump and call him out for this stupid war.

In the book of Genesis, Chapter 22, God tells Abraham to take his son, Isaac, up to a mountaintop and sacrifice him to show his fealty. Abraham did so. Did he think “short term pain,” the death of his son, for “long term gain,” the fealty of a powerful God? Why would the thought of such a sacrifice even come into Abraham’s head? In Chapter 17, God had told Abraham that He would make a covenant with Isaac. Did Abraham remind God of that earlier promise? Hey, God we had a deal. At that point, Abraham was at least a hundred years old and Isaac could have easily refused to submit. Best not to analyze these stories because they are stories, like the many stories that Trump and his team have told about the reasons for getting into this war.

Rubio said that Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in the driver’s seat on this one (Source). How to make sense of this escapade? There was little consideration given to the consequences. Trump seems to be the leader of the gang that couldn’t shoot straight. Reminiscent of other laughable failures like Trump University, Trump Steaks, Trump Vodka, Trump Mortgage (Source). There’s a rumor that Netanyahu has evidence of Trump’s escapades with Jeffrey Epstein and is holding that as a threat over Trump’s head. Oh, now it all makes sense.

Several thousand years ago, people believed that what happened in the material world was the result of spiritual forces and gods. If this war were the result of a feud between the Greek gods Athena and Ares, then it would all make sense, of course. Pete Hackysack, the Defense Secretary, or as he likes to be called, The Secretary of War, certainly personifies Ares, the Greek god of war in all its fury and chaos (Source). But wait, Athena was the goddess of wisdom and strategic war (Source). This is not a strategic war by any stretch of the imagination, so how could Athena be involved? “Tonight we speak with an expert who is doubtful that wise Athena has a hand in this ill planned war. Our second guest this evening will be a Jewish scholar who claims that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is guided by the hand of Athena towards the final apocalypse and Israel’s victory.” The news media loves to cover the controversy. Political analysis would be much more entertaining if we adopted a spiritualist interpretation of current events.

Meanwhile, several thousand people have died in this war so far. They are the Isaacs, the sacrificial lambs not to some chieftain God of the Old Testament, but offerings to appease the vanity and folly of our leaders. I hope to see you next week when the price of gas goes up yet again.

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Image by ChatGPT