The spectacle of international relations has finally devolved into a high-stakes version of two toothless dogs barking through a chain-link fence, convinced their saliva-flecked growls are actually thunder. Washington and Tehran are at it again, engaging in what the media—those breathless stenographers of the apocalypse—calls 'sabre rattling.' It is a quaint term, isn’t it? It suggests there are actual sabres involved, and that the people holding them have the wrist strength to actually lift them. Instead, we have the Orange Emperor and the Turbaned Titans exchanging threats that carry all the intellectual weight of a YouTube comment section, while the rest of the world waits for a climax that never quite arrives.

Washington has moved an aircraft carrier. Because nothing says 'I am a serious global power' like floating a multi-billion-dollar steel island toward a coastline just to see if anyone flinches. It is the geopolitical equivalent of revving a rusted Honda Civic at a red light in a desperate bid for attention. The carrier, a marvel of engineering dedicated to the noble art of turning tax dollars into vapor, sits there as a floating target for rhetoric. It is a symbol of a bygone era where 'projecting power' meant something other than giving the news networks a fresh graphic to scroll across the bottom of the screen. Meanwhile, the Iranian officials respond with the usual linguistic flourishes, promising 'crushing blows' and 'unimaginable consequences,' phrases they have clearly copy-pasted from a 1980s action movie script that was rejected for being too cliché.

The Left will wring their hands, clutching their organic cotton totes and weeping about the 'erosion of diplomacy,' as if diplomacy was ever anything more than a series of polite lies told over expensive shrimp cocktails in wood-panneled rooms. They act as if a few more strongly worded letters from the United Nations would somehow pacify two regimes that thrive on the oxygen of mutual hatred. They want 'de-escalation,' a word that implies there was ever a peak to descend from, rather than just a flat, muddy plateau of perpetual annoyance. Their belief in the power of 'dialogue' with people who view compromise as a fatal allergy is as touching as it is moronic.

The Right, on the other hand, is currently suffering from a collective priapism at the thought of 'projecting strength.' To them, a carrier strike group is a giant phallic symbol intended to compensate for the fact that their domestic policy is essentially a dumpster fire fueled by grievance and student loan debt. They scream for blood, provided it is someone else’s child spilling it in a desert they couldn't find on a map, while they tweet from the safety of a climate-controlled suburban breakfast nook. They think war is a video game where the 'good guys' win and the oil prices drop, ignoring the inconvenient reality that every time Washington kicks a hornet's nest in the Middle East, we just end up with more hornets and a significantly higher bill for the removal services.

The Iranian leadership isn't any better; in fact, they are the other half of this toxic marriage. They need this conflict. They need the 'Great Satan' to keep their own restless, tech-savvy population from noticing that the domestic economy is a charred ruin and the social contract is a list of things you aren't allowed to do on a Tuesday. Every time a US carrier moves an inch closer to the Strait of Hormuz, it is a gift to the hardliners in Tehran. It validates their paranoia. It justifies their existence. It is a symbiotic relationship of pure, unadulterated stupidity. Trump needs a bogeyman to distract from the latest legal circus or flagging poll numbers, and the Ayatollahs need an external threat to justify the morality police. It is a dance of the macabre, performed by geriatric ego-maniacs for an audience of millions who are too tired and too broke to look away.

Think of the historical parallels, if you possess the attention span of something larger than a goldfish. We have been here before, dozens of times. The Cold War was a masterclass in this kind of theatre, but at least the participants back then had the decency to look terrified of nuclear annihilation. Today, it is all performative. It is content. It is 'engagement.' The threats are issued on social media or through state-run television channels that have the production value of a local car dealership commercial. We are witnessing the death of the 'Great Power' narrative, replaced by a petty squabble between two entities that are both, in their own unique ways, failing their citizens on a daily basis.

The aircraft carrier moves. The threats are issued. The stock market wobbles just enough to make the ghouls on Wall Street a little bit richer. The pundits shout until their veins pop. And tomorrow, we will do it all again. It is a closed loop of human failure. There is no 'solution' because the people in charge don't actually want one. A solution would mean they would have to find something else to talk about, something like crumbling infrastructure, a failing healthcare system, or the fact that the planet is slowly cooking us alive. But those things are hard. Moving a boat and shouting into a microphone is easy. So, enjoy the show. The tickets were expensive—you paid for them with your future—so you might as well watch the sabres rattle until the metal finally snaps under the weight of its own absurdity.