AMATEUR HOUR IN WET MANURE

APRIL 19, 2026 – If ever there were a case for the superiority of experts over amateurs, we’re seeing it play out in the current fiasco over Iran. According to the latest reporting, the sometime Appalachian memoirist JD Vance,[1] along with the stereotypical New York real estate developer Steven Witkoff and Jared Kushner, all-around grifter and son-in-law of the Greatest Grifter in the History of Hyperbole, are flying off to Pakistan again to “negotiate” a resolution to one of the Biggest Stomps into Wet Manure in the History of . . . Wet Manure. The whole mess reminds me of the 12-year-old kid who on a lark, got behind the wheel of a parked school bus—engine running—and drove onto the Interstate for a mile or two before crashing into a ditch. The thing of it was, however, the first responders were adults with appropriate training, and the kid—whose prior record was longer than the bus—was ultimately sent to reform school.

But here we are, the most powerful nation of all time, run by a clown relying on . . . amateurs . . . to pull him—and the rest of the world—out of the wet manure. What will it take for American voters to acquire just a teeny-tiny bit of fact-based information, apply some basic judgment to it, and see the connection between “amateur” and “wet manure,” so that assuming the country survives the mid-term elections, we never ever again wind up with such a clown show in Washington?

As I see it, the wet manure is not something that can be easily hosed and scrubbed from the national shoe. If the central rationale for the attack on Iran was (or became?) “never to allow Iran to have nuclear weapons,” we pretty much guaranteed the opposite outcome—and not only in the case of Iran.

If for kicks we crawl inside the turbaned heads of our adversaries, in the cool light of day we’d find that those folks are laser focused on three realities:

1. America has awesome conventional and nuclear military power.
2. America elected—then re-elected—someone crazier than anyone in Iran, who (a) unilaterally ripped up an agreement reached under his predecessor, (b) picked a big fight despite having campaigned on a promise he wouldn’t, and (c) threatened to blast a whole 2,576-year-old civilization back to the Stone Age—i.e. commit wholesale genocide in contravention of international law, which his own country had worked so hard to get the world to adopt.
3. However much—before all this—Iran’s leaders had been deep down in their bunker rubbing their hands together, plotting ever so deviously to destroy the country of Israel in a phantasmagorical Blitzkrieg, in light of #s 1 and 2 above, development of a robust nuclear arsenal is now essential to Iran’s very survival. Forget Mephistopheles; Iran needs Jesus—in the form of NUCLEAR DEFENSE.

In light of this little venture inside the thinking of the “bad guys,” what can we expect our amateurs to extract from talks in Pakistan—or anywhere else? What rational person, no matter how good or evil, would trust the likes of Vance—who’d once trashed Trump categorically—and Witkoff and Kushner, rank amateurs at best, and lying SOBs at worst, not to mention the Commander of Mixed Messaging, as in, “Today it’s peace, tomorrow it’s war, or did I get that backwards? – I don’t know; I guess we’ll find out.”

To drive home the point here . . . If I were advising the “bad guys” in their talks with the U.S., I’d urge a proposal that included, “Iran will destroy all fissile material and all delivery missiles and agree not to replace any of the foregoing,[2] provided that the U.S. and Israel do the same, subject to open and random inspections of all three countries by the IAEA and, in the case of the U.S., a security bond equal to 1% of the U.S. annual GDP, adjusted annually commensurate with changes in said GDP, deposited in U.S. dollars (or the global reserve currency, as the same may change hereafter) in a Swiss bank.” Just to be snarky, I’d add to the proposal, “Entire peace agreement to be blessed by the Pope, with the signing ceremony to take place at the Vatican.”

Of course, even the American amateurs would reject such a proposal, but I’d counsel the “bad guys” to “hang tough” for a few days. This would give the world a chance to chew on things for a while and give FoxNews a new opportunity to demonstrate their expertise at pretzel-making. While Trump seethed at the newly spiked price of WTI (West Texas Intermediate) crude oil spiked, I’d suggest to my “bad guys” that they extend a public invitation to Kim Jong Un, Vlad Putin and Xi Jinping to join Iran in a “One World” strategy session—BYOD (“Bring Your Own Drones”).

Where in the U.S. government are those Iran and nuclear experts now that we really need them? Oh yeah: They all got fired by the amateurs standing in wet manure.

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© 2026 by Eric Nilsson

[1] Of the record, by the record, and for the record, a/k/a James David Vance, a/k/a J.D. Hamel, a/k/a JD Hamel, a/k/a James David Hamel, a/k/a James Donald Bowman.

[2] And just to play an inside joke on all American lawyers, I’d counsel adding, “—subject to the Rule Against Perpetuities.”