by Soma Oj.

The only time things are ever allowed to get this murky is when we are tucked in on Saturdays with nothing to do but watch silly movies with mind blowing plot lines and incredibly good characters to bring them to life. Movies about crazy Presidents who started wars based on their naivete or crazy ideas about the world and their stupidly evil plans.

Movies like The Interview, The Devil’s Double and Dr Strangelove. Yes! Movies like Idiocracy where the story is that intelligent people have bred so little they’ve gone extinct. Since dumb people were far less selective in their breeding, the result is a society where there so many dumb people that a moderately intelligent guy from is frozen for 500 years. When he wakes up, he finds himself the smartest man on Earth.  He has to help an unbelievably stupid society solve all of their problems like an agriculture crisis caused by watering their crops with an energy drink.

Sadly, the plot of Idiocracy now bears some semblance to our reality. And I say our because America continues to deceive itself that it’s the most powerful country in the world. It’s kind of like how the country won’t stop saying that the American society is an egalitarian one founded on the principles of equality of all men.

The rest of the world can see the folly but America would rather maintain the charade and so we all quietly resign ourselves to this alternate reality in exchange for the good movie stuff and the benefits of Silicon Valley and whatever else gets handed down from there.

So yes, “our” reality. Because if the most powerful man in the powerful country is failing, it means we are all on unsteady grounds. And we sure are.

Yesterday, Donald Trump made himself the focus of even more unpleasant scrutiny than the usual. He’d apparently done the exact thing that Michael Flynn was fired for; a variant of the allegations Hillary (may or may not have) lost the elections for. He leaked sensitive intelligence gathered from U.S spies about alleged activities and plans of the Islamic State terrorists during his meeting with the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, and the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov.

The whole of America seems to have been turned upside down over this but there are just a few question burning on my mind. Here are 5 of the most important ones as determined the more sane people around me:

1. What really is the cause of all the fuss?

After The Washington Post published its damning report about the fact that Donald Trump may have released sensitive information to the Russian in the White House, the President took to his Twitter to respond saying that he had the absolute right to do so. And apparently, this is true seeing as no one has taken him up on that. In fact, the report by the Post even admits that as the Commander in Chief, Trump is at liberty to declassify any classified information.

So what again are we all mad about?

2. How come Syria does not have a voice in all these? 

So the Post says that Trump may have talked to the Russian envoy about some code-word level intel. Stuff that even some government officials are not entitled to be debriefed about. Naturally, the Post could not publish the specifics of what Trump may or may not have leaked but it’s big stuff.

The hot point for many of the complaints however centre around the fact that Trump leaking to the Russians may have already jeopardised the US intelligence community’s relationship with the source that helped them gather the said intel.

The fear is that this may now have ruined their chances of getting this source to possibly provide “intelligence on Russia’s presence in Syria. Moscow would be keenly interested in identifying that source and perhaps disrupting it” now that Trump has blown the cover.

And this is important because “the two nations have competing agendas in Syria, where Moscow has deployed military assets and personnel to support President Bashar al-Assad” while the United States has all but admitted to funding and arming the rebe; fighters against the Syrian government headed by Assad.

It all just begs the question: Where does Syria get to stop looking like the helpless child of two deranged adults in a nasty custody battle?

3. Are we really openly discussing espionage?

Just assumed it was the kind of thing best reserved for a 007 movie.

4. Still on this source…

One of the ananymous government sources that leaked the scoop to Washington post lamented: “If that partner learned we’d given this to Russia without their knowledge or asking first, that is a blow to that relationship.”

One would imagine that the US would have figured by now, with all the global fuss we are making about it, that “the source” already knows.

5. A quick final question: 

Just in case it all deteriorates and the world powers go crazy and we have a world war on our hands, where does Nigeria stand? We cannot really sit that kind of thing out on account of a sick President, can we?