Politics is business. Business is politics. And right now, both are on fire.
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This morning, the President of the United States posted the above on social media. The first sentence is worth repeating: “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”
Read that again. An American president just announced the potential annihilation of an entire civilization. He called it “one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World.” He framed mass destruction as something wonderful.
This is not leadership. This is not strategy. This is a man with access to the most powerful military on Earth, a man with his finger on the nuclear button, posting like he is promoting a pay-per-view event.
The loss of innocent human lives in this conflict is a tragedy beyond measure, and I talk and write about that all the time here on my Uncensored Objection Substack. But, in this post I want to focus on what this means for your business and your bottom line.
Oil just crossed $111 a barrel. Gas in California is over $6 a gallon. The Strait of Hormuz remains effectively closed. The International Energy Agency has called this the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market. The S&P 500 has lost ground for five of the last six weeks. Morgan Stanley is warning of stagflation. Goldman Sachs says if this continues, gas prices and inflation become permanent problems for American families.
And here is the part almost nobody is talking about.
The closure of the Strait has nearly halted global fertilizer deliveries. Without fertilizer, crops fail. Farmers in the American Midwest, grain producers across Asia, and food systems feeding billions all depend on this supply chain. Miss the planting window and the food does not grow. We are facing catastrophic reductions in global food supplies. Not higher prices. Empty shelves. Famine-level shortages. Food insecurity reaching American families who have never experienced it.
This is not happening in a vacuum. This is happening to your retirement account. Your supply chain. Your operating costs. Your clients’ ability to pay you. Your employees’ ability to afford groceries and rent.
The former head of Human Rights Watch, Kenneth Roth, says the president is openly threatening collective punishment of civilians. That is a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Attacking civilian infrastructure like power plants and bridges to coerce a population is a war crime under international law. I wrote in detail about this in yesterday’s post, “I Applied Four Geneva Convention Legal Tests to Trump’s Iran Threats. Every Single One Came Back as a War Crime.”
Iranian civilians are forming human chains around power plants tonight. A synagogue in Tehran was destroyed during Passover. Children under ten were killed in overnight airstrikes on a residential neighborhood. The president says he is “not at all” concerned about war crimes.
You do not get to claim you are liberating a people and then announce their civilization will die tonight. Those two ideas cannot coexist.
I am a trial lawyer. I have spent nearly 40 years reading human behavior, evaluating evidence, and holding people accountable for their actions. And I am telling you this. The language in that post is not the language of a commander-in-chief. It is the language of someone detached from the consequences of his own words. Someone who sees global conflict as personal branding.
Business leaders need to understand something. Every dollar of increased fuel cost ripples through every transaction in the American economy. Every disrupted shipping lane raises the price of goods your customers buy. Every week this war escalates without a credible diplomatic strategy, your margins shrink and your risk increases. And now, the food supply chain that feeds your family and your community is under direct threat.
Politics is not something that happens to other people. It is happening to your P&L statement right now. It is happening at the grocery store. It will be happening at harvest time.
You can have strong opinions about Iran’s government. I certainly do. You can believe the regime is dangerous. Many serious people agree. And you can still recognize that threatening to destroy a civilization on social media, the same way someone announces a product launch, is reckless, immoral, and economically catastrophic.
The people who will pay the highest price for this are not the ones making the threats. They are the civilians in Tehran. The small business owners in Ohio paying $5 for diesel. The retirees watching their portfolios bleed. The families in Israel living under retaliatory strikes. The farmers who cannot get fertilizer in the ground before it is too late.
We deserve better than this from our elected leaders. Our businesses depend on it. Our communities depend on it. Our food supply depends on it. Human decency demands it.
Say something. Share this. The silence from business leaders right now is deafening.
Mitch Jackson, Esq.