In January 2012, Donald Trump tweeted, “@BarackObama will attack Iran in order to get re-elected.” He kept that clever idea in his back pocket for eight years. In January 2020, on the eve of his own reelection campaign, he ordered the assassination by drone strike of Iranian top commander Qassem Soleimani.

With this blatant act of aggression Trump has not only lurched toward war with Iran, but also shown his political hand. After running disingenuously as an anti-war candidate in 2016, it’s now evident that his 2020 campaign will be set to war drums.

It’s a shrewd political strategy. Impending or ongoing war could be a political game-changer. Our nation is presently of two minds: even as millions of Americans grow disillusioned with wars in the Middle East, we are still vulnerable to star-spangled sentimentality and fearmongering about conniving foreign adversaries, still persuadable that the urgent need to reform economic and political life at home is subordinate to the duty to respond aggressively to perceived threats abroad.