“The UAE is being bombed by the Iranians. Flights in and out are grounded. We’re marooned here in Dubai and may not make it back home.”
“Yes, but will Dubai chocolate be cheaper?”
What. The. Actual. FUCK.
Were these people dropped on their heads as infants? Like… I don’t even know what to say to that. To be fair, this is the most 2026 attitude that it is possible to hold toward the hostilities in the Near East right now: worry about the price of candy and the provision of fast fashion slop shipped directly from China (because of course someone posted wondering about the state of their Shein order).
The price of gas shot up by 40¢ per gallon overnight and God only knows how much higher it’s going to go1 if the Strait of Hormuz remains blocked. Several of my coworkers have uniformed service members who may have to ship out soon. Innocent people are already dying because of the unbelievable hubris and arrogance of the American and Israeli regimes. Iran may very well pose an existential threat to any and all Western countries. There are signs that the Russians are giving intelligence to Iran. The Trump Administration has threatened to institute a trade embargo with Spain because Pedro Sánchez, that country’s prime minister, has taken the eminently reasonable path of not agreeing with an act of open aggression against a sovereign nation. We may be observing the opening salvoes of World War III, and if we are, my hope is that I can find relative safety in Argentina, Iceland, South Africa, or perhaps Australia. The last thing on my mind right now is where I’m going to get my next fix of Dubai-style chocolate.
To be fair, when you see headlines like these, it does feel like you’re living in a movie. It does indeed seem surreal. I’m not making excuses for anybody involved, but it does bear noting that life feels enough like a simulation these days that it seems unreal to see in the headlines that the US and Israel have started a war with Iran that has escalated, in less than a week’s time, to a regional conflict. I remember having this feeling when the 2001 terror attacks happened, when we invaded Iraq in 2002, when the Space Shuttle blew up in 2003, during the early pandemic in 2020, and during the coup attempt in 20212. That doesn’t excuse the utterly despicable act of betting on nuclear annihilation, making light of innocent civilians losing their lives, or joking about the world coming closer to doomsday than it has been since the Cuban Missile Crisis. We may be on the cusp of a global conflict the likes of which has not been observed within the living memory of the vast majority of people currently alive.
Stay safe. Pray if you’ve got a prayer to pray. I don’t really have anything else to say other than that I hope the conflict is resolved soon through diplomatic means and people stop dying because Trump and Netanyahu wanted to prove a point.
And to the people of Iran: We do not stand with your oppressive government, but we do stand with you. We wish you peace and long life. Sincerely, the rest of the world.
- Late edit: About \$1.10/gallon in East Tennessee as of March 19, 2026. A typical 12-gallon fill-up for my Volkswagen is about $13 more than it was before the proceedings started. ↩︎
- I’ll go as far as saying that Trump’s campaigns for president in 2016, 2020, and 2024 felt like something out of a movie. ↩︎