The Trump-Iran War is a strange one, in that we’re not experiencing it directly; we only experience the effects.

Every war since Vietnam has been live and in person, in our living rooms on the evening news (or, with the rise of the 24-hour news channels, all day long). There have always been war correspondents embedded with the troops, and we’ve seen them on the ground in the fields of battle. We’ve heard from them how well or poorly the troops are holding up; they’ve offered us pronouncements and interviews from the commanders in battle; they’ve involved us in the wars. War has been emotional for Americans.

But this one is different. We aren’t experiencing the war directly, visually, viscerally. The only way we know the Trump-Iran War is still happening is because we’re paying more for gas, and high diesel prices have translated into higher costs for food and everything else. But beyond those basic effects on our lives, the only way we know the war is happening is due to the near-constant assertions from the White House that we’ve destroyed the Iranian military, that we control the Gulf of Hormuz, that Iran wants to negotiate.…

I can only surmise it’s a result of Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth’s war on the free press. Hegseth threw the press out of the Pentagon, so there are no Pentagon briefings. And Donald Trump and his lackeys keep trying to throw the free press out of the White House. Well, I will say the press are also colluding in this silence, to a degree. It is far cheaper and easier for the press to report on the never-ending political/election “news” than to actually put reporters in the field. But sending those reporters into a war zone is not a unilateral decision; it has required the assistance of the government and the military, and that assistance is not there this time.

I don’t have an answer, just questions, and a feeling that something is amiss. There is no longer any such thing as a “long-distance phone call.” UFOs have disappeared because everyone now has a cell phone camera. We can communicate with nearly everyone on the planet with only the slightest of difficulties or pauses. And yet the Trump-Iran War is shrouded in mystery; we have only a single source of information about it, and that source—Donald Trump—has proven repeatedly over the last decade that he is not a reliable reporter about anything.