The “Awesome” Sarcasm That Reveals More Than It Admits
- Charles "Ghost" Coutts
- 23 hours ago
- 7 min read
Propaganda must facilitate the displacement of aggression by specifying the targets for hatred. — Joseph Goebbels
(Opinion) For informational and educational purposes only. It's just something to think about.
Look at this tweet. On April 20, 2026, Sen. Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) replied with one word—“awesome”—to a post citing a Lloyd’s List Intelligence report: “At least 26 Iranian shadow fleet vessels bypass US blockade.”
First, the ships did get through. Independent maritime tracking shows that at least 26 shadow-fleet vessels continued moving in and out of Iranian ports or exporting cargo despite the U.S. naval blockade that began around April 13. Some laden tankers slipped past the expanded “blockade line” after April 16. That’s real data from a respected shipping analytics firm.
Second, no blockade in history has ever been 100% successful. Not one. During the Union blockade of the Confederacy in the Civil War—the most studied modern example—five out of every six blockade-running attempts succeeded early on. Even as the Union Navy grew to hundreds of ships, fast runners still managed to get through with supplies, weapons, and goods. Napoleonic-era British blockades, World War II campaigns, ancient sieges—every one of them had leaks. Humans who want to move something badly enough (oil, weapons, money) will find ways: spoofed AIS, dark voyages, ship-to-ship transfers, flags of convenience, bribes, hidden routes. History proves it every single time.
So the Lloyd’s List report isn’t by any stretch of the imagination shocking news. It’s the predictable friction of enforcing a naval operation against a regime that has spent years perfecting evasion tactics. The U.S. has reported turning back or intercepting dozens of vessels, with real disruption occurring. Blockades raise costs, slow trade, and apply pressure—they don’t create hermetic seals overnight.
The real question isn’t whether ships got through. We already knew they would because they always do. The question is why this predictable reality was packaged as a gotcha to demonize Donald Trump.
Murphy’s one-word sarcastic reply—“awesome”—doesn’t add analysis, historical context, clarification of circumstances, or acknowledgment that full enforcement is hard, nearly impossible in most cases. It mocks. It frames the early-stage leaks as unique proof of failure under Trump. That wording is deliberate. It could have been neutral: “Trump’s blockade fails to stop the shadow fleet—just as Obama’s sanctions relief and Biden’s enforcement gaps allowed the same fleet to mature and surge exports to China.” But it wasn’t. It was crafted to cast doubt specifically on Trump’s competence and to invite followers to see it as more evidence that he’s reckless or incompetent. That's called propaganda, and it intends to mislead.
That’s not neutral commentary. It’s a classic, well-known Marxist tactic.
Look at the double standard in the record. When Iranian oil exports and shadow fleet activity rebounded sharply under Biden (exports to China quadrupled in some metrics after Trump’s first-term pressure campaign, hitting multi-year highs), Murphy didn’t flood timelines with sarcasm or “disaster” labels about enforcement failures. He was a vocal defender of Obama’s JCPOA, which included sanctions relief that helped the evasion networks develop. Under Trump—both terms—any reported gap becomes “catastrophic failure,” “unmitigated failure,” “pure insanity,” or even “war crimes” territory. The underlying dynamic (shadow fleet doing what shadow fleets do) is treated as a non-issue or minor technicality under one set of presidents and as proof of unique recklessness under the other.
Murphy’s history makes the pattern unmistakable. He has repeatedly called Trump’s “maximum pressure” approach a “complete, total failure,” “disaster,” and worse, long before this specific blockade. His “awesome” reply fits the pattern perfectly: spotlight every friction point to personalize and polarize.
These examples show him repeatedly personalizing every setback or policy friction as Trump’s personal incompetence, insanity, recklessness, or criminality — not as the predictable limits of blockades, sanctions, or military operations. The “awesome” sarcastic reply to Lloyd’s List shadow-fleet report fits perfectly into this established pattern.
Direct quotes from Murphy (all verifiable on X/@ChrisMurphyCT or his public record):
April 15, 2026: “Let’s talk about Trump’s insane plan to fix Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz by helping them close the Strait… He’s just compounding one mistake with another.” (Personalizes the entire strategy as “Trump’s insane plan.”)
April 8, 2026: “No President in control of his senses would publicly promise to eradicate an entire civilization… Trump seems to be taking us on a path to mass war crimes.” (Suggests Trump is mentally unhinged and personally leading the country into war crimes.)
April 7, 2026: “It appears Trump just agreed to give Iran control of the Strait of Hormuz… The level of incompetence is both stunning and heartbreaking. What on earth is happening?” (Freezes Trump as personally incompetent and responsible for a “history-changing win for Iran.”)
April 7, 2026: “Trump’s Iran War has been a disaster in the U.S.… the scope of the damage he has caused.” (full thread) (Attributes global economic pain directly to Trump personally.)
April 5, 2026: “This is pure insanity. It won’t work. It will just permanently stain America.” (Repeated “pure insanity” framing of Trump’s decisions.)
April 5, 2026: “Trump is out of control. The experts on the Geneva Conventions are clear… Bombing to induce political panic IS A WAR CRIME.” (Directly accuses Trump personally of war crimes and being “out of control.”)
April 5, 2026: “Trump is calling reporters today to tell them he is going to commit mass war crimes next week. GOP leaders need to stop him.” (Explicitly frames Trump as someone actively planning war crimes.)
February 2024 (still cited in 2025–2026 coverage): “President Trump’s policy towards Iran was a complete, total failure by every available metric… a disaster.” (Long-standing baseline attack on Trump’s entire Iran approach as uniquely failed.)
Contrast with the Obama and Biden eras (the double standard)
Murphy was, as mentioned, a leading defender of Obama’s JCPOA, calling it a diplomatic success that was “working” and arguing that rejecting it was reckless. When Iranian oil exports and shadow-fleet activity rebounded sharply under Biden (reaching multi-year highs as evasion tactics matured), Murphy did not issue threads calling it a “disaster,” “insane,” or “war crime”-adjacent failure. Instead, he criticized Trump’s prior maximum-pressure campaign as the real problem and pushed to rejoin the JCPOA.
The same underlying reality (shadow fleet moving oil, sanctions/blockade evasion) is treated as a minor technicality or non-story under Obama/Biden, but as fresh proof of Trump’s personal incompetence or criminality when it happens on his watch.
How this fits Alinsky Rule 12 — and why the “awesome” reply matters
The “awesome” sarcasm to the Lloyd’s List post isn’t an isolated quip. It’s the latest data point in a years-long pattern of freezing Trump as the singular target, ridiculing his actions with loaded language (“insane,” “pure insanity,” “stunning incompetence,” “out of control,” “mass war crimes”), and polarizing the issue so that any friction in a difficult operation becomes “Trump’s unique failure.” Murphy is far from the only government official doing this demonization, either.
This is straight out of Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, Rule 12: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Cut off support, isolate the target from sympathy, and make it about the person, not the policy. Ridicule works. A single sarcastic word travels fast, shapes narratives, and reinforces tribal lines. Supporters see unfair piling-on; critics see validation. The result? More division, more hatred directed at one man, less focus on the actual mechanics of squeezing Iranian revenue for proxies and nukes.
Little things like this matter consequently because they add up, influencing public opinion. Not about the policies, it is all hatred towards and demonization of the man himself. Rule 5. One viral sarcastic reply from a sitting senator doesn’t just comment on policy—it molds public opinion. It turns a complex, imperfect naval operation (with real enforcement actions alongside expected leaks) into another data point in the “Trump is uniquely bad” story. "Orange man bad, so everything orange man does is also bad by default." It distracts from asking the hard, consistent questions that should apply no matter who’s in office: How much is Iran’s regime actually being squeezed over time? Are proxies deterred? Is leverage building? Look at the big picture, the full painting, instead of criticizing errant brush strokes.
We can hold two truths: Ships get through blockades, and this one is no different. And we can still call out the selective outrage and deliberate framing that turns predictable reality into partisan ammunition. That’s not defending any policy—it’s demanding intellectual consistency. Because when every friction point under one president becomes “awesome” material for mockery while identical dynamics under others get a pass, it’s not about results anymore. It’s about the target.
I have said this many times, and it is no less true. Donald Trump is just a name. The person sitting in the White House doing what Trump is doing could have any name, and the events unfolding around them would not change one bit. We will see this play out firsthand in real time if the Republicans keep the White House in 2028, so pay attention! The only thing that is going to change is the name of the person sitting in the Oval Office. Everything else will continue seamlessly, which will prove my point beyond any doubt to anyone with the backbone to admit it. Once we get that fact through our thick skulls, we might actually have a chance at changing some things.
But not until that happens. Demonization is also a form of dehumanization, so if you are part of that, you might want to take a long, hard look at yourself. Just saying. Dehumanizing another human being is the epitome of evil after all, is it not?
They do not call us fascists because we are fascists. They call us fascists to dehumanize us and justify the atrocities they have planned in the future. ~CH Coutts
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