TOM EATON | It’s only a matter of time before Americans bring the war to the Capitol steps

On Wednesday, the US Senate voted that there should be no legislative checks and balances on Donald Trump’s ability to assassinate foreign leaders or drop thousands of tonnes of bombs on their countries without declaring war, meaning that only one thing now stands between Iran and total obliteration: Americans’ refusal to use public transport.

By now you’ll have heard a lot of explanations for the US-Israeli attack on Iran, some of them more plausible than others, but none more chilling than the one that came from White House spokesliar Karoline Leavitt.

According to Leavitt, who presumably wears a Christian cross around her neck as some sort of satirical performance art, “the president had a feeling, again, based on fact, that Iran was going to strike the United States”.

If we are now at a point where the biggest military in the history of the world can be unleashed on a foreign country because Trump “had a feeling’, then it’s not unreasonable to imagine a scenario later this year when he has another feeling, just before the mid-terms, requiring the elections to be postponed. After all, as conservatives have shown us over and over again, their feelings are more important than our facts.

But I digress. The point is there have been many explanations, both sensible and silly, but few have pretended to appeal to geopolitical common sense like another one you’ve probably seen a few times by now, namely, that this attack is an attempt by the US to choke off one of China’s sources of oil.

On paper, the US is the richest country in history, but this is a mirage: the overwhelming majority of Americans are members of the working poor, one paycheque or medical emergency away from ruin, with the 50% poorest Americans owning just 2.5% of the country’s wealth.

It goes without saying that this argument falls at the first logical hurdle: if the goal is to starve China of oil, then the US should also be bombing Moscow, Riyadh and Sao Paulo.

But the thing it gets spectacularly wrong — and which many supporters of the China theory still don’t seem to understand — is that China has been planning for this moment for years, stockpiling almost 1.3-billion barrels of oil, or enough oil to survive four months of global supply disruption.

This is also why the oil price hasn’t spiked past $80 (R1,335) a barrel, let alone $100 (R1,668): the world’s largest importer of oil hasn’t needed to rush to market in a panic, unlike the western countries that were caught flat-footed by the 1973 oil embargo that saw prices increase between 100% and 500%.

Of course, four months doesn’t seem like a long time. But when it comes to cash-strapped Americans and their overwhelming reliance on petrol-driven cars, it might just prove to be more than enough.

Last week, the American Automobile Association reported that the daily national average price for regular petrol in the US was $3.07 (R51.22). This week, it has risen to $3.11, then $3.19, and, at the time of writing, $3.25. That’s an almost 6% increase in less than a week.

For an electorate that has been trained like Pavlov’s dog by Republicans to see a fuel price of more than $3 as evidence of a failing state and an incompetent president — Sleepy Joe! — the current surge will be upsetting and confusing.

But the pain won’t only be emotional.

A quarter of Americans have no emergency savings at all. Depending on who you ask, between half and two-thirds are living paycheque to paycheque. Unsecured debt such as credit cards is exploding.

On paper, the US is the richest country in history, but this is a mirage: the overwhelming majority of Americans are members of the working poor, one paycheque or medical emergency away from ruin, with the 50% poorest Americans owning just 2.5% of the country’s wealth.

If fuel continues to rise for the next few weeks, America’s working poor may be pushed to breaking point, and that’s to say nothing of the inevitable inflationary shocks coming down the pipe.

The current shooting match has been described as a sort of ballistic countdown, its short-term outcome hinging on whether Iran runs out of missiles before Israel and the US run out of interceptors.

But I suspect there is another countdown at play: whether the stupidest war in recent years ends before the working poor of the US run out of road.