Tell Me Are You TIRED: The War Comes Home and Other Inconvenient Truths

It’s highway-time the rubber meets the road Amerika, and if rough roads or language bother you please do not read this, for your own comfort.

The War Arrives

A few days ago I went to purchase tires for my vehicle. Four new tires. A rather routine, if annoying, chore of adulthood. The technician is familiar with me and said “The usual Mr. K, 245-40/18 for the Audi?” I answered affirmatively and took a seat in the lobby.

The lobby.

As I sat there, in that funky little lobby reeking of oil and petrochemicals, there was CNN or some such thing showing grainy black and white images of missiles (stock DOW footage) allegedly being fired at Iran. At least that was the equally grainy narrative. Nick and his crew are exceptionally efficient and, before too long, he came out, clipboard in hand, and said “Mr. K that will be $777.93.” I damn near blacked out; quite literally.

I asked Nick if there was an error “I bought the same tires two years ago Nick, that seems a bit more than the inflation rate, no pun intended.” Nick (his real name) looks exactly like Nicholas Cage. There are actually dozens of pictures of customers that have taken pictures with him because the resemblance is so striking. Just for the record, as an actor, Nick Cage has always creeped me out.

He explained to me “Mr. K, all of the manufacturers are raising prices due to the war in Iran and more hikes are coming. Actually you came in at about the best time under the circumstances. What worries me after thirty years in this business is that people are running on tires that are unsafe…they just can’t afford to replace them so they are putting it off. Let alone how business is getting pretty rough.” I thanked him and handed him the plastic card.

Shock is something I try to avoid like the plague. The Black one, of course. Luckily, and unfortunately, my life has created a person surprised by little. Nonetheless, that mundane trip to the tire shop started a cascade of realizations that have been distilled into what is literally manifested here. Nick did not hand me a bill, and our conversation, however cursory, brief and, albeit friendly, was a motherfucking casualty report.

How many people have been killed and maimed over these past seven murderous months of US militaristic adventurism because they lost control of an automobile due to a bad tire? How many more to come? Is the “Department of War” or the psychopathic sycophants of the main stream media tracking those statistics? We are already dying; just too goddamned pacified and vapid to know it…yet.

Just like lab mice, the Amerikan public is trained to panic when the price per gallon of petrol ticks up a nickel, believing that oil is only something we burn, and steal from others, to move from point A to point B. A stunt that could only be pulled off on a distracted citizenry incapable of critical thought; a grand delusion of galactic proportions, ‘tis. The average person looks at a tire and sees rubber. They don’t see the synthetic polymers, the petrochemical compounds, and the ocean of crude oil required to manufacture the very tread beneath their feet. Be it motorcycle, automobile, or jetliner. Leave alone their hundred dollar sneakers.

This is not about a gas station and “the price at the pump.” This is about your grocery cart and food bill. This is about the plastic tubing that delivers intravenous medication to you to save your life, and a plethora of other medical devices. This is about your electronics without which most of you are blind, crippled and, as always, crazy. This is about the very asphalt those tires land, roll or jump on. Imagine another pandemic were it to occur right now. My visit with Nick was the tip of a colossal, petrochemical iceberg coming dead at you.

Tell me, are you tired?

Strait Of Hand: Prestidinflation

The term prestidigitation is defined as: the skillful performance of magic or conjuring tricks using the hands, commonly known as sleight of hand. Clearly I have subverted the terms in my usual fashion into the portmanteau referenced supra, but the requisite for presence here is LookingNWords. Let us proceed therefrom and trust that I will tie this in a neat little bow in the end.

The best magicians hide in plain sight: The prince of the power of the air. After all, the Devil’s greatest trick was to convince people it did not exist, though clearly it does however illusory. The government and media have us looking at direct military expenditures and daily gas station signs, keeping our attention entirely on the jab (but the right-cross is coming).

Problem is, the Iranians (as do other nations) have a few tricks up their sleeves, too. Consider it Strait of Hand. In Iran’s case, geography is the magician’s trick. The physical constriction of global trade in a narrow body of water is the mechanism doing the invisible dirty work. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) recently reported that because petroleum is an input in almost all manufacturing and transporting, war-driven hikes indirectly bleed into the final retail prices of all goods and services. These hidden, accumulated supply chain pressures will continue to compound. Real-world constraints are already popping up; for example, retail giants like Costco have even had to resort to rationing basic petrochemical consumer goods like motor oil.

All tire manufacturers will implement major price hikes in 2026. Because crude oil derivatives make up 60% to 70% of a tire's raw materials, global oil spikes have forced specialty inputs like carbon black to jump by up to 25%. Simultaneously, maritime conflict has forced ships to reroute around the Cape of Good Hope, doubling war-risk insurance premiums, triggering steep fuel surcharges, and driving up winter tire costs by 10%. Market giants like Bridgestone, Pirelli, and Goodyear continue to pass these hundreds of millions in raw material and freight expenses directly to consumers across all passenger and commercial vehicle tiers.

Tell me, are you tired?

World War III And Other Inconvenient Truths

Unless one is well into their 80’s they have no clue of “world war.” Let alone how it is defined and who defines it. They can only interpret the moniker based on old, grainy black and white footage of tanks, soldiers with bayonets and gravity bombs. Very different from today’s grainy images. Most people, at that time, had neither indoor plumbing, televisions nor telephones. Fast forward 81 years where a device that fits in your pocket is a telephone, a radio, a camera, a “television” and a computer.

I need not some proclamation by a white man that finally decides “the world is at war.” Besides, that lofty shit always happens way after the fact. If the world is not at war now, it never has been. But this one is very, very different from the others for very, very different reasons.

From trade war, to kinetics and cyberattack it is on and cracking, Jack. Just a few weeks ago several water treatment plants were cyberattacked all over the US; it is alleged that it was Iran, but when virtually the entire world despises you who knows. Point is, most didn’t hear a peep about it. No matter perpetrator, that was a beta test.

FITFO, and tell me, are you tired?

https://rohnkenyatta.substack.com/p/has-world-war-iii-already-begun-a?utm_source=publication-search.

The Neat Little Bow As Promised

As I left the tire shop, I was pretty saturated by the implications of what would appear on its surface a casual conversation, so I grabbed a CD (yep, still have CD’s) and popped it in. I did not look at it, I just grabbed the first thing I got my hands on. Anything to get my mind off of what it was on. I soon realized I grabbed Carlos Santana’s Amigos CD. The player was on shuffle.

Then it came, Tell Me Are You Tired, the 1975 Latin-rock bassline started thumping in the back of my skull. I was a twelve year old boy when I first heard that bassline, and a thousand times since, but I wasn’t expecting to hear it at that moment. Then the brother sings, in a mellow tone:

What do you do when you're down and out
Do you sit and sigh and wonder why
If the answer just comes right to you
Its letting you know just what to do…

All you got to do is stop running around…
Tell me, are you tired running around,
Stay at home, where you belong.
Stay at home.

In Santana’s lyrics when the vocalist sings “All you’ve got to do is start staying at home,” he was talking about a man flirting with disaster in a domestic relationship. But forty-odd years later, his lyrics pose an ominous geopolitical question, albeit both subjective and rhetorical. What if the US actually did stay at home? What if the trillions of dollars vaporized in Iraq, Afghanistan, Alkebulan, Latin America, Ukraine, Israel, Palestine, and Iran—wealth spent explicitly to manufacture death—had been spent right here? Make Amerika Great For Once.

Tell me, are you tired yet?

Or destined for a blowout.