The Senate voted down a resolution to end a war with Iran that hadn't started. This happened weeks before midterms. Republicans needed to keep their majorities. Nothing says "vote for us" like rejecting the end of a war that doesn't exist.
Imagine the meeting. Some senator stands up and says we should stop fighting Iran. Another senator says no. They vote. The non-war continues. Retail traders immediately checked their defense contractor holdings, realized they own none, then bought Tesla calls because that's what they do when geopolitics happens.
The resolution called for an end to something. That something was not occurring. The Senate said no anyway. This is the equivalent of your neighbor proposing you stop stealing his lawn gnomes and you voting against the proposal despite never having touched his lawn gnomes. Except in this version, your neighbor's lawn gnomes cost $700 billion annually and sometimes explode.
Trump wanted his Republican friends to win their races. Those friends then voted to continue a war that existed only in the hypothetical space between a resolution and reality. Voters were supposed to find this compelling. The alternative was voting for people who wanted to end wars that hadn't started, which somehow polled worse.
Day traders saw "Iran" and "war" in the same headline. They bought oil futures. Oil went down. They bought defense stocks. Those went sideways. They tried gold. Gold laughed at them. By the end of the day they were back in crypto, which has nothing to do with Iran, war, or the Senate, but at least it moves enough to make them feel alive.
The Senate protected America from peace with a country we weren't fighting.
Photo by sina drakhshani on Unsplash
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