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There is no art to Trump’s Iran deal

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Tom Cruise attends the promotional event for 'Edge of Tomorrow' at the Dotonbori Riverside on June 26, 2014 in Osaka, Japan. (Photo by Jun Sato/Getty Images)

As far as I know, I’ve never been stuck in a recursive aberration in the space-time continuum. My days are suitably different enough from one another that I don’t worry I’m stuck in a “Groundhog Day”-style time-loop. If I take some time to practice an instrument or rage at the world, I know I won’t get that time back at 6 a.m. the next morning.

Every once in a while, however, a headline crosses my desk that makes me wonder if I’ve been doomed to live through the last decade forever. Jill Biden’s memoir reviving the chatter around Joe Biden’s dismal 2024 debate performance is one such story. 

In her upcoming book, the former first lady recalls how she felt watching her husband fall apart on national television. Speaking to CBS earlier this week, Jill Biden said the then-president’s performance was “frightening.”

“I thought, 'Oh, my God, he's having a stroke.' And it scared me to death," she shared. 

Jill Biden isn’t alone in her desire to return to the past. Donald Trump’s two terms, and his four years of stewing in between, have been marked by a unique pettiness and a penchant for score-settling. It’s no longer surprising when Trump revives an on-air beef from his days in television or sics the Justice Department on people who have crossed him. He’s never given up the idea that he was the rightful winner of the 2020 election. He’s ridden that belief to the point of creating a fund to reward the followers so loyal that they stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to stop the election from being certified.

Democrats seem similarly eager to turn back the clock, with many of them plotting a rerun of their catastrophic 2024 loss with the same candidate. It’s a welcome reprieve from their seemingly endless relitigation of their 2016 loss, but only relatively.

On social media, the same three or four arguments reappear every few weeks. We’re currently on our hundredth or so run-through of the intergenerational debate around home ownership. Boomers and zoomers, neither of whom  seem to remember the last umpteen times we’ve had this fight, charge into battle and gleefully yell past each other about property taxes and interest rates. It can leave you envying Tom Cruise’s eternal soldier from “Edge of Tomorrow.” He ran into the same battle over and over again, but at least he got to die. 

What do you think? Are we all stuck fighting the same tired fights forever? Sound off in the comments.

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