An Open Letter To Matt Walsh

An Exercise In Futility

Open letters are kind of silly, but I came out with this, so why not publish it.

FOLLOW UPS ARE HERE. PLEASE READ THESE.

PS to My Open Letter: Clarity on Iran and Israel

Deadly Combination: Wokeness and Isolationism

What Next? To My Fellow War Dysphorics

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Dear Matt,

Just so that no one misunderstands what I’m writing about, here are screenshots of your recent tweets about Operation Rising Lion:¹

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When it comes to the culture wars in the West, you can’t go wrong with a Matt Walsh mockumentary. The man buns, the wry humor, the way you maneuver these idiots into hanging themselves on their own insanity—dude, at this, you are peerless, and you deserve an award that “the Academy” will never give you.

But Matt, fighting drag queens is one thing. When comes to Middle Eastern mullahs with apocalypse in their synapses, Russian autocrats who poison their enemies for breakfast, and a Chinese dictator so wily he makes Machiavelli look like Mother Theresa, you’re out of your depth.

You want to let Iran and its Houthis choke off the Strait of Hormuz because “it’s none of our business”? That’s cute. You think you’re being principled—one of those patriotic anti-interventionists. I get it, Matt. I’ve been there. But I came to my senses. We are in this thing up to our eyeballs and there is no escape.

As a great American philosopher said of an opponent, “He can run but he can’t hide.”

What you’re actually doing is bending over and handing the keys to the global economy to a fanatical theocracy with a martyrdom complex and a missile arsenal. Backed by Russia. And China.

Iran or its crazy proxy doesn’t need to take over the Strait. All they need to do is make it dangerous. Plant mines, hijack tankers, turn the Gulf into a free-fire zone. Every ship that carries oil, gas, grain, medicine will either hesitate, or reroute. Or sink.

Oil triples overnight. Not in some distant city—in Nashville, where you live. People can’t afford to commute. Hospitals will need generators and diesel costs will skyrocket. Don’t get sick, don’t have an operation. Have that premature baby at home. He’ll die. You’re anti-abortion, Matt, whatabout preemies? Basics vanish from your grocery supply chain and this isn’t some temporary Covid-era thing, it’s for good. Meds aren’t shipped. The stock market panics. The Fed slams the brakes. Your savings dissolve. A cascade of disaster happens when the Gulf and the Straits have been targeted by a hostile force.

But sure—let’s keep tweeting about “none of our business” while the world slides into chaos. Gotta keep up that engagement farming!

While we're at it let’s remember how we got this job. The British ran the Gulf well for over a hundred years. It was their colonial petrol station. The Gulf wasn’t called “the British lake” for nothing.

But by the 1960s, the Empire was doddering. We were the only ones who could prevent Russia, that is, the Soviet Union, from horning in on the Gulf. People forget. Before it cracked up, the Soviet Union was a genuine peer competitor and they were obsessed with controlling the Gulf. And now you’re whining claiming that being the responsible party is not our business!

You think pulling out means peace? It means power vacuum and power abhors a vacuum as much as nature does. Power vacuum means Russia and China, with Iran as its agent, divvying up the Gulf not like a chessboard, but like a pizza—devouring it.

Oh yeah, when Israel is on its own, well, I’m not sure I even want to imagine that. Um, I am sure. I do not want to imagine that. If Israel goes under, it takes a lot of people with it.

I’ll just say this. The US pulling out of the Persian Gulf and the Straits of Hormuz means war—not in some faraway shithole, but in your living room, in your fridge, in your paycheck.

So yeah, keep pretending that this is “over there.” Keep pretending you can shut the door on the world and still eat cheap food, drive cheap cars, and watch cheap Netflix. But when the Gulf or the Straits burn—and it will if we walk away—don’t act surprised when your middle-class life burns with it.

And by all means, do not say that you don’t care about any of that because you’re a Catholic and the only thing a good Catholic cares about is the world to come…Matt, you are a modern American, and you need your fantastically easy, soft life. You’d die without it. Your wife would be very mad if she had to cook food for six kids over an open fire with unshaven legs.

You’re not avoiding war, kid. You’re letting someone else choose when it starts. I don’t like those odds. In my world, it’s better if I get to choose when I kick ass. And even if I can’t choose, I do not want to be forced into it when I can hardly eat, or fill my gas tank. America in 1941 was a rich country and then internally cohesive. It was simply disorganized. Imagine facing relentless enemies disorganized and poor.

Matt has millions of followers and I’m a no-name schmuck, so he won’t take notice of me. If he does: “Hey, Ms. Warmonger, we never should’ve kicked the British out of the Gulf”—here’s my answer.

“We Should’ve Let the British Handle It”? Grow Up.

Matt, I thought I already answered that, but thanks for the opportunity to pound it in.

You’re saying we should have outsourced American sovereignty to a faded empire that barely held onto a few islands in the West Indies post-war. LOL. By the 1960s, the only invasions the Brits were capable of were pop stars—and at that, they were very good! But they weren’t capable of policing the Gulf.

By 1968, their economy was collapsing. Their military was a shadow of its former self. They could barely afford to police Glasgow, let alone guard tankers in the Gulf.

America didn’t kick them out. We stepped in because the alternative was Soviet encroachment, Arab nationalist chaos, or Iranian dominance under the Shah—which didn’t go well either. That Shah was often a pain in the ass. We filled the vacuum because no one else could.

Let’s be honest—people who say “we should’ve left it to the British” are just dressing up cowardice as nostalgia. They don’t want to face the ugly fact that superpower status means showing up when it’s hard.

You don’t like that? OK, Be like the British then, and find another superpower to maintain order in the world’s two biggest oil chokepoints… who would that be? Russia or China?

And, aren’t you one of those people who (justifiably) laughs at the green clowns? Then get real. Advanced industrial economies run on oil and LNG and twenty percent of both runs through the Gulf, to the Strait of Hormuz.

So no—we don’t get to wish for the British to come back. That fantasy ship sailed long ago. The question isn’t “should we be there?” It’s: Who do you trust more to hold the line—us or Tehran (and behind them, Russia and China)? Because it’s either us or them.

And if your answer is “none of the above,” don’t pretend to be surprised when your economy collapses under someone else’s flag.

Sincerely,

Diana

1. I actually agree with some of the second tweet. But I really can’t accept the premise of the first tweet, and that bleeds into the substance of the second: Israel isn’t just taking care of itself, it’s taking care of the world’s business by castrating the Mullah-o-crazy.