Fifty-nine cruise missiles. When Donald Trump ordered the attack on Syria, he made an impetuous decision, turning his previous commitment to stay out of the Syrian civil war and focus on ISIS on its head. He ordered the attack on a sovereign nation without seeking sanction from the United Nations or the U.S. Congress. For this, he received lavish praise from the media and bipartisan congressional support. He’ll undoubtedly enjoy a boost in the polls.

Military force is called “strong power.” Ordering an attack turns the president into the commander in chief and gives him an image of decisiveness and power. Yet the unleashing of cruise missiles against Syria is both dangerous and deceptive.

If Trump has decided to commit to regime change in Syria, it is dangerous. Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad is backed by both Russia and Iran, and Assad’s forces are the leading opposition to ISIS, the terrorist gang that Trump is already committed to destroying.

On April 11, a local anti-corruption group held the Columbus Grassroots Anti-Corruption Forum from 6:30pm-8:00pm EST, at the Columbus Metropolitan Library, 850 N. Nelson Rd., Columbus, OH, 43219. Anti-corruption activists, local leaders, and national experts attended the forum to discuss state-based strategies to to pass anti-corruption reform, gerrymandering reform, and open primaries.

“After almost 100 days of a new administration, it’s clear that the government still won’t drain the swamp: we have to fix corruption ourselves.” Said Barbara Eakins, local member of Represent.Us, the nation’s largest grassroots anti-corruption campaign, which brings together conservatives, progressives and everyone in between to pass anti-corruption laws in cities and states around the country. Represent.Us’ local members helped organize the forum. “There is an anti-corruption movement growing in Ohio, and this forum gives local activists what they need to get involved in fighting our corrupt political system, starting right here in Columbus.” continued Eakins.

Speakers at the forum included:

There’s a predictable cycle to pop culture phenomenons: hyper popularity for a few years, followed by dismissal as something that’s “over,” followed eventually by nostalgia. World of Warcraft, once the online game everyone was playing, weathered that slump and is now well aware that the surge of players returning to the game with last summer’s Legion expansion are here for the nostalgia.

To be fair, WoW was never exactly dead – when Activision Blizzard stopped publicly reporting at the end of 2015, it only had half the subscribers it had at its peak, but that still left it with 5.5 million players. Much of that was thanks to the game finally catching on in China, where distribution and then censorship problems bogged it down until it was cooling off in the US and Europe. (This also helps explain why last year’s Warcraft movie was a blockbuster in China despite being a failure in North America.)

A Morning Consult poll winks at me from my inbox: 57 percent of Americans support more airstrikes in Syria.

My eyeballs roll. Hopelessness permeates me, especially because I’m hardly surprised, but still . . . come on. This is nuts. The poll could be about the next move in a Call of Duty video game: 57 percent of Americans say destroy the zombies.

This is American exceptionalism in action. We have the right to be perpetual spectators. We have the right to “have an opinion” about whom the military should bomb next. It means nothing, except to those on the far end of the Great American Video Game, where the results are real.