You flip on the television at night, exhausted from the day, and there it is again. Another segment on FOX News about “inner-city chaos” and skyrocketing crime. CNN rolls out experts decrying systemic barriers that keep Black men locked in cycles of poverty and punishment. On Newsmax or OAN, the tone is often even harsher, conveying the same message of danger, failure, and inner-city crime.

Scroll through social media (X, Facebook, TikTok, Truth Social, and even Instagram), and the algorithm serves up an endless buffet of outrage clips, fights, viral memes, and cherry-picked tragedies exploiting black violence and crime. Black men in America, the story goes, are either victims or villains. Rarely anything in between. This is what so many depict now as “Black Culture.”

But here’s a number that never makes the chyron: there are over 400,000- 500,000 more Black men in college than in prison. Let that sink in. Not a talking point. Not a spin. Data from the National Center for Education Statistics and the Bureau of Justice Statistics has shown this reality for years.

Back in 2009, roughly 1.4 million Black men were enrolled in postsecondary programs, while about 840,000 were behind bars. The gap has fluctuated with enrollment trends and declining incarceration rates, but the fundamental truth remains: more Black men are hitting the books than the cell block. And yet you’d never know it from the nightly news or your feed.

One of the main reasons why this isn’t common knowledge is that outrage pays, while nuance and boring truth don’t. Media outlets on both the left and right run-on engagement. Fear keeps eyes glued. Hope doesn’t trend.

A police encounter gone wrong in a major city is prime-time and will headline news cycles for a week, if not more. A young Black man graduating from Howard, Morehouse, Tuskegee, the University of Michigan, Clemson, or Texas Tech with a degree and landing a good job or starting an innovative business will hardly ever get mentioned unless he is a star athlete. It doesn’t fit the script.

For progressive networks, acknowledging educational gains might undercut the narrative of perpetual systemic failure. For conservative ones, highlighting Black success stories risks softening the tough-on-crime message that resonates with their base. Social media algorithms are engineered to hack your dopamine, feeding on outrage, anxiety, and tribalism to keep you hooked. Statistics about Black college enrollment barely get mentioned, and when they do, it gets buried under the latest culture-war land mine.

This isn’t a conspiracy. It’s business. Cable news ratings soar during racial unrest. Social media companies profit when tribal users contribute to their echo chambers. Politicians on both sides raise money off the divide. This has led to a distorted mirror held up to Black America that reflects only the broken pieces.

I’m not saying these problems don’t exist. They definitely do. Black men are still overrepresented in the criminal justice system relative to their share of the population. Poverty, fatherlessness, and failing schools in some neighborhoods are real problems. Crime statistics paint a horrific and sad picture of reality for many Black Americans, and ignoring them helps no one. But the same honesty demands we acknowledge the other side of the ledger.

Incarceration rates for Black Americans have dropped sharply since the peak of the war on drugs. College enrollment, despite recent dips among Black men specifically, still outpaces imprisonment. Black-owned businesses are growing faster than the national average in many sectors. Homeownership rates have ticked up over the past two decades.

These aren’t miracles. They’re the product of individual grit, family sacrifice, mentorship, community churches, athletic organizations, HBCUs, and yes, policy shifts that reduced mandatory minimums for nonviolent offenses. Yet the coverage gap is glaring.

Search any major outlet’s archives for stories on Black male college graduation rates. You’ll find a handful that are usually tied to some crisis or protest. Now search for stories on prison populations, bail reform failures, or urban violence. You’ll come across page after page and link after link. The imbalance isn’t accidental. It’s purposeful curation. Media gatekeepers decide what “matters,” and positive Black achievement rarely clears the bar unless it serves a larger ideological point.

I remember talking to a friend. He is a Black father of two sons. He put it bluntly: “They want us mad, not motivated.” He wasn’t wrong. When every headline screams crisis, young men internalize it. They see the world as rigged against them before they’ve even tried.

That’s the quiet poison of selective storytelling. It doesn’t just inform; it shapes expectations. Tell a generation that prison is their destiny, and some will live down to it. Show them the thousands walking across stages in caps and gowns every spring, many of whom are the first in their families, and you plant a different seed.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not calling for feel-good propaganda either. Truth requires both the bad and the good. The incarceration rate for Black men born in 2001 is still far too high. Some estimates have shown that one in five Black men born in 2001 is expected to serve time in prison during their lifetime. That’s unacceptable. But so is pretending that the needle hasn’t moved.

Since the early 1990s, Black male college enrollment has exploded before recent headwinds. HBCUs, once written off, have produced leaders in every field. Black men are earning degrees in engineering, business, and health sciences at rates their fathers could only dream of. These aren’t exceptions. They’re patterns hidden in plain sight.

This matters beyond Black America. Every group gets the selective treatment. Immigrants are either all criminals or all saints, depending on the outlet’s bias. Rural whites are either salt-of-the-earth or dumb rednecks. The game is the same: simplify, polarize, and repeat. But when it comes to Black men, the stakes feel higher because the stereotypes have such deep roots, and there is very little “either” for us. The “thug” trope sells papers. The “scholar” doesn’t. Yet many scholars are out there. Many of them are quietly rewriting the story one diploma at a time.

Imagine if the media treated this like the achievement it is. Front-page features on first-generation graduates. Profiles of Black men mentoring at-risk youth while finishing night classes. Data-driven segments on how family structure, school choice, and personal agency drive outcomes more than pundits admit. Ratings might dip initially. But trust could be rebuilt. Viewers might feel something besides anger and prejudice, maybe even hope.

Until that happens, the responsibility falls on parents, teachers, pastors, uncles, coaches, bosses, mentors, and anyone with influence. We all have to be responsible and take accountability. Tell the young men in your life the whole truth. Yes, the world can be unfair. Yes, some systems need fixing. But no, prison isn’t inevitable. College, trade school, and/or entrepreneurship paths are possible and increasingly traveled. Data proves it.

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The next time you catch yourself doom-scrolling or glued to the 24-hour outrage machine, pause. Ask: What aren’t they telling me? Then go find out. The numbers don’t lie, even when the headlines do. There are more Black men in lecture halls than prison yards.

That’s not spin. It’s reality. And it’s time the rest of the country heard it-unfiltered, untwisted, and unapologetic. Because propaganda makes for lousy education. Truth, messy as it is, builds better futures.

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

The right’s criticism of the left’s view of science is more narrowly focused. The right believes the left puts its own extreme ideology above science. For example, the multiple genders argument turns upside down basic biological principles in favor of identity politics.

Conservative positions hold that addressing climate change involves weighing trade-offs rather than panic over predictions that may not be reliable. A third area of conservative concern is crime. Conservatives reject the left’s notions that all criminals are rehabilitatable and that their crimes should be mitigated by their oppressed status. They believe the foundation of any stable society is law and order, so the public needs to know that its safety is protected by law enforcement.

An analysis of right and left positions on denial of science shows that both conservatives AND liberals can be science deniers. Why? Because scientific skepticism is a human trait, not a political one.

Science is a child of the Enlightenment, when mankind realized he could control his environment through technologies that were developed using scientific principles. Early in the Enlightenment, scientists believed that the world could be understood through the acquisition of absolute knowledge. This idea was debunked by the philosopher David Hume, who asserted that perceptions of reality can be mistaken. In other words, there was no absolute way to know reality.

The solution to Hume’s obstacle was Fallibilism, a philosophical principle holding that human knowledge is never certain and is always open to revision. Our beliefs may be false or mistaken. The important conclusion is that not knowing for certain about the world is an acceptable reality, as long as we continue to test what we believe to be the truth. That practical approach to understanding the world is the scientific method. Scientific theories arise when evidence supports a hypothesis, using observable laws (e.g., the law of gravity). Theories can be revised or discarded if the data no longer support them.

Given its remarkable track record, we should be aware of threats to science and its continued progress. One such threat is science denial: the groundless rejection of well-established scientific conclusions. Scientists themselves have been especially keen to sound the alarm about this widespread tendency, while social scientists have begun to investigate.

One common assertion is that science denial is primarily an issue on the political right. Consistent with this idea, right-leaning individuals are more likely than their left-leaning counterparts to deny various pivotal scientific claims.

Why do conservative people deny science? According to many psychologists, it’s because people on the right have certain cognitive tendencies that make science denial more tempting for them. These include a strong need for verifiable knowledge, rigidity in their worldview, and a tendency toward system-justifying beliefs. People on the left are less prone to these cognitive foibles and thus less likely to engage in science denial.

These ideas seem plausible enough at first glance, but they have to be tested. A problem with testing at the outset is that most psychologists and social scientists are themselves on the political left. This creates potential problems for research on science denial.

First, because most psychologists lean left, they may be more inclined to characterize people on the right as having behavioral biases that explain why they get everything wrong - and to portray themselves as having various traits that explain why they get everything right. Because there are relatively few right-leaning researchers, these conclusions may receive less attention than they should.

Second, psychologists may be quick to identify science denial on the right but slower to spot it among themselves. Although we’re less likely to hear about it, the left does have certain blind spots when it comes to accepting scientific findings.

Left-leaning individuals are often highly skeptical of the idea that genes help shape individual differences in mind and behavior. Many reject evolutionary psychology, thereby denying the evolution of the mind. Many deny the validity of IQ research. Many downplay or deny evolved differences between the sexes. And some even deny that the sex binary is one of the best-established findings in biology.

A study was conducted in 2016, and the resulting paper was titled “Science Denial Across the Political Divide: Liberals and Conservatives Are Similarly Motivated to Deny Attitude-Inconsistent Science,” by Anthony N. Washburn (awas hbu1@uic.edu) and Linda J. Skitka, Social Psychological and Personality Science, Volume 9, Issue 8, September 14, 2017.

The authors tested two main hypotheses:

1. The Uniquely-Right-Wing-Pathology Hypothesis: the idea that the right is more prone to science denial than the left.

2. The Symmetry Hypothesis: the idea that right and left are equally likely to reject scientific claims that clash with their political preferences.

Washburn and Skitka randomly assigned more than 1,000 participants to review scientific findings on various political topics. The topics included immigration, gun control, carbon emissions, health-care reform, nuclear power, and same-sex marriage. There were two versions of each reading: one with findings more aligned with the left, and one with findings more aligned with the right.

After completing their assignment, participants were asked which conclusion was supported by interpreting a set of numerical results included in the reading.

The findings largely supported the symmetry hypothesis over the uniquely right-wing hypothesis.

People on both sides of the political aisle were more likely to interpret the findings in ways that supported their pre-existing views than in ways that refuted them. After choosing an interpretation, participants were told the correct answer. They were then asked whether they agreed with it, whether they thought the researchers were knowledgeable, and whether they trusted the researchers’ interpretation. Finally, participants were asked for their own views on the issues covered in the study.

A twist was also added. For each reading, there was a simple but incorrect interpretation of the result, and a complex but correct interpretation. This was done to test the theory that, if the simple interpretation fit people’s pre-existing views, they’d be more likely to stop there. In contrast, if it didn’t fit, they’d be more likely to keep thinking until they arrived at the more complex - and correct - interpretation.

The findings largely supported the symmetry hypothesis over the uniquely right-wing or uniquely left-wing pathology hypotheses. People on both sides of the political aisle were more likely to interpret the findings in a way that supported their pre-existing views rather than in ways that refuted them.

Science denial is often construed as an ideological issue that is typically a problem for those on the political right (e.g., conservatives are anti-climate change science). The data suggest that this conceptualization is incorrect. When scientific conclusions conflict with people’s ideological stances and attitudes, people on the left and right are motivated both to perceive the evidence in a way that supports their preferred conclusions or to deny the validity of the findings when provided an interpretation that is inconsistent with their preferred conclusions.

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Explanations for ideologically motivated reasoning, however, go beyond simple attitude preferences and most likely indicate inherent psychological differences between conservatives and liberals that account for ideological differences in science reasoning.

The description of the study above includes excerpts from a Substack post titled “Who Engages in More Science Denial, Left or Right?” By Steve Stewart-Williams.

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

Participants weren’t all there for the same reasons, but common themes include: concerns about authoritarian leadership (too much executive power), immigration policies and ICE enforcement, U.S. involvement in conflicts (especially Iran), voting rights and civil liberties, and cost of living and economic issues. Of course, it’s much easier to produce large numbers of protesters if there are multiple causes to protest.

Americans have every right to protest about whatever they want, but it’s also important to look under the covers and see who’s funding the protests and what their motives are. The citizenry of a society is never an important tool for change or revolution, because they are a disorganized mass. Still, the public is often used to influence public opinion.

As Anna Ahrent wrote in her book The Origins of Totalitarianism, the drivers of revolution (the wealthy who want change, plus the intellectuals) use two groups from the public to assist them. The first group is the dedicated ideologues who want to see their chosen system implemented. Judging from the size of the socialist and communist organizations in America, that group isn’t large enough to matter.

The second group is people who want to be part of something big. They sign on for the thrill of participating. Often, there is a third component, the scapegoats. They help generate momentum for change because they are a handy target for blame for the current conditions. The Nazis’ use of the Jews as scapegoats was a historically important example. We are reminded of 1930s Germany by the antisemitism that is on the rise in the United States today.

The left blames Israel for the misfortunes of the Palestinian people, made a current issue by the Hamas attack on Israel and the subsequent Israeli invasion of Gaza. More recently, a group of conservatives, who lean libertarian, have turned against Israel. They have embraced nationalism and see Trump’s relationship with Israel as a violation of their ideological dogma. It’s a slippery slope from here to Jewish censorship and worse.

Movements such as the “No Kings” rallies or the 50501 Movement typically aim to signal public opposition, influence media coverage, pressure politicians and institutions, energize supporters, and build networks.

Public protests can shift public opinion by making an issue feel urgent, moving undecided people, and changing what’s socially acceptable to say or support. For example, the Vietnam War protests gradually shifted public sentiment in the 1970s. Specifically, protests are designed to influence elites (indirectly) by affecting polling, creating media pressure, and signaling voter intensity. That might influence legislative priorities, executive actions, and court awareness of public climate.

They seek to build long-term movements. Many protests are really about organization-building to recruit volunteers, grow email/text lists (like MoveOn), and connecting local activists.

They want to affect elections by increasing turnout among supporters, framing campaign narratives, and highlighting issues candidates run on.

The No Kings protest was funded by major left-wing groups, most notably Indivisible, MoveOn, The 50501 Movement, labor unions, and civil rights groups.

Indivisible is a nationwide grassroots political organization formed after the 2016 election. Its main funding sources include small-dollar donors (a very large share) and foundations such as the Open Society Foundations, the Ford Foundation, and the Democracy Fund. They are heavily grassroots-funded, but also receive millions in foundation grants for civic engagement work. The Open Society Foundation is George Soros’s. The Ford Foundation does not explicitly label itself as “left-wing.”

Still, its focus areas overlap heavily with progressive priorities, and its funding choices often support organizations on the left side of the policy debate. The Democracy Fund is a philanthropic grantmaker focused on U.S. democracy, funded by a single billionaire (Omidyar), not by governments. It spends tens of millions of dollars per year on elections, media, and civic organizations. Like similar foundations, it indirectly supports activism, but that’s only a small part of a much broader portfolio.

MoveOn (often called MoveOn.org) is a progressive political advocacy organization in the United States, founded in 1998 during the impeachment of Bill Clinton. MoveOn focuses on mobilizing public opinion and political action, especially among left-leaning voters. Its key activities include petitions and email campaigns, political ads and fundraising, organizing protests and rallies, supporting candidates (mostly Democrats), and increasing voter turnout.

The 50501 (50 states, 50 protests, 1 day) movement is a loosely organized protest movement that aims to coordinate demonstrations across all U.S. states on the same day around shared political concerns. It is grassroots and decentralized, focused on pro-democracy themes, often tied to opposition against perceived threats to democratic institutions, election-related issues, and specific political figures or policies.

The left does much more protesting than the right, so they receive more airtime for their activities. The reason? The left is more dedicated to fundamentally changing our society, and they have to work harder to attack the status quo. Of course, the socialists and communists are part of the Democratic big tent, and they want our current system to be discarded.

The identity politics folks, for their part, want our culture radically changed to embrace the full expression of the human experience. To them, any law, behavior, or custom that places limits on individual behavior is immoral and must be changed. Their effort does not apply to white people.

Conservatives work as individuals because that’s their nature. They affect change through voting or becoming members of organized groups. It takes issues that strike at the core of conservative thinking to get them to protest; a prime example was the Equal Rights Amendment fight in the 1970s, which they won.

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The stakes are very high this year, and liberal passion is at its peak. The No Kings protest was a manifestation not of public opinion but of how money from left-wing sources is being spent. They are going to have to regain the support of those who flipped to the Republicans in 2024 to win in 2028.

Meanwhile, the evil Hitler Trump is sidelining their agenda to remake American culture. Instead, he is embracing the core principles our Republic was founded on, the principles the left seeks to destroy. Even though the 2024 election went badly, they believe that they have a chance to right the ship in 2026. If they take the House, the Trump agenda will be thwarted, and theirs will be reestablished. The impeachments will begin again.

Will this cycle of retribution ever end?

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

I traveled to Israel in 1981 on a business trip, stopping in Paris on the way back. It was a two-week journey that began the last week of December and ended in early January 1982. I had just left academia and moved into the private sector when a friend called to tell me he had recommended me for a consulting assignment in Israel. He was acting as a consultant for the State Department and was not available for the assignment.

The Israeli Health Ministry had asked the State Department to send someone to advise them on IT deployment and network communications. It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and I jumped at it even though I knew nothing about the project.

The year 1981 saw the Iran-Iraq War raging and increasing unrest in Lebanon. Israel attacked Lebanon in 1982, marking the beginning of the Lebanon War. Israel’s attack was launched to destroy the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization) fighters operating there. Then in 1983, the American Barracks in Beirut were bombed, and 241 Americans were killed. I knew what was going on in the Middle East, but I wasn’t concerned that I would be harmed.

I flew from Detroit to Frankfurt as the first leg, then on to Tel Aviv. The first leg was uneventful, but our departure from Frankfurt was an experience I will never forget. Instead of waiting in the gate area, the other passengers and I were taken to a private room with our luggage.

A team of airport employees was there to open and search the bags. After that was completed, we sat and waited for a bus to take us to our plane. After we boarded it, the bus took us to a remote part of the airport. There our Lufthansa plane sat, by itself, encircled by a group of soldiers armed with automatic weapons. Seeing those soldiers made the Middle East feel like a hotbed for me.

The plane departed Frankfurt on time for our four-hour flight. During the flight, I kept looking around, trying to identify the Mossad agents who were undoubtedly on the plane. They did a good job of disguising themselves. The flight was uneventful, and we arrived in Tel Aviv on time. Walking down the stairway, I noticed serious-looking men at the bottom. I guessed they were Mossad agents who had memorized the faces of every terrorist in the Middle East, and I appreciated their thoroughness.

I spent three or four days in Tel-Aviv, ushered around by health ministry personnel. The main event was a visit to Sheba Hospital, the city’s largest medical facility. We looked at the computer room and discussed how the equipment was being utilized.

That was when I was told of the reason for my visit. The Israeli hospitals at that time operated as isolated islands of information processing. The National Health Ministry saw this as a problem due to its obvious inefficiency. They wanted to consolidate their data and share it across the different locations.

When I wasn’t busy with Health ministry officials, I was on my own, which meant doing some exploring. I visited the beachfront area and had dinner there. Tel-Aviv appeared to be a modern version of Jerusalem.

On my last day in Tel Aviv, I was given a tour of the northern part of Israel, including Haifa, about an hour to the north. While there, I was taken to a place where we could observe the Golan Heights, a strategically important plateau of land, which was occupied by the Israelis in 1981. Before the Six-Day War in 1967, Syrians had used the heights to attack the north of Israel with artillery, so its occupation was strategically important to Israel.

The next day, I was driven to Jerusalem. My time there included an immersion in the region’s history. I visited Bethlehem, Jericho, and all the holy sites in the city.

It was fascinating to walk through the old walled city and imagine the events that took place there. I was taken on a tour of the famous Hadassah Hospital, probably the best-known medical facility in Israel. On New Year’s Eve, I sat in the hotel lobby for a while watching TV. It was an odd experience because there were no festivities. The Western New Year means nothing in Israel, which celebrates Rosh Hashanah in September.

On the last day, I was invited to a senior staff meeting at the Health Ministry to share my thoughts on their concerns. That meeting was an eye-opening experience, given the contrast with the kind of meetings we have in the States. All of the attendees were dressed casually, and the table where we sat was filled with bottles of various juices, water, and fruit.

During the meeting, the participants argued and interrupted one another, each seeking to prove that their ideas offered the best solution to the problem. It was like a big free-for-all. They may have expected me to join the melee, but it was hard for me to get a word in edgewise.

I’m afraid I was a disappointment to them because I couldn’t offer a magic solution. The internet did not exist, and data processing sites had to rely on phone lines to transfer information. The Israelis told me their phone systems were unreliable and subject to frequent disruptions.

Without an ironclad method of sending data, they couldn’t be sure of the data integrity at the other end. I told them that they had to continue with the “islands of data” model until their phone systems became more reliable.

I departed Israel for a weekend in Paris, which I had never seen. It was snowy and cold there. I visited the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame, climbing up to the roof of the great cathedral.

The trip had a profound impact on my understanding of Israel and how it has to deal with threats every day. I will never temper my admiration for a people who have had their traditional homeland returned to them and ferociously defended it against their adversaries in the Middle East. Every Israeli would die for their homeland if the need arose, which is why all eligible young people are required to serve in the Israeli Defense Force (IDF).

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The zeal of the Jewish people matches that of their ancestors who fought the Romans. In 70 CE, a Jewish militia attacked the Roman fortress at Masada and killed every Roman soldier in retribution for the Roman burning of Jerusalem. It took the Romans two years to prepare for an assault to retake the impregnable rock. When they finally broke through during the final assault, all the Jews had committed suicide.

Today, in the United States, Israel is being attacked from the left and right. To the left, they are oppressors of the Muslim people, who must be condemned. To the right, they are an unnecessary distraction from the implementation of an America First, nationalist identity in America.

The suffering of the Jews over the last two thousand years and their continued resilience deserve our respect and support, not our condemnation.

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

Recently, I watched a podcast in which the host attempted to explain Trump’s foreign policy thinking. The speaker did not claim insider knowledge, and his credentials were questionable, so I approached the discussion cautiously. Still, the underlying theory was interesting enough to examine further.

Any discussion of American strategy begins with identifying the nation’s major rivals. Today, those rivals are clearly China and Russia, along with aligned or dependent states such as Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, and Syria.

China has spent the last two decades steadily expanding its influence through economic, technological, diplomatic, and military means. Rather than direct confrontation, it favors gradual, long-term leverage.

Its primary strategy has been economic expansion through the Belt and Road Initiative, which finances infrastructure projects across Asia, Africa, Latin America, and parts of Europe. These investments increase dependence on China and expand its influence over trade routes and strategic resources.

Militarily, China has strengthened its position in the South China Sea while modernizing its armed forces. Diplomatically, it presents itself as an alternative to Western leadership, particularly in the developing world. Beijing emphasizes “non-interference” in domestic affairs and avoids attaching human rights conditions to economic assistance, which appeals to many governments.

China has also invested heavily in technology and supply-chain dominance. Through its “Digital Silk Road,” it exports telecommunications infrastructure, surveillance systems, and smart-city technology. Countries that adopt these systems often become dependent on Chinese technology and manufacturing.

In addition, China uses media organizations, cultural programs, and information campaigns to promote the image of Chinese stability and Western decline. Its broader objective is not simply territorial expansion, but the creation of a China-centered economic and political order that reduces reliance on Western systems.

China has achieved major gains in parts of the developing world, though distrust of Beijing has grown in many advanced economies.

Russia’s goals differ somewhat from China’s. Moscow’s primary objective is rebuilding a sphere of influence in the former Soviet region, with Ukraine at the center of that effort.

Russia also sees itself in long-term competition with the United States and Europe. It seeks to weaken Western unity through cyber operations, propaganda, political disruption, and pressure campaigns.

A third goal is maintaining great-power status despite Russia’s relatively weak economy. To compensate, Russia relies heavily on military power, nuclear deterrence, and advanced weapons systems.

Russia’s economy remains deeply dependent on energy exports, particularly oil and gas, which it uses as a tool of influence. At home, nationalism and external conflict help reinforce support for Vladimir Putin’s government.

Russia has demonstrated resilience despite sanctions and continues exerting influence in parts of Africa and Eastern Europe. However, the Ukraine war has exposed military weaknesses, increased Russia’s isolation from the West, and strengthened NATO rather than weakening it.

How do China and Russia fit into Trump’s larger foreign policy approach?

The first element is energy independence. Trump argues that the United States weakened itself by restricting domestic energy production in pursuit of climate goals. While sustainability is important, he believes economic and strategic stability require abundant domestic oil and gas production.

The second element is recognizing how oil shapes global power.

The United States imports most of its foreign oil from Canada, with additional imports from Mexico and a handful of other countries. Because the U.S. also produces massive quantities of shale oil, exports offset much of what is imported.

China, however, is heavily dependent on imported oil. Russia is one of its largest suppliers, while major volumes also come from the Gulf states, Brazil, Iran, Angola, and Venezuela. This dependency creates a strategic vulnerability.

From this perspective, Venezuela becomes highly important.

Trump’s supporters argue that pressuring or influencing the Maduro government gives the United States leverage over Venezuelan oil exports. If Washington can limit China’s access to Venezuelan energy, China becomes more vulnerable economically and diplomatically.

There is also a secondary effect involving Cuba. Cuba relies heavily on Venezuelan oil, so disruptions in Venezuela place additional stress on the Cuban economy. Supporters of Trump’s approach believe this creates opportunities to influence political developments inside Cuba.

Iran represents the next major piece of the strategy.

Supporters of a hard line against Iran argue that Tehran destabilizes the Middle East through proxy groups, terrorism, and regional intimidation. Weakening Iran would therefore reduce threats to U.S. allies and potentially reshape the regional balance of power.

In this interpretation, pressure on Iran also creates indirect pressure on China and Russia. China depends partly on Iranian oil, while Russia and China both maintain strategic relationships with Tehran, including military cooperation.

If Iran were weakened economically or politically, several potential outcomes could follow.

First, China could lose another major energy supplier, increasing American leverage in trade negotiations.

Second, Russia and China would lose a Middle Eastern partner that often challenges Western interests.

Third, Gulf states might feel more secure, lowering tensions in the region.

Finally, the United States could shift more strategic focus away from the Middle East and toward the Pacific, where competition with China is increasingly central.

Supporters of this worldview believe such a strategy could only emerge from a populist administration willing to challenge both globalism and traditional foreign-policy assumptions. In their view, previous administrations focused too heavily on diplomacy without integrating economic leverage into broader geopolitical strategy.

Trump’s approach attempts to combine politics, trade, energy, and security into a single framework. Rather than separating economics from foreign policy, the theory is that economic dependence itself can become a strategic tool.

Critics would argue this framework oversimplifies global politics and risks escalating conflicts abroad. Supporters, however, see it as a recognition that geopolitical rivals increasingly use economics, energy, and technology as weapons of influence.

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Whether one agrees with Trump’s methods or not, the underlying concept is understandable: reduce America’s vulnerabilities, increase leverage over adversaries, weaken rival power structures, and reposition the United States for long-term competition with China.

Ultimately, the argument is not that every individual action is disconnected, but that many of them are linked by a larger strategic objective centered on energy, economic leverage, and great-power competition.

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

Referring to European Union member nations, he stated, “For we in America have no interest in being polite and orderly caretakers of the West’s managed decline.” There’s a strong argument that were it not for the policies of the Trump administration, “we in America would have become the polite and orderly caretakers of our own managed decline.”

“Managed decline” is an outgrowth of a philosophy that employs sympathy as the basis for establishing policy and prioritizes weakness over strength as a means of dealing with social issues. That philosophy has caused a number of European countries to throw their borders wide open to immigrants from nations with autocratic governments that force their populations into the virtual prisons of poverty, oppression and slavery.

The Biden administration justified its open border policies as being a humanitarian action. That was nothing more than diversion from the true reason. The open borders policy was nothing more than an exercise of inhumanity as it facilitated the deaths of thousands of immigrants, condemned thousands of children to being sex-trafficked and welcomed criminals.

The top priority of the Biden administration seems to have been gaining a political advantage by using illegal immigrants to increase the populations of specific districts as a means of gaining seats in the House, and electors in the electoral college. If a few thousand Americans were killed, raped or otherwise victimized as a result. That’s no big deal- if you believe the end justifies the means.

Historically, people escaping nations with oppressive governments were seeking freedom and opportunity. Until recently, that was the case. But many recent immigrants seek to create an equally oppressive culture under which they are the oppressors as opposed to being the oppressed. Their next step is to impose that culture on the citizens of the country to which they have “escaped”.

The assault on Western values comes from many directions, but the most virulent are the attacks from proponents of radical Islam. With respect to that, retired Lieutenant Colonel Allen West explains, “It’s not a religion, it’s a totalitarian, theocratic political system that is rooted in tyranny, that says you either convert, you subjugate or you die. That’s in their own words.”

That is not a condemnation of Islam, it’s a recognition of the goals of radical Islam which is to subjugate the “infidels” in the countries to which its proponents have emigrated.

If you don’t believe that uncontrolled immigration can lead to cultural and physical genocide, you probably think history is based on fairy tales. But look no further than the destruction of Native Americans and their culture, by the masses of European immigrants, to see that the life- and culture-killing effect of uncontrolled immigration is not a fairy tale.

For entirely different reasons, Native Americans shared the open border policies of the Biden administration and Elizabeth “Pocahontas” Warren. With nothing to stop them, Europeans flooded the Native American homelands. Many came to North America in search of religious freedom or economic opportunity. Irrespective of individual reasons, all were escaping nations with oppressive governments.

And they brought their culture with them- one that did not share the values of Native Americans. As the number of Europeans grew, they displaced the original residents. Slowly at first, but as one generation was replaced by the next, Europeans became Americans who claimed the continent as their own. Native Americans’ culture did not harmoniously blend with that of the European-based American culture. Native Americans were a clear impediment to American expansion and were either forcibly removed or killed.

It’s unlikely immigrants could crush a Western nation’s civilization to the degree Europeans crushed that of Native Americans- unless their efforts were assisted by allies already in the country. Unfortunately, the reality is “inside” help already exists.

It arrived through the open border policies of previous administrations. The result of such policies is especially evident in numerous European countries which are now facing serious challenges to their existing cultures with over 15% or their populations are non-native and a significant percentage of those immigrants have no desire to assimilate.

Fortunately, the United States does not yet have such a high percentage of immigrants who would seek to destroy our existing culture. But the illegal immigration surge of the past few years supercharged the quest for self-destruction within the United States.

That quest originated several years ago under the leadership of elected officials and bureaucrats who have infested American government at all levels. It isn’t just Democrats, who have doubled-down on illegal immigration; in the past, many Republicans were complicit because for years, they took no action to improve border security.

The quest for self-destruction continues. Although the Trump administration is actively taking action to eliminate the threat created by anti-American immigrants, liberals still pursue the quest for self-destruction as Democrat-run cities and states continue to protect illegal immigrants with “sanctuary” policies. Obviously, their priority is to stack the deck against Republicans during elections.

Irrespective of their ethnic or religious background, the end goal of America-haters is to move local, state and ultimately federal governments to operate under socialist, communist- or Sharia principles. New York City is a case in point.

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The current socialist mayor is pushing an increase in the corporate tax rate along with tax-the-rich/tax-the-white schemes to fund such things as; universal free childcare, city-owned grocery stores, free public transit, subsidized public housing and rent-freezes. The question is, what’s next?

Time will tell whether the majority of voters wake up and reject the agendas of Democratic socialists like Mamdani, Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders. If they do, the Democrat party will have been successful in its quest for self-destruction. If they don’t, the Democrats will have been successful in their quest for the self-destruction of the American republic.

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

In the case of President Truman, we note his decision to drop the atomic bombs on Japan. That decision was certainly controversial and was strongly criticized. I believe Truman made the correct decision for two reasons: it induced the Japanese nation to surrender and bring an end to the war, and it scared the world by having them witness the power unleashed by atomic weapons. That fear has kept us safe from nuclear weapons for 80 years.

Truman made another controversial decision three years later, to recognize Israel as a nation. The British mandate, which gave Britain control of Palestine, was to end on May 14, 1948. Truman knew that Israel would declare its independence, so he had to decide how America should proceed. Supporting the recognition were the Jewish lobby, humanitarian pressure resulting from the holocaust, and some members of Congress.

Opposing recognition were General George Marshall, the Secretary of State and author of the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe, and most of the State Department’s senior members. The leadership at the State Department believed that recognition would turn the oil-producing states in the Gulf against the United States and disrupt oil shipments to the United States. Some believed Truman was fishing for the Jewish vote in order to try to win the election.

In the days and weeks preceding decision day, the Arab countries in the region were amassing armies at Israel’s borders. Egypt from the south, Jordan from the east, and Syria and Lebanon from the north were ready to strike the new Jewish state at the appropriate moment.

The Israelis announced their independence at 4 PM Tel Aviv time, eight hours before the British mandate expired. President Truman announced America’s recognition of Israeli independence 11 minutes later. The next day, the Arab countries attacked simultaneously. The Israeli defence force at that time consisted of holocaust survivors and native Israelis, roughly organized into an army called the Haganah, as well as a group of small independent militias. By their strong will and dedication, the Israelis resisted the attacks and eventually pushed the invaders back beyond the borders set prior to the start of the war.

In the November election that year, Truman squeaked out a win despite expectations that he would lose. The statistics show that Truman received strong Jewish support, but the number of Jewish votes did not determine the outcome.

Later, Truman stated that his decision was based on the moral imperative to provide a permanent home for the Jewish people. He told friends he was Cyrus, recalling the Persian king who allowed the Jews to return to their homeland.

Now we move forward in time to the present day and Trump’s attack on Iran.

YouTube is full of speculation about Trump’s motives. Much of it is designed to create controversy, because that produces clicks. Many know-it-all establishment types opine on what’s going on under the covers. I, for one, think it’s not that complicated. Trump sees Iran as a serious threat to the world, based on its stated goal of achieving threat-level ballistic missile and nuclear capability.

The previous residents of the White House did not seriously address the “Iran” problem, which has reached its 57^th year. It’s a Democratic Party tendency to be passive on foreign policy, and this was born out during the Obama presidency. Obama believed in “shared responsibility” with allies, multilateral leadership, and avoiding unilateral U.S. military action when possible.

The problem with that approach is that Western Europe, under neoliberal ideology, was also passive. Obama’s “leading from behind” strategy was just kicking the can down the road.

Obama believed that diplomacy was better than war, so he set out to bring Iran to the table. His administration negotiated the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2015. It was reached between the United States. Iran, and other major powers (UK, France, Germany, Russia, China, plus the EU).

Iran agreed to limit its nuclear program, including cutting uranium stockpiles by about 98%, reducing centrifuges, and allowing international inspections. In return, the U.S. and others lifted nuclear-related economic sanctions. The goal was to ensure Iran’s nuclear program stayed peaceful and far from weapons capability.

In 2018, Trump withdrew the United States from the agreement. Critics had warned from the outset that some key restrictions were temporary (expiring after 10–15 years), and the deal did not eliminate Iran’s nuclear capability—only restricted it. This raised concern that Iran could later legally expand its program. It also didn’t address other concerns, such as Iran’s missile program and support of its regional proxies (Hamas, Houthis, Hezbollah, etc.). Opponents argued that this allowed Iran to create force multipliers to achieve its objectives.

The Hamas attack on Israel resulted in the neutering of Hezbollah and attacks on Iran, along with the Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip. The weakening of its partners and Iran’s continued bellicosity regarding Nukes convinced Trump that the problem needed his full attention. Diplomacy was tried without success, which moved Trump to act militarily.

The attacks began on February 28, and a rift emerged immediately within the conservative base. I do not believe this rift is mainstream; it is concentrated among the ideologues and pundits, who reflect growing anti-semitism in the United States.

In 2026, American public sympathy regarding the Middle East shows a widening divide, with 41% sympathizing more with Palestinians compared to 36% with Israelis, as found in a recent Gallup poll. The left has embraced the Arab point of view as an oppressed race and become more anti-semitic. A piece of the right has joined the opposition because they feel Trump is putting Israeli objectives above America’s interests.

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Trump will not allow the Iran invasion to become a “forever” war, so he is not going against his beliefs. As a person who hates war, Trump wants to stop Iran before they have a chance to start one. Like Truman, he made a hard decision. If the endeavor against Iran is successful, it will be the most important accomplishment of his presidency.

Trump knew that an attack could put the fall elections at risk if the Iran situation is not resolved by then. By Trump’s calculus, the threat Iran posed, their vulnerability, and confidence in a successful outcome outweighed the downside.

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

Democrats have been mostly silent since their attempt to put a leash on the president failed. They hope the effort will fail and bolster their chances of success in November. Short of that result, they hope for an economic impact that will strengthen their “affordability” campaign for the fall. Keeping the government closed is part of their calculus. The inpass is not about ICE, since ICE is already funded. It’s about a way to damage the president, given their limited ability to do so. Of course, no one really knows what will happen with the war.

Republicans are also silent, probably to remain on Trump’s side and because they believe in the cause.

What I get from the mass media is a nothing burger. They don’t really know anything, so they speculate and advocate for one side or the other. The Strait of Hormuz is trending because 20% of the world’s oil supply goes through there. Iran has declared the Strait closed, and the U.S. has to figure out how to keep it open so oil prices don’t skyrocket.

Some pundits have us returning to the 1979 oil embargo, which is fear-mongering nonsense. Trump knows the stakes of the game he is playing and will play his cards as he sees fit, but even he can’t predict when the Revolutionary Guards will surrender, if and when the Iranian people will rise and take their country back.

Here is a sampling from the New York Times: UD bombs Iranian oil hub. Why was so little done to head off the Strait of Hormuz problem? Trump and Rubio’s vision of war: The art of destroy and deal. Trump’s alliance with Israel is reshaping the Middle East.

The crown prince Reza Pahlavi, son of the Shah, deposed in 1979, is now communicating directly with the Iranian people. He has told them to prepare for the regime’s collapse and to stay safe until then.

Frustrated by the political coloring of content, I started looking for alternative sources of information. What follows are some points of view I discovered.

1. There are daily updates on the YouTube channel Tousi TV, which is an online political news and commentary channel, mainly distributed through YouTube, social media, and its own subscription platform (Tousi TV+), all broadcast from the UK. It focuses on geopolitical news, politics, and commentary about current events.

Mahyar Tousi, the channel host, is an Iranian who provides updates on political events in his country and also speaks to the Iranian people around the world. He has 1.4 million followers. Tousi has shown videos of mass protests inside Iran demanding the return of the crown prince, and people taking control of police stations in some cities, where the police stood down and joined the celebration. Revolutionary Guard food distribution locations were taken over by the people and looted. Mahyar appears to have enough connections inside his country to provide an accurate picture of what’s happening on the ground.

2. I listened to Rafaela Siewert of the Free Press interview Elica LeBon, an Iranian lawyer and activist living in the United States, who talked from an Iranian point of view.

Elica made a strong point about the negative reaction to the war in the United States, as reflected in recent polls. The reality for people living in the U.S. and, generally, in liberal democracies is that they are never threatened. The force the U.S. is exerting to suppress threats from the outside and keep Americans safe also creates a paradox: people don’t see why we need to take any action against an enemy because THEY don’t feel threatened.

“The Iranian regime has enshrined in its Constitution from its inception, death to America and Israel. It has promised to eliminate both those forces, and it has acted on that intention significantly over the past 47 years. Some people push back on this contention because they don’t believe that the Iranians have nukes. Regardless of nukes, the Iranian regime is motivated to destroy the United States using any means possible.

The removal of this regime is absolutely the best thing for the American people, for the Iranian people, for the people of the Middle East. I can’t. I can’t guarantee that it will happen this way, but. We’re hoping.”

3. I listened to The Mishal Husain Show on Bloomberg. She interviewed Iranian scholar Vali Nasr from The Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. I am very skeptical of scholars these days because politics has negated the value of their expertise. Deep establishment thinkers are largely anti-Trump because he doesn’t possess the gravitas they have.

“And now this war has gone out of his control. It’s far longer, far messier, and is actually exacting costs across the United States, both in terms of damage to its bases and the impact on energy markets and the global economy as a whole. So, I think it’s signaling that he wants to end it, but I don’t think Iran is ready to quit.

But I think they calculate that this is not a munitions count. This is not about who has a bigger bond. This is about who has a higher pain threshold. And they think the United States and Israel can Dash a lot faster, but they’re not really long-distance runners. And so, I think they’re prepared to absorb this for far longer.

And so if the president was looking for a quick political uprising in Iran, it’s not going to happen. It will not happen until the dust of this war settles. So for now, the Iranian public is not a factor in this war (false), and this was something that both Israel and the United States had been counting on, that the war would pave the way.

I was in India recently, and it’s very clear that, outside the United States and the West, Iran is enjoying widespread support for standing up to Donald Trump and Standing Tall. Also, they are actually inflicting pain on the United States.

When I was with the Obama administration, we pursued a path of Engagement. Mishal: If Donald Trump hadn’t ripped up the Iran deal, would it have resulted in a better present, or is your description of the regime too entrenched? For that, you know, I think it could have ended up better (false).”

4. Mohamad Faridi, an Iranian living in the United States (his parents are still in Iran), was interviewed on the Dave Wood podcast. Here are a few quotes from him.

“The regime, with all its brutality and all the evil that came down on the Iranian people, shut down. Protests killed thousands of Iranians throughout the years, and then the most horrific one of them was last month, in January, and now it’s actually March. About five weeks ago, they say, they killed, upward of 90,000 people.

I have spoken to my family in Iran. All of my family is in Iran. They told me that any relatives, any, anybody that they know they have lost, or one or two members of their families to this? Regime, you know, savagery? Many of the people were detained, arrested, in prison, tortured, raped, and they kept their backs against these evil people.

This regime is one evil, weird thing. I mean, from evil to unimaginable evil that they have ruled in this nation for 47 years. In 2009, we had the green movement, when Obama betrayed the Iranian people and sent pallets of money instead of jets. Just imagine how stupid a president could be negotiating with terrorists. That didn’t work.

In 2023, we had Masa Amini, the girl who didn’t wear her hijab, and she was killed. Iranians came, and we had the same situation, and Biden was in power, and we were thinking God, if Trump were in power, something such as this would have happened.

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And now, we see the difference. Trump told them that if they killed the Iranian people, the guns would be locked and loaded. Help is on the way.

But, thank God, finally. Thank God that they have arrived, and then they killed the head of the octopus that was in Tehran. I promise you, upwards of 90 percent of the Persian population in Iran and the diaspora are rejoicing in it. This has been the best news for them.”

The best place to get information about Iran is from the Iranian people. They are the ones with a stake in the game. They are the ones who want their country back. Comments from here from academic elites or journalists with a political axe to grind are useless.

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

In college, I never read for pleasure; instead, I focused on subjects related to my field of study. I observed that my friends were reading for pleasure and noted what they were reading. Still, I was not interested enough to read those books myself.

After my undergraduate years, and while I was in graduate school, I decided to read the great literature and plowed through the works of American and English writers. I also found Dostoevsky and other Russian authors to be a revelation.

A couple of years ago, I decided to tackle the books my college friends had read. I respected them as friends and figured they were reading the books for a good reason. No doubt, those books addressed issues related to my generation, most importantly the counterculture movement and the Vietnam War, which were significant events in recent American history.

I went through my book list with an open mind and quickly found myself transported back in time. These books reflect common themes of the time: rejection of 1950s culture, alienation, longing for a perfect world, peace rather than war, drugs as a tool to expand the mind, and the evil of the establishment. Reading them helped me understand the frustration of my generation, which I had ignored while pursuing a technology career.

I will discuss my book list in chronological order by year of publication. It will be immediately apparent why these books were embraced by the counterculture movement and 60s intellectuals in general. What’s more important is their impact on us today, because the concerns of the counterculture movement have not been addressed 60 years later.

Walden, by Henry David Thoreau (1854), explores Thoreau’s assertion that most people live overly complicated, distracted lives. By simplifying possessions, work, and habits, a person can gain freedom, clarity, and deeper awareness of life. Thoreau suggests we focus on what truly matters, reduce unnecessary labor and consumption, and observe nature and human life more clearly.

Steppenwolf, by Herman Hesse (1927), explores the personality of Harry Haller, a middle-aged intellectual living alone in a German city, who feels completely alienated from bourgeois society and thinks he has two opposing identities: a refined, thoughtful human, and a wild “steppe wolf” who despises society. Haller explores these two natures and discovers that his personality is more complex than he believed.

By leaving his mind open, he found he could discover new experiences of value. Themes of the book include alienation from society, the search for meaning, individuality versus conformity, and the need for humor and play in life. The rock band Steppenwolf took its name from the book, and the group’s best-known song, “Born to Be Wild,” became an anthem for motorcycle riders in the 1960s.

Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley (1932). The novel is set in the World State, a global civilization in which humans are genetically engineered in laboratories rather than born naturally. People are designed to belong to five castes: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon. From infancy, they are conditioned through hypnopaedia (sleep-teaching) to accept their social roles.

Citizens are kept content through entertainment, casual sex, and a mood-altering drug called Soma. The novel explores: the dangers of technological control over human life; consumerism and pleasure as social control; the loss of individuality; and the conflict between happiness and freedom. Huxley’s vision differs from that of other dystopias, such as 1984, in that its characters are not controlled by fear but by comfort, pleasure, and distraction.

The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien (1937). This book needs no introduction as it remains popular today. It explores courage in ordinary people, the corrupting power of greed, friendship and loyalty, the value of home, and the value of a simple life.

1984, George Orwell (1949). Unlike Brave New World, 1984 presents an ugly dystopian world in which elites control society through fear and intimidation. Major themes include: totalitarian control, propaganda and manipulation of truth, surveillance and loss of privacy, the corruption of language (Newspeak), and psychological domination of individuals. Sound familiar? The book should be required reading for anyone who admires the agenda of the WEF/WHO/UN/World Bank and can’t see the danger we would face with them in power.

Siddhartha, by Herman Hesse (1951), is a philosophical novel about a man’s lifelong search for spiritual enlightenment in ancient India. It explores the search for enlightenment, the limits of formal religious teachings, the unity of all life, and the value of learning through experience rather than doctrine.

Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley (1954). This book had a direct impact on the drug culture because it tells the story of Aldous Huxley’s experiments with the drug Mescaline. In the book, he introduced “his reducing valve” theory, which asserts the universe contains far more information than we can normally perceive, the brain filters most of it out so we can function practically, and so psychedelic substances may temporarily open the “doors” of perception, allowing access to a broader awareness. This book prompted drug experimentation by those interested in exploring a widened state of perception.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey (1962), is about a man placed in a mental institution for misbehavior rather than mental illness. He tries to enlighten his fellow patients in the ways of the world, only to be crushed by the institution and its masters. Central themes are individual freedom vs. institutional control, conformity and rebellion, the abuse of authority, and the restoration of personal dignity.

Cat’s Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut (1963). Vonnegut became a countercultural icon because his novels combined anti-war sentiment, distrust of powerful institutions, satire of modern society, and a humane moral outlook, all delivered in a witty and unconventional style. He used dark humor to explore themes he saw as reprehensible in American society. Cat’s Cradle explores the irresponsibility of scientific innovation, the dangers of technology without ethics, humanity’s need for comforting beliefs, and the absurdity of political power and religion.

Dune, Frank Herbert (1965). Dune is a science-fiction epic set thousands of years in the future, in a vast feudal interstellar empire. The novel explores several big ideas: Power and politics – rival houses and imperial intrigue; Religion and mythmaking – how belief systems can be engineered and used politically; Ecology – the fragile desert ecosystem of Arrakis; Human potential – training, genetics, and consciousness; and the danger of charismatic leaders.

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test: Tom Wolfe (1968). After writing One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey became involved in government-sponsored experiments with LSD while working at a veterans hospital in California. The experiences convinced him that psychedelic drugs could radically expand consciousness, so he gathered a group of friends who shared his beliefs and formed the Merry Pranksters, dedicated to exploring new forms of perception, community, and culture. The group bought an old school bus, painted it, and traveled across the United States.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, by Hunter S. Thompson (1971), is a wild, semi-fictional account of a drug-fueled trip to Las Vegas that became a satirical exploration of American culture and the collapse of the 1960s counterculture. Its themes included the illusion of the American Dream, media and journalism satire, drug culture and altered perception, absurdity, and alienation in modern America. The book became a defining work of Gonzo journalism, blending reporting, personal experience, exaggeration, and fiction.

The Greening of America, Charles Reich (1971), is an analysis of the cultural revolution that occurred in the United States during the late 1960s. The book argues that a profound transformation in American consciousness was underway, led largely by young people and the counterculture. It argues that this shift cannot be stopped by political force, will gradually transform American institutions, and represents a peaceful revolution through culture rather than politics. Its assertions are hauntingly prophetic.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig (1974), is a philosophical novel that combines a motorcycle journey across the United States with a deep exploration of philosophy, particularly the concept of “Quality.” The book blends travel narrative, autobiography, and philosophical inquiry around themes including the nature of quality and value, the split between science and art, technology and human meaning, sanity, the limits of rational thought, and the importance of careful attention to everyday activities.

The themes and narratives in all these books remain relevant today. Challenge yourself to read one or more of them.

The impact of the counterculture was not what it intended. It took on the establishment, hoping to tear it down and replace it with a new system, but it never had the power to do that. Plan B became infiltrating the academic system and changing the culture through indoctrination. In that endeavor, it was highly successful.

The problem that occurred along the way, however, was its alignment with socialism, which was used as a bolt-on ideology. That alignment precipitated its 50-year attempt to destroy America’s institutions and traditions, which has now come far enough to reach the point of absurdity and has generated significant resistance among a large segment of the American population, who do not accept left ideology.

The youngest boomers are 62, and the oldest are 80. Their descendants are taking control of American society and do not have the same life experience. Let’s hope they proceed down a different path.

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

Let’s unpack this problem and explain what’s going on. We begin with a short list of turncoats.

Tucker Carlson, formerly the most influential host on Fox News. After leaving in 2023, he moved to independent media on X and other platforms. Increasingly critical of Republican foreign policy, corporate power, and parts of the GOP establishment. Often described as “post-conservative” or nationalist but anti-establishment.

Glenn Greenwald, a co-founder of The Intercept who is not originally a conservative, has broken with much of the progressive media establishment, collaborates frequently with conservative audiences, and is a strong critic of U.S. foreign policy, intelligence agencies, and corporate media.

Candace Owens rose to prominence through Turning Point USA and The Daily Wire, split with Ben Shapiro and the Daily Wire in 2024 over Israel policy and rhetoric, and now operates independently and often criticizes establishment conservatives.

Steve Bannon, former strategist to Donald Trump and former head of Breitbart News, now promotes a “national populist” movement through his War Room show, and often criticizes the Republican establishment and even parts of Trump’s circle.

Dave Smith, libertarian comedian and host of Part of the Problem, is associated with the Libertarian Party (United States) and a critic of conservatives for foreign intervention, surveillance, and government spending.

These individuals fall into four separate camps: National populists – e.g., Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon; Libertarian critics of the GOP – e.g., Dave Smith; Independent media conservatives – e.g., Candace Owens; and cross-ideological anti-establishment figures – e.g., Glenn Greenwald.

The splitters are now anti-MAGA.

This discussion is about people splitting from Trump. There was also a split that created Trump. If you look at the history, you’ll understand how we got here.

William F. Buckley, by his own willpower, created a conservative ideology in the 1960s. Prior to that time, conservatism was seen as nothing more than honoring traditions and resisting change. Buckley welded together three disparate groups: traditional conservatives, libertarians, and former communists, who had rejected the failed Soviet Union. That alliance got Reagan elected in 1980. The new conservative alliance included Irving Kristol, the so-called founder of Neoconservatism. Neocons believe in an interventionist foreign policy, including forcing regime change if necessary.

By the end of Reagan’s second term, some conservatives, most notably Pat Buchanan, were predicting an ideological split. Buchanan, himself, was one of the founders of Paleoconservatism, which is basically the Buckley ideology without the Neocons. Buchanan accused the Republican Party of becoming too globalist, pro-immigration, and interventionist. He promoted economic nationalism, immigration restriction, and non-intervention abroad. Trump later embraced these ideas.

Irving Kristol, for his part, predicted there would be growing tensions between economic libertarianism (small government and individual liberty) and social conservatism (moral order and cultural stability) within the right. The split is:

Establishment Right - global markets, immigration friendly, interventionist foreign policy, and Elite institutions.

Populist / National Right - economic nationalism, immigration restriction, non-intervention, and America First anti-elite populism.

The fusionist coalition that Buckley created lasted until 2015. At that point, the legacy of a single event broke it. That event was the Iraq War. The end of the Cold War in 1990 removed a uniting factor among the conservatives, but the Iraq War caused the final break. The break came when several political ideas became reality: trust in conservative foreign-policy elites collapsed, populist conservatives began attacking the “neoconservative establishment,” and libertarians and nationalists began cooperating politically.

This shift created the intellectual groundwork for populist momentum.

Many conservative intellectuals realized the break was permanent on February 13, 2016, at the Republican presidential debate in South Carolina, when Donald Trump directly attacked the legacy of George W. Bush over the Iraq War, while standing next to Bush’s brother, Jeb Bush. During the debate, Trump said, “Obviously, the war in Iraq was a big, fat mistake.” He went further and blamed the Bush administration for destabilizing the Middle East, saying the war had made the region worse rather than better.

This comment cemented in place the difference between the conservative establishment and MAGA, leading to outrage among the Republican establishment over Trump. This outrage birthed the resistance to Trump in his first term, including The Lincoln Project, and the Never Trumpers like Liz Cheney.

Fast-forward to the present day, and we now see a fragmentation in the populist coalition. Tucker Carlson has become an anti-establishment nationalist. He heavily criticizes Israel and accuses Trump of being Netanyahu’s stooge. Carlson opposes Trump’s foreign policy because it draws our attention away from the country. His “cult of personality” behavior is evidenced by his ridicule of Ted Cruz during an interview and his embrace of Nick Fuentes, who is an antisemite and an admirer of Hitler.

There is no explanation for Candace Owens, who went from Democrat to conservative to conspiracy theorist. Some recent titles from her podcast include JD Vance’s Mysterious Past, Elon Musk, Secret Underground Bases, and UFOs, Shocking: The Sinister Group Behind Your Grocery Items, and How We Faked the Moon Landing. Most recently, she has been attacking Erika Kirk. She reveals what she calls Erika’s “shady past” and says Erika might be a psychopath.

When I notice a behavior change in those I listen to for content, a shift from politics to the weird and unusual, that ends it for me. The correlation between controversy and clicks is used to foster the cult of personality, rendering their discussions useless.

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The populist fragmentation we’ve been discussing is damaging to the conservative movement, and the behavior mimics what the Democrats do. They’re better at dealing with it, however, because they have to live with it all the time.

The conservative movement is breaking down into competing identities, each vying for airtime. The lack of unity and obsession with ideology bodes ill for this November’s election, and the left is giddy at its prospects. Building unity out of the ideological splinters of our populist movement is like herding cats when the cats only care about themselves.

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

Iranian people around the world are celebrating the death of the Supreme Leader, hoping the theocracy can be overthrown. It remains to be seen how, and whether, the people inside Iran can rise and create a new government. Revolutions are tricky things, and they fail as often as they succeed. People on the street are a gauge of dissent, but contribute nothing to revolutions. The outcome depends solely on the intentions of the wealthy; will they see a benefit in the change? It also depends on the intellectuals who must sanction the process.

Unfortunately, Iran, like many Arab states, is struggling with factional politics. Four groups are competing for power there: conservatives who strongly support the theocratic model, reformists who support social reform within the theocratic system, moderates who focus on economic and managerial competence rather than ideological overhaul, and the opposition, which seeks to tear down the theocracy. The first two groups have the power, and it may be difficult to wrest it away from them. Another possible outcome is the implementation of reforms, which may cool the public enthusiasm for change.

From an American interest standpoint, any outcome that stops Iran’s support and encouragement of terrorism around the world would be great. The world would truly be safer if that happened.

The remaining leaders of Iran contacted Trump and asked for a meeting. He told them he would take their call after the mission was complete. This message cuts off any notion they had about getting a quick ceasefire. For 47 years, the Iranian Islamic state has been lying to the world about its nefarious intentions and its willingness to discuss solutions, making an absolute fool of Obama, along the way.

This instance is classic Trump. Negotiate if you can, and give the opposition time and reasons to agree. In the business world, running out of time means the deal is off. In our conflicts between nations, time running out means that, if you’re evil enough, you will be attacked.

For 47 years, Iran has threatened its neighbors in the Middle East. It has funded proxy groups, Hezbollah, Hamas, and others, who create instability and seek the destruction of Israel. It killed our Marines in Beirut, killed sailors on the Cole, and threatened to kill our presidents. In the last two months, it had killed 32,000 of its own citizens who were protesting the economic conditions in their country. Enough is enough.

The Congress had its typical reaction. The Democrats accuse Trump of waging war without their permission. A Democratic politician said, “Trump used the word ‘war’ in his attack announcement, so it must be a war.”

This is an old complaint we have seen many times.

Long ago, Congress gave up its authority to initiate war, ceding that power to the president. Formal declarations of war have gone the way of the buggy whip, used at a time when nations were more polite than they are now. “Oh, you declared war on me? Alright, I will now declare war on you.” The following list shows some of the undeclared “wars” since the end of World War II.

Vietnam War (1965-73). U.S. fatalities: ~58,220 Johnson

Korean War (1950-53). U.S. fatalities: ~36,574 Truman

Iraqi War (2003-11). U.S. fatalities: ~4,550 Bush 43

Afghan War (2001-2021). U.S. fatalities: ~2,461 Bush 43

Gulf War (1990–1991). U.S. fatalities: ~294 Bush 41

Lebanon (1982–1984). U.S. fatalities: ~241 Reagan

Iraq & Syria (ISIS campaign, 2014-) U.S. fatalities: ~100 Obama

The Democrats can tout the fact that the resistance to Trump’s attack on Iran is bipartisan because they include the two “useful idiots” from the Republican side, Thomas Massie and Rand Paul. Both are libertarians, the most idealistic and impractical political ideology ever conceived by man.

I cite two examples and rest my case. Number one, libertarians believe in open borders. Number two, they support the legalization of marijuana. They are small-government advocates, a concept that became obsolete in the 1930s.

I would gladly trade Massie and Paul for John Fetterman, who puts America’s interests above politics.

What do the 2028 Democratic candidates say about the attack?

Former Vice President Kamala Harris condemned President Donald Trump’s decision to launch large-scale military strikes on Iran, calling the operation a “dangerous and unnecessary gamble” and urging Congress to intervene before the United States is drawn deeper into what critics are describing as a war of choice. (Prediction: the attack may end before Congress addresses it.)

“It stems from weakness masquerading as strength,” Gavin Newsom told a San Francisco audience while promoting his new memoir. “It stems from the complete failure of this administration, this president who’s historically unpopular.”

In these examples, candidacy adds a layer of hyperbole to Trump hatred because they must try to outdo their competition by offering raw meat to the base.

On the other hand, Moj Mahdara, head of the Iranian Diaspora Initiative, appeared on CNN on Sunday and said, “As a Democrat, I am not with my party right now.” She sees them as being on the wrong side of this issue.

Twenty-seven percent of Americans surveyed approved of the strikes, 43% disapproved, and nearly three in 10 were not sure. But there’s a partisan divide, with Republicans supporting the military action by a 55%-32% margin. The vast majority of Democrats, 73%, disapproved of the strikes, with only 7% saying they approved.

A plurality of independents, 44%, disapproved of the military attack, with 19% supportive and nearly four in 10 unsure. In this tribal time, one can expect no “atta boys” from the left, and we see the usual mixed bag from the independents.

Most of our European allies condemned the counterstrikes by Iran against its neighbors while avoiding criticism of Trump over the U.S./Israeli attacks. An odd exception was Keir Starmer, of the UK, who condemned our attacks as a breach of international law. Does he think Iran never violated international law? His position spells the end of Starmer’s relationship with the U.S., which his successor will have to repair.

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President Trump will carry this attack to its logical conclusion, and then it becomes a waiting game to see whether the Iranian government will change. We hope for at least a softening of its belligerent stance against the world, which would be a positive outcome.

Democrats are the party of peace, which also means they are the party of submission. They continue to believe that if you are nice to tyrants, they will be nice to you. No matter how foolish and naïve that idea is, it remains a fundamental component of their equality ideology.

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

On the other side, you have other members of the general public and press who paint a completely different picture, saying the US has achieved a near-total military victory and that it is the Islamic Republic that is desperate for the war to end while attempting to save face with its own supporters.

So which side is to be believed, and how can we know who to trust?

In this age of social media algorithms and ever increasingly polarised opinions, it’s little wonder that the sources we rely on for information tend to confirm the viewpoints we hold, rather than challenging them. But this makes it tricky when we come across differing worldviews and opinions, when the choice must be made to either disregard the claim, question the motives or information behind it, or to take it seriously.

I suspect most people reading this will have a view on the conflict, and that this view will likely be shaped by whether or not they were pro or anti-Trump, Israel, and the Islamic Republic of Iran before it started.

But for those of us who like to comment upon such things, what is it that drives us? Are we seeking the truth and that alone, or merely confirmation of our own worldview?

This is a question I’ve long been asking myself, even once considering starting a news agency with this exact goal in mind - to report dispassionately - before concluding that any such endeavour would still come with a bias; it would just be my own, as opposed to someone else’s.

But what are journalists for, if not to seek out and report on the truth? I find myself increasingly considering this question, as I grow frustrated by what I believe to be flawed reporting of the current conflict, including from storied journalists such as the BBC’s Lyse Doucet and Jeremy Bowen.

Question marks have also been raised about the visits of certain journalists, including Doucet, to Iran in the wake of the January massacre, when reports seemed to focus on pro-regime gatherings - Doucet was especially lambasted for describing them as having a “family feel” - while neglecting to visit the mortuaries in which the bodies of thousands of protesters had been piled, or seeking out bereaved family members.

Among the others welcomed to Iran’s streets in the wake of the massacre were Muslim activist Bushra Shaikh and the co-founder of Palestine Action-US, Calla Walsh, and I suppose I don’t need to tell you whose narrative their reports sought to bolster.

One of the greatest achievements of the Islamic Republic has been its ability to control the narrative, both at home through state TV, but also through a network of well-known and lesser-known apologists in the West.

As someone whose work has focused on Iran for the last seven years, I’ve become well accustomed to seeing seemingly credible journalists and even activists labelled as apologists. At times, the claims have surprised me, but for the most part, there has appeared to be some truth behind the claims.

The group most frequently tarnished by its alleged association with the Islamic Republic is the National Iranian American Council, or NIAC, whose “experts” have long been decried by many an Iranian as nothing more than the puppets of the regime. But the accusations have gone much further, including journalists at the BBC, CNN and New York Times, all of which leads one to wonder how the regular non-Iran expert is supposed to make sense of it all.

An additional complexity is the skill with which the mouthpieces of the Islamic Republic twist the truth. It is all so carefully choreographed, as is always the case with the Islamic Republic of Iran, for whom propaganda and oppression go hand in hand.

Take Mohammad Marandi, whom you may well have come across on talk shows like Piers Morgan’s, and who is so skilled at lying that even as someone who disagrees with almost everything he says, I sometimes find myself wondering if there’s some truth to it.

They’ve even tried rebranding Hitler of late, with posters hung on Iranian streets, showing pictures of Adolf alongside the new Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, and a quote attributed - apparently falsely - to the Nazi leader, stating that “betraying the homeland is the same as enabling your own mother’s rape”.

In the case of the current conflict, the question of who wins the war may even be disputed long after it has finished, as all sides will no doubt attempt to claim victory, unless the regime in Iran is actually overthrown.

Failing that, you can almost guarantee that the Americans will claim a military victory and that the Iranians “begged” them for a deal; that the Israelis will say they’ve put back Iran’s ballistic missile and nuclear ambitions by over a decade; and that the Islamic Republic will claim that merely surviving proves no outside force can defeat them.

One Iran analyst, Karim Sadjadpour, wrote recently that “Tehran wins by not losing; Trump loses by not winning”, and I agree.

But in the meantime, how can the average Joe know whether to believe that the US has completely “obliterated” Iran’s military, navy, and air force, as it has claimed, or whether, as the Islamic Republic would wish us to believe, the desperate calls are coming from the other direction.

It increasingly appears to me that what the world needs most is someone, or some entity, that can help people make sense of all the differing perspectives out there, from a truly neutral and dispassionate position - journalists who seek to report the truth and the truth alone, however much it may grate against their own preconceived positions.

Since the conflict, during which Iranians have once again been almost completely cut off from the Internet, there has been an outcry from Iranians against the reporting of journalists from Sky News and CNN, whose coverage from inside Iran has seemed entirely one-sided.

But my question is: what motivates such journalism? Is there malign intent, or are the journalists simply seeking to present the facts as they see them, through their own anti-Trump and Israel lenses?

I suspect the latter is true, and that, like all of us, they are so steeped in their particular worldview that they wouldn’t even recognise, let alone accept, the criticism that they are only aiding the Islamic Republic in its bid to cover up the massacre that led us here and instead to present itself as the chief resistor against imperialism.

But what of my own bias? I recently spoke to a valued colleague at a partner organization whose viewpoint I found challenging but also difficult to dismiss out of hand. Essentially, the argument this individual was making was that the regime in Iran was unlikely to fall, and that those who believed it will were romantics, rather than realists.

I found it a difficult message to accept, but was this because I did not believe the assessment to be true - one Iranian friend of mine suggested this individual had watched too much CNN - or because I feared that it might be, but that to accept this would be to put a dagger through my own dreams of an Iran finally freed from the Islamic Republic.

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It is certainly true that I find it easier to welcome reports and comments that suggest the Islamic Republic is weakening and even on the verge of collapse, than those that suggest Trump is already looking for a way out, and that this will enable a hollowed-out and embittered regime to remain.

I dearly hope - and believe - that it is the truth that I seek more than simply confirmation of my own biases, but perhaps that just confirms that, truly, I am more of a romantic than a realist.

I suppose time will tell, but in the meantime, good luck to all of us as we attempt to make sense of it all.

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

The notion of open borders and climate change hysteria is now encountering strong resistance from populist movements across the Western world, because the public sees its rights being taken away by unelected bureaucrats.

It is also possible for those new actors to serve as transition agents, pushing the Democratic Party in a new ideological direction. Abigail Spanberger, the newly elected governor of Virginia, will likely be taking one of those two roles.

Spanberger declared herself a moderate during her campaign, although it appears her use of the term was a strategy to get her elected. Her first act was to rescind the previous governor’s order to cooperate with ICE. That’s straight blue ideology.

Governor Spanberger also signed ten executive orders focused on affordability, healthcare, housing, education, and government preparedness. They direct state agencies to identify ways to reduce costs for Virginians (e.g., housing, health care, energy, groceries).

These ten orders have a dual purpose. They highlight the Democratic Party’s 2026 campaign theme: that Trump can’t fix America’s affordability problem because he doesn’t care enough about the people, and is angling to claw back the loyalty of the historical constituencies they abused during recent years.

Lunch box issues are always attractive to political parties because they sound good, even though they’re impossible to achieve. Later, they can campaign on the fact that they tried. Politics is always about touting the imaginable, especially if it creates an advantage for the next election.

Spanberger indicated that Virginia would rejoin the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a regional climate collaboration. Ten Northeastern states are members, and they will try to save the climate initiative for the next Democratic president, but the issue may be on borrowed time.

The governor has replaced some members of the VMI (Virginia Military Institute) governing board with individuals more in line with her governing philosophy. Virginia lawmakers are now advancing a proposal that could reshape VMI’s future, raising fresh questions about governance, accountability, and whether the state should continue funding an institution that does not comply with the Democrat DEI rulebook.

Spanberger opposes defunding of police, which makes sense considering her background, but she won’t take a position on transitioning teenagers. She can’t afford to gamble her popularity by upsetting feminists, who are a vital constituency.

The governor is the daughter of a career law enforcement officer, who served in law enforcement herself before joining the CIA. While at the CIA, she was a case officer, working to find, recruit, and build relationships with foreign nationals who could have had information of value to the U.S. government. She left the CIA and was elected to the House of Representatives in 2018.

Is she trying to turn her state more blue or attempting to set a middle course between traditional Democratic ideology and the radical progressives? The latter makes more sense because her party has to move to the right to win future elections. Still, Spanberger will have to feel her way toward the right because the majority of the House Democratic coalition is progressive and wields significant power. Woke is dead, so it’s easy to ignore. DEI is fading, but many Dems want to reverse that trend. ICE in blue states is the hottest issue.

Women are now governors in 14 states; 10 are blue, and 4 are red. In one case, a Republican governs a blue state (New Hampshire), and in another case, a Democrat governs a red state (Kansas). Overall, Democrats control 24 states, so women represent 41% of the blue governor states.

These are aggressive smart women who stand in stark contrast to the radical feminists I wrote about previously. These are practical Democratic women with power who are trying to chart a new course for the Democratic Party. Of course, the feminists are a vital constituency that the politicians can’t ignore.

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As the Democrats try to redefine themselves, the Republican Party is in a state of paralysis. It is beholden to Trump and Trump policies, so there will be no redefining until Trump is gone. Trump’s monumental task of tearing down the deep state in order to level the playing field for conservatives cannot yield results quickly because of the resistance by Democrats and the strength of the bureaucracy itself.

Without a better strategy, a House victory for the Democrats this November looks likely, and that will further stifle progress for the Trump agenda.

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

The book was later criticized, and Fukuyama was taken to task for touting a naïve view of the world. One of many factors he didn’t consider was the rise of the Islamic state, which became a new threat to the West after 911.

Fukuyama’s central argument for the rise of populism is technological: the Internet and social media. By process of elimination, he concludes that other factors—economic inequality, racism, cultural backlash, or leadership failures—while significant, cannot fully explain the timing or the peculiar nature of today’s populist movements. Fukuyama lists nine commonly cited causes of global populism, ranging from economic inequality to human nature, before zeroing in on the Internet.

His diagnosis of the Internet’s role is framed around the loss of traditional means of communication. Before the digital age, information passed through gatekeeping institutions—newspapers, universities, editors, and broadcasters—that filtered falsehood and moderated tone. The Internet’s democratization of communication removed these filters, enabling everyone to become their own publisher. What once appeared as a liberating channel for knowledge, Fukuyama argues, has devolved into a destabilizing force that erodes trust, empowers conspiracy theories, and rewards sensationalism over truth.

He highlights how algorithms, designed to maximize engagement for profit, drive users toward extreme and emotionally charged content. Fukuyama’s account captures not just a technological transformation but also a psychological one—the conversion of information consumption into a competitive, addictive game of attention.

One of his most striking examples is the anti-vaccine movement, which he says is emblematic of the Internet’s distortion of truth. Vaccination skepticism, he notes, has no coherent ideological basis and would once have contradicted conservative reverence for science and innovation.

Yet online echo chambers allowed anti-vax sentiment to spread virally, demonstrating how networked misinformation can override reason and public health alike. By connecting the anti-vax phenomenon to populist distrust of elites, Fukuyama underlines how the Internet has fused political grievance with systemic nihilism—the belief that all knowledge is manipulated or fake.

I take issue with Fukuyama’s conclusion and the assumptions he made in reaching it. The Internet and social media are not the answer. The answer is the failure of Western governments to address their people’s needs. Social media is an amplifier of the public mood, not the cause. In his quest to find a single cause, Fukuyama became fixated on social media and overstated its importance.

Meanwhile, he calmly dismisses economic inequality, racism, cultural backlash, and leadership failures as relevant contributors. To me, it’s easy to find the right answer if one is objective about globalism, the real culprit. Rich men’s schemes to expand their wealth are boundless, and the needs of the public do not appear on their radar.

The gospel of globalism teaches that workers have no value and no grievance. Use them where their cost is minimized. The nation-state is a thorn in their sides that must be removed. How dare the nation-state leaders try to rein us in with their laws. We want only international laws that we can control outside of the nation-state.

Fukuyama overlooks that populism reflects the strategic exploitation of media by political actors, leading to public backlash. In addition, he doesn’t identify the public as participants in the media, which they are. Their behavior is the pulse of the culture.

Fukuyama’s embrace of globalism is evident in his discussion of COVID. He discusses the bad actors who spread misinformation and conspiracy theories on social media, while ignoring the fact that the federal government did the same. It demanded adherence to rules it made up, not supported by science.

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It attacked doctors for suggesting effective alternative treatments in order to protect vaccine manufacturers’ profits. Branding the critics of the government’s approach to the pandemic as quacks and liars shows his support for government controls, which is the globalist model.

I can’t explain the logic behind Fukuyama’s article. Is this a case of an academic trying to create new interest in a particular subject, or was he out of material to talk about? Perhaps he wants to raise the visibility of social media as a destructive force, so people start paying more attention. His time would be better spent calling out the real danger: the lack of responsible governance in the Western world.

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

Tribalism is an American phenomenon that has only recently emerged in Western Europe. Most Western European nations have more than two parties, so there is no binary choice, as we have here. Their traditional left-right ideologies, split among multiple parties, have been replaced by the “open” and “closed” camps.

The open camp supports pro-EU integration, pro-immigration/multicultural initiatives, an urban, educated, and globalized society, and Green, liberal social values. The closed camp prioritizes national sovereignty, restricts immigration, and embraces rural/small-town, culturally rooted, traditional, law-and-order values.

The Syrian refugee wave in 2015 is widely seen as the moment European tribalism accelerated. The triggers were reached when trust in mainstream parties dropped, identity politics intensified, immigration became the emotional center of politics, and voters decided that elites were ignoring their concerns.

European tribalism has a supranational government (the EU), which becomes a loyalty test: are you pro-EU = progressive, modern, cooperative, or are you Eurosceptic = nationalist, traditionalist, and skeptical of globalization? With regard to voting, capitals and large cities vote overwhelmingly for progressive candidates, while smaller towns and the countryside tend to vote for nationalist/populist candidates. Like in the U.S., alternative media ecosystems have grown, distrust of legacy media is high among populist voters, and online networks amplify grievance and identity narratives. Europe also has strong state broadcasters, which some see as mouthpieces of the establishment.

In summary, we can see that Europe’s tribalism is multi-party (not binary), more about identity and sovereignty than race, less about religion, more about immigration and national culture, and expressed through new parties rather than taking over old ones.

When you look at the American system, you can see that the progressives are the EU-like party, driven by the Silicon Valley globalists and the well-educated white urban crowd. They are the open camp faction, and they have suppressed the opinions of traditional Democrats. Thirty-five percent of Democrats do not support open borders.

Why are the people on the left globalists? The prospect of a utopian world where equality reigns is near and dear to the hearts of the left. They don’t really care that the result of that journey is a totalitarian system, because they are the smart people who will be running it.

So what is the future of tribalism in America?

In the last chapter of my book, I speculated about factors that could end tribalism, and there were 3: apathy, a threat to America as a whole, and the building of a consensus.

Apathy could take hold if the warring parties realize how stupid the whole exercise is. The idea that the success of our political system depends on the winner of a fight over ideology is absurd, because practical politics should always outrank ideology in the minds of Americans. Which makes more sense to fight for, the cost of healthcare or the climate?

Fixing the idiocy depends more on the left’s behavior because they are the aggressors. If they stopped working for radical change, the right would abandon their resistance. These are the two political points of view in America, roughly equally divided among the populace. The country must be governed by consensus, based on a combination of the opinions of the right and the left, not on either alone. Both groups need to realize that as long as the ideological fight continues, the elites can put their feet up, have a cocktail, and relax, because there is no organized resistance against their excesses.

The threat to America alternative would come about after a 9/11-like event occurred. That one day galvanized the American people to a special purpose and forced partisan rancor to the sidelines. I, for one, thought COVID would serve the same purpose. Unfortunately, it ushered in the era of open and closed camps due to a fundamental disagreement over how to handle the pandemic.

The third possibility is building a consensus for change. It would take a significant percentage of the American people to accomplish that task. With the country divided, how could that be possible? Perhaps the recent polling documenting the level of dissatisfaction the American people feel about their government.

Both parties, regardless of ideology, are fumbling the ball. They’re playing a game to see how much they can get away with before the American people blow a fuse. Since both parties are puppets of the elites, the wealthy would have to say, “Enough is enough,” before we make progress. The problem is that millions more Americans are happy to express their displeasure with the government than are willing to go to the polls and do something about it.

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What we need is the rule of neither party. Trump is close to that model because he’s anti-establishment, but he also relies on conservatives for support, which makes him biased against the left. Trump won’t display any tolerance for the left because he feels the Lawfare attacks were a vendetta. He can be friendly with the elites and try to work with them, as seen by his work with Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg.

Where will a Trump-lite come from? Where can we find an individual with charisma who will be dedicated to anti-establishment policy-making? Only time will tell.

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

There were mixed reactions regarding the news of the Hawks teaming up with the adult venue, including players on the Hawks team who were against the idea. In fact, San Antonio Spurs center Luke Cornet called for the league to intervene and cancel the event in his article on Medium, saying that the league would be participating in being complicity in objectifying and mistreating women in society as well as calling on the league to “promote an atmosphere that is protective and respectful of the daughters, wives, sisters, mothers, and partners that we know and love.”

While the NBA made the right choice in cancelling the event, the purpose of this article is to address and focus on the very intriguing responses and backlash from the NBA’s decision, specifically the people who are criticizing the decision, and are using interesting defenses in defending a strip club being seen on social media.

Let us start with this: we with common sense know what a strip club is and why people go. It isn’t for having happy hours or to enjoy food, regardless of how great the lemon pepper wings (which are an apparent staple of Magic City). People go to strip clubs to see entertainment from women, who use their bodies and get naked and do other debaucherous activities to earn money from those watching them.

In other words, you can consider this sexual exploitation and the objectification of women, disguised as entertainment. The NBA knows that its fans consist of men, women, and children, and has a responsibility to ensure that these games and what they promote are family-friendly. If they allowed this Magic City night to go ahead, that would, without question, send a very controversial message to its fans, the brand, and the game itself, if they promote debauchery as this to women and children, wrongly influencing them to think this is quite okay.

Now the NBA has dropped the ball in some cases, and they by no means have clean hands, however this would be something that they know they cannot defend, as there is no legitimate defense in promoting a strip club.

Another interesting phenomenon in the defense of Magic City is how this place is a “cultural icon.” The Atlanta Hawks issued a statement in response to the cancellation of Magic City night, expressing disappointment but respecting the decision, even saying that “we remain committed to celebrating the best of Atlanta. In ways that continue to unite and bring us all together.”

I found this intriguing for various reasons: first, Atlanta is one of the most iconic major cities in the US, coined the Black Mecca, considered the Capital of the Southeast US, with all the great milestones Atlanta is known for, yet they decided that a strip club is on par with this? Here is a small homework assignment: go to Magic City’s website, browse their photos, and evaluate if what they promote is worthy to be in the same category as what Atlanta is best known for.

If Magic City is considered the “best of Atlanta”, then clearly there is a huge problem. When I think of Atlanta, I do not think of strip clubs and the degeneracy behind it, I think of the epicenter of the civil rights movement, the home to arguably the greatest Civil Rights Leader in MLK Jr., the home of Coca-Cola, where the 1996 Summer Olympics took place, home of the Jimmy Carter Presidential Museum and Library, site of Civil War battles, top destination for music, film and pop culture, and so many more accomplishments of ATL.

A strip club should be nowhere close to these magnificent milestones that Atlanta has accomplished. The Hawks decided this was a great idea to celebrate over something such as an HBCU Night, Black Business Night, Education Night, Women’s History, etc., and it couldn’t be more backwards with their ideas of promoting what actual societal contributions are.

Even prominent figures have come out to defend Magic City. Killer Mike, one of Atlanta’s best-known rappers, claimed that Magic City has been a major part of Atlanta’s cultural landscape for decades. Going further as to say that it has helped individuals achieve success over the years, including women, and has been a staple of Black culture in Atlanta. Killer Mike has also stated that opinions from people who aren’t from Atlanta are not relevant.

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Respectfully to Killer Mike, you do not need to be from Atlanta to understand that the simple concept that celebrating a strip club and saying it’s part of “the culture” is not only ignorant, but it’s also embracing degeneracy to the extreme. The question that people fail to articulate an answer to is how a strip club is significant and a beacon to a community and a staple of a city’s culture, particularly in a city with an abundance of black people. If this is celebrated as “culture” then something is clearly rotten with the culture.

As Hamlet said famously, “something is rotten in the state of Denmark”, I’ll take a step further, something is rotten with “Da Culture” that embraces degeneracy and other behaviors that has left us with a bad reputation in society. Regardless of the weak defenses of degeneracy from people all over, this just goes to show that bad is now good, and good is now bad, and morality is declining. Maybe just maybe, white supremacy and racism are not the problems in Black America; perhaps regaining our values and moral compass should be. Just food for thought.

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

Think of these basic, common-sense principles as a checklist for good reasoning:

First is legitimate authority. Military force should only be used by recognized governments or international bodies acting for the public good, not by rogue militias or lone actors. This matters with Iran because airstrikes carried out by recognized states may claim legal justification, but that alone does not necessarily make them morally right.

Second is just cause. War is meant to stop a grave wrong—such as defending against an imminent attack—not to settle grudges, display strength, or reshape a region for advantage. If bombing Iran is truly about preventing a clear and immediate threat, it may meet this test. If it is merely about wealth, dominance, revenge, or saving face, it fails.

Third is the right intention. Even if a conflict begins justly, it can quickly devolve into something evil as events unfold.

Fourth, military force must be the last resort, used only after serious diplomatic and economic pressure has been tried in good faith.

Fifth, proportionality requires that the harm done not be greater than the harm prevented. Dropping bombs that kill large numbers of civilians can make the cure worse than the disease. Indiscriminately bombing cities, infrastructure, or neighborhoods where civilians will predictably die is not merely bad strategy—it is a blatant moral failure.

Sixth, there must be a reasonable probability of success. Applied to Iran, these principles raise hard questions. Will bombing actually reduce danger, or will it provoke a wider war? Are leaders truly seeking peace, or merely posturing before the next round of escalation?

This longstanding framework does not say “never fight,” nor is it a simple fix. It does say, however, “fight only when your back is against the wall, and only to the extent absolutely necessary to reach an achievable goal.” For the average person, “Just War Theory” offers a mature and responsible way to think beyond persuasive sound bites and tribal loyalties.

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Bottom line: Every war claims to be just, but history shows that all of them leave deep and lasting physical, psychological, and spiritual wounds. If bombing Iran moves the world closer to peace and eliminates a nuclear threat, that’s a good thing, but if the gamble fails, it will almost certainly move it closer to the abyss.

Pray for world leaders, our military, and ourselves, because the decisions they make—and the positions we support—will not only produce immediate consequences; they will also reverberate into eternity, when the “Just Judge” will separate the sheep from the goats because he alone has all the unredacted intel.

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

They do not care about Asian people because they have worked hard to reach a high achievement level, without the help of the left, so they don’t fit the narrative. They do not care about Jews, since Jews have been labeled as oppressors of the Palestinian people.

The fuel causing the left to act follows from the identification of oppressed groups and the launching of efforts to protect them. Grievance is the catalyst for their work, and it all began when Women’s Studies programs were created at universities in 1969, marking academia’s first departure from the tree of human knowledge.

Up until that point, all academic scholarship was based on the division and advancement of existing knowledge. Natural history became biology, ecology, and geology. Natural philosophy became physics, chemistry, and astronomy. The social sciences grew out of natural history as a way to understand humans, just as we try to understand plants and animals. The tree grew larger and larger over time as our knowledge expanded, and each subject had a pedigree.

Women’s Studies and its companion disciplines had no pedigree, were agenda-driven, and powered by grievance. The scientific method was not relevant, because the answer that women were disadvantaged was already known. All that was needed was a focused effort to remove that disadvantage.

Here are four recent examples of irrational left behavior. I can’t relate to them because their behavior goes against what I consider normal.

1. A delivery nurse who works at Baptist Hospital in Boca Raton, Florida, posted a message on TikTok expressing the wish that Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Levitt, would have a difficult childbirth experience and suffer for a long time afterward. She was immediately fired.

2. A Nurse working at Virginia Commonwealth University posted a video on TikTok recommending that people consider ways to poison ICE personnel. She said in part, “anybody got any poison ivy, poison oak in their yard? Get some of that, obviously with gloves, and put it in some water. Like a gallon of water. And get the poison ivy/oak water, and I’m going to put it into a water gun. Aim for faces, hands.” “Sabotage tactic, or at least scare tactic. All the medical providers, grab some syringes with needles on the end,” she said. “Have them full of saline or succinylcholine, you know, whatever. Whatever. That will probably be a deterrent. Be safe.” She also encouraged women to go on dates with ICE agents to spike their drinks. She was also fired.

People have crazy thoughts all the time that enter their minds or are generated by anger. But broadcasting messages like these in public space is crazy. Did they think about their careers at all? Or did they believe the ICE issue was bigger than their careers? Self-harm generated by enthusiasm is hard to contemplate.

3. Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, was shot and killed by a federal ICE agent in Minneapolis on January 7, 2026, during an immigration enforcement operation. ICE’s response was based on her refusal to get out of her vehicle and her attempt to drive away, which included striking an ICE officer and causing internal bleeding to his torso.

Why didn’t she obey the ICE agents, who would have quickly defused the situation? The public knows that when a policeman (or policewoman) perceives a threat to their lives, they can respond with lethal force. Why do people create situations that force law enforcement to make that decision? Just obey the police when they tell you to do something.

4. On January 24, 2026, Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse for the United States Department of Veterans Affairs, was shot multiple times and killed by United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents in Minneapolis, Minnesota. This incident occurred amidst the widespread protests against Operation Metro Surge following the killing of Renee Good on January 7 by a United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent.

The investigation of this shooting is ongoing at this time, although it’s a fact that Pretti brought a loaded gun with him to the rally. Why would someone take a loaded gun to a rally, unless they thought they might need to use it? Having the firearm on his person constitutes a threat to law enforcement.

The only explanation for the behavior illustrated in these examples is a drive for equity that outweighs rational decision-making. The police are oppressors, according to their ideological dichotomy, and must be resisted. This attitude is similar to the “Defund the Police” movement, which sought to eliminate society’s most important tool for maintaining law and order. No law enforcement = anarchy.

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Across many surveys over decades (Pew, Gallup, ANES, GSS), it has been shown that conservatives are much more likely to trust police, say police use appropriate force, believe people should comply with officers even if they disagree, and see the police as a legitimate authority. Liberals are more likely to be skeptical of police use of force, emphasize civil liberties and individual rights during encounters, and view police through a lens of systemic bias or overreach.

Conservatives certainly do things that open themselves up to criticism, but making public threats l and confronting law enforcement are not among them.

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

I cannot scroll through my fellow British writers’ feeds without seeing some rant about Trump and Epstein, or memes satirising Working Class parents, calling them names, lampooning them for not being university educated, as if they should apologize for holding the country’s economy together, whilst we poets can languish in damp pub basements talking about our genders. There’s a hatred there, something performative and narcissistic.

But nowhere in this performance are British girls.

They can’t even pretend to care.

It is as if the ‘grooming gangs’, not being politically fashionable, nor popular enough on TikTok to make money from viral videos, simply do not happen in the personal universes of these writers. I have never felt more alienated than I have in recent weeks, never felt more disgusted, seeing people double down on their beliefs, on their ignorance, and name-calling anyone who isn’t in their cult.

I wonder how much of this is driven by algorithms. I wonder because, privately, I don’t want to blame individuals for their ignorance when I know, for example, that I never see posts about school shootings. Does that mean I am ignoring school shootings?

I so want it to be the case that my friends have been hypnotized by social media feeds into missing this. Because the alternative is that people I love have read about the mass human trafficking of British girls by a trafficking cult, and sometimes the deliberate hateful choosing of them because they are white, and have chosen to turn away and write smarmy little haikus about the ‘far-right’ instead.

I know there will be whataboutism. I know people will say “most blah blah blah is by white men” and I can reply with proper statistics, or perhaps individual cases where the men have admitted the crimes were racially motivated. But what good does arguing do? Why are we even trying to convince the ignorant to be anything else? What if it is who they are?

And as a genuine Liberal, who would I be to try to change them? They might identify as ignorant. It would be ignorantphobic for me to educate them.

I also know the reputational risk that caring about all children’s safety might bring. Lost gigs, lost agents, lost appearances on shows. It might upset the tribalists.

I remember the look of dismay, disgust even, from a poet friend when I told them proudly how I had interviewed WomenForIran before the BBC even picked them up. I suppose that poet was freaking out internally because I had done something which poked a hole in his worldview, a view in which foreign people are an unthinking monolith, a lump of clay for so-called ‘Liberal’ (by name only) hands to shape into whatever he wanted them to be.

To discover that some of them were violently oppressing others must have been very confusing. The news to these people must be like a video game. There are goodies, and baddies, and nothing in between. Faraway lands are just levels we’ve not unlocked, and like Star Wars planets, are predominantly mono-climatic, filled with cardboard cutout desert people, or cardboard cutout snow people. Individuals do not exist. Nuance does not exist.

So breaking the childish illusion must freak these types out.

And I know in posting this that I could lose some opportunities with these people, who invariably and inconceivably hold lofty positions in the Arts (which is why your TV shows have gone shit, by the way. It’s not ‘wokeness’ but piss poor writing, which I suppose are interchangeable). But I do not care. I do not want to work with the ignorant.

What I want is to live in a world where people are genuinely treated equally.

And that must include not being squeamish about dealing with child abusers just because they happen to pray to a different god.

It must include annihilating the soft bigotry of low expectations, stop allowing people to use ‘culture’ as an excuse for horrendous, evil behaviour.

It must therefore include expecting visitors to a country and culture to actually share important cultural goals with us, such as protecting children from abuse.

It must include weeding out hatred wherever we find it (you may recognize this as a supposedly Liberal idea, but they very rarely enforce it on anyone other than their own parents). This must include getting rid of homophobia, even if doing so necessitates the removal of hateful people or ideologies.

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I leave on this note. The first hate crime I ever witnessed was a white girl in my school being set upon by three Pakistani girls. Seeing that did not make me hate people from Pakistan, but it did make me hate those three girls as individuals. And talking about it does not make me hate the entire group from which they owe their heritage. Because that would be insane.

Black and white thinking will doom us all.

In order for humanity to evolve further, for the world to become kinder and safer, we must agree, collectively, to see people as individuals. And that must include holding everyone to the same standards.

No more excuses.

No more social squeamishness.

No more turning a blind eye and pretending you are being “politically correct.”

Because I find that what is “politically correct” is so often morally wrong.

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

There is a new ideology operating called “dark woke.” This term is a cynical and aggressive version of “woke”.

Originally, woke emerged in the 1930s but didn’t reach widespread use until the current period. It became associated with language policing, call-out culture, and institutional enforcement. Enforcement was vested in organizations with power, namely, schools, workplaces, media, and governments, all under the control of the Democratic Party.

Dark woke has the following characteristics. It touts moral certainty without humility, public shaming, cancellation, or social punishment, a belief that the ends justify the means, and treating opponents as enemies rather than as persuadable people. Dark woke is a psychological reaction to the failure of woke. Rather than putting up with the frustration created by the lack of progress of woke, liberal women have become a new kind of activist agent. These women turn their disillusionment into a willingness to sharpen their rhetoric and ramp up their militancy. Right-wing critics of dark woke accuse them of replacing liberalism with authoritarianism and persuasion with coercion.

Dark woke emerged because cultural conflict has become more moralized and personal, and social media rewards outrage and absolutism.

A large majority of Dark Woke women are white and middle-class, and they amount to about 20% of women. The primary age groups of these women are late Millennials (30-42) and early Gen Z (22-29). They are the most reliable Democratic bloc in the United States. This bloc never crosses party or ideological lines. Its activists believe that the right threatens women’s rights, gender equality, and workplace norms. They take politics personally.

The original objectives of feminism were equal opportunity, legal rights, and individual freedom. The new feminist mantra is safety and harm prevention, opposing unbalanced power, and blaming structures rather than individuals. This shift in ideology leads to identifying enemies and setting boundaries for exclusion and punishment.

Regarding their social points of view, these women face a later marriage or no marriage, higher education with debt, career pressure, unstable relationships, and men disengaging from them. These factors have led to status frustration, loss of patience, and political views shaped by insecurity.

Social media platforms reward strong points of view, call-outs over dialogue, and identity-based storytelling. Women who are talented at signalling and norm enforcement excel in this space. Liberal women have become the new cultural enforcers of progressive ideas.

Social and cultural trauma has contributed to this new behavior. Trump, Dobbs, the Me Too Movement, and COVID provided a mixture of assaults on progressive women. Self-defense has turned into full-blown hostility.

The public notices this change in women’s ideology because the activists have moved from empathy-centric to gatekeepers of a rigid ideology. To the right, they seem authoritarian. But within the group, they have set important boundaries that make their associates feel safe.

How do liberal men fit into this story?

As liberal women gained stature and influence over the past 10 years, they took power away from liberal men. For the first time in history, men were expected to defer to women on progressive ideology. In addition, they were looked at with suspicion with regard to gender issues and lost the ability to speak freely. The result was male withdrawal from the ideological battle and the development of a cynical attitude.

Dating app patterns show that liberal men have been pushed to moderation because highly ideological men are often penalized socially. They have responded by downplaying ideology and avoiding activist language. Men put personal stability above personal morality and seem confused when they interact with progressive women. What they see in women is emotional harm language, lived experience as authority, and norm enforcement. To men, the mismatch with their own attitudes suggests that silence is safer than engagement.

Men do not like double standards, selective enforcement, and status-driven moralism, but progressive women activate each of these issues. Men label the hypocrisy of free speech, pushing equity with exclusions, and one-dimensional empathy as illogical and unreasonable.

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Progressive women see Trump as an existential threat, a bodily autonomy risk, and the driver of a scary cultural rollback. Liberal men have a different reaction. They see Trump as a chaos creator who creates institutional stress and seeks cultural absurdity.

The split between men and women on ideology appears larger than it is because men moved to the right, replacing moral signaling spaces with a more rational perspective. Their political motivation operates at a lower level than that of women, and they don’t share the same psychological motivation.

The psychological component of liberal women’s behavior is the sad part. Their all-out drive for their perfect ideology has placed limitations on their future happiness by disregarding the most important human support system, the family unit.

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.