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.

Now, we fast-forward to the present day.

After conservative activist Charlie Kirk was killed in September, Donald Trump vowed retribution against groups that he said have done “tremendous damage to our country.” The president directed his administration to prosecute anyone engaged in political violence.

Nothing has happened since, because these pronouncements have come into conflict with the wishes of the elites. No widespread crackdown has arrived, and the idea is stalled.

It turns out there are concerns among conservative elites that Trump’s attacks are dangerous. Talk of going after people like George Soros makes them nervous for a couple of reasons. First, they see Trump as becoming the Democrats when they dragged him through lawfare during the Biden years. Second, they worry that the Democrats will turn the tables on the Republicans when they regain power.

Many MAGA supporters are very unhappy with this delay. They have felt the sting of Democrat abuse for decades when they had no recourse. And there is plenty of real evidence for some of these crimes.

“Blanket threats bring out the worst in the use of political power, mimic what the left has done for too many years, and don’t advance the purposes of getting us to a lawful nation that at least tries to respect people’s privacy rights, property rights, and associational rights,” said Margaret Little of the New Civil Liberties Alliance, a conservative organization.

An unnamed Republican congressman added, “They shouldn’t be going after them.”

Others disagree. One former congressional staffer said the donor complaints were illogical, because “blowback’s coming anyway. What matters is we were winning this issue,” implying that they aren’t now.

The Congressman’s quote expressing reservations reveals the wimpiness of conservatives, who are afraid of their own shadows. Has anyone noticed a Democrat losing their nerve because they were fearful of conservatives? No one is afraid of conservatives because they always give up the fight. It’s about time that changed.

Trump is acting as the conservatives’ backbone, even though he isn’t a conservative.

This ideological battle has been ongoing since the end of the Civil War and began with the Progressive Movement. The left has been more aggressive than the right, seeking equality, while conservatives focus on preserving the status quo and traditions. Trump has loaned the Republican Party the aggressiveness it has never possessed, but needs desperately. Still, his accomplishments are limited by the comfort level of Republican elites, which filters down to their lackeys in Congress.

Trump was elected by people who polls showed cared about stopping the censorship and political prosecutions. The legacy press’s characterization of these issues was that Trump was merely attacking “perceived enemies” that didn’t really exist, a characterization that hasn’t changed since the 2024 election. So far, the New York Times’ display of exploding drug boats and masked ICE raids doesn’t appear to be losing Trump support among independents or donors who supported him.

In the end, MAGA disappointment might not come from what Trump is doing, but from what he promised to do that has not been fulfilled. If the elites block progress against the sins of the Democrats, Trump’s followers will give him part of the blame.

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Since both parties started accusing each other of sedition, insurrection, and domestic terrorism, these terms have lost their meaning (like racism). But the watering down of a major complaint during Trump’s campaign, that he was getting attacked for his beliefs, will reduce some of the enthusiasm that formed the basis for his support. MAGA wants some retribution so they can feel they have won for a change.

The wealthy enjoy seeing the parties fight because that takes the public’s attention off them. Their perpetual belief is that they can put a stop to anything using money. The power of that money over politicians binds them to serving the needs of the elites rather than the people.

Don’t think of the elites as party-driven. In reality, they are money-driven and have much more in common with elites in the other party than they do with their constituents. They are a rich man’s club where money takes priority over party affiliation.

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

To understand this competition, we need to look at history. China has a civilization that goes back over 5,000 years. The United States, in comparison, is a young nation—only about 250 years old. America has been an incredible experiment in democracy and freedom. However, China’s long history has taught its people some hard lessons.

Over thousands of years, China has been both the richest empire in the world and the poorest. That experience taught them how to survive when times are tough, how to be patient, and how to plan for the long term. It’s like the difference between a kid who grows up with every advantage and a kid who has to work hard for everything. The one who struggles often learns more about how the world really works.

The big question is: what is America’s defense department, the Pentagon, doing about this economic challenge? From where I stand, it doesn’t seem like much. They are experts at fighting traditional wars, but this is different. History shows that even brilliant military organizations can make huge mistakes by not thinking creatively.

Before the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, for example, U.S. officials dismissed a threat because they believed the harbor was “too shallow” for enemy torpedoes to work. The Japanese simply innovated, adding wooden fins to their torpedoes so they wouldn’t dive too deep. They thought outside the box, and it worked. America cannot afford to make that same kind of mistake today by only preparing for the last war.

China’s strategy is rooted in its ancient philosophy. Thinkers like Confucius, Sun Tzu (author of The Art of War), and others taught the value of patience, strategy, and intelligence. You can even see this in modern Chinese technology. They have developed advanced artificial intelligence, like a system called DeepSeek. I’ve used it extensively, and it feels different from Western AI—smarter in some ways, and built with a mindset that values long-term planning and strategic thinking, much like those ancient philosophers taught.

So, what exactly is an “economic war”?

At its core, it’s a fight over who controls the world’s money system. For decades, the U.S. dollar has been the global currency. This started with an agreement in 1944. Then, in 1971, America took the dollar off the “gold standard.” This meant the dollar’s value wasn’t directly tied to a physical asset like gold anymore. Instead, its strength was backed by the sheer size and power of the U.S. economy and its military.

This allowed the U.S. to print more money when needed. But this system is now being challenged. A group of nations called BRICS (which includes Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) is creating its own financial network. Without China, this group wouldn’t be very powerful. But with China leading it, they have a lot of influence. They are building systems to move money that compete directly with the U.S.-controlled system we’ve used for decades. Even the “petrodollar”—the system that forced oil to be sold in U.S. dollars—is becoming less important.

This is a huge shift in global power. The real problem is whether American leaders truly understand this shift. In my view, many do not, at least not in a serious way. Large institutions like the Pentagon or the State Department can become “inbred” in their thinking. This means they often promote ideas from within their own circles and have a hard time accepting new or outside perspectives. “Thinking outside the box” is rare when everyone inside the box has the same training and background.

We saw a version of this after the 9/11 attacks. The U.S. focused on hunting down Osama bin Laden. When we finally did, it felt like a victory. But bin Laden’s real strategy was a war of attrition. He wanted to drag America into long, expensive conflicts that would drain our money and our spirit. In that goal, he was sadly successful. We spent trillions of dollars and vast amounts of energy on wars while our competitor, China, was focused on building its economy and influence.

After running many mental, computer simulations, and thought experiments on this situation, I’ve come to a difficult conclusion. The best outcome America can realistically hope for is not a clear victory over China, but a strategic draw. We need to find a way to live alongside China as an equal power. This will be very hard for the American public to accept.

We are used to being the unquestioned number one. As the U.S. dollar loses its unique global status, the cost of living for Americans will likely rise dramatically. The middle class is already in trouble; we are on the precipice of a disaster. Ask yourself how much it cost to fill your grocery basket a year ago and how much it costs today.

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This isn’t a pretty picture. But we have to face it. The first step is to recognize that the battlefield has changed. The next war won’t necessarily start with a shot, but with a shift in the global financial system. The second step is to break out of our old ways of thinking. We need leaders and institutions that can innovate as quickly in economics and technology as we once did in military hardware.

America still has immense strengths: our universities, our culture of innovation, our entrepreneurial spirit, and our democratic values. In China, there’s no such thing as Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. It has a pure meritocracy system that was developed 2600 years ago by the philosopher Confucius. Meritocracy was not a European invention. We must wake up to the new reality. We are in a quiet, ongoing economic war. To secure our future, we must learn to fight and compete on this new battlefield. The time to start is now.

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

There is no question that, over the last 25 years, red states have become redder and blue states have become bluer. There are fewer swing states today, as we saw in the 2024 election, when Michigan, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina, Nevada, and Wisconsin were the keys to Trump’s victory. How odd it is that the votes of people in the other 43 states don’t change parties very often and have little impact on the election. Both deep red and deep blue states have large minority constituencies, meaning the divide influences statewide outcomes rather than representing unanimity.

The strongest sorting in America is geographical and issue-based: rural versus urban, college-educated metros vs non-metro areas, and coastal + large cities vs interior regions.

The separation is primarily ideological, driven by the different worldviews of conservatives and liberals. These differences focus on abortion access, voting rules, gun laws, LGBTQ protections, education content, marijuana legalization, and labor protections.

A significant trend can be seen in the social sorting area, where people live among politically similar neighbors, work in ideologically aligned industries, marry within their political identity, and view the other side not just as wrong but as dangerous.

Among the social trends, marriage and family are of particular interest.

Sixty-two percent of conservatives are married, compared with 39% of liberals. This figure, often cited in commentary, is based on analyses that categorize respondents along a liberal–moderate–conservative continuum and then compare their current marital status.

Researchers say that conservatives are significantly more likely to be married than liberals, even after controlling for factors like age, income, education, and region — though those variables still influence overall rates. The gap appears to have widened for younger adults, with marriage rates declining faster among liberal young adults compared to conservative peers.

With regard to childbirth, across the U.S. (and most developed countries), religious, rural, and socially conservative adults have higher fertility, while urban, secular, college-educated liberals have fewer children and delay childbirth.

Conservative-leaning families: ~2.1–2.6 children

Liberal-leaning families: ~1.3–1.8 children

Birth rates matter more in our culture than elections because higher conservative fertility has stronger effects on church attendance, homeschooling and private education, local community norms, cultural transmission, and resistance to rapid social change. This can sustain conservative institutions and slow cultural shifts.

There are countervailing forces favoring liberals, however. Immigration is a factor because immigrants tend to be younger, have higher fertility initially, and lean Democratic overall (though not uniformly). More students in college means that college-educated voters turn out at higher rates, lean Democratic, and are growing as a share of the electorate. Urban economic gravity generates jobs, attracts young adults, and concentrates political power.

The biggest wild card: which side keeps its children? In other words, will conservatives or liberals do a better job of keeping their kids in the party?

The greatest problem of continuing polarization is that it weakens shared national narratives.

In the past, Americans disagreed politically but still agreed on what the Constitution means, what institutions are legitimate, what facts are broadly true, and what “success” looks like.

Today, each side questions the legitimacy of the other. Elections, courts, and media are now political tools. Even long-standing concepts, like freedom and equality, are being defined differently by the two sides. This battle erodes social trust, a foundation of democracy.

That also means governance becomes harder — even when one side wins, laws are reversed, the presidency becomes more powerful due to a stalemate in Congress, courts become battlegrounds, and each side wants to expand the limits of our institutions.

The U.S. divide is unlike the rest of the West because U.S. parties are farther apart ideologically than in other countries, with fewer cross-cutting identities, more winner-take-all political structures, and a media environment that reinforces separation.

In many countries, you can be left-wing and religious, right-wing and secular, and conservative but pro-welfare state. In the U.S, identities are bundled into opposing camps.

Long-Term Demographic and Cultural Consequences

Because ideology correlates with marriage, child-rearing, education choices, and geographic clustering, the divide reproduces itself over generations.

This matters because cultural values get passed on unevenly, regions diverge economically and socially, and national cohesion weakens over time. This is not just polarization — it’s civilizational drift within one country.

This trend is dangerous not because people disagree, but because each side increasingly views the other as illegitimate. Moral judgments replace policy debate, and losing feels intolerable. When political morality replaces debate, the continuing operation of democracy is put at risk.

It’s not clear that some event or factor can overcome the tribalism we are experiencing. It will take a significant event to unite the American people. Short of war, that event cannot be anticipated.

The path we have taken to tribalism is clear. The left wanted to force social and cultural change in America because they worship at the altar of equality. The right, as individualists, did not put up a fight because they weren’t interested. The objectives of the left became real when they took over academia, because that allowed them to promote one ideology after they forced out the conservatives. Left ideology became politicized and made its way into the public space, exceeding the right’s tolerance level, and tribalism emerged.

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The left secretly infiltrated the elementary and primary grades with an ideology indoctrination program that wasn’t discovered until parents started asking questions. School policies were put in place to supersede parental rights.

We will have to wait and see how much of the left’s ideology march can be blocked in the future. The right must understand that the left will never give up its quest for a socialist state. They’ve been trying for 170 years to make their model work.

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

This is something I never thought I’d have to consider, much less collect, write, and publish, but after seeing Stephen Colbert’s recent witticism:

“Do not compare ICE or Border Patrol agents to the Nazis. That’s an unfair comparison. The Nazis were willing to show their faces,” and thinking about the mindless sheep who agree with him, the unfortunate time has come where our leftist friends and seemingly millions of uneducated fools actually need to better understand the true horrors of the Holocaust.

Before beginning, I will specify that I am neither Jewish nor am I an historian. I am a middle-aged American who learned about WWII, the Nazis, and the Holocaust in school and through those archaic wood-based products, otherwise known as books, and am sick of the flippant view and comparisons peddled by idiots.

I have no doubt that survivors, families, and historians can top, both in numbers and horror, the examples I will share below. But both the lack of empathy for Jews and others victimized by the Holocaust and the complete lack of perspective exhibited by ‘people’ like Colbert demand that the Holocaust be better understood for what it was.

Beware, the examples below are distressing and hard to read, much less truly consider, but exemplify what truly happened to the victims of the Holocaust and should, at least for any person with a bit of humanity, cause any contemporary comparison to be treated as the ravings of the mentally deficient.

1. The Holocaust was a deliberately designed, engineered, scheduled, industrialized genocide. The attempted annihilation of entire peoples. Camps were designed and built. Train tracks were laid. Murderous mechanisms were engineered and produced specifically to this end. This can never be considered ‘injustice’ or ‘oppression’ or any of today’s buzzwords.

2. Men, women, and children arrived in camps together and within hours simply ceased to exist. Entire families and generations were exterminated in moments. Not deported. Not jailed. Not moved. Just ended.

3. Mothers with children were forced to make horrific choices in an act of psychological terror so demented that we cringe when reading about it in fiction. Which child should die immediately? Which child may survive for another 5 minutes? Or maybe be tortured? This was deliberately engineered and implemented.

4. Children were the subject of horrific experiments. Deliberate infection with disease, without treatment. Surgical procedures are performed without anesthesia. Twins were subjected to extreme experiments just to see which would die first.

5. Starvation was used as policy. People were made to go days, weeks, months without food. Bodies collapsing, organs failing in deliberate, extended suffering with an absolute goal of agonizing death. Not just their own death, but watching compatriots endure and succumb to the same pre-determined design.

6. Entire populations were exterminated at the same time. Whole Jewish villages shot down together. Citizens watching their neighbors and family members being executed while waiting for their turn. Mothers killed with babies in their arms and piled into mass graves.

7. Many victims of the Holocaust were even forced to participate in the atrocities designed and engineered by the Nazis. Digging the graves, handling the dead bodies, and rooting through the remains for valuables. These victims were not only the target of the genocide but were also made unwilling accomplices. Deliberately.

8. The true industrial scale belies belief. Over 6 million erased. Over 1.5 million children. Literally thousands killed a day. In multiple camps and countries.

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That was the Holocaust and the legacy of the Nazis.

You can oppose immigration enforcement. You can oppose deportation. You can seek accountability. You can look to change the legitimate laws of the land. But to compare the current situation in Minneapolis or the US to the above is like, well, comparing a deportation to the most evil, extreme, and inhumane behavior ever engineered by man.

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

“Maybe his best metaphor was his claim to bring democracy to Venezuela. There’s a big policy there. It flopped,” Schumer said, just a day after Trump’s speech, touting that Maduro’s dictatorship would be “smashed and broken.”

“The president brags about his Venezuela policy? Give us a break. He hasn’t brought an end to the Maduro regime,” Schumer continued. “The Maduro regime is more powerful today and more entrenched today than it was when the president began his anti-Maduro campaign. Same thing with North Korea, China, and Russia. Same thing with Syria.”

Fast-forward to the U.S. arrest of Maduro on sweeping narcotics charges under the second Trump administration. Now, Schumer is accusing the Trump administration of potentially sparking an “endless war” in Venezuela with Maduro’s removal from power.

“But launching military action without congressional authorization and without a credible plan for what comes next is reckless,” says Senator Schumer.

For some time now, our politics have embraced irrationality. The left attacks whatever Trump does, no matter what the subject. They react the same way, even when Trump’s actions benefit the American people, because they are lapdogs to the ideologues on the left who advocate doing everything possible to destroy Trump. Schumer is so afraid of the progressives taking his toys away that he’ll say anything.

The right is irrational, also, when it comes to Democratic policies, but the nuance is not as heavy-handed. If you’re on the right and believe the left has gone too far, you’re using exaggeration and cherry-picking of information to make your case.

To rationally analyze Trump’s foreign policy, we need to use a different lens. The left thinks of Trump as a Neoccon-lite ideologue looking to accumulate authoritarian power, but it’s easy to see that they are wrong. Neoconservatives believed the U.S. should: use military power to spread democracy, act as a global enforcer, support regime change (Iraq War, Afghanistan surge, Libya, etc.), and maintain U.S. leadership through intervention. They are ideological interventionists. Anthony Blinken, Biden’s Secretary of State, was a true Neocon.

Trump’s worldview is closer to “America First” nationalism: he is skeptical of foreign wars, opposes nation-building, frames alliances as business deals rather than moral missions, and prefers coercion (sanctions, tariffs, threats) over occupation. Trump hates the wasting of money in foreign lands, so he would never advocate nation-building. His behavior puts him in the tradition of right-wing populist realism, not neoconservatism.

Trump has used business deals to seek an end to the Ukrainian war (unsuccessful so far), the Israeli war with the Palestinians (partly successful), and he has tied trade to the military and economic negotiations with the EU and the UK. He used coercion with Iran, and then backed up his warnings with action. The same holds for Venezuela, where Trump tried trade negotiations, intimidation, threats, and finally, as a last resort, initiated an attack.

Two factors make the Venezuelan case different. It’s a nation located in our hemisphere, and it participates in drug trafficking to the United States, which is killing our people. In addition, China, Iran, and Russia have been making inroads into the Caribbean by building relationships with Venezuela, and this is an unacceptable threat to the United States, which has not allowed foreign interference in the Americas since James Monroe was president.

What have these countries been up to?

Russia has maintained one of the closest relationships with the Maduro regime since at least the 2000s through military sales, diplomatic support, and economic ties. Moscow has supplied fighter jets, air-defense systems, and other weapons to Venezuela and has used its UN Security Council veto to shield Caracas from Western actions.

Russia repeatedly publicly defended Maduro against U.S. pressure and condemned U.S. actions as aggression. Despite rhetoric and arms transfers, there was no treaty obligating Russia to intervene militarily if Venezuela were attacked. Recent reporting suggests Moscow pulled back some public support as U.S. actions intensified, illustrating the limits of the alliance in practice.

China was Venezuela’s largest external financier for many years and a top buyer of Venezuelan oil via “oil-for-loans” arrangements. Beijing extended tens of billions in loans tied to future oil deliveries. China also provided diplomatic support to Maduro at the United Nations and publicly criticized U.S. pressure on Venezuela, calling U.S. actions a violation of international norms. China’s involvement was largely economic and diplomatic, not a binding military alliance. Recent events exposed the limits of Chinese support in terms of actual security guarantees.

Iran and Venezuela have cultivated closer ties over the last decade, in part to evade U.S.-led sanctions and coordinate in energy and military technology exchanges. Iran sent fuel supplies, refinery parts, and technical assistance to Venezuela and has discussed long-term bilateral agreements. Tehran publicly condemned U.S. actions and framed its partnership with Caracas as resistance to U.S. hegemony.

All three of these adversaries seek to weaken the United States economically and politically. They wish to distract her from responding to other activities they are pursuing.

Now, their attempts to increase their leverage in the Caribbean via Venezuela have been cut off. The American left is deeply split on Trump and U.S. foreign policy, which has caused it to break into 3 camps:

The establishment liberal view (Biden/Obama) sees Trump as dangerous, reckless, and destabilizing, claiming he weakened NATO and U.S. alliances, treated dictators as equals (Putin, Kim Jong-un), pulled out of agreements (Iran deal, Paris climate), and made U.S. power unpredictable. From this view, American leadership keeps the world stable. Trump disrupted that system without replacing it with anything coherent. In their eyes, he was not anti-war — just anti-institutions.

The liberal view argues for the status quo, which is a neoliberal/globalist worldview. The only way to stop the neoliberal advance is to blow it up. Trump pretends to treat dictators as equals only to strike deals with them, and he rejects the existing institutions as corrupt. Trump’s unpredictability can be an asset, because our adversaries should not know what to expect.

The progressive anti-war left (Bernie/AOC) is conflicted. They hate Trump, but many quietly agreed with parts of his foreign policy: They liked that he didn’t start major new wars, questioned NATO and military spending, talked about ending “endless wars”, and criticized Iraq. They hated that he increased drone strikes, backed Saudi Arabia in Yemen, escalated the conflict with Iran, and used sanctions that hurt civilians. To them, Trump was half-right, half-awful — anti-interventionist in rhetoric, but not in method.

The progressives have the most naïve foreign policy ideology imaginable. They reject the idea that global conflicts are caused mainly by villains. To them, the real cause is structures like capitalism and colonialism. They see war as a tool of elites, not of people. They favor international law over force, naively believing that international courts (which are respected by no one) can reconcile the conflicts among the world’s peoples.

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The foreign-policy left (Noam Chomsky /realist left) believes the U.S. behaves like an empire. They view Trump as not uniquely evil — just more honest about how power really works. They argue that Obama and Bush used nicer language, Trump dropped the moral cover, and the empire stayed the same. To them, Trump didn’t “break” U.S. foreign policy — he exposed it.

The left will never stop haranguing Trump over foreign policy, even though they don’t agree about what it should be. We’re much better off having Trump break the elitist neoliberal approach to foreign policy, so we can eliminate wasting money overseas and work to get things done for the American people.

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

Our story starts during the Space Race in the 1950s and ‘60s, when the United States and the Soviet Union were competing to achieve firsts in spaceflight. Astronauts like John Glenn and Alan Shepard became household names, celebrated as brave pioneers. But behind these men were teams of brilliant minds making the math and science work. Surprisingly, a key part of this team was a group of Black women mathematicians.

At the time, the electronic computers we have today didn’t exist. Instead, NASA and its predecessor used “human computers”—people, often women, who did incredibly complex calculations by hand and with mechanical calculators. A number of these human computers were highly skilled Black women working at Langley Research Center in Virginia. They faced the double hurdle of segregation and sexism, often working in separate offices, but their work was essential.

The most famous of these women was Katherine Johnson. Her math skills were so outstanding that when John Glenn was preparing for his 1962 mission to orbit the Earth, he personally asked for her to check the orbital calculations made by the new electronic computers. He famously said, “If she says they’re good, then I’m ready to go.” Johnson and her colleagues verified the flight paths that launched Glenn into orbit and brought him back safely to Earth. They also did crucial work for Alan Shepard’s 1961 flight and even for the Apollo missions that later landed men on the moon.

Their job was highly technical. They programmed early electronic computers using a language called FORTRAN, one of the first programming languages that was closer to English than to the ones and zeros of machine code. It was cutting-edge work for its time.

This incredible history was largely unknown for decades. It was brought to light by the book and later the movie Hidden Figures, which followed the stories of Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson. While the movie took some dramatic shortcuts, it succeeded in introducing millions to these women’s vital contributions. Astronaut John Glenn himself recognized their work, taking pictures with them and acknowledging their role.

So, what does this have to do with the question “Is math racist?” Today, you might see articles or discussions arguing that mathematics, or the way it is taught, can be biased or racist. In these modern debates, the popular media often overlooks stories like that of the “human computers.”

The story of these Black women proves that math itself is not racist. It is a universal tool. These women used math with extraordinary skill to achieve a national goal, despite working within a racist and segregated society. Their story is one of triumph through mathematics. By focusing heavily on the idea that math is racist, the media—sometimes called the “white liberal media” in the text—ignores powerful, true stories that show a different picture. It’s as if this positive history doesn’t fit the current media narrative.

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Math is a field of knowledge, a tool. The story of the Black “human computers” at NASA shows that this tool can be mastered and used for greatness by anyone, regardless of race or gender. The barriers they faced were not in the math itself, but in the prejudices of the society around them. Their legacy is a testament to human potential. Perhaps the real issue isn’t whether math is racist, but whether we choose to remember and celebrate all the people, from all backgrounds, who have used it to shape our world. By forgetting stories like theirs, we lose a vital piece of history that can inspire everyone.

Paul F. Renda has spent over 40 years in information security. He studied physics and math at Queens College and the University of Houston, and he has worked as a system administrator for IBM Z/OS and Linux systems. He was also recruited by the FBI/NYPD Joint Terrorism Task Force to provide open-source high-impact information.

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