America

A Grown Up Assessment of Iran and Trump’s Foreign Policy

/ Rich Wilkins / Leave a comment

Multiple things can be true at once. Ayatollah Khamenei was an awful person and leader who terrorized and killed his own people, and the world and Iran are better off with him dead and gone. The United States entering another war of choice in the Middle East is a terrible idea (assuming we actually do). Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu probably have no plan for what they would do if they achieved regime change in Iraq, and maybe that’s better than if they do. Congress should vote on whether we go to war or not, but Congress is an impotent institution. Actual Iranians seem somewhere between bewildered and happy.

For the second time this year the United States has taken out a ruthless, disgusting, brutal dictator who is awful to his own people. No one should miss Maduro or Khamenei. For that matter, let me lump Mahmoud Ahmadinejad into this too, since he died in the strikes. None of these are good people. Whether we arrest them and remove them from office or kill them in an air strike, honestly, I don’t lose sleep over them. Khamenei has killed tens of thousands of Iranians this year. Read that again if you need. Maduro deteriorated Venezuela to the point of having pirates sailing around off their coast in the Caribbean. Sure, I think Donald Trump is an idiot, but I can’t sit here and honestly say it’s a bad thing that we removed these people. Actual Venezuelans and Persians seem fine with it, the anger almost all seems to be from white leftists. I really don’t care what they think of these events.

Is there any plan here though? When we removed Maduro, we allowed his butcher of a Vice-President to take over as the President there in exchange for access to oil. Will we end up just allowing a new Ayatollah to take power in Iran, or some other puppet strong man, in exchange for oil? My guess is yes, and that definitely defeats whatever good purpose these actions had. Reza Pahlavi seems like the most logical short term answer to who should lead Iran right now, and frankly giving the former Shah’s kid power seems like just our latest blunder in that region. About the only thing worse would be a full scale invasion and having to occupy the country and run it ourselves. It seems that the “Trump Doctrine” at this point is Bush’s “Axis of Evil” on steroids, where we go into every hot spot we’re unhappy with in the world and decapitate their leadership and let them figure it out after.

Trump ran his 2024 campaign talking about how he’d bring peace. He lied. He spent the first six months of his Presidency dismantling the federal government by force, simply shutting down whole agencies and departments that were created by laws, on his own word. He is actively trying to reshape the world now using American power. It is not entirely clear what the end result of his plans will be. He has not meaningfully tried to back down Russian aggression in Ukraine, or Chinese designs on Taiwan. It’s not clear that he’s willing to try and push countries who could potentially do major harm to America. In Iran though, it is probably his most aggressive move yet. Regime change there would do great harm to Russia. He has already drawn the Saudis into his coalition with Israel there. Toppling the Iranian regime could go a long way to defunding Hezbollah and Hamas. Toppling Iran isn’t super easy though. It could require an actual war that costs money and lives. There’s the potential that this is the new Afghanistan.

If I’m being honest here, I don’t really have a problem with taking down a terrorist, murderous regime. I just don’t trust the two guys in charge of this. Netanyahu’s decision to drag out his war in Gaza has not been good for anyone, so why would he handle this better? Trump is just maniacal and will do anything he can to try and get his face on Mount Rushmore and out of the Epstein Files at this point. Neither of these guys gives me any confidence. The fact that they have highly competent and funded militaries means they can succeed in a short term attack where they just approve the plans put forward by Generals and Admirals. I don’t really think either has a vision or plan that we should all be excited about.

Patriotism, Hockey, and Democrats

/ Rich Wilkins / Leave a comment

I have to admit something that will definitely get me canceled in Democratic circles- I find Toby Keith’s “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue.” In fact, I find gratuitous acts of patriotism to be fun. I was celebrating outside of the White House the night Osama Bin Laden was killed with thousands of other young Americans. I was cheering for both Alysa Liu and the Men’s Hockey team at the Olympics. In fact, I generally support America on almost everything. This does not mean I don’t know or care about Jim Crow, the Trail of Tears, Japanese Internment camps, slavery, or any of the other atrocities committed by our nation. It does not mean I wasn’t a protestor during the Iraq War. Far from. In fact, I see no problem with blasting “Free Bird” and acknowledging our problems, even in the era of Trump.

In our currently “black and white” era of politics, there are folks who think picking sides is an absolute. You’re either team AOC or team Vance, period. This extends to the point of an Olympic hockey team, because a.) a majority of them are either conservative or politically disengaged, and b.) they’re white men. Yeah, Kash Patel is a weirdo, and yeah, Trump’s joke about the women’s team was piss poor, but if that’s what you took away from the Olympic Hockey Final, or if you were arguing about Alyssa Liu’s (liberal) politics against people that wanted to re-cast her as simply an anti-communist crusader (she’s both liberal and a tremendous symbol against communism), you kind of missed the point. We don’t watch sports to get political commentary. I think many of us are well aware that the athletes playing on the television have political views like the rest of us, they’re people. You can’t possibly watch what’s going on with ICE in America and *not* have an opinion on it of some kind. The point is that yes, it actually doesn’t matter when I’m watching a hockey game. People are not wired to functionally live in a constant war with their fellow citizens like this. It’s weird. Most people think it’s weird. Trying to force it turns off way, way more people than it attracts.

I get that many people on the American left-of-center side are worried that this will be our final President and that our current state is permanent, and so they think the only choice is to fight on every battlefield, all day, everyday. I do not share that sentiment. I believe Trump will lose the House of Representatives in November and his Presidency will practically end. I do believe we will elect a new President in 2028, regardless of who it is. I don’t think a bunch of hockey players visiting the White House after they win a Gold Medal threatens that. I’m sorry, I think this is a fight and argument that generally makes the left look a lot less appealing to unradicalized normies who actually will decide who that new President is. So I think this was stupid.

Btw, I wrote this in the time it took me to listen to “Free Bird,” “American Girl,” and “American Idiot.” Not bad.

I Didn’t Need to Watch the State of the Union to Know What It Is.

/ Rich Wilkins / Leave a comment

I’m pretty happy I didn’t watch Trump’s State of the Union last night, unlike many of you who read this blog. From what I gather, he gave the longest speech in history, for the second straight year. Yeah, no thanks. Honestly, listening to this guy ramble for hours about how wonderful he is and how great things are is bad for your mental health. You lose brain cells and you might even be tempted to respond to him. There is no point to that. You are persuading no one by arguing about him. You are also not debating a normal politician. If job growth is tepid at best, he’ll tell you he created a billion jobs. Facts and figures don’t matter. For the most part you’re not debating any sort of actual policy. He talks about immigration for instance, and his chaos in the streets policies to deport illegal people here are less effective than Clinton and Obama simply taking people out of prisons who were arrested for crimes and were here illegally. The guy finds a way to even do things that people want in the dumbest way possible, and there’s no point acting like he’s anything but an ignoramus. The people voted for him, and they’ve got him for four years, if they still want to watch, go on ahead. My guess is the ratings were piss poor.

I also don’t watch for all the other theatrics that go on in the room. Honestly, the Cabinet, the Supreme Court, and the Congress are three loathsome institutions at this point, filled with strange people and strange ideas that aren’t doing much good for the public. I don’t need to watch Democratic members who did go yell at the President so they can get their 20 seconds on TV and raise money off of it by text message later. While Trump may be the center piece of decline in that room, let’s not pretend the rest of the room are not complicit in their own ways for reducing our country to a carnival side show. Congress has become successively worse over the last 30 years at doing anything beyond basic appropriations bills to fund stuff they want to do, and even then they often times fail to do it on time and end up shutting down the government. Our current Congress is among the least productive in the history of man kind, a symbol of failure in Western society that deserves scorn from all angles. Even when someone proposes something broadly popular and supported from all sides, you’re lucky if you can get it a vote, let alone pass it through both houses. And the court? They created our current mess. We won’t waste more words on them.

So how is our country doing? Health care, housing, and food all cost too much, and they are all things that are essential to our survival as human beings. We’re actively rolling back protections for our air, water, soil, and food, poisoning the Earth we live on in the name of what? I don’t know, let’s just say profits. Our government is dysfunctional. Our economy is not meeting the public’s needs. Our people are fighting on social media over nonsense. Yeah, we’re doing great. The state of our union is “stronger than ever.” This is just what Americans died in wars for, right?

We’re a shitshow. And if you watched it, that was on display. Me? I had nothing to do last night, but I was too busy for that.

Your World Last Week, 2/24

/ Rich Wilkins / Leave a comment

Have you dug out of the snow yet? I guess that depends where you are. In a rare snow event, you’re better off in Mt. Pocono after this weekend than you are in Cape May. New Jersey got a blizzard. Here in the Lehigh Valley, the storm underperformed. Go figure.

The Olympics are now over. Pop quiz, let’s see people find Milan and Cortina on a map now. Last week I listed the Gold Medalists through that point, so today let me finish the U.S. Medalists list. Mikaela Shiffrin won Gold in the women’s slalom event. Elana Meyers Taylor won Gold in the women’s monobob bobsled event. In the two-woman bobsled, Lailie Armbruster Humphries and Jasmine Jones won the Bronze. Armbruster Humphries added a Bronze in the women’s monobob event. Ben Ogden and Gus Schumacher won the Silver in the men’s cross-country skiing team sprint. Alyssa Liu won the Gold in the women’s figure skating event. The freestyle skiing mixed aerials team of Connor Curran, Kaila Kuhn, and Christopher Lillis won the Gold. Alex Ferreira won the gold in the men’s halfpipe event. Mac Forehand won the Silver in the men’s freestyle big air event. Corrine Stoddard won a Bronze in the 1500m short track skating race. Jake Canter won a Bronze in the men’s snowboard slopestyle event. Jordan Stolz won a Silver in the 1500m men’s speed skating race. The team of Ethan Cepuran, Casey Dawson, Emery Lehman, Conor McDermott-Mostowy, and Jordan Stolz won Silver in the men’s team pursuit speed skating race. Mia Manganello won a Bronze in the women’s mass start race in speed skating. Oh, and of course the women and men’s hockey teams won Gold, too. Free Bird, bitches. The complete list is here.

So tonight is the President’s State of the Union address. I will not be watching, antique road show/random NBA game/The Weather Channel is on then. We will probably bomb Iran within days, as our government is saying they could have the capability of building a nuclear bomb within a week. The Jalisco New Generation Cartel is causing chaos and panic in the Mexican state of Jalisco after their leader “El Mencho” was killed apparently by the Mexican government, but American officials tried to take some sort of credit as well and so they’re threatening Americans there. France is telling Jared Kushner’s daddy to stay in his playpen, taking away the Ambassador to France’s ability to talk directly to government ministers on the behalf of the United States after he stiffed them on a meeting. Shocking that Charles Kushner isn’t a good Ambassador, since he got the job for being rich and related to the President. Texas Congressman Tony Gonzales is making a strong play for biggest piece of shit in the world this week, as we get more and more details of his affair with a staffer that worked for him that lead her to light herself literally on fire to commit suicide. One thing’s for sure, Washington, D.C. is always there to make us proud of our nation. Oh, and the DNC thinks Kamala Harris lost for not siding with Hamas. This message seems like a sure way to lose elections for the rest of our lives. In better news, Baseball is back. Not like real, good baseball, but there are players being paid to play in Florida and Arizona right now for real teams. The World Baseball Classic is coming up too. I can’t wait until the 2028 Summer Olympics, when we get a baseball tournament, in-season, with the best of the United States, Japan, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Canada, Venezuela, South Korea, Australia, Puerto Rico, and Mexico, to name a few. Duke beat Michigan, Arizona beat Houston, and UCONN dog walked Villanova in college basketball. The NHL is getting ready to come back from it’s break. Tyler Reddick won the second NASCAR race of the year, to go along with his Daytona win, and Michael Jordan again gave the first interview after his driver won. Back to uplifting news, Savannah Guthrie’s mom is still missing, but FBI Director Kash Patel got to make his wish and celebrate with the U.S. Hockey team at the Olympics. Oh, and the President’s tariffs were thrown out by the Supreme Court, so he just made up a new legal argument for them and raised them. The government also has no real plan to return the money.

The world is awesome. The World is fine. Have a great week.

Americans Hate Everybody

/ Rich Wilkins / Leave a comment

Americans are some miserable bastards right now. The President? We hate him. The last President? Yeah, him too. Leaders in Congress? Congress itself? We despise them. Cabinet members? Members of the judiciary? Yeah, we hate them too. Some are hated so badly (Schumer) that they’re underwater with their own party’s voters. Almost all of them are hemorrhaging a significant number of voters in their own parties, relative to how many Americans even know who they are (View Pew’s numbers here and Gallup’s numbers here).

The truth is that both political coalitions that have ruled the country essentially since Buchanan have cracked, and we’re all just prisoners in the skeletal remains of the two parties. The old Reagan/Bush Republicans are now a minority in their own party, while MAGA runs the show, with a small smattering of Libertarians somewhere in their coalition. The Obama coalition still essentially rules in the Democratic Party but about a third of the party is somewhere between European social democratic (big government) politics and flat out Marxists and Anarchists. The only unity between these groups is essentially their desire to win Presidential and other office nominations for themselves. A lot of Mamdani backers have nothing good to say about Joe Biden, and can barely be considered a member of a similar political party, let alone the same one. When you consider both political parties are fairly unpopular, and neither can really be assured of getting a majority of the popular vote at this point, it’s hard to see a national figure any time soon that reaches 50% approval for a sustained period of time. People would rather cheer for literal terrorists than a leader from the other party, and that includes some segment of your own party.

A few weeks after the 2016 Election I was drinking in DC with some friends from the Obama days, and I said we were entering a 20 year period of darkness in the politics and government of this issue. Basically I said we’d have four or five Presidencies in that period (numerically we’ve had two people serve three individual terms so far), Congress would swing regularly (we’ve had four Speakers since, and the Senate has swung twice), policy would swing wildly (kind of became obvious in 2025), and political rhetoric would get even more adversarial than it was in 2016 (I underestimated the violent element). My theory was we’d get to the end of that and either be good (so still a functioning, sane democracy) and fine, or bad (I’m pretty sure right now we’re closer to whatever the fuck this is) and fine. Maybe I should not make predictions about the future on a December weekday in a Russian bar anymore. The voodoo really woke up on this one.

I have no idea who or what would be the unifying figure to lead us out of this mess. No one will be well liked enough. As is, I don’t think you can put “the old way” back together in DC after Trump. There may not even be anyone liked enough by our population to even make us stop calling each other scumbags and Nazis on social media.

Collective Political Failure

/ Rich Wilkins / Leave a comment

Donald Trump is the President of the United States and Zohran Mamdani is the Mayor of New York. One, a raging madman that has re-defined conservatism around his cult of personality, hatred towards those he perceives of enemies, and the destruction of both our federal government and the existing world order since World War II. The other, a self-described socialist that won’t say “the Intifada” is bad, wants to open city owned grocery stores, and ran on a platform of giving away a lot of free stuff to city residents that he will need Albany to come in and foot the bill for. If you read my blog regularly, you know that I have no use for either one. In fact, I think the election of both is a sign of a society in decline.

As is true with all things though, Mamdani’s first day was a mixed bag, even if it was almost all bad. He did decide to keep the city’s office that fights antisemitism, even if he weakened it a bit, which is a good thing. He also is showing signs that he is willing to cut through some bureaucratic red tape in the government to help build more housing fast. Other than those two things, his first day in office was a hellscape of terrible. You know it’s bad when the speeches by AOC and Bernie were as much about criticizing Democrats as the Trump Administration, but they were nothing compared to Mamdani’s. One line, in particular, has received almost all of the attention- “We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.” If Mao or Stalin himself had said this, we would have zero shock. The speech was literally a call to return to at least “big government liberalism,” if not an outright socialist battle cry altogether. As Putin critic and former Soviet citizen Gary Kasparov put it on Twitter, “The “warmth of collectivism” is to freeze while those with heated dachas tell you how noble your sacrifice is.” Mamdani, a man born of economic and academic privilege, is what happens when limousine liberalism gets put on steroids and hyper-charged. There is a reason China rejected Mao, the Soviet Union failed, Cuba is a failure, Venezuela is now a living hell, and no one wants to go to North Korea. This kind of rhetoric leads to failure, because the underlying system of socialism has no grounding in practical reality, it cannot be run in a functional way. Mamdani’s solution is to get the city involved in things the city probably can’t do very well, like run a grocery store. His solution to expensive transit is to make it free. His solution to some crimes is to legalize them. What he doesn’t get is that someone has to pay for it all. Politicians in Albany aren’t going to be excited to raise taxes to pay for his programs, and they probably will just refuse to do it for the most part. To the extent he’s even allowed, he may try to pin that bill on the wealthy in New York City. At least some of them will just leave. No city, not even the greatest city, can survive with no taxpayer base.

My guess is Mamdani will mostly fail to deliver, and that’s my hope. If he succeeds, it will have long lasting impacts on the city, and a few will be good, but the net will be bad. How do you get to Mamdani though? You get there through electing a Trump. How do you get a Trump? You get there by a government that the public doesn’t think meets it’s needs. A world where more people live out of debt, work more hours, and get ahead less. In short, it is a collective failure that gets you to Mamdani. Oh, the irony.

Why Obama and Biden’s Norms Failed

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This past year, in Northampton County’s vast ruby red Northern Tier there was an election to be the Magisterial Judge in the Wind Gap/Plainfield area. There were two respectable, good people running to be the new judge. One won the Republican nomination, and eventually the seat, and the other won the Democratic nomination. In the Democratic Primary, there were 1,522 votes cast. Over 10% of them (195) went to a third candidate in the race- the candidate was at the January 6th rally in 2021 that ended up ransacking the capitol (no idea if he went inside or not). This same candidate was also at the center of a legal case involving the Northampton County GOP showing home made pornography at their general membership meeting (to be clear here, as the victim). He also was reportedly saying in his campaign that he did not believe PFA’s were constitutional, and he wouldn’t enforce them (I have nowhere to link to here because the campaign is over). Even with all of that, this individual received nearly 200 Democratic primary votes. Is it possible some of them just didn’t know what they were doing? Sure. Over 10% of them? No. Some people knowingly and willingly voted for this guy.

One of the unpleasant, but absolutely true things to know about our democracy and the people participating in it is that the people don’t really trust politicians or experts anymore. It’s more pronounced on one side, but it’s not limited to that side. Politics have become almost entirely tribal, completely culturally, and more or less, emotional. Nearly every institution from the White House to the Army, to the Catholic Church, to banks, to college football powers, have been engaged in a scandal in the last 50 years that have wrecked public trust with them. No one likes banks. Organized religion has been in a decline with the public for years. No President has been willing to get into a protracted war after Iraq. Faith in institutions is gone. People tend to believe the institutions aren’t for them. Experts work for them, not for us, or something.

Whether you believe Barack Obama was born in Kenya, 9/11 was an inside job, or Trump had Epstein killed, an increasing number of people on your side agree with you. This has not been true in the past. People basically don’t believe anything their told, as long as it does fit their world view, as you can see in the polling above.

This is, in and of itself, the main reason that Barack Obama and Joe Biden ultimately gave way to Donald Trump. They ran a political party based on “managing” society right. There’s a lack of audience for that. An increasing share of the American left are also chiefly concerned with “getting stuff” from the government. If they don’t, they’re not super interested. They also aren’t interested with a government run by “experts” if it isn’t doing what they want. People don’t believe the experts. They don’t believe the institutions. They believe nutty videos on YouTube and TikTok though. You know they’d never lie to you or manipulate you, right?