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“…In the eyes of Iranians, the Islamic Republic has long-since lost whatever virtue it might once have claimed to have. They have had to suffer basic shortages of electricity and water, while the regime pumps billions into promoting a genocidal war with Israel. And when they have tried to take back some measure of freedom – to dress how they please, to express a democratic view – they have been violently and lethally suppressed. All in the name of Islamic values.
This explains a telling paradox. The most ambitious theological experiment of the 20th century, this testament to Islamism, is now home to the most secular populace in the Middle East. In the heart of the Islamic Republic, un-belief is flourishing like nowhere else. So much so that in 2023, high-ranking Iranian cleric Mohammad Abolghassem Doulabi revealed that two-thirds of Iran’s mosques – 50,000 out of 75,000 – have been closed due to declining attendance.
Whatever happens after this awful war concludes, the Islamic Republic will fall. Not, as Islamists around the world will insist, because of Western force, be it economic or military. But because of this reactionary project’s own internal contradictions and pathologies. It talks of liberation, while demanding submission to ‘no other deity but Allah’. It commits a nation’s resources to fighting the evil of Westernization and Zionism, while being unable to provide Iranians with even the most basic necessities of life. And in the name of revolutionary Islam, it murders its own people.
Like fascist Italy or Nazi Germany, the Islamic Republic was born of a very modern, counter-Enlightenment ideology. Let’s hope it too is soon consigned to the dustbin of history…”
“…The popular idea in China that American strength is waning may need a rethink, observers say…”
The U.S. controls major shipping chokepoints around the globe and has the capability and will to use them to U.S. advantage.
Trump did that and in so doing reversed decades of U.S. unwillingness to exert U.S. power.
America has few real competitors in any aspect of international relations.
Anthropic is run by naive idiots.
“…Trump has met the moment and risen to the occasion in numerous foreign theaters besides China and the broader Indo-Pacific as well. He saw decades of American malaise, managed decline, and overextended empire, and he has promptly reversed course.
Trump and his administration have repeatedly proven willing and unafraid to criticize America’s European allies, nudging our core NATO partners to be better versions of themselves in such areas as military spending and defense self-sufficiency. He has responded to decades of buildup of murderous transnational nonstate cartels and Chinese and Russian entrenchment in our own hemisphere by reasserting the Latin America-centric Monroe Doctrine, as most spectacularly evidenced by January’s Operation Absolute Resolve extraction of fugitive Nicolas Maduro in Caracas.
And now there is the unfolding Operation Epic Fury in Iran…”
“…This brings us back to what we might call the IOP problem: Buttigieg has punched his card, has followed all the prescriptions, has received every honors grade and service patch one can get by the age of 44. But it turns out that lots of people, and not just jealous Ivy Leaguers, hate this. They hate pretensions of expertise. They hate people who work to become what they are not—even when they work to become better people, or better presidents. “I’m like you,” Gavin Newsom told a crowd in Atlanta in February. “I’m no better than you. I’m a 960 SAT guy.” That score is well below average. The audience cheered.
Buttigieg’s critics seem to fault him for the vaguest reasons, many of which come down to: he’s too perfect; he’s not authentic; he’s not a man of the people. It’s an odd line of attack. Is it possible to be too perfect? Is perfection a flaw? Social psychology has documented something known as the “pratfall effect”: the distrust of people deemed too perfect…”
These people are pathetic
The inimitable David Burge skewers the fakery and plops it on the grill:
“…to be fair, she made this argument a little before Operation Epic Fury. Fifteen years before, to be accurate, when Barack Obama took the exact same action that Trump did this weekend…”
The banal stupidity of repeating debunked claims for what? The entire Democrat message is dependent on the voters being uninformed stupid people.
