The Myth of the Incredibly Dangerous Iran

One of the primary reasons for Israel and the USA to attack Iran was to neutralize the incredible threat that it posed to the rest of the world and to Israel and the USA specifically.  Well let’s take a look at how dangerous Iran was.

As of March 8^th, the USA and Israel have murdered a host of top Iranian officials, bombed a school, destroyed most of Iran’s navy, and killed well over 1400 people, most of whom are civilians.  They have also severely damaged much of Iran’s military infrastructure as well many industrial complexes and oil refineries.

 

What has that highly dangerous Iran managed to do to Israel and the USA?  So far, it appears that 6 American soldiers have been killed and 11 Israelis.  Thousands of rockets and drones from Iran have essentially accomplished nothing.  In the face of the vast military and intelligence might of the USA and Israel, Iran is more or less impotent. 

 

Wow!  Good thing we started a major war, spent billions of dollars, created a potential oil crisis, justified any future arbitrary, unilateral military actions by other nations and further damaged our reputation in the world to stop this incredibly dangerous foe!  

 

Trump and Hegseth are like adolescent boys, chest-thumping and bragging about a military triumph that is so one-side it is ridiculous.  Sure, no one likes the Iranian regime.  But who is really going to suffer in both the short and the long term?  The Iranian people, of course.

 

The premise for this war was absurd from the start.  And it is all the more idiotic when one thinks about the legacy of American military actions in the past 50-60 years.  Shame on us!

Donald Trump: People’s Republic of China Hero

I can picture the banners and the murals.  Sometime in the near future the pantheon of heroic figures that China will revere will certainly include Donald Trump.  China was on the road to superpower status but for the first 15 years of the 21^st century the road looked long and difficult.  Then came Donald.

The list of the Chinese people’s exalted heroes will include Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai of course.  And Xi Jinping will naturally be on an equal level with the founders.  There will also be other heroes of communism – Lenin, Stalin, perhaps Trotsky, Castro, Che Guevara, Ho Chi Minh.  The one capitalist addition to the list will be Trump for having single-handedly ensured China’s ascendancy to stand-alone world power and economic dominance.

 

Trump’s chaotic, arbitrary and punitive tariff policy, his bullying treatment and alienation of allies, his idiotic military strikes and wars, his cruel and extreme immigrant policies, his short-sighted disengagement from all international efforts to fight climate change and protect international health, his petulant cessation of renewable energy technology development, and his endless posturing, threatening and bragging will have diminished both the hard and soft power of the USA beyond repair.

 

As King George sang in Hamilton: Oceans rise, empires fall.  Some fall faster than others though, and some shoot themselves in the foot to hasten their downfall.  Trump has set the wheels in motion for China to surge past the USA on all fronts.  China’s rise was inevitable given its size and its highly educated and motivated workforce, but a wiser US president would have created a relationship with China and the rest of the world that could benefit all. 

 

In the winner-take-all Trumpian-imagined dystopia, the USA is fast becoming a pariah.  The Chinese won’t miss this opportunity and perhaps the world will be better off for it.  China may be authoritarian and a bit on the pushy side, but at least its leader appears to not be a narcissistic lunatic.  

 

It’s not too early to get the Chinese students and party members working on Trump posters and banners.  We know how much Donald loves adoration.  He’ll be delighted.  

 

A Double Wag the Dog

The rationale for the Israeli and American war on Iran is a Chinese menu – Imminent nuclear threat, regime change and freedom for the Iranian people, long term security for Israel, punishment for Iran’s existential threat to Israel and regional stability, democracy for Iran, or, most likely,  cover for two corrupt and diabolical leaders – Netanyahu and Trump.

Few will mourn the demise of the Ayatollah or his henchmen.  They have impoverished and terrified the Iranian people over the last 40 years.  Their support of the extremist proxies Hezbollah and Hamas has contributed to the growth of right-wing authoritarianism in Israel.  Rather than aiding the Palestinian cause, this support has made any progress highly unlikely.

 

But the assassination of Iranian leaders and all-out war that Trump and Netanyahu have initiated is unjustified for many reasons.  The first is that Iran by all reasonable assessments is incapable of nuclear warfare any time in the near future.  This has been verified by the UN’s nuclear inspection agency and other neutral third parties.

 

The second is that Israel is far superior to Iran in military capabilities and the idea that Iran is an existential threat to Israel is simply laughable.  Even without US support, Israel has little or nothing to fear from Iran. Moreover, Netanyahu has been chafing to attack Iran for decades and argued that Iran would have a nuclear weapon imminently back in the early 90’s.  He was delighted to discover that he could stroke Trump's ego enough to lure him into fulfilling his dream.

 

The third is that the recent history of overthrow of Mideast regimes through warfare has been dismal.  Both Afghanistan and Iraq were foreign policy and humanitarian catastrophes, whose ill effects are still reverberating throughout that region.  Have we learned nothing?

 

The fourth reason is that unilateral military action against sovereign states and leaders is an abandonment of international rules-based diplomacy, a way for Russia to further rationalize its invasion of Ukraine, and an invitation to future unilateral actions such as a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

 

The fifth reason is that war’s result is unlikely to be a democratic, secular regime in Iran.  The current Islamic state is so deeply embedded that it is difficult to imagine it changing dramatically.  The more likely scenario is a long period of chaotic, tragic internecine battles between various factions.  Furthermore, the idea that Trump and Netanyahu have the slightest sympathy for the Iranian people is totally absurd.

 

And the final reason is that there were clearly vile and cynical personal motivations for both Trump and Netanyahu to launch this war that have nothing to do with noble desires to free the Iranian people.  Trump is facing a disastrous midterm election that could completely derail his presidency.  Netanyahu has so far managed to avoid the consequences of his administration’s security failures and prior support of Hamas by his brutal destruction of Gaza and murder of close to a hundred thousand Palestinians, but a time of reckoning was approaching.  His corruption and legal problems were also threatening.

 

Yes, the Iran war is a classic wag the dog scenario.  Both Trump and Netanyahu are authoritarian leaders who are totally unscrupulous and diabolical.  Their capricious use of military force with unclear objectives is intended to distract a public that has been easily wooed by violence and warfare in the past.  One can only hope that this time the ruse won’t work and that they will pay for their arrogance.  But the sad truth is that this war will cost the lives of thousands and perhaps tens or hundreds of thousands if history is any guide.

The Charade of Governance

One has only to listen briefly to Donald Trump’s mad musings to realize that he views himself as dictating and controlling every aspect of our country’s government and foreign policy.  I believe that is what one would call a dictator.

US Presidents have embraced and utilized executive privilege in various ways throughout our history, but there has never been a president who does not even attempt to work through the normal paths of governance.  Trump only uses congress as a rubber stamp for his desired policies and his cabinet sets its agenda in total obedience to his whims.  The only independent body in the government now is the judiciary, and many of the critical judges are Trump appointees, which calls into question their independence.

 

The list of policies and actions that Trump has personally dictated or pressured is long, but here are some of the most egregious examples:

 

• Unilateral levying of tariffs both for economic and punitive purposes
• Targeting and deportation of student protestors
• Changes in vaccine policy
• Rejection of climate change science and all government activities to address it
• Cancellation of wind farm, solar and charging station projects
• Wholesale reduction or elimination of environmental and financial regulations
• Pulling the USA out of many international organizations and agreements
• Government blackmail or extortion of law firms and universities
• Justice department investigation and prosecution of Trump’s adversaries
• Wholesale pardoning of January 6^th convicted criminals
• Changing names and titles of geographic places (Gulf of Mexico)
• Government support of Crypto
• Ending government DEI efforts and applying pressure to end them everywhere else
• Military actions in Iran and Venezuela; extrajudicial killings in coastal waters
• Threats to Greenland/Denmark, Canada, Mexico and NATO allies
• Abandonment of support for Ukraine in its war with Russia
• Threat to end birthright citizenship
• Threat to effect national changes in elections
• Dangerous buildup of a paramilitary organization (ICE) to deport undocumented aliens
• Use of the National Guard to intimidate democratic-controlled cities

 

Some MAGA Americans support this kind of dictatorship as a necessary evil to overcome the paralysis of democratic government, what they view as unsettling cultural changes and the post-industrial economic malaise.  But the vast majority of democratic and independent voters view Trump’s actions as authoritarian and dangerous.  

 

Trump slid into office by a mere 1% of the popular vote, a fact that many forget and that certainly does not give him the mandate to dictate such extreme policies.  His win was based on the expectation that he would dramatically improve the economy and fix the immigration problem.  The economy is no better and may be heading for worse after one year, and his draconian, police state policies on immigration have been a national disgrace.  Playing emperor and conqueror may thrill his base, but the American people will hopefully have finally realized that the emperor has no clothes and give him a resounding rebuke in November.

The Dangerous Rush to Push AI Into Schools

Recent testimony to a senate committee by Dr. Jared Horvath, neuroscientist and educator, presented studies that showed alarming downward trends in student cognitive development since the mid-2000s across developed nations.  This was the first decline since the beginning of the 20^th century, when standardized education sparked a century long improvement in those same cognitive abilities.

Dr. Horvath concludes that the aggressive introduction of technology and extended periods of screen time have had a deleterious effect on education and cognitive development.  This testimony will no doubt be strongly contested by the technology establishment, as it calls into question one of the key claims that AI makes for its future profitability – the goal of enhancing human intelligence and lives across class and cultural barriers.

 

I have some anecdotal evidence that supports Horvath’s thesis as I have spent the last 6 months tutoring Hispanic high school kids in math.  All of their work is on Chromebooks.  There is no math textbook and every problem is presented and worked on the computer.  The students enter every calculation into a subject line as part of their solution and use associated calculators to perform them.  Not a single student has immediate recall of multiplication tables (8 times 7 for example) or knows how to add fractions using common denominators.  Even basic addition is wanting.

 

This would perhaps be ok if their command of higher-level concepts were solid, but their work is almost totally mimicry or use of AI in other web windows.  They struggle to do any problems that truly require deeper understanding of the theory.  These students are much less capable than the very weakest students I taught in my three years as a high school mathematics teacher from 2006-2009, before any significant introduction of technology.

 

Schools and universities are desperate to avoid the stigma of missing the boat on AI, so they appear to be embracing AI and other technology components with willful abandon and probably spending funds that could have been used to hire and train teachers.  The hype and pressure from AI companies and their legions of pundits is immense.

 

Horvath’s research on cognitive development theorizes that human evolution is much better adapted to person-to-person learning focusing on a single task.  The combination of screen time trances, application multi-tasking and non-academic app distraction create a net negative effect when technology is the centerpiece of instruction.  His survey of research indicates that reading comprehension and retention are much stronger on paper, as is note-taking, particularly for complex or extended texts or tasks.  

 

Technology used for practice and remediation to support learning objectives has been shown to be net positive in many studies, but this type of limited utilization is anathema to the tech titans who see their products being center stage and ubiquitous.  They will no doubt be relentless in their insistence that the future is in AI education and that it is only a matter of educators adapting to the new tools.

 

Public policy failed us completely during the advent of social media and legislators allowed tech apps to foul the waters of social intercourse and adolescent mental health in the name of so-called free speech and the free market.  Let us hope that Horvath’s warnings will be heeded and that the avalanche of AI-based education ‘miracles’ will be subjected to careful scrutiny, monitoring and control before we find that we have irreversibly damaged our species.  But then again, those future generations will be so much more easily manipulated by AI, so perhaps it is all just part of the master plan!

Our Better Angels Are Quick to Flee and Slow to Reappear

After the Kent State massacre in 1970, where four students protesting the Vietnam War were shot dead by national guardsmen, a Gallup poll found that 58% of the nation blamed the students for their own deaths.  

Interestingly, The President’s Commission on Campus Unrest came out with a report later in that year that called the shootings “unwarranted, inexcusable and unnecessary”.  It concluded that even if the guardsmen faced some limited danger (a few rocks were thrown), it was not a danger that justified lethal force.  The commission stated that the shootings occurred in the most divisive time in America since the Civil War.  

 

People polled fifty years after the shooting in 2020 had a very different opinion, with only about 14% blaming the students.  

 

Americans can be vicious, and I suppose we are not alone in this regard.  Anger and violence lie close to the surface in all human beings, especially when our closely held tribal beliefs are threatened.  The fact that 76% of Republicans say that the shooting of Renee Good was justified demonstrates the kind of bloodlust that occurs in times of great conflict and division.

 

A recent poll by Emerson College found that 41% of Americans believe we are more divided now than in 1970, and another 20% said it is about the same.  We are clearly a very troubled country.   

 

When passions run high about political, economic and social issues, our better angels take flight and we succumb to our baser instincts.  The social media machine and an ever-increasing number of demagogues inflame these passions and render civil discourse and critical thinking ever more difficult.

 

It may be that the clearly documented murder of Alex Pretti has prompted serious reflection in the hearts of many independents and more moderate Republicans.  It may be that we are on the verge of reawakening some of the better angels in our society.  A small seed of doubt may have been sowed in the MAGA heartland.  We will pray that at least enough eyes have been opened to begin the shift back toward a more humane and less brutal America.

The Anti-Fascist Dilemma

Trump and the MAGA world love to conjure up the image of a nationwide conspiracy of violent Antifa radicals threatening democracy in America.  In September, 2025, Trump signed an executive order designating Antifa as a terrorist organization despite the fact that the Antifa movement has no centralized organization and mostly consists of people opposing and protesting aspects of the Trump agenda in peaceful ways.

The term ‘antifa’ has its origin in the short-lived German ‘anti-faschistische’ movement in the early years of the Hitler regime.  It was, of course, rapidly annihilated by the fascists it was opposing.  The Antifa in the USA has a variety of political groups loosely connected to it – communists, anarchists, left-wing progressives, anti-racists, anti-capitalists, anti-authoritarians and others.  The movement became much larger and more visible after Trump was elected in 2016, and especially after the Charlottesville riots in 2017, but it is relatively small.

 

A basic, shared tenet of these groups is that the slide toward an authoritarian or even fascist state in the USA must be confronted vigorously.  Most of the people identifying with this movement are dedicated to employing non-violent tactics, but there are some who believe that, ultimately, violent opposition may be required to stop the Trump regime from becoming fully authoritarian.

 

Many in this movement use the Hitler example as motivation and justification for more energetic opposition.  Their belief is that one must act decisively in the early phases of a move toward fascism before a dictator has the ability to fully control the key foundations of the state – police, military, justice department, courts, legislature.  They fear that in a truly ruthless move toward fascism the election process is too slow and unwieldy to act as a brake, and that more direct and immediate activity in marches, protests and mass disobedience is indispensable.

 

The counter argument to this line of reasoning is that mass action verging on violence or mass disobedience would be an excuse for Trump to declare martial law and employ national guard or even military troops to re-establish control.  This is the dilemma for Antifa, and indeed for all true patriots.  

 

How close we are now to a true authoritarian state is not totally clear, though there is enough evidence and enough of a breakdown of traditional democratic processes to make one quite fearful.  And there is no doubt that Trump is the type of personality that will not hesitate to go as far as he can in having complete control.

 

In my view, the strategy to oppose Trump and the MAGA movement in the absence of any congressional will to counter him is to use the legal system and the courts as much as possible to limit the damage, to peacefully express public opinion in marches and protests, and to work toward a resounding repudiation of all things Trumpian in the midterm elections.  

 

If the good people of this country are not capable of seeing the truth, fearing the worst and changing their minds, then all is lost anyway. No amount of violent action can substitute for the majority will of the people, and at this time any violence would most likely be counterproductive and hasten the end that we all dread.