[National Review] The past decade has seen many in the West engage in an unprecedented campaign of cultural self-flagellation and a rejection of Western and Enlightenment values. That the West is good rather than evil has become morally suspect at best and grounds for threats and violence at worst.
Polarized critics from within perceive the downfall of the West, preaching inequality, "down with imperialism," "tax the rich," environmental apocalypse, racial injustice and systematic oppression, fascism, and a hundred other pessimistic railings of the self-proclaimed champions of the proletariat.
From without, hostile foreign nations and countless proponents of anti-Western ideologies burn flags, call for "death to America," the West, the rich, and the free, and denounce everything the West represents. The loudest and most extreme calls for an end to the West and Western values have come from people and cultures outside the West; however, in this most recent decade, many of the most vehement and obnoxious cries come from within.
They would ask you to ignore, reject, and dismantle the values, cultural norms, and institutions that have made the West a place where people flee to rather than flee from.
People with the ability to move freely elect, with almost no exception, to move from autocratic rule to freedom. From poverty and dearth to wealth and abundance. From hunger and want to satiation and plenty. From danger and violence to safety and peace, and from bleak prospects toward the opportunity for a better future. Those who already have these conditions may well elect to visit the world of those living without, but they almost never elect to move there permanently. Many moonlight in rejecting the West, but, if pressed, they’re not much keen on giving up what the collective Western cultural system provides. The unique synthesis of ideas, cultural adaptations, innovations, and institutions that have emerged from the West have become humankind’s blueprint for prosperity and progress. No other collection of values and ideas than those of the Enlightenment has resulted in freer, longer, healthier, and richer lives.
“Operation Epic Fury was the loud one. Operation Economic Fury is the quiet one... While the carriers were on television, Treasury was doing the actual demolition.” —Jesús Enrique Rosas on X
[OutdoorLife] As a professional hunter who grew up in the bush, I've had my fair share of animal attacks and run-ins with Africa's big five
I grew into hunting because my natural father, Clary Palmer Wilson, has long been a professional hunter in East Africa, and hunting is in my blood. My earliest memories are of being on safari when I was five or six years old. Between safaris on which Clary guided clients, he often took my mother, my two brothers, my sister, and me for a month or two on safari while he hunted elephants for the ivory.
Once on such a trip, when I was about six, a rhino walked between our tents and stood sniffing some of the toys I had left on the ground. I was utterly captivated and could hardly be kept from running closer. The rhino soon left, without giving any trouble.
On another safari I remember as a child, a leopard chased a bleating native goat through one of our tents, which was open on both ends because of the heat. Next morning we found where the leopard had killed and eaten most of the goat and hung the remainder in a tree, hardly a stone’s throw from our camp.
We lived on a farm near Lushoto, Tanzania, where we raised cattle, sheep, and pigs and kept a large vegetable garden. It was game country, and we had a lot of trouble with forest hogs rooting up our vegetables. Cape buffalo occasionally broke fences to feed in our gardens. Lions and leopards occasionally killed our livestock.
Throughout my boyhood my fascination with these wild animals and their habits and with hunting them far overshadowed any slight interest I had in farming. Clary, at age 16, had guided alone a group from the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago to collect big-game specimens, and my desire to hunt was just as fierce. By the time I was 15, I had dropped out of school and was hunting elephants and hippos for their ivory, and crocodiles for their hides.
Today, at 25, I am a full-time professional hunter. I am licensed as a professional white hunter in Tanzania, East Africa, and I am also a registered guide in Alaska.
While visiting in the United States when I was a boy, I met Bud Branham, an Alaska guide, and we remained good friends and corresponded for many years after I returned home to Africa. I came to the U.S. to attend college in 1963, and at that time Bud Branham legally adopted me, which makes me one of the few people in the world with two fathers.
Three years ago I graduated from Texas Christian University with a degree in Business Administration. I now am an American citizen and work as a full-time partner with Bud, who is also licensed as a white hunter in Tanzania. We have an agreement with Clary, my natural father, to work with him winters in Africa, where we hunt what until recently was the Selous Game Reserve, the largest game reserve in Africa, an area that was closed to human entry for about 50 years. During the rest of the year, we hunt in Alaska.
#1
2 places near to my heart n soul. Safaris in SA and Kenya, hunting in Namibia, and several fishing trips in remote AK. Planning a 10 day float in western AK for August.
Posted by: Bangkok Billy ||
05/12/2026 8:46 Comments ||
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#2
Bastard.
I grew up reading Hemingway's stories of safari.
[YouTube - Promethean Updates] In this episode, host Susan Kokinda discusses Secretary of State Marco Rubio's recent decision to ban five British and European agents attempting to interfere in US elections and silence Americans. Kokinda delves into the broader implications of this move, focusing on how the British Empire's influence is being challenged by Donald Trump's policies. She highlights the strategic maneuvers by British establishment figures, notably Mike Pence's alignment with European policies, and outlines Trump's economic strategies to bolster the American working class and reduce European influence. Kokinda emphasizes the importance of supporting Trump's initiatives to ensure sustainable economic growth and political sovereignty for the US while promoting Promethean Action's role in this movement.
#1
The Treaty of Vereeniging was a peace treaty, signed on 31 May 1902, that ended the Second Boer War between the South African Republic and the Orange Free State on the one side, and the United Kingdom on the other. This conflict, aside from our own American Revolution, must certainly be one of the greatest examples of threats to freedom, private land ownership, and farming. The loss of those freedoms is seen today as migrants from SA continue to find refuge in the States, quite literally, "the last bastion of hope."
[FoxNews] In the past year, I’m incredibly proud of the progress we’ve made under President Donald Trump’s leadership. We have rebuilt and revamped the FBI’s infrastructure across the enterprise, helping the bureau achieve record-breaking results in crushing violent crime and defending the homeland, while providing historic transparency.
Artificial intelligence is a huge part of that overhaul. When then-Deputy Director Dan Bongino and I arrived here at headquarters, AI had almost zero role at the FBI. That had to change, so we got to work. We immediately led the way by setting up an AI working group to evaluate how we could accelerate modernization, getting input from field leaders on the ground in your communities. We appointed a chief AI officer and established an AI Review Board to streamline our efforts. We created an AI Champions Program to identify advocates across the bureau. Maybe most importantly, we created direct partnerships with private-sector industry leaders to rebuild our infrastructure and bring in AI on a broad scale.
Sources confirmed to Fox News Digital that Patel and his girlfriend Alexis Wilkins were in town over the weekend to attend a funeral for a close friend.
The protesters obtained Patel's suspected travel itinerary using publicly available tracking data to follow a Department of Justice aircraft believed to be connected to the FBI director, FOX 12 reported.
In 2008 Joe Biden was Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, with oversight jurisdiction of the U.S State Dept., and by extension all foreign policy nominations etc.
In 2008 John Brennan was working for the Obama campaign when someone from his outside government group, The Analysis Corporation, “hacked” into the state dept database to access the passport files and State Dept records of Barack Obama.
John O. Brennan, Obama’s then top terrorism and intelligence adviser, was the owner of The Analysis Corp. The company was cited in March 2008 for penetrating the files of presidential candidates Barack Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and John McCain in the State Department’s passport office.
State Department employee, Lieutenant Quarles Harris, Jr. who had the passport access, apparently was the guy who penetrated the database and scrubbed the records. Harris was killed – April 18th, 2008.
Yes, Lieutenant Harris decided to cooperate with the FBI who were investigating the break-in. Soon after his cooperation became a matter of record, his body was discovered in his parked car; he had been shot twice in the head, likely a “suicide”.
[AT] A Senate rule never mentioned in the Constitution now allows a minority to block election safeguards supported by most Americans.
Today’s filibuster is a shadow of its former self. Senators no longer need to stand on the floor, speak for hours, or defend their obstruction before the American people. Instead, they merely signal an intent to filibuster, and legislation effectively dies unless 60 votes can be mustered for cloture. No speeches. No effort. No accountability.
That’s not deliberation. That’s abdication.
The filibuster is often spoken of in reverent tones, as if it were handed down alongside the Constitution. It wasn’t.
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/12/2026 00:00 ||
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#1
MY PURPOSED NEW RULE
If any elected official decides not to show up and conduct official business.
Then the elected official doing so, and their staff don't get paid for that MONTH.
Plus NO federal/state paid or coverage of benefits for either.
1st a warning, after 3 days, removed from office and banned from that office for 10 years.
In other words...
Just like any Middle Class US voter/worker and their Family would have to endure,
if the one collecting the Paycheck did not show up and work.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited by Evgeny Balakin
[REGNUM] Pelageya Serebrennikova, a townswoman from Arzamas, was prophesied to become a "great luminary of Orthodoxy." This was revealed to her by the great miracle worker and clairvoyant, St. Seraphim of Sarov. Apart from Father Seraphim's words, nothing indicated that Pelageya would become one of the most revered elders of the Diveyevo Monastery and would be glorified as a saint.
When the townswoman Serebrennikova was just beginning her path to holiness, her husband beat her to death
…surely nearly to death…
and chained her up, and her relatives and neighbors considered her insane.
If the expression "the feat of foolishness" was present in the lexicon of the Arzamas residents, it was applied to the ancient ascetics so beautifully described in the lives of the saints. But in a provincial town in the Nizhny Novgorod province during the reign of Nicholas I, such behavior was a violation of good manners—nothing more.
When you become acquainted with the biographies of the elders of the Diveyevo Monastery, a unique phenomenon in Russian history of the late 18th and early 20th centuries, you get the feeling that you are exploring a sociological cross-section of all classes of the Russian Empire.
The founder of the monastery, Mother Alexandra, was a noblewoman whose family had given the empire dignitaries, military men, and socialites. The prophetess and fool for Christ, Paraskeva, was a serf who was not even allowed to have a family name and who did not dare leave the master's estate.
Blessed Maria of Diveyevo was one of the peasants who were freed by Alexander II's reforms and flocked to the cities to earn a living. But at some point, each of them broke the life pattern prescribed by their class, wealth, and era.
More important were the words of Christ, as conveyed by the Evangelist Matthew: “Whoever wants to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.”
Pelageya Ivanovna Serebrennikova, née Surina, was a city dweller before taking up the cross, and not one of the poor.
STERN STEPFATHER
She was born in 1809, the year of Napoleon's victory at Wagram, the publication of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck's work on evolutionary theory, Ivan Krylov's first book of fables, and the beginning of Mikhail Speransky's failed constitutional reform.
Arzamas merchant Ivan Ivanovich Surin owned a tannery, ran his business honestly and successfully, and his family lived in prosperity.
And overall, the industrialists and merchants of the district town grew rich. The fair at the Makaryev Monastery was not far away (in 1817, the Makaryev Fair would move to Nizhny Novgorod). And the imperial manifesto of 1807, "On New Benefits Granted to the Merchants," spurred the development of commerce.
But tragedy struck the Surin family: Ivan Ivanovich died suddenly, leaving his wife, Praskovia, a widow with three young children. To preserve her family and her fortune, she remarried (or rather, her relatives, the Bebishevs, arranged for her to do so) to Alexei Nikitich Korolev-Ikonnikov. The Korolevs and Ikonnikovs were two distinguished families, a kind of merchant "aristocracy" known throughout the Volga region, the Urals, and Siberia.
Her stepfather, Alexei Nikitich, was stern in disposition, unlike her biological father. Pelageya spent her childhood in a large house in Arzamas, doing housework.
From an early age, she showed signs of strangeness: she pretended to be a “fool” in order to avoid the vanity of the world (in which the word “merchant” often concealed the desire to deceive one’s neighbor) and to preserve her heart for God.
"AND YOU WILL BE THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD..."
Seeing this, her mother rushed to marry her daughter off, considering her behavior a hindrance to the family's well-being. When Pelageya was 19, they found a husband, albeit one of lower social status—the bourgeois Sergei Serebrennikov.
The lives of holy ascetics repeat the story of "she was burdened by marriage." But judging by the life of Pelagia of Diveyevo, marriage was difficult for both her and Sergei.
Having children could have saved the marriage. But two sons died before they were even eighteen months old, and the daughter "was taken by the Lord" when she was just a few weeks old.
Infant mortality in the Russian Empire (as in European countries) was high. Doctor of Medicine Heinrich Attenhofer cited data for the capital city of St. Petersburg from 1800 to 1812: 311 deaths per 1,000 births.
The "problem" was easily resolved—by having more children. But it seems the Serebrennikovs were alarmed by the way Pelageya spoke of the deaths of her sons and daughter: the Lord took her children to Himself so that they would not know this difficult worldly life. Her relatives and husband were surprised by such words from the "blessed one."
The family decided to send Sergei and Pelageya with their mother Praskovia to the Sarov Monastery to seek guidance and prayerful help from Father Seraphim, who was already considered a saint during his lifetime.
The saint received the merchant and bourgeois delegation from Arzamas in his cell. He blessed Sergei and Praskovya Ivanovna and sent them away in peace. He told Pelageya to stay and spoke with her for at least two hours.
Eldress Pelagia recounted how Father had entrusted her with the feat of foolishness for Christ, predicting a long life in the Diveyevo Monastery and that she would take upon herself the care of the nuns. And when Seraphim escorted Pelagia to the gate—all the pilgrims had already witnessed this—he bowed to the young woman and said:
“Go, go, mother, go to Diveyevo, take care of my orphans and you will be the light of the world.”
THE ORDEALS OF THE FOOLISH PELAGIA
Upon returning from the Sarov monastery, Pelagia, with the blessing of Father Seraphim, began to learn the Jesus Prayer—the way the Athonite elders pray.
But most importantly, she began to act like a fool. Or, to use the language of the 1845 Code of Criminal and Correctional Punishments, she allowed herself to "cause noise, shouting, or other disorderly conduct in a public place or at a public gathering." She dressed absurdly, ran through the streets "shouting outrageously," and at night knelt on the church porch, atoning for her sins and those of the world.
The husband, who by the standards of the time wasn't considered a domestic tyrant, "treated" this madness by chaining her to the wall and beating her. When measures against the "fool" and "family disgrace" failed, he returned his insane wife to the family of her stepfather, the merchant Korolev-Ikonnikov. Beatings and chaining followed in her "home" as well.
In "barbarian" Muscovite Rus', men of God who denounced the evils of this world were treated with a wary respect. In the Russian Empire of the 19th century (despite its official commitment to Orthodoxy—the third pillar in the triad of "Orthodoxy, autocracy, and nationality"), social deviations were corrected using the method of "supervise and punish."
In despair, her biological mother handed her daughter over to the city authorities for re-education.
The saint's life contains an episode: by order of the Arzamas mayor, the townswoman Pelageya Serebrennikova was beaten half to death. The life contains the words of her mother, horrified by how the authorities fulfilled her parents' wishes: "Her body hung in tatters, blood soaked the entire room, and yet she even gasped."
According to the hagiography, that same night the mayor had a dream: for such abuse of the defenseless fool for Christ's sake, he would burn in hell. Be that as it may, the city authorities were ordered not to touch the "fool."
And soon the family also abandoned their unfaithful relative, fulfilling a simple request - to let her go to the Diveyevo monastery.
A PIT WITH BRICKS
But even within the monastery walls, the holy fool seemed to be encroaching on an important element of the imperial triad: Orthodoxy.
She threw stones, broke windows in cells, and exposed the sisters for the sins they were hiding.
The most harmless of these was the "daily work" that Nun Pelagia performed until her death: every day she threw bricks into a pit filled with dirty water, then climbed in, pulled the bricks out, and threw them back into the pit. It was hard and, at first glance, pointless work—the same as the daily struggle with sin.
In return, she received beatings and insults. Her first cell attendant tortured Pelagia so cruelly that "it was impossible to watch without pity."
But little by little, it became clear to the sisters: the mad Pelagia was behaving as the blessed ones of previous centuries had. She was merciless not only to the sins of others, but also to herself: she exhausted them with a strict fast—on bread and water, sleeping on broken bricks, and wearing rags. But most importantly, she reminded them of what Father Seraphim had said: Diveyevo is the fourth lot of the Most Holy Theotokos, and the service here is special.
Pelagia tirelessly repeated that she came “to protect the orphans of Seraphim,” who were called to pray for the Church and the world.
"SHE HIT THE BISHOP WHILE DENOUNCING HIM."
Pelagia lived in the Diveyevo Monastery for almost 47 years. Each day began with prayer, followed by a difficult service, visible only to God: foolishness for the sake of saving the monastery.
In 1861, the year of the peasant reform, the monastery experienced its own "upheaval," known in history as the Diveyevo Troubles. A year earlier, by order of Bishop Nektary of Nizhny Novgorod, the Diveyevo community had received the status of monastery. The power-hungry Hieromonk Ioasaph had achieved the status of trustee and spiritual father of the monastery. He claimed to be a disciple of St. Seraphim of Sarov, but it was known that Father Seraphim had not blessed him to "lead" Diveyevo.
With his strict supervision and his desire to rationalize community life (no spiritual gifts allowed unless they were in accordance with the charter), Joasaph alienated most of the sisters. But he had a support group. The discord "in the spirit of the Antichrist" that Seraphim had predicted began.
And then the holy fool Pelagia reminded the sisters that they should not retreat from the truth, and she fought for this truth in her own way: “she beat and thrashed and, denouncing the bishop, struck him on the cheek.”
The sisters' indignation reached the church authorities, and they backed down (a complaint that layman Nikolai Motovilov, a disciple of St. Seraphim, brought to the emperor also helped).
Joasaph was transferred to another diocese, and the monastery was given the opportunity to live without bureaucratic supervision.
FLOWERS FOR THE MOST HOLY MOTHER OF GOD
But the stern Pelagia seemed to have changed—the one who slept on the rocks and continued throwing stones into the pit now began planting flower beds around the cells, saying that flowers brought joy to the Most Holy Theotokos. Praying on the porch of her cell, the blessed one sorted through the bouquets.
It was then that the sisters remembered how her rebukes were always accompanied by unexpected affection and consolation. On the other hand, she could tell the Mother Superior about their lack of evangelical love: "You are not the abbess here—the Queen of Heaven Herself is! And I have come to protect the Seraphim orphans!"
The elder accurately knew people's thoughts and secret intentions, predicted events, and sternly admonished those who strayed from the true path. Now, not only the young sisters (whom Pelagia called "little children" and "daughters") but the abbess herself turned to her, asking for prayers and guidance.
“Look how many children I have,” Pelagia said to another blessed Paraskeva of Sarov.
The popular veneration of Eldress Pelagia came during the final years of Alexander II's reign, when, following the reforms, the rural world began to gradually crumble. For peasants who found themselves in new circumstances—often "halfway" between a hut and a factory dormitory—her words of consolation took on a special power. Streams of pilgrims flocked to the Sarov and Diveyevo monasteries. Pelagia welcomed everyone into her cell, claiming that she did so with a blessing from above and the behest of Father Seraphim.
The final years of Blessed Pelagia's life occurred during the reign of Alexander III the Peacemaker. The authorities had frozen the empire, but the Diveyevo elder warned the sisters of the trials to come.
She continued to "rush" around the monastery in tattered rags, rebuking and comforting, tending the flower beds, and praying for the "orphans of Seraphim," but the years were taking their toll. After nearly half a century of uninterrupted service, she fell gravely ill and rarely left her narrow bed in her cramped cell.
Pelagia of Diveyevo died at the age of 75, in 1884. In her final days, the blessed one lay, barely opening her eyes. The sisters took turns keeping vigil at her bedside. She received Holy Communion. Just before her death, Matushka called the closest sisters and quietly but firmly repeated, "I have protected the Seraphim orphans. Now everything is in the Queen of Heaven's hands."
Blessed Pelagia Ivanovna was buried in the monastery cemetery, near the altar of Trinity Cathedral. Her grave soon became a place of pilgrimage.
Beginning in late 1918, Lenin ordered the mass closure of monasteries. Diveyevo Monastery's turn came on the tenth anniversary of the Revolution. After the monastery's destruction, the remains of Blessed Pelagia miraculously remained untouched.
The revival of the Church in the 1990s and 2000s allowed many holy names to be brought back from oblivion: in 2004, Blessed Pelagia (Serebrennikova) was glorified as a saint along with other Diveyevo blessed ones.
[SOTT] The WHO, Big Pharma, and the other bad actors behind the Covid catastrophe are at it again.
At this writing, they're churning out industrial-strength fear porn regarding an alleged outbreak of Hantavirus infections aboard a small cruise ship, the MV Hondius. If all this gives you flashbacks to the Diamond Princess cruise ship incident from the early days of Covid, you're not alone.
But before we all hide in our closets (again) until Moderna and friends save us (again) with another toxic gene-therapy pseudo-vaccine (which of course, they and about a dozen other Big Pharma profiteers have been working on for years), let's take a moment to consider the pathogen in question - Hantavirus.
I have seen one case of Hantavirus in my 30-year career in internal medicine. It happened around the year 2000, when I was a young physician with the Indian Health Service on the Navajo Reservation. A Navajo man presented to clinic, initially having been feverish with severe muscle aches for several days. Later he developed progressively worsening shortness of breath, which prompted him to seek our attention.
His chest X-ray showed a pattern consistent with diffuse bilateral pulmonary edema - fluid throughout both lungs. It was springtime, and he had been cleaning out a mouse-infested shed several days before, sweeping and vacuuming mouse droppings in the process. I cannot claim that I made the diagnosis. An older, more experienced physician, who had seen one or two similar cases of Hantavirus in the past, recognized the cause.
#3
Why must we be burdened with Big Pharma financial outcomes and government subterfuge? Why can't we have more stories about extra-terrestrial life and alien encounters ?
#4
It certainly seems that the Democrats are trying to re-create the conditions of the 2020 elections to affect the midterms.
They really do have a very limited playbook.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
05/12/2026 6:17 Comments ||
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#5
Tedros is a funny character. Tried to grab control too early. He doesn’t understand his cues. They needed more media build up.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
05/12/2026 6:22 Comments ||
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#6
Hantavirus and, literally, the Black Plague are endemic to the four corner area, CO, NM, AZ and UT (the Navajo reservation is in that region). Here's an old idea. Keep your cities clean and free of rodents (aka basic civilization).
#7
I'll worry about this as much as COVID, none. I don't sleep around rat shit. But I never saw a crack head die from COVID. Everyone wants all this healthcare, but it seems the more pills they shove down ppls throats the more things that are wrong with them.
Posted by: chris ||
05/12/2026 7:30 Comments ||
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#8
My understanding is that Patient Zero was a birdwatcher who visited a big-ass landfill in Argentina where he contracted the Andes hantavirus strain. So bioweapon, no.
Are the usual Big Pharma grifters and friends trying to get in the game? Of course.
#15
Plague is a bacterial disease. Hantavirus is a virus, the name should give a clue.
What's next, Rocky Mountain Spotted fever was a bio-weapon too? And Trump is about to unveil the secret lizardmen who have been running the world and Lord Rothschild really is one and then he flys off in his UFO which makes 90 degree turns at high speed?
Alex Jones and the KKK have better conspiracy theories.
[NY Post] Insty's take. I tend to agree, so feel free to accuse me of being a fanboi, I guess
... maybe we should start comparing him to Gen. Winfield Scott.
In the mid-19th century, Scott was America’s preeminent military mind, the architect of victory in the Mexican War and the “Grand Old Man of the Army.”
As the Civil War loomed, he developed a plan to defeat the Confederacy with the smallest number of casualties possible.
He called it the Anaconda Plan — and like its namesake it was about applying a squeeze, and squeezing hard, until its object was squeezed to death.
Rather than winning a single decisive battle or a series of major confrontations, Scott wanted to cut the Confederacy in two by seizing control of the Mississippi River, while choking off the South’s foreign trade — upon which it was enormously dependent for both money and materiel — with a naval blockade of its Atlantic and Gulf ports.
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/12/2026 00:00 ||
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[1762 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Iran
[IsraelNationalNews] President Donald Trump understands the Iranian threat far better than many previous American administrations did. His willingness to confront Tehran economically and strategically represented a major departure from years of diplomatic wishful thinking and dangerous illusions. His understanding of Israel’s strategic reality has also been unmatched by any modern American president.
Yet even strong leadership may still face a deeper problem - one rooted not in military weakness, but in a fundamental mismatch between how democratic societies and revolutionary ideological regimes think, calculate, and define rational behavior.
For decades, American policymakers have approached Iran largely through the lens of Western logic. They assume economic pressure eventually forces compromise. They assume populations reject prolonged hardship. They assume governments ultimately prioritize prosperity, stability, and the survival of their citizens over ideological confrontation.
These assumptions are deeply rooted in Western political culture. In democratic societies, leaders remain accountable to voters whose daily lives directly influence political survival. Economic pain creates political pressure. Prolonged instability becomes a domestic liability. Election cycles impose urgency. Public opinion matters.
Iran understands this extremely well.
The Iranian regime has spent decades studying the behavior of Western democracies. It understands that administrations change every few years. Policies shift. Coalitions weaken. Public attention drifts. Economic discomfort generates political pressure. Democracies naturally seek normalization and stability because prolonged uncertainty exhausts both governments and voters.
Iran’s leadership, however, operates according to a very different strategic framework.
In my first economics course many years ago, the professor emphasized a foundational assumption behind modern economic theory: human beings behave rationally in pursuit of self-interest. Remove this assumption, and much of classical economic modeling collapses.
Western diplomacy often extends a similar assumption to geopolitics. American negotiators frequently assume that all nations ultimately seek prosperity, stability, and the avoidance of catastrophic risk because such behavior appears rational through a Western cost-benefit lens.
But revolutionary ideological regimes may define rationality very differently.
What Washington interprets as unbearable pressure, Tehran may interpret as the acceptable cost of long-term ideological endurance. What America sees as dangerous escalation, Iran may see as strategic persistence. What democratic societies experience as exhaustion, revolutionary regimes may experience as sacrifice in pursuit of historical or religious objectives.
This does not necessarily make Iran irrational within its own framework. It means the framework itself is fundamentally different from the assumptions guiding much of Western strategic thinking.
That difference repeatedly produces Western surprise.
American policymakers often assume that sufficient economic or military pressure will eventually force Tehran toward compromise because that is what rational cost-benefit analysis predicts in democratic systems. Yet Iran has repeatedly demonstrated willingness to absorb sanctions, isolation, economic suffering, internal unrest, and prolonged confrontation while continuing to pursue long-term strategic objectives.
This is precisely where the strategic asymmetry emerges.
America negotiates within political timeframes measured in election cycles. Iran often negotiates within ideological timeframes measured in decades.
America seeks resolution. Iran often seeks endurance.
While Washington increasingly worries about the Strait of Hormuz, oil prices, shipping disruptions, and the immediate economic consequences of regional instability - with uranium enrichment, inspections, and diplomatic deadlines now becoming only one part of a much broader concern - Tehran has steadily expanded its strategic leverage far beyond the nuclear issue itself.
Iran understands that it does not need to sustain a permanent closure of the Strait of Hormuz in order to exert enormous global pressure. Even temporary instability, rising insurance costs, shipping uncertainty, and oil price spikes may be sufficient to generate political and economic shockwaves throughout democratic societies highly sensitive to short-term economic pain.
Oil prices, regional proxy networks, missile capabilities, drone warfare, cyber operations, and strategic uncertainty have all become interconnected tools within a broader long-term pressure architecture.
Tehran understands that democratic societies may tolerate distant strategic threats for long periods, but economic pain at the gas pump produces immediate political consequences. Iran does not need to defeat America militarily in order to exert enormous global influence. It only needs to maintain enough regional leverage to create persistent instability, economic anxiety, and political pressure inside democratic societies already vulnerable to internal division and short-term political thinking.
This is not an argument against democracy. Democracies possess enormous strengths: innovation, economic power, military capability, openness, and resilience. But democracies also struggle with long-term strategic continuity because leadership changes frequently and public tolerance for prolonged confrontation is limited.
Iran’s leadership understands these structural realities remarkably well.
Perhaps the greatest danger is not merely that Iran understands America remarkably well.
The greater danger may be that America still fundamentally misunderstands the nature of the regime it is confronting - a regime that does not necessarily calculate costs, risks, endurance, and sacrifice according to the assumptions embedded within Western democratic thinking. Think of this that way: "is it possible to achieve compromise with Democrats?"
Posted by: Grom the Affective ||
05/12/2026 00:00 ||
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#1
The difference is the US is trying to get it's way.
Iran is trying to survive.
Different cost/benefit analysis.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
05/12/2026 10:34 Comments ||
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#3
The Mad Mullahs, like Hamas and Hezbollah, are trying to remain in power. If they lose control, they’ll either have to join Bashar al Assad in Moscow or the’ll join Muammar Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein in Jahannam.
#4
a foundational assumption behind modern economic theory: human beings behave rationally in pursuit of self-interest.
A more modern Game Theory version of that statement is: human beings behave rationally in pursuit of their self-interestas they see it. Rationality is not some shining city-on-a-hill concept that everyone agrees on. Each player has their own set of payoffs.
Take Iranian nukes. The IRGC sees them as a highly-desirable necessity. Trump takes the opposite view, seeing them as a waiting existential danger. Both sides are strongly committed to their positions. This is why there will be another round of war unless the other Iranian factions can get the IRGC under control, an unlikely event unless something changes the internal power balance.
tl;dr: The IRGC still have the guns. Go ahead and pencil in Bridges and Power Plants Day on your calendar.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
In 2008 Joe Biden was Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, with oversight jurisdiction of the U.S State Dept., and by extension all foreign policy nominations etc.
