The Washington Post polled American opinion on a U. S. attack on Iran:

What do Americans think about the possibility of launching U.S. airstrikes against Iran, which President Donald Trump threatened this week unless the country dismantles its nuclear program? The Washington Post texted more than 1,000 people on Wednesday to ask.

The poll finds Americans opposing U.S. airstrikes against Iran by a 20 percentage-point margin — 45 percent to 25 percent — with a sizable 30 percent saying they are unsure.

In no group that the WaPo sampled did a majority of those polled favor a U. S. military response against Iran. Not Democrats (by a large margin). Not Republicans. Not independents. Not veterans. Not non-veterans.

Only 7% thought that Iran’s nuclear development program is not a threat to the U. S. at all and nearly 2/3s think that Iran’s program is either “an immediate and serious threat” or a “somewhat serious threat”.

With his characteristic analytic rigor Tomas Pueyo considers why Israel is attacking Iran now rather than earlier or later:

Israel attacked Iran because it believed Iran was close to getting a nuclear weapon, and that threatened Israel’s existence.

But why does Iran want to eliminate Israel?
Was it close to developing a nuclear weapon?
Why did Israel attack now? Why not earlier or later?
Was there any other way?
What does all this say about the outcome of the war?

After a detailed account of the actions of the Shah, he summarizes:

This is not an exhaustive list, but you can see the pattern: An elitist, pro-Western, anti-Islamic leader, propped up by the US, initially succeeded in modernizing the economy, but hit some roadblocks and didn’t act decisively, letting the opposition take over.

That is followed by an analysis of the anti-U. S. stance of the present regime, the anti-Israel stance of the present regime, and whether Iran has been developing a nuclear weapon. Here’s his summary of that:

So Was Iran pursuing an actual bomb? Well:

• It was opening another enrichment sites in an undisclosed place
• It was likely hiding three more nuclear sites
• It had enough enriched uranium for 9-10 bombs, which is not for nuclear energy
• It was accelerating its uranium enrichment
• It was uncooperative with the IAEA
• It was developed a form of metallic uranium that is only useful for nuclear bombs

which comports with my view. He characterizes the U. S. view as “naive”. He concludes by speculating that Israel attacked now because a) it was ready and b) its intelligence assets within Iran were receiving increased scrutiny.

I encourage you to read the whole thing.

I have only one conjecture to add. One of the things that might have affected the apparent lack of readiness of Iran’s air defenses is the large number of air force officers who were murdered in the early years of the mullahocracy. They numbered in the hundreds or even thousands. Those are the men who would have been responsible for formulating Iran’s air defense posture and those who replaced them were not as capable or well-trained.

Every year ’round about this time give or take the Social Security trustees provide their annual report. Sometimes they have good news. Others, like this year, they have bad news reports Julie Zauzmer Weil at the Washington Post:

The trust funds for Social Security and Medicare will run out of money in less than a decade, according to a report released Wednesday, as the programs’ trustees warned that the funds’ depletion date is significantly closer than predicted a year ago.

If Congress does not overhaul the programs’ financing, automatic cuts will slash Social Security benefits by 23 percent and Medicare hospital benefits by 11 percent in 2033, the report said.

Read the whole thing. My prediction is that Congress will not overhaul Social Security and Medicare until it’s absolutely necessary which will be too late to do much about it. As I’ve said before my proposals for reforming those systems are:

1. Make all wage income subject to Social Security withholding
2. Reform the retirement ages to make the actuarial assumptions resemble those at the inception of the plan more closely

To those I believe that employers should be required to report how many jobs they are outsourcing and pay a tax of roughly 30% of the gross to make domestic jobs more competitive with offshore employees. I don’t know who first made the wisecrack. I’ve heard it attributed to Joe Kennedy, father of JFK, Bobby, and Teddy:

When my shoeshine boy was giving me stock tips I knew it was time to get out of the market.

Offshore outsourcing isn’t just for enterprise-sized companies anymore. Even very small companies are offshoring software development these days. When a $10 million company is offshoring jobs, it’s time to start keeping track of the practice and controlling it.

I don’t think that the Iranian regime is nearly as shaky as some seem to believe and I also don’t believe that the Israelis are in nearly as strong a position as some seem to be claiming.

With respect to the mullahocracy, I suspect its support remains quite strong among the rural and urban poor. Yes, they’ve taken substantial losses of leadership personnel. I have no idea how deep their “bench” is.

And with respect to Israel I have no idea how many offensive and defensive weapons remain in their arsenal. A serious depletion of the missiles that constitute their “Iron Dome” would have dire implications. Neither they nor we can replenish them particularly quickly. The advantage they have there is that the Iranians’ inventory is being depleted too and it can’t be replenished particularly quickly, either.

What I do know is that we have a recent history of underestimating the staying power of our opponents.

Please don’t construe this post as my declaring defeat. As the title of this post indicates, I’m asking a question rather than making a claim. The more opinion pieces I read that say the Iranian regime is on the verge of collapse the more I suspect propaganda at work.

In a piece at Liberal Patriot John Halpin reproduces a graph illustrating some things that 80% of Americans believe in:

Examining a range of polling from the past few years and trying my best to use reputable polls and exclude ones by activist groups pushing questionable opinion data to defend their issue, I put together this table below showing the contours of what public agreement among eight in ten Americans looks like on basic tests of supporting or favoring various policies. This exercise does not include other areas of potential 80 percent consensus, such as desiring less divisive politics in America or viewing the economy as the most important priority—clearly things most people would like to see their government focus on.

and here’s the table:

I can’t honestly say that I support all of those but I do support the majority of the items with 80% support. In fairness I suspect that were one to change the phrasing or narrow some of those items extremely slightly they would garner less support.

It does bring up a question, however. Why don’t either of our major political parties support all of those measures? Here’s my guess. Their donors and activists don’t support them.

I encourage you to read Yascha Mounk’s consideration of whether the United States is headed towards dictatorship. I think he has a number of thought-provoking observations. Here’s his conclusion:

So: Is America about to turn into a dictatorship? Not today. Not tomorrow. But the danger is real. And the ultimate outcome, far from being predetermined, may not be knowable for decades to come.

Ask me again in ten years.

For some reason everything seems to remind me of Tom Wolfe these days. For example, here’s what Tom Wolfe said about fascism in America:

The dark night of fascism is always descending in the United States and yet lands only in Europe.

I think there’s a reason for that. America is an outlier. Freedom of speech, religion, the press, etc. are more extreme here than in the United Kingdom, in France, in Germany, or anywhere in Europe. Historically, that has been one of our strengths. China seems to be using them against us these days.

I know I don’t entirely understand Trump and think he puzzles Dr. Mounk as well but I think he understands part of his appeal: he’s a populist. Full stop.

I would like to offer some additional thoughts about the Trump phenomenon. I think he’s a vision of things to come. He’s the first truly post-literate president. As I have mentioned in my many posts on the subject of what I have called “visualcy”, the brains of pre-literate and post-literate people are structured and work differently than those of literate people. Let me summarize.

Literacy is inherently linear in nature and it promotes thinking in abstractions. In pre-literate and, I believe, post-literate cultures people do not turn to books for knowledge. They rely on experts and visual sources of information In a literate culture public communication is abstract and literary. In a post-literate culture it is less logical, more emotional, and more extreme.

Trump exemplifies that beautifully. He is not an abstract thinker. His communication is emotional and extreme. I suspect his highly transactional approach can be related to that as well.

I’m seeing a rash of articles this morning complaining about emerging Israeli regional hegemony. Nothing could be more absurd or farther from reality.

It may be that some Israelis long for such an outcome. It maybe that nothing short of regional hegemony will give some Israelis the security they want. Let me remind you that Israel is a tiny country the size of New Jersey and smaller than some of our counties without natural resources.

Israel may be able to destroy Iran’s warmaking capability. It may be able to destroy its nuclear program although I doubt its ability to do even that. Conquering Iran is beyond its competence. Iran is too big and too isolated by its ring of mountains. That’s why conquering the Persians eluded the Romans for 1,500 years.

The reasons for the Israelis’ success against Iran are:

1. U. S. support
2. Some very smart very capable Israelis who are afraid of their neighbors for reasons based on experience and willing to devote the resources to doing something about it.
3. General Iranian incompetence or perhaps overconfidence.

So, what are the Arabs and Iranians who are writing these jeremiads afraid of?

At Time Miranda Jeyaretnam reports on the multiple bipartisan efforts in Congress to limit the president’s warmaking authority. Here’s a snippet:

Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) announced plans to introduce a resolution on Tuesday that asserts the requirement of Congress’ approval if Trump wants to commit armed forces to military action in the region.

“This is not our war. But if it were, Congress must decide such matters according to our Constitution,” Massie posted on X.

The resolution has already gained the support of progressive Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who replied “Signing on” to Massie’s post.

It’s also not the first proposal by a lawmaker seeking to limit U.S. military engagement in the conflict.

I sincerely hope that the Congress acts on this matter with some sense of urgency rather than its ordinary, leisurely pace. Such a move is long overdue and it looks like it took their corporate uncertainty about Trump to rouse them from their accustomed lethargy. There are many more similar actions that need congressional attention.

The man suspect of murdering a Minnesota state representative and her husband and two other individuals has been arrested by Minnesota law enforcement. Nathan Layne and Tom Polansek report at Reuters:

MINNEAPOLIS, June 15, (Reuters) – A massive two-day manhunt ended on Sunday with the arrest of Vance Boelter, 57, for allegedly killing a Minnesota Democratic state lawmaker and her husband while posing as a police officer, Governor Tim Walz said.

Boelter allegedly shot dead Melissa Hortman, the top Democrat in the Minnesota House, and her husband, Mark, in their home on Saturday – a crime Governor Tim Walz characterized as a “politically motivated assassination.”

This whole matter has been horrid and reprehensible. One of the things that has struck me is the pains to which both Democrats and Republicans have gone to cast political blame for the crime on the other side. Can’t we just acknowledge that these murders are horrible and unjustified and leave it at that? We’ll know more about it soon enough.