The Great Dipshit American War (in Iran)

Over the past week, my country has decided, foolishly, to attack Iran for reasons. What those reasons are, or what our goals are supposed to be, are entirely unclear. For certain, Iran has been involved in terrorism, its government is repressive and awful, and it is deeply unpopular in many parts of Iran as a whole. In fact, I first started using Twitter because Twitter was the best place to follow news of the Green Revolution during Obama's Administration.

But even during the Green Revolution, everyone with half a brain realized that American involvement in the Revolution was counter-productive. Iranians are patriots to their own country - a country, mind you, whose history goes back antiquity - and any outside influence in their politics would be seen negatively. And unlike a country like Iraq, who was dominated by one person and one family, the Iranian regime is deep, and has support in the rural areas of the country. 

The other aspect of why an invasion of Iran was never considered was because Iran, unlike Iraq or Afghanistan, is not completely an international pariah. While Iran certainly is not on friendly terms with a number of countries, there are countries out there that are willing to prop up the regime with material support. Specifically, Russia and the PRC have both stated that they will provide material support to Iran. And Russia has also apparently provided intelligence to Iran. In contrast, Iraq and Afghanistan were so isolated that no one (except for Pakistan to some degree) was willing to assist them when the US came knocking.

Now, this sort of material support is much more important than you may think. From what we have seen over the past 70 years of modern warfare is that smaller entities can survive the onslaught of superpowers if they can get material support from outside powers. The Russo-Ukraininian War that continues to rage has lasted as long as it has because Ukraine has been able to receive material support from Europe and the US (until Trump). The Soviet Afghan War lasted for 12 years, in part because of American material support. North Vietnam won the US Vietnamese War, in part, because it received material support from the Soviet Union and the PRC. And the Korean War, famously, was all but won until McArthur threatened the PRC. 

In other words, what every power has to do when bringing war is to make sure that the state it chooses to invade to be sufficiently cut-off from other powers. For the US, the fact that most countries in Latin America are too far from Russia or the PRC is useful in allowing the US to invade those countries with relative impunity. But anytime the US, or any other power, ends up invading a country that is willing and able to provide material support, the invaded country has the opportunity to wear down its invaders.

What's more, invading Iran itself has its own challenges. Its terrain is mountainous and it has a large population of over 93 million people. There are population centers, but the populations in those centers tends to be the most anti-regime. So, attacks on those population centers will only serve to turn those populations against invaders.

But of course, that's exactly what the US is doing. Worst yet, the military managed a decapitation strike, but killed the old guy (Khamenei) who was most likely to seek a quick end, and didn't follow up with an immediate invasion to use the chaos to its advantage. And, of course, the reliance on a decapitation strike also indicates the lack of understanding of how Iran works as a regime. Khamenei wasn't so much a dictator, as he was the aging head of an authoritarian regime. He wasn't the CEO, or COO, he was the Chairman of the Board. Iran is a complicated country, and it has a complicated government. 

Now, the new Supreme Leader is Khamenei's kid, who's (naturally) younger, more capable on running the day-to-day, and is now out for vengeance. As is the rest of the country because we didn't just kill Khamenei, but we bombed an elementary school for girls. All the while, our allies in Europe see every horror broadcast to them. 

But there's more - as we now see - Iran is eminently capable of disrupting oil production in the Middle East. So long as Iran can affect shipments out of the Strait of Hormuz, it can drive up oil prices. This benefits Russia (who relies on oil exports to float its economy), and it benefits China, who has invested heavily in renewable energy. In the meantime, those of us in the US are going to be hit with all the "fun" of a supply side shock - stagflation. All of these horrors should have been immediately obvious to anyone who's studied modern history and can read a fucking map. Neither of which are Trump's strong points.

Of course, it is entirely possible that Trump, finally understanding the risk caused by his idiocy, will stop short of a complete invasion. But the damage caused already will reverberate through the American economy and foreign policy for decades. 

That's why I can this the Great Dipshit American War. Because only a total dipshit would have gotten us into this mess in the first place. And Donald Trump is absolutely that dipshit.

Lastly, do I think that this war was caused by Trump's need to distract us from the Epstein Files? Yes and no. Trump needed a war, for certain. But this particular action was probably directed by Hegseth and Netanyahu, who talked Trump into this. Hegseth believes that the war will hasten the Rapture (which is not a thing, by the way), and Netanyahu needs Israel to remain in a state of war lest he be removed from office and sent off to prison for gross corruption. 

The Shocking Win that Wasn't Particularly Shocking

 In what some would classify as a surprise, Zohran Mamdani was elected yesterday as Mayor of New York. Mamdani is a Democratic Socialist (so part of Bernie Sanders' party, though Mamdani ran as a Democrat), espoused a whole raft of progressive and socialist policy plans, and has been public with his support for Palestine. His opponents included the former Governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, and the head of the Guardian Angels (a pseudo-vigilante/neighborhood watch group), Curtis Silwa. The current Mayor, Eric Adams, dropped out of the race a few months before the election as he is generally despised.

Now, as someone from Southern California, and as someone who has young children, I haven't really  followed the election in NYC all that closely. But my general take away is really this - if you take away Mamdani's ethnicity (Indian, born in Uganda, and Muslim) - there really isn't anything shocking about this election. With one exception that I will get into.

Here's why it wasn't that shocking. Mamdani's views and policies were based around the idea of making NYC more affordable and making public services more efficient. That's basic bread and butter stuff, and the anti-rich tilt he had is bound to be popular in a modern era where the gap between the wealthy and everyone else grows more and more each day. But rather than being just a policy guy, Mamdani is also a capable communicator. He's telegenic, and can deliver speeches with the same kind of emotional punch as Barack Obama. And not surprisingly, his campaign, knowing that Mamdani was their best asset, utilized social media, particularly short videos on TikTock, etc., to get his message out. So, Mamdani not only had a message that resonated with New Yorkers, but he also had an effective communication methodology. 

In contrast, his opponents neither had a good policy message for voters, nor were they particularly good at communicating those messages. Silwa, the Republican in the race, had a message that New Yorkers appreciated for its eccentricity, but not for the actual policies he espoused. 

Cuomo, meanwhile, ran a campaign on his experience, which makes sense on paper (he is the former Governor, after all, and was Secretary of Transportation under Clinton), but only allowed Mamdani to attack Cuomo on his failures while Governor. And as Cuomo had to resign in disgrace but a few years ago, there was a lot to attack. And Mamdani attacked that record savagely in every debate.

The only wildcard in the race were the plutocrats and billionaires who poured millions of dollars into the campaign on Cuomo's behalf. Meanwhile, Fox News devoted so much attention to the race, that people in Kentucky were contacting state and local officials IN KENTUCKY asking how to vote in the Mayoral elections in NYC. 

But all that attention - from the President (who endorsed Cuomo) on down - only existed to try to reverse the flow of gravity. And, in fact, it likely strengthened Mamdani's message, because Mamdani's campaign suddenly became part of the overall narrative of the 2025 elections (which almost uniformly went against Trump). It's in that context that I learned about this race. 

And it is because of that broader context that this local election provides consequences for the country as a whole. Let me give you one example: the Senate Minority Leader, Chuck Schumer, pointedly refused to endorse in this race, even though he represents New York in the Senate, is a resident of NYC, and Mamdani was the nominee of the Democratic Party (and was also featured in one of the Democratic Party's hype videos it aired yesterday), and was way ahead in all the polling. By every metric, Schumer's refusal to do endorse in this race was a disaster for him. The kind of disaster that could easily lead to a well-funded primary challenger. To stave off this outcome, Schumer will have to take a harder line in the negotiations on reopening the government.

Moreover, other Senators who favor fighting over caving to the GOP's demands on the budget can argue that yesterday's elections show that Trump and the Shutdown are highly unpopular (Trump recognizes this as well). Which means the Democratic Senators, for once, may not cave. Wonders will never cease, I know.

CalExit Part 2

Upon the election of Donald J. Trump for his first disastrous term, one idea that floated around was the secession of California from the Union. I wrote about it at the time here. Ultimately, the idea went nowhere because Californians are extremely patriotic people, and were at the core of the Democratic Party. Heck, Kamala Harris was Joe Biden's VP.

Now, 8 and half years later, as Trump 2.0 appears to be an even greater disaster than his first term, I am left to wonder about CalExit. There is a ballot initiative for secession which I believe is up for a vote in November of 2028. As things are currently going, I can see that ballot initiative doing better than most people expect.

And zooming out from the everyday politics, one thing we can see is that the history of American secession movements are quite strange. Secession movements happen in places that are far from are outside of the political centers, tend to generate a lot of tax revenue, and don't see that revenue come back in the form of beneficial spending. For example, Lombardy and Venezio were the major sources of tax revenue for the Hapsburg Empire in the early 19th Century. 1/3 of the total tax revenue for the entire Empire came from those regions. Ethnically, linguistically, and culturally, these regions were distinct from Vienna, and so the secession movements were not surprising. Similarly, the secession movements in Ireland, the 13 Colonies of the United States, Kashmir, the Soviet Republics, and most other secession movements follow the same pattern.

In the US, the secession by the Confederate states was so strange because rather than being far from the center of power, slave states literally surrounded Washington, D.C., and Southern politicians played prominent roles in American politics throughout the political history of the United States. And Southern states were tax generators, federal spending was so low in the Antebellum period that there was no significant tax burden from the federal government anywhere. So, it really was all about slavery.

But looking at California in 2025, California is exactly the sort of place where a secession movement would grow. California is a net generator of taxes - meaning Californians pay $80 billion more in taxes than the state receives back in federal funding. With Trump threatening to withhold all federal funding from California (well, not all of it, as there are significant military bases here, and the federal government owns most of the top third of the state), that number will grow larger.

It's also clear that Trump's isolationist policies hurt a number of Californian businesses which rely on both foreign labor (either factories abroad, or direct hire of foreign workers), and exports. It doesn't help that Trump has also directly threatened companies like Apple. Further, Trump's policy of deporting workers who have deep ties to the community (and not the "gang members" he promised), has only served to stoke anger here. That certainly has been amplified with the arrest of the President of the SEIU, the largest and most politically active labor union in California, and the recent protests in LA, which Trump has further inflamed by nationalizing the National Guard and sending in troops.

In short, the conditions are looking more and more ripe for a significant secession movement in California. Given the tremendous importance California has for the United States as a whole, it's highly unlikely we would be let go peacefully. All of which, at the end of the day, means that the next four years in California are not going to be great. 

It's Not About Politics

 For the second time in 8 years, the United States has elected Donald Trump to be our President. This time, of course, was significantly worse, as Trump won both the popular vote and the electoral college after his former staff members stated he was a fascists, a want-to-be dictator, and who is advocating for the forced removal of people he deems to be illegal immigrants. In the meantime, the people around him are advocating for a nationwide abortion ban, but also a nationwide ban on women traveling across state lines, have taken strong anti-LGBTQ positions, and have advocated the use of the military to put down protests.

Now, I say all this because I know a lot of people have viewed this election through the lens of normal politics. And, of course you have, because media outlets like the Washington Post, the New York Times, CNN, etc., have spent the past 10 years sanitizing what Donald Trump has been saying. They correct his grammar, try to make his nonsensical statements make sense, and then utilize the "both sides" approach to make his statements sound like politics as usual. They aren't.

No, Donald Trump - or rather the people around Donald Trump - want to actually hurt people. A lot. The last time Trump was President, he scooped up people seeking to legally immigrate into the United States into camps, and tore children from their parents. Immigration lawyers were literally having to represent children as young as 18 months old in immigration proceedings. To date, not all of those kids have been reunited with their families. The reason to do this was simple - to be as cruel as possible.

So, it is not beyond the question that a President who as absolute immunity, like Trump, who no longer has people around him that will contain his worst impulses, will expand his cruelty to whomever displeases him. And, as he has shown in the past, he will take actions against the families of those who displease him.

In that sense, my despair isn't about politics. It's not about the government pursuing the wrong policies, or imposing taxes I don't like. Politics is fun, rollicking, and free-wheeling. It's backrooms and deals, and walking door to door and designing nasty hit pieces you will never use, and sign wars, and chants and songs and ribbons and buttons and America at its best. None of my despair is due to my team losing.

My despair is about the people who will be hurt. My friends who are transgender, my family members in the LGBTQ community, my neighbors whose skin color isn't the "appropriate shade," my daughters who will have no legal rights soon enough, and for my community. People are going to get hurt. Families will be torn apart, and people will be sent to prison for not fully backing Trump. My despair isn't about politics, it's based on an honest fear about the future.

For those of you who fall into the "other categories" - start making your escape plan now. At minimum, plan to get to one of the blue states. But also plan on leaving the country. If you don't already, get a passport, and save up as much cash as possible for your getting out of Dodge ASAP fund. And plan 2 or 3 different routes, just in case. 

For those of you who think you are in the clear, remember that your safety and well-being is only guaranteed if you are useful to Trump Administration. This is true for all fascist regimes. If you find yourself on the outs of what's useful for any reason, your life will be forfeit. For your sakes, I hope you remain useful or are lucky enough to not be affected. I doubt it though.

On that point, it is likely that JD Vance will attempt to kick Trump out of office by way of the 25th Amendment. When that happens, be very careful who you support. The winner of that conflict will punish the supporters of the loser.  

Going to Sicily - Rumination on Immigration and Loss (Part 7 of 7)

Understandably, my last few posts were retrospective. But here is where I want to think about the future. The contacts I made last month are the sort of contacts that would be unforgivable to forget. So, what can I do about the future?

Obviously, one of the next steps is to try and make visits to Troina and Sicily more often. As I said, flying from the midwest or NYC is definitely easier than flying out of San Diego. Luckily, I am often in Chicago thanks to my wife's family. And she wants to go to Ireland next. With Catania being a relatively short flight from Ireland, we could do both, possibly. I think she'll like Troina. As will my other daughters when they get old enough.

Next, I want to make sure that each and every person we met in Sicily knows they are welcome to come to visit us. While most of you, if you manage to come out this way, stop in New York, I would suggest you come and see me in San Diego. At minimum, you too can experience the strange sensation of traveling thousands of miles to see land that is almost exactly like the land you just left. While you are here, I owe several of you pizza and lots of drinks. Luckily, we plenty of breweries, wineries, and distilleries to assist in that endeavor. Also we have tacos, which you must try.

I also would like to help the Troinese get in contact with people here. For instance, both Southern California and inland Sicily face water shortages due to drought. And while San Diego has more than its fair share of problems, our water has been managed shockingly well. In the last bad drought, which lasted over six years, our reservoirs were at 90% capacity when the rains finally came. In addition, and this goes out to Guisy and her father, I have a friend in Elizabeth Harris who used to own several bakeries. A Cross-Atlantic cultural exchange could be mutually beneficial. Or not. But I'd love to help exchanges like that.

That's long-term of course. In the near term, I can take advantage of the fact that San Diego and Troina have similar weather and vegetation. For instance, I mentioned that we ate cookies that had a "fig" filling. That is not actually true. The filling is made from prickly pears. The kind that grow wild here and can be found in every grocery store in Southern California. I am going to make vastedda more often, and think of seeing all of you. 

Going to Sicily - Rumination on Immigration and Loss (Part 6 of 7)

 If you will note based on the title, I think I am going to stop this series as seven posts. This post will be about my visits with family, and the next post will be about my hopes for the future. 

To reiterate, my daughter and I travelled to Sicily, and flew into Catania. We managed to get some sight-seeing in, but she was very jetlagged. I, weirdly, was not. After a day in Catania, we drove out to Troina. I would not recommend anyone drive in Catania if possible, but if you do, you will know that you can handle just about anything. 

Upon checking in, I was told by the front desk that I had an appointment to meet the mayor at 11 a.m. the next day, that I should absolutely not miss it. I was also advised to contact Basilio Arona. That evening I learned that driving in Troina at night can be a bit harrowing, and managed to scrape up my rental car when driving through a too narrow corner (I had about 1/2 inch of clearance). But with the help of locals, I managed to make my way up to the square, and saw the World War 1 memorial with the names of people we were sure were relatives. 

The next day, the professor arrived. As I noted earlier, Basilio is the town's historian, and absolutely passionate about Troina and it's history. As we talked, he provided me with a booklet describing the family history, who my great-grandparents' family members were, and who were surviving members of the family. And then he confirmed that, yes, a number of my relatives died in World War 1, including my great-great-uncle. 

As an aside, the history of World War 1 makes it absolutely clear that the Italian officer core, particularly the generals, were completely incompetent and got millions of their countrymen killed. This was done through multiple FRONTAL ASSAULTS on Austrian entrenched positions IN THE ALPS. But, again, my family were peasants, and probably disposable in the minds of these incompetent buffoons. My great-great uncle died in the Battle of Caporetto.

Now, we finally made it to the Troina town center, and got to visit the mayor. Now, I had no expectations of this meeting. Having worked in politics, I assumed that it would be a photo op, and a handshake. But given my luck with mayors (hi Todd!), I should probably have expected more. What we got was a family reunion overseen by Basilio Arona and the mayor, Alfio Giachino, and the entire city council. This was a not a short meet and greet either, but a legit two hours of the mayor's time, followed by lunch, and seeing the homes of my great-grandparents. 

And while there was a language barrier, these individuals were definitely our relatives. You know how I said that my oldest daughter was the most Italian looking? As it turns out, my assumption was wrong. I saw my middle child's face in a number of my Sicilian relatives. And her eyes, and those of my youngest daughter, are definitely Troinese. 

Had the trip ended at that moment, I think I would have been happy. This was the moment of connection that all of us had traveled all the way to Sicily to have. And while we were complete aliens (my Italian pronuciation and grammar was judged highly, but my vocabulary is bad), this was a place we can go, and point to a house and say, we are from here. This is where we are from, and these are our people. A family trauma that has begun to heal.

But, of course, we did more while in Troina. As it turns out, one of my cousins and his daughter own a bakery called "La Bonta del Fornaio" - which translates to "The bounty of the oven." On Saturday evening we went to the bakery to meet with our cousins and try the local delicacies. Of particular note were the cookies made with a "fig" filling (more on that in the next post), and cannoli made with a baked shell instead of a fried shell. Absolutely delicious. 

We also had pizza at the bakery. I mention this in a separate paragraph because I did not grow up near my grandparents and didn't get to see them that often when I was growing up. So, the one lasting memory I have of my grandmother was her making pizza on Christmas Eve. This was the family tradition of making and eating pizza every year on Christmas Eve, and so, what could be more fitting for a meeting with her relatives than eating pizza? But interestingly enough, the pizza we ate at the bakery is a completely different style from the pizza she made. And like those of us who grew up in the United States only speaking English, and our cousins only speaking Italian, the crossing of distance has not ended all barriers. But we're closer now than we have been in some time.

The next day, we met with more relatives. This time, it was the grandchildren of my great-grandmother's favorite sister, who my great grandmother named my grandmother after. Here again, we were struck by familial resemblances. Our cousin Elvira was a dead ringer for my great aunt Marie, and her grandchildren (who were with us) immediately started bawling at seeing someone who looked just like their grandmother. 

While there were other experiences, it was these moments that stuck with me. Meeting and being with family, the irrepressible Basilio Arona, walking the streets where my ancestors walked. We are a family somewhat reunited (we still have Argentinian cousins out there).

Going to Sicily - Rumination on Immigration and Loss (Part 5 of ???)

The scene of our great return to Sicily is almost set. But there is one more important piece: social media. As much as I despise a lot of what Facebook does (installing analytics to spy on its users even when they aren't using Facebook, rigging the analytics to incite people to, in at least one instance, genocide, and whatnot), I have to admit that without the connections I made through Facebook in particular, this trip would not be nearly as successful as it was.

The lynchpin to this trip was my connection to Basilio Arona. He is the town historian for Troina, and more. If any of you reading this remember me through the Italian House days at William & Mary, Basilio reminds me a lot of Professor Triolo, but with a beard, and with a deep passion for very specific topics. 

And for Basilio, that topic is the one I've been thinking about since I visited Troina - the trauma and loss caused by the Italian diaspora at the end of the 19th Century and into the 20th Century. For a quick refresher, Italian emigration was more or less around a couple of thousand people annually until the Unification. Then it exploded. All in all something like 16 million Italians left Italy between 1880 and 1917. That diaspora did not affect all if Italy equally. Instead, most of the population who left Italy were from the former Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (which is basically southern Italy). While a good percentage of Sicilians went to the United States, just as many immigrated to Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Mexico.*

(*A quick sidenote that may only interest me: in most of the countries where there is a significant population of people of Italian descent, there are tons of restaurants that serve the local version of Italian food. That has created new cuisines, such as Italian American cuisine, Italian Argentinian cuisine, etc. But the one place where this has not really happened is in Mexico. There was an Italian restaurant in Tijuana that created the Caesar salad, but one could argue that restaurant catered to Americans. In terms of everyday cuisine, it does not appear that Italian immigrants made any impact at all).

For a city like Troina, that was isolated in the mountains, where the locals had to work together to survive, the loss of even a few people would have been traumatic. And here, over a million and a half Sicilians emigrated between 1890 and 1917 - roughly 1/4 of the overall population. And that's leaving Italy altogether. There was likely another million Sicilians who moved to Northern Italy. Not because Sicily was a bad place, but because they were destitute. And so, the trauma suffered by those immigrants and their families back home must have been devastating. It is an intergenerational trauma that my family and I share. 

That's why, for as long as I can remember, so many in my family have tried to remember where we came from, who are relatives where, what they ate (or currently eat), and what they wear. In my life, I studied Italian in college, and lived in the Italian Language House for two of my four years in hopes of catching a glimpse of what was lost. And I don't know of any member of my extended family who doesn't do the same.

Basilio's hope, through his Troinese del Mondo Facebook group (it roughly translates to "People of Troina from around the world), is to connect the immigrants who left Troina (and their descendants), with the families left behind. I joined the group about a year or so ago. In fact, Basilio's great uncle was on the same boat to the US as my great-grandparents. So, this is just as personal for him as it is for me. 

Now, I didn't quite know all this before going to Troina, but knowing how to use social media, and knowing we wanted to connect with our family in Sicily, I posted the details of the visit on the Troinese del Mondo page. My cousin Zelinda Trovato (my great-grandfather's brother's granddaughter) did me a solid and immediately acknowledged that yes, my family was from Troina. Basilio then contacted me through Facebook messenger, asking about various aspects of the family, which I responded to.

That set in motion a whole series of events of which I was completely unaware of, but got a lot of credit for. Basilio worked hard on finding out who my great-grandparents were based on the information I provided him, and then contacted the surviving family members. The mayor sent me an invite to come and visit city hall when we got in. And plans were made. In the meantime, I put together a t-shirt for the family to wear. I sent around the mark-up as a rough draft, but then everyone started ordering the t-shirts and we were off.