He seeks future peace through present strength.

Ever since Iran’s “Islamic Revolution” succeeded in erecting a theocratic regime whose leaders condemn America as the “Great Satan,” call for “death to America,” and kill American soldiers, a question has hung in the air: How many years would the United States tolerate an Islamic dictatorship that murders American citizens, threatens America’s economic interests, and annually celebrates having held fifty-two Americans hostage for four hundred and forty-four days by burning American flags? The answer might be forty-seven.

As is his wont, President Trump appears to be grabbing the status quo by its ear and squeezing it as it squeals in pain.  The theocratic police state that has brutally run Iran for nearly a half-century has also financed, provided material support for, and carried out more acts of terrorism around the world than any other nation.  Iran’s agents have murdered civilians on every populated continent and murdered members of America’s Armed Forces on both land and sea.  Iran’s Islamic terrorists don’t build; they bury roadside bombs meant to mangle the bodies of unfortunate travelers.  Iran’s Islamic terrorists don’t support free trade; they seize private maritime vessels and mine international shipping lanes.  Iran’s Islamic terrorists don’t seek peace; they demand the nuclear destruction of Israel and the United States.

President Obama begged the Iranians for mercy by conceding to the terrorist regime’s every demand in a lopsided nuclear “deal,” handing the Islamic theocrats billions of dollars in cash, and betraying American victims of Iranian terrorism whose court judgments have never been satisfied.  The Obama and Biden administrations were so desperate to prop up Iran’s Islamic tyrants that the Democrats bent over backwards to appease terrorists who celebrate the slaughter of Americans. 

President Trump has chosen a different path.  In the forty-seventh year of a destructive Islamic terror-state, America’s forty-seventh president has decided that governments celebrating the deaths of Americans should not be allowed to exist.  Trump gave Iran’s “Supreme Leader” Ali Khamenei numerous chances to submit to American demands.  Khamenei chose “death to America,” so now Khamenei is dead.  This continues a trend in American military posture over the last several months.  After giving Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro the chance to choose exile (an opportunity he refused), President Trump snatched him up in the middle of the night and likely ended twenty-seven years of communist rule in one of the Western Hemisphere’s most important countries.  By quarantining the waters around Cuba and preventing oil shipments from reaching the island nation, President Trump’s actions may lead to the collapse of a communist regime that has been in power for sixty-seven years.  When Trump’s carrots don’t work, he pulls out big sticks.

From a position that prioritizes America’s strategic interests, these actions were long overdue.  After all, it has always been a bit incongruous for the United States to project “superpower” and “unipolar” strength, while appearing seemingly incapable of squashing Iran’s Islamic terrorists or the advance of communist regimes within America’s own backyard.

As the world changes quickly and likely becomes more dangerous for the foreseeable future, President Trump has decided that it’s time to “settle all family business.”  That famous movie line — from Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola’s masterpiece The Godfather — seems appropriate for these circumstances.  In the film, Al Pacino’s Mafia don utters it after having successfully taken revenge against every party that had ever injured his family.  Today, America’s “Don” is patiently, methodically, and strategically doing the same thing.  Although his political enemies have abused the “justice” system to investigate him frivolously, secure improper convictions, and tarnish his reputation, President Trump is no criminal.  But he is a bit of a “gangster,” in the sense that he knows how to use America’s reputation for strength in a way that protects American lives.  When America’s enemies consider harming Americans away from home, they must now look up the street to see if President “Don” is already swinging his nail-spiked bat.  Unlike some of his invertebrate predecessors, Trump understands that effective deterrence requires the biggest, baddest dude on the block to deliver an occasional beating. 

While President Trump’s warnings to Venezuela, Cuba, and Iran have not been mere bluster, his actions against those countries’ leaders are not the products of mindless rage either.  Look around at where the world is heading.  Whether we are ready for it or not, the global technology landscape is rapidly changing.  The era of Artificial Intelligence is here, and it will likely change everything.  Not only are we already seeing how AI will replace human jobs in almost every professional field, but also we have begun to see how AI will dramatically reshape the battlefield.  Reports indicate that AI may have assisted Delta Force operatives in their mission to extract Maduro from his heavily fortified Caracas compound.  AI-operated “drone swarms” have hunted targets in Russia and Ukraine.  AI systems are already curating online information, policing social media platforms, and assisting in state-directed information warfare.  The U.S. Department of War is integrating AI across military platforms. 

As U.S. military planners quickly adapt to technological innovation in order to stay ahead of enemies and adversaries around the world, long-term strategic worries mount.  Can the advantages of AI be effectively corralled, or will AI also become an effective and deadly tool for hostile regimes?  One of the lessons learned during the War in Ukraine has been that relatively inexpensive drones can cause colossal damage to weapons systems that cost billions of dollars.  If guerrilla insurgents (or rogue regimes or terrorists) with minimal resources can inflict tremendous damage upon superior fighting forces, then the limitations of asymmetric warfare go out the window.  If AI proliferates across the globe, then presumably nuclear proliferation follows, too.  We are heading toward a future when AI, drones, and even inexpensive autonomous robots will likely minimize the disparate military lethality of poor and wealthy nations.  

With such an unpredictable future headed our way, President Trump is settling the American family’s past business before old foes have a chance to transform into something even more threatening.  He is urgently addressing American vulnerabilities around the world.  His actions reveal intent to prepare for the worst-case scenarios rapidly heading our way.  His attack on Iran should be seen through this lens.

Consider the geopolitical chess moves that President Trump has made in his first year back in office.  He has reasserted the Monroe Doctrine and is actively building “Fortress America” in the Western hemisphere.  He is strengthening economic and military alliances with regional powers such as Japan, India, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Argentina, Poland, and Hungary.  He is working to neutralize hostile regimes that threaten global fuel supplies and international shipments.  He is expanding American control over regions of the world with abundant supplies of hydrocarbon energies and other natural resources that have become only more critical in the emerging AI age.  He is even looking for ways to cooperate with the Russian Federation, create economic ties with long-term adversaries, end unnecessary wars, and build the foundations for some semblance of peace.  President Trump is right now preparing the United States for an uncertain future in much the same way that an industrious squirrel stores nuts to survive the harsh winter ahead.  

Attacking Iran comes with risks.  Only time will tell whether this military operation makes America safer and the world more stable.  Ask yourself this, though: What is it that the president sees down the road that has convinced him to take action against Iran right now?  As with all decisions that come from the Oval Office, there’s always much more to the story than what is plainly visible.  Threats are growing.  Uncertainties are exploding.  President Trump is battening down the hatches because the storm outside is brewing.  He seeks future peace through present strength.

By – https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2026/03/trump_settles_the_american_family_s_business.html

America has seen a spate of political assassination. What does it mean, and how should we respond?

You might have missed the headline, but there’s been another assassination attempt against President Trump. This time, a deranged 21-year-old man named Austin Martin tried to break into Mar-a-Lago with a shotgun and a gas canister. The Secret Service killed him.

The story would have dominated the headlines during any other period in American history, but in this instance, it seems to have passed through the discourse without much of a blip. Are we becoming desensitized to assassination culture, and if so, where does that leave us? What does the gradual normalization of conspiracy-driven violence mean for the future?

The evidence suggests that online radicalization was a major part of the alleged assassin’s spiral into violence. The would-be shooter seems to have been radicalized by Epstein conspiracy theories. According to messages obtained by TMZ, he had texted a friend saying, “I don’t know if you read up on the Epstein Files, but evil is real and unmistakable,” and “[t]he best people like you and I can do is use what little influence we have.”

Martin’s backstory reminded me of what we know about Thomas Crooks, the 20-year-old who nearly succeeded in killing Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania. In both cases, these were bookish young white men who had trouble fitting into the high school social order and who, if reporting is to be believed, graduated from high school as supporters of Trump. Then, for whatever reason, they had a psychological breakdown and ended up trying to assassinate the president.

The Cycle of Paranoia in American History

Paranoia and assassination have been a recurring, if unfortunate, feature of American politics. Conspiracy and counter-conspiracy are baked into our history, from the founding era to the Civil War to the cultural revolution of the 1960s, which saw the assassinations of figures like John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X. While any one incident can be blamed on a particular lunatic, the waves of violent paranoia that we have seen in specific periods of our history—and that we appear to be seeing now—are indicators of broader social distress, public anxiety, and latent political frustration.

What is happening now? In my view, contemporary American society is afflicted by what the philosopher Jean-François Lyotard called the “postmodern condition.” Digitization fragments reality and undermines a society’s meta-narrative, producing splintered counter-narratives. Walter Cronkite is displaced by infinite podcasts. Thomas Pynchon’s novels capture the feeling of this post-1960s paranoia, how it distorts human psychology in profound ways and how it undermines our ability to parse the real world.

Take David DePape, the lunatic who attacked Paul Pelosi with a hammer. A few months ago, out of curiosity, I pulled his trial transcripts and spoke with people close to him. DePape was involved in fringe subcultures; he lived in Berkeley, made pornographic films, drifted from the fringe Left to the fringe Right, was marginally employed, and was deeply immersed in conspiracy podcasts.

The trial transcripts show he spent hours every day consuming right-wing conspiracy podcasts. DePape concluded that public schools were “pedophile molestation factories,” for which he blamed the queer theorist Gayle Rubin and the Democratic establishment. Would it be fair to say that DePape’s attack on Pelosi was the fault of the conspiracy podcasters? Of course not. But would it be fair to say that the information environment in which DePape was operating activated pre-existing mental illness and directed it toward a target? Yes.

How to Resist the Postmodern Condition

What can we do about all of this? We can’t eliminate the algorithm. Censorship won’t solve the problem. The only prescription, to my mind, is individual responsibility. We have a duty to steel ourselves intellectually and hold on to our perceptions of reality. This moment will burn out, as similar moments have in the past. Technology will further evolve, solving existing problems while creating new ones. In our current information moment, it really is caveat emptor. You “consume content” at your own risk.

In my view, the deepest kind of conservatism involves resisting the culture’s attempt to imprint its ideology and its paranoias on future generations. Children today are taught leftist counter-narratives without ever learning the foundational meta-narratives of Western civilization. They don’t read the Bible; they don’t learn about the American Founding or the glories of the frontier. Instead, whether through Oscar-nominated films or unending TikTok videos, they absorb a thin, post-1968 ideological framework—one that is ultimately anti-civilizational.

Resisting the postmodern condition begins in our own households. In my own family, one thing we’ve been doing is eliminating digital distractions during critical periods. I leave my phone in my truck overnight. After dinner, we have a “family reading hour” when everyone sits together and reads. Sometimes we read children’s books, and sometimes we take on more challenging texts.

The goal isn’t to shelter kids from the world but to equip them to face the world from a position of strength—rather than surrendering to whatever fantasies, trends, or conspiracies happen to be circulating online.

By – https://christopherrufo.com/p/in-the-swirl-of-rage-and-paranoia?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1248321&post_id=189243659&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=7krs8b&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

Now, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Kristi Noem has disclosed something that should reverberate across every federal agency and every American household.

According to a statement highlighted by Just the News on X, Secretary Noem declared, “Some of my own employees in my department had downloaded software on my phone and my laptop to spy on me.” The accompanying report stated that DHS Secretary Kristi Noem revealed new information, saying spyware was planted on her devices by DHS employees. Let that sink in.

If her statement is accurate we are not discussing a foreign cyber intrusion from Beijing or Moscow. We are confronting the possibility that employees within the Department of Homeland Security installed spyware on the devices of their own Secretary. What does that say about the internal culture of one of the most powerful departments in the federal government? What does that reveal about the persistence of the Deep State? Outrage is warranted. Surprise is not.

The unauthorized interception of electronic communications is a federal crime. Under 18 U.S.C. § 2511, part of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, it is illegal to intentionally intercept, endeavor to intercept, or procure another person to intercept any wire, oral, or electronic communication without authorization. A violation can result in fines and imprisonment of up to five years for each offense.

If DHS employees intentionally accessed Secretary Noem’s devices without proper authorization, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1030, may also apply. That statute criminalizes accessing a computer without authorization or exceeding authorized access, particularly when federal government systems are involved. Depending on the nature and scope of the intrusion, penalties can include substantial fines and imprisonment of up to ten years for a first offense.

If any classified information was accessed, copied, or transmitted, additional statutes may be implicated, including provisions of the Espionage Act under 18 U.S.C. § 793, which carry severe penalties including lengthy prison terms up to life in prison.

Put simply, this is not a trivial workplace dispute. These are very serious and complex crimes. It is potentially a felony of extraordinary gravity.

Do we know precisely how this spyware was installed? Was it embedded under the guise of routine IT maintenance? Was it concealed within an ostensibly benign software update? Was it authorized by someone higher in the chain of command, or was it the unilateral act of rogue employees? These questions demand answers.

Equally important is the question of motive. Why would DHS employees spy on their own Secretary? Was this an attempt to gather political intelligence? Was it bureaucratic insubordination born of ideological hostility? Or was it part of a broader effort to monitor and constrain an executive who does not conform to the preferences of the permanent administrative class?

The Deep State is not a cinematic abstraction. It is a durable network of career officials, contractors, and institutional actors who often outlast elected administrations and sometimes view themselves as the true custodians of policy. It survives electoral shifts. It adapts to new leadership. It frequently cloaks its actions in the antiseptic language of compliance and security.

If President Trump’s Cabinet officials cannot communicate without fear of internal surveillance what does that mean for the integrity of executive governance? If a member of the executive branch of government in the Cabinet must now wonder whether his or her own department compromised the their devices how can sang of them exercise independent judgment?

An exhaustive forensic investigation is imperative! Devices must be examined. Audit logs must be scrutinized. Chains of authorization must be traced with precision. If criminal conduct occurred, indictments should follow without hesitation. The rule of law cannot become a rhetorical ornament applied selectively to political adversaries.

The penalties for these crimes are not symbolic. They are punitive as well as severe. They include imprisonment, fines, and the permanent destruction of professional standing. These laws exist to deter precisely this kind of clandestine misconduct.

Secretary Noem’s statement on X has ignited a controversy that cannot be resolved with bureaucratic platitudes. Was this an aberration, or is it symptomatic of a deeper institutional pathology? Were these employees acting alone, or were they executing directives from unseen superiors?

The American people deserve transparency, we deserve accountability, and above all, we deserve a federal government that does not surveil its own leadership in defiance of law and constitutional order.

I am indignant, angry, frustrated, betrayed, and disappointed…but I am not remotely astonished. In fact, I expect the Deep State can and will continue to be an encumbrance to this second Trump Administration. The machinery of the administrative state has demonstrated time and again that it is capable of self preservation at almost any cost. But they certainly aren’t capable of policing themselves. The question is whether this episode will finally expose the extent to which that machinery operates beyond democratic control.

If Secretary Noem’s devices were indeed compromised by her own department, then the issue is not partisan, it is constitutional and it demands nothing less than a full reckoning.