Piling onto Timothée Chalamet

"Politics ain't beanbag."

Hollywood isn't beanbag either.

USA Today

BBC

The "politics ain't beanbag" comment is familiar to Americans as recognition that politics is a rough game. I have likened current politics to professional wrestling. Trump is the premier practitioner of smashmouth vitriol. Like a good anti-hero professional wrestling character, Trump dishes it out and then acts indignant at the injustice of insults being returned. Trump isn't good, but he is interesting and he commands an audience. Hollywood knows how to play the audience-attention game.

I had never heard of Timothée Chalamet until three days ago when I read that he said something dismissive about opera or ballet. Apparently Chalamet is a big name in Hollywood and he is currently dating another big name, a woman who appeared last night at the Oscar awards event in a see-through dress. Nothing new in that. What was new to me was the delight the Academy Awards host, the audience, and the media took in tormenting Chalamet for his comment and failure to win the "Best Actor" award. They piled on with glee. I thought it was excessive, but I am a softie, and I am not a fan of professional wrestling.

College classmate Erich Almasy is a former management consultant who lived in Canada and now lives in Mexico. He writes guest posts about the expat experience. He enjoys the fine arts that Chalamet dissed. In a civil but snarky tone, he shares his thoughts.

Almasy

Guest Post by Erich Almasy

Opera and Ballet are Still Relevant

I don’t know much about Timothée Chalamet. He’s 31 and holds dual French and U.S. citizenship. He’s very busy and has appeared in a number of successful films, of which only one registered with me, Dune. He has four Academy Award nominations to his credit, including one this current Oscar season for his role in a movie about ping pong. He may be best known for his three-year relationship with the youngest Kardashian, Kylie Jenner.

Earlier this month, Chalamet drew my attention with the following comment, "I don't want to be working in ballet or opera, or, you know, things where it's like, 'Hey, keep this thing alive, even though it's like, no one cares about this anymore.'" My negative reaction to this totally asinine statement could have been from the infantile use of “you know” and “like” (twice) in the same sentence. If you cannot speak English, best shut up.

However, my sensibilities were most hurt by his apparent lack of any understanding or empathy for cultural art forms that have entertained, educated, and employed millions for centuries. It made me wonder if he has ever seen either in person. My father grew up in Vienna, Austria, where, as a teen, he watched composer Richard Strauss conduct one of his works at the State Opera House. It was a highlight of his life.

I served on the board of the Canadian Opera Company for nine years, during which we built a combined opera and ballet house and staged the first Wagner Ring Cycle in Canadian history. The house was built from the inside out with acoustics as the primary architectural feature. It has a sprung floor to aid ballet dancers. The Canadian Opera and the National Ballet are both world-class and are well-supported by the Canadian public and provincial and federal governments.

The difficulties of American arts organizations are well-documented, especially the current issues facing New York’s Metropolitan Opera. Unlike European countries, where government subsidy is universal and supported by the public, the United States government makes little or no cultural commitment. Vienna and Berlin both have three opera houses, which are typically sold out.

Opera and ballet feature strongly in our appreciation of the performing arts. Classical composers such as Beethoven and Mozart also wrote operas, and the music of Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, and Stravinsky is fundamental to ballet. I don’t believe that I am a minority when I say that certain arias give me goosebumps. Solos and duets from works such as Bizet’s Norma and Carmen; Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, La Boheme, Turandot, and Tosca; Verdi’s Rigoletto and La Traviata; Mozart’s Don Giovanni and The Magic Flute; Wagner’s Ring and Lohengrin; and so many more. The lyrical beauty of ballets such as Swan Lake, Romeo and Juliet, The Rite of Spring, Giselle, and La Sylphide have enchanted me and remain truly timeless.

Is my position elitist? I don’t believe so, because standing-room audiences throughout Europe, over 100 professional opera companies in the United States, and over 175 ballet companies worldwide suggest that at least a few people still “care.” Perhaps Monsieur Chalamet might do well to remember that before him came Anna Pavlova, Joan Sutherland, Rudolf Nureyev, Maria Callas, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Luciano Pavarotti, Margot Fonteyn, and Enrico Caruso. If I’m allowed to be slightly snarky, Timothée, please wipe that smirk and smudge off your upper lip. It makes you look twelve - or maybe that is the idea. Life is truly better with art. Even yours.

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Easy Sunday: My up close experience with GLP-1

I like it.

I am having a good experience with the GLP-1 drug.

I feel fully, comfortably satiated all the time. The drug turned off the background "food noise" that has been with me my entire life.

Zepbound, by Lilly

The thimble-size vial containing a few drops of liquid

Let me start with the disclaimers:

--  I  am not a doctor. I am not giving medical advice. I am just someone sharing his own experience and observation.

--  GLP-1 may not be right for you. You might have side-effects or contraindications. I don't appear to.

--  I have have been taking an GLP-1 drug for less than three weeks, so I am describing my own before-and-after experience as a new user. I am in awe of how dramatically it changed my relationship to food.

I had seen the advertisements: Retired tennis pro Serena Williams and retired NBA player Charles Barkley praised it. They lost weight, buying it through Ro.co. (Note: dot co, not com) I was curious. I had presumed that it mostly affected how a body absorbed nutrition out of food. That is incorrect. The drug works primarily on signals to the brain. Within hours of the first self-injection, GLP-1 eliminated my food appetite. I felt comfortable and satiated even though I had not eaten for eight hours. I did not feel "full," exactly, because my stomach was mostly empty. But instead of an empty stomach being a matter of gnawing discomfort, I felt fine just as I was, stomach empty. Comfortable. I had no particular desire to eat. That feeling has persisted throughout each week that I inject the drug.

A person can lose weight because small portions or skipped meals feel just fine when one's food appetite is gone.  

Don't I miss having an appetite for food? Doesn't GLP-1 take away one of the great pleasures of life, eating tasty food? Maybe a little. Food still tastes good, but that never-quite-enough appetite was more a burden than a joy. We are surrounded by wonderful foods -- sweet stuff, salty and savory chips, and of course healthy foods, too -- but without the constant brain signals saying "more food would be great!" I can eat a reasonable amount of food if I want to. Or not. I mostly feel relief.

The injection needle is less than a quarter of an inch long. It is like a mosquito bite. Self-injection is no big deal.

The drug costs me $250/month, paying totally out of pocket. I didn't want to fool with Medicare or insurance or fight with anyone over whether I was overweight, way-overweight or whatever. 

Because this is mostly a political blog, I will conclude by observing that this drug, in its various formulations and delivery systems, will have enormous public health consequences. It has the potential to bring down health care costs as it reduces obesity in the country. With less diabetes, lower blood pressure, and better cardiovascular health, Americans may live longer, healthier lives. That is good, right? Yes. Mostly. But realize that there are downsides to this. We might start living as long as people in do in Japan, a place where obesity is rare, and that would stress the Social Security and pension systems. 

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The Rogue State Era

Sometimes you know a moment is a turning point in history. 

Sometimes you only know it when you look back years later.

The classic recognize-it-now case is December 7, 1941, that "day that will live in infamy." It moved the U.S. from a neutral bystander into a belligerent. September 11, 2001, is another, a day that shaped the past quarter-century of our relations to the countries and religions of the Middle East.

Some turning points are evident in hindsight. Betty Friedan's book, The Feminine Mystique, comes to mind. Published in 1963, it identified something in the cultural and economic environment: the dissatisfaction of American women with their roles. It was a catalyst for the enormous repositioning of women in American life. At the time my attention was on other things: Black civil rights, the Vietnam War, the Beatles. The giant impact of feminism was evident only later.

I expect histories written 50 years from now to understand Trump's second term as a turning point and the beginning of a named era.  The "postwar world" that established a certain role in the world for the U.S. is over. Trump ended that. In hindsight, named eras makes sense of the noisy confusion of current events. 

This might simply be "The Trump Era," and it may last for a decade or more. If things work out very poorly, in 50 years it might be described the way the Chinese describe the disastrous turmoil of their Cultural Revolution with an indirect term, "The Troubles." If events bring us to a nuclear exchange with Russia or China, historians who survive may call it "Pre-War." If the republic survives and the Constitution stays as written, but under a system where its words are interpreted to allow essentially unitary government by the executive branch, it may be understood as "The Strong Man Era." 

Historians may cite events of the recent news.

-- The Supreme Court disallowed Trump's unitary tariffs, but Trump immediately reestablished tariffs citing a different law. The executive can no longer be constrained by courts.

--  They can cite Trump's open grift, with multimillion dollar gifts, with the Trump cryptocurrency, and his flagrant pay-to-play use of presidential discretion to reward business allies. They will note that Congress was silent. This means that in practice the executive can take whatever he wants for personal use.

--  The strike against Venezuela may be understood as part of a series of acts of hemispheric hegemony, the precursor of the actions against Cuba and Greenland. Trump said at his inauguration that the U.S. should grow in territory. 

--  They may cite Trump ignoring international law and traditional rules of warfare. They could cite the unapologized-for bombing of the girls school. They will cite Secretary of War Peter Hegseth:

No stupid rules of engagement, no nation building quagmire, no democracy building exercise, no politically correct wars. We fight to win, and we don’t waste time or lives, as the president warned, an effort of this scope will include casualties.

--  The U.S. started a war but did not consult with our allies and affected nations. The closure of the Straight of Hormuz was an obvious risk to the world. Retaliatory strikes against hotels and civilian infrastructure in our Gulf State allies were predictable. We acted anyway, on our own. We could, so we did. 

I doubt that historians will cite this as the Golden Age predicted by Trump in his inaugural address. This doesn't feel like a golden age. My guess is that historians will understand this to be an era when the U.S. abandoned "global thinking" and global leadership. Trump thinks that is a fool's game. It is a us-versus-them world, and always has been, and the U. S. stands alone, heck with anyone else. 

Trump has rung that bell and it cannot be un-rung. It will take a long time to repair the damage it caused. We are living in "The Rogue State Era."

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Surprise: One more Democratic candidate for Congress

I missed one: Chris Beck

Now six candidates have filed for the Democratic nomination for Oregon's 2nd congressional district.

Opening page of his website

Website: Photographed atop Mt. McLaughlin, 2018

Chris Beck entered the race on February 24. The filing deadline for this office for non-incumbents was Tuesday, March 10. The election is on May 19.

Democratic candidates know that the district is considered "safe red," so this is a long-shot race. The incumbent, Cliff Bentz, won in 2024 with a 64-33 percent margin. 

A Democratic campaign in this district is a platform of protest and prescription. It is an opportunity to share with voters a view of how our government ought to be. One could dismiss this as a mere personal quest -- like writing a daily political blog or climbing to the top of Mt. McLaughlin -- a vanity project. That is wrong. It is more than that. 

Candidacy for U.S. representative has a potential prize at the end. Political environments change and elections are the mechanism for it. The Democrat could win. It happens. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is an example. 

Running and losing is not a waste. A candidate has a platform that moves public opinion goalposts on what is reasonable. If Democratic candidates are saying with conviction that we should reform the healthcare system by adopting Medicare-for-all, or that there should be a $20/hour minimum wage, then a policy idea that was fringe becomes plausible and a matter of debate. Ideas sometimes lose until they don't.

Democratic candidates in a district like this force a supposedly-safe incumbent to remember that they represent all their constituents. Bentz's greatest political vulnerability is within his party, were he to come to the negative attention of President Trump. For that reason, Bentz is slavishly loyal to Trump, even though Oregon's second congressional district is uniquely disadvantaged in matters of health care by the Big Beautiful Bill's price increases for health insurance bought under the ACA. Rural hospitals in Bentz's district may close because of it. I watched Bentz tell me and fellow Rotary members that it was a good thing to obey Trump's command not to release the Epstein files. Bentz looks like a toady for Trump, but it requires a general election threat for that to matter to Bentz. 

Chris Beck is unlike the other five candidates. He is a political pro.The others are not. He would have no illusions about his chances of winning -- slim but possible. He attended Portland schools, Brown University, and Harvard's JFK School of Government. He volunteered on campaigns, became an assistant to the popular Democratic Governor John Kitzhaber, then became a committee staffer for the state Senate Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee. He was elected a state representative in a Portland-area district. Beck worked for a non-profit land conservation program dealing with farm and forest land. His career brought him to national and international government and NGO work: Mercy Corps, the Agricultural Department in the Obama administration, and the United Nations.

He has done good, important work. 

However, that work and life was not being a local farmer-rancher 2nd district resident; it was working in the public/NGO space to deliver programs to them. Them. Other people.

Beck's website reveals him scrambling to show his local bone fides. He headlines "Coming of age east of the Cascades." He references his grandfather teaching agriculture at Redmond High School, his boyhood wading in the Deschutes River, his looking for arrowheads at Fort Rock, and his administering conservation projects in Eastern Oregon locations. He shares old photographs of himself atop 2nd District mountains. It isn't phony, but one can see his intent to find evidence from five decades to show us that he is one of us. Really he is, see? I'm not a carpetbagger.

Beck presents reform programs on issues of interest to Democrats.

--  He headlines "Quality health care is a human right" and says he supports "phasing in an affordable public health care option."

--  "Using the farm bill to promote healthy food options and to reallocate government subsidies to prioritize affordability and variety."

--  "Low interest financing for first-time rural home-buyers."

--  "Reforming and leveraging federal housing programs."

We see the drift here. Beck understands federal legislation regarding agricultural and rural issues at a level of granularity  not evident in the other candidates. And his approach is to do more federal programs better. He is thinking like a rural policy expert and government/NGO bureaucrat. That isn't a criticism, exactly. We need policy experts explaining policy solutions.

It is possible that this is exactly what a winning plurality of voters want. But I suspect not. I suspect the tide of public opinion is moving against experts administering federal programs. I suspect voters will want a representative, not a program administrator. 

That may not matter. Beck has a niche here: the expert in rural government programs. He has a real shot at winning because of the issue I described yesterday. Differentiation. Differences among the four female candidates will be hard for voters to see. The winner in this primary will be the odd-person-out, the person who gets noticed. One of the six candidates might win with 30 percent of the vote. Indeed, I expect that. I don't know that it will be Beck with the 30 percent, but his resume makes him the outlier.

His website is: https://chrisbeckforcongress.com/

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Oregon's 2nd congressional district: A problem of differentiation.

Five people have filed for the Democratic nomination for Oregon's 2nd congressional district.

Which one will emerge from the group?

Some of them are sharpening up their campaigns with new focus. For example:

Mary Doyle makes the blunt observation that the district's current congressman Cliff Bentz voted not to count Pennsylvania's electoral votes in 2020 and opposed the bipartisan infrastructure bill. She objects.

Peter Quince says "This war must end. Our president has entered us into a catastrophic war." He didn't need to say the Iran war. We know.

Patty Snow cites the fact that 70 percent of this congressional district's children rely on Medicaid for health care, but that Cliff Bentz voted in favor of the Reconciliation Bill, which would kick many of them off of it. 

At this point in their campaigns the candidates are looking at their draft Voters Pamphlet statements and deciding what to say. No one asked me for my advice, but here it is:

Be blunt. Be clear. Don't voice just anodyne sentiments.

--   Resist the temptation to say namby-pamby things that nearly everyone will agree with. If everyone would agree with your statement, don't say it. That is what you will be tempted to write. It only proves you are a blabbering politician filling space. 

--  Realize that almost no one knows you or will remember you or anything about you. You are a blur, flashing by voters' attention background. So try to give them something to remember you by.

--  Opposition and criticism is your friend. Disagreement defines your brand by showing what you are not. Orange juice isn't Coke or Pepsi, and it doesn't apologize for that or try to blunt the difference. 

--   Disappoint the "usual suspects" of Democratic interest groups by expressing your reservations about one of their positions. Pick one or more: labor unions, abortion advocates, environmental groups, trans-rights advocates, pro-immigration activists, NIMBY activists, gun opponents, health care activists, pro-Israel people, pro-Palestinian people, anti-war activists, wealth-tax activists. These interest groups understand themselves to be "the tip of the spear" in advocacy, extreme for the purpose of moving the policy goalposts. Go ahead and disappoint them and take their criticism and relish it. It will demonstrate that you have the courage of your convictions, which is more valuable than being perceived as a slave to orthodoxy. Plus, you might get noticed.

Who are these five candidates? All good people. Conscientious. All would represent Democrats well. I think the candidate who will emerge is the one who has a clear, sharp focus on something with some edge. Something mentally "sticky." Someone who says something where voters think, “Oh, that’s the one who said ______” Like Mamdani and the free bus rides. Or George McGovern and ending the Vietnam war.

Rebecca Mueller

From the beginning of her campaign website:

"I am Rebecca Mueller, and I am running to represent Oregon's 2nd US Congressional District.

My campaign is focusing on issues of healthcare, fair wages, environmental stewardship as well as thriving farming and small town economies; standing on values of human dignity, mutual respect, and the belief that hyper-partisan, professional politicians are not serving the interests of a balanced democracy.

We Are More Than This."

Patti Snow

From the beginning of her campaign website:

"From the attempt to squelch our right to Free Speech to the Repeal of Women’s Rights, the roll-back of Clean Air acts and changes to our Healthcare System that will leave millions without coverage, Cliff Bentz and Trump have ensured that we have plenty of battles to fight. All of these are important issues but there are several areas I consider my “North Star” priorities. These priorities include ensuring that hospitals in rural Oregon are kept open, that our school children and underprivileged citizens are fed, that the sick and elderly can afford healthcare and that our rights to live our lives according to our own beliefs are protected."

Dawn Rasmussen 

From the beginning of her campaign website:

"Oregonians are ready for decency, democracy, and down-to-earth leadership — values that have guided my life and will guide my work in Congress.

I’m not a career politician. I’m a working Oregonian who believes that Representative isn’t just a title — it’s a job description. It means showing up. Listening. Taking every voice — whether it agrees with me or not — seriously.

Oregon’s 2nd District deserves someone who represents people, not politics. That’s the kind of leadership I’m bringing to Washington."

Peter Quince 

 

From the beginning of his campaign website:

"Tikkun Olam

The North Star that guides me is Tikkun Olam, often translated as “Heal the World”. None of us can heal the entire world, but we can make better what’s within our reach and that, if all of us do that, we WILL heal the world.

Mission Statement

To restore representative government. Congress needs to reclaim the role assigned by our founding documents. I want to work to heal our democracy so these United States of America can again be a beacon of hope, prosperity, inclusiveness, and peace."

Mary Doyle

 

From the beginning of her campaign website:

"Leadership That Listens

For more than twenty years, I’ve worked in Oregon’s public schools; teaching, leading, and working directly with families. I’ve sat at kitchen tables, in classrooms, and in community meetings listening to real concerns about health care costs, water security, wildfires risks, and making ends meet.

Listening isn’t political for me, it’s personal.

That’s the leadership I’ll bring to Congress; grounded, accessible, and accountable to the people of Southern and Eastern Oregon."

 

Disclosure: I have made a campaign contribution to the one candidate in this group who made a serious request for a donation. 

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Deus ex machina

"Like a bolt out of the blue

Fate steps in and sees you through
When you wish upon a star
Your dreams come true.

   Disney, "When you wish upon a star," 1940

"When you're a star they let you do it. You can do anything."

   Donald Trump, Access Hollywood tape, made public, 2016

Deus ex machina ("god from the machine") is a plot device where an unsolvable, seemingly hopeless problem is abruptly resolved by an unexpected, unlikely occurrence.

We understand that the Deus ex machina device is implausible plotting. 

Herb Rothschild's guest post the day before yesterday recalled an incident that is burned into the consciousness of people on the political left about the hypocritical and disastrous decision of the U.S. to engineer a coup in Iran. In the 1950s the CIA and related organizations deposed Iran's elected government led by Mohammad Mosaddegh and replaced it with the pro-American Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Pahlavi made Iranian oil cheaply available to western oil companies. The Pahlavi dynasty wasn't organic to Iran nor a legitimate government. That was the original sin. The Pahlavi government was overthrown after 20 years by a government far worse than the one we deposed; our democratic hypocrisy backfired. That is the lesson the non-interventionist left learned 

There is another lesson that persists, though. It is that the U.S. has god-like machines at its disposal: air power, and special force teams that can do targeted assassinations and captures. We got Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan and Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi in Syria. So clean. So surgical. It would be a shame not to use so wonderful a machine. It would be like having the Covid vaccine and not taking it. Only foolish MAGA cultists would do that, right?  

Trump absorbed that lesson. We performed lightning strikes on boats off Venezuela, and no person, country, law, or norm could stop us. Trump was Zeus. The snatch and grab of Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores worked so well. Trump kept the existing authoritarian government in place, rejecting what would have been democratic government led by María Corina Machado, the Nobel Peace Prize winner. She would not have been compliant. The successor to Maduro holds power at Trump's pleasure. Perfect!

There is something unsatisfying in a narrative that requires a bolt out of the blue to resolve an intractable plot problem. If the cavalry is going to ride in and save the wagon train from attack, then it needs to be established that the cavalry was somehow summoned by the people they rescue. Superman or the Ghostbusters team cannot just show up with supernatural power. 

The world is re-discovering the limits of the bolt out of the blue. Iran's resistance to U.S. air power is organic. I am appalled by what I consider religious fanaticism that is widespread in the region, but it is present. They aren't being reasonable, from my point of view, but they are being who they are, and they are there, the combatants in Israel, Iran, and elsewhere. The comments written to the back-to-back guest posts of yesterday's by Michael Trigoboff and the prior day by Herb Rothschild make my point. Zionist Jews have asserted God's blessing on the region being theirs alone. Leave or die. Strong, fanatical words. Islamic voices have said Allah wants that same land for Muslims alone. Death to Jews. More fanaticism. 

Trump has kicked a hornets nest. This will not end neatly and quickly with a new, compliant, government in Iran. Such a government would not have legitimacy and would not reflect a plausible equilibrium of the centrifugal forces inside Iran. Is there any chance that a government that emerged after an assassination of President Trump by an Iranian drone would resolve into happy state in which the Iranian ayatollah picked a new U.S. government sworn to establish Sharia law in a disarmed United States? Of course not.

The sudden change that is possible is Trump abruptly announcing that the war has already succeeded, the greatest victory in history, a 100 percent removal of the Iranian threat, and that he is the world's best dealmaker. Bebe Netanyahu would protest that the U.S. is leaving the region with the job unfinished, but Trump will ignore him. It is TACO Trump. This is sudden, but it would not be a bolt from the blue. It would be Trump being Trump, making trouble as he has with tariffs, U.S alliances, and immigration control. He breaks things, and then moves on. That backstory is well established.

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Guest Post: Don't blame the U.S. and Israel. Blame Iran.

     "Nothing would improve the prospects of the people of Iran, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Gaza, Yemen and Israel more than removing the Islamic regime in Tehran."

          Thomas Friedman, in today's New York Times

Maybe the U.S. and Israel aren't the bad guys. Maybe Iran is.

Yesterday's guest post by Herb Rothschild listed the policy and moral failures of the U.S. and Israel. I invited someone to respond and argue "that the policy and actions of the U.S. and Israel have been honest, above-board, and peace-seeking in this region."

Michael Trigoboff doesn't argue that the U.S. and Israel are good, but rather than their war against Iran is good because it is necessary. Iran is a danger to Israel, to the region, and to the USA. It is fanatical, brutal, and relentless in its desire to destroy The Great Satan (the U.S.) and The Little Satan (Israel.) They pray for our deaths.

Michael Trigoboff is a retired computer science professor at Portland Community College.

Trigoboff

Guest Post by Michael Trigoboff

A response to yesterday's post by Herb Rothschild:

Mr. Rothschild thinks that the United States has no reason to go to war against Iran. I wonder what he thinks incessant chants of “Death to America” are all about. I wonder why he thinks Iran is motivated to get nuclear weapons and who they might want to use them against.

Iran doesn’t just chant its wishes. Iran and its proxies killed over 200 US Marines in Beirut; they captured the CIA station chief in Lebanon, tortured him to death, and sent us a video of the torture; they supplied Iraqi insurgents with IEDs that killed and wounded thousands of our soldiers.

Iran is the foremost sponsor of Islamic terrorism in the world. It threatens all of our regional allies. Its proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah, provided it with a strong deterrent against attack. Thanks to Israel's destruction of those proxies, that deterrent has evaporated. Iran’s currently weakened state provides a golden opportunity to take down one of our foremost enemies.

Israel made numerous offers to live in peace beside a Palestinian state. The Palestinian response was not just refusal, but refusal accompanied by terrorist violence. One such offer was made to the Palestinians in 2000 by President Bill Clinton and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Not only did the Palestinians refuse to negotiate about this offer, they accompanied their refusal with the Second Intifada, a wave of 140 vicious terrorist suicide bombings targeting school buses, pizzerias, and cafes. Israel had a strong peace movement, but after the Second Intifada it collapsed, because most Israelis saw that the only outcome acceptable to the Palestinians was the total destruction of Israel.

Pro-Palestinian demonstrators often chant, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” That's the chant in English. In Arabic, they chant: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be Arab.” The Palestinians want a one-state solution; a state “from the river to the sea” completely free of Jews.

Iran’s ruling ayatollahs are not a normal regime that wants the best for its people. Their extreme Islamic ideology wants nothing less than the destruction first of Israel, then America. Their goal is Islamic rule over the entire world. Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder of the Iranian regime, said this ultimate victory was worth it, even if Iran had to burn in the process. That same ideology was at play in Gaza, where Hamas spent its years of rule building nothing but tunnels so that it could hide under its civilians, turning them into human shields. The fate of those human shields mattered to Hamas only as a propaganda tool against Israel.

Obama’s “nuclear deal” with Iran was fatally flawed by its sunset clauses. By now those sunset clauses would have taken effect and Iran would be free to pursue nukes again. Allowing an Islamic death cult like the Iranian regime to get nuclear weapons is nothing short of criminal strategic negligence.

Israel had to destroy the Iranian proxies before it could go after the head of the snake. The United States is in the same position, but on a much larger strategic chessboard. Ninety percent of Iranian oil goes to China, which is how Iran gets around sanctions. China needs this oil to support its economy. By becoming a proxy of China and stepping onto that larger chessboard, the Iranian regime made a strategic, and hopefully fatal error.

The United States needs to deter China from attacking and taking over Taiwan. A credible threat to cut off China’s external oil supplies could do this. Just as Israel needed to take Hamas and Hezbollah off the chessboard before it could go after Iran, the United States needs the means to credibly threaten China’s external oil supply.

This could be the coherent strategy behind going after Venezuela first, and then Iran. We now control Venezuela’s oil exports. That oil is no longer going to Cuba, and we could stop it from going to China. If we gain that ability with Iranian oil as well, we may have what we need to deter an attack by China on Taiwan.

Both Mr. Rothschild and I are of Jewish heritage. When he thinks about who the good guys and the bad guys are, he might consider what his life would have been like had he been born in Iran instead of here in America.

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