Molineaux is co-publisher of The Fulcrum and president/CEO of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund.
Each day, I’m reminded that, while I expect most systems to work seamlessly, they are no longer one-hundred percent reliable. When my internet goes down or my phone locks, I’m annoyed by the inconvenience. I feel anxious because words are weaponized; changing meanings almost overnight. Or how some words may have different meanings depending on the culture. I need to be better at acknowledging gender pronouns so I don’t accidentally cause offense. Through this change, I drift into nostalgia, remembering a past that wasn’t so personally hard to navigate or filled with seeming landmines. And I have compassion for those who have always been challenged to “code switch” for my comfort. I’m getting a small taste of what others have lived through.
While this time feels like a breaking down of the old, no-longer-effective systems, it also offers the potential to break through to a new culture that works for us all. We are currently in the uncomfortable place in between. We are seeking an innovative shift in our culture; one that is centered on humanity, and fulfilling the promise of our founding documents – life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness – for all people.
I have also been pondering the process of innovation and our willingness to let go of nostalgia since seeing a meme that stated:
“No amount of innovation applied to a candle would have produced a light bulb.”
The problem of illumination after the sun goes down has been solved by fire-based solutions for millennia. Yet, I would never trade the ease of flipping a light switch to go back to candles and lanterns. My nostalgia for candlelit dinners doesn’t mean I want to return to olden times.
Similarly, I wonder why are we holding onto our nostalgia for a more white/cis-centric society, that obviously doesn’t work for everyone? Is it the fear of the unknown? Is it an underlying racial bias? Is it the concern for the loss of power? Because it’s more comfortable for some of us? Better that we innovate a new society that works for all.
When inventing new illumination methods, scientists began by conducting experiments. Through this process, they learned what worked or didn’t work. There were gas-lighting (too fire-prone), electric arc lighting (too bright) and 23 other incandescent bulbs produced (too expensive) before Edison’s incandescent bulb. The effort, once begun, took more than 50 years to innovate a marketable solution and another 40 years for the infrastructure to be built that still supports the lightswitch flipping we take for granted today. And thus as technology evolves and takes time we must evolve and take the time to adapt and understand. Patience is obviously needed.
The inventors started with a human need for illumination after dark.
Using the aforementioned thought pattern as a guide, what is the human need within our communities today? Or in our nation? Having the right problem identified will allow us to experiment and iterate effectively, innovating as we go. Here are some quick ideas of what we need:
- Opportunities for individuals to thrive.
- Education about the opportunities available.
- Responsibility by individuals to give back to the community.
- Leaders who are responsive to their constituents.
What would you add?
Individually, we need to create conditions in which people can:
- Feel and be safe.
- Be able to provide for themselves and their families.
- Feel a sense of belonging.
- Contribute to something bigger than themselves.
You’ll notice that in addition to the material needs of food and shelter (providing for ourselves and family), most human needs are about a sense of security and belonging, which allows them to contribute back to the overall community. Our current systems do not provide for these immaterial needs, hence our society breaks down. Innovative solutions must and will address these human needs.
So much of our media and entertainment is focused on surviving a coming apocalypse. And in a sense, they are right that a way of life is ending. We have come to the end of an era; which is inevitably followed by a new era, necessitating we create the foundation for our next era interpersonally.
Let’s identify the unmet human needs and begin innovating to meet those needs. Perhaps then we will have a positive peace, based in liberty and justice for all.
image of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square in New York on April 8, 2026.
Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war.
I don’t worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality.
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.” This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of “superpositionality” in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles aren’t any one thing, but a “cloud of probabilities.”
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of his own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isn’t a war. We have a deal, but we don’t have a deal, but we’re about to have a deal. We destroyed Iran’s military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No we don’t. We already accomplished it. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in-between. No deal without “unconditional surrender.” Let’s make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didn’t have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. President Trump didn’t prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iran’s senior leadership, on the first day of the war. To “the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump announced on Feb. 28. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
I support regime change in Iran and shed no tears for Khamenei or his goons. But when you start a war by killing the regime’s top leaders, it’s not unreasonable for the remaining ones to conclude that you really intend regime change.
Khamenei was a murderous fanatic, but he was a fairly cautious one. He liked to threaten closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking our regional allies, but he was reluctant to actually do it, fearing it would invite a regime change war. The mullahs and IRGC goons believed, not unreasonably, that if they lost their grip on power, they’d be lynched by the Iranian people they’ve brutalized for decades.
By starting with a regime change war, Trump removed any reason for the regime not to go for broke. When you have nothing to lose — particularly when you are a millenarian religious fanatic — a Persian Alamo strategy makes a lot of sense.
So Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and attacked its neighbors.
But it turns out this wasn’t the Alamo. In the contest of wills, Trump blinked. The Iranian regime’s tolerance for punishment proved — so far — to be greater than Trump’s and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn’t have the political capital for that.
But that’s only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn’t want to pay — militarily, economically, politically — what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn’t come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they’re willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump’s in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn’t exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can’t go on forever. But I’m sure it’ll last until long after this column is forgotten.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.