Debilyn Molineaux serves as the catalyst for the American Future project to help everyday Americans discover and believe in a future that will be "worth it" to work together for the sake of our nation.
My new weekly column, American Future, will report on the desired future of everyday Americans as I interview a few people each week from across the nation. The four-week journey began on November 9, 2023. Zoom interviews will be ongoing.
Tim and I sat down on October 31, 2023 at my dining room table.
Debilyn: Hello Tim, it's good to sit down and talk about a future that you'd like to have for yourself - how far in the future are you thinking?
Tim: Let's go with five years.
OK, so where are you in five years? That would be 2028.
Tim: I'll be living in a small house that I own. It's a single family home that I share with others - namely my wife and child. Just one child in five years. The house is filled with possessions we love. It's a quiet neighborhood, similar to where I grew up. It may be in Maryland, or California or Illinois.
What will you be most proud of, in 2028?
Tim: My family and the people around me. I'm proud that I've helped others to grow and contributed to their accomplishments and achievements. I've made them happy. I'm also proud that I'm mostly self-sufficient and capable of taking care of myself.
In 2028, how will you spend your average day?
Tim: I'll wake up early and work out. I may do some household chores. Then I'll likely cook breakfast for my family. During the day, I'll spend time doing social work. It will be a mix of in-person and virtual, helping people to work out their problems. In the evening, it's time to relax with family and friends. Having time to play is very important to me. I'll have a few evenings to myself, maybe 2-3x per week, where I'll go out. Evenings and weekends are for having fun with friends and family.
How does your 2028 self feel, most of the time?
Tim: I am generally pretty content and able to keep anxiety at bay; to keep myself afloat. It depends on how much the world improves, and if it does, I'll feel capable and secure. Compared to myself in 2023, I am calmer and optimistic about the future. I also feel self-directed with clarity about what to do.
What are your three priority values in 2028?
Tim: Self awareness, temperance and kindness.
What does the community that supports your future need to include?
Tim: Higher compensation for social workers! I make a lot more today in tech than I could as a social worker. I would need the ability to live comfortably with a family on one income, that could take the form of higher wages, lower housing costs, universal basic income, etc. We will need community based childcare, something that the families in the neighborhood could do together. We need a community where meeting basic needs is easy, from housing to activities to transportation to healthy food. Also, there is a new norm of handling conflict in a healthy way -- sometimes through compromise. There is an element of seeking to understand others, first.
Is there anything you can do today or in the near future to co-create the future you vision?
Tim: I'm looking for a partner to start a family.
This piece was originally published on November 2, 2023 AmericanFuture.us
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.