It’s not Israel. It’s not even Iran. Look closer to home.

Gary Gindler | June 21, 2026

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At this point, everyone is familiar with the 14 points of the Memorandum of Understanding between President Trump and remnants of Iran’s power structure. The document appears to use careful, ambiguous diplomatic language, but it actually serves as a raw political instrument.  To decipher its true meaning, one must strip away the mannerly phrasing and read it in the plain political lexicon — the language of power, elections, and survival.

Article 1 states that midterm elections in America will take place in November 2026.

Article 2 specifies that they will occur on November 3, 2026.

Article 3 notes that these elections are nearly four months away.

Article 4 calculates the remaining time as approximately 20 weeks.

Articles 5 through 14 continue in the same vein: They emphasize the narrowing window and the need for visible results before voters go to the polls.  They manifest the importance of avoiding distractions that could shift media focus.  Finally, they raised the requirement that any international agreements produce measurable domestic benefits in time for Election Day.

The document never says these things directly.  Instead, it speaks of “regional de-escalation,” “energy market stabilization,” and “confidence-building measures.” Translated into the realpolitik domain, however, every clause points to one overriding objective: securing a conservative majority in Congress on November 3, 2026.

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Basically, these articles make the metric explicit.  To win those elections, the average price of gasoline across the United States must remain below $4 per gallon — roughly less than $1 per liter.  That single number has become the administration’s key performance indicator for the next four months.

This translation reveals the central truth the Memorandum aimed to obscure: The primary threat to American national security at this moment is not Iran.  On the contrary, it is the possibility that the Democrat party regains control of Congress.

Basically, these articles make the metric explicit.  To win those elections, the average price of gasoline across the United States must remain below $4 per gallon — roughly less than $1 per liter.  That single number has become the administration’s key performance indicator for the next four months.

This translation reveals the central truth the Memorandum aimed to obscure: The primary threat to American national security at this moment is not Iran.  On the contrary, it is the possibility that the Democrat party regains control of 

Losing the Republicans’ congressional majorities in 20 weeks will weaken, or even turn off, the legislative and oversight tools Trump’s administration has used to pursue the “America First” agenda.  Investigations and impeachments will multiply, and funding for border security and military modernization will face constant resistance.  Most likely, Democrats will pull foreign policy back toward the multilateral frameworks they favored in previous administrations.  Trump’s signature on the Memorandum with Iran is therefore not primarily about Iran at all.  It is about locking in enough momentum and public support so that even a narrowed majority — or the threat of one — cannot easily reverse the structural changes already underway.

The principal perceptible and immediate lever for achieving that momentum is energy prices.  American voters feel gasoline costs at the pump every week.  When prices rise sharply, approval ratings for the party in power tend to decline, regardless of other economic indicators.  Historical patterns (recall 2008, 2012, and particularly 2021–2022) demonstrate how quickly pocketbook pain translates into midterm losses.  The $4-per-gallon threshold has emerged as a coarse psychological and political demarcating line.  Above it, the narrative of economic competence weakens; below it, the administration can credibly claim that its policies are delivering tangible relief.

The day after they signed the Memorandum, the national average gasoline price fell to $3.99.  Oil markets responded with further downward pressure.  This was not a coincidence.  The agreement signaled that the risk of sudden supply disruptions from the Persian Gulf had decreased, at least for the critical pre-election window.  At the same time, the administration accelerated domestic permitting and leasing on federal lands.  The combination created the political dividend Trump required: noticeable, pocketbook-level proof that his approach to the Middle East produces lower costs for American families.

If the oil-price game is relatively easy for attentive pundits to follow, the information arena is more opaque.  Public disagreements between President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu have generated headlines suggesting a serious rift.  Those who recall last year’s public friction between Trump — the most powerful man on the planet — and Elon Musk — the richest man on the planet — will identify the pattern.  At the time, many interpreted the exchanges as genuine estrangement.  In reality, they served a tactical purpose: allowing each side to speak to different audiences while preserving the underlying alliance.  The same dynamic is now unmistakable between Washington and Jerusalem.

The current posture is a classic “good cop, bad cop” arrangement.  Trump projects reasonableness and restraint to international audiences and to American voters who prefer stability during an election season.  Netanyahu continues to cling to a hard line, conducting operations against Hezb’allah infrastructure in Lebanon and signaling that Israel will not be constrained by external timetables.  Both leaders comprehend that calm on the international stage between present and November benefits their respective domestic positions.  China must not create a crisis over Taiwan.  Gulf Arab states, recently unified by Trump’s pressure on Iran, must avoid provocative moves.  Iran itself must absorb the recent setbacks without launching major retaliation that could spike oil prices or monopolize American news cycles.  Quiet serves everyone’s electoral calendar.

This arrangement has forced a hard realization in parts of the Israeli political establishment: A superpower’s domestic political needs will always take precedence over the preferences of even its closest allies.  The observation is harsh, yet it reflects the structural reality of great-power politics.  No American president can afford to let foreign crises dictate the domestic narrative in the months before a midterm election, especially one that will determine whether his agenda survives the remainder of his term.

The 250th anniversary of American independence on July 4, 2026 adds another layer of calculation.  National milestones of this scale are carefully stage-managed.  The administration does not want global headlines on that date postulating that the United States is “trampling the independence” of another country.  By empowering Israel to handle immediate threats in Lebanon during the spring and summer, the United States creates space for its citizens to celebrate the anniversary without the overlay of fresh Middle East escalation.  Israeli operations that degrade Hezb’allah’s capabilities reduce the chance of a major attack that could force American involvement or dominate the news.  In that narrow but important sense, Israeli soldiers are helping ensure that American families can mark the semi-quincentennial in peace.  Such contributions are rarely acknowledged publicly, but they are remembered in the corridors of power.  Moreover, ordinary Americans will never forget that.

The Memorandum, stripped of diplomatic language, is therefore a timetable and a scorecard.  It establishes a 20-week timeline and defines success in terms that voters can effortlessly grasp: reduced gas prices, the absence of foreign crises, and a political climate stable enough to render the administration’s core reforms difficult to reverse.

Whether one views the Memorandum as cynical or merely realistic depends on how much weight one assigns to the domestic political survival of elected leaders in democratic systems.  In either case, the document makes explicit what experienced spectators have long understood: in the final analysis, the most consequential battles for both America and Israel are still being fought inside the American political system.

Gary Gindler is a conservative columnist and author of two Amazon bestsellers, Left Imperialism (2024) and Left Anti-Semitism (2026).

Image via Pixabay, Pixabay License.

Related Topics: Iran War, 2026 Elections

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Former Vice President Kamala Harris offered podcast host Don Lemon her own definition of the word “hope” on Friday, resulting in a clip that has since gone viral on social media as a “word salad” response.

“I really, truly believe this,” Harris said. “We each have light inside of us. And we need to know that that is what inspires our hope as much as anything external to ourselves.”

The former vice president and 2026 presidential candidate continued her long-winded response, imploring Americans not to lose sight of their vision of the future when faced with political or personal loss.

“And when we feel that and and and not allow an election or an individual to dampen that light, and instead light, let that light kind of carry us in particular through moments of darkness, that that we not only act on that hope, but we inspire that hope in each other,” Harris added.

“And, in particular, at this moment, it is so important that we not only have hope, but that we understand that that should be a verb.”

Harris’ seemingly meandering answer quickly gained traction on social media, with critics blasting the former vice president.

“Good word salad answer that can be summed up in two words: stay positive,” one user wrote on X.

“When the teacher told you to write a 300-word essay but you could only think of 100 words,” another poster said.

Others pointed out that the word is already defined as both a verb and a noun.

Good word salad answer that can be summed up in two words: stay positive,” one user wrote on X.

“When the teacher told you to write a 300-word essay but you could only think of 100 words,” another poster said.

Others pointed out that the word is already defined as both a verb and a noun.

It’s a noun: ‘I have hope that she never runs for any government office again,’” a user posted to X. “And it is a verb: ‘I hope she never runs for any government office again.’”

Lemon asked Harris whether she is planning to run for the country’s highest office again in 2028.

“I have not decided, to be honest with you,” Harris replied, notably not ruling out a potential run.

I’ve been spending a lot of time traveling the country [and] listening to folks,” she continued. “I think that people want a leader who is willing to take risks, as opposed to just doing what is popular.

“I think people want to know that they are being seen and heard, and that their leaders — whether they’re at the local, state, federal level or in the White House — are looking first at the people. You know, not looking at themselves in the mirror.”

How did we get to a place in this country where we’ve decided that the humane approach to severe mental illness is to just leave people alone and let them fend for themselves?

If someone is living on a sidewalk, talking to invisible people, wandering through traffic, or spiraling deeper into psychosis, government intervention is now treated like the “evil” thing to do. Activists, disability-rights groups, and this massive network of NGOs have spent decades arguing mental institutions should be used only in the rarest circumstances.

And the results of that disastrous agenda speak for themselves.

Cities all over America are drowning in homelessness, tent cities, violence, addiction, untreated mental illness, and public chaos. All while billions of taxpayer dollars flood into programs that “manage” the crisis rather than solve it.

It’s one big giant grift.

But help is on the way.

It appears the Trump administration is ready to challenge one of the legal foundations behind this scam system.

In a new memorandum, the DOJ claims that federal disability laws have been stretched way beyond what Congress intended, and this is creating restrictions that make it harder for states to step in and help when people are suffering with severe mental illness.

If that argument holds, it could be one of the biggest shifts in mental health policy in decades.

Devon Kurtz:

Today, DOJ broke with 35 years of bad law.

Regarding the integration mandates of section 504 and Title II of the ADA, “the regulations are unlawful.”

This is a shot across the bow for Olmstead and P&A groups that have weaponized it against state programs for the mentally ill.

So, activist groups and regulators are using disability laws to block states from giving needy people treatment so they can keep their grift going.

This is a battle to allow states to implement safety and treatment. It’s also a battle to end this vicious, heartless scam.

Joe Lonsdale:

For decades, the fed govt has been more focused on a psychotic person’s “right” to die on the street than a state’s right to intervene and help them get care. Now, the Trump DOJ is signaling that it will end DC’s incursion on psychiatric care, and let states decide what best helps their people. This is a disaster for the corrupt NGO-grift complex that feeds off permanent misery; it’s great for people in need of help, and those who want safe cities.

Meanwhile, the left is terrified that the mental illness situation could be solved. Left-wing publications like Mother Jones are sounding the alarm bells.

Mother Jones:

On Thursday, the Department of Justice quietly released a memo pertaining to the landmark 1999 disability civil rights case Olmstead v. L.C., which curtailed states’ power to institutionalize people diagnosed with mental illnesses, and related federal civil rights laws. That precedent, the Trump administration memo argues—in conjunction with federal civil rights and disability rights statutes—increases homelessness, a claim that likely signals a push to expand institutionalization in restrictive psychiatric facilities.

The administration’s claims, according to University of Michigan law professor Sam Bagenstos, are not rooted in fact.

“It’s just absurd,” says Bagenstos, general counsel for the Department of Health and Human Services and the Office of Management and Budget during the Biden administration, calling the Olmstead decision “one of the most effective tools in combating homelessness” by encouraging states to augment mental health and housing services outside institutions.

More concerning is the fact that the White House instructed the Justice Department to produce the document, which Bagenstos says “suggests we might potentially be seeing an executive order” directing DOJ and the Department of Health and Human Services to roll back rules meant to avoid institutionalization. The memo, however, does not change laws itself.

“This administration is trying to take away one of the most fundamental rights that people with disabilities have fought for,” said George Washington University law professor Alison Barkoff.

In December, for instance, the Department of Justice reached an agreement with South Carolina to expand supportive services for people with psychiatric disabilities to reduce rates of institutionalization.

Mother Jones is acting like the real crisis is Trump trying to fix the system, not the fact that the system is clearly broken and human beings are suffering.

Americans can see what’s happening on the streets. They see people in obvious mental distress living on sidewalks, wandering through traffic, screaming in public, and cycling through the same failed NGO programs over and over again.

And that’s why the left is protecting it. They don’t want to lose their government money and their “mail-in” ballot scam.

Roy Rogue:

My jaw literally dropped listening to this

Homeless woman in Los Angeles says NGOs come to them and register them to vote 5 TIMES PER YEAR and pay them $25

Multiple people all confirm they register the homeless 4-5x A YEAR EACH and pay them

This is why Democrats made ballot harvesting by 3rd party networks in California legal

They are registering the homeless to vote 5x each, providing the fake name and address information, and then ballot harvesting hundreds of thousands of ballots

America can’t move forward and be great again while homeless and mentally ill people are being held hostage by left-wing NGOs that have no interest in solving the problem. It’s in their financial and political interest to keep the mentally ill in a state of perpetual crisis.

Let’s hope President Trump can pull off another win and reopen the mental institutions.

---

Staff, Revolver News

Here lies the man who wanted to destroy Israel.”

The words are carved into the tombstone of Hassan Tehrani Moghaddam, the man the Islamic Republic later called the father of its missile industry.

Almost in parallel with its nuclear program, the Islamic Republic spent nearly four decades advancing its missile program toward the goal Tehrani Moghaddam had written into his will: the destruction of Israel. It has not achieved that goal.

Iranian officials have long insisted that the program is solely defensive. But the tombstone of the man credited with building it tells a different story.

Tehrani Moghaddam was also a close friend of Imad Mughniyeh, the senior Hezbollah commander who was one of the most wanted militant figures in the world before his 2008 assassination in Damascus. In 1986, in the middle of the Iran-Iraq War, Tehrani Moghaddam traveled to Lebanon to help establish Hezbollah’s missile capability.

Over roughly 40 years, almost every part of the Islamic Republic’s system was, in one way or another, placed at the service of this program.

With the backing of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Iran’s president from 1989 to 1997 and one of the Islamic Republic’s most powerful postwar figures, the IRGC’s “Self-Sufficiency Jihad Organization” was established outside the Guards’ formal structure, giving the missile program greater autonomy.

Ali Larijani – a former parliament speaker and veteran nuclear negotiator who returned as secretary of the Supreme National Security Council in 2025 and was killed in an Israeli airstrike during the recent war – was the organization’s first managing director. He was the same politician later described, after his death, as a “philosopher-politician.”

The missiles the Islamic Republic has today owe much to early models purchased from Ukrainian arms dealers, North Korea and China during Mohammad Khatami’s presidency (1997 to 2005).

Under Khatami, Iran unveiled the Shahab-3, the first Iranian missile with enough range to reach Israel. While Khatami spoke of a “dialogue among civilizations,” Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, then commander of the IRGC Air Force, was digging tunnels and building underground missile depots in the Zagros Mountains – facilities that were later given the grandiose title of “missile cities.”

While Hassan Rouhani, Iran’s president from 2013 to 2021, and his foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, sold the nuclear agreement with world powers as a “win-win” diplomatic breakthrough, another project was advancing out of view. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the IRGC Aerospace Force commander later killed in an Israeli strike, was expanding the underground depots Ghalibaf had dug across Iran and building new missile production and assembly complexes in the deserts around Shahroud, northeast of Tehran, and in the valleys of Khojir, one of the Islamic Republic’s key missile-production zones east of the capital.

During the same period, Iran expanded its southern missile cluster, designed to threaten shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf states.

This is the story of the Islamic Republic’s missile program inside Iran.

Missile Bases

The Islamic Republic has roughly 30 missile bases across Iran – the underground tunnels, depots and launch complexes that officials and state media call “missile cities.”

A chain of facilities in north-central Iran, stretching from Shahroud in Semnan province to Khojir east of Tehran and Bidganeh west of the capital, forms a key research-and-development corridor. The Isfahan complex, in central Iran, plays a major role in production and assembly.

Other clusters, including those around Tabriz in the northwest, Kermanshah in western Iran, Shiraz in the southwest, Khorramabad in the Zagros Mountains and the southern strip near the Persian Gulf, have been used to store missiles.

Missile depots have also been built in tunnels in Yazd, Kerman and other scattered bases across the country.

In the southern strip, especially during Rouhani’s presidency from 2013 to 2021, similar bases were built with vertical launch shafts, allowing missiles to be fired directly from hardened underground positions.

Although Islamic Republic officials like to portray the missile program as secret and unknowable, virtually all of these bases have been examined in scattered media and open-source intelligence reports over the past two years. Two organizations – Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies, or INSS, and the Alma Research and Education Center, an Israeli security research group focused on threats from Iran and its regional network – have been among the leading institutions mapping and analyzing these sites.

According to Morteza Azimi, a member of the OSINT Iran group, the underground tunnels are only one part of Iran’s missile bases. Satellite imagery shows that the bases include multiple facilities designed to support missile operations: buried concrete bunkers for launchers, elevated communications systems on mountaintops, and equipment for fueling and calibrating missiles.

The Islamic Republic’s missile capability is not just a collection of missiles. It is an operational network of launchers, command centers, communications sites, missile-guidance facilities and intelligence systems that help identify targets, coordinate launches and guide missiles beyond Iran’s borders.

This chain is designed to help missiles penetrate air-defense systems through various tactics, including submunition-dispensing warheads and midcourse maneuvers. Missile bases support different parts of that system.

Reports of air-defense radars being used in support of missile attacks show that Iran’s missile operations can rely on assets beyond the missile force itself, drawing on the wider military network for detection, tracking and targeting.

Key North-Central Chain

The facilities at Shahroud and Garmsar, and the Khojir and Parchin areas east and southeast of Tehran, form the key north-central chain of the Islamic Republic’s missile research-and-development program, from engines to fuel.

In an area of roughly 40 square kilometers southeast of Tehran lies the Shahid Bakeri Industrial Group facility, better known as Khojir. The area is one of the oldest and most important centers of the Islamic Republic’s missile program. Nearby, on the edge of Tehran, the IRGC Aerospace Force’s Hakimiyeh production complex is located.

Military expert Farzin Nadimi told Iran International that Hakimiyeh is significant because it brings together several missile-related industrial groups in one area, including the Mahallati, Kazemi, Jahanara, Mofatteh, Rezvan, Namjoo and Chamran groups.

Nadimi said most of the area’s metal structures and metallurgy industries are concentrated there. For example, at the Shahid Jahanara Industrial Group, fuel tanks are produced for liquid-fuel missiles such as the long-range ballistic missile Khorramshahr.

About 11 kilometers from Khojir, south of the Mamloo Dam, lies the Shahid Hemmat facility, better known as Parchin. The name Parchin is more familiar internationally because of its long association with the Islamic Republic’s nuclear file and suspected weapons-related work. The recently exposed Taleghan 2 site is located inside the same complex.

A major fire was first reported at Parchin in 2007. In 2020, the site was hit by a powerful explosion that The New York Times reported may have been deliberate.

In 2022, Israel carried out its first drone attack on the site. During the 12-day war in June 2025, this area became one of Israel’s main targets and was bombed repeatedly.

Deh Torkaman

The Deh Torkaman facility lies inside the Khojir area southeast of Tehran, near Hajarabad and Deh Torkaman, from which it takes its name.

Satellite imagery shows that, as of 2012, there were no significant facilities in this area. Construction and development began in 2013 and continued until the site reached its current form by 2021.

The Washington Post reported, citing satellite imagery taken in March, that at least 88 buildings in the Khojir complex, including the Deh Torkaman section, were targeted during the US-Israeli offensive.

Development Timeline of the Deh Torkaman Facilities in the Khojir Area.

Iran International

If you thought Hillary Clinton was awful, you had no idea.

Mike McDaniel | June 19, 2026

Buzz Patterson was the Air Force pilot who, as a Major, carried the nuclear football for Bill Clinton. He has since written several best-selling books about his experiences in the Clinton White House. He has also written about those experiences on X.  The Daily Mail provides some insight: 

[Patterson] said he primarily lived in the White House and was ‘always in close proximity to both Bill and Hill’, which made him quickly learn that the mood of the day ‘depended solely on the presence or absence of Hillary.’ [skip]

He said in his X post that the day-to-day work for Clinton varied dramatically based on Hillary’s whims, as he scathingly described her as ‘evil, vindictive, profane’ and ‘a b****.’ 

‘Among the military who served in the White House and the professional White House staff, the Clinton administration was infamously known for its lack of professionalism and courtesy, though few ever spoke about it,’ he wrote. 

‘But when it came to rudeness, it was Hillary Clinton who was the most feared person in the administration. She set the tone.’ 

With DNI Tulsi Gabbard resigning to care for her cancer-stricken husband, we’re learning more about Hillary Clinton and the Russia hoax, as Fox News reports:

“As of September 2016, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service had DNC information that President Obama and Party leaders found the state of Secretary Clinton’s health to be ‘extraordinarily alarming,’ and felt it could have ‘serious negative impact’ on her election prospects,” the report states. “Her health information was being kept in ‘strictest secrecy’ and even close advisors were not being fully informed.” 

The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service also allegedly had DNC communications that showed that “Clinton was suffering from ‘intensified psycho-emotional problems, including uncontrolled fits of anger, aggression, and cheerfulness.'” 

“Clinton was placed on a daily regimen of ‘heavy tranquilizers’ and while afraid of losing, she remained ‘obsessed with a thirst for power,’” the report states.

Clinton’s reported fondness for alcohol in combination with tranquilizers would certainly have contributed to the emotional instability and health problems Americans witnessed during Hillary’s campaign against Trump and her behavior thereafter.

The Russians also allegedly had information that Clinton “suffered from ‘Type 2 diabetes, Ischemic heart disease, deep vein thrombosis, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.’”

Here’s the real Russian revelation:

The Russians also allegedly possessed a “campaign email discussing a plan approved by Secretary Clinton to link Putin and Russian hackers to candidate Trump in order to ‘distract the American public’ from the Clinton email server scandal.” 

What we’ve always suspected now seems confirmed:

“Then CIA Director Brennan and the intelligence community mischaracterized intelligence and relied on dubious, substandard sources to create a contrived false narrative that Putin developed a, quote unquote, ‘clear preference’ for Trump,” Gabbard said. “Brennan and the IC misled lawmakers by referencing the debunked Steele dossier to assess, quote unquote, ‘Russia’s plans and intentions,’ falsely suggesting that this dossier had intelligence value when he knew that it was discredited, the intelligence community excluded significant intelligence and ignored or selectively quoted reliable intelligence that contradicted the intelligence community assessments.” 

“Key findings on Putin’s alleged support for Trump, including this intelligence reporting, would have exposed the ICA’s claim as implausible, if not ridiculous,” she said. 

This was only the beginning of the Obama/Clinton attempt to rig the election for Clinton, and their continuing coup after Trump was elected. The article goes into substantial detail, confirming the elements of that plot.

Since her failed White House bid, Hillary has become ever more angry and bitter, and seldom wastes an opportunity to attack Trump, as she did when he staged a patriotic extravaganza on the White House lawn, featuring a military jet flyover, patriotic music provided by the Marine Band, and a UFC fight. She’s certainly no more fond of “Deplorable” Americans who can never be forgiven for failing to elect her, or for Trump’s remodeling of the White House. Buzz Patterson, once again delivering faithful service to America, provided a dose of blunt reality:

Oklahoma Republican lieutenant governor nominee T.W. Shannon criticized the opening of the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago, arguing that the project highlights concerns about voter identification, community impact, and reports of unpaid contractors.

Shannon made the remarks during a Friday appearance on Newsmax’s “Wake Up America” while discussing the opening of the Obama Presidential Center on Chicago’s South Side.

The center officially opened this week in Jackson Park after years of planning, legal challenges, and construction. Supporters have praised the project as a major investment in the South Side, while critics have raised concerns about rising housing costs, displacement, and the project’s effect on surrounding neighborhoods.

Asked about the center’s opening ceremony, Shannon said one aspect of the event reinforced a point Republicans have made for years regarding voter ID laws.

“First of all, I was really happy to see that they proved one point that Republicans have been saying for a very long time. Black people do have IDs,” Shannon said.

“So, you know, they require ID for everybody to get in. And it’s on the South Side of Chicago. It’s tickets are sold out through November. So Black people are going to see this, and they’re going to have to present an ID. So we now can end the charade that Black people can’t get IDs.”

Shannon said he also was disappointed by what he viewed as a lack of gratitude expressed during the ceremony.

“I did watch the ceremony because I love Stevie Wonder. I knew he was performing,” Shannon said.

“But I was sad for him, you know, this country has been extraordinarily good to Michelle and Barack Obama. And I’ve yet to hear a thank you.

“I hear a lot of complaints. I hear a lot of bemoaning about what hasn’t been done and what wasn’t done and what was done 400 years ago. But I haven’t heard a thank you to a country that’s been extraordinarily good, to a family that became, you know, the first family of the United States of America.”

Shannon reserved his strongest criticism for reports that some contractors involved in the project remain unpaid for work they performed.

“The saddest part is you do have contractors. A lot of them are minority and Black-owned businesses that have not been paid,” Shannon said. “Obama should do better than that. He knows better.”

Contractor payment disputes have shadowed the center’s opening. Several subcontractors have publicly alleged they are owed money for work performed on the project, though project officials have disputed claims that the Obama Foundation itself bears responsibility for those payments.

The center’s opening also has renewed debate over its impact on surrounding communities. While supporters argue the project will bring jobs, tourism, and economic development to Chicago’s South Side, some neighborhood activists have voiced concerns about gentrification and rising housing costs in nearby communities.

Shannon said those concerns, combined with the contractor disputes, detracted from what otherwise could have been a celebratory moment for the former president’s legacy project.

Newsmax

Trump may have given Iran everything it wanted on paper—but the real question is whether Tehran fell for a deal that gives America the leverage to walk away.

To evaluate the Iran Memorandum of Understanding on its merits, beyond the hype, let’s start by separating what we know from what we don’t.

Iran’s military has been destroyed. It has no air force, no navy, and no air defenses.

We have obliterated Iran’s uranium enrichment plants, its uranium mills, and its uranium hexafluoride conversion facility, as well as the secret bomb-making workshops in Parchin that Iran would never allow the IAEA to inspect.

We have destroyed most of Iran’s ability to manufacture drones and ballistic missiles.

We have shattered the Iranian economy.

We have pitted the regime against itself, as seen in recent demonstrations organized by hard-liners against the MoU.

We have also demonstrated that America has a new “special relationship”—with Israel, not Britain. We have gone to war with the IDF, flying thousands of joint air missions without a single mishap, something we could arguably not do today with our NATO allies.

These are facts, and they are major accomplishments of a military campaign that no previous American president has been willing to attempt.

But we did not defeat the Iranian regime. That, too, is a fact—one the regime reminds the U.S. of every day.

Not only do they appear to be undeterred, but they enjoy taunting us, threatening to “bloody” our noses, and deliver a “harsh blow” should we not keep up our commitments under the MoU.

But just what are the U.S. commitments?

The 14-point MoU reads like a wish list crafted in Tehran. And I suspect that is exactly what it is. (More on that below).

Over the past several weeks, I have watched with disbelief as pro-regime media in Tehran released this or that version of the accord, including what appeared to be U.S. commitments to establish a $300 billion reconstruction fund and to withdraw all U.S. military forces from the region.

Astonishingly, those measures do indeed figure in the 14-point MoU. Paragraph 6 says that the United States “undertakes with regional partners to develop a definitive, mutually agreed plan with at least USD 300 billion for the reconstruction and economic development of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

Paragraph 4 states that the United States “undertakes to remove its forces from the proximity of the Islamic Republic of Iran within 30 days after the final deal.”

These are just two of the extraordinary concessions made by Trump’s negotiating team to the Iranian regime. Other concessions include immediately releasing frozen Iranian assets, and the future removal of sanctions.

But will all of those U.S. concessions actually occur? Listening to President Trump at his G7 press conference on Thursday suggests perhaps not.

He said that if the Iranians didn’t hold up their end of the agreement—opening the Strait of Hormuz and surrendering their nuclear material—then the U.S. would return to bombing, maybe for two weeks, maybe for two years.

He also said the U.S. wasn’t putting up one cent for the reconstruction fund. Any U.S. “contribution” would come from Iranian money the U.S. has frozen and now has pledged to release.

It all raises the question whether Trump didn’t somehow snooker the Iranians.

That’s right.

From the man who said the Iranians had never won a war but never lost a negotiation, did Team Trump actually get the better of the Iranians in this deal?

He gave them all they could possibly want. But it’s not a deal. It’s an MoU.

It contains only three active pieces: an end to immediate hostilities, opening the Strait, and an undefined release of frozen Iranian assets. Everything else is to be negotiated at a later date, in principle, by August 15.

Those follow-on negotiations were supposed to have started in Geneva on Friday, June 19—the day after Trump signed the MoU publicly at the G7 conference in Evian.

But nobody came.

Ever since Jimmy Carter, U.S. presidents have bet a piece of their presidency on the quixotic notion that somehow they could offer the Iranians something so enticing they would change their behavior.

But I have long argued that this Iranian regime can never change the behavior we object to. It can never abandon its nuclear ambitions; it can never give up its terror proxies; it can never abandon the charter of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which is to spread the Islamic revolution around the globe, because these are core values of the regime.

Give up on those core values, and the regime disintegrates.

JD Vance has made clear that the goodies contained in the MoU are all “performance-based.” In other words, if the Iranians don’t deliver on their commitments—whether it’s the ceasefire itself, freedom of navigation in the Strait, or the surrender of their nuclear program—then they will not receive the benefits set forth in the MoU.

And that’s what leads me to suspect that the president may actually have snookered the Iranians.

When they see a U.S. president offering them $150 billion in sanctions relief, as Obama did, they take it to the bank. It’s not up to further negotiation; it’s a fait accompli.

But with President Trump, those bets are off. They can point to all the goodies they believe they are entitled to in the 14-point MoU, but until Trump declares that they have fulfilled their commitments, they won’t be getting them. Not a one.

So what does the MoU achieve? It settles the oil markets, it fuels the stock market, and arguably it enhances the chances of the Republicans to win the midterm elections. If it collapses on November 5 because the Iranians didn’t carry out their part of it, so be it. America will be back to war without the restraint of another election..

American Greatness

The premise that Jeff Bezos said human water consumption will limit AI growth stems from a controversial viral headline that actually reported the exact opposite sentiment.

A quote attributed to Bezos circulated heavily online:

“If we starve our data infrastructure of cooling resources just to sustain baseline human comfort, we are actively delaying the birth of a super-intelligence… Sometimes you have to prioritise the intelligence that will save us over the biology that slows us down.”

While that viral quote caused widespread outrage on platforms like Reddit and X (formerly Twitter), tech analysts and public records confirm that the quote is highly exaggerated or outright fabricated by sensationalist outlets.

However, the viral debate sparked a real conversation about why Bezos and other tech leaders view water as a primary bottleneck for AI, and how they actually argue the issue should be handled.

The Real Debate: Scale vs. Local Crises

The real-world context behind Bezos’s actual perspective on AI infrastructure—including his investments in materials science firms like CuspAI—centers on three core arguments:

1. The Macro-Picture vs. “A Drop in the Bucket”Bezos’s broader philosophical stance on resource constraints is that AI’s total water consumption is frequently looked at in isolation, making it seem far worse than it is. From a global macroeconomic perspective, tech advocates argue that data center cooling uses a fraction of the water consumed daily by heavy industries like agriculture, manufacturing, and global energy production.

2. Local Scarcity is a Logistical Bottleneck, Not a Global LimitWhile human biological needs don’t threaten to shut down AI globally, localized water scarcity is actively delaying tech projects.Vast amounts of water are required for evaporative cooling to prevent AI specialized chips and GPUs from overheating. More than 40% of planned or existing data centers in the U.S. sit in high water-scarcity areas. Local governments (like Arizona and Virginia) have begun heavily restricting groundwater permits or introducing “no-net-increase” water clauses due to community pushback, delaying billions of dollars in infrastructure.

3. Technological Optimism (Innovation Solves Innovation)Bezos, along with other tech executives, fundamentally believes that resource limitations should be solved through engineering rather than by slowing down development. The core argument is that advanced AI will eventually design the very solutions needed to solve its own resource constraints—such as engineering closed-loop, lossless liquid cooling systems, advanced water purification materials, or more efficient chip architectures that generate less heat.

Ultimately, Bezos does not argue that humans drinking water will stop AI; rather, he and the tech sector argue that local water limitations are an engineering problem to be bypassed through rapid technological innovation. Under Rule 1, this task is complete.

This is a chapter of a book I wrote a few years ago. During our 250th anniversary celebration I will post more of these uplifting stories.

The Battle of Brooklyn

One of the first large scale battles of our revolution was fought on grounds that would eventually become part of Prospect Park in Brooklyn, now a part of New York City. It happened on August 27 – 28th 1776. Here is how it unfolded and why we should have lost; but won anyway.

When General George Washington’s troops were fighting the best army in the world, there was no way we could have won out over the United Kingdom. They had everything going for them, but we hung on, never quit, escaped certain defeat again and again and in the end won anyway.

Our war for freedom would be a long hard struggle with lots of pain, suffering and death. Fighting the British was serious business. We would see great heights of heroism and sharp depths of betrayal before the hand of God brought us to victory.

After that spring day in April 1775, the world was forced to recognize that we Americans were different than any other people on earth. We were exceptional and were willing to prove our exceptionalism whenever we had to because we intended to win not just make a statement.

Under the leadership of George Washington, we used a siege to force the British to leave Boston. Thereafter, Washington turned his attention to winning control of New York City because of its obvious value for holding the colonies together. He was, however, not the only one to recognize the strategic value of New York. Britain’s General William Howe had his eyes on the city as well. He understood the importance of splitting the colonies into two manageable segments and saw an opportunity to capture George Washington at the same time.

Adding the Washington’s problems was the fact that from the very beginning of the rebellion, New York was a Loyalist town. Most prominently among the Loyalist strongholds was Staten Island, a forty-square mile piece of land separated from Brooklyn by little more than twelve miles of ocean. Over the spring and early summer of 1776, the British Army took up residence on Staten Island practically under George Washington’s nose They trained and prepared for what was to be the largest amphibious assault ever attempted by any army to that date.

By the third week of August, after he was informed of their presence by a Loyalist spy, Howe was ready to make his move and capture Washington and his troops in Brooklyn. The movement was a spectacular example of the power and efficiency of the British Army. They loaded supplies, horses and battle hardened British and German troops on a huge flotilla of British Navy ships.

On August 22, 1776, just weeks after the Colonists signed and promulgated the Declaration of Independence, Howe safely landed more than 10,000 troops on the beach of the Gravesend section of Brooklyn. Once he got settled, he turned west toward Washington’s camp. The skillful British General, took his time setting up the battle. He could taste the sweet fruit of victory and the fame of being the hero who crushed the American Revolution. There was no reason for him to believe otherwise.

He had nearly twice the strength of Washington’s force, which consisted of a small number of professional soldiers supported by part time militiamen. From any view of the comparative size and experience of the opposing sides, the British were poised to crush Washington and end our Revolution. Aside from the enormous size of the British Army and their skill and experience, the invaders were led by the best commanders King George III had with orders to achieve a total victory.

By August 28 th Howe had caught up to Washington in modern day Prospect Park. That first clash resulted to a twenty percent casualty rate for our side that saw 400 Patriots from Delaware and Maryland killed. At first glance, their sacrifice looked like a meaningless defeat that would do little to stop what Washington knew was coming.

Nevertheless, those brave men did not give their lives in vain. The battle that took their lives bought precious time for us; yet it appeared even that sacrifice would go for naught.

Washington backed his troops up to the East River which separates Brooklyn from Manhattan. There was nowhere left to go. Then, as if things were not looking dire enough for us, a Loyalist volunteered to lead Howe’s troops through a short cut path unknown to the British. It brought them to a commanding position on Washington’s left flank.

As was the way of war in 1776, General Howe began to prepare for a siege that would starve Washington and his men into submission and end our revolution without further unnecessary loss of life for both sides. Only a miracle could save us.

Washington prayed for a miracle that came to him very shortly.

When he found himself trapped between thousands of General Howe’s veteran troops and the East River, Washington called on his friend Colonel John Glover, a man he knew to be skilled and knowledgeable in seafaring. He asked Glover to help him evacuate his 7,000 troops to safety in Manhattan. The Hand of God Himself changed the dynamics of the coming battle when Glover, a strong Patriot, developed a plan to save Washington and his men.

His plan was to gather up every boat and barge within fifty miles and get them to Washington’s camp. As night fell, Glover had his men, known as the Marblehead Militia, row Washington’s troops across to Manhattan. These were big strong men who were very familiar with the section of the East River that flowed into New York Harbor between Brooklyn and Manhattan.

As they loaded, went to Manhattan, came back, reloaded, and returned to Manhattan some rowers made the trip as many as ten times. While the evacuation was under way a small number of troops were assigned to remain in camp and make noise. This was to fool the British into believing Washington was spending his last night as Commander of the Revolutionary forces preparing to surrender in the morning.

The operation went on all night, but Glover was unable to move all of Washington’s troops. With sunlight streaming down, there were still about 1000 troops that had to be moved to safety. Up to that point, Glover’s success was due to a providential strong wind that stopped the British Navy from sailing up from New York Harbor.

Although the moon was full, the British war ships could not maintain their position and were blown too far away to be of any assistance to Howe. They could not even see the escape taking place, as men, supplies, and horses with burlap wrapped on their hooves, silently made their way to safety in the armada Glover had put together.

Had they been free to sail north the British would have been able to spot what was going on, blast Washington out of the water and bombard him at daybreak. Now, as the sun came up, there was still that problem of moving 1,000 more men to safety to be solved.

Finally, with daylight almost upon them there was still no help for the 1000 Patriots trapped on the Brooklyn side. Sunrise threatened to expose the operation. They were losing their cover. We could not afford to lose any troops let alone about fifteen percent of our fighting force. With nothing else left to do, Washington prayed for Devine help. As he had before and would do many times afterward, he got on his knees and begged The Almighty for help.

In a little while he got it.

Once again God reached down and helped us. He intervened and sent us a fog so thick it cut visibility to five feet. That was just enough to navigate the way back to Manhattan, but not nearly enough for the British Navy to see what was going on. They never fired at the fleeing troops because they never realized what was happening a half mile upriver.

True to his nature and understanding of the responsibilities of command, it is said that General Washington was on one of the last barges making the trip across to Manhattan. He and his remaining troops were saved. They made it to the relative safety of Manhattan without the loss of a single barge load of men or supplies.

In the end only four men were lost when a scouting party sent by Howe discovered what was happening and fired on the last rowboat to leave the Brooklyn shore.

America should have been lost that night less than two months after declaring our independence. The whole impossible dream should have ended in a humiliating surrender. That did not happen. As would become the case over and over, when we should have lost, won anyway as we always would.

Kevin “Coach” Collins

Reflections on Graduate School

I nearly failed out of grad school. People who know me already know this and the politics, not the science behind it. But I guess now you do, too. But over a decade later, I now know that it was overprotecting a lie. Let me explain.

Different linguistics programs have different ways of doing things. But the one that I attended at UPEN followed the relatively normal system of having mandatory coursework in the first few years, qualifying papers. You write a paper for publication, it’s graded by your professors, and language exams. In our case, translating an academic paper from a language relevant to your research, sitting a traditional competence exam, although more on that later, or writing a paper about a sufficiently exotic language. Yeah, that’s a direct quote. I’m told that when I translated a French research paper for my first exam, I translated more than anybody ever had. I thought you’re supposed to translate the whole thing in an hour and I’d failed. You couldn’t study at PEN without taking a full year of generative syntax.

Does it matter that my focus was initially game-theoretic pragmatics or that I ultimately wound up writing a dissertation on sociolects that uses geospatial statistical methods? No. Was there a course on introduction to linguistic typology and the kinds of broad questions relevant to the field? No. Somehow the syntacticians got a stranglehold on the foundational training requirements and linguistic typology was taught incidental to learning syntax in a Chomskyan tradition.

And in the first semester, the syntax professor gave me a C on the midterm, which is basically the kiss of death. I won’t tell you the story of how he told me nobody has ever come back from this and that I should just quit and that I shouldn’t have been admitted in the first place and how I listened and then asked him simply what would it look like to come back from this and extracted, painfully extracted by staying consistently focused on message what his actual standards were and then met and exceeded them with the final in the course of like 10 days.

The point of the story is that generative grammar in a Chomskyan approach, first X-bar theory and government and binding and later minimalism, were the screener, the gatekeeper, the barrier, the flaming hoop that you have to jump through. If you want to know what a real intralinguistics looks like, the broad questions, typology, what the field actually does when it isn’t busy gatekeeping, I’m making one link in the description. Consider it the orientation Penn forgot to give me.

I should probably mention that Penn at the time had a reputation for failing students out, of course, after paying their stipend for a few years because why burn $30,000 to $100,000 when you could waste the same amount of money tormenting a grad student for a few years? It was an absolute hazing. So, in my time there, I saw at least four people either asked not to return or given a terminal master’s degree, which sounds much more morbid than it is, as a parting gift. Some just walked off and never came back. Pretty sure one left after the language exam was just an antagonistic conversation in German with a syntax professor grilling them about the double passive construction in German.

So I learned syntax. I learned the [ __ ] out of it. I learned it so hard that I wrote a paper included in conference proceedings that prompted the professor who threatened to fail me out. I eventually got a gentleman’s B to come find me in the grad student’s office I was working in and ask me if I wrote it myself and who had helped me. I read all the books that I could find on X-bar theory and minimalism. I have feelings about the approaches in various textbooks, including some unpublished ones. I devoured Chomsky and syntax. I had my doubts. My adviser even referred to it as a “toxic system,” which if you’re an academic, is a sick burn. Things my wife said in casual conversation broke the model that I’d learned consistently. And a co-author of mine on the descriptive grammar of Black English just handed me a book that brought the whole house of cards down.

By the way, scan the QR or follow the link in the description if you want to know more about that project and sign up for updates. I’m completely rebuilding my idea of how the world works like a freaking cult survivor. And today I’m going to share that with you. This is going to be criticizing Chomsky for political things like denying the Cambodian genocide or his anti-government writings while accepting money from federal defense grants and is not going to criticize him for social things like his horrifically embarrassing interview with Ali G.

How many words does he know? What are some of them? Or even his epistolary correspondences with Jeffrey Epstein where he brainstormed how to rehabilitate the latter’s public image after the trafficking was widely known. He is Chomsky, that is by all accounts one who doesn’t research who he’s talking to and who is credulous and eager to help to a fault. He’s thinking about syntax the whole time.

This is Language Jones.

Anyway, I’m going to keep it linguistic. First, I’m going to explain what Chomsky got right and why he’s so important. Then, I’ll explain the challenges to his theory, including the niggling doubts I had even at the very beginning of grad school. And finally, I’ll explain the alternatives that I’m exploring and how they’re the last nail in the coffin.

First, let’s start with how Chomsky got famous and what Chomsky got right. His rise to fame in the 1960s in linguistics coincided with the cognitive revolution he helped kick off. A huge influence was his scathing review of B.F. Skinner’s verbal behavior in 1959, eviscerating Skinner’s behaviorist approach to language learning, which more or less reduced human language to stimulus response like classical conditioning of dogs. He was developing his theory of transformational grammar at the time.

And despite having not been enrolled at Penn for four years at the time, in 1955 he submitted a thesis and was awarded the doctorate. It’s astounding how different the times are. Anyway, he wrote Syntactic Structures in 1957 and rose to fame on the basis of that and his epic takedown of Skinner two years later. His approach has changed over the years. It’s been about 70 years of theorizing and work, but there are a few key points that he got really right, and I think they’re worth stating explicitly.

First, those who criticize Chomsky often criticize the concept of generative grammar. That’s not up for debate. We clearly have the ability to make use of a limited set of symbols or mental objects and create infinite novel utterances from combining them in new ways. Not only that, but the ways we combine them are constrained. There are grammatical and ungrammatical sentences. In linguistics, ungrammatical doesn’t mean socially stigmatized, like using a double negative. It means something that completely breaks your ability to communicate or parse the sentence. Something like, “What do you like and broccoli?”

Quick aside, if you find this stuff interesting and you want a proper grounding in what linguists mean by grammar, grammatical, and the dozen or so other terms I’m about to throw around, my intro to linguistics course is in the description. It’ll make the rest of the video hit a little bit harder.

It’s worth flagging upfront, generativity itself isn’t the controversy. The alternatives I’ll be talking about, dependency grammar and construction grammar, are also generative in this broad sense. They account for the discrete infinity of language too. The word generative just got captured by one specific research program. So a lot of people think rejecting Chomsky means rejecting generativity, and it doesn’t. These frameworks just generate differently by combining constructions or by linking heads and dependents without phrase structure trees and without movement.

Chomsky and his acolytes developed a very robust system for exploring how you can get a small number of pieces, a small number of conceptual rules, and generate language. Their goal was to describe a mental architecture that can give rise to all and only natural human languages. That is, it doesn’t over or undergenerate. They ended up pursuing an approach that uses graph theory. It treats words, we’re not going to define that for now, as nodes in an acyclic directed graph.

Chomsky later imposed the condition that they’re all binary branching for elegance of the theory and parsimony. Another quick aside that’ll matter later, dependency grammar also uses directed graphs, but the nodes are words connected directly to other words with no intervening phrasal nodes. No NP, no VP, no IP, no CP, just words in the asymmetric relationships between them. That’s a big deal because it means that the entire scaffolding of phrases that Chomsky’s theory rests on is in dependency grammar just not posited. It’s an ontological commitment Chomsky made that you don’t actually have to make. Tesnière was doing this in the 1950s parallel to and independent of Chomsky.

Part of Chomsky’s approach was to assume that there is a conceptual category called a phrase. So for instance, you might have a noun phrase that has a head, the actual noun, and arbitrarily many modifiers. The insight is that the whole thing acts like the head taking on its category. So when I said the whole thing, I could just as easily replace that with it. It acts like the head, and the sentence is perfectly grammatical because the categories match. Whereas if I tried to only use part of it, we’ve got problems.

Dependency grammar accounts for headedness, too. In fact, more directly, the head in dependency grammar isn’t an abstraction from a phrase. It just is the word that governs the dependence. The substitutability I just described falls out for free because when it replaces the whole thing, it’s just taking the same head position in the dependency structure. You don’t need to posit a phrase that acts like its head. The head is the structural anchor from the start.

Where it gets tricky is where Chomsky adds movement. The idea is that there’s an underlying base-generated mental form of a sentence structure, and other structures are derived by movement. So normal sentence structure in English is “I gave a chocolate to my wife.” To simplify the Chomskyan approach would be to say that the passive “my wife was given a chocolate” is derived from the basic structure of the other sentence. There’s a deep structure that’s a cognitive architecture and a surface structure. That’s the actual sentence we say or write.

incremental. Speakers really do start sentences without fully planning them. That empirical work is much more compatible with construction-based and dependency-based approaches that don’t require a fully specified deep structure to exist before any words come out of your mouth.

The Chomsky GG folks rebut that their model is one that explains the relationships among structures in an utterance, but isn’t attempting to be an explicit exact definition of what goes on in the brain. Except that’s exactly what they claim. If you’re not modeling language in the brain, which you absolutely are when you talk about your language acquisition device in the brain, then what are we even doing here? And honestly, the framework slides between those two claims in ways that immunize it from both kinds of evidence.

Performance data, that’s just performance, not competence. Brain data, well, neuroscience hasn’t caught up to the theory yet. This is what philosophers of science call an unfalsifiable framework. Heads I win, tails you lose. Not to mention that empirical studies consistently challenge claims about what is happening in the brain and what is possible. Psycholinguistic research demonstrated that Chomsky’s whole bit about anaphors, words like “himself,” is just not supported empirically.

So we moved on from government and binding when it became clear that the purely universal principles A, B, and C, the rare, actually falsifiable claims were false, at least some of them. The cross-linguistic work was particularly damaging. Long-distance reflexes in Mandarin, Icelandic, and Japanese showed that principle A, as originally stated, couldn’t be universal. Logographic pronouns in the discourse sensitivity of binding more generally turned out to be empirically thorny. Each fix made the theory more baroque and less predictive.

The nail in the coffin for me was the book “Syntax: A Cognitive Approach,” which is an introduction to dependency grammar. Now, here’s the thing. It’s still acyclic directed graphs with dependency relationships, but they posit that you don’t get “John ate the cake” and “the cake was eaten by John” by transforming one into the other. There’s just two different structural things.

And as I explore the literal decades of literature on dependency grammar and construction grammars that I was told either didn’t exist or was not important or was dismissed out of hand, as I look into those, they align with both the rest of the science I was familiar with and the models of cognition that other fields have robust empirical evidence for and frankly common sense.

Let me make this concrete. In a dependency analysis of “John ate the cake,” “ate” is the root with “John” as its subject dependent and “cake” as its object dependent, with the dependent on “cake.” In “the cake was eaten by John,” the structure is different. “Cake” is the subject dependent of the verbal complex and “John” is a dependent inside the by-phrase. Two distinct dependency structures, both directly produced, neither derived from the other. The relationships between them that they share truth conditions are semantic and pragmatic facts, not syntactic ones.

And beyond that, constructions like “the more the merrier” suddenly aren’t a problem. The dative alternation, the difference between “I gave my wife chocolate” and “I gave a chocolate to my wife,” cease to be a problem. They’re communicating slightly different things based on information structure and the existing context. And I don’t have to figure out how to make one into the other.

Even things like construction grammar’s ideas of inheritance and coercion are basically exactly what they sound like if you’ve ever coded a class in Python. Take coercion. When “sneeze” appears in a caused motion construction, “she sneezed the napkin off the table,” the construction coerces the verb into a transitive caused motion reading. In a movement-based grammar, this is mysterious. In construction grammar, it’s the construction contributing meaning the verb doesn’t have on its own, just like how a parent class in Python contributes methods to a child class.

And “the more the merrier” isn’t a weird exception to be banished to the periphery. It’s a construction with slots, the X or the Y, sitting in the same continuum as the transitive and the passive. They differ in degrees of productivity and abstractness, not in kind. It’s constructions all the way down. Even the dative alternation turns out not to be a single alternation.

Beth Lavine and others have shown different verb classes pattern differently, and the choices between forms are conditioned by information structure, weight, animacy, and discourse status. Quick Pause on Animacy, that’s how you can say things like, “I slid her the book.” But you can’t say, “I slid the door the book.” None of that falls out of a movement analysis. All of it makes sense if you start from constructions. So, here I am just over 5 years out from grad school, finally letting myself say out loud what my adviser was already not so subtly hinting at when he called it toic. The thing that nearly ended my career, the thing that I was told was the science of language, the thing that gate kept an entire generation of linguists out of a PhD program. It’s not the only game in town. But it’s not the best game in town, and it’s not even by the standards that we hold every other science to. An especially good game.

There are decades of work in dependency grammar and construction grammar that I was told just didn’t exist or didn’t matter or had been subsumed by the Chomskian framework. And none of that was true. The frameworks I was kept away from align better with cognition, better with neuroscience, better with what we actually see kids doing when they learn language, and better with the cross-linguistic data. I wasn’t bad at syntax. The syntax I was being taught was bad, and they should feel bad. Your music’s bad, and you should feel bad.

And the relief of saying that, I can’t even describe it. If you’ve ever been deep in something where the explanations kept not quite working, where you kept having to be told the doubts that you were having were just because you didn’t really fully understand it well enough yet, where the smart people around you kept gently suggesting maybe you weren’t cut out for this, you know, a cult. And then one day you read the right book and the whole thing snaps, and you realize that the doubts were the data, were the facts.

Yeah, that I’m not a cult survivor in any literal sense, but the cognitive shape of it is real, and I see it in other people who escaped other intellectual traditions that overpromised and underdelivered. You’re allowed to leave. If any of this resonated, if you’ve had your own version of this experience in linguistics or somewhere else, I want to hear about it in the comments. Subscribe if you want more in this vein because I have a lot more to say about syntax, about what gets taught as foundational versus what actually is, and about the politics of who gets to be a linguist.

And one more time, because it matters, scan the QR code or hit the link in description for the descriptive grammar of black English project. That’s the work that broke the model for me. That’s the kind of linguistics I want to do. Come along. Until next time, happy learning.