Happy Easter to our listeners around the world. You can find details of our seasonal programming here. This Easter we are also in a widening war, analysis of which we shall resume on Easter Monday. As longtime readers will know, for over twenty years I have argued that the home front is the real battlefield, rather than distant horizons where America and its dwindling number of allies expend vast amounts of blood and treasure to achieve no strategic objective. As a poignant vignette of that neglected home front, consider this:
The niece and grand-niece of a notorious late Iranian general have been arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Los Angeles and had their green cards revoked.
Hamideh Soleimani Afshar, 47, and her daughter Sarinasadat Hosseiny, 25, were detained by ICE on Friday while living in the City of Angels.
Afshar had celebrated the deaths of US soldiers during President Donald Trump's ongoing war with Iran, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said.
Their late uncle was General Soleimani, whom Trump droned in 2020, just before Covid and lockdown. It was quite a big deal at the time as he was considered by many analysts to be second only to the then Supreme Leader. Now we learn that many of his family are US green-card holders. Here are the niece and grand-niece, looking rather assimilated:
That's my idea of a sleeper cell: Hubba-hubba akbar! If they showed up like that for the interview with US Immigration, one can well see why they were cleared for the express check-in. Of course, as Secretary Rubio eventually figured out, they're just the usual Death-to-the-Great-Satan types, but at least they're Death-to-the-Great-Satan hotties. I'm not merely slavering over Persian totty the way Lindsey Graham does over civilian casualties, but making rather a basic point: superficial assimilation, such as eschewing one's brassière in favour of plunging cleavage that plunges all the way to the top of your socks, is no reliable guide to the primal impulses that beat deep within the human breast. A hyperpower can be "culturally" dominant, via cheeseburgers and hippety-hop and X-Men 37, even as, on every other metric, its decline accelerates.
But just to emphasise:
*The Bush Administration designated Uncle Soleimani a "terrorist" in 2005;
*The Obama Administration admitted the niece and grand-niece on tourist visas in 2015;
*The Trump Administration granted them "asylum" in 2019, a few months before droning the uncle;
*The Biden Administration issued them with full green cards in 2021, a year after the droning of the uncle.
As a "niche Canadian" once observed, sometimes a society becomes too stupid to survive. And all the bureaucrats who greenlighted the Soleimaneaters are still in the federal government.
Which brings us to this week's episode in my ongoing audio adaptation of the bestselling America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It. It concludes a section examining different aspects of the home front, including our ongoing demographic decline:
You'll recall that during the Iraq war, we heard a lot of talk about ancient Mesopotamia - the land of the Sumerians, Akkadians and Hittites - being 'the cradle of civilization'. That's a very pertinent formulation: Without a cradle, it's hard to sustain a civilization.
Members of The Mark Steyn Club can hear me read Part Thirty-One of America Alone simply by clicking here and logging-in. Earlier episodes can be found here.
~If you prefer more fictional fancies of a weekend, there are spy thrillers, comedy classics, tales of horror and historical romance and much more, all over at our Tales for Our Time home page. If you've a friend who might be partial to almost eighty cracking capers, we have a special Gift Membership that, aside from audio adventures, also includes video poetry, live music and more. And I'll be doing a live-performance Tale for Our Time at sea on the next Mark Steyn Cruise - sailing aboard the Queen Mary 2.
To become a member of The Mark Steyn Club, please click here - and don't forget that special Gift Membership. As soon as you join, you'll get access not only to America Alone but to nearly eighty gripping yarns in Tales for Our Time. Please join me next weekend for Part Thirty-Two of America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It.
