Off the coast of Yemen and at the UN Security Council we are seeing the strategic endgame of Barack Obama’s administration. And it isn’t pretty. 

In the last ten days, Iran’s Houthi proxies in Yemen have attacked US naval craft three times in the Bab al Mandab, the narrow straits at the mouth of the Red Sea. The Bab al Mandab controls maritime traffic in the Red Sea, and ultimately control the Suez Canal.

Whether the Iranians directed these assaults or simply greenlighted them is really beside the point. The point is that these are Iranian strikes on the US. The Houthis would never have exposed themselves to US military retaliation if they hadn’t been ordered to do so by their Iranian overlords.

The question is why has Iran chosen to open up an assault on the US?  Iran’s game is clear enough. It wishes to replace the US as the regional hegemon, at the US’s expense.

Since Obama entered office nearly eight years ago, Iran’s record in advancing its aims has been of uninterrupted success.  Is this an accident on Mr. Obama’s part, sheer incompetence, or is it something far far worse?

There's been a lot of concern recently about the “takeover of the Internet.”  Yesterday (10/17), news reports broke that the lawsuit of four states suing the US for the Internet turnover has been dropped.

Here’s why not to worry about it.  There’s something else to worry about instead.

The organization being handed to an “international body” is the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN.

ICANN  runs the DNS system that allows you to type in something like mysite.com, rather than something like 237.57.364.1. The root servers that people talk about keep track of all those numbers and names.

So, could the international group play ugly games with ICANN? It's possible, of course, but unlikely.  ICANN really isn't very important anymore, save for political bragging rights. Here are some of the reasons why:

There are fewer than 30 days to go before the US presidential election.

It is a campaign which mirrors many of the arguments and conflicts that we have seen recently in British politics, especially during the recent Brexit referendum campaign. Essentially, this election is about continuity versus change, with huge doses of personal vitriol thrown in.

When I arrived at the Republican Party convention in Cleveland, Ohio back in July, I was amazed at the reaction to me over the Brexit result.

One thing is for certain: our successful Brexit referendum is being talked about the world over and it may well be the first kick-back against the status quo that leads to a popular revolt across the West.

Like him or loathe him, Trump is not a part of the political elite and he most certainly is not constrained by political correctness.  This is why he is the leader of this popular revolt in America.

In fact, I believe we are witnessing a popular uprising against failed politics on a global scale – and that if Trump wins in November, he will be the leader of it not just in the US but world-wide.

In this disgusting election, dominated by the personal and the petty, the importance of the nation’s economic geography has been widely ignored.

Yet if you look at the Electoral College map, the correlation between politics and economics is quite stark, with one economy tilting decisively toward Trump and more generally to Republicans, the other toward Hillary Clinton and her Democrat allies.

This reflects an increasingly stark conflict between two very different American economies.

Ephemeral vs. Heartland

One, the “Ephemeral Zone” concentrated on the coasts, runs largely on digits and images, the movement of software, media and financial transactions. It produces increasingly little in the way of food, fiber, energy and fewer and fewer manufactured goods.

The Ephemeral sectors dominate ultra-blue states such as New York, California, Oregon, Washington, Massachusetts, Maryland, and Connecticut.

The other America constitutes, as economic historian Michael Lind notes in a forthcoming paper for the Center for Opportunity Urbanism, the “New Heartland.” Extending from the Appalachians to the Rockies, this heartland economy relies on tangible goods production.

It now encompasses both the traditional Midwest manufacturing regions, and the new industrial areas of Texas, the Southeast and the Intermountain West. 

Contrary to the notions of the Ephemerals, the New Heartland is not populated by Neanderthals. This region employs much of the nation’s engineering talent, but does so in conjunction with the creation of real goods rather than clicks.