In the current American–Iran stand-off are a number of global players. That is hardly new, but what is novel is that, for the first time in decades, there’s almost no power that can obstruct or alter U.S. efforts to confront Iranian aggressions in America’s own time and fashion.

In other words, the United States is almost immune from the sort of pressures that usually coalesce to dictate, modify, or thwart U.S. decision-making in the Middle East.

Such liberation from outside coercion is singularly unusual in the post-war American overseas experience.  Let’s count the ways this is happening across the globe.

President Trump has returned from the G20 summit in Osaka Japan in triumph.

During his time in Asia, the President reset relations with both China and North Korea. All while continuing to implement his strategic vision for the United States to a worldwide audience.

He engaged in talks with Russia to begin resolving regional disputes, reinforced our relationships with our allies in Japan and South Korea, then reengaged  with Xi Jinping to bring the China trade agreement closer to fruition.

Trump capped all that with a stirring “spontaneous” offer to meet Kim Jong Un at the DMZ in South Korea. The pandemonium, drama, and historical nature of the next two days completely eclipsed much of the G20 summit.

However, it totally reinforced Donald J. Trumps position as the preeminent player on the world stage.

Progressives do not see the United States as an exceptional uniter of factions and tribes into a cohesive whole—each citizen subordinating his tribal, ethnic, and religious affinities to a shared Americanism, emblemized by our national motto e pluribus unum. Instead, they prefer e uno plures: out of one nation arise many innately different and separate peoples.

Progressivism’s signature brand is now tribalism: all of us in different ways are victims of a white male Christian heterosexual patriarchy—or a current 20 percent hierarchy that past and present has supposedly oppressed anyone not like themselves. In contrast, our differences define who we are, and are not incidental to the content of our characters.

The salad bowl, not the melting pot, is the new national creed. America is to be a conglomeration of competing tribal parties in the fashion of the Balkans, Rwanda, or contemporary Iraq.

How does the relative victimhood work politically?

It would seem tantamount to insanity to suggest that Donald Trump could win, or even make a sizable dent in, the African-American vote in 2020, but I submit that it's not quite as crazy as it sounds and he should give it a serious shot.

He should go into the black community as often as possible and make his case. This would be using identity politics in order to destroy it. (A noble task. Good riddance.)

Trump clearly has a good case to make — black and Hispanic unemployment are at their lowest numbers ever.  By contrast, over the last few days, we have seen the Democrats go race crazy, outbidding each other with asinine proposals. Reparations are back, ratified by nearly all the candidates to one degree or another.

That is insane. And racist.  Many, many blacks know full well it is and resent it.

Volodymyr Zhukovskyy is what happens when you stop enforcing all the laws, for all the people.  The photo of him above is at his arraignment in Springfield Mass. on Monday (6/21).

He’s 23, here from Ukraine on a green card.  Here’s a timeline of his driving history provided by WMUR radio news.  It’s a timeline of the horrific consequences of what happens when our politicians and judges define deviancy down.

It’s easy to see why criminals should be prioritized for removal. But those who say all illegal aliens are criminals, by definition, have a fair point, too. If that’s too much to ask, then violent criminals, certainly.

But there is another group, more toxic to the body politic than most: the haughty, self-described “Undocumented and Unafraid” clique.

I mean the “undocumented” activists, organizers, and political operatives who have reaped the generosity of this country, only to spit in its face.  Even before those to be deported for not showing up at their asylum hearing, these need to be kicked out of our country, unafraid no more.

A new escalation in the long-running conflict between Russia and Georgia happened almost by chance last week (starting on June 20), but it answered the anxious desire in the Kremlin to move Russia proactively from the path of gradual decline.

Russian President Vladimir Putin likely suspects that the real economic situation in his country is worse than the officially registered sluggish growth and that the erosion of his popularity goes deeper than the slight decline reported by semi-official pollsters (Carnegie.ru, June 20).

The sudden quarrel with Georgia thus provided the policy-manipulators in the Kremlin with a perfect opportunity to produce a distraction from these unhappy domestic developments.  This is unlikely to end well for Russia’s dictator.