An American graduate student imprisoned for three years in Iran while doing PhD thesis research on Iranian history explains why no improvement in U.S.-Iran relation should be expected — no matter who wins the coming presidential elections in the U.S. and Iran.
--Marvin Zonis

By Marvin Zonis

Writing in the New York Times, Dwight Garner had these thoughts about Isabel Wilkerson’s, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, “that strikes me as an instant American classic and almost certainly the keynote nonfiction book of the American century thus far. It made the back of my neck prickle from its first pages, and that feeling never went away. . . I told more than one person, as I moved through my days this past week, that I was reading one of the most powerful nonfiction books I’d ever encountered.”[1]

Although not intended by the Founding Fathers, the U.S. Senate has become a “racist” institution. By providing two Senators for each state and by the policies its members have adopted for requiring super majorities and by the difficulty of ending filibusters, the Senate has turned out to effectively deny equal representation to African-Americans. The chances for change are zero.
——Marvin Zonis

By Isabel Wilkerson

The United States has widely recognized problems: growing income inequality, stagnant wages, decreasing social mobility, diminishing life expectancy, failing health delivery systems and many, many others. Elites have taken it upon themselves to find solutions. The result, it is argued here, will be solutions that preserve the existing system of power without altering the basic realities of the U.S. Instead, the author calls for the government to implement laws that will make meaningful change.
——Marvin Zonis

The dilemma for the Republican Party is obvious: it represents the well-off. But its dilemma is that the well-off are not a majority. To win an election, the Party needed a strategy. It found one after the crushing defeat of Barry Goldwater in 1964. It became a white grievance party.
——Marvin Zonis

A compelling future driven by the cost of major economic inputs falling to zero.
——Marvin Zonis

A struggle for influence within Iranian politics has recently intensified. So-called “hard-liners” who seek to preserve the “revolutionary” character of Iran and its rule by the Supreme Leader and his clerical allies have been able to win control of Iran’s Parliament. Simultaneously, their ally — The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps — has been spreading its influence to other institutions in the system. Massive efforts are being made for the hard-liners and the IRGC to control the outcome of the next presidential elections in May 2021 and the eventual succession to a new Supreme Leader. Their efforts are risky because until now, competition within the system allowed a safety valve for widespread internal dissension.
——Marvin Zonis

By Marvin Zonis

Katherine M. Gehl and Michael E. Porter, The Politics Industry: How Political Innovation Can Break Partisan Gridlock and Save Our Democracy, Boston: Harvard Business Review Press, 2020.

Run! Do not walk! Read this book now!

By Marvin Zonis

The belief systems that justify the ways things are and the way they ought to be – the “Veil of Legitimacy” – are increasingly failing to convince more and more Americans and are more and more under attack. The result is the possibility of an opening to substantial change in this country. This is a “pre-revolutionary” moment.

By Marvin Zonis

Bill Gates recently told me (and millions of other subscribers to his www.gatesnotes.com) that he would recommend Bob Iger’s book, The Ride of a Lifetime, “whether they’re looking for business insights or just want a good read…” But, Bill Gates continued, “It’s still the case that the best business book I have ever read is Business Adventures, a little-known collection of articles by a reporter named John Brooks.”