In the first days of January 2026, widespread protests erupted across Iran amid soaring inflation and a collapsing currency. Demonstrations that began in Tehran’s Grand Bazaar quickly spread to dozens of cities, with security forces responding with tear gas, live ammunition, and mass arrests. Rights groups reported that at least 34 protesters had been killed and more than 2,000 arrested within the first week of nationwide unrest. At the same time in the United States, protes

How endless debate weakens rights without removing them Public conversations about democratic decline often rely on dramatic imagery. The fall of institutions. The suspension of elections. Authoritarian takeovers. These images are not wrong, but they are incomplete. Democratic erosion rarely arrives as collapse. More often, it arrives as dilution. Rights are not typically abolished outright. They are discussed. Reconsidered. Reframed. Narrowed. Qualified. Deferred. Each step

Often, exclusion is defended with a phrase that sounds neutral enough to escape scrutiny: “It’s just not my preference.” This framing is common in discussions around sexuality, gender, race, disability, and other social identities. People insist that their discomfort is personal, not political. That their exclusion of entire groups is a matter of taste rather than judgment. But when “preference” is used to dismiss people rather than objects, it stops functioning as a benign d