America survives as a healthy, wealthy nation only if the majority of the population is willing to stand on its own two feet.

Allan J. Feifer | May 23, 2026

Long before we Americans pick a side politically, we adopt a rhetorical stance that matches our worldview. That stance becomes the filter through which we interpret everything we see and hear, shaping our preferences and our politics.

Broadly speaking, Americans fall into three groups:

A. Dependents—those who believe in the primacy of the collective, where individualism is subordinated to the needs of the group. Their worldview echoes the “it takes a village” mentality.

B. Individualists—those who believe that responsibility begins and ends with oneself, and that we are meant to become the best version of who we are through our own decisions, actions, and consequences.

C. Amoral Pragmatists—those who choose the path of least resistance. They are situational, opportunistic, and guided more by emotion and convenience than by principle or ethics.

These three groups are roughly equal in size. Dependents form the backbone of today’s progressives. Individualists form the core of today’s conservatives. And the third group—the amoral pragmatists—constitutes the modern swing vote. They are highly persuadable, driven by emotional security, and often vote with their pocketbooks. During times of societal stress, this group becomes especially volatile, prioritizing safety and comfort over principle. High gas prices, war, and economic anxiety can swing them dramatically, and as a result, they frequently determine election outcomes.

For a society to prosper, it needs more individualists than dependents. But government policy has spent generations cultivating the opposite. Government, by its nature, expands. America’s safety nets—federal, state, and local—have grown steadily for more than a century, and many people, especially those in the third group, no longer see themselves as responsible for their own well-being to the degree their parents or grandparents once were.

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Geography reinforces this divide. The South and Southwest remain strongholds of individualism. The North and West Coast have embraced a near-total reliance on government to shield them from crime, economic hardship, health risks, and educational failures. Government has become, in effect, a surrogate parent—a provider of safe spaces and emotional reassurance. To individualists, this is anathema. To the swing group, it is sometimes comforting, sometimes not. Together, these dynamics explain much of the country’s deepening bifurcation.

It’s worth remembering that none of these three groups existed in 1776. The country was founded by people whose values centered around independence, self-governance, and personal responsibility. These principles left no room for a dependent class or an emotionally driven swing bloc. Those who still favored British rule kept quiet and adapted. And the dependent group, as we know it today, simply could not have survived. There were no government programs to fall back on, and private or religious charity came with expectations that discouraged idleness or fantasy.

It took roughly 140 to 150 years after America’s founding for large-scale, government-run safety nets to meaningfully displace America’s original model of individualism supported by local charity. The shift began in the late 1800s, accelerated at the state level in the early 1900s, and became unmistakably national with the New Deal in 1935. That moment marked the inflection point at which individualism began to give way to federal and state social programs and a growing cultural belief in government’s central role.

From that point forward, a kind of countdown began—a slow transition from independence to dependence. Immigration played a major role in accelerating this shift, particularly by introducing large numbers of people whose cultural assumptions were incompatible with the most productive aspects of the American ethos.

America has never opposed immigration per se, but we turned it into a lottery for those entering, rather than a benefit for those already here. And when change wasn’t happening fast enough for progressives, they just opened the doors to anyone and everyone, regardless of health, education, criminality, or willingness to assimilate. We all know how that turned out. It was simultaneously their most brilliant and most disastrous tactic.

Some argue that this flood of incompatible immigration was accidental—a misguided act of empathy. It wasn’t. It was a deliberate strategy by those who envisioned a Marxist America and were running out of time to see it realized. Their impatience may yet prove to be their undoing.

We recently came very close to the tipping point. Had Kamala Harris been elected president, the transformation would likely have been completed. Another 15 to 20 million illegal immigrants would have crossed the border, creating a national crisis of staggering proportions.

Under a Harris administration, the filibuster would have been eliminated, D.C. and Puerto Rico would have become states, and the Electoral College and Supreme Court would have been “reimagined.” Progressives would have framed all this as moral necessity—a suicidal empathy, to use Gad Saad’s term, demanding that we absorb tens of millions of newcomers at any cost, just as Europe did, surrendering sovereignty and stability in the process.

Through divine providence, Donald J. Trump’s election, and other forces, we may yet avoid the fate now overwhelming many first-world nations. But the other side is not giving up. As we approach a pivotal moment this November, we must understand exactly what we are up against and craft a message that resonates with the persuadable middle. That’s not a new insight. What is new is recognizing that dependence functions like a drug—and more and more swing voters are becoming addicted.

The question before us is simple: What are we doing to counter that message?

God Bless America!

Author, Businessman, Thinker, and Strategist. Read more about Allan, his background, and his ideas to create a better tomorrow.

American Thinker

The EU assumes the truth of an ideology that most Hungarians—and millions of other Europeans—reject.

On April 21, just nine days after Viktor Orban’s electoral defeat in the Hungarian parliamentary elections, the Court of Justice of the European Union delivered its ruling in Commission v. Hungary, decreeing that Hungary’s 2021 Child Protection Law prohibiting the exposure of minors to LGBT propaganda is in violation of EU law and core values. Sixteen member states joined the EU Parliament in the case against Hungary, and so the outcome was, in many ways, foreordained. Mark Rutte—then prime minister of the Netherlands, now secretary general of NATO—famously promised to bring Hungary “to its knees.”

News of the ruling reached Luxembourg’s Foreign Minister Xavier Bettel (who served as prime minister from 2013 to 2023) as he spoke to a meeting of foreign ministers. “It’s not the fact that I’m gay that I just fight for gay rights, but it’s the fact that I fight for minorities and it’s always easier to fight against the smallest group in some countries,” he gloated unconvincingly to Euronews, noting that he’d confronted Orbán about the law. “To do politics by blaming someone reminds me seriously of how it starts with Jewish people and then with gypsies and etc.” The allusion to the Holocaust was insidious and deliberate.

“There is now no excuse for the Commission not to require Hungary to quickly withdraw the law,” stated Katrin Hugendubel of the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association Europe on the day of the ruling. “Hungary cannot enter a post-Orbán era without repealing [anti-LGBTQ+] legislation, including the Pride ban. If [incoming prime minister] Péter Magyar truly aims to be pro-EU, he must place this at the top of his agenda for his first 100 days in office, as an essential part of his EU-facing reforms.”

John Morijn, professor of law and politics at the University of Groningen, hailed the ruling as historic and far-reaching as a precedent for LGBT rights overriding the sovereignty of member states, telling the BBC: “You cannot equate what is totally natural—that 10% of the population loves the same sex—with egregious crime.” European Commission spokeswoman Paula Pinho was positively imperious. “It’s up to the… Hungarian government to abide by the ruling and once that is done the issue is solved,” she said.

Before leaving office, Orbán stated in a letter that Hungary would not comply with the order from Brussels, citing political, legal, and constitutional concerns. The ball is now in Péter Magyar’s court. Brussels and the LGBT activists they speak for have made their demands clear.

Both the timing and the tactic of ruling are obvious. If Magyar wishes to make nice with the EU and gain access to billions in frozen funds as he promised during the campaign—a declaration that Hungary “chooses Europe” was part of Tisza’s 2026 election program—he will have to genuflect to the LGBT flag to do so. He will, as Rutte demanded, have to bow the knee. For his part, Magyar has been slippery about how he will deal with EU demands to get in line with the EU-enforced sexual revolution. During his April 12 victory speech, Magyar called Hungary a country “where no one is stigmatized for … loving differently than the majority” but has been vague when it comes to policy.

The CJEU’s ruling has been universally celebrated across the European establishment, but the precedent is worth taking a closer look at. The CJEU, presumably sensitive to backlash from socially conservative countries, was careful not to openly articulate the implication of their decision: that children do have a right to LGBT content, or, conversely, that LGBT activists have a right to expose children to ideological content unimpeded by the law. The ruling even gave a perfunctory nod to the idea of parental rights, conceding that laws oriented towards the “best interests of the child” can justify restrictions.

But the ruling emphasizes the divide between those who believe that the public promotion and protection of the natural family and protection from LGBT ideology are in “the best interests of the child” and those who believe, for example, that sex changes for gender-dysphoric children are in “the best interests of the child.” Throughout its ruling, the CEJU promiscuously used phrases such as “sex assigned at birth,” indicating its complete acceptance of the premises of transgender ideology and emphasizing its total lack of neutrality. The EU assumes the truth of an ideology that most Hungarians—and millions of other Europeans—reject.

As I noted in at europeanconservative.com last year, public Pride parades and other LGBT events routinely expose children to adult nudity, displays of bizarre and grotesque sexual fetishism, simulated sex acts, and pornographic displays. This is not a matter of isolated incidents but recognized and celebrated standard fare—in 2021, Dutch photographer Jan van Breda won a €2,500 prize for snapping, as a local newspaper put it, “the most iconic, meaningful and aesthetic” picture from 25 years of Pride in Amsterdam, featuring a small child playing on a swing while men in latex bondage gear mingled nearby. This is what the CEJU is defending—and what Rutte was defending.

There is also the fact that multiple major studies—starting with Lisa Littman’s 2018 paper—revealed that trans identification among minors is often a “peer social contagion.” That is, it spreads through peer groups and is frequently driven by content consumed online. This thesis has been confirmed by other studies and has led to a reevaluation of transgender treatments for minors in many countries. Considering that exposure to LGBT content has measurably resulted in children identifying as transgender—and, indeed, a wide range of other new gender identities and sexual orientations—and that transgender treatments often result in irreversible damage, it is clear that protecting minors from such content is, in fact, in “the best interests of the child.”

CEJU’s ruling emphasizes the ‘values’ of the New Europe. Just fifty years ago, no civilized country would have accepted that children had a human right to consume LGBT content, or that LGBT activists had a human right to expose themselves in public or act out weird sexual fetishes in the streets. The EU despises leaders who will not accept these new ‘values’ because they are, fundamentally, more European than the new ruling class—because they cling to a continuity with the Christian civilization that once defined the continent, rather than the new Europe that has arisen out of the sexual revolution.

When Mark Rutte declared that he would work to bring Hungary to its knees, it is because he wanted Hungary to join the countries that already knelt before the rainbow flag. We will soon discover what sort of stuff Péter Magyar is made of.

The European Conservative

I bet you know the name George Floyd. He couldn’t breathe.

I’ll bet you don’t know the name Henry Nowak. He couldn’t breathe either.

Henry Nowak was an 18-year-old first-year university student at the University of Southampton (studying Accountancy and Finance), originally from Chafford Hundred, Essex.

He was fatally stabbed on December 3, 2025, while walking home from a night out with friends in the Portswood area of Southampton, England.

What happened to Henry was no less tragic or horrible.

Henry was the victim of a stabbing attack by a crazed Sikh, but after being stabbed, Henry was put in handcuffs and allowed to bleed to death.

British police handcuffed a teenager who had been stabbed by a Sikh man wielding an 8-inch ceremonial knife, and died in fear. The law currently makes an exemption allowing Sikhs to carry these weapons in public.

After he was stabbed, Henry Nowak, 18, tried to climb a fence to escape, but Vikrum Digwa, 23, “aggressively pursued” him, leaving a trail of blood.

Police were called to the scene but arrested Mr. Nowak after Digwa claimed he had been racially abused.

Mr. Nowak was then handcuffed before passing out and dying in the street a short time later.

The last memory Henry Nowak will have had was trying to tell the officers that he couldn’t breathe and that he had been stabbed.

The officer replied “I don’t think you have, mate.”

Well, he was. And while this cop wet his nappy worried about someone thinking he was a racist, Henry died.

Key points from reports:

• Nowak was reportedly recording videos on Snapchat and jokingly interacted with Digwa, calling him a “bad man” before the altercation escalated.
• He suffered multiple stab wounds (including to the back/legs and a fatal chest wound) and tried to flee.
• Bodycam footage showed police handcuffing Nowak upon arrival (based on the attacker’s racism allegation) while he was bleeding heavily and pleading for help; first aid was delayed, and he collapsed and died at the scene.

Vickrum Singh Digwa, 23, has been charged with his murder. Digwa denies the charge and claims self-defense, stating he feared an attack and used a ceremonial kirpan (a Sikh blade, described in court as around 21cm long). The trial is ongoing at Southampton Crown Court. Digwa’s mother has also been charged with assisting an offender.

The Nowak case is just one more obscene example of how far England fallen into a two-tiered justice system.

“Two-tier” policing or justice in the UK refers to the widespread perception that authorities (police, CPS, courts) apply the law unevenly based on race, ethnicity, religion, or political views—often showing leniency toward ethnic/religious minorities or left-leaning causes while being stricter with native British or right-leaning individuals.

This is hotly debated: critics (including figures like Nigel Farage, Robert Jenrick, and many on X) cite patterns in protest handling, sentencing, and responses to violence. Defenders (government officials, some media) call it a myth, arguing differences stem from context, threat levels, or public order needs—not bias. Polls show significant public belief in disparities, especially among certain demographics.(yougov.com)

Here are prominent examples often raised:

1. 2024 Riots vs. BLM/Pro-Palestine Protests

• Anti-immigration/Southport riots (mostly white working-class): Hundreds arrested quickly, fast-tracked courts, lengthy sentences for violence, incitement, or even social media posts. Keir Starmer vowed “full force of the law.”
• BLM 2020: Widespread disruption, statues toppled, some violence/police injuries. Police seen “taking a knee”; fewer immediate harsh responses despite lockdown breaches.(blogs.lse.ac.uk)
• Pro-Palestine marches (weekly since Oct 2023): Large-scale, with reports of hate speech (“jihad” chants, flags glorifying terrorism), road blockages, and intimidation. Often policed lightly; arrests mainly for clear crimes. In contrast, far-right or patriotic displays faced quicker intervention.(spiked-online.com)
• Harehills riot (Leeds, 2024): Roma/immigrant community unrest; police reportedly withdrew, allowing cars burned and disorder. Contrasted with heavy response elsewhere.

2. Henry Nowak Case (2025)

• 18-year-old white student stabbed to death in Southampton by Vickrum Singh Digwa (23, carrying a large ceremonial blade). Bodycam allegedly shows police handcuffing the bleeding victim (on attacker’s racism claim) while delaying aid; he died at the scene. Attacker claims self-defense; mother charged with assisting offender. Limited mainstream coverage initially, sparking outrage over perceived prioritization of the suspect’s narrative.(facebook.com)

3. Sentencing and Pre-Sentence Reports

• 2025 Sentencing Council guidelines proposed “normally requiring” pre-sentence reports (potentially leading to more lenient/community options) for ethnic, faith, or cultural minorities, women, or transgender offenders—but not routinely for white males. Critics called this explicit two-tier justice; the government blocked it via legislation.(spectator.com)
• Older cases like Rhea Page (2011): Somali Muslim gang attacked a white woman, kicking her head while shouting racial slurs (“kill the white slag”). Light sentences criticized for downplaying racial element.(jsc-chambers.co.uk)

4. Speech and “Hate” Offences

• Lucy Connolly: Jailed for a tweet amid 2024 riots.
• Tommy Robinson: Imprisoned for contempt/film showing; contrasted with lighter treatment for other inflammatory speech.
• Non-crime hate incidents recorded unevenly; “hate crime hubs” and online policing criticized as targeting native concerns more.

5. Other Patterns

• Grooming gangs (Rotherham, etc.): Authorities delayed action for years fearing “racism” labels against Pakistani Muslim networks abusing thousands of mostly white girls.
• Protest symbols: Reports of Union Jack or Israeli flags confiscated; different handling for other groups.(youtube.com)
• Knife crime and street violence: Disproportionate impact on working-class areas, with debates over stop-and-search reductions in minority areas seen as contributing.

The UK is losing its identity as a nation with Two-tier Keir paving the road. This post captures the essence of the current situation in England.

Mohammed Starmer continues to flood the country with economically dependent “migrants” who have no use or respect for English culture, resulting in clash of civilizations.Worse, the invaders are afforded privileges superior to those of native Brits.

This is where the UK in headed.

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In any case, I think it’s  too late. The UK is a fascist state in which its own are automatically guilty and the guilty foreign vermin are automatically innocent. England does not deserve to survive.

Thankfully we have Trump.

DrJohn

DrJohn has been a health care professional for more than 40 years. In addition to clinical practice he has done extensive research and has published widely with over 70 original articles and abstracts in the peer-reviewed literature. DrJohn is well known in his field and has lectured on every continent except for Antarctica. He has been married to the same wonderful lady for over 45 years and has three kids- two sons, both of whom are attorneys and one daughter who is in the field of education.

DrJohn was brought up with the concept that one can do well if one is prepared to work hard but nothing in life is guaranteed.

Except for liberals being foolish.

National Democrats are going after San Antonio-area congressional candidate Maureen Galindo, placing a last-minute ad buy against her amid backlash over antisemitic comments she made on social media.

The spot, which began airing Friday ahead of Tuesday’s primary runoff, dubs Galindo “MAGA Maureen,” highlighting what they say is Republican meddling in the race after a super PAC with suspected GOP ties began boosting her with supportive ads earlier this month. It’s paid for by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and is the group’s first spending in the runoff, totalling $34,000.

The group is hoping to prevent her from becoming the party’s nominee in a competitive seat that includes much of southern Bexar County. National Democrats have lined up behind Galindo’s challenger, former sheriff’s deputy Johnny Garcia, whom they see as the party’s best chance to retain a district that Republicans redrew to lean in their favor.

Galindo, a family therapist who describes herself as progressive, came in a narrow first during the March primary with 29% of the vote. She later came under fire for comments on Jews and Israel, including the notion that people who identify as Jews today are not the Jews of the Bible and that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is based in Tel Aviv.

Leaders including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and U.S. Rep. Greg Casar, D-Austin, began condemning the remarks last week and endorsing Garcia. Galindo doubled down last weekend, writing in an Instagram post she would seek to convert an immigrant detention center near San Antonio into a “prison for American Zionists and former ICE officers.”

Asked for comment, Galindo pointed to a statement posted on her campaign website that states the prison would be “for the billionaire zionists who have profited off genocidal prison state materials and trafficking.”

“Prosecution has nothing to do with religion – they could be Evangelical, Catholic, Mormon, Jewish, etc.,” it says.

The winner of the runoff will face the GOP nominee, who will either be state Rep. John Lujan of San Antonio or businessman Carlos De La Cruz.

“House Republican leadership must immediately cease propping up this antisemitic candidacy, pull spending in the race and forcefully condemn these comments,” DCCC spokesperson Madison Andrus wrote in a statement earlier this week.

Democrats in the U.S. House have killed a proposal for a Women’s Museum on the National Mall because it would be about … WOMEN!

Applying their anti-science transgender agenda, that men can become women by saying they are women, they rejected the plan because an amendment would provide that the subjects in the museum be biological women.

“The measure came up short in a vote of 204-216 after a handful of conservative GOP lawmakers joined Democrats in tanking the legislation that would secure a site for the forthcoming Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum on the grounds of the Mall,” explained a report from Fox News.

Some Republicans objected to the plan over concerns about whether a women’s history museum was needed. Others were concerned that there weren’t adequate protections against left-wing ideologies from being put on display there.

The report said it was unclear whether Republican leadership would to bring the legislation up for a vote at a later date.

It was the Democratic Women’s Caucus whose members had lobbied against honoring women, specifically because the location would not recognize “transgender women and girls.”

Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, R-N.Y., explained, “A women’s history museum is supposed to be dedicated to women, period. And the fact that they’re going to pull their support after overwhelmingly co-sponsoring this bill because the word biological was inserted, to me, is ludicrous.”

They said limiting a women’s museum to biological women was a “poison pill.”

“The Museum shall be dedicated to preserving, researching, and presenting the history, achievements and lived experiences of biological women in the United States,” an amendment from Rep. Mary Miller, R-Ill., said.

The legislation bans depicting “any biological male as female.”

That simply is putting into the law what President Donald Trump wrote in an executive order last year, barring men being presented as females.

“The addition of the word biological made them all run for the hills,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said. “If that’s controversial in the Democratic Party, we’re in serious trouble. The party that purports to support women, demanding that the museum include biological men.”

Media analysts pointed out that the vote was notable as it came immediately after the release of the DNC “autopsy” report from the party’s failures in the 2024 presidential race that flagged how transgender and identity politics contributed to their defeat.

That report cited Trump’s very successful messaging: “Kamala is for they/them, President Trump is for you.”

Bob Unruh

I’d hate to be the guy who throws on the spandex and a mask to play Captain Bringdown, but Spencer Pratt is not going to get elected mayor. That’s not dooming. That’s objectively assessing the situation. Spencer Pratt is a political superstar—there’s no doubt about that. He’s injected something that’s totally missing from the LA mayoral race, which is common sense. His innovative AI-aided ads and his ability to inflict something the Democrat overlords don’t ever get—public pushback—is highly entertaining. But Los Angeles is not coming out of its death spiral anytime soon. I wish it weren’t true. But it’s true.

And the spiral is spiraling. I just came back from my Houston house to spend some time here, and what struck me was the malaise. It’s dingy. It’s old. It’s dirty. This isn’t the California of my youth with swinging palm trees, sunshine, and endless opportunity. The sun still comes out, but there’s a vibe here I’ve never felt before in my 50+ years in Cali. It’s depressing. I grew up in a northern California San Francisco suburb (the same one and at the same time as Greg Gutfeld, though we didn’t know each other), and that had its unique problems, but it was a cool place to be. Then I went to college in San Diego in the 80s, and that was really cool. But after going off to the Army and the Gulf War, I knew I wanted to come back to Los Angeles because I knew Los Angeles was the place I could do whatever I wanted to do. And I did. I became a bunch of things: a senior Army officer, a partner in a law firm trying and winning multimillion-dollar cases, a best-selling author, a columnist, and even a stand-up comic. That was the California dream. If you wanted to do it and were willing to work for it, you could do it. This is where the great Andrew Breitbart chose to make his splash at the end of LA’s prime. Then, Los Angeles was a place of opportunity.

But that LA is gone, replaced by Palm Tree ‘n Fire Detroit. And it’s reasonable for you to ask why I’m not gone, at least not yet. Here’s what you need to know about California, and Los Angeles as well. It’s a feudal system. People asked me why I live here. I live here because it’s really good to live here, except for the taxes and the irritation I experience knowing they’ve managed to take the Golden State and turn it into the Gelded State. See, it’s semi-tolerable because I’m not a serf. I was a lawyer. I’m a nobleman. I don’t live in the City of Los Angeles. That’s not for people like me. The people like me—affluent professionals—live in the surrounding cities. I live in the Beach Cities south of LAX. It’s very nice here – good restaurants and very few bums. There are a few who wander in, but the cops are all over them. We don’t defund the police. We fund the police. All those ladies with the “Hate has no home here” signs? They see somebody who doesn’t fit in, and they’re on the phone to the local 5-0 before you can say “No Kings.” Oh, and when there are No Kings rallies, and there occasionally are, it looks like Sunny Acres has been issuing its residents day passes.

Of course, if you go five miles to the east across the 405, you get into where the poor people are. It’s Serfin’ USA. It’s a dystopian scene full of misery and decline. The high schools in my area send kids off to the Ivy Leagues and the UC system, provided they’re not white. The high schools in the hood might have five or 10 students who are grade-level proficient in reading and math. That’s not a percentage. That’s absolute numbers. But you know, their mom and dad voted for it or didn’t vote at all. Maybe the local Democrats just filled out their ballots for them—LA is as fully corrupt as Capone Era Chicago was. But it doesn’t matter. Not my problem.

Nope, Los Angeles is not my problem, and I’m not going to give it another moment of thought. If it wants to drown in a cesspool of hobo dung, it can dive in. Spencer Pratt is absolutely right about everything he says, from the fires to the junkies to the gross incompetence. Moreover, everybody knows it’s true. But nobody cares. You need to understand something. This isn’t about competence. When Karen Bass, a black communist mental defective, looks baffled at Spencer Pratt explaining how she’s helped run Los Angeles into the ground, that look of confusion is not because she’s stupid. She is, but it’s because he’s speaking a different language. She’s a literal communist. She’s gone to Cuba and taken notes. Her purpose isn’t to create prosperity and security for the people of Los Angeles. Her purpose, like that of all communists, is to secure power. The same is true of her bizarre, real competitor, some South Asian communist named Nithya Raman. As is endemic to the Third World, they fetishize power; these Marxists want control. That’s it. It’s not about filling in potholes. It’s not about safe streets. It’s not even about keeping half the city from going up in flames. It’s about control. There is no bottom to Los Angeles. It’s not going to get so bad that people are going to generate some sort of backlash, no matter how clever Spencer Pratt’s ads are, and they are clever. Those ads are only scoring with those of us on the outside. They give us false hope that something can be done. But nothing can be done. The decline is not the point. It’s literally irrelevant to them. Take Detroit, once also a rich and powerful city. Do you think that at some point, the leftists who control it looked at it and said, “Wow, we have become Detroit. Yikes! Should we try something else”? No. The dysfunction is the function; the squalor doesn’t matter to them. Not at all.

And it doesn’t matter to the vast majority of the inhabitants of LA. Almost all of those people who got burned out along the Pacific Coast Highway and in the Pacific Palisades are leftists who voted these people into office. And here’s the thing. They’re going to vote for them again. Raman ran an ad calling Spencer Pratt a “fascist.” It’s hysterically funny to the rest of us, equating the idea that safe streets and your house not burning down is pretty much the same thing as being Mussolini. But you know what? Those people whose houses burned down are going to listen to her, and they’re not going to vote for Spencer Pratt. They’re going to vote for her.

You can’t help somebody who won’t help himself. And let’s not fool ourselves into thinking we can.

What’s it going to take to fix Los Angeles, California, and the rest of the blue hellholes? Gosh, you don’t want to ask that. You’re not going to like the answer. They will never fix themselves. Never. All the normal people are gone. You’ve got a few rich leftists and a bunch of welfare cheats, and that’s it. It’s going to take something from the outside to fix them. It would have to be imposed upon them and not gently. It would take an American Franco, but then you would need to have an American Spanish Civil War to get there, and I’m not up for that—nor should you be. There are plenty of things I’m willing to fight and even die for, like my own personal freedom. After all, at my age, I’m too old to live on my knees, and I prefer to expire on a pile of expended brass. But I’m not willing to risk death to save people intent on destroying themselves.

Sorry to be depressing, but I’ve got to be honest. I’m not going to tell you the sun’s out like on an old-school California summer day. It isn’t. But that doesn’t mean Spencer Pratt isn’t performing an important service. The guy is a patriot. The guy isn’t giving up. He’s staying in the fight. And even if he doesn’t win this battle, and he’s not going to win this battle, he’s doing something for the rest of us. He’s shining the spotlight on the complete failure that the Democrat Party has embraced as it has invited the socialists and communists into the highest echelons of its ranks. Los Angeles won’t save itself, but the cautionary example that Los Angeles provides may help other places save themselves.

Thank you, Spencer, for sounding the alarm, and good luck to you even though you don’t have a chance in hell.

Kurt Schlichter, Townhall

A patient recently came to see me, saying she was furious with a friend. What began as an ordinary disappointment—a canceled dinner and a text returned too late—had become something far larger and far more charged. The friend was now “toxic.” The exchange had become a “violation of boundaries.” The hurt itself had been elevated into “trauma.” She had screenshots and a polished story about what the episode revealed about her friend’s pathology.

What she didn’t have was introspection. She was no longer asking the most psychologically useful questions: Could this have been carelessness rather than ill intent? Was the reaction intensified by other things that may have been going on? Had she contributed in any way to the conflict? The language she brought into the room gave her something powerful: certainty. But certainty is often the enemy of insight.

This scene has become one of the defining features of my work as a psychotherapist, and it sits at the center of the argument in my forthcoming book, Therapy Nation: Too much of modern therapy culture keeps people stuck, reinforcing grievance, externalizing blame, and turning everyone else into the reason their lives are so miserable.

The problem begins with my own field. For years, my profession has trained clinicians to elevate validation over challenge, affirmation over interpretation, and emotional fluency over the harder work of behavioral change. What has followed is the rise of grievance culture dressed up as psychological sophistication. Too many therapists now function less as clinicians than as reinforcers of the most self-protective interpretation available, teaching patients to locate the problem everywhere but themselves. Of course it is your boss’s fault. Of course your colleague is toxic. Of course your ex is a narcissist. Of course the world keeps wounding you. In this softened therapeutic frame, frustration is rarely something to examine; it’s something to assign.

The patient doesn’t gain greater agency, but instead, a more polished story about why someone else is to blame. If you feel injured, the injury must be real. If you feel unsafe, the threat must be there. If a relationship creates discomfort, the relationship itself becomes the problem.

I recently saw the aftermath of this in a new patient who came to me after months with another therapist. Every difficult interaction at work had been interpreted through the same frame: the boss was toxic, the co-workers invalidating, and the environment unsafe. By the time we met, the patient could describe every slight in flawless therapeutic language but had never once been pushed to consider whether avoidance, defensiveness, or fear of criticism might be part of the pattern. And she was never given constructive advice on how to bring about changes. The therapy had made the story clearer without making her stronger.

This is how therapy can quietly become an engine that keeps people stuck. Patients leave not more capable of tolerating frustration, ambiguity, or ordinary disappointment, but less. They become more fluent in explaining why they feel the way they do while becoming less practiced at changing what they do next. And therapists are largely responsible for this phenomenon.

While it may feel like growth, it functions as avoidance. And that is corrosive. The patient becomes good at explanation, more sophisticated in the language of harm, and more certain about who is to blame, but no closer to actual change. Grievance becomes part of identity.

That same emotional habit doesn’t stay confined to the therapy office. People carry it into marriages, friendships, workplaces, and, eventually, politics. Ordinary frustration becomes proof of mistreatment. Ambivalence becomes danger. Disagreement becomes evidence of harm. Once enough people are trained to interpret discomfort this way, coexisting with others starts to feel impossible.

The political consequences follow naturally. A citizen trained to experience ordinary conflict as evidence of harm will eventually bring that same mindset into public life. We’ve seen this dynamic play out vividly in the Donald Trump era, when members of my profession moved from helping people navigate political differences to legitimizing family estrangement as a sign of psychological health. On national television, prominent therapists and psychiatrists suggested it might be essential for mental health to avoid Trump-voting relatives during the holidays.

The same therapeutic scripts that encourage patients to pathologize difficult bosses and disappointing partners now teach citizens to reinterpret ordinary democratic differences as evidence of danger. The result is a society less capable of living with differences, less able to tolerate friction, and more likely to retreat into emotionally curated silos and echo chambers.

This is where therapy culture ceases to strengthen people and starts quietly weakening them. The person becomes increasingly protected from scrutiny, and increasingly fragile as a result.

Social media has been uniquely fertile ground for this corruption. The algorithm doesn’t elevate the most psychologically accurate interpretation. It elevates the most emotionally satisfying one. Hence the ecosystem of so-called mental-health influencers: Endless posts diagnose narcissists, decode toxic bosses, and turn ordinary disappointment into proof of pathology. Social media rewards certainty, speed, and self-protection—precisely the instincts real therapy is supposed to challenge before turning them into conclusions. The result isn’t a more psychologically sophisticated society. In many cases, it’s quite the opposite.

We are becoming emotionally articulate while growing psychologically brittle.

My own field should be willing to say this plainly: We helped create this culture. The original promise of therapy was never that life would stop hurting. It was to help people become stronger in the face of pain, clearer in the face of conflict, and more honest about the role they themselves play in the conflicts they keep re-creating.

Real therapy should make people more capable of dealing with reality, not less.

Trump has done so much damage to libtardery that the Democrats will need a decade of uninterrupted power to undo it, which they’re not going to get.” —Matt Forney on X.

If you learned anything from this week’s extravaganza in Beijing, it is that Donald Trump is aggressively re-aligning world relations so that the USA does not end up one of the losers in the global resource scramble that lurks darkly behind all current events. China does not intend to be an eventual loser, either, though it has lost a lot of traction lately. The Eurolands are certainly the main losers, embracing loserdom as the old and sick long for death. India and some of the BRICs countries are looking a little loser-ish just now.

The primary resource all nations scramble for is oil. Without lavish supplies of oil, you can’t have an advanced techno-industrial economy and, as the feckless Eurolanders learned the hard way, there really isn’t an adequate substitute for oil. The flow of oil depends on economically producible reserves of oil country-by-country, but also on geographic advantage, as we are learning just now in the Hormuz crisis.

“Europe’s crude oil production started its permanent decline in 2001. Asia-Pacific’s production hit a maximum in 2010, and it has been declining since. Africa’s peak oil production took place in 2008, and it has been mostly declining since.” — Gail Tverberg, OurFiniteWorld.com

Also, turns out, the peak oil story is still real, despite fifteen years of shale oil miracles. The Persian Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia, are probably past peak. American shale oil is in the peaking zone, too — the Permian Basin in Texas is running short of sweet spots. The Arctic National Wildlife Reserve (AMWR) is open for leasing, but it is expensive to drill and produce in the harsh arctic region and the US Geological Survey estimates recoverable reserves there between 7.7 – 10 billion barrels — America consumes roughly 7.5 billion barrels-a-year, so. . . .

There’s Canada, of course, and its tar sands, but the Great White North these days leans rather hostilely towards its neighbor to the south (us). Otherwise, North America is pretty fully explored oil-wise. There can’t be a whole lot of hidden, un-tapped “elephant” fields out there. On the plus side, America enjoys its geographic advantage, comfortably cushioned between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, far from the madding crowd of Eurasia.

We have lately trumpeted our supposed acquisition of Venezuela, but projected production of US companies there looking ahead several years would be under a million barrels-a-day while the US uses 20.5-million barrels a day. As for Venezuela’s jungle-bound oil sands, well, for now, fuggeddabowdit.

Russia’s Ministry of Natural Resources puts its commercially recoverable oil resources (with current technology and prices) at around 80-billion barrels, which is a lot, and leaves Russia in a theoretically favorable place for the short term, anyway. China uses about 17-million barrels-a-day and imports about 70-percent of that. Its imports of Iranian oil are substantial but obscured in official statistics due to the evasion of US sanctions. The Hormuz blockade has put a hurt on China.

Here’s how the global resource scramble translates into geopolitical behavior: As has been evident for some time, US interests are increasingly alienated from Euroland’s interests, and better aligned with Russia’s interests. Europe is demonstrably insane these days, roiling with loose talk as it whirls around the drain. Russia, under V. Putin, looks more like the adult in the room. Even Russia’s military operation in Ukraine looks rational if you consider how the EU and the CIA started the damn thing in the first place circa 2014 for the very purpose of provoking Russia.

Mr. Trump has yearned to normalize relations with Russia since he stepped on-stage in 2016, to the great consternation of America’s neocons, CIA shadow-meisters, and the born-again communists running the Democratic Party (who seem to resent Russia ditching Marxism-Leninism thirty-five years ago). This week, the US and China have mutually proposed becoming “partners” rather than rivals on the world scene. We will surely remain mutually wary, but apparently things have changed.

Most urgently, China would like its oil imports from the Persian Gulf restored, and the obvious way to make that happen would be for them to lean on Iran to stop screwing around and come to terms with the US — give up the enriched uranium and stop laying jihad on everybody near and far. We’ll know soon enough if China will do that for us, and we have some goodies promised for them, Nvidia chips, soybeans, and more.

Mr. Trump is rearranging the global game-board bigly, and the net result will be the sorting-out of winners and losers. Iran is the poster boy for that. It could go either way for them, soon, and rather sharply. If Iran’s jihad-happy leaders just quit FAFOing, they have the chance to re-enter the global community as an advanced modern economy with a comfortable standard of living. Or, the US could just blow up what’s left there. China will probably deliver that message forcefully in the days ahead.

There remains, however, the dirty business of America’s domestic enemies, of whom we learn more and more each week. This week, it was the testimony of “whistleblower” CIA agent James Erdman that the CIA worked sedulously to conceal the true origins of Covid-19. It looks pretty much like what half of America has suspected all along: that Covid was a trip laid on the nation by its own Deep State (mainly the CIA), in concert with the rogue Democratic Party, for the express purpose of queering the 2020 election.

Related seditious operations apparently continue to this very hour. Former CIA Director John Brennan told MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace this week: “There’s still a legion of professionals in the law enforcement environment, the Department of Justice, as well as the CIA and other places — the ones who are refusing to follow politically motivated prosecutions, those who are refusing to support any type of political activities on the part of the Trump administration. . . .” Did he just admit that the conspiracy he kicked off in 2016 is still ongoing? And that he is an active party to it? I think so. Do you think Joe DiGenova noticed that down in the DOJ’s Southern District of Florida?

Just as astoundingly, this week former FBI Director James Comey told CNN’s Kasie Hunt that he “still speaks regularly” to current FBI employees. Say, what. . . ? He palavers with the very agency that is investigating him for serious felonies, such as threatening the life of the US president? Sounds a little out-of-order, ya think? Does he long to spend the rest of his life as captain of the ping-pong team at the Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary?

Last year we mounted a GiveSendGo campaign to help Nurse / Midwife Kathie Breault pay her legal fees after “Joe Biden’s” DOJ indicted her for giving Covid vax cards to people who did not receive Covid-19 vaccinations so they would not be fired from their jobs under the Covid mandates. Kathie, age 67, was forced into a plea deal to avoid prison, but she faces a $10,000 fine. So, I have reactivated her GiveSendGo campaign, and urge you to consider helping her pay this fine. Click on: the Kathie Breault Legal Defense Fund.

James Howard Kuntsler

The NYU Executive Committee of the Student Government Assembly expressed “profound disappointment” that their graduation speaker was to be internationally renowned social psychologist Jonathan Haidt. In a Statement on All-University Commencement, the committee asked the administration to “reconsider.”

“The pivot from figures of universal inspiration,” NYU students complained, “to an individual who has been accused of making homophobic remarks in a class and public misconceptions about transgender identity, and has promoted disturbing rhetoric around antiracism, social justice, and diversity, equity and inclusion, claiming that the abolition of DEI may be the only way out of the Leftist ideological capture of American campuses, is deeply unsettling and clearly undermines the University’s stated values.”

Those accusations are deeply mistaken and profoundly misleading. The one accurate claim is that he did acknowledge that the abolition of DEI might be the only way for academia to correct course. So Haidt is clearly not an inspiring choice for students who are attached to that destructive paradigm.

But Haidt is nothing if not a figure of inspiration for parents, writers, and budding social scientists. He has produced four bestsellers, of which three, including The Coddling of the American Mind, are global blockbusters. His latest, The Anxious Generation, has spent over a year on international bestseller lists, leading to not only parental and community efforts, but real policy changes to protect the mental health of children and adolescents.

This includes an initiative at NYU called “IRL” (In Real Life). As a result of Haidt’s work, designated spaces on campus are device-free to encourage face-to-face interaction and time away from the distractions of social media. The student statement, however, unironically asks whether the choice of Haidt was “yet another effort to push the IRL narrative.” At elite universities, where everything is “narrative,” even efforts to encourage friendships and immersive real life experiences can only be interpreted as an effort to push a narrative.

“Many students have reported feelings of disappointment, disgust, unenthusiasm, defeat, and embarrassment” as well as “being misunderstood,” the statement reads. Awkward phrasing aside, at least these students didn’t insist that Haidt’s selection was “harmful.” When I worked with Greg Lukianoff and Haidt on The Coddling of the American Mind, attempts to disinvite and deplatform speakers were often framed as efforts to protect vulnerable students from the “harm” of speakers’ words — or even the speaker’s mere presence.

Psychologists at UCLA, Harvard, and Ohio State have found that believing words can harm is associated with worse mental health: more anxiety and depression, less resilience, and worse emotion regulation. And when students see words as violence, they can become willing to endorse actual violence in response to speech — or even to prevent it.

According to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), Gen Z is roughly 10 times more accepting of using violence to prevent speech than Baby Boomers, and more than 25 times more than the Silent Generation. Roughly 43% of Gen Z survey participants refused to endorse the view that violence against speakers is never acceptable.

As of May 7, campus deplatforming attempts had surpassed 100 for the year, according to FIRE’s publicly accessible Campus Deplatforming Database. In the first quarter of 2026, reports FIRE’s Chief Research Advisor, Sean Stevens, 65 of 70 attempts succeeded.

While failed deplatforming attempts are bad enough, at least they “show that institutional safeguards are holding,” Stevens says. “A successful attempt signals that those safeguards are eroding. If nearly all deplatforming efforts are now succeeding, then the problem is not simply that controversial events are being challenged. The problem is that universities appear increasingly willing to fold under pressure.”

Protesting commencement speakers is hardly new. When I graduated from Barnard College in 1990, students at Wellesley College were “outraged” by the choice of their commencement speaker, Barbara Bush, because she wasn’t a career woman.

But when students of past generations tried to school their elders, their elders schooled them right back. Psychiatrist and author Jean Baker Miller called those students’ objections “simplistic.” Wellesley alumnae quipped that the class of 1990 had apparently not learned the school’s Latin motto: “non ministrari, sed ministrare,” not to be served, but to serve.

And the pushback wasn’t partisan. Feminist Pat Schroeder offered, “I have nothing but respect for Barbara Bush…. Being a wife and mother is not a protestable offense. After all, if it weren’t for mothers, there would be no students at Wellesley.” Mrs. Bush, always the soul of discretion, said simply, “They’re 21 years old and they’re looking at life from that perspective.”

Gen Z has been less fortunate. Instead of university administrators and other leaders asserting their authority, they have increasingly appeased and indulged students’ emotional instability, arrogance, and even rule-breaking — including with respect to disruptions, harassment, threats, mobbings reminiscent of Maoist struggle-sessions, and even violence. This is not beneficial for anyone, including those students who violate the boundaries of protected free expression.

Both Jonathan Haidt and Barbara Bush delivered their keynote addresses. Mrs. Bush’s is now included in NPR’s list of best commencement speeches of all time:

“As important as your obligations as a doctor, lawyer or business leader will be,” she said, “you are a human being first. And those human connections—with spouses, with children, with friends—are the most important investments you will ever make.”

That advice has never been more true or more necessary. And it’s not so different from the message NYU graduates heard from Haidt on Thursday. “Call someone you love just to say hi,” he told them, “Invite someone to dinner. Say yes when someone invites you. Be the one who makes things happen in the real world.” Hopefully, the graduating class learned something from him.

The Wall Street Journal last week ran a column headlined, “The Congressional Pension Racket.” That got me thinking about how Congressional pensions aren’t such a big grift around here, because none of our Congressional hacks ever retire.

Why should they? The entire six-state region is 100 percent gerrymandered – 21 seats, 21 Democrats, even though about 40 percent of the New England electorate voted for Donald Trump in 2024.

That’s why the Democrats are so mad about the gerrymandering this year. They’ve already gerrymandered everywhere they could, in spades. Their gerrymandering is a mature industry. The Republicans had a lot of ground to make up, and now they have.

As for the Congressional pension racket, it’s tough to come up with the actual numbers. The feds don’t have to easy-to-access website, like we do for tracking our greed-crazed hacks here in Massachusetts.

But after doing some checking, it’s clear that our shiftless, corrupt local hacks are stuffing their pockets with a lot more cash than almost all of the Congressional layabouts.

The info in the WSJ column came from the National Taxpayers Union Foundation (NTFU), and some of it is outrageous.

For instance, Dementia Joe Biden, the worst president in US history. After a lifetime at the public trough, he now collects $413,000 a year.

More than the president makes – if Trump were taking a salary, that is.

I called the NTUF and asked them to run some local hack numbers for me. As I said, though, the numbers are vague, and there aren’t that many. You see, here in New England, as Thomas Jefferson said of the federal bureaucracy, vacancies by death are few, and by resignation never.

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen is retiring at the end of the year after two terms. The NTUF says she should be getting $50,610 a year.

One of those running to replace her is the guy she beat back in 2014, John Sununu. He’s still only 61, but when he turns 62, he’d be eligible to grab $32,515 a year. A call to his Senate campaign about his pension plans was not returned.

Then there’s ex-Rep. Barney Frank. He announced way back when that he wouldn’t take a hack pension. Was he telling the truth? Hot Bottom’s heart throb was not available for comment from hospice.

Nikki Tsongas was a Congresswoman in Massachusetts for a few forgettable terms. At age 80 she’s out now, and the NTUF estimates her annual take at $33,218. She’s also the widow of ex-Sen. Paul Tsongas – another kiss in the mail, for which we do not have the numbers.

Tsongas succeeded Marty Meehan, who seen his opportunities and took ‘em, parachuting into the ZooMass hackerama with a salary last year of $889,453.66, behind which comes the 80 percent pension.

But wait, there’s more. Marty is 69, and according to Congressional pension rules, since turning 62 he’s been eligible to collect even more public money — between $39,000 and $41,000 a year.

These are decent if not exorbitant pensions, especially when consider that it’s only undoubtedly only one of several stipends most of these tax-fattened hyenas are grabbing.

But it’s still short money compared to what Massachusetts hacks are making on the back nine.

Just to cite one example, there’s Cong. Bill Keating. Before he was elected to Congress, he was the district attorney of Norfolk County.

His predecessor, both as DA and as Congressman, was Bill Delahunt. After getting elected to Congress, in a very Joe Biden-like election, if you get my drift, Delahunt then connived himself a deal at the State House to shift the pension status of all DA’s into Group 4 – cops.

That means full retirement benefits available at age 55, 10 years earlier. Guess how old Delahunt was when he was first elected to Congress.

Suddenly Delahunt was eligible for a full-boat state pension – in addition to his full Congressional salary, on which he hardly paid any federal income tax because his legal domicile was more than 50 miles from D.C.

After 83 glorious years of uninterrupted slurping at the trough, Delahunt died in 2024. In addition to his Congressional pension, he’d been double-dipping with a state pension of $64,003 a year.

But his double successor Bill “the Invisible Man” Keating is the one who’s really stuffed his pockets full under the Delahunt dispensation.

Keating, who doesn’t even go to the bathroom without a hall pass from either Nancy Pelosi or Hakeem Jeffries, pockets $174,000 a year as a rubber-stamp Democrat Congressman.

And he now collects both his full Congressional salary of $174,000 – again, minus most federal income taxes – and a state pension from Massachusetts that is now up to $116,269 a year.

This is Keating’s 16th year double-dipping. Just from the state pension alone, he’s stuffed his pockets with $1.7 million.

A very long time ago, Keating was his own man. He was in the state Senate, and he actually ran for the presidency of the body against Billy Bulger. This was back in the day when Billy’s serial-killing brother Whitey was still around, so it took some stones to go head-to-head with the Corrupt Midget.

Keating could have allowed himself to be bought off a state judgeship. But he hung in for the big bucks, and it’s worked out for him more than somewhat. Cueball Keating is laughing all the way to the bank.

For the record, Billy Bulger crushed him in that fight for the presidency of the state Senate.

But who really won? In hack terms, only one thing counts – the money, the kiss in the mail for doing nothing.

So here are the final results:

Billy Bulger, pension of $274,539 a year. Since 2004, he’s collected almost $5 million — $200,000 a year until 2020, when his wife died, after which he started grabbing the extra $75K.

Bill Keating: $174,000 Congressional salary and $116,269 a year pension. There’s a saying:

Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered. That old saw obviously doesn’t apply in the hackerama, but here’s one that does.

Two kisses in the mail is better than one kiss in the mail.

This is why I say, don’t worry about the Congressional pension racket. The real scandal is the Double-Dip Pension Racket.

It’s one thing for all these hacks to be feeding at the trough. But why do they have lick the plate?

Howie Carr