The Artful Dilettante is a native of Pittsburgh, PA, and a graduate of Penn State University. He is a lover of liberty and a lifelong and passionate student of the same. He is voracious reader of books on the Enlightenment and the American colonial and revolutionary periods. He is a student of libertarian and Objectivist philosophies. He collects revolutionary war and period currency, books, and newspapers. He is married and the father of one teenage son. He is kind, witty, generous to a fault, and unjustifiably proud of himself. He is the life of the party and an unparalleled raconteur.
Imminent changes to the U.S. credit scoring system could see millions of Americans face lower credit scores as FICO prepares to incorporate “buy now, pay later” (BNPL) loan data into its calculations this fall. Knewz.com has learned that the move reflects the growing prevalence of BNPL services, which allow consumers to spread out payments with little or no interest, but experts warn that the change may negatively affect users who struggle to make timely payments.
BNPL services have surged in popularity, with an estimated 81.5 million Americans using them in 2024 and projections reaching 91.5 million in 2025, according to Capital One Shopping. Originally designed to ease payments on discretionary purchases, BNPL has expanded into essential spending: 47% of users apply it to groceries and 35% to medical bills. “BNPL offers benefits relative to other credit products that charge higher interest rates, such as credit cards, payday loans, car title loans,” Aditi Routh, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, said in a statement. “Consumers can reduce or avoid high costs or interest charges, making them better-off.” Yet she cautioned that late payments may signal overspending, overextension or worsening financial situations, requiring monitoring by researchers and policymakers.
Historically, BNPL arrangements did not affect credit scores. However, that will soon change, potentially creating a significant impact for users juggling multiple loans. LegalShield’s survey of more than 2,000 adults found 62% of BNPL users managed multiple loans simultaneously, and 41% reported making a late payment in the past year, up from 34% the year prior. Rebecca Carter, attorney and LegalShield provider, explained, “The greatest legal risk with BNPL arrangements stems from consumers not fully understanding the contractual terms. Many plans include added costs or interest if balances are not paid within a specified period. Beyond that, consumers often underestimate their broader cost-of-living expenses, which can lead to financial strain. As a result, they may increasingly rely on BNPL for everyday necessities. Because these are typically smaller loans with modest monthly payments, it is easy for consumers to dismiss them as ‘affordable’ without considering the cumulative impact of multiple obligations.”
According to reports, a substantial number of consumers remain unaware of the upcoming FICO changes. LegalShield found that 38% of Americans did not know BNPL data would soon factor into credit scores. Billing errors and disputes are also common: 62% reported billing errors, and 45% had faced legal or contractual disputes over BNPL loans. “It is not surprising that such a large percentage of consumers remain unaware,” Carter said. “Many individuals who rely on BNPL options are already financially vulnerable and focused on meeting immediate needs. Long-term considerations, such as the effect on credit scores, often do not receive the same level of attention in the moment.”
FICO has said that its updated scoring system, part of the FICO Score 10 Suite, will allow lenders to evaluate credit readiness more accurately, particularly for first-time credit users. Julie May, FICO’s vice president of B2B Scores, said, “This innovation also supports our mission to expand financial inclusion by helping more consumers gain access to credit.” While the exact rollout date has not been specified, the changes are expected this fall. Reports have mentioned that consumers with multiple BNPL loans or a history of late payments may see declines in their scores.
What if I told you that cartels and other bad actors from around the world conspired to undermine the integrity of the health care system in the U.S. and came way too close to succeeding? If you didn’t hear about the bust of 324 people; the U.S.-based cartel shell medical supply companies; the pill mills pushing opioids; the doctors on the take; or how law enforcement captured many of the bad guys at the U.S. border and airports as they rushed to escape, that’s understandable. The feds revealed this potential $14.6 billion “depth charge” planted inside the Medicaid, Medicare, and private insurance programs in June, while most people were away on summer vacation.
Why did transnational organizations go after these particular programs? “Criminals go where the money is,” Acting Health and Human Services Inspector General,Juliet Hodgkins said at a news conference about “the largest health care fraud takedown in American history.” There’s more than $1.4 trillion spent by these government programs per year, and the bad guys have tried, by hook or by crook, and even with the aid of AI, to set into motion plans to steal nearly $15 billion. They got away with just shy of $3 billion before they were caught, and their other frauds were frozen in their tracks.
If this bust looks to you like it had Elon Musk’s old Department of Government Efficiency fingerprints on it, you’d be right. Using AI and law enforcement tactics, the DOGE team worked with HHS, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid, and an all-hands-on-deck array of federal agents from the DEA, FBI, and health care agencies to track down all fraud leads, according to Dr. Mehmet Oz, head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). As a result, the feds are setting up a healthcare data fusion center to detect where fraud spikes are occurring in near real time.
DOGE is involved,” Oz told reporters in June. “The president has been very clear that he wants this fraud, waste and abuse crushed. That’s the word that’s used.” He continued, “DOGE is not just about cutting waste and fraud within government. [It] has been actively involved at CMS in helping us address places where fraud is existing that we never thought to look.”
Oz said these bad guys were sophisticated and used state-of-the-art methods to rip the government programs blind.
[T]hat’s how we’re being attacked now, and it’s not done by small-time operators, as you’re hearing about and you will read about. These are organized syndicates who are designing to hurt America. And why do they hurt our health care system? Well, CMS is probably the largest target of all, responsible for about $1.7 trillion dollars of disbursements. So, it’s a big target on our side. And they can pierce the veil of protection by just getting identifier numbers from our seniors or Medicaid recipients or others.
According to the DOJ, overseas cartel thieves set up a sophisticated network of medical supply companies that “submitted more than $10 billion in fraudulent healthcare claims to Medicare.” The bad guys used stolen identities of at least one million Americans found in data breaches and sold on the dark web to make the reimbursement requests. It’s unclear if the thieves used the unique Medicare and Medicaid identifying numbers to steal the money.
Other scams used a network of Phoenix-based sober living houses to demand government payments for people who never got addiction treatment at the facilities. The facilities, run by ProMD, received $560 million before the feds caught on to the scam.
In Atlanta, medical professionals ordered skin grafts for dying patients who didn’t need them. By the time the grift was discovered, they’d scammed Medicare out of $760 million.
People from as far away as Estonia have been arrested. Seven people were found trying to scuttle over the southern U.S. border but were stopped before they got away. Another bunch were caught trying to leave the country from U.S. airports.
The bad actors from Russia, Pakistan, and Eastern Europe used the American health care system like their “personal piggy bank,” the Department of Justice’s Acting Criminal Division leader, Matthew Galeotti, said. He said that “this was a staggering breach of trust” and they “will prosecute these criminals as aggressively as we would any drug dealer because that’s exactly what they are.”
Musk, who stepped away from the White House after a rift with President Donald Trump, is the one who conceived and executed the DOGE project, and he’s a damned American hero. Let’s give that guy a medal for saving American taxpayers yet another tranche of billions.
Victoria Taft is an award-winning journalist, radio talk host, and host of the “Adult in the Room ” Victoria@VictoriaTaft.com
Much of America’s youth is in free fall, with the only question being why. On every metric, our kids lag behind the world, are abysmally unhappy and unprepared for a life that’s less kind and forgiving than it was fifty years ago. It didn’t happen by accident, and the divided nature of our country means we are unprepared to make necessary changes. Our society tolerates confrontation and excuses, always finding superficial reasons why Johnny can’t read, and why everyone’s so angry. It’s certainly not about money; we spend more per pupil than anyone else.
COVID may ultimately prove to be both the best and worst thing that has ever happened to us. All-powerful American teachers’ unions and school administrators effectively forced schools to close, replaced by online education, which was a total failure. However, the upside was that parents learned what was being taught in schools, and it wasn’t the ABCs! All manner of DEI initiatives and social gobbledygook took center stage, boring children out of their minds, with many dropping out, never to return. No wonder that, today, American schoolchildren have extremely high absentee rates, likely the highest in the developed world.
During COVID, roughly 31% of students were chronically absent (missing ≥10% of school days). In 2022-2023, the rate dipped slightly to 28%, but that’s still 75% higher than pre-pandemic levels. In the 2023-2024 academic year, long after COVID’s lockdowns ended, approximately 27.4% of students were still absent.
But that’s just the start of the problem; if Johnny isn’t in school, he can’t learn. But what about when he’s physically in school? What are the underlying dynamics that prevent our young from having a fighting chance to obtain essential skills that are a requirement for living a good life?
It takes three things to take a young person and grow him into a scholar. A scholar must learn to think critically, read, write, and be both emotionally and logically prepared to live in the real world. That young person must eventually (with the help of loving parents) decide which direction to strike out into, whether it be a specific trade or higher skills requiring college or university. Treading water jobs that used to be transitional are now becoming permanent, stymying growth for millions because their schools failed them, and too often, their distracted parents as well.
When we don’t give children the ability to grow, learn, and yes, even fail, thereby leaning to pick themselves up again, we rob them of the essential life lessons needed to make a success of themselves.
The question is always, why did the teachers not cry “foul” and stop this while there was still time?
During COVID, roughly 31% of students were chronically absent (missing ≥10% of school days). In 2022-2023, the rate dipped slightly to 28%, but that’s still 75% higher than pre-pandemic levels. In the 2023-2024 academic year, long after COVID’s lockdowns ended, approximately 27.4% of students were still absent.
But that’s just the start of the problem; if Johnny isn’t in school, he can’t learn. But what about when he’s physically in school? What are the underlying dynamics that prevent our young from having a fighting chance to obtain essential skills that are a requirement for living a good life?
It takes three things to take a young person and grow him into a scholar. A scholar must learn to think critically, read, write, and be both emotionally and logically prepared to live in the real world. That young person must eventually (with the help of loving parents) decide which direction to strike out into, whether it be a specific trade or higher skills requiring college or university. Treading water jobs that used to be transitional are now becoming permanent, stymying growth for millions because their schools failed them, and too often, their distracted parents as well.
When we don’t give children the ability to grow, learn, and yes, even fail, thereby leaning to pick themselves up again, we rob them of the essential life lessons needed to make a success of themselves.
The question is always, why did the teachers not cry “foul” and stop this while there was still time?
Those who spoke up quickly learned to keep their mouths shut, quit, or felt forced to retire. That was because so many teachers and administrators in public education came out of their training programs having been indoctrinated in leftist values, so they supported anything and everything the Democrat established, helped along by some of the highest (undeserved) salaries in the world.
In addition to teachers indoctrinated into depriving children of learning skills and knowledge, there’s the puzzling growth in the number of administrators who do exactly what? U.S. growth in school administrative staff has been much larger than growth in U.S. students and teachers over recent decades. Administrative position growth has been ten times that of actual teachers!
There are two reasons: First, follow the money. Administrators typically make 50-100% more than teachers. But, there’s a second, more insidious reason. Every gang of criminals requires enforcers. Administrators perform that role, rooting out any student or teacher who doesn’t toe a leftist line.
Standardized Test Scores: U.S. students have experienced sharp declines in math and reading scores since 2015, with pandemic-era losses further accelerating the trend. In 2023, 40% of public school students failed to meet basic standards in either subject, a trend that has worsened since then.
International Ranking: The U.S. ranks behind 36 countries in educational proficiency.
Literacy Crisis: 28% of Americans are functionally illiterate, up from 19% in 2017.
2. Grade Inflation & “Equity Grading”
Minimum Grades for Failure: Some districts award a minimum grade of 50 even for missed or failed assignments.
Unlimited Retakes: Students may retake tests as many times as needed, often without penalty for skipping class or missing deadlines.
Result: Graduation rates rise while actual mastery plummets—45% of high school seniors can’t do basic math.
3. Curriculum Erosion
Phonics Abandoned: Effective reading instruction has been replaced by “whole language” approaches, leaving 60% of 4th graders struggling with reading.
History & Civics Gaps:NAEP data reveal widespread ignorance of U.S. history and civic structures among high school students.
STEM Weakness: China now dominates global STEM fields, while U.S. students tank.
4. Chronic Absenteeism & “Zombie Schools”
Attendance Crisis: In some districts, over 30% of students are chronically absent, creating “zombie schools.”
California Example: Less than half of students meet literacy standards, and only one-third meet math benchmarks.
5. Institutional Resistance to Accountability
Union Pushback: Teachers’ unions resist performance-based accountability, shielding failed systems from reform, while funding many Democrats political asperations.
Social Meddling: In some states and districts, schools withhold information from parents concerning sensitive issues, such as gender ideology.
6. IQ Decline & Cognitive Trends
First IQ Drop in 100 Years: Recent studies suggest a measurable decline in average American IQ scores, likely linked to shifts in education and culture.
America has a history of facing challenges and then overcoming them, and saving our young people should be no different.
Fixing obvious issues can be easily remedied with rigorous and unflinching honesty, but only if we focus our minds and implement a national Marshall Plan that eliminates social promotion and demands direct accountability for schools, teachers, and administrators—no more excuses. Fix the problem or give the money to the parents.
The question remains as to whether we can agree that a good education trumps politics.
God Bless America!
Allen J. Feifer is an Author, Businessman, Thinker, and Strategist. Read more about Allan, his background, and his ideas to create a better tomorrow at www.1plus1equals2.com.
Tom Wolfe, the celebrated author of The Right Stuff and The Bonfire of the Vanities, famously skewered New York’s cultural elite in his 1970 essay “Radical Chic.” He brilliantly satirized a high-society dinner party where wealthy Manhattanites, dressed in their finest, toasted their own virtue while feigning solidarity with the Black Panthers.
The posturing that Wolfe’s original critique targeted has since devolved into something far more chilling: a modern cynical flirtation with violence and extremism, best described as terrorism chic.
Mind you, our cultural elite don’t do the actual terrorism. They leave the dirty work to their more fervent devotees, like the assassin of Charlie Kirk and the killer of the schoolchildren praying in a Catholic church in Minneapolis.
Today’s cultural elite wield their influence not by reasoned debate, but through a constant drumbeat labeling political opponents as Nazis, extremists, and dictators. In this rhetorical war, even a benign phrase like “Make America Great Again” is weaponized, its four words recast as a slur expressing fascist ideology. This relentless vilification is a calculated effort to inflame passions and obliterate common ground.
One of the casing from Charlie Kirk’s killer reportedly bore the inscription “Hey fascist, CATCH!” The alleged assassin, Tyler Robinson, was likely convinced he was a hero, extinguishing a “hater” and striking a blow for justice. The profound irony is lost on both him and the cultural forces that shaped his belief: In silencing a public debater and vocal proponent of free speech with a bullet, they adopted the playbook they claim to despise. In this brutal act, the ultimate tool of fascism was used to eliminate a voice they could not defeat rationally.
Nor is Charlie Kirk the only victim. How many impressionable adolescents’ lives have been ruined by being taught gender nonsense and queer ideology? Throw in all the innocent people harmed by terrorism chic in other ways, such as homicide victims from the open border push from our cultural elite or by their patrons, blue municipalities, who have a revolving door for violent criminal offenders. When you add it up, the body count is staggering, with no end in sight.
America’s cultural landscape is under the sway of the left, with terrorism chic at the top of the social hierarchy. Yet a look at the political scoreboard tells a different story. An analysis of the last ten presidential elections reveals a nearly perfect split, a dead heat between Republican and Democrat victories. Winning elections is great, but winning the culture is better.
Where doesn’t terrorism chic own the day? From primary education, to academia, the arts, media, the internet, technology, science, the list is endless of where they own the culture. If we are to have any hope of a sane, free, workable republic, winning back the culture and building it back up brick by brick is our only hope. The question is how best to do this? The answer is for us on the right to articulate our beliefs well, lead by example, stand firm for what we believe in, and engage thoughtfully and respectfully with our fellow citizenry, winning hearts and minds.
That is what Charlie Kirk did, and his punishment was to be taken out by a bullet at age 31. Let’s pray that others as skilled as Kirk pick up his banner and run with it.
Washington steals half of out health-care dollars.
Democrats threaten government shut-down over Medicaid cuts; as Americans are bracing for another increase in their healthcare costs; and as patients wait an average maximum of 132 days to see a primary care doctor, Americans can’t seem to wake up from the nightmare called U.S. healthcare.
The rise in insurance premium costs is estimated at 7–10 percent next year. This is on top of already unaffordable family spending with the average American family expending $32,066 on healthcare in 2024 according to Milliman Medical Index.
Faced with increasing pressure on their bottom lines, employers are passing these additional expenses on to employees with reduced benefits, narrower medical panels (which means longer wait times), plus higher deductibles and copays.
Republicans plan cuts to Medicaid that Democrats and the complicit media say these cuts will “hurt families,” “increase uncompensated care,” “and lead to thousands of deaths.” Biden’s 2021–2023 lockdowns threw millions of people out of work. Unemployment made them ineligible for employer-supported health insurance. Biden then expanded eligibility, adding 17 million Americans to Medicaid rolls. More than 60 percent of these individuals have returned to work and become (again) eligible for employer-provided insurance. Cutting them from Medicaid rolls will actually increase funds available to pay for those who truly need Medicaid.
NPR business analyst Maria Aspan is clear about whom she blames for elevated costs: “insurers, drug companies and your employer,” along with the Trump administration that has “government-sponsored alternatives” it won’t use, she says.
Last year, the U.S. spent $4.8 trillion on its healthcare system. That amount is greater than the entire GDP ($4.7 trillion) of the third-most productive nation on earth, Germany.
Where is all that money going? Who is getting rich, or richer, from Americans’ “unsustainable” (Obama) healthcare spending? Doctors? Big Pharma? Insurance? Hospitals? While each does take a piece of the healthcare “pie,” none comes close to the one entity that consumes more than 50 percent of all U.S. healthcare spending.
Of the $4.8 trillion, more than half, that’s right, at least $2.4 trillion, went to pay the federal BURRDEN — Bureaucracy, Unnecessary Rules and Regulations, Directives, Enforcement, and Noncompliance activities. Our own government denied Americans more than two trillion dollars’ worth of patient care to pay…itself.
The growth of the nonclinical healthcare workforce explains where the BURRDEN money is going — to accountants, administrators, authorization agents, compliance officers, lawyers (lots of lawyers), managers, reviewers, and a multitude of people who never touch a patient. From 1970 to 2020, the number of physicians increased approximately 100 percent. As a result of Congress passing innumerable healthcare Acts with familiar names like Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare, the number of healthcare nonclinical workers — bureaucrats — increased by more than 4,400 percent! Taxpayer dollars funded the salaries and fringe benefits of 44 bureaucrats for every doctor.
The public often fails to recognize the cost and complexity associated with passing healthcare legislation, no matter how straightforward. Take price transparency as an example.
Medical price lists do not simply, magically appear. It requires a complex series of costly tasks between the passage of the Health Care PRICE Transparency Act of 2023 and posted lists of hospital prices for patients to see. Rules must be written and vetted to assure concurrence with existing laws and rules. Regulations must be developed which are actionable and quantifiable, including consequences for noncompliance. Directives must be distributed to give hospitals time to understand the regulations, gather, collate, and format the data in compliance with federal requirements, while maintaining secrecy of proprietary commercial information. A system to enforce compliance and punish the noncompliant. An entire bureaucratic structure must be created to accomplish all these tasks.
Not one penny of the billions expended to implement price transparency (or any other healthcare legislation) provides care for a single American patient.
Don’t blame doctors, hospitals, insurance, or even Big Pharma — they are not the big money consumers. They are playing the game according to rules established by Washington.
Blame innumerable federal Acts passed over the past six decades such as
Medicare, Medicaid, EMTALA, UMRA, HIPAA, most OBRAs, ACA, and IRA-2022.
Blame a World War II (1942) wage freeze that was never repealed, which has morphed into the disingenuous, market-distorting employer-supported health insurance benefit that denies 150 million employees an average of $25,572 of money they earned.
Blame a third-party payment system that takes away patients’ medical autonomy, supplants doctors’ judgment, and makes patients wait for care so long they die waiting in line.
Better yet, don’t play the blame game.
Identify the root cause and fix it. The problem of constantly rising healthcare costs is caused by Washington-created BURRDEN and third-party payment market distortion. The solution is to kick Washington out of healthcare. Empower patients — directly connect them with their own money and their chosen doctors without third-party payers in between.
Deane Waldman, MD, MBA, is Professor Emeritus of Pediatrics, Pathology, and Decision Science; former Director of the Center for Healthcare Policy at the Texas Public Policy Foundation; and former Director of the New Mexico Health Insurance Exchange. He co-authored Empower PATIENTS – Two Doctors’ Cure for Healthcare with Vance Ginn, PhD. Follow him on X @DrDeaneW or visit deanewaldman.com.
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Trump urges attorney general to prosecute rivalsPresident Trump appears to pressure Pam Bondi to prosecute his political rivals in a late-night post on Truth Social.
Multiple top federal prosecutors at U.S. attorney’s offices around the country received a directive Monday to prepare to launch investigations into the Open Society Foundations, a group funded by the billionaire Democratic donor George Soros, multiple sources confirmed to ABC News.
“This DOJ, along with our hard-working and dedicated U.S. Attorneys, will always prioritize public safety and investigate organizations that conspire to commit acts of violence or other federal violations of law,” a spokesperson for the Justice Department told ABC News when asked about the directive.
The order from Aakash Singh, a senior official in Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche’s office, was sent to U.S. attorney’s offices in at least seven states, the sources confirmed, including California, New York, Illinois, Michigan and Maryland.
The letter lists potential charges prosecutors could take under consideration as they prepare to investigate the Open Society Foundations, ranging from material support to terrorism, arson, wire fraud and racketeering, the sources said.
A spokesperson for Open Society Foundations, in a statement to ABC News, said, “The Open Society Foundations unequivocally condemn terrorism and do not fund terrorism. Our activities are peaceful and lawful, and our grantees are expected to abide by human rights principles and comply with the law.”
These accusations are politically motivated attacks on civil society, meant to silence speech the administration disagrees with and undermine the First Amendment right to free speech. When power is abused to take away the rights of some people, it puts the rights of all people at risk,” the statement said.
The directive comes as President Donald Trump and senior White House officials have ramped up their demands in recent week that the Justice Department and FBI more aggressively pursue groups on the left that they claim have fueled recent acts of political violence around the country.
The New York Times was the first to report on Singh’s directive.
Both President Trump and Vice President JD Vance specifically singled out Soros in public comments since the killing of right wing influencer Charlie Kirk, with Trump saying in an interview with Fox News that Soros should be investigated for racketeering.
A Virginia mother filed a federal civil rights complaint Sept. 24 against Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS), alleging administrators allowed a male student with facial hair to repeatedly enter the girls’ locker room at her daughter’s high school and watch female students change.
Filed with the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR), the complaint says the 14-year-old daughter first encountered the sophomore boy Sept. 2 in the locker room at West Springfield High School (WSHS). She and other students alleged he stood and watched them undress.
According to the filing, administrators said the male student identifies as female.
The filing alleges that despite multiple objections, school officials failed to intervene. Assistant principals allegedly told the girl’s mother that a staff member had instructed the boy not to enter the locker room, but added he would not be stopped or disciplined.
“After this episode, WSHS administrators called [the girl’s mother] to inform her that the boy has a right to use the girls’ locker room because he identifies as female,” the complaint states.
Court documents also allege that school officials also told the girls they could use a single-occupancy unisex bathroom if they were uncomfortable changing in front of a male student.
On Sept. 22, staff reduced the amount of time the freshman girls had in the locker room to allow “the boy to use the locker room after them without being in their presence,” according to the complaint.
“I’m just dumbfounded that this is even a thing, that I’m having to go to this length in order to protect my child,” the mother told National Review. “At any point, as a parent, your first responsibility is to protect your child. You send them to school, you think they’re safe at school, and my daughter having to worry about a boy looking at her in the locker room is not safe.”
The Defense of Freedom Institute for Policy Studies submitted the complaint on behalf of the mother, and the filing alleges Title IX violations against FCPS.
The district is one of five in Virginia facing potential loss of federal funding after refusing to roll back policies allowing male students to use girls’ bathrooms and locker rooms. As CatholicVote reported in August, Fairfax Superintendent Michelle Reid said at the time the district’s policies already complied with state and federal law.
Several columns ago, I used the phrase, “Thunder without sound,” when writing about our First Lady, Melania Trump. After my wife, two good friends, and I toured Auschwitz, I hope you’ll allow me to reuse that phrase, albeit slightly changed.
Auschwitz doesn’t whisper, shout, or mumble; it’s a quiet explosion rocking the foundation of my soul. I walked through our tour with an open mind, allowing it to flow rudderlessly to shape an outline for me to express in a way I hope makes sense. However, to properly share my thoughts, I’ll need to break this down into a few parts.
There was a strong sense of irony as we entered the camp, disembarking in the same area that victims did around 85 years ago, except we knew what to expect. The air felt different as we entered through the gates, almost as though it remembered. The weather truly fit the mood: windy, cold, rainy, as if we needed a reminder of what occurred there.
Then the barracks, the long rows of brick, standing like mute witnesses refusing to look away. When we entered them, it hit me, it wasn’t sadness, although that was there, it was rage. Unrestricted, boiling rage.
I was furious when looking at the selection lines, where men sitting in uniforms holding clipboards, deciding on the fly which prisoner would be healthy enough to work, and those who didn’t died a cruel death minutes later.
I felt tremendous rage towards the officers who carried out orders with German precision, with polished boots and a cold resolve. Rage at wives kissing their husbands goodbye, unsure if they would ever see them again, even though the SS soldiers told them they needed to shower off the dust of the long railroad ride. Rage at the local neighbors who saw trains packed with souls, heard cries, smelled the smoke, and decided to stick their heads into the ground. To them, silence was much safer than defiance.
The husband of the couple brought this up afterward, during a quiet lunch, the pejorative word, “Nazi.” Because of our tour today, I will never be able to connect that word uttered by idiots in America to what I witnessed. President Donald Trump and his cabinet aren’t Nazis when they’re working to restore our government, fix a broken education system, or clean up a nest of entrenched bureaucrats in the CDC.
No, the barracks made history books lie when calling this history an atrocity or tragedy, words too soft and sterile to describe what happened accurately. What occurred wasn’t a tragedy; it was a choice, not an accident of war but an enterprise of extermination, the result of an industry of evil, designed and maintained by people who enjoyed dinners with their families after a day of murder.
People casually tossing around that word will never have the bravery to face an evil that took the face of Nazis, because if they did, they would hopefully look themselves in the mirror and resolve never to use that word in anger again.
Yeah, right.
The Machinery of Murder
It took the Nazis a few years to transform chaos into order; trains arrived on time, families divided left or right based on a nod from a camp doctor, a chance for life when chosen for labor, or an immediate death. Bureaucrats dictated who worked until collapse and who walked straight into gas chambers disguised as showers.
It’s nearly impossible to estimate the number of people on the planet who believe the Holocaust was nothing more than a myth. The rage in me ebbed when looking at the evidence that’ still there, especially in its ordinariness: Shoes piled high, still laced, neatly labeled suitcases because the victims were told that they’d retrieve them later — they expected relocation, not annihilation. What nearly put me over the edge was the sight of roughly two tons of preserved human hair. Something I didn’t know was that the Nazis shaved the heads of men and women, primarily women, and kept the hair for industrial uses, typically woven into fabric used for felt and stuffed inside mattresses.
The Nazis felt pride in their efficiency, where industrial-scale murder ran like a factory line. Engineers designed crematoria, and doctors performed selection using the same detachment they would use when diagnosing illness.
The trains continued rolling, while the killing kept up with them. Civilization didn’t collapse; it simply inverted itself: Knowledge, science, law, and order remained intact, yet severed from conscience.
For the first few years Auschwitz opened, the Nazis took ID photos of all incoming prisoners. Looking at the eyes of the people who defied with their eyes struck home for me. The people in those pictures were of the era of my parents and grandparents; it was impossible for me to see my loved ones standing in front of those cameras.
That’s why the barracks left me furious, because the horror wasn’t the product of monsters from another world: It was men and women belonging to a civilization stripped of their souls.
The Neighbors’ Silence
Evil on this scale requires more than the executioners, making the complicity harder to bear than the perpetrator’s uniforms. This evil demands silence from the neighboring world, which saw ash drifting from chimneys, looking the other way, while others convinced themselves they didn’t know: The rest preferred the relative safety of silence to the perils of truth.
The screams from Auschwitz carry across time, yelling that evil doesn’t grow in secret, it grows in plain sight, and “decent” people decide it’s somebody else’s problem.
A Warning Hidden in Anger
I didn’t walk out of the barracks feeling lighter, but shocked and sad, while carrying the weight of fury, including a warning buried inside. Auschwitz dares you to prove that you would have stood up while others looked away.
The temptation to remain silent in evil’s face didn’t die at the end of World War II. Proving that the world still watches atrocities, calling them “complex conflicts,” the bureaucrats continue inventing euphemisms like “complex conflicts” to avoid responsibility, so when neighbors heard cries, they were able to pretend they didn’t hear anything.
Auschwitz doesn’t only belong to history; it’s the mirror held up to us, asking if we continue remaining silent.
Final Thoughts
Even though Auschwitz is a memorial, I don’t think it’s an opportunity for reflection; it demands confrontation. Barracks aren’t relics; they’re accusations reminding us that civilization is a fragile thing, where ordinary people build Hell when conscience is stripped away, and silence is as deadly as complicity.
I wasn’t moved to tears when I walked out; I was moved to fury because anger is the only honest response to standing where mankind decided that sitting was a safer path for them. I felt the camp figured that efficiency mattered more than mercy.
This fury must never fade, or else the barracks stands ready to welcome new victims, except now they’re built with the hands of contemporaries who continue to forget their humanity.
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Dave Manney is a PJ Media columnist known for calm, clear-eyed writing rooted in moral clarity and everyday experience. A former journalist and technical writer, he explores corruption, cultural drift, and political hypocrisy without resorting to theatrics or using talking points.
Manney blends historical insight with grounded storytelling, often drawing from life in the Midwest, his dog Watson, and the quiet moments most writers overlook. His work reflects a core belief: what you do when no one’s watching still matters.
The Utah County Commission has approved an agreement naming Kathryn N. Nester as lead defense counsel for Tyler Robinson, the man charged with capital murder in the killing of conservative leader Charlie Kirk, the Deseret News reported.
Nester is a seasoned Utah trial lawyer with decades of experience handling complex criminal and capital cases.
Robinson appeared via video from the Utah County Jail during a 4th District Court hearing in Provo last Tuesday, where he is being held without bail. He remained expressionless as Judge Tony Graf read the charges.
Graf appointed the public defender’s office to handle the case but did not immediately name a specific attorney. Greg Skordas, a veteran Utah defense attorney and co-host of KSL NewsRadio’s “Inside Sources,” appeared on behalf of Utah County at Robinson’s first court hearing.
Before entering private practice as a founding partner of Nester & Lewis PLLC, Nester served as executive director of the Federal Public Defender Office for the District of Utah, where she managed federal capital and high-stakes criminal defense.
She is known for meticulous case preparation and expertise in death-penalty litigation.
Nester will oversee Robinson’s defense as prosecutors weigh seeking the death penalty, a process requiring intensive pretrial investigation and specialized mitigation work.
Prosecutors say Robinson fired a fatal single shot to the neck of Kirk, co-founder and CEO of Turning Point USA, on Sept. 10 during an event at Utah Valley University in Orem.
Swedish professional protester Greta Thunberg and supporters now traveling in a 51-vessel convoy to Hamas-terrorist controlled Gaza have a problem. Opponents have hijacked their radios and communications systems to play ABBA on repeat and block out any other comms within the anti-Israel fleet.
The Global Sumud Flotilla (GSF) alleges the ongoing radio jamming incidents using the mellifluous tones of the legendary Swedish super group to be the work of an Israeli attack.
Mamma Mia! Greta’s Gaza Flotilla Flooded with ABBA Music on Repeat as Radios Hijacked 2 BARCELONA, SPAIN – AUGUST 31: Greta Thunberg waves as she greets people while sailing on tMario Wurzburger/Getty Simon Kent25 Sep 202566 2:30 Swedish professional protester Greta Thunberg and supporters now traveling in a 51-vessel convoy to Hamas-terrorist controlled Gaza have a problem. Opponents have hijacked their radios and communications systems to play ABBA on repeat and block out any other comms within the anti-Israel fleet.
The Global Sumud Flotilla (GSF) alleges the ongoing radio jamming incidents using the mellifluous tones of the legendary Swedish super group to be the work of an Israeli attack.
“We are witnessing these psychological operations first-hand, right now, but we will not be intimidated,” they added. “Sumud” in Arabic means “steadfastness” or “steadfast perseverance,” NBC News reports.
The protesters were subjected to hours of relentless playing of ‘Lay All Your Love On Me’ by the pop band – in a possible nod to Thunberg’s own nationality, the outlet confirmed.
Multiple ships in the activist’s flotilla are understood to be targeted by the intrusions, GB News reports.
“They’re jamming our radio,” Yasemin Acar, a member of the GSF, despaired in a video while ABBA blasted in the background.
“We don’t know where this is coming from, the sound, but other vessels are experiencing the same thing.”
THE ARTFUL DILETTANTE 