“Never confuse education with intelligence. You can have a Master’s degree and still be an idiot.”
That’s because intellectuals are mostly taught to evade reality and evading reality makes you an idiot. If universities and intellectuals still engaged in the search for objective truth rather than more political dollars, or the praise of fellow sycophants in the Imperial City or on MSNBC, our culture would look very, very different from how it does now.
We’re having a News Conference tomorrow in the White House. I’m going to make our Capital safer and more beautiful than it ever was before. The Homeless have to move out, IMMEDIATELY. We will give you places to stay, but FAR from the Capital. The Criminals, you don’t have to move out. We’re going to put you in jail where you belong. It’s all going to happen very fast, just like the Border. We went from millions pouring in, to ZERO in the last few months. This will be easier — Be prepared! There will be no “MR. NICE GUY.” We want our Capital BACK. Thank you for your attention to this matter!
Social media sherpa “The Chief Nerd” posted a video clip of “entertainers” Jimmy Kimmel and Sarah Silverman discussing their anxiety over President Trump’s return to the White House. Kimmel says he obtained citizenship in Italy so he can escape America. Silverman thinks that is “amazing” and describes how she searches online for “Trump regrets or MAGA regrets” in the hopes that Americans’ shared misery “will bring people together.” They both agree: “As bad as you thought it was gonna be, it’s so much worse.”
Celebrity therapy sessions such as this one resemble nature documentaries featuring exotic beasts. It is fascinating to see rich, famous people living in their native habitats (read: leftistbubbles). Whenever I think, “Wealthy woke-tards can’t possibly be this daft,” I inevitably stumble upon one of these nature clips documenting the behaviors of idiotically out-of-touch champagne socialists ruminating in the wilds of a Beverly Hills mansion, Manhattan penthouse, or exclusive island resort.
They always repeat something that is regurgitated on leftist social media accounts, too: Trump-voters regret their 2024 votes. What kind of self-medicating Bizarro World do these mental cases call home? Trump voters are thrilled with the way things have been going. They want only more of it and at a faster pace!
They want members of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, Barack Obama’s administration, and the Brennan/Comey/Clapper Intelligence Community to be prosecuted for the Russia Collusion Hoax. They want just-following-orders lawfare agents from the DOJ and FBI to be prosecuted for harassing Christians, pro-lifers, J6 protesters, First and Second Amendment–supporters, and everyone who told the truth about the Wuhan Virus and the unsafe and ineffective “vaccines.” They want millions of criminal illegal aliens to be rounded up and deported posthaste. They want schools that push boys into girls’ locker rooms to be punished. They want universities and companies that discriminate based upon race, religion, and sexual orientation to face consequences for violating Americans’ civil rights. They want the government to stop making it so easy for corporations to ignore American workers by offshoring plants to third-world countries exploiting slave labor and hiring illegal aliens here at home. They want an end to endless wars. They want “Green New Deal” regulations to be trashed for good and the vast administrative bureaucracy to be demolished. They want cheaper energies, less inflation, and greater prosperity. They want an exceptional America that once again protects free speech and private property and vigorously opposes the coercive strictures of “political correctness.”
MAGA Americans want all this and more, and President Trump is largely delivering. They don’t expect to agree with everything the president does, but they do have a great deal of faith that they are all on the same side and working for similar things. When Jimmy and Sarah say that Trump’s return is “unbelievable” and “way worse” than anything they had imagined, they reveal how insular their lives are and how little they understand of the world outside of their carefully pruned, socially segregated, gated communities.
I think the feelings I experience when I hear Kimmel and Silverman expressing their thoughts out loud must be similar to those of a poor kid from Victorian England seeing drawings of lions, elephants, and giraffes for the first time. I am struck with a sense of disbelief. Are these strange creatures real? Oh, yes, the world is filled with many curious oddities!
Kimmel is so worried about imaginary fascism in America that he plans to flee to the land of Mussolini. Silverman, displaying traits of a psychologically unstable adult, has built a fantasy world in her mind in which President Trump’s voters desperately wish that Drunk Kamala Harris were in the White House today. In the real world, we might speak gently to Jimmy and Sarah and explain to them how their delusions are causing self-harm. But this isn’t the real world. This is La La Land — where the best women have penises, Big Government is great (except when Democrats are out of power), and everything people enjoy causes planet-killing “global warming.”
You listen to caviar communists such as Kimmel and Silverman long enough, and a sensible person begins to wonder whether America would be better off providing loony leftists with complimentary straitjackets and taxpayer-funded housing in blue city–sized rubber rooms. But that’s already what most Democrat-run cities have become! They are dirty, cramped, crime-ridden hellholes whose residents can barely afford to live without welfare assistance. Crazy, psychopathic gangs run the streets. And crazy, sociopathic elites watch the mice scurrying around the urban maze from the safety of luxury lofts high above the carnage. The only thing that privileged Democrat nobles share with the Democrat riffraff struggling to survive the effects of official Democrat party policy is that both the princes and the hoi polloi suffer from insanity.
If Jimmy and Sarah lost all their wealth and were forced to navigate the world without the help of servants, chemical stimulants, and a reality distortion field that shields them from alternative points of view, would they survive? Or would we find them curled up in the fetal position, sucking their thumbs and shaking uncontrollably on the side of the road?
People who believe that free speech can survive only if conservatives are censored and the government funds NPR and PBS don’t tend to be made of hardy stuff. People who think enforcing immigration law is “fascist” don’t tend to be blessed with much cognitive reason. People who think the government should force citizens to be injected with the pharmaceutical industry’s latest experimental serums don’t tend to have a functioning moral compass. People who think the sight of American flags on American lawns is “scary” and that the National Anthem should be replaced with “land acknowledgments” don’t tend to see America as “home.” People who would rather embrace a “mermaid lifestyle” than befriend a MAGA American don’t tend to function well beyond the fortified perimeters of their insulated “safe spaces.”
Chances are that if Jimmy and Sarah were ever forced to survive in real America, they would perish in a puddle of their own tears.
The German economy is sinking far deeper into recession than previously thought. Recent revisions to the national accounts by the Federal Statistical Office paint a dramatic picture.
Quietly and without fanfare, the Federal Statistical Office released new data this week on Germany’s economic output. And, as expected, the figures were revised downward. Instead of shrinking by 0.2% in 2023 as initially reported, Germany’s GDP actually contracted by 0.9%. The outlook for 2024 has also worsened: a projected contraction of 0.5% instead of the previously assumed stagnation.
Three Years of Ongoing Recession
Anyone who still clung to the illusion of stability must now face reality. Germany is stuck deep in its third consecutive year of recession — and there’s no way out in sight. The downturn is deeper than previously assumed, with far-reaching consequences that politicians and media had downplayed.
It’s not unusual for macroeconomic data — such as GDP, unemployment, or inflation — to be revised retroactively. These figures are highly aggregated and often based on estimates and projections. It would therefore be unfair to accuse former Economy Minister Robert Habeck (Green Party) of falsifying these numbers. For one, the Ministry of Economic Affairs isn’t the only institution massaging data to suit political interests.
Just think of Germany’s labor market figures, which have been grossly distorted by early retirement schemes, job creation programs, and other manipulations — rendering them practically meaningless.
Central Planning and Climate Ideology
Still, there is no question that Habeck’s policy approach has inflicted severe damage. His economic policy strictly followed the Green Deal line, aiming to transform fundamental pillars of the German and European economy. At the heart of this centrally planned transformation was the energy sector — once the engine of German industry. The explosion in energy prices is the ultimate proof of the failed energy transition — a disaster that will remain tied to Habeck’s name until Europe returns to a framework of market-based economic order.
Clinging to economic dirigisme is a fatal error. It reflects a profound lack of competence. Economic growth happens when unconsumed resources are invested in the kind of capital stock that creates goods and services demanded by consumers in a free market. Artificial state demand and credit-fueled stimulus programs, by contrast, are nothing more than centrally planned misallocations of scarce resources — diverted from where they are truly needed by businesses and consumers.
That’s the basic economic logic politicians like Habeck, central planners like Friedrich Merz, and bureaucrats like Ursula von der Leyen are unable to grasp.
The GDP Illusion
The most fundamental distortion in economic data stems from the way government spending is included in GDP. The state does not produce market-demanded goods or services. On the contrary — it consumes resources created by the private sector, and at best adds more demand via deficit spending.
To get a real sense of economic growth, one must focus on private sector investment. This is the best indicator of whether an economy is growing, stagnating, or shrinking. For Germany, this metric confirms it has been stuck in recession for quite some time. Each year, the country loses over €60 billion in net direct investment. In 2023, capital flight reached a staggering €94 billion.
The economy is voting with its feet. Confidence in German policymaking has long since evaporated.
The situation is truly dire — and becomes even clearer when you factor in Germany’s high government spending ratio of 50%. With net new public debt exceeding 3% of GDP in 2023, the private sector must have contracted by nearly 5% to result in an overall GDP decline of 0.9%. That’s not a recession — that’s a depression.
Free Fall Without Safety Nets
Daily reports of factory shutdowns, mass layoffs, and capital relocations confirm the picture: Germany’s private economy is in free fall.
Overregulation and crushing tax burdens—driven by the fanatical climate agenda from Brussels and Berlin — have triggered a domino effect in the economy. Even drastic reform efforts may not be enough to stop it now. The newly initiated debate by Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil about raising taxes fits perfectly into Brussels’ agenda. Here, too, new corporate taxes are being floated to finance the EU’s sprawling bureaucracy. Europe is becoming hostile territory for investors and entrepreneurs.
It speaks volumes about how out of touch policymakers have become that even pro-business factions within the ruling coalition — like the CDU Economic Council or the SPD’s Seeheim Circle — have largely ignored the revised recession data. This is where political irresponsibility comes into full view.
It’s not the statistical quirks of GDP that should alarm us. It’s the fact that since 2019 — pre-lockdowns — Germany has added some 700,000 new unemployed people, despite the government creating hundreds of thousands of new public-sector jobs.
You can suppress reality for a while. But eventually, it hits with full force. That’s exactly where Germany finds itself now.
Desperate people clamouring around a truck begging for food. An emaciated child on death’s door. Women, girls, children, babies: no innocent is immune from Israel’s psychotically cruel campaign of bloodlust in Gaza. It is unbearable to see. Who can stand by and watch such crimes?
This, at any rate, is what most of the world’s media, from the most respectable broadcaster to the grimiest freesheet, is eager for you to think. It is also what Hamas wants you to think. As long-term masters of some of the most cynical propaganda the world has ever seen, Hamas is succeeding in its plan with resounding success.
Keir Starmer last week appeared to speak for the whole of Britain when he said that scenes from Gaza fill us with “revulsion” – against Israel, of course.
Largely because of such images of suffering, Starmer wants to reward the forces of Palestinian terror with the recognition of a state. “I think people are revolted at what they are seeing on their screen,” he said. The next day he spoke of “starving babies, children too weak to stand, images that will stay with us for a lifetime”.
Pictures. Images. Screens. These are what appear to be deciding Israel’s – and the Palestinians’ – legal status on the world stage.
It is not that there isn’t immense suffering in Gaza. There is. Hundreds of thousands of Gazans are in dire straits, have lost family members, are in pain, injured, hungry, homeless, desperate, scared, the terrorist group’s blood-soaked grip always around their necks. It’s a tragedy.
But a lot of what sets the world alight is massaged, manipulated and in many cases downright fake.
One of the most iconic images of the last few weeks, which helped consolidate the false worldwide consensus that Israel has become a rogue, genocidal state while the Palestinians deserve a state, was the skeletal boy allegedly nearly starved to death by an Israeli blockade, held in his mother’s arms.
What the great and the good left out in their haste to publish this picture, posed as a tableau reminiscent of Mary holding Jesus, was that the boy suffered from a congenital disease. It was later quietly acknowledged by The New York Times – way too late – that he had pre-existing health problems and they would have highlighted this if they had known before publication.
We see lots of pictures of desperate people clamouring for food banging pots and pans. Some of these might represent the strangled reality on the ground.
But as the German tabloid Bild bothered to discover, one of the most prominent pictures of such clamouring hunger in recent weeks has photographer Anas Zayed Fteiha, a freelance journalist commissioned by the Turkish news agency Anadolu, snapping the photos in the manner of a director.
Fteiha, as Bild reveals, isn’t quite the impartial documentarian suggested, but an activist whose agency answers straight to Turkey’s Hamas-sympathising president, Recep Erdoğan. Fteiha’s social media profile is informative. His Instagram page includes a video captioned “F** Israel” plus a painting by an arch-anti-Semite. He is publicly committed to the “free Palestine” end game. But his pictures, notable for their perfect lighting and close-ups of idealised suffering, especially of children and mothers, were swallowed without question, disseminated in New York Magazine, CNN, the BBC, plenty of German papers and more.
The wildfire success of such lies tells you much less about people’s gullible compassion than about how far Hamas now rules the global playbook of anti-Semitism, Israel-hating and Israel-blaming. Let us be clear. For the terrible suffering in Gaza, the blame falls squarely on Hamas’s manifold crimes. Hamas invaded Israel, knowing that, with its tunnels, weaponry and soldiers embedded in homes, schools and hospitals and behind civilians, Gazan civilians would take the brunt of Israel’s inevitable response.
The terror group’s continued stranglehold in the Strip and refusal to hand back the hostages is the only thing prolonging the war and suffering, all of which could have ended long ago.
Aid distribution systems have been corrupted, smashed or perverted, keeping food from some who badly need it, and ensuring it goes to those with the right connections. None of this is because of Israeli cruelty. All of it is because of Hamas’s cruelty and infinite scheming.
The truth has never mattered, though. Hamas knew Israel would be blamed, ostracised, and punished on the world stage on a scale never seen before, its very legitimacy called into question amid irreparable diplomatic crises. It was easy; Hamas was just kicking at a door its own predecessors helped kick open.
Hamas is finessing and darkening a tradition of propaganda built by Yasser Arafat, a master of the fabricated sympathetic picture, such as that during Israel’s 2002 operation in the West Bank that showed him alone and besieged in his compound. He sat at his desk with only candlelight to see by – an image the world lapped right up – only for lights to go right back on after the shoot.
As the historian Richard Landes describes in his essential book, Can the Whole World Be Wrong? Lethal Journalism, Antisemitism and Global Jihad, one of the defining images of the 21st century, the signal “icon of hatred” against the Israel and the Jews, was the “eyewitness” film apparently capturing Muhammad al-Dura, a defenceless 12-year-old boy, being shot in cold blood by the IDF, while held in his father’s arms, on September 30 2000.
It spread like wildfire. Analysis of the footage later contradicted this narrative. The IDF didn’t kill the boy. But by the time it was corrected, the damage had been done. Nobody cared, then, or now. This laid down a grotesquely immoral media-age template that has been used ever since.
Those of us who have followed media bias against Israel for many years are well versed in the absolutely central role of “Pallywood” – the well-known industry in the Palestinian territories that oversees the staging of fake news footage of Palestinian children and women suffering at the hands of Israel, producing a stream of emotive imagery for the world’s media. No true imagery produced by Israel, or even the true, boastful footage from Hamas of the Israeli hostages it has starved and murdered at close range, can even begin to counter Pallywood’s work.
The use of emotive imagery to peddle genocidal ideology is hardly new. Leni Riefenstahl, the director of the Third Reich’s propaganda films (who lived to the age of 101), offers an interesting comparison. Whereas Pallywood stages suffering, Riefenstahl’s art pretended that even those bound for Auschwitz were just fine and dandy. She cast gypsies as frolicking extras, then said they all survived the Holocaust. Not only were they sent to Auschwitz, Riefenstahl was thought, in some cases, to have helped them on their way though she denied it all.
While people were tortured, executed after show trials, or sent to the gulag, the Soviet propaganda department ensured a constant flow of idealised images of healthy, happy, sturdy people: courageous, righteous, industrious, reproductive and the biggest lie of all: finally free.
What makes the global hook, line and sinker acceptance of Hamas propaganda so surreal is that it comes a century after Stalin took power, and nearly a century after Hitler did.
What has history taught us? Sadly, those in Israel who know the answer are ignored and vilified, and those outside Israel who know the answer are now too old to provide it.
In speaking of Democrats verbally attacking law enforcement officers, President Trump is quoted as saying, “Well, they would not be saying that if they didn’t hate our country. And obviously, they do.”
Then President Trump spoke a generality concerning Democrats and said, “This is the problem with Democrats, they have a lot of bad things going on in their heads. They’ve become very…they’ve lost their confidence, number one. And they’re really, they’ve become somewhat deranged.”
Just to prove President Trump correct when he stated Democrats have “a lot of bad things going on in their heads” causing them to “become somewhat deranged,” U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) demanded that the White House unfreeze billions in National Institute of Health (NIH) funding and foreign aid. If that weren’t enough, Schumer demanded that the White House would issue no more “clawback packages” trying to reduce spending and reclaim waste, fraud, and abuse. Schumer was trying to apply political extortion on the White House by saying if you don’t fulfill our requests, we are not going to “greenlight” even Trump’s non-controversial nominees to their appointments.
So, let’s get this lows Democrat wasteful spending of taxpayer money, Schumer is going to instruct Democrats not to do their job. A good question to ask Mr. Schumer is, “What part of a $37,193,339, 958,268 national debt don’t you understand?” It looks like Trump was also right in that Democrats “hate our country.”
If Schumer ever had an honest thought in his brain, I’ll bet that thought would die from loneliness.
According to Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK), Schumer kept upping the price tag on his demands. Concerning Schumer’s demands, Mullin stated, “We’ve had three different deals since last night, and every time it’s, ‘I want more’.”
Mullin accused Schumer of going “too far.” Mullin stated, “You get to a realization that … it was never about making a deal. [Instead, Democrats] want to go out and say the President’s being unrealistic, and because he can’t answer to his base to make a deal, like we have in every other president in history.”
Mullin hit the nail on the head. Schumer never wanted a deal, but wanted to slow the Trump agenda, while continuing his slander of President Trump. If Democrats are correct that they could make deals with every other president in history, that clearly explains how our country has a $37,193,339, 958,268 national debt, which is rising rapidly.
In response to Schumer’s negligence in doing his job, President Trump stated on Truth Social,
Senator Cryin’ Chuck Schumer is demanding over One Billion Dollars in order to approve a small number of our highly qualified nominees, who should right now be helping to run our Country. This demand is egregious and unprecedented and would be embarrassing to the Republican Party if it were accepted. It is political extortion, by any other name. Tell Schumer, who is under tremendous political pressure from within his own party, the Radical Left Lunatics, to GO TO HELL! Do not accept the offer, go home and explain to your constituents what bad people the Democrats are, and what a great job the Republicans are doing, and have done, for our Country. Have a great RECESS and, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!
To further prove President Trump is correct concerning Democrats having “a lot of bad things going on in their heads” causing them to be “deranged,” Democrat state lawmakers in Texas fled the state to prevent a quorum needed in the Republican-dominated state legislature to vote on bills they were trying to pass. A quorum is the minimum number of lawmakers needed to be present to conduct legislative business.
So, instead of doing their job, the Democrats fled Texas to stay in the Democrat-led states of Illinois, New York, and Massachusetts, where they were welcomed with open arms.
Republican strategist Matt Whitlock called the actions of the Democrats, “cartoonishly dumb.” Unfortunately, this is not a cartoon. These Democrats are wasting taxpayer money, and since they are in the minority, they are also not doing the will of the people who elected the representatives to office.
Most of the Democrats fled to Illinois, a state Whitlock called “the Mecca of partisan Gerrymandering,” in favor of Democrat congressional appointments.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott is fining the Democrats $500 per day and had Texas Speaker of the House Dustin Burrows issue arrest warrants for these absent Democrats. After the vote in the chamber authorized the arrest warrants, Abbott swiftly called on the Texas Department of Public Safety to arrest the “delinquent Texas House Democrats.” Governor Abbott has also threatened to expel and prosecute Democrat lawmakers who have fled Texas, stating, “In addition to abandoning their offices, these legislators may also have committed felonies. Many absentee Democrats are soliciting funds to evade the fines they will incur under House rules.”
Concerning the bills that the GOP is trying to pass in Texas, Governor Abbott stated, Texas is doing what is allowed “by the law.”
In 2021 fifty Texas Democrat lawmakers fled Texas to go to Washington, DC to once again halt a vote on Texas legislation concerning voter ID. They returned to Texas after multiple members caught COVID-19 and the vote was passed several months later. So, their actions were nothing more than a political stunt, and once again, a waste of taxpayer money.
With what Tom Homan calls “the former first drug addict” Hunter Biden’s interview where every third word was the F-bomb, and him saying he might run for president, and Democrats like Stephen Colbert who can’t seem to wave at the crowd without using his middle finger, perversely cursing at the president of the United States on television, and with Kamala Harris allegedly breaking the law using campaign finances to pay celebrities to support her, and Massachusetts Democrat Attorney General Andrea Campbell spending nearly $300,000 of tax payer money on world travel, and Pete Buttigieg spending $80 billion on DEI in aviation, refusing to upgrade air traffic control, and the DOJ launching grand jury investigations into Russiagate conspiracy allegations against top leaders of the Democrat party, it really seems to confirm what President Trump said — that Democrats “have a lot of bad things going on in their heads” and they have “become somewhat deranged.”
If you think about it, what does the Democrat party stand for? They stand for killing babies, homosexual marriage, teaching sexual perversion in schools, transgendering children, illegal immigration, and allowing deranged boys in girls’ sports and locker rooms. This shows the effects of Democrats voting God off their party platform in 2012.
Erin Maguire on the Gutfeld show stated, “Democrats do have a major issue, but they still haven’t figured out what the problem is yet. You saw Senator Mark Kelly on television this past weekend saying Democrats have a messaging problem. You saw Ken Martin, DNC chair, saying they have a brand problem. No! The have a moral rot problem.”
Well, it looks Democrats really do have a lot of bad things going on in their heads and they are deranged, so it’s time to update our red hats to say, “Trump is STILL right about everything.”
Barack Obama’s presidency didn’t just strain America—it shattered its social fabric, fueling the political divide that made today’s bitter polarization inevitable.
Someday, when today’s young Americans look back in anger at what their country has become—and believe me, they will be angry—they will have their pick of culprits to blame for the sad state of affairs. If there is any justice in the universe, however, they will focus their resentment and frustration on one man: Barack Obama. Although the United States (and the West more generally) had been drifting toward collapse for decades, Obama’s efforts to “fundamentally transform” the nation were, in retrospect, the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.
Now, to be clear, I’m not referring here to something as small and meaningless as policy, foreign or domestic. As Presidents Trump and Biden amply demonstrated, policy can be changed and then changed back again, over and over and over. To be sure, the effects of these changes may be deleterious, and they may create substantively different outcomes than would have occurred otherwise. For the most part, however, the effects of policy changes are limited and, if corrected, temporary. Obama, for example, may have thrown the entire Middle East into flux and threatened the very future of the planet with his policy of appeasing the Mullahs of Iran, but Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump, between them, undid most of that damage and returned the region to its pre-Obama status quo.
And nor am I referring to Obama’s inarguable and inarguably troubling role in the scheme to undermine Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign (and, eventually, his presidency) by painting him as an agent of Russian influence. Russia-gate is ugly and treacherous, and a significant number of players—perhaps including Obama—should be held to account for what they did and how they manipulated the nation’s intelligence apparatus to serve partisan political ends. Some of them—perhaps including Obama—deserve to spend the rest of their lives in prison. This “scandal” is far more serious and far more perfidious than any other in American history—save, perhaps, the scandal of saddling the American people with an incoherent and incompetent president for a full four years, while others, still to be named, ran the country surreptitiously.
Nevertheless, Obama’s true offense is even more damning still.
As I have argued in these pages and elsewhere, none of the people who deserve to go to jail for the crimes involved in the scandals noted above will ever actually do so. A handful of lesser players may pay some minimal price for their involvement, but none of the big players, who made the big decisions and committed serious crimes, will ever do so. The nation today is simply too divided, too thoroughly bifurcated along partisan and ideological lines for serious punishment, much less widespread acknowledgement of guilt, ever to be a realistic outcome. Regardless of what documents, investigations, or testimony may conclusively demonstrate, roughly half of the country will refuse to believe it, including many elected representatives. Even if their guilt could be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, neither Hillary Clinton nor Barack Obama nor anyone else of significance, will ever pay a significant price for their actions. Today, everything is political, and political lines cannot be crossed, no matter how vital to the country’s future crossing those lines might be.
And in a very real sense, Barack Obama is responsible for this.
The evolution of the Total State—the state that no longer acknowledges anything as nonpolitical—by and large dates from the Enlightenment and its fostering of “liberalism.” From that point on, matters that had once been handled by families and communities slowly but surely became the purview of governments and, eventually, centralized states.
The inimitable Russell Kirk famously noted that “All history, and especially modern history, is in some sense the account of the decline of community and the ruin consequent upon that loss.” Much of that “ruin” can be attributed to the concentration of power in the hands of the centralized state and the expansion of that state’s jurisdiction to every aspect of people’s lives. There is no standard definition for the onset of “modern history,” although the Enlightenment serves as a reasonable approximate start date, given its ideas, ideologies, and revolutionary moral schemes. Those ideas, ideologies, and schemes radically accelerated the destruction of community and made the rise of the Total State virtually inevitable.
In Europe, the Total State grew steadily throughout the 19th century, in coordination with the nation-state and as an outgrowth of the consolidation of leftist ideologies. World War I, however, marked the line that separated the old from the new and signaled the inescapability of the Total States (and the slaughter that would accompany the descent from sovereign democracy to sovereign dictatorship).
In the United States, by contrast, the slide into the Total State largely happened in stages—four of them. The first of these was the advent of the Progressive Era. The Progressive movement was, more or less, the politicization of Protestant pietism. The Progressives—especially their intellectual godfathers, Richard Ely and his protégé Woodrow Wilson—were advocates of what is known as the Social Gospel, a religious movement spawned by the Second Great Awakening, which posited that the state can and should be harnessed to fix the problems of society and to make man’s existence more “Christlike.” Progressivism built on this foundation and largely succeeded in making the American state more religion-like, while also making American Protestantism more state-like. The damage done to the constitutional republic during the Progressive Era is both incalculable and still felt today.
The second stage in the growth of the American Total State was the New Deal. Hoover and then FDR expanded the size and the scope of the state dramatically, giving it almost unlimited power to impact the everyday lives of its citizens-turned-subjects. Those aspects of pre-modern American communities that weren’t destroyed by the Progressive reforms were finally done in by the New Deal. By the time World War II ended, the centralized American state stood supreme, both at home and abroad, and little could challenge its power.
The third stage of the American Total State began with the consolidation of power by the cultural Left during the 1960s. The New Democrats and their anti-war, anti-establishment agendas took what remained of the cultural remnants and pulverized them, making everything in man’s life subject to politics. “The personal is political,” the cultural Left insisted, and then, it did its damnedest to ensure that was the case.
Finally, in 2008, with the advent of the “Hope and Change” era, Americans were given implicit permission to hate one another for their differing “values” and to see one another exclusively as friends or enemies in accordance with those values. Rather than approach his election as the enormous racial accomplishment it was, the essential redemption of the nation’s long and sordid racial history, Obama chose to scold those unlike him and to turn them into the sociological “other.” He told his supporters to “fight” their political opponents, to “go low” when they “go high,” and to “punch back twice as hard” when confronted by opponents who resisted their proclamations of moral superiority. He and his administration demanded that supporters turn family gatherings into policy debates/arguments. He mocked his adversaries mercilessly and encouraged his “team” to laugh at them and see them as “lesser than.” In short, Obama took the political and cultural degeneration of the previous two centuries and made the acknowledgement and application of that “ruin” socially acceptable, if not socially mandatory.
As I said above, Obama arrived in the Oval Office and purposefully added as many straws to the already overburdened camel’s back as it took to break it.
Many political observers today think that Donald Trump is the most aggressive and uncompromising politicizer of American life who has ever existed. Whatever else he is, though, Trump is, first and foremost, the reaction to Obama’s action. Trump the politician did not spring, fully formed like Athena, from his father’s forehead. He was created over time, just like the rest of the American Total State.
Michelle Obama says she’s been oppressed, which has contributed to chronic stress and mental health challenges.
She’s so oppressed she just sold her Martha’s Vineyard retreat for $37 million. [@danielledsouzag on X]
Elevation to a completely undeserved status with no talent, no character, relentless loathing for the nation that lifted you, and nothing in particular to offer other than your race (which you did not choose) — I guess that is pretty hard and stressful on your mental health.
Many enemies of Israel, including some in the United States Congress, see the U.S.-Israel relationship as one-sided. This is true of Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who, in interview with Steve Bannon earlier this month, stated, “I’m entering amendments to strike 500 million more dollars for nuclear-armed Israel. And it’s important to say nuclear-armed Israel, because they do have nuclear weapons. This is not a helpless country, and we already give them $3.4 billion every single year in the state — from the State Department. Three point four billion dollars every single year.”
The $500 million Rep. Greene is speaking of is for missile defense cooperation, and the U.S. Defense Department is a major beneficiary of Israeli research and development. As a result of the experience Israel has garnered from employing various missile defense systems — such as the Iron Dome, David Sling, and Arrow — the Pentagon has received valuable technological capability information, which has saved the U.S. millions — some even say billions — of dollars. President Trump has repeatedly called for a “Golden Dome for America,” which would utilize some of Israel’s missile defense research.
Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), the Somali Muslim native and member of the anti-Israel and anti-American “Squad,” posted on X, “The genocide of the people of Gaza continues as members of Congress vote to fund Israel’s defensive and offensive military capabilities. This is immoral and no amount of excuses will ever make it okay.”
Omar’s usage of the word “genocide” is not only outrageous, but a lie. Israel does not target civilians, but rather warns them to evacuate from combat zones. No other army, in the midst of war, has put itself at such a disadvantage in order to avoid hurting civilians. On the other hand, Hamas uses its civilians as human shields, hence the high casualty rates among Gazans. Omar, unlike her “Squad” colleague AOC (D-N.Y.), seeks to deny Israel funding for defensive arms, such as the Iron Dome.
Moreover, Omar ignores how the U.S. benefits from the $3.3 billion Israel receives in military aid, including supporting thousands of jobs for U.S. citizens. Alexander Haig, former secretary of State and U.S. Army general, notably remarked, “Israel is the largest American aircraft carrier in the world that cannot be sunk, does not carry even one American soldier, and is located in a critical region for American national security.”
Additionally, Israel provides the U.S. with valuable intelligence and, as “eyes and ears” in the Middle East, shares with the U.S. any anti-American moves by Israel’s neighbors and beyond. At the height of the Cold War, during the 1960s, Israel captured advanced Soviet Mig jets and turned them over to the U.S., which helped the U.S. Air Force combat North Vietnamese, Soviet, and Chinese Migs — and saved America lives.
U.S. European Command (USEUCOM) commander General Bantz J. Craddock stated on March 15, 2007 that Israel was America’s “closest ally” in the Middle East and that it “consistently and directly” supported U.S. interests. General George F. Keegan, a retired U.S. Air Force intelligence chief, disclosed in 1986 that the intelligence information he obtained from Israel was greater than what would have been possible had he had “five CIAs.”
Israel continues to help the U.S. deal with traditional security threats. The two countries share intelligence on terrorism, nuclear proliferation, and Middle Eastern politics. Israel’s military experiences have shaped the U.S. approach to counterterrorism and homeland security.
Israel’s military research and development complex has pioneered many cutting-edge technologies that are transforming the face of modern war, including cyberweapons, unmanned vehicles (such as land robots and aerial drones), sensors and electronic warfare systems, and advanced defenses for military vehicles. It is difficult to quantify the value of Israeli assistance to the U.S., but it clearly reveals a relationship between two allies that is a “two-way street.”
Another example of shared knowledge is with Oketz, Israel’s specialized canine unit, which trains dogs to perform life-saving tasks for soldiers by alerting them to potential dangers that include explosives and weapon caches. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has trained American G.I. canine units on how to use dogs without a leash, which saved American lives in Iraq and Afghanistan from improvised explosive devices.
Intel, Microsoft, Cisco, and Google have research and development offices staffed by Israeli engineers and programmers whose technological innovations are helping the U.S. maintain its economic competitiveness, promote sustainable development, and address a range of non-military security challenges.
Israel’s contributions to the U.S. are not limited to the spheres of intelligence and military innovations. The U.S. has benefited from technologies such as drip irrigation technology and wastewater recycling, which the U.S. has provided to third-world countries, which has enhanced American prestige worldwide.
Countless American lives were saved during the 1991 Desert Storm campaign in Iraq because in 1981, Israel destroyed Saddam Hussein’s Osirak nuclear facility.
During the 2023 Republican presidential debate, Vivek Ramaswamy argued for reducing U.S. military aid for Israel. Nikki Haley, Republican former governor of South Carolina, responded to Ramaswamy by stating that he was “completely wrong”: “Support for Israel is both the morally right and strategically smart thing to do. Both countries are stronger and safer because of our ironclad friendship. As president, I will never abandon Israel.”
Although friendship between Israel and the U.S. is grounded in shared democratic values, the strategic component is key. The Jewish state is one of America’s best investments abroad. The relationship is a two-way street, with Israel giving as much as it gets from Washington.
THE ARTFUL DILETTANTE 