Eric Swalwell sometimes flies under the radar among members of Congress who operate daily with a double-digit IQ. Often, it’s members of the so-called Squad who earn that accolade. They get the spotlight, and rightly so.
But the congressman proves his mettle time and time again, spitting out ideas indicating he’s clearly two beers short of a six-pack.
Swalwell, the Democrat Representative who has served California’s 14th congressional district, recently announced he was jumping into the Golden State’s gubernatorial race. He announced his laughable campaign with the less humorous Jimmy Kimmel because, of course.
Things got infinitely funnier when, speaking with CNN over the weekend, Swalwell offered one of his initial brilliant ideas for the 2026 election. He wants Californians to have the option to vote by phone.
We’re not kidding.
“I want us to be able to vote by phone. I think every Californian— vote by phone, yeah, if we can do our taxes, do our… healthcare appointments… essentially do your banking online, you should be able to vote by phone,” he said.
“Make it safe, make it secure. But it’s actually already happening all over the United States. I want us to be a blue state that doesn’t do just a little bit better than, like, Georgia or Alabama, when it comes to like, voting access,” Swalwell explained. “I want us to max out democracy.”
The phrase “max out democracy” absolutely had to have been workshopped by an intern fresh out of high school. You know, high school, where Swalwell no doubt was stuffed in his locker nearly every day. I kid, I kid.
Swalwell got absolutely raked over the coals for the idea.
“Vote by phone so every 13-year-old with mom’s iPhone can pick the governor. Eric Swalwell just invented election fraud 2.0,” one X user wrote. “Genius level: room temperature IQ.”
It’s not even that warm.
“This is the worst voting idea I’ve EVER heard. That would be an abject disaster,” Eric Daugherty, Chief Content Officer for Florida’s Voice, added.
“Democrats always want more cheating in our elections,” conservative commentator Paul Szypula responded to the idea.
Fact check: True.
Currently, there are roughly zero U.S. states that allow universal voting by phone (e.g., via mobile app, voice call, or SMS) in federal, state, or local elections, primarily due to significant security, privacy, and verification concerns. Concerns that would be obvious to anybody with more than three functioning brain cells.
Some states have tested mobile or online voting pilots for specific populations, primarily for military and overseas citizens or voters with disabilities. Even then, it’s not widespread and often requires biometric verification or is restricted to specific jurisdictions.
Voting by phone fails most critically on authentication, secrecy, and verifiability. Phone numbers are easily spoofed, hijacked via SIM-swapping, or bought in bulk, making it impossible to prove that the person voting is the actual registered voter. The fraud alarms should be going off everywhere. But what is an alarm to you and me seems like a golden opportunity for Swalwell.
Similar to efforts to allow voting without government-issued identification, Democrats are always looking to expand who has access to the ballot box. Not to “max out democracy” as Swalwell suggests, but rather to allow as many unverified people as possible access to elections to muddy the waters.
Rusty Weiss has been covering politics for over 15 years. His writings have appeared in the Daily Caller, Fox News, Breitbart, and many more. Follow him on X.
Nov 14, 2025 10:32 pm · Updated Nov 18, 2025 7:54 pm
Reading time: about 6 minutes
It’s Tuesday, Nov. 4: Election Day 2025. The day began with the death of Dick Cheney and ended with the election of Democrats and Democratic Socialists all over the country.
I grew up in Astoria, Queens — the heart of the NYC Democratic Socialists of America with Tiffany Cabán, Zohran Mamdani and Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez as my DSA-endorsed representatives. Ever since the Democratic primary, I had been counting down the months, days and, by 8:59 p.m., the seconds until New York City would elect a Democratic Socialist as our mayor.
This election cycle yielded incredible news for leftists all around the country. In New York City, Mamdani won with over 50 percent of the vote. Kelsea Bond became the first Democratic Socialist to be elected in Atlanta, winning over 64 percent of the vote. It was a victory for Democrats as well, with decisive wins for governors in Virginia and New Jersey, managing to flip a significant number of Republican voters. Here in Ithaca, DSA-endorsed candidates Jorge DeFendini and Hannah Shvets won seats in the Ithaca Common Council.
For the first time, there was something that I was excited to vote for in US politics. As a nine-year-old, I rode the tide of Bernie Sanders enthusiasm, yelling out “Feel the Bern” with my parents at political rallies — the only time I have ever attended them. After that, it was disappointment after disappointment with Trump’s first far-right candidacy and disillusionment over Biden’s support of Israel in its genocide of the Palestinian people. With the Harris and Trump electoral race, my choice was between a center-right and far-right candidate.
Compared to the international political spectrum, United States politics is skewed to the right. Our “left-wing” representatives, the Democratic Party, are, to borrow from folk musician Phill Ochs, “ten degrees to the left of center in good times [and] ten degrees to the right of center if it affects them personally.” In the first 2024 election debate, Kamala Harris affirmed that she was pro-military, pro-fracking and against gun control. “Radical” Democratic Socialists such as Mamdani, who Republicans have branded as “communist extremists,” base their platform on policies taken for granted in most European countries. Abroad, free public transit, universal childcare and rent freezes are programs of common sense and empathy.
Yet, Mamdani’s victory proved that grassroots organizing can triumph over oligarchy. Andrew Cuomo’s campaign raked in $55 million from a handful of power brokers, calculating to $65 a vote. A large sum went into an Islamophobic smear campaign featuring racist AI-generated ads, including one infamous video depicting an AI-generated Mamdani eating with his hands and a Black man wearing a keffiyeh and shoplifting.
Zohran’s campaign, on the other hand, was powered by over 100,000 unpaid volunteers. Daily, people knocked on doors, called voters and organized within their communities. Every time I went back home, I would spot “Vote for Zohran” messages written on the sidewalk in chalk.
It was the same story for Hannah Shvet’s campaign ever since she narrowly won her primary against landlord and former factory CEO, G.P. Zurenda. After losing to Shvets, Zurenda then proceeded to pull an Andrew Cuomo by running as an independent in the general election. Like Cuomo, a small number of big corporations and property owners paid large sums of money to his campaign. Zurenda averaged $362 per donor while Shvets averaged $15.64 from 448 contributors.
In an interview with me, Shvet’s campaign reported that volunteers knocked on 2,479 houses, registered close to 200 students to vote, tabled outside for weeks, assembled scores of buttons and made 3,670 phone calls. All this was organized by students who have their hands full with classwork in one of the most elite universities in the nation. “I think just being present around campus this month helped a lot,” said Shvets in the interview. “We got to know so many people and told them about the race, how to vote and why it’s so important for Cornell students to engage in local politics.”
Hannah Shvets won with a staggering margin of 243 to 134 in an election with historic voter turnout. In NYC, we saw the greatest number of voters in half a century. These elections demonstrate the formidable strength of grassroots organizing. That’s certainly not a new revelation, but it needs to be said. It needs to be yelled out from rooftops and spread from city to city. Most importantly, it needs to continue to ensure that our elected Democratic Socialists can fulfill their promises.
Although I believe that capitalism must ultimately be replaced for true liberation, these electoral wins matter right now. Rent stabilization, free child care and higher minimum wages can alleviate the symptoms of oppression and have the capacity to help millions — indisputably, an incredible victory. “We can mobilize people around these issues,” said Shvets. “Coming to public comment at City Hall, writing letters to Cornell, holding rallies, etc., are all things that go into getting meaningful legislation passed.”
But the fight is not over. The forces of oligarchy and fascism — through real east lobbies, police unions, billionaire donors, AIPAC and conservative media ecosystems — are prepared to smother these victories. They will spend billions to undermine our elected Democratic Socialists, starve them of resources, and then proclaim that “once again, socialism failed.”
This is why the work after election day is even more important. The real power gained from organizing to elect Mamdani, Shvets and many more, is the momentum that comes from learning how to mobilize renters, students and the community. Electoral politics will not guarantee us a new world, but these wins open up a small crack in the current system. And historically, from these cracks slip through revolutions. As Mamdani said in his victory speech, quoting Eugene Debs, “I can see the dawn of a better day for humanity.” As the Red Sun Rises on this new dawn, it is up to us to make sure it reaches its zenith in the sky.
Mina Petrova
Mina Petrova ‘29 is a Freshman in the College of Arts & Sciences studying English, History, and Government. Her fortnightly column ‘North Star’ studies the past and critiques the present, focusing on politics, protests and activism that strive toward a more equitable future. She can be reached at mpetrova@cornellsun.com.
Taxpayers are footing the bill for up to $30 billion in fraudulent payments, one expert told The Daily Wire.
Though the government shutdown has ended, the fight over Obamacare is still raging.
Democrats want to extend and renew the Affordable Care Act’s expanded COVID-era subsidies, which are set to expire on December 31. Doing so would cost American taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decade. Republicans want to let the subsidies lapse, and find a way to reform America’s healthcare system.
Ryan Long, Senior Research Fellow at the Paragon Health Institute, told The Daily Wire that the expanded subsidies have created zero-dollar insurance plans that have sparked widespread fraud and abuse.
“There’s upwards of 6 million people who aren’t actually within that income category that are claiming credits as if they were in that income category,” he explained. “In certain states, there are three to four times as many people enrolled in 100 to 150% of poverty in these $0 plans than there are people actually in those income brackets.”
“So these COVID credits have just produced massive amounts of fraud,” he said. “The federal government’s paying, you know, upwards of $27 billion to $30 billion in fraudulent payments.”
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz echoed this concern last week. “Today, it’s over 11 million people who have Obamacare, never use their policies … which means they often don’t know that they have it,” he said. “Yet we’re stuck with the bill.”
Obamacare is also making health insurance more expensive. Obamacare plan premiums have climbed a whopping 169% since 2013. The increase is far steeper than that of employer-sponsored insurance, because when prices rise, the government is paying most of the cost, so insurers can keep raising them without people feeling the impact, Long explained.
What we’ve seen is, since the [ACA] was established or implemented in 2014, employer-sponsored premiums have gone up about 68%. ACA premiums have gone up 129%,” he said. “So that can’t be a function of just prices going up. There’s something truly wrong here.”
Healthcare costs and wait times have not improved since the implementation of Obamacare, either. So, where is all this money going?
Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) told The Daily Wire in an interview this week that a lot of this money is going to insurance companies.
“The largest carrier of exchange policies is UnitedHealthcare,” he said. “Their stock price has gone up 1,177 % since the invitation of Obamacare. Of the top seven carriers, the smallest amount of stock increases — I think, 414%. A lot of money into the insurance companies, a lot of money into the hospitals. There’s no doubt about it that we’ve got rural hospitals that are in trouble, but the big city hospitals are making money hand over fists.”
“There is nothing about Obamacare that created incentives to save money,” he emphasized. “All the incentives are to increase the money spent on healthcare so everybody gets their cut, everybody gets to make their profit. Non-profit hospitals, take a look at the pay of CEOs — some of them are making over $30 million a year in total compensation.”
“Money is flowing into the medical establishment, they’re making money hand over fists; the tabs are being picked up by the American taxpayer,” the senator told The Daily Wire.
Democrats’ solution to the healthcare crisis is to continue to extend and expand subsidies.
“We had a provision that was ready to be signed, that we know would’ve decreased premiums by 10 to 15%,” Long said. “Senate Democrats objected to it — the same policy that they were saying we had to do back in 2018. And so I think that they’ve just said, ‘Hey, the horse is outta the barn, we’ll just, you know, paper over any mistakes with more subsidies.’”
Twenty-two million of the 24 million people will still get their subsidies, the original Obamacare subsidies, which subsidize the insurance at 91 % of the premiums,” he explained. “So their premiums won’t double.”
“Now, you can argue that people that went from paying a negligible amount to zero premiums, they’re going to have to pay another negligible amount,” Johnson said. “But again, going from zero to a negligible amount is an infinite increase. You can’t put that as ‘doubling premiums.’”
“The people we’re talking about, the 1.6 million people whose subsidies completely go away — I’m willing to work with Democrats on that,” the senator added. “But again, it’s simply false to say that most people are gonna see their premiums double and triple. Now, the gross premium has more than doubled and tripled since Obamacare, but that’s because of Obamacare.”
The GOP believes that deep reforms need to be made — or Obamacare needs to be scrapped entirely.
President Donald Trump has proposed HSA-style accounts for Americans, allowing them to purchase their own healthcare plans, opening up the market, and bypassing insurance companies.
“I am calling today for insurance companies not to be paid,” Trump said last week. “But for this massive amount of money to be paid directly to the people so they can buy their own healthcare. They’re gonna buy their own healthcare, and we’re gonna forget this Obamacare madness.”
🚨 WOW! President Trump has the Democrats TOTALLY CORNERED on Obamacare
“I am calling today for insurance companies NOT to be paid. But for this massive amount of money be paid DIRECTLY to the people so they can buy their own healthcare!”
Though the government shutdown has ended, the fight over Obamacare is still raging.
Democrats want to extend and renew the Affordable Care Act’s expanded COVID-era subsidies, which are set to expire on December 31. Doing so would cost American taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decade. Republicans want to let the subsidies lapse, and find a way to reform America’s healthcare system.
Ryan Long, Senior Research Fellow at the Paragon Health Institute, told The Daily Wire that the expanded subsidies have created zero-dollar insurance plans that have sparked widespread fraud and abuse.
“There’s upwards of 6 million people who aren’t actually within that income category that are claiming credits as if they were in that income category,” he explained. “In certain states, there are three to four times as many people enrolled in 100 to 150% of poverty in these $0 plans than there are people actually in those income brackets.”
“So these COVID credits have just produced massive amounts of fraud,” he said. “The federal government’s paying, you know, upwards of $27 billion to $30 billion in fraudulent payments.”
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz echoed this concern last week. “Today, it’s over 11 million people who have Obamacare, never use their policies … which means they often don’t know that they have it,” he said. “Yet we’re stuck with the bill.
Obamacare is also making health insurance more expensive. Obamacare plan premiums have climbed a whopping 169% since 2013. The increase is far steeper than that of employer-sponsored insurance, because when prices rise, the government is paying most of the cost, so insurers can keep raising them without people feeling the impact, Long explained.
“What we’ve seen is, since the [ACA] was established or implemented in 2014, employer-sponsored premiums have gone up about 68%. ACA premiums have gone up 129%,” he said. “So that can’t be a function of just prices going up. There’s something truly wrong here.”
Healthcare costs and wait times have not improved since the implementation of Obamacare, either. So, where is all this money going?
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Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) told The Daily Wire in an interview this week that a lot of this money is going to insurance companies.
“The largest carrier of exchange policies is UnitedHealthcare,” he said. “Their stock price has gone up 1,177 % since the invitation of Obamacare. Of the top seven carriers, the smallest amount of stock increases — I think, 414%. A lot of money into the insurance companies, a lot of money into the hospitals. There’s no doubt about it that we’ve got rural hospitals that are in trouble, but the big city hospitals are making money hand over fists.”
“There is nothing about Obamacare that created incentives to save money,” he emphasized. “All the incentives are to increase the money spent on healthcare so everybody gets their cut, everybody gets to make their profit. Non-profit hospitals, take a look at the pay of CEOs — some of them are making over $30 million a year in total compensation.”
“Money is flowing into the medical establishment, they’re making money hand over fists; the tabs are being picked up by the American taxpayer,” the senator told The Daily Wire.
Democrats’ solution to the healthcare crisis is to continue to extend and expand subsidies.
“We had a provision that was ready to be signed, that we know would’ve decreased premiums by 10 to 15%,” Long said. “Senate Democrats objected to it — the same policy that they were saying we had to do back in 2018. And so I think that they’ve just said, ‘Hey, the horse is outta the barn, we’ll just, you know, paper over any mistakes with more subsidies.’”
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Johnson said Democrats are insisting on extending the COVID-era subsidies “to paper over to hide the fact that Obamacare has just been a miserable failure.”
“It caused premiums to skyrocket, as opposed to … President Obama saying that he would reduce premiums by $2,500 a year by family — again, that’s a total lie,” he added.
Johnson also pushed back on Democrats’ claims that premiums will double for millions and millions of Americans if the subsidies aren’t extended.
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“Twenty-two million of the 24 million people will still get their subsidies, the original Obamacare subsidies, which subsidize the insurance at 91 % of the premiums,” he explained. “So their premiums won’t double.”
“Now, you can argue that people that went from paying a negligible amount to zero premiums, they’re going to have to pay another negligible amount,” Johnson said. “But again, going from zero to a negligible amount is an infinite increase. You can’t put that as ‘doubling premiums.’”
“The people we’re talking about, the 1.6 million people whose subsidies completely go away — I’m willing to work with Democrats on that,” the senator added. “But again, it’s simply false to say that most people are gonna see their premiums double and triple. Now, the gross premium has more than doubled and tripled since Obamacare, but that’s because of Obamacare.”
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The GOP believes that deep reforms need to be made — or Obamacare needs to be scrapped entirely.
President Donald Trump has proposed HSA-style accounts for Americans, allowing them to purchase their own healthcare plans, opening up the market, and bypassing insurance companies.
“I am calling today for insurance companies not to be paid,” Trump said last week. “But for this massive amount of money to be paid directly to the people so they can buy their own healthcare. They’re gonna buy their own healthcare, and we’re gonna forget this Obamacare madness.”
🚨 WOW! President Trump has the Democrats TOTALLY CORNERED on Obamacare
“I am calling today for insurance companies NOT to be paid. But for this massive amount of money be paid DIRECTLY to the people so they can buy their own healthcare!”
Republicans seem to be on board with the proposal. In fact, Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) said last weekend that he’s drafting legislation to put this idea into action.
Long said this could be a good move for Americans. If Congress were to adequately fund Cost-Sharing Reductions (CSR) — which are supposed to help people pay for things like deductibles and copays — that could drastically lower premiums and cut tens of billions of dollars in taxpayer funding, he explained. And, as Trump proposed, sending that money straight to Americans rather than insurance companies would only empower patients.
“One thing that we’ve advocated for is if you appropriate those CSR subsidies, which is one of the twin pillars of the subsidy structure from the ACA, you’ll reduce premiums by 10 to 15%,” he explained. “Two, you’ll lower federal spending by about $30 billion. You’ll give patients more power and choice. And we think with that power and choice, you’ll also have the effect of them being better shoppers, and that will lead to more competition and choice.”
“So one thing that you could do is appropriate those CSR subsidies, and instead of giving those CSRs straight to the insurance company, you can give those to people in an HSA, where they can have more power to shop around for more valued services or better-priced services,” he elaborated. “Again, you’ll have the twin effects of lowering premiums, lowering federal spending, and empowering patients, which we think is sort of a triple winner.”
Schools across the country have been lowering standards and removing penalties for failure,” writes Rose Horowitch in The Atlantic. Colleges have stopped requiring applicants to submit test scores. The results of this vast experiment are in. Joe College can’t do math well enough to succeed in a science, engineering, computer or business major. The odds are he’ll struggle to complete college reading assignments and write a coherent essay.
The University of California system went “test-free” five years ago. SAT and ACT scores aren’t considered in admissions. The percentage of new students who can’t meet high school — or middle school — standards soared.
“We call it quantitative literacy, just knowing which fraction is larger or smaller, that the slope is positive when it is going up,” Janine Wilson, the chair of the undergraduate economics program at UC Davis, told Horowitch. “We are just seeing many folks without that capability.”
Students seem to think they don’t need to learn math, said Maria Emelianenko, chair of George Mason University’s math department. AI will do it for them.
“Who is going to trust somebody who got a degree in airline engineering who doesn’t know how to think through a problem without a computer telling them the answer?” Brian Conrad, a Stanford math professor, said. “The premise that foundational ideas don’t need to be learned anymore is a recipe for idiocracy.”
Horowitch points to several culprits for the decline in achievement, starting with the distractions caused by smartphones in schools, and the federal government’s weakening of accountability measures.
Of course, remote learning was an educational disaster. Students learned very little, and teachers were told to lower standards even further.
“Equity” initiatives led to “no zeroes” grading: Students can get partial credit for assignments never even attempted, much less successfully completed. I used to think “A” stood for “average.” In some schools, “A” is for “alive.”
Students move through high school getting A’s and thinking they’re prepared for the next step, writes Kelsey Piper in The Argument. “They were lied to.”
“Year after year, they fall farther behind,” and it becomes harder for teachers to give them honest grades, she writes. “It would ruin the kids’ GPAs and college prospects.”
They get to college and end up in low-level remedial classes, Piper writes. If they’d failed earlier, they might be prepared to excel in college. Giving them undeserved A’s wastes their time and makes it likely they’ll waste time and money in college. “Cargo cult equity needs to die.”
Requiring SAT or ACT scores would identify college applicants with inflated grades and weak skills. Some selective colleges have abandoned test-optional policies, and I predict nearly all will do so very soon. (UC is more extreme: Test scores aren’t considered at all.)
But what about all the kids who aren’t trying to get into selective colleges, but do need math and reading skills to learn a skilled job or qualify for military service or function in the adult world? They need to be taught the basics, retaught if they’ve failed to achieve mastery, and given an opportunity to build on that foundation during their many years of free education.
Is it wrong for white Christian men to have a sense of identity?
Ben Shapiro seems to think so. During a recent interview with Dana Loesch, the Daily Wire host lamented the rise in white identity among young conservatives. “I think we can start with what’s driving this in the first place,” Shapiro said. “For a decade or more, there was an attempt by the left to target Christian white men.”
Continuing, he explained:
“In saying that over and over and over, they started to create a feeling in a lot of young white men, that as a targeted group, they actually were an identity group of their own, and that now as an identity group of their own, they must rise up and lay low anyone who is not a member of that group.”
Shapiro’s two assertions are correct: the left promulgates anti-white identity politics, and many younger conservatives have developed a sense of white identity in response to it.
But his read of the situation is simplistic. White people can have a positive sense of identity without needing to “rise up and lay low” people from other backgrounds.
It is reasonable not only for white conservatives but also for conservatives of any racial background to object to demographic change, race preferences, and the demonization of European contributions to world civilization. One could certainly oppose these things on colorblind grounds, as conservative activist Chris Rufo has done, since it appears to be the most effective way to build a broad coalition capable of winning elections and changing laws.
But just as Asians may oppose woke policies on the grounds that they feel personally targeted, so, too, do many white people oppose them because they feel targeted. It is entirely reasonable to oppose a policy that directly targets you because of your race, while supporting a colorblind approach to undoing those policies.
In other words, it would be entirely sensible for a white American to object to becoming a minority in a country where discrimination against and demonization of whites is not only legal but widely celebrated. I fail to see why a self-respecting person of any race would support such discriminatory treatment of their own group. Does this qualify as white identity politics?
Clearly, it would be a grievous mistake to look at our current situation and conclude that the solution is to hate all non-white people, expel all blacks from America, advocate for violence, or become as loud and annoying about one’s white identity as the woke activists are about theirs. Those who espouse this hardline white identity politics are often crude and disagreeable, and I’m convinced most on the right who categorically reject any form of white identity are responding to them.
Yet those who seek to quash any sense of white self-identification among younger generations misunderstand the phenomenon and are doomed to fail. Life experiences for young Americans differ dramatically from those of their elders.
For one thing, many young white people grew up in raucous minority-majority schools, where to be white may be to stick out like a sore thumb. Spend a little time on X and you are bound to see videos of black mob violence against white teenagers in high schools across the country. It doesn’t help that in class these students are taught to feel ashamed of their ancestors’ real or perceived sins, a narrative that is also promoted by political elites, entertainers, and the mainstream media.
It’s a sorry situation. But one thing’s clear: telling young white Americans that these problems don’t exist is the surest way to lose credibility in their eyes.
Like it or not, many young white people are being forced to confront the realities of race. To ensure they avoid overreacting, it is important to eschew the finger-wagging and moral denunciations that brought us here.
Those who point to antiwhite discrimination are now so accustomed to scolding that they’ve become immune to it. Instead, what is needed is to calmly and rationally acknowledge the injustice they see while explaining why things shouldn’t be taken too far.
What does such an explanation look like?
In the first place, it’s important to stress that hardline white identity politics is a dead end for the right. If ending anti-white racism and mass immigration are the goals, then the right must build a coalition capable of winning elections and changing laws.
Appealing only to white people is unlikely to make that happen. In fact, Trump campaigned on mass deportations and opposition to anti-white DEI policies, yet he won by increasing his share of minority voters at the same time he supported these policies. Had he adopted a hard white identity politics approach, not only would he have alienated non-white voters, but he also would have alienated many whites.
Second, hardline white identity politics doesn’t offer a path to individual or national flourishing. Look at the white nationalist movement to see what happens to those who subscribe to and get caught up in this ideology. It always ends badly. They find themselves cut off from polite society—not only because of the risk of doxing, but also because the demand for an ever-ratcheting ideological purity puts one at odds with most people, even white conservatives, who do not share their views.
It is perhaps no surprise that when one looks at the numerous high-profile white nationalists who have disavowed the movement—from Derek Black to Jeff Schoep—one notes how easily, once leaving, they became leftists. If this kind of intellectual instability isn’t a wise idea at the individual level, it certainly isn’t going to be at the national level.
The third and last reason is that the form of white identity advocated by hardline proponents is not, as they assert, historically accurate. It’s true that white identity has played a role in American history. British colonists recognized themselves as distinct from Indians and black slaves and understood that those racial differences were greater than whatever ethnic and religious divides separated them from other Europeans.
But modern proponents of hardline white identity politics, who reduce everything to race, ignore the realities of ethnicity, culture, and religion. Putting your racial identity above all else is a sign of deracination, not a return to tradition.
Nevertheless, that doesn’t mean that race is an inconsequential factor in society. We can support racially neutral laws while at the same time opposing the third-world demographic transformation of the West.
Recognizing and celebrating the unique achievements of Europeans need not entail supremacism. We can acknowledge that group differences exist without resorting to hatred. And there’s simply no reason why white Christian men should be uniquely denied a sense of identity.
Some, like Ben Shapiro, might disagree on that last point. But the onus is ultimately on them to demonstrate that their position is not rooted in an anti-white double standard.
There is a strange trend in the modern West: telling the truth has become an act of defiance. Truth has not changed—but society’s tolerance for it has. At the core of this decline is the erosion of masculinity, the force that once stood guard over truth.
What once anchored civilization became something that polite society treats as a provocation. Truth confronts feelings, narratives, and institutions that depend on fragile illusions. Yet truth has never survived by accident—it survives only through courage. And historically, that courage fell especially to men. The responsibility to defend truth has never belonged to men alone—but throughout history, masculine courage has often carried that burden when it mattered most.
History is full of men who exposed corruption—not because it was safe, but because it was right. From military officers who reported failures that endangered soldiers, to scientists who challenged the official COVID-19 narrative, to men who resisted communist regimes, truth was defended at personal cost. Their names were rarely honored—but their courage preserved sanity and reality.
Today, speaking truth carries a new kind of risk—not only legal or political, but professional and social. A telling example occurred in 2021, when Coca-Cola held a DEI training instructing employees to “try to be less white.” Questioning the premise risked social or professional consequences. Across corporate America, the pattern is the same: once certain narratives become mandatory, honesty becomes hazardous.
Masculinity, in its healthiest form, is a stabilizing force for truth, clarity, responsibility, and protection. It built the West, defended it, and preserved its freedoms. But today, the characteristics that once stabilized society are being recast as threats to it. Masculinity is no longer honored as a stabilizing force. Instead, it is often portrayed as something to be softened, tamed, or “retrained.” Men are encouraged to suppress their nature in favor of emotional conformity. They are told to trade integrity for approval.
Masculinity is not at war with emotion—it rejects emotional absolutism, the idea that feelings should outrank facts and determine reality. This re-engineering of masculine character is not accidental. It serves a purpose.
As I explore further in the book The War on Men: How the New Gender Politics Is Undermining Western Civilization, once strength is redefined as danger and clarity as intolerance, society begins to drift away from reality.
A childhood friend recently admitted he followed certain policies during the Covid “pandemic” that he privately questioned simply so he and his wife could “go for a coffee in a coffee-house.” That single line reveals what soft tyranny looks like: the transformation of ordinary conveniences into levers of compliance. When courage fades, even trivial discomfort is enough to silence truth.
The Cultural Project: Emotional Obedience
The modern redefinition of masculinity revolves around a single goal: to replace steadiness with emotional obedience. Men who are steady, principled, and difficult to manipulate are inconvenient to systems that prize conformity.
The culture now encourages a softer man—sensitive, easily guided, emotionally pliable, and eager for approval, comfort, and validation rather than truth.
But emotional obedience is the opposite of mature masculinity.
Authentic masculine energy creates stability out of chaos. It draws boundaries. It names reality. It resists manipulation. It protects what is worth protecting. It does not bend simply because bending is easier.
When men suppress this nature, society pays a price. Confusion grows. Boundaries dissolve. Institutions drift. Narratives replace facts. Emotional intensity replaces reason. The world becomes unmoored from reality.
You Don’t Fight Delusion With Violence — The Truth Itself Is the Blade
One of the most important insights of traditional wisdom is that delusion is not defeated through force. You do not need an axe or a sword. You need clarity.
The truth itself is the blade.
A man who speaks truth cuts through confusion without harming anyone. His weapon is not aggression but clarity. His force is not violence but responsibility. His courage does not seek to dominate but to liberate.
At the same time, refusing to speak truth is not neutral. It becomes a subtle form of harm—a spiritual harm. When a person sees what is real but remains silent, the conscience begins to rebel.
And worse, silence leaves others trapped in illusions they might have escaped had truth been spoken.
Silence in the face of lies does not preserve peace. It prolongs the harm.
False Compassion: Fear Wearing Morality as a Mask
The culture now encourages silence, and calls it kindness. We are told to avoid “offending” others, “creating discomfort,” and “disrupting harmony.” But much of what passes for compassion today is simply fear wearing a moral mask.
Some claim masculinity is merely adapting to a gentler age. But compassion without courage is not maturity—it is compliance. A culture that demands silence in the name of kindness does not become gentler; it becomes dishonest.
True compassion sometimes requires saying what others do not want to hear. It may be uncomfortable, but it demands clarity, boundaries—and courage.
If a man sees someone drowning in confusion, compassion is not silence. It is speaking truth—calmly, firmly, respectfully—even when it is unwelcome. Courage and compassion are not opposites; they are allies. Courage without compassion becomes harshness. But compassion without courage becomes sentimental weakness.
The union of courage and compassion is the essence of moral strength.
Still, even when truth is spoken clearly, it cannot be imposed. A man may be shown reality, but only he can choose to face it. No one can wake a man who chooses sleep; the decision to confront reality is his alone. Truth can be shown—but it must be chosen.
Truth-Telling Is Sacred Work
Throughout history, the people we admire most are those who told the truth when it carried a cost. The hero is not the one who chases comfort but the one who refuses to bow to fashionable lies.
It is often the quiet acts that matter most—the parent who stands up to a school board pushing ideology over reality, or the soldier who reports failures that could cost lives.
In our own lifetime, speaking truth has once again become risky. After the Patriot Act expanded surveillance, many who raised concerns about its overreach were dismissed as paranoid or unpatriotic—yet years later, their warnings proved justified.
Truth-telling does not require power—only sincerity and courage. As Shakespeare put it, “This above all: to thine own self be true…”
A Man Cannot Lead If He Fears Disapproval
Leadership demands courage. A man who fears social disapproval cannot lead; fear makes him reactive and easily swayed. Many men have outsourced their moral compass to the approval of the crowd—not because they are bad, but because they are afraid.
But fear does not produce freedom. Fear produces conformity. Conformity, when the culture is built on unstable ideas, leads to chaos.
A man must decide whom he serves: public opinion or the truth. Masculinity is not fading—it is waiting. And as courage rises, truth will rise with it.
The World Needs Men Who Refuse the Lie
The West does not need more apologetic men shrinking themselves to fit the mood of the age. It does not need more men drifting with every cultural wave. It does not need more men acting small to avoid criticism.
It needs men who stand firm.
Men who refuse to repeat what they know is false.
Men who choose clarity over comfort.
Men who accept responsibility rather than seeking escape.
Men who refuse emotional obedience.
Men who speak the truth humbly, courageously, and consistently.
To be a man is to refuse the lie—even when the lie is popular.
Masculinity does not need to be reinvented—it needs to be reclaimed. Not with anger, but with honesty. Not with force, but with clarity. Men must once again guard the truth — or the truth will not survive.
The election of the Islamo-communist Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York is an insult to America in several respects. It’s an insult to the credo of individual enterprise and freedom in the nation that has succeeded in enriching the masses through its capitalist economy. And it’s an insult to the America that fought the communists in Korea, in Vietnam, and, during the Cold War, against the USSR born from that deadly ideology.
The fact that the communist mayor is also a Muslim and an activist one, who connected with powerful Muslim lobbies only 24 years after 9/11, is the ultimate provocation. America rightly laments the Muslim invasion (organized by the EU leaders) that distorts our Europe (where I live) to what seems like a point of no return, but may not have measured the extent of the same rampant evil within its own borders.
In the Anglosphere in general, and particularly in the UK, for the last two decades, we have seen veiled women in the street, in public and private jobs, and even in Parliament at Westminster. In the USA, the Congress is now affected, too.
This has happened because of the sacred respect for religious freedom enshrined in the Constitution. But there, our Anglo friends are making a major misconstruction. These Muslim immigrants did not come to England, America, Canada, Australia, or New Zealand because they were fleeing religious persecution or were forbidden to practice their faith. Quite the contrary. They may have fled many evils, but not that one.
Logically, Muslim women should be fleeing the treatment to which their religion submits them. But not at all. Most Muslim immigrants have brought their religion to impose it on us, in accordance with the demands of that religion and perhaps also under orders from the authorities of the countries from which they came. More mosques keep being built in America, and the country is discovering street prayers. Besides, it is not just in New York that a Muslim has been elected “as a Muslim.” Several Muslim-majority localities did the same thing on November 4.
Militant Muslims are naturally allied with all left-wing movements, even LGBTQ++ movements. In France, the anarcho-communist Jean-Luc Antoine Pierre Mélenchon proudly represents them. In the UK, PM Starmer bends over backwards to downplay the crimes and offenses that Muslims (both born in Britain and immigrants) commit, and bestows knighthoods on Muslims right and left. A scoundrel like Sadiq Khan, the mayor who has turned London into the capital of knife murders, is now Sir Sadiq, dubbed without qualm by the enviro-fundamentalist King Charles III.
The European Union, the American left, and all Western elites have opened the floodgates to millions of immigrants pouring in from the Third World. Under Biden, for four years, it was at a rate of 10,000 per day. The European Court of Human Rights is now considering granting rights and benefits to the second, third, and Nth wives, as well as to their children.
The boldness of these particular immigrants is limitless…and it pays.
When you invite the Third World to your home, you incrementally start to resemble the Third World. The financial burden of invasive immigration is weighing us down, leading to a €10 billion annual deficit for France alone.
But decadent Western nations are not content with letting themselves be invaded. Their virtue also unfolds abroad through their quasi-religious environmentalist crusade.
On a French TV channel, on November 10, during the 8 p.m. news, while commenting on the opening of COP 30, a properly groomed airhead declared: “Western countries are responsible for the climate crisis, and this crisis hits poor countries harder, countries that remain poor because we oppressed them in the past.” Consequently, we “owe them” much more than the hundreds of billions already paid, a pittance, and we must now move into the trillions.
One recognizes the UN’s discourse in that statement.
Western taxpayers are buckling under taxes, and all our institutions are overrun by economic and cultural Marxists, just as Gramsci recommended. But Gramsci could not have imagined what a fabulous ally militant Islam would be for his project of destroying Western civilization. Like him, they are in no hurry: they play the long game and are confident in their success.
Our leaders have betrayed us. The European Union, allied with the transnational Western left, is waging a war on the peoples to subject them, if need be, by replacing them. Cultural Marxism is gaining momentum: deportations must accelerate, and the concept of denaturalization must be applied to thousands of individuals like Mamdani who will never assimilate but have the nerve to campaign on their hatred for the countries that welcomed them, to the point of seeking to seize and transform them.
New York has seen many things, but the election of an Islamo-communist should shake people out of their torpor.
Trump cannot do everything everywhere alone. Western countries must unite in an existential action of pushback.
The Democrats recently trotted out six members of Congress with military or intelligence community experience to encourage soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, and intelligence officials to disobey orders. Part of the oath we take is to obey the lawful orders of those appointed over us. These Dems talk about disobeying “unlawful” orders. What orders are they talking about? The military does a good job in training of explaining that if you are in combat and ordered to line up a bunch of civilians and execute them, you have a responsibility to disobey. I am unaware of any recent orders along those lines.
Are the Dems saying the B-2 pilots should have refused to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities? The refuelers should have refused to fly? The Patriot battery should have refused to shoot down Iranian missiles aimed at Israel? Those conducting attacks on drug boats should disobey? CIA analysts who discover the launch of drug boats should conceal their discoveries from superiors?
Actually, there is an historical example that could highlight this issue. During the Vietnam war Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara recommended and President Lyndon Johnson approved changing our strategic goal from win to tie. The decision occurred on November 5, 1966 and based on domestic political calculations relating to the 1968 election. The mechanism to achieve the new goal was to stop the open-ended commitment to victory and establish a troop ceiling beyond which we would not go. The administration wished to avoid mobilization or calling up the reserve and set the ceiling accordingly. The American commander in Vietnam, General William Westmoreland, advised that while we would not be defeated with the proposed force, neither would we win and it would be a prescription for an unreasonably protracted conflict. That was good enough for the Johnson administration.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff protested the decision in a series of bureaucratic exchanges with McNamara over the months required to reach the ceiling. Finally, in August 1967, having adjusted the ceiling slightly, McNamara informed the Joint Chiefs that the discussion was over. But the Johnson administration was being criticized by Republicans for its handling of the war, and Johnson wanted to create the (false) impression that he was doing everything possible to support the commander in the field. In other words, he wanted to create a public narrative that was the exact opposite of the truth.
Having just told the Joint Chiefs that the debate concerning a troop ceiling was over, McNamara pressed the military to speed up deployments to reach the troop ceiling, without revealing to the public that there was a troop ceiling. The objective was to create the public impression that all was being done to support Westmoreland. In early September 1967, the administration asked the Joint Chiefs (a) what could be done prior to Christmas? and (b) what could be done prior to the March 12, 1968, New Hampshire presidential primary election?
One result was to accelerate the deployment of the 101st Airborne Division. In October it was determined that the division could be deployed by Christmas and, with some additional training, be employed in January. The original plan had been to deploy the division in March 1968.
Here is where I argue that there is potential for an unlawful order. It also would have been impossible for the soldiers receiving the order to know it was unlawful, though the Joint Chiefs should have known. And the administration disrupted the situation for them by coming up with a desire to increase pressure in the Northern Provinces. Let’s take a married Staff Sergeant in the 101st with two children. In the fall of 1967 he expects to go to Vietnam in March of 1968. He makes plans for his family. Where to live, schools, the car, the bank, etc. In October he discovers he is going to Vietnam before Christmas. Have his plans just been dealt a blow? Yes, but he is an Airborne soldier and is ready because his country needs him. But if we change that to, he is ready so he can help Lyndon Johnson in the New Hampshire primary, is the answer the same? Should that have been a lawful order?
Johnson and McNamara were despicable. It was clear that these military decisions were being taken for crass political reasons. The fact that they put the New Hampshire primary reasoning in writing perhaps would have given cause for formal objection, but even then it was confounded with the Northern Provinces gambit. Even this disgusting example is difficult, and we only know about it because of the Pentagon Papers.
Encouraging disobedience in the military and intelligence community is a dangerous path to follow. If these six Dems had a specific order in mind, they should have said what it was. They did not and they have undermined the good order and discipline that is necessary in conflict.
Now more than ever, the ability to speak our minds is crucial to the republic we cherish. If what you see on American Thinker resonates with you, please consider supporting our work with a donation of as much or as little as you can give. Every dollar contributed helps us pay our staff and keep our ideas heard and our voices strong.
Johnson and McNamara were despicable. It was clear that these military decisions were being taken for crass political reasons. The fact that they put the New Hampshire primary reasoning in writing perhaps would have given cause for formal objection, but even then it was confounded with the Northern Provinces gambit. Even this disgusting example is difficult, and we only know about it because of the Pentagon Papers.
Encouraging disobedience in the military and intelligence community is a dangerous path to follow. If these six Dems had a specific order in mind, they should have said what it was. They did not and they have undermined the good order and discipline that is necessary in
I’m probably in a minority of one, but I’ve concluded that Michelle Obama is a pitiable woman because she is incapable of happiness. Mind you, she’s not a harmless woman, because she uses her bully pulpit to spread her misery by making other people, especially women and minorities, equally dissatisfied, paranoid, and hate-filled, but there’s still something pathetic about a woman who has everything yet still sees herself as the victim.
Michelle’s latest rant was about hair. Now, I must admit to a little fellow feeling when it comes to frustration about hair. My mother had bone-straight hair, and my father had lovely ringlets. Combine the two, and you get me, with patches of hair texture across my head: I have random clumps of ringlets, curls, waves, bone straight hair, and frizz.
In my youth, I paid either to straighten or curl it to achieve a mono-texture, but eventually I stopped. Unlike Michelle, spending endless money and having an entourage of stylists isn’t in my budget or my modest lifestyle. But honestly, if I could have someone style my hair daily…I probably would, given the frustration I’ve experienced over the decades.
But for Michelle—because she’s a leftist and the personal is always political—the fact that the current style is for lustrous straight hair isn’t a personal frustration, it’s a racist outrage. And the fact that one of America’s richest women must pay if she wants—not if she’s forced to by the government, but if she wants—to have straight hair is an insult that every white woman (each of whom, apparently, is blessed with straight, shiny hair) has taken aim at Michelle’s essential blackness:
I found Michelle’s rant incredibly funny, not because she’s witty, charming, or wise, but because, if you’re watching the video, you can see that her hair is straight—a whole lot straighter than I can ever get mine without spending hundreds of dollars. Michelle could have gone for braids, an afro, or God alone knows what else, but she’s giving this harangue about the racial horrors of being forced to emulate white women’s hair…while her head is crowned with white women’s hair.
But we already know that Michelle is angry, whiny, and hypocritical. That’s not new.
What’s new is that I looked at this woman and saw not one of America’s most popular, famous people who rolls in dough and is surrounded by sycophantic adulation. Instead, I saw before me a pathetic loser. She’s a loser, of course, because gratitude is utterly foreign to her nature, which consigns her to a lifetime of misery.
Michelle cannot be happy. For her, every day is a series of insults, oppressions, and humiliations, all wrapped in a package of unfulfilled desires. What Michelle has going on in her head—something she voluntarily embraces—is a mindset I’d wish on my worst enemy, but not on anyone else.
My approach to life is endless gratitude. I am grateful that I live in what is still the greatest country in the world. My home is a happy place, and I am surrounded by good people. When I venture out of my community to shop or engage in fun activities, if I smile at people, ask them how they are, and converse with them cheerfully, they respond in kind. My children are healthy, happy, and thriving as adults. They are good people, which is probably the thing that makes me most grateful.
In my world, every day is a good day. And for that reason, even though I’m not rich and famous like Michelle Obama, even though I don’t have someone constantly taming my hair, even though I’m not out on yachts and sharing my (valuable) thoughts with the world, and even though my bank account is not even a blip compared to hers, I am an infinitely richer person than poor, frizzy-headed Michelle Obama.
I began my career with Allegheny County Pretrial Services in April 2008.
I was sworn in by a judge, issued a badge, and placed into a system built on neutrality and public safety. Our job was simple: interview defendants, verify information, review police reports, pull complete criminal histories, and present magistrates with fact-based recommendations.
We weren’t advocates for release or detention. We were there to present facts. And for a long time, the system worked because facts were the only thing that mattered.
Failures to appear happened, but they were usually honest mistakes. Multiple pending cases were rare. Dangerous charges or a dangerous record meant detention; non-violent charges meant release. Rap sheets rarely exceeded fifteen pages. By the time I left, fifty-page criminal histories had become routine.
Deputy Director Paul Larkin set the standard that kept the system stable. With decades in the courts, he understood both the law and the operational realities. If a case required a bond revocation, he supported it. If someone was held on a bad warrant, he contacted the president judge and resolved it. As long as he was there, the system functioned.
In 2016, that changed. National organizations were pushing rapid decarceration, and the Arnold Foundation’s Public Safety Assessment — the PSA — arrived in our office. Paul warned it would dismantle the safeguards pretrial relied on. The tool ignored violent charges, violent histories, multiple pending cases, outstanding warrants, probation or parole status, and repeated failures to appear. It made release the default. Before he could stop it, Paul died at forty-eight. With him gone, internal resistance disappeared.
After his death, our director approved the PSA and promoted a close friend as deputy director. She rushed a full computer overhaul despite warnings it wasn’t ready. Reports printed at 150 pages. Charges scrambled. Dates disappeared. Recommendations were distorted. When the system stabilized, the real impact became clear: dangerous defendants who once received bonds were now funneled into non-monetary release — including individuals charged with homicide.
What the public never knew is why.
The PSA was adopted in exchange for millions in grant funding from foundations aligned with national decarceration efforts, including Arnold, Heinz, and MacArthur.
Pretrial’s funding increased as the jail population dropped, turning release decisions into a performance metric. One supervisor — responsible for override decisions — also held the title of Jail Population Control Manager, a position dependent on lowering jail numbers. We were civilian court employees, yet a decarceration-driven role tied to financial incentives was embedded inside pretrial. Under this structure, charges, criminal histories, and patterns of violence no longer determined release. Funding did.
The consequences were immediate.
Defendants accumulated case after case with no intervention. One man with six open gun and aggravated assault cases was released every time. On his seventh arrest, he murdered a stranger walking up the street in broad daylight. Investigators requested overrides in his earlier cases. Every request was denied.
The same pattern appeared across cases. A woman raped while unloading groceries. A deaf woman sexually assaulted. A drug dealer firing military-style weapons during a shootout with her child beside her. Under the prior system, these defendants would have received bonds. Under the PSA, release was recommended, and overrides were rejected.
Pressure also came from outside. One morning, public defenders entered our jail office demanding access to pretrial computers. When questioned, our director denied authorizing it. When they returned the next day, they stated she had sent them. Their goal was to ensure magistrates followed pretrial’s recommendations. And if a magistrate didn’t, an internal unit — the Arnold unit — voided the magistrate’s order the next business day and secured the defendant’s release.
Elected magistrates never knew their decisions were being reversed behind the scenes.
Between 2016 and 2022, nearly $20 million in foundation funding flowed into pretrial under “reform.”
None of it improved safety or operations. Our jail office had leaks, mold, collapsing ceilings, and malfunctioning HVAC. Computers failed constantly. When hazards were reported — including sections of ceiling falling during shifts — administration dismissed the concerns and labeled employees as troublemakers. Basic needs went unmet to the point that staff purchased their own chairs, keyboards, and cleaning supplies. There were no upgrades, no staffing increases, and no operational investment. The funding disappeared inside administrative channels without transparency or public audits.
By 2022, the system had collapsed. Dangerous individuals were repeatedly released. Victims were sidelined. Investigators’ warnings carried no weight.
I stayed until one case made remaining impossible. During a family biking event downtown, a mother sat at a traffic light with her baby in the backseat and her boyfriend — a gang member — beside her. Rivals recognized him, made a U-turn, and opened fire. The mother survived. The boyfriend survived. The baby did not. At least one shooter was out on pretrial release with open cases. Overrides had been denied. The PSA recommended release.
I resigned on July 29, 2022. The only communication I received from my bosses was a letter threatening to dock my final paycheck unless I returned my badge, an expired can of mace, and a pair of unused handcuffs. This came from the same leadership that had accepted nearly $20 million in foundation funding with no transparent accounting of where it went. I promptly responded with one sentence: “If you want money for those items, get it from the millions you took in exchange for public safety and human lives.”
Kelly Rae Robertson is a former Allegheny County Pretrial Services investigator with fourteen and a half years in the Fifth Judicial District of Pennsylvania. She is now a nationally published writer and criminal-justice whistleblower focusing on systemic failure, public safety, and government accountability.
Now more than ever, the ability to speak our minds is crucial to the republic we cherish. If what you see on American Thinker resonates with you, please consider supporting our work with a donation of as much or as little as you can give. Every dollar contributed helps us pay our staff and keep our ideas heard and our voices strong.
THE ARTFUL DILETTANTE 