Authored by Joe Baron via DailySceptic.org,

According to David Betz, Professor of War in the Modern World at King’s College London, many of the preconditions for civil war exist in Britain today. 

Using academic studies on social cohesion, civil war causation theory and social attitudes surveys, he argues that the following preconditions are in place: elite overreach, factional polarization, a collapse in trust, economic pressures, and the perceived downgrading of the majority population in a previously homogeneous society, are all present in contemporary Britain.

The current dynamics, he continues, point to an emerging conflict between radicalized factions within the Muslim community and an incipient nativist white nationalism. Professor Betz goes on to claim – using the Maoist model that divides insurgencies into three phases – that the nativists are in phase one, the so-called defensive phase in which the group begins to organize, disseminate propaganda and build a conscious community of followers.

Islamists, on the other hand, are in phase two – when violent attacks occur on a semi-regular basis, a military structure is being developed, but they are not yet strong enough to challenge the state’s monopoly on violence. (Professor Betz believes that, due to the absence of clear geographic divisions between the antagonists, Britain is unlikely to reach phase three – the offensive phase. This is when the insurgent groups are strong enough to challenge government forces.)

It is an arresting and troubling thesis. It is also convincing. 

The preconditions outlined above undeniably exist in modern Britain.

There has been a collapse of public trust in the state, for example. The 41st British Social Attitudes Survey (BSA) report, published on 12 June 2024, concluded “that people’s trust in governments and politicians, and confidence in their systems of government, is as low now as it has ever been over the last 50 years, if not lower”. Indeed, a record high of 45% “almost never” trust governments of any hue (22 points above the figure recorded in 2020); 58% (another record high) “almost never” trust politicians to tell the truth when they are in a tight corner, up 19 points on 2020; and a striking 79% of respondents said that the system of governing Britain could be improved “quite a lot” or a “great deal”, matching a record high recorded during the parliamentary stalemate over Brexit in 2019 and up 18 points on 2020.

Professor John Curtice, the Senior Research Fellow at the National Centre for Social Research, the organisation that carried out the BSA survey, says: “The government… will… need to address the concerns of a public that is as doubtful as it has ever been about the trustworthiness and efficacy of the country’s system of government.” As Professors Curtice and Betz warn, public trust in governments of all stripes has collapsed and, with it, trust in the system of government that we have traditionally sacralised and encouraged others to adopt. That this trend, if left unchecked, could potentially shatter an already fragile social contract is a statement of the obvious. Trust in the state unites the disparate groups of a multicultural society, acting as what Professor Betz calls a kind of “superglue”. Without it, the groups fracture and retreat into silos characterised by mutual suspicion and animosity.

Although the BSA report does provide a chink of light, offering the possibility of a resurgence in trust – like the one seen in 2020 after the parliamentary shenanigans over Brexit were finally put to bed by Boris Johnson’s election victory – the signs are inauspicious. The post-Johnson resurgence was short-lived, eroded by more ‘elite overreach’ as he turbocharged immigration against the wishes of the electorate. What became known as the ‘Boris-wave’ was the final act of betrayal for a downtrodden populus reeling from a decade of broken promises.

Indeed, public trust has been eroded by elite arrogance – and such arrogance shows little sign of abating. Political elites are not only forcing mass immigration on a reluctant population; they are now actively discriminating against the white majority. The recruitment practices of our public services are a case in point. In the summer of 2023, a report found that the Royal Air Force was unlawfully discriminating against white men in a campaign aimed at boosting diversity; West Yorkshire Police recently placed a temporary block on hiring white British candidates for the same reason. In addition, a recent article in the Telegraph revealed that NHS trusts discriminate against white applicants by manipulating interview shortlists to favour ethnic minorities. Our irreproachable health service encourages what is known as the ‘Rooney Rule’ – a policy originating in American football that makes it mandatory for ethnic minorities to be shortlisted for interviews if they apply.

Furthermore, the toxic spectacle of two-tier policing is obvious to all but the most dyed-in-the-wool progressives. The contrast between the police’s uncompromising response to the white Southport rioters – in which they rightly used batons and shields against the aggressors – and their pusillanimous reaction to the Harehills Romani rioters – in which they ran away despite a bus being set on fire – was starkly demonstrative of a system that no longer treats its citizens as equal in the eyes of the law. Sir Keir Starmer took the knee in the wake of the violent Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests; he pressured judges to hand down custodial sentences to mothers who posted injudicious tweets during the Southport disturbances.

Guidance issued by the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) and the College of Policing shamelessly highlights the current two-tier approach. It says there should be “equality of policing outcomes”, meaning, to ensure “racial equity” not everyone should be treated the same. Apparently, policing should not be “colour blind”. The justification for anti-white racism is therefore spelt out in black and white – excuse the pun. No wonder the police attack white football fans trying to protect the Cenotaph whilst appeasing the Islamo-fascists who wish to deface it. No wonder they tolerate marauding Muslim gangs in Birmingham while deploying armoured battalions to deal with their white counterparts.

The white, native population is in the midst of an elite driven programme to downgrade their status in the United Kingdom – a phenomenon that Professor Betz cites as a precondition for civil war. 

That it could lead to a backlash by those being downgraded is self-evident.

Britain is already facing factional polarization within some of its communities. Last year, four independent MPs were elected because of a religiously-inspired preoccupation with the Israel-Hamas war. Moreover, according to government figures, the UK has approximately 40,000 Islamists on the terror watchlist. Inter-communal violence has also been playing out on the streets of Birmingham between Hindus and Muslims, as well as on the streets of London between Eritreans and Ethiopians. If you add economic pressures into the mix – economic stagnation since 2008, an acute housing shortage, historically high taxation, private and public indebtedness, and broken public services – and a resentful white majority (Southport witnessed the incipient convulsions of a native population that clearly feels besieged), a heady, explosive cocktail threatens to ignite the country.

Professor Betz is right. The preconditions for civil war do exist. Years of elite overreach have led to resentment and an alarming collapse of trust in our politicians, institutions, and political system, in addition to the increased polarization of our ever-growing migrant communities – communities that find themselves, along with the native majority, in the eye of an approaching storm. Our elites must wake up before it’s too late!

Joe Baron is the pseudonym of a secondary school teacher. This piece was originally published on his Substack, which you can subscribe to here.

Authored by Andrew Korybko via substack,

That would be a nightmare scenario from the perspective of Israeli interests...

A report circulated last week alleging that Trump cut off all direct contact with Bibi after feeling manipulated by him. For as sensational as it sounds, the larger context suggests that it might be true. For starters, there was bad blood between them since late 2020 after Trump reportedly felt betrayed by Bibi recognizing Biden’s electoral victory while Trump was still challenging it in the courts.

This is a very personal issue for him seeing as how he continues to insist that he won so it wouldn’t be surprising.

More recently, Bibi has been pressuring Trump to bomb Iran, which Trump doesn’t want to do since a large-scale war in West Asia would offset his planned “Pivot (back) to Asia” for containing China. In connection with that, Trump reportedly dismissed former National Security Advisor Mike Waltz due to him supposedly coordinating too closely with Israel. Also of relevance are the rumors that Israel was caught off guard by the US’ resumption of talks with Iran and is against any agreement between them.

Then there’s the US’ recent deal with the Houthis that excludes Israel, reports that the US will delink Saudi recognition of Israel from their civil nuclear talks, and even speculation that Trump might recognize Palestine during his attendance at next week’s Gulf-US Summit in Riyadh. Altogether, it’s self-evident that US-Israeli ties are newly beset with a host of problems, thus lending credence to the earlier cited report about Trump cutting off all direct contact with Bibi.

Their rift might even be irreconcilable depending on Trump’s next steps. It was already bad enough from Israel’s perspective that the US reached its own deal with the Houthis right after they announced their plans to impose an air blockade on Israel but delinking Saudi recognition of Israel from their civil nuclear talks, let alone recognizing Palestine, could cross the Rubicon. In that scenario, Israel and the US would remain at odds during the rest of Trump’s term, and perhaps even afterwards if Vance succeeds him.

The consequences of that happening would widely reverberate throughout the region. Without the continued support of its oldest and most reliable ally, which is still the strongest and most influential country in the world despite the global systemic transition to multipolarity, Israel would be left alone to deal with threats from Iran and Turkiye. To make matters worse, it can’t be ruled out that the US might curtail or even suspend its military aid to Israel on whatever pretext, thus weakening its armed forces.

This combination of factors could lead to Israel wildly lashing out against its regional adversaries in desperation before it loses its military-strategic advantages, which could spark a large-scale war, or being coerced into a series of compromises that accelerates the loss of these selfsame advantages. From the viewpoint of Israeli interests, this a zero-sum dilemma that it must avoid at all costs, yet Trump’s potentially irreconcilable rift with Bibi could turn this nightmare scenario into a fait accompli.

Nevertheless, as Trump’s unexpected reconciliation with Zelensky shows, there’s always the chance that their tensions could be overcome. For that to happen, however, Bibi would likely have to give Trump something of equivalent strategic value to Zelensky’s minerals deal. It’s unclear what that might be, and it could come too late to stop the US from delinking Saudi recognition of Israel from their civil nuclear talks and/or recognizing Palestine, but Bibi would do well to make Trump a peace offering pronto.

Authored by Chase Smith via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The Department of Homeland Security has issued a subpoena to Los Angeles County for records tied to a state-run assistance program, which the department alleges might have been used to unlawfully provide federal benefits to illegal immigrants.

A Social Security Administration building in Burbank, Calif., on Nov. 5, 2020. Valerie Macon/AFP via Getty Images

Homeland Security Investigations served a Title 8 subpoena to the Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services, which administers California’s Cash Assistance Program for Immigrants.

While the cash assistance program is a state-funded initiative, the federal subpoena seeks records from January 2021 to the present to determine whether any recipients received Supplemental Security Income benefits but who were ineligible, based on their immigration status.

The requested documents include applications, immigration status records, proof of Supplemental Security Income ineligibility, and supporting affidavits, DHS said in an announcement.

“Radical left politicians in California prioritize illegal aliens over our own citizens, including by giving illegal aliens access to cash benefits,” said Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

“If you are an illegal immigrant, you should leave now. The gravy train is over. While this subpoena focuses only on Los Angeles County—it is just the beginning.”

The move comes less than a month after President Donald Trump signed a memorandum directing federal agencies to crack down on misuse of Social Security Act funds. The April 15 directive, aimed at enforcing Executive Order 14218, calls on federal officials to identify and prevent payments to ineligible recipients, including those without lawful immigration status.

Trump’s memorandum directs federal agencies to investigate fraud and prioritize enforcement in areas with high numbers of illegal immigrants. It also calls for expanding fraud prosecution programs through special assistant U.S. attorneys, particularly targeting identity theft and improper benefit payments.

According to DHS, more than 2 million illegal immigrants were issued Social Security numbers in fiscal year 2024 under prior policies. The department said it is now working with other agencies to prevent any further disbursement of benefits to ineligible recipients.

The Social Security Administration previously expressed support for the White House memo and outlined steps it is taking to prevent future benefit fraud. In an April 16 statement, acting Commissioner Leland Dudek said the agency is committed to ensuring that benefits are “paid only to those who should receive them.”

The Social Security Administration said it is reviewing questionable earnings reports and considering whether to resume civil monetary penalties in cases of fraud. The agency also confirmed that it recently reclassified more than 6,300 Social Security numbers as ineligible after identifying recipients who had been paroled into the U.S. despite criminal records or national security concerns.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services, and the California Department of Social Services did not respond to a request for comment from The Epoch Times before publication.

Naveen Athrappully contributed to this report. 

Authored by Jeffrey A. Tucker via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Commentary

In high school in West Texas in the late 1970s, psych meds were Veblen goods; that is, products desired as markers of status. They were conspicuously consumed by the children of the well-to-do with profound awareness that their schoolmates could afford neither the treatment nor the supposed cure.

Ollyy/Shutterstock

So the kids—I knew many of them and they would tolerate me in their circles from time to time—would brag about their diagnosis, their prescriptions, the mix, and how it made them feel.

They would carry their pills and show them off, rattling off names of this or that drug and laughing mischievously about it all. There was nothing particularly maudlin about them except as performance. They were genuinely proud, the way one might be when wearing an overpriced luxury coat or shoes. The pills were just part of the mix. So too, they paraded their supposed maladies as badges of honor.

There was always a sniffy air of detachment culture of these kids, a nonchalant disregard for all systems, whether school or family or church, even society at large. They were above it all, and the meds and the condition they were addressing were part of that. It was a class marker. There was even a hint of politics about it, an underscoring and display of alienation. They were at once the top of the social heap but disdainful of it.

Most of these kids excelled in their grades and set their sights high in college applications, with no doubt that they would succeed. They would do so despite their profound mental condition, which they blamed on parents, social structures, teachers, protocols, and the machine generally. Society had made them sick, but the meds gave them freedom to float above it all.

Fancy some lithium?

I’ve not followed their lives since then. Maybe they dropped them after college and lived normally. Maybe not. None will likely write memoirs, so we’ll never know. Regardless, in the decades since, this Veblen good went the way of all luxury purchases over time. It became mainstream. Psych meds are now common among adults and children. It’s a massive industry: like cell phones and TVs generations ago, they migrated through the class structure year by year.

Now comes “Unshrunk” by Laura Delano, a book that could change everything. If it were not an autobiography, it would make great fiction of the gothic sort popular in the Victorian period. If it stripped out all commentary on the dubious merit of all these supposed sicknesses and cures, it would still be fantastic drama from first to last.

Nothing I say can possibly prepare you for the adventure this book brings. It is perfectly crafted almost in a poetic way to bring to the reader the actual feeling of going through each stage over a decade and a half of drug cocktails, mental institutions, hospitals, and much more, and finally to her self-motivated emancipation from the whole industry.

I worry that the topic alone will deter readers. It should not. Read it the way you might a great work of fiction. It makes it all the more riveting to realize it is the real thing—an actual person—with all the attendant pain required for any author to pour out his or her soul this way. It’s a rare experience, one of a kind in our time.

In addition, even if you extracted all the detailed medical critiques about drug trials, side effects, market flimflam from these drugs, and turned that into a monograph on its own, it would be of enormous value.

So we really have here three books in one: a brilliant drama with a fantastic story arc, an autobiography of a young woman in a world set apart that most of us will never know, and a technical medical treatise on an entire industry.

Looming rather large in the narrative is the issue of social class. The author was born into a world unknown to most, the social-register set in Greenwich, Connecticut, descendent of a three-term president, a prep-school educated and Harvard-bound beneficiary of every financial and social privilege, one afforded the best psychiatric care available anywhere.

She was not mistreated. She was treated. She says this herself:

“I was once mentally ill, and now I’m not, and it wasn’t because I was misdiagnosed. I wasn’t improperly medicated or overmedicated. I haven’t miraculously recovered from supposed brain diseases that some of the country’s top psychiatrists told me I’d have for the rest of my life. In fact, I was properly diagnosed and medicated according to the American Psychiatric Association’s standard of care. The reason I’m no longer mentally ill is that I made a decision to question the ideas about myself that I’d assumed were fact and discard what I learned was actually fiction.”

The best of care. The best physicians. The best institutions. The best consultations. The best meds, constantly tweaked by experts: a bit more of this, a bit less of that, and here’s a new one. When Laura’s diagnosis was switched from Bipolar to Borderline, it was under the care of the very father of the supposed disease itself: Dr. John G. Gunderson at McLean Hospital at Harvard (which had also seen Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and Susanna Kaysen).

She had every reason to trust the experts except for one telling fact: she never got better, only worse. She gradually concluded over time that her real trouble was iatrogenic; that is, induced by the very drugs that were said to be the solution.

The first hints of real recovery hit the reader once Laura starts attending Alcoholics Anonymous, where everyone cheered as people there revealed how long they had been sober. It struck me while reading, though the author doesn’t say this, that pretty much everyone gets that alcoholism is a huge issue and that the safest path for everyone is sobriety. No physician really recommends more drinking, more liquor, different kinds of liquor, more regular cocktails, as a solution to anything.

And yet a completely different standard applies to more powerful pharmaceutical cocktails. They are carefully dispensed on millions of patients, with warnings never to skip. That’s what bad patients do.

People who unwisely attempt to do without are rediagnosed with “discontinuation syndrome”—as if dropping toxins created a new disease—which of course calls forth new prescriptions.

The entire system is built to keep people on meds. And when one tries to dispense with them, the adapted body fights back with symptoms that seem to reinforce the diagnosis and the solution. We hope you see why we put you on these drugs in the first place!

Why the gigantic and upside-down judgment against one toxin (alcohol) and for all the others? Here is the core of the real scandal. It’s about the enormous power of industry, the mystique of science, the prestige of academia, and the class associations connected with high-status diagnosis and purported solutions.

This line of thinking opens up even broader critiques of the entire medical system and pharmaceuticals more generally. This book thoroughly explodes the popular understanding of mental illness and the capacity of the expert class to deal with it. The lessons are rattling to the point that no reader will look at commoditized pharmaceuticals in the same way.

In the COVID period, you recall, compliance with protocols was a class marker too. Only tacky people demanded their freedom, dared walk around stores without masks, or failed to social distance in elevators. Trashy types protested the lockdowns. Canadian truckers, indeed! What else do you need to know? The good people, the successful and high-earning professionals on laptops, stayed home, streamed movies, and stayed away from others.

I recall being shouted at while walking outdoors without a mask.

“Masks are socially recommended,” yelled a man, mangling a few phrases into a new coinage. There was fury in his voice that someone as lowlife as I would dare to be in his neighborhood, no doubt spreading COVID. I had otherized myself simply by my refusal to cover my face as if I revealed myself to be a vector of disease spread.

The moral landscape became crystal clear with the shot rollouts. Clean people get them. Dirty people refuse them. The model was primitive in the extreme but with a class bias that bled over to a kind of regional bigotry: the unvaccinated states went for Trump. Whole cities became segregated, as the culmination of an entire class-based outlook that split us from them. (See my big theory of clean vs dirty as a lens through which to understand the whole period.)

I never had much of an awareness of social class and its meaning in politics before this period. Suddenly, it was all that mattered, with government agencies delineating who was essential and who was not. Nor had I considered that medical protocols and products had emerged as a Veblen good, something to consume with pride in one’s high place in the social strata, like modern art and postmodern philosophy.

How brilliant of the psych med industry to market itself—beginning long ago—as a luxury good, a class marker, a product to be consumed by the privileged. There is something wrong in every life. Successful people fix it with pills. Take your meds: you are not a substance abuser but a highly responsible patient who can afford the best care. As the song says, the devil wore a lab coat.

Laura Delano’s book weaves together these pieces into an alarming tale of tragedy followed by final hope. From the first chapter in which the supposed problems begin, through the wild ups and downs and tales of 21 different meds (my count), I could not wait to see how the author would handle the ending.

The last chapters are perfect in ways I won’t reveal for fear of spoilers. My further hope is that this brief review will inspire many more people to travel this journey with the author and draw deep and broad lessons from it.

From the Brownstone Institute

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

Authored by Isaiah Austin via BitcoinMagazine.com,

Humans like to make analogies to understand new things better. It makes complete sense why we would look for one in the case of Bitcoin. 

Bitcoin is a novel concept to most people hearing about it for the first time, and can require great effort to grasp fully. Using the phrase “digital gold” to describe Bitcoin is incredibly palatable, and even if you don’t understand the functionality of the network, you can know certain things to be true: Bitcoin is scarce, global, and a store of value.

This narrative has worked well, ushering in institutional and nation-state adoption. The first section of President Donald Trump’s executive order establishing the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve states, “As a result of its scarcity and security, Bitcoin is often referred to as ‘digital gold’.”

On one end, we should be celebrating these incredible achievements for Bitcoin. We have made massive strides in adoption by propelling the “digital gold” narrative that should not be understated. However, for Bitcoin to reach its true potential, the narrative needs to shift.

Bitcoin is NOT “digital gold”.

Labeling Bitcoin as “digital gold” is a misrepresentation that reduces the world’s most revolutionary form of money to a mere store of value. Bitcoin’s fundamentals make even the most desirable attributes of gold completely obsolete while simultaneously being a faster, safer, more decentralized alternative to fiat currencies.

Let’s dive into what separates Bitcoin from gold.

Scarcity vs Finicity

Likely the largest selling point for gold, and why it’s survived as a store of value for thousands of years, is its scarcity. 

It’s estimated that over the past 100 years, gold’s supply has only increased by around 1-2% each year. This is because there is no real economic incentive to increase the supply of gold through mining. In addition to how difficult new gold is to find, labor, equipment, and environmental compliance costs make the process extremely difficult to justify financing.

For this reason, gold has held its value well throughout history, with its monetary status dating back to 3000 BC. In the 1st century AD in Ancient Rome, you could buy a high-quality toga for the same price in gold as a luxury tailored suit today!

Gold’s scarcity and the impact that it has had on society for thousands of years cannot be understated. However, in the age of Bitcoin, continuing to measure economic value in terms of an asset with a fluctuating supply seems arbitrary.

Bitcoin is not scarce, but finite, with a set supply of 21 million coins entering circulation. There is no “gold rush” for Bitcoin, and, as technology advances, we won’t find Bitcoin on an asteroid.

Through technological and mathematical advancements, we now have the capabilities to buy and exchange cash with a fixed supply. The significance of this development cannot be understated as “digital gold”.

Microdivisability

I will concur that gold is technically “divisible” – that is, if you have a handsaw or laser handy along with a scale. However, “microdivisible” is not a word that describes gold.

Gold thrives in large transactions where expensive goods and services are being transferred. But when you start moving to smaller transactions, problems start to arise.

Below is an image of 1 gram of gold, which, at the time of my writing this, is worth ~ $108. Imagine a world where you get a sandwich from Subway, and, in exchange, you shave off the corner on a gram of gold…

That’s not happening.

Older societies throughout history understood this limitation of gold and acted swiftly to combat this by issuing coins that represented a specific concentration of the precious metal.

Although it can be difficult to pin down, it is possible that the first gold-backed currency was the Lydian stater in 600 BC. Issued in Lydia (modern-day Turkey), the coin was initially minted with electrum (an alloy of gold and silver), with a gold composition of around 55%.

In 546 BC, the Persian Empire conquered Lydia and inherited the Lydian stater. Although the Persian Croeseids initially retained a high percentage of gold in the coins, they eventually debased the currency by adding base metals like copper. By the end of the 5th century BC, the Lydian stater only contained 30-40% gold.

Gold’s inability to be a microdivisible asset is a devastating flaw, and the reason societies have never been able to truly utilize it for a significant period of time. To make small transactions, citizens choose to hand their gold to the government in exchange for 1:1 coins, which, over time, are inevitably diluted and debased by the elite class, causing the society to collapse.

There is not a single example in history where a country operating on a gold standard hasn’t eventually debased its currency in exchange for microdivisibility through coins and paper notes. This, again, is largely due to people’s ultimate need for small units of account to purchase inexpensive goods.

This fatal blow to gold is ultimately solved by Bitcoin. Bitcoin’s smallest unit of account is called a “satoshi” and represents 1/100,000,000th of a bitcoin. Today, one satoshi is equal to roughly $0.001, which makes it more microdivisible than the US dollar!

There is never a reason to involve governments in Bitcoin transactions because there is no need for a smaller unit of account. For that reason (among many others), Bitcoin works perfectly as money without the involvement of any intermediaries.

When considering bitcoin’s divisibility and units-of-account, it is comical to even compare it to gold in any form or fashion.

Auditability

I believe it’s a fair assumption that at the time of this article’s release, the “Fort Knox Audit” still hasn’t happened. As quickly as it became the top headline, the idea disappeared into irrelevance.

The United States’ gold holdings were last audited in 1974. After multiple decades of conspiracy theories and public speculation, President Gerald Ford decided to allow journalists inside Fort Knox. Their findings were unremarkable, with no noticeable missing gold on the premises.

However, that was 51 years ago. Today, we are in a similar position, with public curiosity piqued regarding the gold in Fort Knox.

Just a couple of months ago, the “Fort Knox Audit” seemed like it would happen any day. In fact, Elon Musk was going to livestream it! Though now, it’s beginning to seem like the elephant in the room that we’re not supposed to talk about.

Unlike gold audits, which are infrequent and manual, Bitcoin’s validation happens automatically through its proof-of-work consensus mechanism.

Approximately every 10 minutes, miners add a new block to the blockchain, verifying the legitimacy of transactions, the total Bitcoin supply, and adherence to consensus rules.

In contrast to traditional audits, which rely on trusted third-party intermediaries, Bitcoin’s decentralized process is trustless and transparent, allowing anyone to independently verify the blockchain’s integrity in real-time.

Don’t trust, verify.

Portability

It requires little persuasion to make the case that bitcoin is more “movable” than gold. Kept simply, gold in large quantities can be extremely heavy and require specialized ships and planes for cross-border transportation. Conversely, Bitcoin is held in a wallet that keeps the same physical weight regardless of the amount.

However, there is a greater distinction here that cannot go unaddressed; Bitcoin doesn’t need to physically “move” anywhere.

The most common critique of Bitcoin is that it is “not real” and “can’t be held”. However, I argue that it is one of the greatest flaws of gold. To receive a large payment in gold, you must put up the costs necessary to transport the heavy and highly valuable materials across fields, oceans, or jungles.

In addition, you must also have a high level of trust for the third parties involved. During cross-border gold transactions, you are trusting your gold with:

1. The third party that brokered the transaction

2. The delivery crew that took your gold to the export station

3. The crew on the plane or ship that is transporting the gold

4. The delivery crew that took your gold to you

5. Whoever you put in charge of guarding and maintaining the gold

On the other hand, Bitcoin allows you to make transactions without needing to travel or involve intermediaries. As discussed before, the Bitcoin blockchain’s consensus protocol allows users to send money across borders without needing a third party.

This not only removes the costs associated with cross-border travel and the various individuals who may be involved, but also eliminates the possibility of fraud, as all transactions are public and on-chain for users to see and verify.

For the first time in human history, we have “electronic cash”. Bitcoin Magazine’s Conor Mulcahy defines “electronic cash” as “a broad category of money that exists solely in digital form and can be used to facilitate peer-to-peer transactions electronically. Unlike e-money, which typically involves intermediaries like banks and payment processors, electronic cash is designed to mimic the characteristics of physical cash, such as anonymity and direct exchange between users.”

The idea that a peer-to-peer transaction without an intermediary could occur without being together in person was only a theory before the creation of Bitcoin. Detractors who dismiss this advancement in our species’ capabilities as “not real because I can’t touch it” will soon realize that they are fighting a losing battle in a world that becomes more digital by the second.

Not All Bitcoin “Adoption” is Equal

If our sole aim is to drive Bitcoin’s price to the moon, the “digital gold” label will suffice. Certainly, governments, sovereigns, corporations, and individuals will continue to pour in rapidly, and the number will keep going up.

But…

If Bitcoin is the transformative freedom technology we believe it to be, we must fundamentally rethink how we educate and share it with the world. To seize this opportunity, we must prioritize educating pre-coiners on the novelty of Bitcoin and avoid oversimplified analogies. This approach will ultimately cement Bitcoin’s role as the cornerstone of global financial freedom.

The U.S. Department of Defense on May 8 confirmed that approximately 1,000 service members who have identified as having gender dysphoria will begin the voluntary separation process under new guidance that reinstates a ban on military service for those diagnosed with or exhibiting symptoms of gender dysphoria.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in Michigan on April 29, 2025. Scott Olson/Getty Images

“Today, the Department will issue guidance to the Military Departments and Services ending the accession of individuals with a current diagnosis or history of, or symptoms consistent with, gender dysphoria and all non-medically necessary treatment,” said Defense Department spokesman Sean Parnell. The new policy marks a significant shift in military personnel standards and reflects President Donald J. Trump’s directive issued earlier this year. "Approximately 1,000 Service members who have self-identified as being diagnosed with gender dysphoria will begin the voluntary separation process."

The decision comes days after the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 6–3 vote, granted a stay of a lower court ruling that had blocked the policy. The majority did not issue an opinion, nor did the three dissenting justices. The stay allows the Department of Defense to enforce the new policy as litigation continues in a case brought by a group of transgender service members.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth defended the move as necessary for maintaining military readiness and cohesion. “This is the president’s agenda, this is what the American people voted for, and we’re going to continue to relentlessly pursue it,” Hegseth said in a video statement. In a memorandum dated May 8, he wrote that “service by individuals with a current diagnosis or history of, or exhibiting symptoms consistent with, gender dysphoria is not in the best interest of the Military Services and is not clearly consistent with the interests of national security.”

Under the new guidance, troops who self-identify by June 6 (active duty) or July 7 (reserves) will be eligible for voluntary separation and may receive separation pay. The deadline was extended from previous guidance by 30 and 60 days, respectively. Those seeking to remain in the military must obtain a waiver demonstrating that their continued service supports a compelling government interest and enhances warfighting capabilities. Among other requirements, waiver applicants must show they have not pursued gender transition and have demonstrated 36 consecutive months of psychological stability without significant distress.

Hegseth, speaking at a recent conservative conference in Florida, signaled a broader cultural shift within the military: “No more pronouns, no more climate change obsessions, no more emergency vaccine mandates, no more dudes in dresses,” he said.

. @SecDef We are leaving WOKENESS and WEAKNESS behind.

No more pronouns, no more climate change obsessions, no more emergency vaccine mandates, no more DUDES IN DRESSES.

We are done with that sh*t.” pic.twitter.com/MSunWnRYXU

Advocacy groups condemned the policy. “By allowing this discriminatory ban to take effect while our challenge continues, the Court has temporarily sanctioned a policy that has nothing to do with military readiness and everything to do with prejudice,” said Lambda Legal and the Human Rights Campaign Foundation, which are representing the transgender service members in court.

The military, which comprises roughly 2.1 million active and reserve personnel, had previously reversed a ban on transgender troops under President Joe Biden. The latest move effectively reimposes the Trump-era restrictions, with narrow pathways for exceptions.

It yet another Ukraine peace talks related surprise, President Donald Trump on Monday floated the possibility of him traveling to Turkey to personally mediate negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, which are set for Thursday in Istanbul.

"I was thinking about actually flying over there," Trump said during a televised press conference on drug pricing. The words come after Ukraine's President Zelensky said he's ready to be there, and also challenged Putin to travel to the Turkish capital in person.

AFP/Getty Images

"There’s a possibility of it, I guess, if I think things could happen," Trump added, and the caveat: "I would fly there if I thought it would be helpful,"

"Thursday’s meeting with Russia and Ukraine is really important," Trump said. "I was really insistent that that meeting take place. I think good things can come out of that meeting. Stop the bloodshed, it’s a bloodbath."

The White House is backing a 30-day ceasefire plan, in hopes that it would lead to a final end to the bloodshed, with detailed negotiations in the interim.

"I have a feeling they're going to agree. I do. I have a feeling," Trump also emphasized. The travel comments seemed more about displaying his personal optimism on new talks.

He didn't mention specifics or the challenge of logistics and setting up proper security, which can typically take days or weeks when it comes to presidential travel and coordination between the Secret Service and host nations.

President Trump is about to embark on a trip to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and UAE - so a potential Turkey visit would require a stop-over upon the return trip.

Authored by James Howard Kunstler,

MAHA Hugger Mugger

"Those who perpetrated the greatest ruse in American presidential history by staging the Biden presidency will never tell us what their ultimate agenda was

- Victor Davis Hanson

One baseline truth in current American life is that our bodily well-being gets worse as the so-called health care industry gets ever-larger — it is now 17.6-percent of the economy (GDP). This is clearly the basis of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) campaign that attached itself to the Trump 2.0 program. 

You hear almost no arguments against MAHA itself, even from the Party of Hustles and Hoaxes, but plenty of calumny and objurgation against MAHA’s chief advocate, Robert Kennedy, Jr.

Mr. Trump’s initial nominee for Surgeon General, Dr. Janette Nesheiwat was pulled last week just before her scheduled Senate confirmation hearing. Her credentials looked a bit sketchy — med school on the tiny Caribbean island of St. Maarten (say, what. . . ?) and other irregularities — which she confabulated about anyway. 

Plus, she was a Covid vaccine cheerleader and an avid advocate of the censorship campaign to slam down debate over it.

Which leads directly to a glaring quandary in President Trump’s current order-of-business: he has avoided engagement with the whole Covid fiasco that unspooled in the last year of his first term. 

Now, it is the opinion of this blog that Mr. Trump was played on Covid by blob-marshaled “experts” Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx, who led the White House Covid “team,” and then snookered the president into Operation Warp Speed, appealing to his vanity to play the superhero. You can also surmise that the Covid operation was hatched to run Mr. Trump out of office by enabling epic election fraud, making a chump of him.

Other aspects of the Covid hairball are now finally getting unraveled, such as the lab origin issue and Dr. Fauci’s nefarious and vast operations to fund bioweapons. But the awful subject of the Covid mRNA vaccines, and all the monkey business around their development and deployment, remains taboo, even as Trump 2.0 sets records in smashing bureaucratic idols and radically shifting all sorts of policy — for instance, today’s monumental move to lower drug costs by 30 to 80 percent, using the Most Favored Nation trade policy device, which ties U.S. drug prices to the lowest prices paid by other high-income countries (e.g., Canada, Japan, or European nations) for the same medications.

But the Covid vaccine shots loom over the land like an ominous miasma that no one wants to talk about. The evidence has mounted steadily that the shots were ineffective and deeply harmful to many of the people who took them, especially those who got multiple boosters. The result, apparently, is a shocking rise in rare and aggressive cancers, immune system dysfunction, damage to the heart and blood vessels, neurological disorders, and much more. The CDC under “Joe Biden” worked desperately to hide all that, but it came out, anyway, because it was too big to hide.

81-percent of the US population submitted to the Covid vaccine shots. So, you can suppose that all that would be an extremely touchy matter. To admit all that scary information to the public arena would likely set off a politically dangerous fury. You can see why Mr. Trump would avoid going near it in the early going of his second term. But eventually he must come to terms with it.

Likewise, sooner or later, Bobby Kennedy, Jr., will have to take some kind of stand on the Covid vaccines, namely stopping the shots altogether. Whatever you think of the childhood vaccine schedule — a red-hot issue these days — it seems quite insane that the Covid mRNA vaccine is still included on it. It is still officially recommended by the CDC. Among the “much more” effects of the shots is damage to human fertility. You must ask: by giving these shots to kids as young as six-months, are we setting up a nation that won’t be able to have children? Pretty spooky.

Casey Means, the new nominee for US Surgeon General

So, the new nominee for Surgeon General is one Casey Means of the brother / sister team, Calley and Casey Means, known primarily as food safety advocate sidekicks to Bobby Kennedy. The Meanses were already under some suspicion for rising too rapidly into prominence from out of nowhere since the summer of 2024 when Mr. Kennedy began to swing over to the Trump campaign. They were suspected and criticized as the shills for some sort of sinister alliance between Silicon Valley, Big Pharma, and the US intel blob. The Meanses have adroitly avoided taking a position on the Covid vaccines. Hmmmm. . . . That’s the chatter, anyway — whether there’s any truth to it, we will have to stand-by to discover.

You’d have to ask yourself whether Mr. Kennedy would ally himself with people of supposedly sketchy character. Is he being used or played? Or maybe, it’s just not so. The nomination of Casey Means sent out shock-waves through MAGA and MAHA. Her credentials seemed a little sketchy like Janette Nesheiwat’s before her. Ms. Means dropped out of her five-year medical residency in Oregon a few months before completing it, apparently due to disillusionment with conventional medicine. She does not have an active medical license, supposedly required to serve as Surgeon General.

Instead, she transitioned into what is loosely called functional medicine, which rejects the oppressive “standards of practice” dictated by insurance companies and reliance on pharma products to alleviate symptoms rather than treat the causes of disease. Ms. Means also became a medical entrepreneur, starting Levels, a glucose-monitoring tech company, and is an Instagram “wellness influencer” with 750,000 followers. Given the gross racketeering aspects of conventional medicine and its failure to deal with the shocking rise in chronic disease, you might argue that Ms. Means made the right career moves, weird as they might seem superficially.

It’s pretty much a miracle that RFK, Jr., managed to land safely as Secretary of HHS and that he was able to enlist “medical freedom” advocates Jay Bhattacharya to run the National Institutes for Health and Marty Makary to run the Federal Drug Administration. This represents a stupendous turnaround in government policy. It’s also plausible that this new public health team has been preoccupied with personnel and administrative re-org in the first months of Trump 2.0. They’ve begun to nibble around the edges of the national health crisis, such as banning toxic food coloring.

They have yet to face the big, nasty legal questions such as revoking Pharma’s liability shield against lawsuits for its defective products, ending TV advertising of Pharma products — which is just an extortion racket for managing cable news content to protect Pharma — fully confronting the autism calamity and its connection to childhood vaccines, and, of course, pulling the Covid shots.

There is also chatter that RFK, Jr., is “managed” by hidden persons or forces. One not-so-hidden character in that psychodrama is Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA). Sen. Cassidy, a medical doctor, chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee that ran Mr. Kennedy over-the-coals in his confirmation hearing. Political pressure caused Sen. Cassidy to cave and vote “yes” for RFK,Jr., then. Louisiana has since changed its election rules so that Democrats can no longer vote in the GOP primary, and Cassidy is vulnerable. His base is restless. He voted to impeach Mr. Trump in January 2021 over the Capitol J-6 riot.

So, the chatter says that Mr. Kennedy made a deal with Sen. Cassidy to avoid taking certain actions — like, anything that might hurt Pharma and its profit-stream — or else Mr. Kennedy would be dragged back in front of the HELP Committee and raked over the coals again. If that were to happen, I suspect Mr. Kennedy would handle himself very capably in any public hearing. He has always been in command of the facts.

As head of HHS, he has had access to a deep trove of information that he had no access to previously. He must know by now exactly what sort of mischief has been perpetrated in US public health over the decades and will not be shy about disclosing it publicly. 

You should also not be surprised if Mr. Kennedy begins issuing criminal referrals before much longer.

As for Casey Means. . . give her a chance to demonstrate that she is on the right side of MAHA and willing to fight in what has become a biomedical war on the American public.

Dozens of white South Africans departed their country for the United States on May 11 after being granted refugee status under the Trump administration’s new admission program.

BREAKING: First white South African refugees fleeing persecution arrive in the U.S.

What do you notice? pic.twitter.com/n0OChhe8Vj

About 49 Afrikaners - a white ethnic minority in South Africa - boarded a chartered flight bound for the District of Columbia, which will then fly to Texas, South African Transport Department spokesperson Collen Msibi said.

“One of the conditions of the permit was to ensure that they were vetted in case one of them has a criminal issue pending,” Msibi was quoted as saying by Reuters.

Aldgra Fredly reports via The Epoch Times, that this marked the first group of Afrikaners relocated to the United States under a refugee admissions program initiated under President Donald Trump’s Feb. 7 executive order that allows the resettlement of Afrikaner refugees “escaping government-sponsored race-based discrimination.”

President Trump on giving refugee status to South Africans: "It's a genocide. White Farmers are being brutally killed and their land is being confiscated. And the media doesn't even talk about it. If it were the other way around, that would be the only story they talk about." pic.twitter.com/YMP2QhYgzt

That executive order was issued after South African President Cyril Ramaphosa signed the Expropriation Act into law in January, allowing the expropriation or redistribution of certain unused land. The law aims to address racial disparities in land ownership that stemmed from South Africa’s former apartheid system.

The nation’s government noted that special conditions must be met before expropriating land, including that it has had longtime informal occupants, is unused and owned purely for speculation, or was left abandoned.

In his executive order, Trump stated that Ramaphosa’s government has imposed countless policies “designed to dismantle equal opportunity in employment, education, and business, and hateful rhetoric and government actions fueling disproportionate violence against racially disfavored landowners.”

South Africa’s government has rejected the claims and called Washington’s move to resettle South Africans as refugees “entirely politically motivated.”

“We reiterate that allegations of discrimination are unfounded,” it stated. 

“Moreover, even if there are allegations of discrimination, it is our view that these do not meet the threshold of persecution required under domestic and international refugee law.”

However, the South African government said that it will not block departures of citizens who seek to leave the country, provided they comply with domestic laws.

Speaking to reporters on May 9, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller said the current situation facing Afrikaners in South Africa amounts to “race-based persecution.”

“What was happening in South Africa fits the textbook definition of why the refugee program was created,” Miller said. 

“This is persecution based on a protected characteristic. In this case, race.”

Trump announced in March that the United States would cut all federal funding to South Africa over its expropriation laws and pledged to resettle white South African farmers affected by the law.

The White House stated in a summary of Trump’s executive order on Feb. 10 that the United States will stop aid and assistance if South Africa “continues to support bad actors on the world stage and allows violent attacks on innocent disfavored minority farmers.”

The Epoch Times has reached out to the State Department for comment but did not receive a response by publication time.

Update (0958ET):

During a Monday morning press conference, President Trump told reporters that trade negotiations have led to a "total reset" in U.S.-China relations. He added that he may speak with President Xi Jinping later this week.

More headlines from Trump's press conference (courtesy of Bloomberg):

• TRUMP: Total Reset With China

• TRUMP: No Decoupling With China

• TRUMP: Doesn’t Include Cars, Steel, Aluminum

• TRUMP: Will Speak to Xi Maybe at End of Week

• TRUMP: China Deal 'Not the Easiest Thing to Paper'

.@POTUS: "Yesterday, we achieved a total reset with China. After productive talks in Geneva, both sides now agree to reduce the tariffs imposed after April 2nd to 10% for 90 days as negotiators continue on the largest structural issues." pic.twitter.com/Jd6tkHo5eC

*   *   * 

Update (0812ET):

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent appeared on Bloomberg TV to discuss the newly announced 90-day suspension of most tariffs between the United States and China.

Below is a summary of key takeaways from the interview, as reported by Bloomberg:

• BESSENT: BOTH SIDES AGREE WE DON’T WANT GENERALIZED DECOUPLING

• BESSENT: PHASE ONE TRADE DEAL WITH CHINA OFFERED A TEMPLATE

• BESSENT: WILL SEE WHERE THE FINAL CHINA RECIPROCAL TARIFF ENDS

• BESSENT: CURRENT TARIFF LEVEL FOR CHINA IS A ‘FLOOR’

• BESSENT: APRIL 2 LEVEL WOULD BE A CEILING FOR CHINA

• BESSENT: NOW HAVE A PROCESS IN PLACE TO AVOID CHINA ESCALATION

• BESSENT: IMPLAUSIBLE TARIFFS ON CHINA GO BELOW 10%

• BESSENT: WANT TO SEE CHINA BOOST CONSUMPTION, OPEN THEIR MARKET

• BESSENT: CHINA MET PHASE-ONE OBLIGATIONS UNTIL BIDEN NEGLECT

• BESSENT: ESCALATORY TARIFFS WERE LIKE US–CHINA EMBARGO

• BESSENT: CAN ALWAYS GO BACK TO APRIL 2 LEVEL FOR CHINA TARIFFS

• BESSENT: SEE PHONE CALL BEFORE MEETING FOR TRUMP AND XI

• BESSENT: IF CHINA ACTS, PERHAPS FENTANYL TARIFF COULD COME DOWN

• BESSENT: NOT PUSHING FOR DEATH PENALTY ON FENTANYL PRODUCTION

*   *   * 

China and the U.S. moved to ease trade tensions early Monday, agreeing to a temporary 90-day reduction in reciprocal tariffs on each other's goods, according to a joint statement released by both governments on X. The accord, viewed as a breakthrough in a multi-month trade war between the world's two largest economies, helped spark a rally in global markets: S&P 500 futures rose 3%, while Nasdaq futures gained 4%. European markets also advanced, and the U.S. dollar strengthened. U.S. government bonds sold as investors rotated back into equities and other risk-sensitive assets. 

https://t.co/NXlayMvBWE

The joint statement said that the U.S. will reduce levies on most Chinese imports from 145% to 30% by Wednesday. 

Here's a summary of the U.S. actions:

The United States will remove the additional tariffs it imposed on China on April 8 and April 9, 2025, but will retain all duties imposed on China prior to April 2, 2025, including Section 301 tariffs, Section 232 tariffs, tariffs imposed in response to the fentanyl national emergency invoked pursuant to the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, and Most Favored Nation tariffs.

• The United States will suspend its 34% reciprocal tariff imposed on April 2, 2025 for 90 days, but retain a 10% tariff during the period of the pause.

• The 10% tariff continues to set a fair baseline that encourages domestic production, strengthens our supply chains and ensures that American trade policy supports American workers first, instead of undercutting them.

• By imposing reciprocal tariffs, President Trump is ensuring our trade policy works for the American economy, addresses our national emergency brought on by our growing and persistent trade deficit, and levels the playing field for American workers and producers.

• Unlike previous administrations, President Trump took a tough, uncompromising stance on China to protect American interests and stop unfair trade practices.

The breakthrough in the talks also led to China reducing its 125% tariff on U.S. goods to 10%. 

Here's a summary of the Chinese actions:

China will remove the retaliatory tariffs it announced since April 4, 2025, and will also suspend or remove the non-tariff countermeasures taken against the United States since April 2, 2025.

• China will also suspend its initial 34% tariff on the United States it announced on April 4, 2025 for 90 days, but will retain a 10% tariff during the period of the pause.

The joint statement indicated that Monday's agreement would pave the way for further negotiations between senior officials. On the U.S. side, talks are being led by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, while Vice Premier He Lifeng will represent China... 

After taking the aforementioned actions, the Parties will establish a mechanism to continue discussions about economic and trade relations. The representative from the Chinese side for these discussions will be He Lifeng, Vice Premier of the State Council, and the representatives from the U.S. side will be Scott Bessent, Secretary of the Treasury, and Jamieson Greer, United States Trade Representative. These discussions may be conducted alternately in China and the United States, or a third country upon agreement of the Parties. As required, the two sides may conduct working-level consultations on relevant economic and trade issues.

The White House wrote on X that these trade talks will address America's trade imbalances:

• The U.S. goods trade deficit with China was $295.4 billion in 2024—the largest with any trading partner.

• Today's agreement works toward addressing these imbalances to deliver real, lasting benefits to American workers, famers, and businesses.

The talks also addressed the ongoing fentanyl crisis.

• The United States and China will take aggressive actions to stem the flow of fentanyl and other precursors from China to illicit drug producers in North America.

https://t.co/xHkmdojKE7

Shortly after the joint statement was released, Bessent, who led the American delegation at the talks, told reporters in Geneva that both sides have "substantially moved down the tariff levels" and "neither side wants a decoupling." 

"We had a very robust and productive discussion on steps forward on fentanyl," Bessent added, pointing out that those talks might lead to "purchasing agreements" by China.

.@SecScottBessent: "We have reached an agreement on a 90-day pause and substantially moved down the tariff levels — both sides, on the reciprocal tariffs, will move their tariffs down 115%." pic.twitter.com/Jxdd11U83s

Commenting on markets, Benedicte Lowe, an equity and derivatives strategist at BNP Paribas Markets 360, told Bloomberg TV that "deescalation was much better than expected by the market" and "for the next couple of days I would expect a bullish environment in the global equity market."

Last week, President Trump floated the "80% Tariff on China seems right!" trial balloon on Truth Social, noting that the final decision rests with Bessent.

"In our view, equity markets are returning to where they would have moved to if Liberation Day had not happened and Trump had just applied the 10% universal tariff," said Roberto Scholtes, head of strategy at Singular Bank. 

Scholtes noted, "Corporate fundamentals are healthy, first quarter results have substantially surprised on the upside, and there's plenty of cash to be invested."

"This deescalation is much more positive than anticipated (GSe: 54% U.S. on China tariffs and 34% China on U.S. tariffs) and the market is reacting as such. We are seeing a clear reversal in short USD positions as U.S. recession risks reduce (GSe was 45%!) and risk-on sentiment rises. DXY rallied over 1%, S&P futures surged 3%, 10y UST rose to 4.43%, gold tumbled ~3%," Goldman analyst Yichin Tsai told clients. 

S&P 500 futures are up 3%, and Nasdaq futures are up 4%. European stocks are in the green. 

The move toward lower tariffs and easing trade tensions between the world's two largest economies follows Sunday's negotiations, during which both sides reported making "substantial progress."

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,

Secure borders and stationary populations were considered the mark of emerging civilization by classical historians. In contrast to nomadism and constant strife over disputed territory, peoples who had clearly defined and protected borders ascended to statehood, maintained a distinct culture, and achieved greater prosperity and security.

In contrast, what we suffered from 2021 to 2025 was unprecedented.

It was an intentional administration effort to de-civilize the nation by destroying its borders—as if to return to the premodern era, when there were no clearly defined or secure borders, and nomadic peoples migrated as they pleased.

Stranger still, illegal aliens were at times given precedence over citizens—as immigration law was simply discarded.

Without IDs, illegal aliens boarded U.S. flights, while the government ordered citizens to obtain more secure “real” IDs.

Some 8,500 veteran soldiers were drummed out of the military for refusing the experimental mRNA vaccinations. Yet 10 million simply walked across the southern border into America, without a care from the Biden administration whether they were vaccinated, ill, or had criminal records.

Any American citizen pulled over for speeding with an invalid driver’s license, while trafficking eight illegal aliens without identification, would be jailed and charged with felony counts. Not Abrego Garcia—the violent spousal abuser, M-13 gang-member, and previously deported illegal alien. He was neither arrested nor even cited by the officers who pulled him over.

One of the great hallmarks of Roman civilization and subsequent Western civilization was its ability to create large cities by importing clean water, removing waste through sewers, and collecting garbage from the streets. Even in the age before microbiology, ancient and premodern city planners knew the connection between cleanliness and epidemics and how to lessen disease through sanitation.

But in the last two decades, our major cities have been de-civilizing. Citizens are told not to flush non-biodegradable plastics down their toilets, both to preserve the environment and to ensure municipal septic systems work properly. They are reminded to pick up their pets’ excrement on sidewalks and in parks. For purposes of collective health, they are taught not to urinate, spit, or defecate in public areas.

Is all that for naught? After all, our mayors and city councils in our biggest and most iconic cities simply destroyed centuries of such health protocols and allowed tens of thousands of homeless people with impunity to inject, urinate, defecate, and fornicate in or on storefronts, streets, gutters, parks, and sidewalks. The stench, flotsam, and jetsam have utterly transformed American inner cities. Central Seattle, Los Angeles, parts of San Francisco, Portland, and Washington, DC, now resemble medieval London or Paris—as if a millennium-long knowledge of basic public health was simply ignored or mocked. In truth, the centers of America’s big cities are spaces where public health protocols are no longer enforced, where all the ancient and hard-won rules of civilization no longer apply. It would likely be safer to walk through Dickensian London of 1850 than to take a nocturnal ride on the New York subway.

Another hallmark of Western civilization was the creation of a judiciary that gave the state the power to enforce laws, ensure justice, and deter criminals by swift punishment, unaffected by ideology, bias, bribes, and personal vendettas. 

From the law codes of Justinian to the American Constitution, ascendant civilizations rose with a codified legal system applied uniformly, disinterestedly, and fairly.

Not any longer. Ideology has turned the American legal system into a commissariat of sorts in which relativism is now the norm. Vandalize a Tesla in a blue state and, like the South of old, the laws will be lightly if even enforced and applied selectively. No one seriously believes that Alvin Bragg, Letitia James, Jack Smith, and Fani Willis were interested in real crimes rather than concocting them to destroy a presidential candidate and thus warp the political system. In contemporary America, it was far more likely to suffer a jail sentence for walking peaceably but unlawfully in the Capitol than for torching a federal courthouse, historic church, or police precinct in the summer of 2020.

From the ancient world to the medieval city to the modern era, universities were catalysts for the advance of science, medicine, law, politics, and the humanities. 

Their civilizing missions were predicated on two unquestioned assumptions. One, unlike prior superstitions, inductive reason would guide intellectual inquiry; examining all evidence would lead to general conclusions rather than cherry-picking data to “prove” predetermined dogmas.

Today, DEI, the Green New Deal, and the “critical theories”—legal, race, and monetary—in the university start with deductive reasoning and then warp evidence to support such faith-based dogmas. 

If any of the current violent pro-Hamas and anti-Semitic campus protests were instead directed at reducing abortion, ensuring that biological men do not compete in women’s sports, or banning racial preferences, the protestors would have long ago been arrested, expelled, or deported.

Tribalism was a premodern obstacle to civilization. It remains so in many parts of the Middle East, where it is routine to hire, promote, retain, and reward on the basis of kinship and bloodlines. In America, we were supposed to have a singular meritocracy, civilization’s effort to ensure that those with the most expertise and experience were charged with the most important tasks and responsibilities to ensure the safety and welfare of the majority. Race, religion, gender, and sexual orientation were neither rewarded nor punished.

Instead, we here, too, returned to premodern tribalism and race quotas, regressing to precivilization ideas that we owe our allegiance first to those who share a superficial appearance rather than to the body politic at large.

Finally, civilizations were often judged by their physical infrastructures—whether iconic, like the Parthenon, the Pantheon, medieval cathedrals, or modern towering skyscrapers, or practical by their roads, aqueducts, government buildings, and water and sewage systems.

But by that standard, too, we are decivilizing. Future generations will be amazed at California’s decaying high-speed rail to nowhere. Tens of billions of dollars and over a decade after the start of construction, there is still not a single foot of track laid, but instead only half-finished massive concrete overpasses that now resemble half-destroyed Mycenean palace walls. The nearly one-billion-dollar, half-finished, five-year-old Obama library resembles an oversized Stonehenge monolith.

In California, we do not just blow up dams, the brilliant work of a now-forgotten earlier generation. Instead, we use public bond funds, voted by the citizens to build new dams and reservoirs, to destroy them.

The more California requires lumber for new homes, fuel for its 31 million vehicles, and energy for its 15 million homes, the more the governor and legislature decivilize the state by shutting down timber companies, forcing oil refineries to flee the state, and closing nuclear power plants and fossil fuel generation, while witnessing replacement, new-age battery-power generation plants blow up into flames.

When preventable fires consume whole neighborhoods of Los Angeles, a paralytic government has no clue how to rebuild the work of past generations. The city government of Los Angeles proved uncannily efficient in ensuring such conflagration—canceling preventive brush clearing, the mayor junketing in Africa during fire season, reservoirs left empty, hydrants that did not work—but cannot rebuild, only destroy.

Why is America decivilizing?

In part, our mediocre schools have not produced competent stewards to maintain and expand the sophisticated infrastructure and ethos of a prior, far more capable generation.

In part, the sheer richness of our inheritance lulled our Lotus-Eater generations to consume what they inherited rather than reinvest it, given that since birth they had been insulated from the elemental and unchanging human and natural challenges to civilization.

And in part, a nihilism arose that despised the hard work of civilization and instead romanticized the wild—clueless that natural man, without the bridles of civilization, is a very dangerous beast, as we so often and lamentably see today.