Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

Nearly 20 years ago when I started my work in the independent media the common mantra among my peers was noting the existence of the “false left/right paradigm” – The idea that Democrats and Republicans were essentially the same and were working towards the same exact authoritarian goals. This was before the Ron Paul movement and the libertarian/patriot shift within conservative circles when Neocons (fake conservatives) dominated all Republican discourse.

In the 16 years since there has been some interesting developments at the state level, with a return to true conservative and constitutional principles. Conservative ideals were on the verge of death in the early 2000s, but thanks to Ron Paul and others there has been a resurgence. The false left/right paradigm still applies in many ways and we have to remain vigilant, but the most blatant RINO frauds are quickly losing favor.

Nihilists (and paid federal provocateurs) will constantly claim we aren’t making any progress, but consider this: Decades ago conservatives used to clamor to defend people like John McCain, Lindsay Graham or Mitt Romney, now they despise such fakes (McCain was hated by most conservatives well before he died). Times are changing; this is a fact, and we need to acknowledge the positive move forward.

This is not to say that Americans should rely on politics to fix our national problems, but it would be a lie to claim that there are no political representatives on our side. A common argument against right leaning movements is that conservative ideals are “poorly defined” and that we “don’t stand for anything.” This is simply not true.  In fact, it’s leftists that are constantly changing their positions like they have schizophrenia. Conservatives have been far more consistent in comparison.

The guidelines are relatively easy to understand – Conservatives and liberty activists support a return to constitutional governance, the protection of the Bill of Rights, free markets, meritocracy, the right to choose associations, truth in media, secure borders, the protection of children from exploitation, keeping America out of foreign entanglements, moral and accountable leadership, etc. The degree to which leaders can adhere to these parameters determines how much trust they earn, and trust is the only currency that matters these days.

Do we disagree on certain nuances of these issues? Of course. We aren’t like leftists following a central hive mind, always afraid of being canceled by the mob; we argue. That’s not necessarily a bad thing as long as we unify on basic tenets and principles.

Democrats (and leftists in general) on the other hand have gone in the complete opposite direction. If there was ever a time when the average leftist and conservative could find common ground, that time was LONG gone. Many leftists used to be pro-individual rights; today they argue incessantly against personal liberty as if it’s dangerous to society. They used to be anti-war; now they froth at the mouth over countries like Russia and press for WWIII without any rational thought. Their methods have become violent, vicious, egregious in execution as they adopt an “ends justify the means” approach.

The political left does not care about what is right. They do not care about what is true. They only care about “winning.”

It is this leftist infatuation with the dark side that is driving the US to the edge of civil war. Would a candidate like Trump be taken as seriously under normal political conditions? It’s hard to say – He wasn’t taken very seriously in 2012. However, when Democrats started to go full bore authoritarian suddenly Trump became very appealing to conservative voters.

Why? Because he represents a big middle finger to the communists, a bull in the china shop. If you want to piss off authoritarian Democrats trying to control what you say and what you think, you put Trump in their faces for another 4 years. Does this fix our underlying national problems? No, not in the slightest. In fact, I still believe Trump distracts patriots from what really needs to be done. I’m convinced that, at this stage, only war will resolve the issue. Voting for Trump is a good way to enrage the woke cry-bullies, and I wouldn’t fault anyone for wanting that, but any real return to honor and order would have to be implemented by the public, not the government.

The deeper problem is one of unavoidable cultural division – Conservatives and patriots cannot live side-by-side with rabid leftists, nor can we accept a leftist controlled government. They have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that they intend to destroy every aspect of western culture and institute a regime of oppression.

So much has happened recently that I fear many Americans will become overwhelmed and forget the recent trespasses of leftists.  In case you had any doubts at all or know people that still defend them, here are just a handful of examples of the worst authoritarian crimes committed by Democrats in the past four years alone…

Weaponizing The Legal System Using Selective Prosecution

When Democrats talk about “equity” in criminal justice, what they are referring to is the unbalanced application of law depending on the ethnicity or political beliefs of the people being charged. The most blatant example being the kangaroo court for the Jan 6th event and their attempt to lock up conservative protesters as “insurrectionists.”

Not a single death occurred due to protesters, property damage was minimal and capitol police INCITED the riot by firing rubber bullets and CS gas into the otherwise peaceful crowd. Yet, the protesters were painted by Dems and the media as monsters trying to “destroy democracy.”

Compare this to the Democrat response to the BLM and Antifa riots across the US since 2016 in which dozens were killed, thousands of police injured, billions in property damage and multiple government buildings attacked. These people tried to hold the country hostage, yet, the vast majority of those that were actually arrested were released and never charged by Democrat District Attorneys and prosecutors. The media even portrayed them as heroes.

If Jan 6th had been a far-left protest, there would have been no commission and no one would be in jail for 10-20 years today. There are numerous examples of selective prosecution targeting patriots and the message is clear – “If you defy us in any way, we have no problem misusing the legal system to crush you.”

Pandemic Hysteria And Medical Tyranny

Did some Republicans initially support the covid lockdowns? Yes. When it became clear that covid was a non-threat did they end the lockdowns in their own states? Yes, surprisingly most of them did.

Half the states in the US (all red states) blocked attempts to continue the pandemic lockdowns. These same states also passed legislation to disrupt any future attempts at lockdowns or vaccine passports. And, all the governors and legislators involved were accused by Democrats and the media of “killing Americans” because of their defense of freedom.

In reality, these states along with conservatives across the country defeated a draconian agenda that almost brought the US to the brink of full spectrum medical tyranny. Democrats and globalists tried to use covid as an opportunity to institute sweeping anti-liberty mandates without checks and balances. Some of rules they wanted to put in place included:

• Forced vaccination.

• No employment for the unvaccinated.

• No access to public spaces for the unvaccinated.

• No access to normal medical treatment for the unvaccinated.

• House arrest for the unvaccinated.

• Fines for the unvaccinated.

• Jail time for people speaking against the mandates or vaccines.

• Government tracking of the unvaccinated.

• Taking children away from the unvaccinated.

• Secret vaccination of children at public schools without knowledge of parents.

• Mass online censorship of anyone presenting information contrary to the government narrative.

Some Democrats including Biden even threatened to go “door-to-door” to vaccinate individuals, though the official position was that they would instead seek to “make life so hard” for the unvaxxed that anyone in refusal would eventually be forced to comply. Luckily their plans failed.  The CDC published a bunch of unverified stats claiming most Americans were vaccinated, no one took the boosters and the agenda fizzled into the background.  That said, it’s important that we never forget what happened.

The true nature of the political left was exposed from 2020-2023, and the difference between conservatives and leftists was made undeniably clear – Red states were made free. Blue states tried to keep authoritarianism in place. Democrats embraced medical tyranny, conservatives did not. Conservatives left blue states (and blue cities) in droves because they were oppressive, red states gained millions of people and turned a deeper shade of red.  This is reality.

Targeting Children For Indoctrination And Exploitation

There’s no surer sign of authoritarianism than a group that recruits children as foot soldiers using political indoctrination under the noses of parents. Democrats and the woke movement have taken the mask off completely when it comes to America’s youth.

The widespread used of woke symbols such a pride flags in public schools and libraries. The use of drag queen performances (often sexual) as a means to normalize baseless gender fluid theories, mental illness and sexual aberration. State government funding of sexualized content including graphic lessons and books for young kids. The list goes on and on.

I can’t think of anything more insidious and evil as the leftist attempt to hijack American children as a weapon for their political coup. And make no mistake, the woke movement is not a movement for equality, it’s a communist and collectivist insurgency. They see children as tools, not as people.

Democrats are going so far as to pass laws allowing children to engage in sex change procedures including hormone blockers and surgeries without parental consent. This is a monstrous policy that needs to be snuffed out immediately. Children are not capable of consent.

Again, all this is being done in the name of winning. What is moral or ethical never crosses their minds.

Mass Censorship And The Demonization Of “Radical Speech”

Who nominated the Democrats to become the arbiters of acceptable speech? Well, they nominated themselves, and the protections of the 1st Amendment are being quietly degraded every day we allow them to continue acting as if they are the thought police.

The new term being thrown around in 2024 is “radical speech”, meaning any speech that runs contrary to “diversity, equity and inclusion” requirements, or any speech that contradicts the preeminence of the official narrative. Understand that “radical speech” is an arbitrary label; one has to consider what the legitimate consequences are and what the intent is.

For a Democrat, any speech that is detrimental to their goal of extorting public support for their policies suddenly becomes “radical.” The label is designed to elicit images of terrorism and fascism, as if mere words are magical and can compel the public to do great evil without them realizing it. This is childish fantasy based on projection. It’s leftists (collectivists) that believe words have magical powers, and so they put great emphasis on controlling speech in general.

I would partially agree, only in the fact that lies do have power to evoke emotional responses, but the only way to combat lies is with the truth. Anyone who says that the best way to combat lies is to use mass censorship is a liar. Democrats lean heavily on mass censorship, as we have seen with nearly every Big Tech social media platform and corporate news platform in the past few years.

The bottom line is this – When someone tells you exactly who they are, believe them. When a group of people show through a host of actions that they are authoritarians, they should not be allowed anywhere near power. It’s time to rethink our ongoing political relationship here in America and consider whether or not we should continue to live with a political movement that has made it so abundantly clear that they are hostile to freedom.

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Authored by Sara Parshaall Perry via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

It’s been a red-letter week for destroying the gender narrative. And the trans juggernaut just hit another speed bump.

Fresh off the heels of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics announcing that it would not allow transgender-identified men to compete in women’s athletic events in any of its association’s 239 small private schools, a landmark study was released on Wednesday that defies the hysterical warning that if gender dysphoric adolescents don’t receive “gender-affirming care,” they will kill themselves.

The new study from British pediatrician Dr. Hilary Cass confirms what we’ve always known: Children presenting with sudden onset gender dysphoria are actually suffering from other mental health diagnoses—not true gender dysphoria. Her research debunks the gender ideologues’ frequent talking point: that the imposition of medical “gender-affirming care” on mentally ill children is not only necessary, but life-saving.

Cass’ research instead reveals that children who think they are transgender disproportionately have mental health issues stemming from a difficult family situation or domestic abuse. They are also more likely to be neurodiverse and have a co-morbid autism spectrum disorder.

Cass reveals that “gender affirming” medical interventions would not remedy any of these psychological issues. Effectively using such interventions would mean turning a blind eye to the real underlying psychological distress with which gender-confused children often struggle.

Cass’ groundbreaking report reveals that mental health therapy is the best approach for gender-dysphoric children, rather than rushing to put them on hormones or puberty blockers or performing mutilating and irreversible surgeries.

Her report also warns that if children are permitted to make choices to physically and socially conform with their gender of choice, rather than receiving the necessary treatment for their underlying mental health issues, they will experience significant negative psychological repercussions.

Yes, you read that right. Securing medical “gender affirming” care creates the negative psychological repercussions gender identitarians warn us about. And the failure to receive it does not.

At last, the narrative about adolescent gender dysphoria has started to crumble.

Conservatives and gender critics have long warned against rushing to chemically castrate and mutilate gender-confused kids, advocating instead for the European approach of “watchful waiting” and mental health counseling. It seems they were right all along.

Cass’ report on gender dysphoria was the second damning study to be released in 10 days. It was launched soon after another study that breaches the once seemingly impenetrable dam of gender identity built by the White House, cultural elites, celebrities, and politicized medical groups.

A Dutch study of 2,700 children revealed that a significant majority of gender-confused children grow out of that feeling by the time they are full grown adults. This newly published research tracked adolescents for over 15 years and found that gender confusion in children drastically decreased over time, supporting the argument that when children believe they are transgender, it is often nothing more than a passing sensation—and not indisputable fact.

Both Cass’ study and the recent Dutch study argue against transitioning kids who report gender dysphoria. Together, they advise for holistic treatment of these adolescents, treatment which addresses the complex psychological reasons a child may think he or she was born in the wrong body.

Gender-confused children have been lied to, and the adults who have lied to them must be held accountable. The flood of litigation challenging these pernicious practices is only just beginning.

Reprinted by permission from The Daily Signal, a publication of The Heritage Foundation.

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

Harvard is joining the ranks of other universities in recognizing the obvious: SATs are a great way to measure aptitude. And now that Harvard is busy grappling with other issues like plagiarism among its top ranks, it has decided to quietly shuffle SAT requirements back to where they were pre-Covid. 

Harvard will reintroduce standardized testing requirements for admissions starting with the Class of 2029, deviating from its prior commitment to remain test-optional through the Class of 2030.

This change, prompted by criticism as peers like Yale, Dartmouth, and Brown resumed mandatory testing, will affect applicants for fall and winter 2024, who must submit SAT or ACT scores unless exceptions apply. In specific cases where students can’t access these tests, Harvard will accept scores from Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate exams instead, according to the Harvard Crimson.

Complete and utter defeat for the anti-test crusaders pic.twitter.com/ubfbg2QTxL

— Alec Stapp (@AlecStapp) April 11, 2024

Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Hopi E. Hoekstra said:  “…standardized tests are a means for all students, regardless of their background and life experience, to provide information that is predictive of success in college and beyond. More information, especially such strongly predictive information, is valuable for identifying talent from across the socioeconomic range. With this change, we hope to strengthen our ability to identify these promising students.”

Uh, yeah. That’s why it was a requirement to begin with. But we digress…

The Crimson wrote that despite a majority of undergraduates submitting standardized test scores over the past four years, the exact figure has not been disclosed.

Recently, Harvard officials, including Dean of Admissions William R. Fitzsimmons, were non-committal about reinstating testing requirements, noting ongoing policy reviews. However, a study from the Harvard-affiliated Opportunity Insights indicated that SAT scores are a better predictor of college success than high school GPA. Experts also suggest that requiring standardized tests could enhance racial and socioeconomic diversity at universities like Harvard.

Harvard economist David J. Deming commented that test scores provide the “fairest admissions policy for disadvantaged applicants.”

“Not everyone can hire an expensive college coach to help them craft a personal essay. But everyone has the chance to ace the SAT or the ACT,” he continued.

Recall, we wrote just days ago that $500 tutors were back en vogue now that SATs were being reinstated. It was earlier this year when we noted that SATs were once again being reconsidered by colleges who had reduced or eliminated their requirement due to (pick one: diversity, racism, climate change, equity, gender affirmation). 

As a result of the comeback, Bloomberg noted that tutors, sometimes costing $500 per hour, are all of a sudden back in vogue. They wrote that demand for SAT tutoring and prep centers is surging as several top colleges reintroduce mandatory SATs, and students adapt to the SAT’s new digital format.

Kaplan reported a significant enrollment increase, attributed to digital testing and the reinstatement of testing requirements by institutions and three Ivy League schools—Yale, Dartmouth, and Brown—have reinstated mandatory SATs, alongside MIT and the University of Texas at Austin. This shift has left many students scrambling for preparation before early application deadlines.

Companies like The Princeton Review have also seen a spike in interest for prep services.

We noted earlier this year in a piece from American Greatness, that according to Axios, multiple colleges used the Chinese Coronavirus pandemic as an excuse to weaken the importance of SAT and ACT test scores in most student applications. But in recent weeks, several schools have reversed course; Yale is considering repealing its prior policy of making SAT/ACT requirements optional, with Dartmouth already reinstating the requirements earlier this month. MIT reversed a similar policy back in 2022.

Authored by James Durso via ResponsibleStatecraft.org,

Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ Al Sudani is in Washington next week with both sides hoping to expand their economic relationship…

Twenty-one years ago, the U.S. and its allies invaded Iraq in the erroneous belief that the country possessed weapons of mass destruction and was allied with al-Qaida, the terror group responsible for the 9/11 attacks.

The U.S. created an occupation authority, but failed to restore order and helped spawn the insurgency that bedeviled it by dismissing the entire Iraqi military and the most experienced civil servants. Coalition troops fought a losing battle, regained their footing with the 2007 troop surge, and finally departed in 2011. U.S. troops returned in 2014 to fight the Islamic State and they remain there to this day, though ISIS was largely eliminated by 2019.

In January 2020, Iraq’s parliament voted on a nonbinding measure to remove the U.S. troops from Iraq, but the Americans remain at the request of the Iraqi government. However, in response to the parliament’s 2020 vote, Iraq and the International Coalition changed the mission of the troops from a combat mission to one of advisory and training.

Iraq’s prime minister, Mohammed Shia’ Al Sudani, will meet U.S. President Joe Biden on April 15, primarily to discuss the U.S. troop presence.

Though the U.S.-Iraq Higher Military Commission is reviewing the troop presence issue, will the U.S. side stall fearing it may have to agree to a smaller presence and constrained operations?

Possibly, so Sudani may want a public commitment from Biden to force the march to a constructive, timely decision.

Aside from the troops issue, Sudani wants to strengthen Baghdad’s ties with Washington, which he considers Iraq’s top bilateral relationship, and to add an economic dimension to Iraq’s ties with America.

When Americans think of Iraq in economic terms it’s all about the oil, but in November 2023 ExxonMobil, America’s biggest oil company, exited Iraq with nothing to show for a decade-long effort.

The departure will lower the expectation of other U.S. companies, but Sudani wants to revitalize economic ties, and he will be accompanied by many of the country’s top businessmen.

U.S.-Iraq trade has room for growth.

In 2022, the U.S. exported $897 million in goods, the top product being automobiles. Iraq, in turn, exported $10.3 billion in goods, most of it crude oil.

A key economic objective of Iraq is the $17 billion Development Road, an overland road and rail link from the Persian Gulf to Europe via Turkey, that will host free-trade zones along its length.

Biden and Sudani should consider the shape of the future U.S.-Iraq relationship, which has to now been governed by military considerations, and has become the best example of The Meddler’s Trap, “a situation of self-entanglement, whereby a leader inadvertently creates a problem through military intervention, feels they can solve it, and values solving the new problem more because of the initial intervention. …A military intervention causes a feeling of ownership of the foreign territory, triggering the endowment effect.”

Iraq is the only real democracy in the Arab world, and many young Iraqis want a separation of religion and state, something that should resonate with Americans and, Iraqis hope, cause the U.S. to deal with Iraq as Iraq, not a platform for operations against Syria and Iran, or to support Washington’s Kurdish clients.

Washington damaged itself in Iraq by killing Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis in January 2020. Baghdad had moved the PMF, once a militia, into the government in 2016 (no doubt with American encouragement), so the killing of Muhandis, then a government official, increased popular support the PMF.

What are some clouds on the horizon for the U.S. and Iraq?

Corruption. Pervasive corruption in Iraq has slowed economic development and subjected Iraqi citizens to ineffective governance. The 2023 Corruption Perceptions Index by Transparency International ranked Iraq 154 of 180, a slight improvement from 2022 when it ranked 157 of 180.

Iraq was previously described by TI as: “Among the worst countries on corruption and governance indicators, with corruption risks exacerbated by lack of experience in the public administration, weak capacity to absorb the influx of aid money, sectarian issues and lack of political will for anti-corruption efforts.”

Sudani has not ignored corruption, calling it one of the country’s greatest challenges and “no less serious than the threat of terrorism.”

Elizabeth Tsurkov. Tsurkov is a Russian-Israeli academic who was kidnapped in 2023 by Kata’ib Hezbollah, an Iranian-influenced Iraqi militia. Tsurkov, a doctoral student at Princeton University in the U.S., entered Iraq with her Russian passport and did not disclose that she was an Israeli citizen and Israeli Defense Forces veteran. (A 2022 Iraqi law criminalized any relations with Israel.)

Tsurkov’s family wants the Biden administration to designate Iraq a state sponsor of terrorism for failing to secure her release. Sudani’s office announced an investigation into the matter and the issue may arise when Sudani meets Biden, though the best outcome for Iraq and the U.S. is a Russia-brokered deal between Israel and Iran.

If Biden designates Iraq a state sponsor of terrorism that will irreparably damage the relationship and open the door for China.

China. The U.S. is Iraq’s top relationship, but not its only relationship. China will respond to the ostracism of Baghdad by extending invitations to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and BRICS, the latter of which can fund infrastructure projects through the New Development Bank. PetroChina replaced ExxonMobil in West Qurna 1, one of Iraq’s biggest oil fields, and is ideally positioned for further expansion. And Iraq was the “leading beneficiary” of China’s Belt and Road Initiative investment in 2021.

Sudani has said Iraq should not be a cockpit of conflict for the U.S. and Iran, but when Iran is concerned it, in Washington, is always 1979.

Though Sudani has many challenges to face, Biden has more: he must reorient his government away from its colonial mentality in West Asia, recognize that Baghdad must reach a modus vivendi with Tehran that may not be to Washington’s pleasure, and not smooth the way for Beijing’s greater penetration of West Asia.

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Brownstone Institute,

My first article on the coming backlash – admittedly wildly optimistic – went to print April 24, 2020.

After 6 weeks of lockdown, I confidently predicted a political revolt, a movement against masks, a population-wide revulsion against the elites, a demand to reject “social distancing” and streaming-only life, plus widespread disgust at everything and everyone involved.

I was off by four years. I wrongly assumed back then that society was still functioning and that our elites would be responsive to the obvious flop of the whole lockdown scheme. I assumed that people were smarter than they proved to be. I also did not anticipate just how devastating the effects of lockdown would be: in terms of learning loss, economic chaos, cultural shock, and the population-wide demoralization and loss of trust.

The forces that set in motion those grim days were far more deep than I knew at the time. They involved a willing complicity from tech, media, pharma, and the administrative state at all levels of society.

There is every evidence that it was planned to be exactly what it became; not just a foolish deployment of public health powers but a “great reset” of our lives. The newfound powers of the ruling class were not given up so easily, and it took far longer for people to shake off the trauma than I had anticipated.

Is that backlash finally here? If so, it’s about time.

New literature is emerging to document it all.

The new book “White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy” is a viciously partisan, histrionic, and gravely inaccurate account that gets nearly everything wrong but one: vast swaths of the public are fed up, not with democracy but its opposite of ruling class hegemony.

The revolt is not racial and not geographically determined. It’s not even about left and right, categories that are mostly a distraction. it’s class-based in large part but more precisely about the rulers vs. the ruled.

With more precision, new voices are emerging among people who detect a “vibe change” in the population.

One is Elizabeth Nickson’s article “Strongholds Falling; Populists Seize the Culture.”

She argues, quoting Bret Weinstein, that:

“The lessons of [C]ovid are profound. The most important lesson of Covid is that without knowing the game, we outfoxed them and their narrative collapsed …. The revolution is happening all over the socials, especially in videos. And the disgust is palpable.”

A second article is “Vibe Shift” by Santiago Pliego:

“The Vibe Shift I’m talking about is the speaking of previously unspeakable truths, the noticing of previously suppressed facts. I’m talking about the give you feel when the walls of Propaganda and Bureaucracy start to move as you push; the very visible dust kicked up in the air as Experts and Fact Checkers scramble to hold on to decaying institutions; the cautious but electric rush of energy when dictatorial edifices designed to stifle innovation, enterprise, and thought are exposed or toppled. Fundamentally, the Vibe Shift is a return to—a championing of—Reality, a rejection of the bureaucratic, the cowardly, the guilt-driven; a return to greatness, courage, and joyous ambition.”

We truly want to believe this is true. And this much is certainly correct: the battle lines are incredibly clear these days. The media that uncritically echo the deep-state line are known: Slate, Wired, Rolling Stone, Mother Jones, New Republic, New Yorker, and so on, to say nothing of the New York Times. What used to be politically partisan venues with certain predictable biases are now more readily described as ruling-class mouthpieces, forever instructing you precisely how to think while demonizing disagreement.

After all, all of these venues, in addition to the obvious case of the science journals, are still defending the lockdowns and everything that followed. Rather than express regret for their bad models and immoral means of control, they have continued to insist that they did the right thing, regardless of the civilization-wide carnage everywhere in evidence, while ignoring the relationship between the policies they championed and the terrible results.

Instead of allowing their mistakes to change their own outlook, they have adapted their own worldview to allow for snap lockdowns anytime they deem them necessary. In holding this view, they have forged a view of politics that it is embarrassingly acquiescent to the powerful.

The liberalism that once questioned authority and demanded free speech seems extinct. This transmogrified and captured liberalism now demands compliance with authority and calls for further restrictions on free speech. Now anyone who makes a basic demand for normal freedom—to speak or choose one’s own medical treatment or to decline to wear a mask—can reliably anticipate being denounced as “right-wing” even when it makes absolutely no sense.

The smears, cancellations, and denunciations are out of control, and so unbearably predictable.

It’s enough to make one’s head spin. As for the pandemic protocols themselves, there have been no apologies but only more insistence that they were imposed with the best of intentions and mostly correct. The World Health Organization wants more power, and so does the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Even though the evidence of the failure of pharma pours in daily, major media venues pretend that all is well, and thereby out themselves as mouthpieces for the ruling regime.

The issue is that major and unbearably obvious failures have never been admitted. Institutions and individuals who only double down on preposterous lies that everyone knows are lies only end up discrediting themselves.

That’s a pretty good summary of where we are today, with vast swaths of elite culture facing an unprecedented loss of trust. Elites have chosen the lie over truth and cover-up over transparency.

This is becoming operationalized in declining traffic for legacy media, which is shedding costly staff as fast as possible. The social media venues that cooperated closely with government during the lockdowns are losing cultural sway while uncensored ones like Elon Musk’s X are gaining attention. Disney is reeling from its partisanship, while states are passing new laws against WHO policies and interventions.

Sometimes this whole revolt can be quite entertaining.

When the CDC or WHO posts an update on X, when they allow comments, it is followed by thousands of reader comments of denunciation and poking fun, with flurries of comments to the effect of “I will not comply.”

DEI is being systematically defunded by major corporations while financial institutions are turning on it. Indeed, the culture in general has come to regard DEI as a sure indication of incompetence. Meanwhile, the outer reaches of the “great reset” such as the hope that EVs would replace internal combustion have come to naught as the EV market has collapsed, along with consumer demand for fake meat to say nothing of bug eating.

As for politics, yes, it does seem like the backlash has empowered populist movements all over the world. We see them in the farmers’ revolt in Europe, the street protests in Brazil against a sketchy election, the widespread discontent in Canada over government policies, and even in migration trends out of US blue states toward red ones. Already, the administrative state in D.C. is working to secure itself against a possible unfriendly president in the form of Donald Trump or RFK, Jr.

So, yes, there are many signs of revolt. These are all very encouraging.

What does all this mean in practice? How does this end? How precisely does a revolt take shape in an industrialized democracy? What is the mostly likely pathway for long-term social change?

These are legitimate questions.

For hundreds of years, our best political philosophers have opined that no system can function in a sustainable way in which a huge majority is coercively governed by a tiny elite with a class interest in serving themselves at public expense.

That seems correct. In the days of the Occupy Wall Street movement of 15 years ago, the street protesters spoke of the 1 percent vs. the 99 percent. They were speaking of those with the money inside the traders’ buildings as opposed to the people on the streets and everywhere else.

Even if that movement misidentified the full nature of the problem, the intuition into which it tapped spoke to a truth. Such a disproportionate distribution of power and wealth is dangerously unsustainable. Revolution of some sort threatens. The mystery right now is what form this takes. It’s unknown because we’ve never been here before.

There is no real historical record of a highly developed society ostensibly living under a civilized code of law that experiences an upheaval of the type that would be required to unseat the rulers of all the commanding heights. We’ve seen political reform movements that take place from the top down but not really anything that approximates a genuine bottom-up revolution of the sort that is shaping up right now.

We know, or think we know, how it all transpires in a tinpot dictatorship or a socialist society of the old Soviet bloc. The government loses all legitimacy, the military flips loyalties, there is a popular revolt that boils over, and the leaders of the government flee. Or they simply lose their jobs and take up new positions in civilian life. These revolutions can be violent or peaceful but the end result is the same. One regime replaces another.

It’s hard to know how this translates to a society that is heavily modernized and seen as non-totalitarian and even existing under the rule of law, more or less. How does revolution occur in this case? How does the regime come around to adapting itself to a public revolt against governance as we know it in the US, UK, and Europe?

Yes, there is the vote, if we can trust that. But even here, there are the candidates, which are that for a reason. They specialize in politics, which does not necessarily mean doing the right thing or reflecting the aspirations of the voters behind them. They are responsive to their donors first, as we have long discovered. Public opinion can matter but there is no mechanism that guarantees a smoothly responsive pathway from popular attitudes to political outcomes.

There is also the pathway of industrial change, a migration of resources out of legacy venues to new ones. Indeed, in the marketplace of ideas, the amplifiers of regime propaganda are failing but we also observe the response: widened censorship. What’s happening in Brazil with the full criminalization of free speech can easily happen in the US.

In social media, were it not for Elon’s takeover of Twitter, it’s hard to know where we would be. We have no large platform in which to influence the culture more broadly. And yet the attacks on that platform and other enterprises owned by Musk are growing. This is emblematic of a much more robust upheaval taking place, one that suggests change is on the way.

But how long does such a paradigm shift take? Thomas Kuhn’s “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” is a bracing account of how one orthodoxy migrates to another not by the ebb and flow of proof and evidence but through dramatic paradigm shifts. An abundance of anomalies can wholly discredit a current praxis but that doesn’t make it go away. Ego and institutional inertia perpetuate the problem until its most prominent exponents retire and die and a new elite replaces them with different ideas.

In this model, we can expect that a failed innovation in science, politics, or technology could last as long as 70 years before finally being displaced, which is roughly how long the Soviet experiment lasted. That’s a depressing thought. If this is true, we still have another 60 plus years of rule by the management professionals who enacted lockdowns, closures, shot mandates, population propaganda, and censorship.

And yet, people say that history is moving faster now than in the past. If a future of freedom is ours just lying in wait, we need that future here sooner rather than later, before it is too late to do anything about it.

The slogan became popular about ten years ago: the revolution will be decentralized with the creation of robust parallel institutions. There is no other path.

The intellectual parlor game is over. This is a real-life struggle for freedom itself. It’s resist and rebuild or doom.

On Friday, President Joe Biden announced that he would cancel the federal student debt of more than 277,000 Americans, equating to about $7.4 billion. This would bring the total of what is considered classical vote buying ahead of the November presidential elections to more than $153 billion, or forgiving the debt of 4.3 million people.

The majority of the 277,000 Americans who were forgiven federal student debt were enrolled in the government’s income-driven repayment plan, known as SAVE, which promises borrowers to forgive their debts after ten years of loan repayments. 

The White House touted: 

Since President Biden took office, his administration has approved over $54 billion in debt cancellation for 1.3 million borrowers enrolled in income-driven repayment plans, including the new SAVE Plan. This builds on additional actions the Biden-Harris Administration has taken to cancel debt for nearly 900,000 public service workers, 1.3 million borrowers cheated by their schools or borrowers covered by related court settlements, and nearly 550,000 borrowers with a total and permanent disability, including many veterans.

Earlier this week, the Biden administration announced new student loan plans that would begin canceling federal student debt up to $20,000 in interest for millions of borrowers and total loan forgiveness for millions more. Those who qualify for the government’s income-driven repayment plan would have the full balance of their unpaid interest forgiven, benefiting at least 25 million Americans. 

“This latest round of debt cancellation comes on the heels of President Biden announcing new plans that, if implemented, would cancel student debt for over 30 million Americans when combined with actions the Administration has taken over the last three years,” the White House said.

Meanwhile, a seven-state coalition filed a new lawsuit on Monday challenging the “most generous ever” federal student loan repayment plan.

In the complaint filed in federal court in Missouri, the seven states argued that SAVE is another unlawful attempt to force taxpayers to shoulder the bill for others. 

“Just last year, the [U.S.] Supreme Court struck down an attempt by the President to force teachers, truckers, and farmers to pay for the student loan debt of other Americans—to the enormous tune of $430 billion,” the states wrote in the complaint, explaining how the high court’s 6-3 majority explicitly ruled that the president shall not sidestep Congress in making a decision that could have a significant impact on the economy. 

“Undeterred, the President is at it again, even bragging that the Supreme Court blocked it. They blocked it. But that didn’t stop me,'” the complaint added.

The administration’s latest student debt push is a sign of desperation. It comes as Bidenomics has been a gigantic failure and risks causing a sovereign debt crisis. Gold’s push to record highs is figuring this one out. 

Now that rate cuts are off the table, interest on US debt – currently the second biggest government outlay at $1.1 trillion – will surpass social security and become the single biggest US expense before the end of 2024 at $1.6 trillion. pic.twitter.com/OQYjHhOks9

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) April 11, 2024

Also, inflation has been reaccelerating for months while nationwide gasoline pump prices inch closer to the politically sensitive $4 level. And if the inflation storm wasn’t enough, the nation has been swamped by a White House-facilitated illegal alien invasion as progressive cities burn under failed social justice reforms. 

What’s worse, the Biden administration’s foreign policy has been an epic disaster as the world moves closer to World War III in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. Still, don’t forget about what’s happening in the Pacific. 

This is why the White House must buy votes… 

What better way to distract voters about the failures of this administration and the inflation storm crushing the working poor than to distract with socialist policies of ‘free stuff’ – such as canceling student loan debt… 

Authored by Jim Birchall via The Epoch Times,

Concerns over the physical safety of female-born football (soccer) players competing against transgender athletes have compelled at least 20 players to quit, according to a source from within a Sydney-based league.

Calling itself the “biggest LGBTQIA+ women’s and non-binary football club in the world,” the Flying Bats FC has made international headlines for fielding 5 self-identifying transgender players, with at least nine transgender players in the wider NorthWest Association.

Critics have said the Bat’s domination of the four-week pre-season Beryl Ackroyd Cup, which followed an undefeated season in 2023 that produced scorelines disproportionate to other teams’ results, was a direct result of the inclusion of male-born transgender players.

According to the feminist and pro-woman online news source, Reduxx, president of St. Patrick’s Football Club Frank Parisi said a March discussion over the Flying Bats FC’s ease of victories had prompted an informal meeting with stakeholders of the Northwest Sydney Football Association to address “concerns around how implausible it has become for any team to win against the Flying Bats as well as physical safety concerns.”

Incensed by the Flying Bats’ domination, other clubs asked the league’s governing body Football NSW to force them into playing in a mixed-sex league.

One club official told the Daily Telegraph, “Our girls are here to play for fun and expect to play in the female competition. They did not sign up for a mixed competition. It was so disheartening for them to see the huge difference in ability—they’re killing it.”

The involvement of transgender athletes in sports is a current hot-button issue, as policymakers grapple with how to balance the effects on women’s players, versus the “rights” of female-identifying players born as biological men.

Advocates argue that transgender individuals should be able to participate in sports according to their gender identity, while opponents raise concerns about fairness and competitive advantage.

One of the key points of contention is the impact of testosterone levels on athletic performance.

Testosterone affects muscle mass, strength, and endurance, and transgender males who have undergone hormone therapy to transition may still have higher testosterone levels than cisgender females, providing a competitive advantage in women’s sports.

Pro-transgender inclusion campaigners argue for allowing individuals to compete according to their gender identity, regardless of hormone levels. They argue that excluding transgender athletes from women’s sports is discriminatory and goes against principles of inclusion and equality.

Teams Could be Punished for Forfeiting Matches

Despite the arguments for and against inclusion, anecdotal evidence has emerged of severe injuries being sustained by female players playing against the Flying Bats.

In audio of the Northwest Sydney Football Association meeting leaked to social media, Frank Parisi detailed an incident whereby a female player’s leg was broken during a game;

“A couple of year ago, one of the Flying Bats players broke one of our players’ legs in a game. It was a clumsy tackle from behind. Our player had her leg broken in two places and she’s no longer playing football. It was a direct result of a real bad, tall player… he didn’t get a red card.

“Accidents happen, but this could have been avoided,” Mr. Parisi said.

“One of our players rushed over to try to help her, she was screaming in so much pain. At that time, she made a derogatory remark to the Bats’ player, which we apologised for. [She was] suspended (for 8 weeks). The Bats player, nothing happened to [him].”

Trans activist and former YouTuber Riley Dennis was also involved in football in NSW and came under criticism while playing for the Inter Lions FC in NSW Women’s Premier League 2 for injuring a female player who required hospital attention.

Mr. Parisi said at the meeting, 24 women had recently withdrawn from his club’s team.

“There’s a massive impact. I’m a very small club, we’ve only got seven teams … and now I’ve lost both my women’s teams, and it was a direct result of members of the Flying Bats who were male playing in a female competition.”

Complicating affairs is a directive from Football NSW and Football Australia that allows players “to participate in football on the basis of the gender with which they identify.”

The clause is consistent with the Australian Human Rights Commission’s guidelines on transgender athlete participation.

Speaking with the Daily Mail, North West Sydney Football (NWSF) CEO Matthew Geracitano said he had heard a team that chooses not to play against the Flying Bats could potentially be censured for an “act of discrimination.”

“In response to a direct question from a member Club, NWSF reminded stakeholders that NWSF’s Grievance and Disciplinary Regulations apply sanctions for teams who forfeit games in any competition and that these regulations have been in place for many years.”

Read more here…

In the latest setback, General Motors has ditched the base trim level for the Hummer EVs, according to a new report from the autoblog GM Authority. The legacy automaker has delayed and slowed its EV initiative in recent months as the industry continues to slide. 

GM Authority has learned that there will be no “base” 2 trim level for the Hummer EV, as was originally announced. As background, the 2 trim was supposed to arrive for the 2024 model year for both the Hummer EV Pickup and Hummer EV SUV, but it seems as though the automaker changed its plans. Moving forward, there will be no 2 model for the 2025 model year.

For GM guys and gals who were promised Hummer EVs with base trims and lower prices (starting around  $79,995 and offer 250 miles of range), the report from GM Authority does not bode well for EV price affordability. 

This also comes as GM delayed the launch of its Toledo EV Propulsion Systems plant in Ohio by nine months. It will start operating in late 2024. GM said it will “retime the launch of Electric Drive Unit at the plant to Q4 2024 in order to better align with Orion Assembly’s planned production schedule.”

Furthermore, GM has announced production delays of EV trucks at its Orion assembly until late 2025, including the Chevy Silverado RST and GMC Sierra Denali EVs. 

Consumer appetite for EVs is rapidly cooling. And legacy automakers have felt the brunt of the slowdown. 

Last week, Ford Motor said it was postponing production of a new three-row SUV as it pushes the delivery date from late 2025 to 2026 and will focus on hybrid options across its entire North American lineup. 

Even Tesla Motors, the leader in the EV space, is experiencing a slowdown in sales. 

“Tesla is going from the golden era to a really challenging era,” said Mark Fields, a former CEO of Ford Motor. 

As legacy automakers face waning demand and mounting delays in debuting EV SUVs and trucks, Tesla’s Cybertruck is in massive demand, and production is being ramped up. 

Authored by Jason Rantz via mynorthwest.com (emphasis ours),

Privileged progressives, donning their white knight armor, are in the next phase of a plan to end Seattle Public Schools’ gifted students program — known locally as its Highly Capable Cohort (HCC). They complained the HCC was too white.

HCC separates academically gifted students from others via different classrooms or entirely different schools. But in 2020, white Seattle school board directors voted to terminate the HCC over the objections of parents. HCC will be completely phased out by the 2027-28 school year. 

Outraged more by the success of white and Asian students than by the untapped potential of black and Hispanic pupils, progressives would rather drag achievers down than elevate everyone. These self-proclaimed saviors boast on social media about tackling inequities, oblivious to the harm they inflict. Indeed, the program to replace the HCC, and be implemented in every classroom, ensures that gifted students will be unchallenged, struggling students will escape the attention they deserve and teachers will be overwhelmed. In other words, everyone will be equitably harmed.

More from Jason Rantz: Seattle English students told it’s ‘white supremacy’ to love reading, writing

Why did Seattle Public Schools gifted program end?

Critics argued the students in HCC did not reflect the diversity of the community. The move was prompted by Black Lives Matter activism.

In 2018, three years after Seattle Public Schools (SPS) hired an “equity specialist” to address so-called racial inequities, the students HCC served 13% multiracial, 11.8% Asian, 3.7% Hispanic and 1.6% black. (By 2023, it was 20% multiracial, 16% Asian, 8.2% Hispanic and 3.4% black.) Critics argue that because the HCC didn’t match the district’s diversity, the program was irredeemably racist and needed to be dismantled.

But parents, including those who are black, Asian and Hispanic, argued against closing them down. They argued that SPS should work harder to identify minority students who are eligible for HCC, rather then kill the program entirely.

One father pleaded that the Seattle School Board “consider the disservice you would be doing to the minorities that are already in the HCC program.” He argued that the gifted program “does more for Black children, particularly Black boys, than it does for their peers.”

But the extremist Seattle School Board was unmoved.

Then-director Chandra Hampson accused black parents supporting the HCC as being “tokenized” by white Seattle parents. 

What is replacing the gifted highly capable cohort program?

The “whole-classroom model” is replacing HCC and be implemented in each classroom starting in the 2024-25 school year. It’s unworkable.

Read the rest here…