Authored by Doug Ross via Director Blue Substack,

How the KGB’s Playbook Is Destroying the West Today

Yuri Aleksandrovich Bezmenov (1939–1993), also known as Tomas David Schuman, was a Soviet journalist and KGB operative specializing in propaganda and ideological subversion.

Ideological subversion is the process of bending a society’s perception of reality so completely that it destroys itself.

In the Cold War era, few voices pierced the veil of secrecy as profoundly as that of Yuri Bezmenov, a KGB defector whose chilling exposés on ideological subversion still resonate today. His warnings, drawn from firsthand experience in Soviet active measures, offer blueprints for destroying free societies—not through bombs, invasions or disease, but through the poisons of manipulated ideas and cultural decay.

Here are 20 of Bezmenov’s key insights.

1. Ideological subversion is a long-term process, spanning 15-60 years, designed to change the perception of reality in a target nation without a need for military force.

2. Only about 15% of KGB efforts focused on traditional espionage; the majority targeted psychological warfare and ideological manipulation.

3. The goal is to demoralize a society by undermining its moral, educational, and cultural foundations, making people unable to recognize or defend against threats.

4. Demoralization takes 15-20 years, the time needed to educate one generation with subversive ideas.

5. Educational systems at all levels are key targets, turning schools into indoctrination centers that promote relativism over facts and critical thinking.

6. Media infiltration sows confusion by amplifying divisive narratives and discrediting objective truth.

7. Religion is attacked by portraying it as outdated or oppressive, eroding spiritual anchors and replacing them with state loyalty or nihilism.

8. Family structures are weakened through promotion of individualism, divorce, and alternative lifestyles that fragment social cohesion.

9. Moral relativism blurs right and wrong, leading to apathy and inability to unite against a society’s true enemies.

10. History is rewritten to vilify national heroes and traditions, fostering self-doubt and guilt in the populace.

11. Following demoralization, destabilization lasts 2-5 years, targeting the economy, foreign relations, and defense to create internal chaos.

12. Economic sabotage widens class divides, shrinks the middle class, and breeds resentment through inflation, shortages, or inequality.

13. Foreign policy is manipulated to isolate the nation, straining alliances and emboldening adversaries.

14. Defense readiness erodes through budget cuts, internal divisions, or anti-military propaganda.

15. The Crisis stage erupts in violence or upheaval, where a demoralized and destabilized society demands radical solutions*.

16. During the crisis, people willingly surrender freedoms for promised security, paving the way for authoritarian control.

17. Normalization is the final phase, where subversive changes become the “new normal,” institutionalized and irreversible.

18. Opposition is silenced through censorship, marginalization, or elimination in the normalization stage.

19. The process relies on “useful idiots”—well-meaning Western intellectuals, elites, activists, and leaders who unwittingly* advance societal suicide.

20. Once subversion succeeds, even exposure of the truth won’t reverse it, as the population rejects facts that contradict their reprogrammed worldview.

Bezmenov’s insights resonate today for obvious reasons from our fractured educational institutions, corrupted sciences to zero trust in “experts”.

Americans must heed Yuri’s prescient warning: reclaim critical thinking, fortify culture, and reject divisive ideologies before the stages of subversion culminate in irreversible “normalization.”

Because at that point America is dead.

Three additional Chinese researchers at the University of Michigan have been charged as part of an ongoing investigation into the smuggling of biological materials from China to the United States, the U.S. Department of Justice announced on Nov. 5.

Bai Xu, 28, Zhang Fengfan, 27, and Zhang Zhiyong, 30, were charged in a criminal complaint filed on Nov. 4 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan.

Bai and Zhang Fengfan were charged with conspiracy to smuggle biological materials into the United States, while Zhang Zhiyong was charged with making false statements to federal agents.

The three defendants were arrested at the John F. Kennedy International Airport on Oct. 16 and taken into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement before they could board a flight to China.

Frank Fang reports that The Epoch Times was unable to reach the defendants’ attorneys for comment, but notes that the case is connected to Han Chengxuan, a Chinese scholar at China’s Huazhong University of Science and Technology.

Han was supposed to start research at the University of Michigan in June under a J-1 visa, but was arrested upon her arrival at Detroit Metro Airport that month. She was accused of having shipped, prior to her arrival in the United States, petri dishes containing nematode worms, known as C. elegans, to the university and falsely declaring them on shipping documents.

Han later pleaded no contest to three smuggling charges and to lying to U.S. customs officials and was sentenced to time served in September.

According to the criminal complaint, Han was removed from the United States on Sept. 11.

“Allegedly attempting to smuggle biological materials under the guise of ‘research’ is a serious crime that threatens America’s national and agricultural security,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement on Nov. 5.

“We will remain vigilant to threats like these from foreign nationals who would take advantage of America’s generosity to advance a malicious agenda.”

Shipments

Bai, Zhang Fengfan, and Zhang Zhiyong all came to the United States on J-1 visas as scholars at the University of Michigan, according to the criminal complaint. Bai arrived in the United States in August 2024, and his roommate, Zhang Fengfan, arrived in September 2023. Zhang Zhiyong arrived in September 2021.

On March 5 this year, a UPS shipment from Han, which was addressed to Bai’s apartment in Ann Arbor, Michigan, was intercepted and found by the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) to be “improperly manifested as ‘doc,’” the criminal complaint stated. The shipment included a handwritten note listing 28 DNA molecules, or plasmids, four of which were related to C. elegans.

Prosecutors said the UPS shipment was the source of one of the three smuggling counts to which Han pleaded no contest.

On March 31, CBP officers contacted Bai about the intercepted UPS package, but he was “uncooperative and refused to speak to or meet with the officers,” according to the criminal complaint.

From July 2024 to October 2024, Han also allegedly shipped several packages to Dylan Zhang, whom prosecutors believed to be Zhang Fengfan. According to the criminal complaint, one of the packages, wrongfully manifested as “plastic plates,” included eight petri dishes “containing C. elegans with genetic modifications.”

The shipments sent to Zhang Fengfan from Sept. 23 and Sept. 29 in the same year were the source of two of the three smuggling counts to which Han pleaded no contest, according to prosecutors.

Zhang Zhiyong sent a package to the University of Michigan in 2019 containing nematodes in petri dishes, but manifested as “plastic plates,” according to the criminal complaint.

Han Chengxuan

After Han was removed from the United States, the University of Michigan conducted an internal investigation. According to prosecutors, the three defendants “each refused to participate in the investigation” and were subsequently terminated by the university.

On Oct. 8, the University of Michigan terminated the three defendants’ records on the Department of Homeland Security’s Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS), prosecutors said, explaining that the move meant that they were “no longer in compliance with their J-1 visas.” Afterward, the Department of Homeland Security considered them “eligible for removal,” according to the criminal complaint.

U.S. customs officials interviewed the three defendants at the John F. Kennedy International Airport on Oct. 16, according to the criminal complaint. The trio identified Han as a member of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Prosecutors noted that Han began her doctoral studies at Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST) in 2020, with Liu Jianfen as her adviser.

According to Liu’s personal page on HUST’s website, he currently serves as president of the school’s College of Life Science and Technology and head of its Key Laboratory of Molecular Biophysics of China’s Ministry of Education.

In 2012, Liu was awarded funding as a distinguished scholar by the state-run National Natural Science Foundation of China, according to his personal page.

Zhang Fengfan told U.S. customs officials that he was flying back to China to continue his second-year doctorate program at HUST under Liu, according to prosecutors.

There have been other smuggling cases connected to the University of Michigan in recent months.

Jian Yunqing, a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Michigan, was charged with conspiring with her boyfriend, Liu Zunyong, to bring a fungus known as Fusarium graminearum into the United States. The fungus can devastate wheat, barley, maize, and rice and cause health problems in humans and livestock.

Jian and Liu were charged in June with visa fraud, conspiracy, making false statements, and smuggling a pathogen into the United States.

Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Select Committee on the CCP, called on university leaders to conduct internal reviews to protect their research from “China’s adversarial actions,” according to a Nov. 5 statement.

“These new charges reveal an organized network of scholars engaged in illegal activity on Michigan’s campus. It is part of a broader, coordinated campaign targeting universities across the country, driven by China’s efforts to acquire American technology,” Moolenaar said.

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

In 1935, the mainline publisher Macmillan printed a book called “Planned Society” edited by American economist and journalist George Soule. The core idea was that mass unemployment, the economic depression, financial instability, and material deprivation all have a solution. We need the best and the brightest to come to power with a new plan for the whole of society.

What followed were many chapters exploring the idea. With the right plan, government can produce and deliver food. It can build all the houses and apartments. It can be the main influence in capital markets and hence fix business cycles. It can set prices and guarantee they are the right ones. It can provide minimum living standards for everyone, plus provide education and health care.

The ethos of the book was not about replicating the Soviet experience, which was already discredited by that time. Sloganeering about revolutionary workers and expropriating the expropriators was not in fashion. Indeed, powerful intellectuals and industries truly feared such attitudes. The planned society of the sort mapped out in this book was to be the alternative.

The underlying presumption of the book—one shared by nearly all public intellectuals at the time—was that both freedom and democracy have failed. They have led to the chaos of economic collapse and social division. These old-fashioned ideas—rooted in simply allowing society to evolve on its own—were deeply unscientific. They needed to be replaced by new ideas from the Ivy League.

The moniker “planned society” also served as a replacement for socialism as a political agenda. Why did socialism have to be replaced? First, it was a political loser thanks to the disasters unfolding in the Soviet Union. Second, all classes of people in the U.S. and the UK like their property rights, religion, and families, and had no interest in a scheme to jettison them. Third, no one at that point in time had a solution to the fundamental economic failing of socialism.

To understand that latter point, let’s go back more than a decade earlier to 1920. Economist Ludwig von Mises had written an article called “Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth.” He offered a novel counterpoint to socialist theory. It had normally been assumed that socialism failed because people are not angels and therefore cannot be expected to work for the good of all.

Mises said something different. He was glad to imagine a world of people who are community-minded, unselfish, and need no monetary incentives to work and do a good job. They are happy to produce, share, and commit themselves to the well-being of all. Let’s say that all men are angels. Even then, he said, socialism will necessarily fail for a precise technological reason.

Socialism imagines getting rid of the private ownership of capital, which are the produced means of production. We are talking about steel, wood, all tools, trucks, and anything else that is neither natural resources nor consumer good. Those would all be owned collectively. In this way, socialism said, it could stop value from unfairly flowing from workers to owners. This addresses the core argument of Karl Marx in his book “Capital” and a constant complaint of socialists from time immemorial.

With collective ownership of capital goods, the market for them would disappear. Along with that there would be no trading of capital and no prices for them. Without such prices, accounting for profits and losses from capital would also vanish. We are left with just huge piles of stuff that have to be allocated through some means other than normal accounting. That means that the planners would have to be in charge.

What signals would the planners have? Prices have been taken away. They would have no access to information systems about the needs of society. They would not know whether scarce amounts of steel should flow to trains, trucks, bridges, buildings, repairs of old things, or building of the new. They would not know whether cotton and wool need to go to blankets, clothing, beddings, or uniforms. They would have no idea what the trade-offs were of these decisions and no means by which to assess whether they had made the right decision.

And then you have the problem of change. In the real world, everything is always changing: consumer tastes, technology, seasonal needs, demographics, and talents. A socialist society managed by elites would lack any signaling system to adapt to such changes. Society would get stuck in place and economic life would stagnate. This is the best possible outcome. The worst outcome is sheer chaos.

“Without economic calculation there can be no economy,” Mises wrote. “Hence, in a socialist state wherein the pursuit of economic calculation is impossible, there can be—in our sense of the term—no economy whatsoever.”

What would replace the economy?

“There will be hundreds and thousands of factories in operation. Very few of these will be producing wares ready for use; in the majority of cases what will be manufactured will be unfinished goods and production goods. All these concerns will be interrelated. Every good will go through a whole series of stages before it is ready for use. In the ceaseless toil and moil of this process, however, the administration will be without any means of testing their bearings. It will never be able to determine whether a given good has not been kept for a superfluous length of time in the necessary processes of production, or whether work and material have not been wasted in its completion.”

Finally: “Thus in the socialist commonwealth every economic change becomes an undertaking whose success can be neither appraised in advance nor later retrospectively determined. There is only groping in the dark. Socialism is the abolition of rational economy.”

The argument was devastating to European intellectuals. Mises’s point was born out in Soviet experience. No one could really come up with an answer to it until the Polish economist Oskar Lange in the mid-1930s took it on. He said that the planners would not need real markets insofar as they could simulate markets with auctions. The state could hire financial traders to bid and ask, thus yielding prices that the planners could take in as information to feed their plans.

That argument was further met by F.A. Hayek who broadened Mises’s point into a general theory of knowledge in society. All social systems need information for coordination and planning but from where is that information drawn? He said that the only reliable information is connected to time, place, and real human experience. Even then, all economic decision-making is a speculation about human needs and future uncertainties. The data we need is necessary to localize and disperse, and even and often embed tacitly in habits, mores, and traditions.

The planners, he said, will always be ignorant relative to the intelligence of the societies over which they preside.

By the 1950s, the planners developed a new scheme that seemed to refute all the past critics of socialism and offer a new way toward organizing a rational society. They claimed that the advent of the computer age had made socialist planning entirely possible. “Let us put the simultaneous equations on an electronic computer and we shall obtain the solution in less than a second,” wrote Lange. “The market process with its cumbersome atonements appears old-fashioned. Indeed, it may be considered as a computing device of the pre-electronic age.”

Of course that scheme did not work. The knowledge problem, clarified Hayek, was not merely a technical issue that can be solved with more computing power. It was a learning and discovery problem that requires freedom of action, choice, and trading to generate useful information that adapts to change.

You see where this is going now. Myriad thinkers have once again rallied around a technological solution to the socialist problem of rational economic calculation and wise use of resources.

Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba, has written: “In the era of big data, the abilities of human beings in obtaining and processing data are greater than you can imagine. With the help of artificial intelligence or multiple intelligence, our perception of the world will be elevated to a new level. As such, big data will make the market smarter and make it possible to plan and predict market forces so as to allow us to finally achieve a planned economy.”

This is the same hubris that led Vladimir Lenin to believe that solving the economic problem under communism was easy as pie, until he discovered two years after taking power that even the pies disappeared.

It will be the same with the people who think AI will make the dream come true. You already know this. Even the best data is past data. It does not provide a crystal ball to the future. It is also deeply mistake prone. As with all planned systems, it provides no mechanisms for adaptation to reality even when that reality is screaming for change.

Isn’t it remarkable? For some reason, intellectuals are forever reluctant to admit that they are in no position to plan society under any ideological flag, and that freedom alone is capable of generating the best possible social and economic outcomes. The old solutions of individual rights and freedom—the rallying points of America’s Founding Fathers—have not only stood the test of time but still offer the best model for the future.

Australia ranks 54th by population, 14th by gross domestic product…and sixth by size?

The infographic below, via Visual Capitalist’s Pallavi Rao, puts its staggering scale in context by showing how many familiar nations could sit comfortably inside its outline.

The data for this visualization comes from UN Statistics Division, using total area estimates.

Australia’s True Size Revealed

Covering nearly 3.0 million square miles (7.73 million km²), Australia is the sixth-largest country, sitting just behind Brazil.

Note: Population data sourced from the International Monetary Fund.

Its landmass is roughly equivalent to the combined size of nine other countries, including 7th-ranked India.

For an American perspective, it’s the size of the contiguous U.S. west of the Mississippi River.

Humans often underestimate continental scale when viewing Mercator maps, so stacking countries gives a more intuitive sense of magnitude.

ℹ️ Related: For more on the Mercator projection, check out: The Problem With Our Maps.

Yet with only 27 million residents, Australia’s average population density is nine people per square mile.

The average population density of the combined nine countries is 687 people per square mile.

Why So Much of Australia Is Empty

The emptiness stems largely from the notorious Outback.

Roughly two-fifths of the continent is classified as arid or semi-arid desert, encompassing the Simpson, Tanami, and Great Victoria deserts.

Summer highs above 110°F (43°C) and some of the lowest rainfall on Earth make permanent settlement costly and risky.

Consequently, more than 85% of Australians cluster in coastal metro areas such as Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, and Brisbane.

If you enjoyed today’s post, check out Visualizing Africa’s True Size on Voronoi, the new app from Visual Capitalist.

Authored by Cara Michelle Miller via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Melatonin, a natural hormone, is often labeled a heart-healthy sleep aid. However, an extensive new study suggests that regular users face a higher risk of developing heart failure, hospitalization, and even death over time.

Adults with chronic insomnia who used melatonin for a year or longer faced a 90 percent higher risk of developing heart failure within five years compared to non-users.

The preliminary analysis, presented Monday at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions 2025, tracked more than 130,000 adults diagnosed with insomnia. Among those who took melatonin for more than a year, 4.6 percent developed heart failure, compared with 2.7 percent of nonusers.

Melatonin users were also more than three times as likely to be hospitalized for heart failure and had almost double the risk of dying from any cause. Still, the two groups differed only modestly in absolute terms—7.8 percent of long-term melatonin users died during the study period versus 4.3 percent in those not taking melatonin—a gap of about 3.5 percentage points.

“The takeaway isn’t that melatonin is ‘bad’ or that everyone should stop taking it,” Dr. Ekenedilichukwu Nnadi, chief resident in internal medicine at SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University, who led the research, told The Epoch Times in an email. “It’s that we shouldn’t assume something is risk-free just because it’s natural or sold over the counter.”

Melatonin, a hormone the body naturally produces at night, is often regarded as a safe, easy fix for insomnia and is frequently taken nightly by people struggling to sleep. Its use has more than doubled over the past decade, with about 12 percent of Americans diagnosed with chronic insomnia and millions more struggling to sleep most nights.

What the Study Found

Researchers used data from more than 130,000 adults diagnosed with insomnia. Roughly half had been prescribed melatonin or reported self-use; the rest had no melatonin use. None had heart failure or used prescription sleep aids at the start of the study.

The results held even when researchers required multiple prescriptions to define “chronic use,” reinforcing a link to long-term, versus occasional, melatonin use.

“This doesn’t prove that melatonin directly causes heart failure,” said Nnadi, noting that the study was observational. People who take melatonin every night may simply have more severe insomnia, which itself could raise heart risks.

Still, the study’s size and careful matching make the findings notable—and raise important questions about supplement safety, he said.

“It shows that people with chronic insomnia who took melatonin long-term were more likely to experience these outcomes. It’s an unexpected and important signal that needs to be studied further.”

What the Study Can’t Tell Us

The research could only track prescribed melatonin, since some over-the-counter use isn’t recorded in medical records. That means some people counted as “nonusers” may have taken melatonin without telling their doctors.

“That would actually bias the results toward no difference. In other words, it would make melatonin look safer than it might be,” said Nnadi. “So the fact that we still saw a strong, consistent association suggests the signal is real.”

“Of course, this limitation is exactly why we need randomized, prospective trials to confirm whether melatonin itself is contributing to these risks.”

Unlike prescription drugs, melatonin supplements are not strictly regulated.

The actual amount of melatonin can vary widely from one brand to another. A study found that the amount of melatonin you get can vary significantly from what’s on the label—ranging from -83 percent to +478 percent—suggesting that some products may supply far higher levels than the body is designed to handle.

Most people in the United States buy melatonin over the counter, without any prescription, and may take it for months or years. In the UK, Australia, and the European Union, melatonin is available only by prescription for short-term treatment of insomnia.

Mixed Evidence on Heart Effects

Melatonin also acts as an antioxidant and has been associated with improved heart benefits for people with existing heart issues—improving heart function and reducing stress on the heart muscles. However, these studies were small, short-term trials on animals or carefully selected patients using pure, prescription-strength melatonin.

“Our study is different,” said Nnadi. “We looked at real-world use: supplements taken nightly for years, in diverse populations with varying doses and product quality in patients that specifically have chronic insomnia. That’s a very different scenario.”

Melatonin helps regulate the body’s sleep-wake cycle, peaking at night to signal the brain that it’s time to rest. For people with insomnia, taking melatonin before bed can help promote sleepiness and support a more restful night. It can also modestly influence blood pressure and heart rate as the body transitions to rest.

Although the study didn’t identify a mechanism, possible effects could involve heart rhythm, blood pressure, or metabolism—effects that are not fully understood—especially with supplements taken over many months or years.

Insomnia itself, meanwhile, has been linked in previous research to increased inflammation, higher nighttime blood pressure, and changes in stress hormones such as cortisol—all of which can strain the heart over time and raise the risk of heart failure.

Expert Recommendations

Marie-Pierre St-Onge, a sleep researcher at Columbia University who was not involved in the study, said in her preliminary analysis that she was surprised that some patients were prescribed melatonin for more than a year.

“Melatonin, at least in the U.S., is not indicated for the treatment of insomnia,” said St-Onge, who chairs the writing group for the American Heart Association’s 2025 scientific statement, Multidimensional Sleep Health: Definitions and Implications for Cardiometabolic Health, adding that “people should be aware that it should not be taken chronically without a proper indication.”

The Council for Responsible Nutrition, a trade group for supplement manufacturers, agreed that melatonin should be used occasionally and that anyone with long-term sleep difficulties should consult a medical professional before using it.

What Should You Do?

For those struggling with consistent sleep, Dr. Muhammad A. Rishi, a sleep medicine physician at Indiana University Health, previously wrote to The Epoch Times via email that melatonin supplements should be used carefully.

Even though melatonin is a naturally occurring hormone, Rishi said that the supplements change a person’s mental or physical state, and therefore, should be treated as a drug.

Common side effects include headaches and dizziness; it can also interact with other medicines, such as anticoagulants—drugs that help prevent blood clots. Sleep doctors typically advise starting with the lowest effective dose—about 0.5 to 1 milligram—taken one to two hours before bedtime, and only for one to three months. Long-term effects remain unknown.

Persistent insomnia can signal an underlying condition, such as sleep apnea, restless legs syndrome, depression, or chronic pain. When a sleep specialist identifies the correct diagnosis, treatment options can then be explored.

“For people using melatonin occasionally or short-term, it may still be fine. But for those taking it nightly for years, especially with heart disease or risk factors, it’s worth having a conversation with your doctor,“ Nnadi said. ”We need to treat supplements with the same care and skepticism as prescription drugs.”

“Our study,” he added, “is a reminder that more isn’t always better, and that we need stronger evidence before calling any supplement ‘heart-healthy.’”

The cost of housing continues to strain American renters, especially in states with rapid population growth and limited housing supply.

This chart, via Visual Capitalist’s Niccolo Conte, ranks U.S. states by the share of renter households spending more than half of their income on rent—commonly known as being “severely rent-burdened.”

The data comes from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS) 2024 1-Year Estimates.

America’s Highest Rent Burdens

Across the country, roughly one in four renter households is severely burdened by rent. But in some states, that share climbs much higher.

Florida leads with 30.1% of renters spending more than half their income on housing. Rents in Florida increased by nearly 40% between 2019 and 2023 due to high population growth and limited rental supply.

Other high-burden states include Nevada (28.0%) and California (27.5%) in the West. Overall, coastal states are prevalent in the top 10, including New York, Oregon, and Hawaii.

Where Rent Pressure Is Lowest

At the other end of the list, rental housing remains relatively affordable in parts of the Midwest and Great Plains.

States such as South Dakota (15.3%), North Dakota (15.7%), and Wyoming (17.0%) report the lowest shares of rent-burdened households. These states also see relatively slower growth in population and demand for rental housing.

America’s Rent Problem

According to a survey of over 31 million households, housing is the single largest expense for renters in the United States.

Households that spend over 30% of their household income on housing costs are considered “cost-burdened”, and nearly half of all renter households in the U.S. fall in this category. Those who spend over 50% of their income on rent and housing costs are considered severely rent-burdened, and almost one in five U.S. households are in this bracket.

Rental unaffordability remains an important challenge for millions of U.S. households, especially as inflation and housing prices outpace wage growth across the country.

If you enjoyed today’s post, check out The Top 20 Cities With Sky-High Rent in 2025 on the Voronoi app.

Authored by Lawrence Wilson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Democrats won decisive victories in the 2025 elections, including a mayoral win in New York City and governorships in New Jersey and Virginia. Democrats also did well in races at the state and local levels.

Despite the victory, their path forward remains no clearer than before, according to some political analysts. That’s because the top Democratic winners presented vastly different governing strategies to voters.

Zohran Mamdani, a political newcomer who describes himself as a democratic socialist, defeated traditional Democrat and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in New York.

Centrist Democrats Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill won gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey, respectively, claiming even wider margins at the polls.

According to Michael Genovese, president of the Global Policy Institute at Loyola Marymount University, whether Democrats will now embrace a leader who can mobilize the far edge of their party, or seek to solidify the middle while distancing themselves from far-left economic and social engineering, depends on this:

“Who captured the zeitgeist of the times?”

Here are three choices Democrats will face at a national level to solidify the gains of 2025.

How to Deliver Affordability

Economic issues were the focus of the major races, and Democrats won by promising change.

“The Democratic Party is a party of affordability,” Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin said in a Nov. 5 press call. “Our candidates connected with voters at their core by running on what they truly care about: their families, their livelihoods, and the American dream.”

That worked well in 2025, with many Americans still dealing with high prices, and all elections were local.

The question now is how Democrats will deliver lower prices, more jobs, and lower housing costs at a national level.

In New York, Mamdani’s affordability plan rests on bigger government and higher taxes. He promised free bus service, free child care, and a rent freeze for nearly half of the city’s apartments to be paid for by an increase in corporate taxes and a 2 percent income tax on wealthy New Yorkers.

In Virginia, Gov.-elect Spanberger’s affordability plan strongly resembled that of President Donald Trump at some points.

She promised to reduce health care costs by cracking down on pharmacy benefit managers, reducing drug prices by negotiating prices with pharmaceutical companies, and lowering energy costs by declaring a state of emergency and increasing production—ideas Trump already implemented at the national level.

Genovese wondered which approach Democrats will land on nationally.

“Are Democrats … strongest when they go left, toward Mamdani, or are they best served by offering moderate, mainstream candidates, such as Spanberger and Sherrill?” he said.

Where to Stand on Gender, Israel

Apart from economics, the party must define a consistent position on issues that have been driven mostly by the party’s left wing, according to Richard Himelfarb, a professor of political science at Hofstra University.

One such issue is gender ideology.

Democrats have advocated for transgender rights and civil liberties, and the California Assembly rejected bills that would have banned transgender-identifying males from competing against women in school sports.

However, not all Democrats have drawn a hard line on this issue.

“Abigail Spanberger really dodged questions about what to do about biological men in women’s sports,” Himelfarb told The Epoch Times.

That worked in a state like Virginia, he said, but said, “I don’t know that the Democratic candidate for the presidency in 2028 is going to be able to dodge that question.”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom also said on his own podcast in March that it is “deeply unfair” for transgender athletes to compete in women’s and girls’ sports.

Another issue that may call for a national position is support for Israel, according to Himelfarb.

The Democratic platform for 2024 states that “the United States strongly supports Israel in the fight against Hamas.” The platform also calls for a two-state solution, providing a home for the Palestinian people.

Yet, Himmelfarb said, “Opposition to Israel has been, in many ways, normalized in the Democratic party, and I think that you are going to see more of that going forward.”

As a case study in both issues, Himelfarb cites Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), who questioned the inclusion of transgender athletes in female sports following the last election and was soundly criticized by fellow Democrats.

Moulton is challenging Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) in the 2026 primary and has refused to accept contributions from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a pro-Israel lobbying group.

“So he’s basically saying, I’m not unequivocally supportive of the State of Israel. He’s tried to move to the left of Markey,” Himelfarb said.

It appears that voters on the left and center will demand clear positions on these issues in the next election.

What You Stand For

Democrats campaigned heavily against Trump in the 2025 election, as they have in most elections since 2016. The party’s 2024 platform mentions Trump 150 times in 92 pages but refers to the future just 31 times.

The party’s strategy now is to continue winning by focusing on household economics, which leaders believe they can own.

“We gave voters something to be for and not just against,” Martin said.

The approval rating of the sitting president is the most important factor in off-year elections, according to Henry Olsen, senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Trump’s approval rating has been below 50 percent for weeks.

“The Democrats should have had a good night. It was theirs to lose,” James Lee, president of Susquehanna Polling and Research, said, referring to the Nov. 4 results.

Economic issues may not be as potent an issue for Democrats as they believe, according to Aaron Dusso, chairman of the Department of Political Science at Indiana University–Indianapolis.

Polling consistently indicates that voters trust Republicans to handle the economy more than they trust Democrats, Dusso said. There’s no guarantee that economic conditions won’t improve over the next 12 months.

Democrats must present a positive vision for issues that they can own, Dusso said.

“You’ve got to get [voters] thinking about other things, the issues that are primary for you.” For Democrats, that’s health care, social policy, and social issues, he said.

To win the next election, Dusso said, Democrats must do more than say, “We’re just like Republicans, just a little bit nicer. You’ve got to stand for something.”

The Epoch Times requested comments from the Democratic National Committee and did not receive a response by the time of publication.

Long before the political assassination of Charlie Kirk, the protest-industrial complex, which fuels endless color-revolution-style operations against ‘MAGA’ and is bankrolled by billionaire-funded dark-money networks, declared war on President Trump and his supporters many years ago. It’s only now that the White House is beginning to understand the NGO beast and the funding webs that quite frankly want regime change – at any cost necessary. 

This year alone, the Trump administration has dismantled USAID and threatened RICO charges against the Soros Foundation. There have been headlines in the news that the Gates Foundation abruptly severed ties with the Arabella Network and reports revealing foreign influence operations among far-left NGOs waging war on Trump. The nonprofit industry, one of the most mysterious and complex to understand, has been placed in the limelight for the world to see as the White House’s coming crackdown has spooked nonprofits not just on the far left that want to destroy America from within, but even nonprofit operators on the right.

Take, Lawson Bader, president and CEO of DonorsTrust, a major conservative donor-advised fund, recently warned the White House against politically motivated investigations of leftist nonprofits without strong evidence of wrongdoing. Following the assassination of Kirk, Bader told The Free Press he’s alarmed by “retaliatory rhetoric.” 

Bader’s comments came amid reports that the Trump administration is planning investigations into leftist nonprofits like Open Society Foundations and many other foundations, following Trump’s pledge to fight “domestic terrorism and organized political violence.” This also comes as Vice President J.D. Vance and senior adviser Stephen Miller have declared war on the radical left groups.

There have been numerous reports from the Capital Research Center and investigative researchers Peter Schweizer and Seamus Bruner of the Government Accountability Institute that show an abundance of evidence via 990 filings that Soros foundations and other leftist billionaire-funded groups funneled money into “pro-terror groups.” 

Schweizer’s top researcher, Bruner, even addressed President Trump on live television about the nonprofit crisis that has waged an endless war against the White House.

He said, “We have identified dozens of radical organizations, not just the decentralized Antifa organizations, but dozens of radical organizations that have received more than $100 million from the Riot Inc investors.” 

Way more than $100M of US taxpayer money

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 8, 2025

Given the hard evidence uncovered by CRC and Schweizer’s team, Bader and others in the industry have called for defending philanthropic freedom instead of digging deeper into the NGO world, warning that investigations into far-left charities could backfire and eventually be used against conservative causes.

We’ve got news for Bader and company: it’s too late. The gloves are off, and if the new face of the Democratic Party, the DSA Marxists, ever seizes power at the executive level, it’s game over.

Currently, the nonprofit world – on both sides of the political aisle – is trembling in fear at what the White House may do next.

According to The Free Press, the administration is weighing how to make good on that promise, and “everybody is concerned across the board about being investigated,” said one nonprofit boss managing more than $1 billion in assets. Another said the fear of probes is already chilling fundraising across the sector.

Heads of Soros-aligned organizations have privately discussed changes to their compliance practices to avoid legal exposure. One foundation reportedly tightened its lobbying policies, while some donors have already pulled back.

Conservative watchdogs have amplified scrutiny of foreign influence. And that’s most likely the angle the administration will take on “dismantling” the NGO world. 

Just days ago…

European Billionaires Funneled $2 Billion Via Transatlantic NGO Network To Erode U.S. Democracy, Finance Anti-Trump Protest Machine https://t.co/7deOFtVMwE

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) November 1, 2025

And this.

Black Lives Matter Under Federal Investigation For Donor Fraud; Report https://t.co/tkXdsYcqh0

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) November 1, 2025

The White House has also shown interest in foreign-linked donors, such as the Cuba connection and the China connection via Marxist billionaire Neville Roy Singham.

EVERY SINGLE REPUBLICAN on @GOPoversight signed on to our investigation into billionaire Neville Singham.

We will NOT TOLERATE CCP sowing division in our country! pic.twitter.com/MSa3e2V5GQ

— Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (@RepLuna) June 13, 2025

The pressure campaign against the nonprofit world has already delivered impressive results, with several liberal foundations freezing or scaling back grantmaking and a wave of layoffs rippling across the sector.

The latest jobs data via Challenger, Gray & Christmas shows an absolute apocalypse for the nonprofit job market:

Non-profits continue to be impacted by Government funding as well as rising costs. These entities announced plans to cut 27,651 this year, an increase of 419% from the 5,329 announced by this point in 2024.red striking results, with several liberal foundations freezing or scaling back grantmaking and a wave of layoffs rippling across the sector.

“When you shine light on billion-dollar NGO networks, they scramble. We are seeing the panic unfold in real time — burner phones, law firms, and retreat statements. That tells you our research is hitting the mark. When you follow the money, the facts speak louder than spin,” Bruner told us. 

Authored by Janice Hisle via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

CHULA VISTA, Calif.—The scene that unfolded along Interstate 5 looked like a carefully choreographed action-film sequence. But it was a real life-or-death situation.

Flames and smoke billowed into the night sky from a vehicle that had crashed off the roadway. Upon arrival, police discovered that the car’s driver was trapped inside, screaming in agony.

“C’mon, give me your hand!” an officer yelled, as he and three others worked frantically to extricate the man through a rear window they had broken.

Panting and grunting, the officers struggled. Then, seconds after they pulled the man to safety along the highway’s berm, the car exploded. A ball of fire engulfed it—just as a fire truck arrived.

The Hollywood-worthy timing, captured on video, is breathtaking.

“That guy probably would have perished,” Chula Vista Police Capt. John English said, if not for the officers’ heroism—and the aid of a camera-equipped, airborne drone.

By relaying real-time information to officers as they head to emergencies such as this one, drones help police plan their actions.

English reviewed video of the fiery rescue with The Epoch Times, explaining how a drone helped officers save the man’s life.

As the car burned, the drone’s aerial view allowed police to quickly identify the best route to the scene. Without that perspective, officers easily could have chosen a more distant highway entrance. “That would have taken extra time to get there—and they didn’t have it,” English said.

Also, because the drone’s thermal imaging showed no person near the burning car, officers suspected someone might still be inside the wreckage. That fear increased their sense of urgency, helping to avert tragedy.

Although the man and three of the four rescuing officers were hurt, all recovered. That incident, on Oct. 13, 2023, stands out as a dramatic example of how drones are bolstering police work across the nation.

Officers have used terms such as “game-changer,” “transformational,” and “revolutionary” to describe the impact of drones on their jobs.

Others are raising alarms over this technology’s capability to be intrusive.

In Eureka, a city of about 25,000 people in northern California, opponents recently stopped local police from even looking into a drone program.

The city’s police had relied on outside agencies for drone assistance in several situations, such as locating armed suspects near school campuses, and negotiating with a suicidal person who threatened to leap from the city water tower. Lacking a local drone fleet “can limit timely access to this critical resource,” officials said, explaining the reason for the proposed study.

After citizens pressured city leaders to back away from the idea, the city announced that the proposed drone study was cut from city council’s Oct. 21 agenda.

An opposition group, which declared victory on its website, said it expects the city to resurrect the proposal. If that happens, “We vow to keep fighting surveillance overreach … [to] preserve our integrity, safety, and privacy in our rapidly changing world.”

Advocates say that police already are following standard procedures that safeguard people’s privacy while greatly enhancing public safety. They consider drones a crucial asset at a time when many police agencies are understaffed and underfunded.

From Rescues to Arrests

In the seven years since Chula Vista pioneered using drones as first responders, increasing numbers of police and fire agencies have adopted the technology.

Some, including Chula Vista, still use advanced, affordable drones from DJI—a source of security concerns because the company is based in China, which has a history of stealing American technology and data.

Chula Vista says its devices have always operated with U.S.-based software “to bypass the drone manufacturer’s systems.” Data from the drones is encrypted and stored on U.S.-based servers “that meet federal requirements for confidential law enforcement databases,” the police department’s website states.

Skydio, a U.S. company, supplies drones to 800 public safety agencies, including New York City, where police are using the aircraft to quell the dangerous trend of riding on top of subways—known as “subway surfing.”

In Cincinnati, which sits along the Ohio River, police used a drone to track a felony suspect who jumped into the water and tried to swim away.

In Redmond, Washington, officers used a drone to reveal the hidden location of a missing elderly man with dementia. He was found safe, sitting in a wooded area.

Police in all three cities run drone first response programs. Drones go airborne to relay and record live video images from scenes where people reported disturbances or circumstances that appear to imperil lives, safety, or property.

Across America, officers credit drones with improving police safety and efficiency. Drones also help police rescue people, de-escalate contentious situations, and arrest suspects.

“We hear more and more reports from our customers about people actually surrendering to drones,” Skydio CEO Adam Bry said at a 2024 conference in California.

His audience had just watched a staged, live demonstration of a remote police officer using a drone to track a fleeing suspect. Using the drone’s loudspeaker, the officer ordered him to put his hands up and walk toward on-scene police. Such an outcome “is not far-fetched at all,” Bry said.

Chula Vista Laid Groundwork

Jon Beal, CEO of the Law Enforcement Drone Association, said he expects the drone first responder trend to grow rapidly, largely because of “trailblazers” such as Chula Vista.

That department’s leaders “stuck their necks out” to figure out drone methods that are now being replicated across the nation, he said, noting that departments fine tune policies to meet each community’s needs.

Over the years, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has been removing approval obstacles.

And President Donald Trump’s June executive order supporting expansion of drone use in the United States further aims to streamline the administration’s processes for drones.

It builds on a directive he issued during his first presidency, ordering agencies to update regulations for “unmanned aircraft systems”—the technical term for drones and their related equipment—while ensuring safe operations. He aims to spur drone use in sectors ranging from agriculture to commerce and emergency management.

Applause and Concerns

The technology’s role in law enforcement has become increasingly important, Beal said. “We believe we’re getting to that place where … it’s almost negligent” if departments fail to use every tool available—including drones, he said.

That’s particularly true in “search-for-persons operations” and high-risk incidents, Beal said. Those might include police serving search warrants targeting dangerous people or responding to shootings-in-progress, unruly crowds, or standoffs with barricaded suspects.

In such circumstances, the high-tech devices give officers two new advantages: “an eye in the sky and time on their side,” Beal said.

About 2,500 police agencies own at least one drone, and 400 police departments run some type of drone program, Beal estimated.

Those numbers are low, considering America is home to about 18,000 federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies.

But “we’ve got law enforcement agencies buying drones on a daily basis,” Beal said.

Agencies that lack their own drones often borrow them from neighboring departments.

And, as agencies’ drone use expands, people on both sides of the political aisle are raising concerns, Beal acknowledged.

In Eureka, California, an Oct. 17 social media post from a group calling itself “The Humboldt Area Center for Harm Reduction” called drones “militarized police technology” and “fascist.”

“Research is only the first step,” the post said, alleging police would move toward “a military drone surveillance program.”

Beal said it’s impractical—and irresponsible—for agencies to deploy drones for general surveillance. It makes no sense for officials to say, “Hey, we’re gonna go out and fly a drone for 10 hours today and hopefully find something,” he said.

Misusing the technology, he said, could ignite backlash against drone programs across America.

Beal’s 2,000-member nonprofit helps train drone operators and sets standards to ensure that the technology is being used “the right way,” he said. His group assists public safety agencies not only across America but also in Canada, Europe, South America, and Australia.

Tales From Two Cities

To learn more about police drones, The Epoch Times visited Chula Vista as well as Cincinnati’s new program, which began this summer.

Although the two departments are located 2,200 miles apart and serve starkly dissimilar communities, both follow some of the same key principles. Their drone pilots must be federally certified, and policies prohibit general patrolling or random surveillance with drones.

Unique factors affect police drone operations in each city.

Chula Vista, which means “pretty view” in Spanish, enjoys Southern California weather that is reliably clear and sunny—ideal drone-flying conditions.

And it is a low-rise city, with buildings mostly 20 stories or lower—simplifying drones’ flight paths.

The police headquarters building is only about four stories high, but its rooftop enables a miles-wide view. It’s one of the locations from which police launch drones.

Under federal rules, a person must be present at the site; that’s typically a contractor who performs maintenance on the drones and coordinates flights with a drone operator inside the building. The indoor employees operate controls and monitor computer displays of maps and of drone-collected images.

In contrast, Cincinnati faces more obstacles for its drone flights.

Midwest weather tends to be more fickle, and skyscrapers form the Queen City’s distinctive skyline—posing challenges for drones. Tall buildings can disrupt GPS signals that guide the aircraft. The structures also may create a “canyon wind effect” that can destabilize drones.

Numerous federal flight restrictions affect Cincinnati airspace, too. While Chula Vista lacks a professional sports team, Cincinnati is home to three: Reds baseball, Bengals football, and FC Cincinnati soccer. Those teams’ schedules and the presence or movement of Vice President JD Vance, whose permanent residence is in Cincinnati, all can cause the FAA to impose restrictions.

Read the rest here…

Authored by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,

The chart below paints a disturbing picture for those not in the top 10%… 

And the accusations regarding who is responsible are predictable, endless, and mostly wrong.

“The top 10% of US households now hold 87% of all US stocks owned by households, with the top 1% alone owning 50%. By comparison, the remaining 90% hold just 13%, while the bottom 50% hold only 1%. The wealth gap has never been bigger.”

– Kobeissi Letter

The “tax the rich” crowd are loud and ignorant of facts, but that doesn’t stop them from bloviating and screaming shrilly on the left wing media channels.

The top 10% aren’t the problem.

They constitute the entrepreneurial class, who open new businesses and hire employees. Most of the top 1% are also hard working creators of wealth.

It’s the .01% globalist billionaire class who are mainly to blame for the economic shitstorm brewing on the horizon.

Young people now overwhelmingly see socialism as preferable to capitalism because they have been indoctrinated by left wing professors and the legacy left media mouthpieces, promoting the Mandamis, AOCs, Bernies and Pocahontases of the world. It doesn’t matter their socialist/commie agenda has a 100% proven record of being erroneous and economically disastrous anywhere on earth it has been implemented, with millions of dead bodies as proof. The truth is we have not experienced true free market capitalism since the unholy conception of the Federal Reserve and initiation of the Federal income tax in 1913. That was surely a bad year for humanity.

When the wealth data is presented in a fair and accurate way, it truly paints a picture of woe for the bottom 50%. Of course, those in the top 10%, who own all of the stocks and businesses, along with most of the real estate, feel little or no pity for the bottom 50%. They think they are lazy, ignorant and stupid. In many cases, that is an accurate assessment, but there are millions of hard working people in the bottom 50% who are there because the .01% like it that way. George Carlin’s famous rant captures the reality of their situation:

“They want more for themselves and less for everybody else, but I’ll tell you what they don’t want: They don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them. That’s against their interests. That’s right. They don’t want people who are smart enough to sit around a kitchen table to figure out how badly they’re getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago. They don’t want that.

You know what they want? They want obedient workers. Obedient workers. People who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork, and just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it, and now they’re coming for your Social Security money.”

Carlin’s disturbingly accurate description of America from two decades ago is truer now than it was then. “They” have accumulated trillions more, while the rest of us have seen our standard of living relentlessly decline due to the Federal Reserve manufactured inflation – designed to accelerate stock market gains and leave the masses destitute. The USD has lost 97% of its purchasing power since the Creature from Jekyll Island slithered from the swamps of DC in 1913. Your 2% to 3% annual raise is consumed by the 5% to 10% increase in things you need to live (food, energy, medical care, education) every year. That is why the Bottom 50% has an average net worth of $54,300.

The real question is who are “THEY”? It is certainly not the top 10%, or even the top 1%. Whether you refer to them as the ruling elite, oligarchy, globalist cabal, or satanic psychopaths, they constitute only a fraction of the 1%. There are approximately 3,000 billionaires in the world, with about a third of them in the U.S. That means they make up about .0003% of the U.S. population and an even smaller percentage of the 8.2 billion global population. Many of these billionaires are just the children or spouses of men who accumulated that wealth. That leaves a few hundred men meeting  the criteria of psychopaths in suits, with totalitarian tendencies, ensconced with a heaping helping of greed, thirst for power, and desire to rule the world.

Let’s be honest, these psychopathic pedophile billionaires and their cadre of well compensated legions of apparatchiks placed within the government, media, universities, finance industry, “think” tanks and fake “charitable” foundations, believe the bottom 50% are nothing more than mouth breathing parasites. They are the ignorant lower class Proles in Orwell’s 1984 and the semi-literate Deltas in Huxley’s Brave New World. They have always been despised by the ruling class throughout history. The current crop of oligarchs truly believe they can replace the “worthless eaters” with robots and AI. Their de-population agenda of killing off the weak, poisoning the healthy, and imprisoning the remainder in a CBDC techno-gulag of their making, is in progress.

Most upper middle class people are trapped in the normalcy bias of ever growing stock market gains boosting their 401k wealth and thinking a doubling of their home’s value over the last five years makes sense. The level of cognitive dissonance among the masses is at all-time highs, as they can see our unsustainable Ponzi financial system is built on a mountain of unpayable debt, but they continue to go further into debt, assuming the overlords running this shitshow will just bail everyone out again when it collapses for the final time.

Maybe they are right, but I think the psychopaths in suits are getting ready to “pull” a Building 7 on our asses. When I bring up the Great Taking scheme to normies, I get nothing but blank stares because it is inconceivable to them that invisible forces who control the levers of our financial system would conduct a “bail in” operation to save the world from the very financial implosion they have engineered. The normies argue the rich would be hurt the worst because they have the most to lose. What they don’t realize is the overlords know what is going to happen and will position themselves and their devoted  minions to benefit from the financial collapse.

The likes of Gates, Soros, Theil, Altman, Musk, Buffett, and many other shadowy billionaires believe the planet would be far more efficient, productive, and profitable for them if it was occupied by a few billion less eaters. They believe their technological advancements and authoritarian mandates would create a world where they wield unquestioned power and control over our lives. They tested their plan using the Covid Plandemic and it convinced them the ignorant masses could be corralled and coerced in any direction they choose.

They used lies, propaganda, and misinformation to convince billions to shutdown the world, huddle in fear within their hovels, shun friends and relatives, inject themselves with an untested dangerous gene therapy that didn’t stop or diminish the virus, fear the annual flu, bow down to the totalitarian measures inflicted upon them by politicians and bureaucrats, and be happy with the pittance doled out to them by their government overlords. They “convinced” 5.6 billion people to get injected with their de-population serum, without a hint of outrage or push back.

Meanwhile, the net worth of the billionaire club grew from $8 trillion in 2019 to over $16 trillion today. Shockingly, the majority of that growth was in the technology and finance realms. Has your net worth doubled since the pandemic? Top 10 US billionaires’ collective wealth grew by $700 billion in the past year alone. These people rule the world, make the laws, siphon the profits through their control of the Federal Reserve, Washington DC, Wall Street, Big Pharma, Silicon Valley, and the Military Industrial Complex, while senior citizens have to decide between paying for their medicines or putting food on the table, and young people see no chance of ever owning a home.

Most cynical old codgers, like myself, have trouble visualizing enough people banding together and leading a revolution to overthrow the existing social order. And as long as the bread and circuses are sustained through their money printing debt to eternity scheme, revolution will be postponed. But, the arrogance and hubris of the billionaire psychopaths knows no bounds. Their wealth harvesting operation will reach a limit, unforeseen circumstances (natural disaster, war, massive fraud uncovered) will trigger a financial collapse. The bottom 50% are already destitute. When college educated upper middle class debt slaves lose 80% of their faux wealth in the blink of an eye, the opportunity for real revolution will present itself. Someone will need to stand up.

The ruling class will seek to implement their Digital ID/Digital Currency malicious plot as the solution to the financial collapse they created. This is where it should get interesting. Will the masses again fall for their fear propaganda, totalitarian dictates, lies about the true nature and causes of their purposely engineered crisis, or will someone stand up for truth, honesty, and allowing future generations to not grow up as slaves within a billionaire controlled techno-gulag? This conflict will likely arise within the next five or so years.

The causes of revolution are always the same:

1) A privileged elite class reap all the wealth while pissing on the lower classes;

2) The lower and middle classes are taxed to the point of poverty;

3) The government increases debt to an unsustainable, unpayable level;

4) wasteful military adventures drain the Treasury;

5) rampant government corruption;

6) societal discontent & chaos;

7) economic/financial crisis.

All the dominoes are lined up, just waiting for the trigger flick which will start the cascade of consequences.

Fourth Turnings never fizzle out. They build to a crescendo of violent upheaval with clear winners and losers.

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” 

– John F. Kennedy

We need to keep in mind there are only 3,000 billionaires on this planet and only a few hundred fall into the category of psychopaths in suits. Yes, they live in gated palaces with ample security forces, but the common folk of this country own over 300 million firearms. If or when they feel they have nothing left to lose, the protected privileged classes should start to worry. Their gates will protect them from the consequences of their actions. We may decide to Make Guillotines Great Again.

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