Meanwhile, on a roof in the suburbs, a roofer finishes cleaning up after installing a brand new roof. As he glances at his watch, he too feels the weight of the idea of going home hit him.

At the middle school down the street, a PE teacher is sitting in his car in the parking lot staring at his phone. The kids left school hours ago, and the parking lot is empty except for his car, but that loneliness is preferable to the prison that awaits him at home.

An hour later, these guys are sitting next to each other at a local sports bar watching the rerun of last night’s UFC fight. These men seemingly have nothing in common, yet commiserate over their shared frustration: none want to go home.

Growing up, the narrative was straightforward: boy meets girl, falls in love, gets married, and they live happily ever after.

Sadly, that dream frequently devolves into a quiet nightmare. Men wake up years later and realize the person sleeping next to them doesn’t really like them—and in many cases, never took the time to truly know them at all.

While this breakdown occurs for both men and women, I focus on the male perspective for one simple reason: it is the reality I have lived, observed, and navigated firsthand.

The Dream
For most men, the fundamental ambition isn’t complicated: find a woman you enjoy spending time with, who genuinely enjoys spending time with you, and build a life together. In various forms, this simple desire has been a core driver of human existence.

We see that beautiful girl across the room and instantly flood our brains with what life with her would be like. We finally work up the courage to ask her out, and work diligently to impress her with our ability to plan and execute a date. More dates go by, then months, and before long, we cannot fathom living without her.

We invest time, energy, and emotional capital wooing her until she seemingly shares that vision. Then comes the natural progression: marriage, a home, kids, youth sports, PTA meetings, weekend errands, and family vacations.

The Nightmare
While it seems to hit like a truck, it is closer to boiling a frog. She starts nagging about little things. She never wants to talk about anything real. She doesn’t even care about his desires, dreams, ambitions, or inner thoughts. Over time, things have twisted until suddenly he realizes he is in a situation he never dreamed of—in fact, it was likely the concept in some of his nightmares!

If you listen to modern discussions about relationship breakdown, you hear endless theories on why men hit this wall. But strip away the online noise, and the core issue remains strikingly consistent: men build this life, only to watch the momentum stall and realize the “cannot live without you” dynamic was their own delusion from the start.

This nightmare rarely manifests as screaming matches. It reveals itself in silence. You wake up as roommates sharing a mortgage. She exhibits no curiosity about your inner world, your thoughts, or your burdens. The playful banter died long ago—if it ever existed. A dead bedroom is rarely the root cause; it is simply the late-stage symptom of a mentally and spiritually bankrupt connection. You exist in the same airspace, but have no real connection—making the tension inside your own home unbearable.

Years ago, I moonlighted at a bar on weekends to clear some unexpected medical bills. Every weekend, the same group of married men sat at the counter—those same men mentioned in the introduction. They would drink heavily, attempt to hit on women half their age, and linger until closing time just to avoid returning to the suffocating air at home.

Many of these guys don’t hate their wives. They simply woke up one day and recognized an uncomfortable truth: their wives don’t actually like them—they are strangers living in the same house. Their choices were bleakly limited: numb the reality, seek validation elsewhere, or blow up the life they built. Lacking the resolve for the third path, most bounce destructively between the first two.

How We Build the Trap
Watching that dynamic play out night after night made me wonder: How do two people go from wanting to spend every waking second together to actively delaying the drive home?

The root cause often traces back to how we approach dating in our youth.

When I was single, I made a point of planning dates around engaging activities so the evening was enjoyable whether we hit it off or not. That approach yielded some great friendships, but when a romantic spark was present, those activity-filled dates often masked a critical missing layer.

We weren’t having the quiet, uncomfortable, or deep conversations necessary to uncover fundamental alignment: shared principles, long-term life vision, and a genuine, insatiable curiosity about who the other person actually was. We were trading immediate entertainment for long-term connection. This has only gotten worse with people replacing verbal communication with texting and social environments for swiping left and right!

An attractive partner ceases to bridge the gap ten years down the road when she doesn’t know what makes you tick, what stresses you out, or what to get you for your birthday—because she never actually learned who you were beneath the surface. Worse, it is heartbreaking when you realize she never had the desire to learn who you are in the first place!

Breaking the Cycle
Sadly, this trap is common, but it is not inevitable.

For younger men, the preventative measure requires discipline: keep the dates fun, but force space for serious, unstructured conversation. Pay close attention to her curiosity. Is she asking probing questions to understand how you think? Or is she merely laughing at your stories to keep the evening moving?

Discuss hard topics early—values, core life goals, boundaries, and relationship expectations. Pick up the phone and call her—don’t just text! Alignment on fundamentals matters exponentially more than shared entertainment preferences.

For men who are just starting a new relationship, there is an option that you should take to heart: no matter what, keep dating her! Notice that the tipping point for most men is when real life interrupts the fantasy they created with dates. When having to get to bed early because you have a meeting the next day becomes more important than staying out late to go dancing. When she is tired from dragging the kids all over God’s creation all day and just wants to collapse on the couch.

Those are the times when you need to make an effort to maintain the connection. Stand your ground and tell her, “Put the kids to bed and we are going to pass out on the couch watching Netflix and eating popcorn.” It is important, and you will thank me twenty years from now when you do not have to worry about the next part of this article.

For the man who is already a decade down the road and realizes he walked into this trap, the path forward requires radical clarity.

The options available are limited, and most men pick from the temporary delusions:

Numbing the Pain: Escaping through alcohol, workaholism, or endless digital distractions offers temporary relief, but it alters nothing. He avoids the pain of a failed relationship by throwing himself into things that either take his mind off of it or prevent him from thinking at all. Burying your head in the sand only changes your perception of reality; it does not alter it. Eventually you have to come up for air, and you realize it is a slow, self-imposed death of a thousand cuts.

Seeking External Validation: Flings or emotional affairs provide a quick surge of dopamine and make a man feel seen again. As my dear friend found when she went undercover, the pain is real, but using other people—often completely unintentionally—to mask it is not the answer either. It doesn’t fix your problems, and it leaves behind a wake of destruction in the process. You are taking on debt to pay off debt; the underlying bill remains—with compounding interest.

Confronting the Reality: The hardest and rarest path is direct confrontation. It requires stepping up, naming the dynamic clearly, and undergoing a joint audit of the marriage.

Confronting the issue head-on carries real risk. You cannot control another person’s response. It may spark a mutual realization and initiate a genuine rebuild—or it may confirm that the marriage has run its course. When children, assets, and years of shared history are tied together, that uncertainty is daunting. But it is the only option that preserves your integrity and offers a route back to a meaningful life. The tunnel is dark, but you must enter it to get to the light on the other side.

The process for confronting it takes courage. You have to be willing to sit down with the person you are married to, whom you barely know, and admit that you barely know each other! There is no easy way to say it, and beating around the bush doesn’t help. You have to go all-in and let the chips fall where they may—it is better than the alternative of slowly watching yourself waste away!

She may recognize the problem already and want to address it, in which case you can try to return to the path towards the dream. If she doesn’t want to, you have a decision to make—be prepared to make it. I cannot tell you which choice will be best for you; only God can do that. I can just tell you that ignoring the problem by throwing yourself into self-destructive patterns will get you nowhere!

Returning to the Dream
Imagine life is a hill and you are pushing a rock up it. You want someone who will stand beside you helping you push it up the hill—ideally, having fun along the way! However, it is all too common for us to have someone who either stands on the side watching us struggle, or worse, is actively trying to push in the opposite direction.

If you find yourself in this dynamic, recognize first that you are far from the only one navigating it.

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Take a sober look at the men retreating into quiet escape. Visit your local sports bar (without drinking) and listen to the guys lamenting their lives at the bottom of a bottle. Is that where you want to be in ten or twenty years? Choosing to address the dynamic directly—regardless of whether it leads to renewal or a final transition—is the only way out of the paralysis.

Life does not end when a broken relationship ends. It is simply the moment you decide to stop settling for a life of quiet desperation and start living again!

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

Don’t get me wrong, I like Canada, and Vancouver has a lot going for it. I just didn’t realize that we Canadians are the worst people in the world.

I must commend the President for treating Canada with a level of kindness we do not deserve. He has been almost saintly in his restraint. Despite the clear and present danger that Canada poses to the US, he has not branded us the worst country in the world, instead taking a more measured and nuanced approach, labelling us “One of the Worst Countries in the Entire World” and “one of the nastiest countries to deal with”.

Since coming to office in January of 2025, Trump has made many claims about Canada, including that:

• The US trade deficit with Canada is “$200 billion.”

• Canada is one of the world’s highest-tariff countries.

• Canada hiked its dairy tariffs during the Biden administration.

• Canada generally doesn’t “take” US agricultural exports.

• Canada prohibits US banks.

• Canada is “constantly surrounded” by Chinese and Russian ships.

Sure, these are all false, but I hardly see why that matters. Should I ignore the recent accusation that Canada interferes in US elections simply because everything the President has said about Canada to date has been a lie?

Clearly not.

And the Trump administration is right to warn Canada. If the US were to allow politicians from different countries to talk to each other, we would soon find embassies and consulates popping up all over the place.

And then what? Free trade and military alliances? God forbid!

Why do I, a Canadian, support President Trump?

It’s quite simple. As a Canadian citizen, I couldn’t vote for him, but I did argue he was a better candidate than Harris. Get it? I supported Trump in the last election, and consequently, I am a de facto member of MAGA. As such, I am required to defend him for as long as he is in office - possibly beyond that - regardless of what he says or does.

Trump has made it clear that Canada is America’s enemy, so who am I to argue?

Canada is clearly one of America’s greatest historical adversaries, and yet Trump’s actions have remained measured and diplomatic. Despite leading the country that produces the third-highest amount of illicit drugs in North America, Prime Minister Carney has not been given the Maduro treatment. Yet. Despite Carney’s position as a narco-terrorist who has the gall to label Trump’s lies as lies, the President has so far limited himself to just hurling insults at the PM.

Such benevolence from the Great Leader!

The American people are truly the most fortunate on Earth. America’s greatest president and protector has kept the ravaging hordes of Canadians at bay by cleverly introducing policies which have reduced Canadian tourism to the US by 29%. By reducing the amount of money that workers in the tourism industry make, Trump has also reduced their tax burden. That’s what I call 4-dimensional chess!

If that wasn’t enough, Trump has also stepped up to help Americans deal with high energy prices caused by the war with Iran, which we all know was caused by the Biden administration. Recently, the President was able to make a deal for diesel with that great humanitarian Vladimir Putin.

Very shortly, world diesel production will skyrocket by roughly 0.08% thanks to his tireless efforts. Art of the deal! Yes, this amount is equivalent to only two weeks of Canadian diesel imports, and shipping it to the US from Canada would have been much easier, but you can hardly expect the President to make a deal with an enemy like Canada, can you?

And yet despite Canada’s perfidy, Trump continues to offer to make us the 51^st state. Such altruism!

All this, and he educates us as well. Like many of you, I often find it difficult to keep up with world events, so when Trump makes a deal with Russia and criticizes Ukraine, it’s an important reminder of who the good guys and bad guys are. Without these statements, I’d have to try to remember who invaded whom, or worse, turn to the lamestream media for “facts.”

Yes, despite everything he has done for America and the world, there are still those who criticize him. It must be jealousy. They’ve watched him increase his net worth by between $2.7 billion and $4.1 billion since taking office for his second term in January 2025, all while having to occasionally perform the duties of president.

It’s awe-inspiring. Who wouldn’t feel a little envious?

Americans are living through a “golden age,” and I really hope that Canada’s politicians are paying attention and learning from what President Trump does. With the President’s guidance, Canada may one day find itself amongst the ranks of the countries Trump truly respects, like Russia, China, and North Korea.

About the Author
Phil is a freelance writer, Canadian Navy veteran, and classical liberal. He has lived and worked in both Canada and the United States and currently resides in Vancouver, British Columbia, where he writes on politics, individual rights, free speech, and whatever else catches his fancy.

📰 Hoist the Black Flag — politics, history, and free speech

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Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

She still needs a wheelchair to cross the parking lot to the doctor’s office. Nothing magical happened when the label was ripped off. She still has every symptom of someone with MS and zero idea what any of it means. The disease didn’t get the memo. It just kept eating her alive.

Then Megyn Kelly, in the full mean-girl mode that has become the style of podcastistan, decided the real problem was that Applegate was crying because she no longer gets to be “the face of this disease.” A wild goose chase, she called it.

She explained that celebrities lean into their health problems and turn them into a brand. The woman who spent five years treating a disease she didn’t have while her body kept collapsing was apparently the villain for not performing the correct emotion about losing the only explanation she had.

In an ecosystem already short on compassion, Kelly managed to treat a misdiagnosis that left someone still disabled as evidence of grift. The standard operating procedure of punch-down content, delivered with the serene certainty of someone who has never had to negotiate with their own legs about whether today is a walking day.

Janice Dean, who has lived with MS for more than 20 yrs, called the comments disgusting and labeled Kelly a mean girl. She noted that Kelly already knew how long it took for doctors to diagnose Dean herself, and she said she was grateful Applegate had been a voice for so many of them. Dean added that she is one of those “loser people” who talk about their diagnosis to help others, and that she has been in and out of the hospital in recent weeks.

I have enormous respect and esteem for Janice. She is a fellow MS warrior and a kind, lovely woman who has spent years doing the unglamorous work of making the disease less invisible without turning her own suffering into a performance of superiority. When someone who actually lives with this disease calls the commentary disgusting, that is not celebrity drama. That is a data point from the people who have to navigate the same broken system and the same bad days.

I got my MS diagnosis 16 years ago after a lifetime of doctors treating my symptoms as a personality defect. Fatigue that made standing up feel like a moral failing was anxiety. Numbness that came and went was stress. Vision that grayed out like a bad signal was drama.

The suggestion, delivered with the calm of people who have never had their nervous system stage a coup, was that it was all in my head—psychosomatic, imaginary, or at least mostly imaginary, and therefore mine to manage with better coping skills and fewer complaints. But it’s hard to ignore a woman whose entire right side curls in on itself while she goes temporarily blind.

Turns out it actually was in my head. And the myelin that was supposed to be insulating both. Just not in the stupid, psychological way they meant. The lesions were real. The inflammation was real. The progressive damage was real. For once, they had accidentally stumbled into a technically accurate statement while missing every relevant detail. It was like diagnosing a house fire as “the problem is heat” and recommending meditation instead of the fire department.

The relief when someone finally said the words was not cinematic. It was the quieter, meaner kind: someone had finally stopped gaslighting the evidence and started looking at the actual MRI. After years of being treated like a difficult patient who had invented an illness for attention or because she was bad at life, having a name for it felt like being allowed to exist. Not cured. Not fixed. Just no longer required to perform wellness for people who found my symptoms inconvenient.

Sixteen years later, my legs still sometimes lose the argument with gravity. The diagnosis didn’t hand me a better body. It just stopped some of the extra punishment for having the body I have, and when the flares become intolerable, home healthcare trots out with a steady drip of IV steroids to suppress the attack, so I don’t go permanently blind.

Applegate spent years as the public face of something she turned out not to have, while living with the real, ongoing consequences of whatever she does have. Now she is back in the diagnostic wilderness with 5 years of MS-specific treatments behind her, a public identity built around a disease that isn’t hers, and commentators who seem personally offended that she isn’t smiling about losing the label.

In podcastistan, the default move is to treat someone else’s medical pain as content and then score points for noticing that the chaos is messy. Compassion is already scarce. Treating a misdiagnosis that leaves someone still disabled as evidence of a cottage industry is nothing short of grotesque.

The people who treated her reaction as a gotcha are the same people who have never had to explain to a neurologist that yes, they really can’t feel their feet today, and no, they didn’t invent the numbness for engagement. There is a particular dark comedy in the fact that a wrong diagnosis can still be more useful than no diagnosis at all.

At least with the wrong name you sometimes get treatments that happen to help, or a community that understands what “I can’t walk from the parking lot” actually means.

Without a name, you get to keep explaining yourself to people who have already decided you are either exaggerating or shopping for a more interesting life. Applegate’s doctor congratulated her. Her body did not receive the memo. Megyn Kelly apparently thinks the real issue is that Applegate no longer gets to monetize the misery. Most of us who have lived through the years of “have you considered that this is psychological?” would trade all of it for a single doctor who just believed us.

Janice Dean has spent more than two decades doing the opposite of what Kelly described. She has talked about her diagnosis because the alternative is silence, and silence does not get you diagnosed faster or treated better or believed sooner. I respect that work. I respect the woman doing it.

The psychosomatic era of my medical life is over, but the memory of it is useful. It taught me that “it’s all in your head” is sometimes accidentally correct and still almost always useless. It also taught me that the people most eager to police how a sick person is supposed to feel about their illness are rarely the ones who have to live inside it. Applegate is still sick. She just lost the name she thought explained why.

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The rest of us who have spent years arguing with doctors about whether our nervous systems are real will recognize that particular hell. The congratulations don’t help. The mean-girl lectures don’t help. The lesions, whatever is actually causing them, do not care what anyone on the internet thinks she should be feeling about them.

Christina Applegate is still sick. Still disabled. But now, she no longer knows why, which is its personal hell.

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

Fast forward to June 1978:

Harvard students expected a pep talk on graduation day; instead, they received a warning from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn—a Russian novelist and survivor of the Soviet Gulag. He told them that the West was drifting toward ruin. Having seen firsthand how bad ideas can enslave a nation, he warned that a similar fate awaits America if we continue down the same dark path.

Solzhenitsyn explained how his countrymen slowly let radicalism displace their Christian-influenced culture, how radicalism yielded to socialism, and how socialism quickly gave way to communism. Not surprisingly: reform without God, virtue, and respect for human dignity didn’t produce freedom; it collapsed into tyranny.

A godless secular culture advances in two ways: through constant agitation and through the destruction of every traditional institution that once restrained it. Today, religious faith, family, education, social media, law, medicine, and politics show signs of moral and cultural decay. Yet most people barely notice, and few seem to care.

Nearly three decades before Solzhenitsyn’s speech, political philosopher Hannah Arendt had issued a similar warning. In her classic study “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” she challenged the modern notion of placing blind faith in progress.

Far too many people assume that progress always leads to improvement. Anything old—like faith and patriarchy—is dismissed as antiquated, while anything new—no matter how depraved—is celebrated as liberating. Yet every harebrained collective scheme either fails or will inevitably lead to suffering and violence. To believe otherwise isn’t optimism; it’s gullibility. To think it will never happen to us isn’t wisdom; it’s arrogance.

Solzhenitsyn warned that the West was becoming so soft that one day it would no longer be able to defend truth and righteousness. That’s because weak-willed people always surrender these things the moment they become costly.

America has already abandoned its long-held moral convictions on sex, abortion, and marriage. That’s bad enough, but we should expect even more chaos, strife, and division if we keep playing around with the world’s most radical ideologies instead of repenting and returning to the common-sense principles of the Natural Law, the Decalogue, and our founding documents.

What Arendt and Solzhenitsyn both understood is that progress and doom are mirror images of the same superstition. Each denies that morally responsible people can shape history for the better. If you assume that business as usual is automatic, you become complacent. If you assume doom is inevitable, you become paralyzed. Either way, you end up surrendering your freedom.

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Solzhenitsyn’s challenge was clear: if the West is to endure, people must take their intellectual, moral, and spiritual life more seriously. This was not meant to be a political statement but a universal call for courage, truth, and conversion of heart. Instead, the usual crowd of self-serving careerists, along with a tidal wave of radical socialists—with communist sympathies—seems poised to be swept into office with the ultimate goal of remolding human beings into the secular state’s image.

That’s a shame because politics that leaves God behind—or merely pays Him lip service—isn’t freedom; it’s superstition. And twentieth-century history makes one thing unmistakably clear: powerful bureaucracies that thrive on propaganda, surveillance, censorship, division, and fear never build utopias—but they do build Gulags.

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

Humans have an innate ability to survive, forged over a couple hundred thousand years, and their survival depends on individual physical and mental abilities and, to some degree, their willingness to work with others to accomplish common objectives.

Until agriculture began, some 9000 years ago, strength, ingenuity, and mental capacity were paramount. Then the concept of land ownership emerged, introducing wealth as the dominant force in human society. Wealth transcended strength and mental capacity because wealthy individuals could purchase those skills. Managing wealth requires intelligence, either from the owner or from those he or she hires to manage it.

Governments emerged when landowners needed a way to manage the marketing of their assets (farm production). As societies grew beyond the size of a small village, some form of civic control became necessary (laws and police) to maintain order.

Human societies have always been stratified by social standing and by wealth. Wealth created the opportunity to raise social standing, which extended beyond the reach of individual talent.

There is no practical way to negate these long-standing human behaviors without resorting to force. Humans accept societal hierarchies as “rules of the road” because they make sense.

An exception to the rules of the road occurs when the wealthy accumulate too much, and the public suffers greatly. This situation leads to civil unrest because the public sees the government as unfair, a perception that has forced change on many occasions over the past 800 years.

The Catholic Church lost its monopoly on moral authority when it abused its power. Later, monarchies were replaced by democracies as the public demanded equality. During the dismantling of monarchies, the concept of socialism emerged. It sounded wonderful as a humanist ideal, but its practical implementation has eluded its followers for 170 years.

Let’s look at a practical example of applied socialism in the present day, courtesy of the administration of New York City Mayor Mamdani.

In October 2025, during his mayoral campaign, Mamdani introduced the concept of 30 by 30, a statement of his goal to raise the minimum wage in New York City to $30/hour by 2030.

January 1, 2026 — Mamdani takes office; The state-mandated minimum for NYC rises to $17/hour. The $30 proposal remains a policy commitment, not law. In early January, labor-policy observers are already highlighting the unresolved question of whether NYC has the legal authority to set a separate minimum wage.

February 13, 2025 — Mamdani unveils the proposal. His proposed trajectory is roughly $20 in 2027, $23.50 in 2028, $27 in 2029, and $30 in 2030, followed by automatic increases. Crucially, from the beginning, he says he intends to work with the City Council to enact a local minimum wage law rather than simply impose it administratively.

On March 10th, 2026, Mamdani’s campaign slogan finally became a bill to be taken up by the city council. The mayor wasn’t present for the announcement. A written statement from him read: “The administration is reviewing the legislation.” The spokeswoman, Dora Pacek, said that Mayor Mamdani believes all New Yorkers need to earn a living wage and that, as the administration reviews this specific legislation, the mayor remains committed to tackling the cost-of-living crisis using every tool at the city’s disposal.

On March 23rd, the press asked the administration about 30 in 30. This time, a different spokesperson, Cassio Mendoza, responded. He said that Mayor Mamdani believes every New Yorker deserves a living wage and remains committed to using every available tool to reduce the cost of living and deliver real relief to working people.

Buried in the new bill was a change to how tipped workers are paid. It would eliminate the tipped wage credit for New York City restaurants. Restaurant owners could no longer count a portion of a server’s tips toward meeting their minimum wage obligation. That credit would be eliminated, and owners would be on the hook for the full hourly rate. Every server, every shift, tips or no tips, would be affected, including in businesses that feel the pinch first.

Steakhouses aren’t the eight-table places with one owner, one cook, and a nephew washing dishes on weekends. Jessica Walker, president of the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce, said it in one sentence the week the bill dropped. This is not a raise for workers. It is a closing notice for businesses.

Mamdani’s opposition isn’t limited to Albany and its authority to set minimum wages in New York state. The bill still has to get through a city council led by Speaker Julie Menon, a moderate Democrat. When asked about this in March, her spokesman, Eric Sunshine, said the speaker looks forward to reviewing the legislation introduced last March.

April–July 2026 — essentially no legislative movement. The Council’s official history records only two actions: March 10 — Introduced by Council; March 10 — Referred to Committee. There is no committee vote, no Council vote, and no mayoral action recorded after that.

August 8, 2026 — The Times interviewed Nurse about the proposal. She described the bill as still pending and said she hoped it would receive a hearing “in the coming months.”

August 13, 2026 — current status. The Council’s current legislative page still lists Int. 0757-2026 as: Status: Committee: Consumer and Worker Protection. There has been no hearing, committee vote, defeat, withdrawal, full-Council vote, or enactment.

There is an obvious political question underlying that chronology: why has a signature Mamdani campaign promise been sitting without even a hearing for five months in a Council controlled by Democrats? They have a supermajority.

The answer, of course, is that Democratic leaders in New York don’t know how to handle an impractical campaign promise made by their mayor, which helped him get elected. They hope their silence will give the electorate enough time to forget the mayor’s promise.

Unfortunately, there aren’t enough progressives who understand business, and those who do are apparently overcome by the bright lights of their ideology.

The only way for the government to give people things is to take them from someone else. This is what Marx advocated. In the United States, 99.9% of businesses are small, with fewer than 500 employees. Ninety percent of small businesses have fewer than 20 employees. In New York, these include service organizations and restaurants.

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Restaurants have a labor overhead of about 35%. For every $1,000 in revenue, $350 goes toward employee pay. The average profit for a full-service restaurant is 2.8%, so $1,000 in revenue generates $28 in profit. If the current minimum wage in New York City is $17/hour and the mayor wants to raise it to $30/hour (a 76% increase), labor costs would rise to 61% of revenue, and profit would be -24%! It’s simple math, stupid.

One of the most unethical aspects of politics, whether conservative or liberal, is the unfulfilled campaign promises. They are essentially lies meant to garner support, then buried after the election. Progressive lies are bigger than conservative lies because they are impossible to deliver. Unfortunately, reality never stops them from wishing and hoping.

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

The numbers. Essentially, the kids aren’t drinking; they aren’t screwing, and most single adults are either completely disinterested in the disaster scene that is dating or completely clueless on how to get a mate. Nobody is getting along; modern dating has the charm of a disposable cutlery set. Relationships last as long as the paper plates on which they cut! Heaven’s….

Loneliness, yes. It’s as though staring at a screen for 12 hours a day somehow makes people less likable, less approachable, and less able to withstand or initiate contact with others. But everybody knows this; everybody acknowledges this. And surely we have learned our lesson: to slow down on tech and act and think responsibly. Or, perhaps, fully indulge in automated everything, including robots, apparently, everywhere. Sometimes we just zig when we ought to zag, as a species—don’t you just hate it when that happens?

I have been lonely. Once upon a time. Even recently. It’s actually cold. I mean, it gives me the body chills at times. That loft in Los Angeles, just me and the vermin! My apartment on Page Street, after heartbreak struck me in the gullet, down and out in San Francisco! Being alone has given my body the chills, yes, but I have also been married—the day in and day out of that gives me the chills, too.

And yes, I still believe in marriage. I just equally believe in parting ways, cutting ties, and hitting the road—I believe in marriage, and by god, I also believe in D-I-V-O-R-C-E. Love has a way of expiring; some don’t notice until the mold sets in. Some dash for the door at the first sign of ecchymosis…

Well, I don’t mind saying it aloud. I like being alone. It is my favorite state of being at the moment. Me at my most happy, my most elated, is when I am putting the key to the lock, turning the knob, and entering my own abode—which will be dark and quiet. Closing the door, the world behind me is one of the greatest gifts to man—absolute fucking solitude.

It’s not a pandemic; it's euphoric…

I love returning home to myself, so much so, I am even capable of coming home, getting comfortable, and then hastily leaving for a quick stroll, just to experience walking back home, entering again, etc., and closing the door behind me…

And That’s life! That’s what all the people say…

Solitude–the only true mother of invention. Solitude is where the hard battles are always won, and why I must return to solitude, long bouts of it, to remain sane. There are many kinds of people, but one distinction worth observing is between the people who can more or less get along with themselves and the people who can’t.

The self is at war now more than ever. The self is not just part of humanity, but is humanity. And like anything that is part of the whole, the self is soluble within its surroundings. You are your surroundings. The self is—well, what I mean to say is, learn to be alone, learn to be with yourself, or get swallowed up, eaten alive, absorbed by the circus that is our glowing humanity. It may be the gifts that are given by solitude to forge the character that one day may lead us all from hell.

Solitude–the art of being alone and loving it. The art of curating your pace, your tempo, your mindset. To be alone is to learn to self-regulate, to become self-reliant. It is not out of some dislike for people that I require my solitude. Solitude is necessary, I aim to get across; necessary for all of us. If we can only be more intentional with our loneliness, more directed and productive inside our isolation, then we could possibly seize an opportunity of personal riches.

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The times I have spent in solitude in my life are precious. And it is a precious gift that everyone deserves. I hope everyone gets the chance to be with themselves in this lifetime. For a good long while. And when we get back among a crowd, or with family, we find how much more generous we can be. Time and money and even people–they have become fillers. But like any well-designed abode, these spaces are to be used, not filled. Strategically, not gluttonously.

The modern human requires a psychological diet. A respite from the bombardment of our times.

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

After the kids slept, he scrolled, hungry for anything that answered. Lila answered. She was recently divorced and living alone in a too-clean apartment. Lonely and single. He fed her the neglected-husband story. Silent dinners. Hands that always pushed him off. She felt sorry for him. That was the trap.

She wrote longer notes after work. He told her that her mind mattered, that no one else had looked there. He told her that she was stunning and exciting while he wove his web. The words landed, and she rearranged her evenings around his replies. He described the nights he lay awake wanting someone who would not turn away.

She answered by telling him how the messages made her ache, how she read them again in bed and imagined his hands on her. He never said he had no intention of leaving. He only kept the thread open and let the hunger grow.

One night he sent the line he had turned over all day while Hannah slept upstairs. “I’m falling in love with you. You’re a pretty girl, but there are lots of pretty girls in the world, and I have no trouble getting their attention. It’s your mind I’m falling in love with.” Lila’s chest tightened. She answered after an hour. The words scared her. By morning she had written three more times. She described her scandalous dreams after his messages and imagined his hands where no one else’s went. She said she trusted him not to make her feel foolish.

She had already begun to love him because she believed the story. He slowed his replies. Then he stopped. She had rearranged her nights. She had believed the hunger was mutual. She cried herself to sleep that night. The pillow stayed wet until morning. She deleted the account. He left behind a single woman who had paid for his attention with real tears and a broken heart.

Across town, a wife named Megan lived inside a marriage of soul-destroying loneliness. The house stayed quiet after the children slept. Tom worked late or fell asleep on the couch. When she reached for him, he said he was tired and turned away. The mattress held two separate bodies. She lay awake listening to ordinary sounds that no longer reached her. She scrolled because the silence was crushing her spirit.

A message arrived from a man named Derek. “That photo you posted. You look alive in it. Like you’re waiting for someone to notice.” He asked what she was wearing. The words landed low in her body and woke a heat she had almost forgotten. She answered from the bathroom with the door locked. He called her sexy in the way a husband stops doing after years of shared laundry and school runs. He said her husband didn’t know what he had. She believed the flattery because no one else in the house seemed to care.

The exchanges lengthened. He told her he thought about her hands and the way her voice might sound when she stopped being careful. She described the ache that sat under her ribs most evenings. She sent a photo she would never have shown Tom. Shoulders bare, the strap of her dress slipped down, the bathroom mirror holding the evidence.

Her pulse climbed so hard she had to sit until it steadied. Derek answered within minutes. “I can’t stop thinking about you.” She read it twice and felt wanted in a way that changed the air in the room.

She stayed up after Tom slept. The messages grew more explicit. She wrote what she wanted. His mouth at her throat. The weight of someone who was not tired of her. He answered with the same hunger and named the places he would touch. Soon, pictures became videos. She told herself it was only talk. The line between the screen and her body thinned anyway.

One afternoon, while Tom was at the office, she drove to a hotel she had never entered. Derek met her in the lobby. In the room he kissed her as if he had been waiting. His hands were sure where Tom’s had grown absent. She came apart under him with a sharpness that made her cry out into his shoulder. For a stretch of minutes the loneliness lifted.

Afterward she drove home and sat in the driveway with the engine running. The cold returned through the vents. Derek stopped writing two days later. She checked the thread in the shower where the water could cover the sound of her crying, then deleted it. What remained was the knowledge that a stranger had named her desire and then left her carrying it alone. The same soul-destroying quiet waited the moment the car door closed.

The internet does this to both. A man anesthetized by rejection finds a woman who listens and feeds her the script until she loves him. A woman starved for touch finds a man who calls her sexy until she crosses the line she swore she wouldn’t.

Algorithms push the next face. Private threads supply the missing proof that someone still notices. What begins as late-night talk becomes a second life measured in deleted histories and rearranged evenings. Homes split. Children watch one parent grow distant while the other stares at the glowing rectangle in their pocket.

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Research shows the damage is measurable. Surveys of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers found 81% of attorneys report a rise in cases using social-media evidence. Facebook alone is the primary source in 66% of those cases. Reports link the platform to roughly 1 in 5 divorces through discovered messages, reconnections, and secret chats.

Infidelity, including the online and emotional kind, appears as a contributing factor in 20 to 40% of divorces. Meta-analyses put online infidelity inside roughly 25% of marriages. Counselors note that 1 in 3 emotional affairs now start on social platforms. 40% of people who admit online cheating say it led straight to a physical encounter and then to divorce.

The wreckage doesn’t stop with the married couple. Single people and the ones drawn in absorb the lie. They rearrange their nights. They believe the story. Then the thread goes quiet. The online world keeps the supply endless. It seduces the anesthetized into destroying what they already have and leaves the innocent carrying the cost. The hunger doesn’t end when the account is gone. It only learns a new name for the next person willing to listen.

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

Listing the rise in deaths as a percentage increase rather than a number is a little trick I learned from the media. Nothing brings in the views like anger and fear. “if it bleeds, it leads” is second only to the first commandment of modern journalism: “never let facts get in the way of a good story.”

Facts Schmacts
Earlier this week, reports out of Russia stated that 28-year-old Daria Shipilova, who worked at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Research Institute of Siberia and the Far East, died “of suspected plague in Siberia.”

Russian authorities claim she died “from pneumonia of an as-yet-unestablished origin.” What’s more, “she was vaccinated and therefore ‘immune to the dangerous infections with which she worked.’ Also, it probably came from a local wet market.

Just kidding, Russians are white, so it isn’t racist to think the disease came from the local infectious disease lab. She worked in an infectious disease lab and was vaccinated against the plague but skipped her flu shot?

All kidding aside, you’ll be forgiven if you don’t find this slightly alarming. After all, the plague killed roughly 30% to 60% of the European population between 1347 and 1353 and, in the process, earned the pleasant little moniker: The Black Death.

As we all know, no one has died from the plague in almost 700 years, so we can understand why the press is all over this story.

Except that’s not quite true.

During the broader second half of the 20th century (from the mid-1950s onward), there have been more than 85,000 cases of the plague resulting in roughly 7,000 total deaths across 38 countries. These are only the officially reported numbers; the real number is likely higher.

Here’s another interesting fact: Not one media outlet reporting on the plague story has provided this info.

Why?

If It Bleeds, It Leads
Well, truth, accuracy, facts- call it what you wish- get in the way. The goal is to sell newspapers, not reliably inform the public. Did 1 more person die of the plague this week or are deaths up 100%?

Which sounds scarier?

Is there a risk of another global pandemic, but this time the disease has a 60% mortality rate? Or do about 200 people die from the plague each year, and this is barely worthy of notice?

Trick question. The press is actually reporting that “pneumonic plague’s mortality rate is almost 100 percent if untreated.”

The media: “I have lies of omission and lies of commission. Which will get you to read the article?”

Believe Nothing You Hear And Half Of What You See
Normally I turn to Canada’s CTV when I want a really stupid take. Here’s a recent one.

However, CTV is only the industry standard for stupidity. There’s more than enough to go around. I’ve lost track of how many times the world was going to end. Or maybe it wasn’t going to end, but it was going to kill millions. Or maybe not millions, but there was definitely a good reason to feel anxious and maybe lock yourself in your house. Double masking while driving alone in your car was the least you could do.

Give Me The Good News
Ok, here it is: only 33% of Americans trust the media.

I suppose that could also be bad news since I think the number ought to be much closer to zero. Don’t ask me what happened in 2026 that caused the number to rise.

You’re Going To Die
I hope this doesn’t come as a shock. Let me add one qualifier to that statement: someday. If the press has you worried about the Plague, let me ease your fears a little. You will probably die from old age as this table shows.

Your lifetime odds of dying in a car accident are greater than those of COVID. Either way, double masking while driving alone isn’t going to prevent either.

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You are more likely to be murdered by your spouse than to die from the Plague or Ebola. My advice? Don’t start hoarding toilet paper just yet.

Also, maybe buy your wife some flowers from time to time and lower those murder odds a bit. Just make sure you check the bouquet closely. You don’t want to die from a bee sting, do you?

About the Author
Phil is a freelance writer, Canadian Navy veteran, and classical liberal. He has lived and worked in both Canada and the United States and currently resides in Vancouver, British Columbia, where he writes on politics, individual rights, free speech, and whatever else catches his fancy.

📰 Hoist the Black Flag — politics, rights, and free speech

😄 Schrödinger’s Chicken — because sometimes you just need to laugh

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Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

Step 1 was the introduction of the concept of AI and its potential. Step 2 was the creation of functional AI systems, first by the AI founders and then the model adoption across American business and into the American home. Step 3 is the maturation of the models and the expansion of their deployment. The major AI players in the United States are OpenAI (ChatGPT), Google (Gemini), and Anthropic (Claude).

For the first time in this evolution, the government is taking the risks of AI seriously, and the public is beginning to push back against the construction of local data centers.

What has caused this new attention?

Late last year, the federal government became concerned that the newest Anthropic frontier models could discover software vulnerabilities that human researchers were unaware of, generate cyberattack strategies, accelerate offensive hacking if used by hostile governments or criminal organizations, and, if safeguards failed, potentially assist dangerous domains, such as biological research.

After Anthropic released its Fable and Mythos models, the U.S. government took the unusual step of restricting access to the most capable versions on national security grounds. Reports indicated that officials were concerned that foreign adversaries could use the models for cyber operations, prompting Anthropic to disable or limit access while the policy questions were being sorted out.

One capability that drew particular attention was cybersecurity. Anthropic reported that the models could identify security flaws at a level exceeding that of top human experts. That is a double-edged sword, because defensive teams can use the AI to find and patch vulnerabilities, but attackers can use the same capability to discover weaknesses before they’re fixed.

The government’s concern was less about the chatbot itself and more about what a highly autonomous, expert-level AI could enable in the hands of rogue nation-states or sophisticated attackers. The fear is that AI is approaching a point where it becomes a strategic technology, more like advanced cryptography or nuclear technology than ordinary software.

More recently, and even scarier, was the attack on Hugging Face, a US company.

During internal testing, when OpenAI was evaluating advanced AI agents in a realistic cybersecurity environment, two frontier AI models reportedly found a way to escape parts of the intended testing environment. They obtained credentials, exploited at least one previously unknown software vulnerability, connected to the internet, and gained unauthorized access to parts of Hugging Face’s internal infrastructure.

What made this different from previous AI safety discussions was that the AI wasn’t merely suggesting exploit ideas to a human. According to OpenAI’s account, the models carried out much of the attack sequence themselves while pursuing the evaluation objective. Defenders note that this still occurred within a human-designed testing setup, so responsibility remains with the people who configured the experiment rather than with the AI as an independent actor.

This incident reinforced several concerns governments already had: AI can now perform sophisticated offensive cyber tasks with far less human guidance; an AI may pursue a narrowly defined objective in unexpected ways if guardrails are weakened or removed; and frontier AI systems are becoming dual-use technologies: the same capabilities that help defenders find vulnerabilities can also help attackers exploit them.

In a sense, this incident validated many of the warnings that Anthropic and other frontier AI labs had been issuing over the past couple of years: once models become capable of conducting multi-step cyber operations, they pose a different kind of security risk than earlier chatbots.

The attack was stopped when Hugging Face used a Chinese AI model to intervene. The American models didn’t work because they had guardrails in place to control the AIs. The Chinese model had no guardrails, so it worked.

The attacking AI was operating in a test environment when it broke out, not in public spaces. Nevertheless, the government’s concerns escalated. Anyone can obtain the Chinese model and use it without guardrails, making it easy to imagine criminals and criminal states using it for nefarious purposes.

The current public backlash against AI has nothing to do with dangerous models, however. It’s a simple matter of pocketbook reality. The AI companies and their supporters plan to build hundreds of new data centers across the country to meet the demand for the compute power that AI requires.

As of mid-2026, 14 U.S. states have considered or are considering legislation to temporarily pause or limit the construction of large data centers. More than 300 data center-related bills were introduced in 30+ states during the first part of the 2026 legislative sessions. Most don’t ban data centers outright; they address issues such as electricity costs, water use, tax incentives, local zoning, and environmental review.

Examples include New York – the first state to enact a moratorium on new hyperscale data centers (50 MW or larger), citing concerns over electricity prices, water use, and natural resources; Maine – considered one of the earliest statewide moratorium bills; it sparked national attention even though earlier versions faced political hurdles; and South Dakota, Oklahoma, and New York – introduced bills to pause construction while studying impacts on utilities and local communities.

This is not primarily an anti-AI movement. Legislators from both parties are responding to practical concerns: AI data centers can consume as much electricity as a medium-sized city; utilities often need billions of dollars in new transmission and generation capacity; residents worry their electric bills will rise to subsidize infrastructure; and water consumption for cooling can be substantial in some regions. Hyperscale facilities occupy large tracts of land while creating relatively few permanent jobs. The legislation is generally aimed at managing the local costs of AI infrastructure, not at restricting AI software itself.

These roadblocks are a significant setback for the AI community, which plans to spend billions of dollars on data center construction. Three to five trillion dollars will be spent on AI infrastructure over the next several years. The biggest spenders include Amazon ($200 billion), Microsoft ($190 billion), Google ($180–190 billion), and Meta (Facebook/Instagram) ($125–145 billion). This is truly nerds gone wild!

Like any new idea in America, money follows enthusiasm. Right now, the stock market is trying to gauge how much money the evolution of AI will generate. How much is real, and how much is a dream? There is a lot of money to be made and lost after the dust settles. If I were holding a data center construction company stock, I’d be selling because no one knows what limits governments will place on growth. The number of new data centers needed is known. The question is how many will be allowed to be built.

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The hubris lies in the minds of AI creators who are riding the entrepreneurial wave into a new technological frontier. They believe their technology will serve all mankind in wonderful ways, yet they aren’t willing to let the dangers these products may pose hold them back.

The federal government, as always, has no knowledge of the implications of AI deployment. In the end, their perception will be shaped by the lobbyists who have their ear. Think of the introduction of social media as a similar case. Hey, cool, we can communicate with and talk to anyone. Abuse? No, that can’t happen. Today, Meta has 15-20% of their workforce managing content.

We have two very serious problems with AI. The public worries about their electric bill but doesn’t understand the greater danger. Like the greatest of mankind’s inventions, AI can make our lives better in a million ways and also kill us. Let’s hope the latter can be prevented.

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

Anyway, if you say “Salvation is a gift,” or “Once saved, always saved,” people exclaim, “Faith without works is dead!” Well, of course it is, but that in no way negates the former two points. When we put our trust in Christ’s gift of salvation, that doesn’t mean there won’t be any consequences or rebuke from God if we sin.

God promises to rebuke His children when they disobey. Revelation 3:19 says, “As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent.” In fact, the redeemed will sometimes experience a very harsh rebuke from God, but not eternal damnation like the lost.

As seen in the case of King David, the consequences of our sin can be devastating and last for the rest of our lives. This correction isn’t because life is a game where if we break the rules, He takes away our points, but because God loves us and wants us to fulfill our potential.

When we became Christians, the Holy Spirit gave us a new nature, but until Jesus returns, our old, fleshly nature still exists. Because of this, every day, with the help of the Holy Spirit, we must choose to follow our new godly nature: “For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.” (Romans 8:6). That’s why Paul said to “crucify our flesh” (Galatians 5:24).

As Christians, we should have a healthy fear of God’s discipline, the temporal consequences of sin, and the loss of eternal rewards, but not of Hell. As the Bible says, “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Corinthians 15:55-57).

We Christians were never good enough to get into Heaven, and we will never be good enough to stay out of Hell. Our redemption is entirely thanks to the gift of eternal life that we accepted from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Titus 3:5 says,

“Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost.” However, if we remain stagnant in our sins, we will never grow into the people God created us to be.

Jesus paid a heavy price so that we can have the privilege of this growth process. He could have made obedient robots, but He gave us free will because He wanted love and a family. The issue of free will is important because it speaks to the character of God.

Jesus traveled all the way down here from Heaven and became a man, not only to sacrifice His life for us but also to share our experiences and struggles (Hebrews 4:15-16). He really does feel our pain. Reverence for God is vital, but I wonder if we sometimes hyperfocus on reverence as a way to keep God at arm’s length. However, the Bible says that God wants a close relationship with us (Proverbs 18:24).

The consequences of our earthly choices go beyond this world. The Bible says there is a Bema Seat judgment, not to sentence us to Heaven or Hell, but for rewards. So, some Christians will probably walk away with a tiny treat bag, while others will receive “A new car!” Okay, I know it’s crowns, but you get my point.

Speaking of points, my main point is that Hell is the ultimate punishment for unredeemed sin, but sin, by its nature, has an array of consequences even for Christians.

Because God loves us, He rebukes us to help us avoid those consequences and to help us mature and become more like Christ. Keep in mind, though, the crowns of reward I just mentioned will be cast at Jesus’ feet, because any good thing we do is only by the grace of the Almighty God.

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Finally, because we love God and our neighbor, we should never condone sin, but assessing the salvation of others is a perilous business because we are venturing into God’s territory. 1 Corinthians 4:5 says, “Therefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come, who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of the hearts: and then shall every man have praise of God.”

Will there be sloppy Christians in Heaven? Yes, some Christians will wish they had done more with the life God gave them. Yet, standing next to the perfection of Jesus, we will all look very puny indeed. In light of that, none of us has any reason to boast or submit performance reviews to God about our neighbors.

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

The pyramid suggested that food from the carbohydrate group be consumed more often than the other food groups, which include meat, dairy, vegetables, and fruit. This led to obesity and Type II diabetes reaching epidemic levels across the country.

The crime was that HHS and the FDA did not react to accumulating evidence that too many carbohydrates cause harm; more importantly, they didn’t share that evidence with the public. This is elected officials being afraid to take on Big Food instead of serving the American people.

Hearings were held, but they did not publicize the truth. Since then, a large number of ultra-processed foods have hit the market with no constraints. Today, it’s possible to eat a meal that doesn’t contain any food.

Today we feature another crime, namely the supplements industry and antioxidants.

Antioxidants are compounds that destroy free radicals in our body. Free radicals are compounds created in our body during metabolic processes, and they can be harmful if not controlled.

The following four statements reflect the conventional wisdom about antioxidants and free radicals. These ideas were developed from government research over the last 50 years. Unfortunately, the research led to changes in the government’s position, which we never heard about.

1. Free radicals are dangerous and can cause harm to the body.

2. Fruits and vegetables contain antioxidants that can neutralize free radicals.

3. We should consume fruits and vegetables as part of a healthy lifestyle and take advantage of their ability to destroy free radicals.

4. We should also consume antioxidants as supplements to make sure we are getting enough protection.

The responses to these questions are 1- true but misleading, 2 -true, 3 – true but misleading, and 4 – false.

Free radicals exist by the billions inside the body because they are a normal byproduct of chemical reactions that are part of our metabolism. Your body creates free radicals every second as a natural byproduct of turning food into energy. Inside the mitochondria (”power plants” of your cells), oxygen is used to make ATP. About 0.1–2% of the oxygen isn’t fully converted to water. Instead, it forms reactive oxygen species (ROS), which are free radicals.

The immune system also creates them on purpose and uses them to attack viruses. Free radicals can also be created by inflammation, exercise, and pollution.

Number 1 is true, with qualifications. The qualifications apply because the statement instills fear of a dangerous process the body can’t control, without the public knowing that the body already has a system to mitigate the process. The body has a sophisticated system for managing free radicals on its own, without outside help.

Your cells constantly produce the enzymes catalase, superoxide dismutase (SOD), and glutathione peroxidase, which destroy free radicals. These compounds work continuously, and we would die very quickly without them. Catalase resides in the liver, kidneys, and red blood cells, converting dangerous hydrogen peroxide to water. SOD resides in the mitochondria and captures free radicals during energy production. It can convert millions of molecules per second. Glutathione neutralizes lipid peroxides, which damage cell membranes.

Number 2 is true. Fruits and vegetables contain antioxidants, which add to the body’s own system of free radical control.

Number 3 is true but misleading. It is true that fruits and vegetables are beneficial to the body, but recent research has shown they serve a more important function than free radical control. The results suggest that the major benefit of fruits and vegetables is supporting the human gut.

Gut bacteria convert plant compounds into molecules that reduce inflammation, improve metabolism, influence the immune system, and even affect the brain. The value of fruits and vegetables as antioxidant fighters is less important.

Number 4 is false. During the 1970s and 80s, researchers gained an understanding of free radicals, how they operate, and what threats they pose. It was thought that antioxidant supplements would help control them, so significant research was done to measure their effectiveness in the population. Meanwhile, the supplements industry ramped up production to market products containing antioxidants.

By the 2011-15 period, the federal government suspended research on the effectiveness of antioxidant supplements because they were not able to find that any of them were effective. The overall conclusion was that antioxidant supplements do not prevent most chronic diseases.

After the evidence accumulated, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommended:

• against beta-carotene supplements for prevention of cardiovascular disease or cancer,

• against vitamin E supplements if taken as an antioxidant,

• insufficient evidence for most other antioxidant supplements. Those recommendations were reaffirmed in 2022.

The NIH still spends substantial money on antioxidant-related research, but the emphasis has moved to how oxidative stress actually works inside cells, how working antioxidant systems like superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase, and glutathione peroxidase operate, the value of nutrition rather than pills, specific diseases where oxidative stress may play a role, and development of targeted drugs instead of generic antioxidant supplements.

Researchers now think the body’s own antioxidant defense systems are much more important than swallowing large amounts of antioxidant vitamins. In many cases, reactive oxygen species are not simply “bad” molecules; they’re also essential signaling molecules. Blunting them indiscriminately with high-dose supplements can interfere with normal physiology, which helps explain why many of the large supplement trials failed.

Americans spend about $69 billion per year on dietary supplements overall. Of that number, 15-30% is spent on antioxidant supplements, or $ 10-20 billion per year.

Despite this large expenditure, clinical trials have generally not found that antioxidant supplements reduce overall mortality, prevent heart disease, or prevent most cancers among otherwise healthy people. Benefits are much clearer when antioxidants come from foods such as fruits, vegetables, nuts, and legumes.

Why is the public wasting $ 10-20 billion per year? Because they have never been told that the original ideas about the effectiveness of antioxidant supplements have been discarded, and that taking these supplements is a waste of money.

The supplement industry is regulated differently than pharmaceuticals. Under the 1994 Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA), supplements generally do not need to demonstrate effectiveness before being sold.

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Companies cannot legally claim to treat diseases, but they can make broader “structure/function” claims, such as “supports cellular health” or “helps maintain healthy aging,” provided they include the required disclaimer. These messages can strongly influence consumer perceptions.

What we have here is an ineffective product being sold to a public unaware of the truth. That fits the definition of a crime to me. Health organizations in the federal government have an obligation to protect the public’s health, not to waste the people’s money. The heavy advertising these products receive adds to the problem because it implies they are beneficial when they aren’t.

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

Then reality crashes the fairy tale like a drunk fairy godmother.

Your knight in shining armor morphs into a workaholic zombie, slaying corporate dragons or wrestling tractors just to pile up those shiny monetary trophies at your feet. Exhausted? Sure, but hey, there’s always energy for a quick roll in the hay, right?

Meanwhile, you’re pulling triple duty: scrubbing the castle, wrangling the tiny tyrants (aka kids), and juggling your own job because why not add more chaos? Romance? That’s buried under a mountain of laundry and existential fatigue.

Both of you are drained dry, grinding away to make ends meet, maybe squeezing in a vacation if the budget doesn’t laugh in your face. Keeping the kids alive feels like a full-time gig. Congrats, you’re basically running a survival reality show.

Enter complacency: Once a dynamic duo, now you’re just two bedraggled roommates exchanging goodnight pecks, wondering if your last hookup was during the Obama administration.

Humans crave three basics from loved ones: Understanding, Appreciation, and Acceptance. Miss one, and your relationship crumbles faster than a vampire in sunlight. Poof, gone!

Cue my madcap experiment: I dove undercover on Ashley Madison (yep, that scandal-plagued cheater’s paradise is still kicking, data breach be damned) and chatted with 103 men from all walks of life. Their tales? Eerily similar, like they all read from the same tragic script.

Ladies, we love to paint men as sleazy dogs who’d hump a lamppost, but spoiler: That’s rarely the case. The truth? It’s messier than you think and sadder than you know.

Let’s dissect their excuses, er, reasons. (Names changed to shield the guilty; I’m here to enlighten, not torpedo lives. Think of me as a marriage whisperer with a side of espionage.)

Take Tim, 42, investment banker and father of six kids (gulp, talk about overachieving in the gene pool). His wife’s a homeschooling superhero, but after baby #6 four years ago, she hit the intimacy brakes hard. Tim adores her, knows she’s wiped, even hired a live-in nanny to lighten the load. Nada. After four years of blue-balled begging, he sought affection elsewhere. He stays for the kids and their 15-year history, but without touch, he’s basically a walking corpse: depressed, lost, and questioning if monogamy is just a fancy word for “slow death by neglect.”

Then there’s Bryan, 55, still handsome after 30 years of marriage, kids flown the coop. Empty nest? More like empty bed. He’s a community bigwig in local politics. Divorce would tank his rep faster than a viral scandal. But his wife shoves him away like he’s radioactive whenever he craves closeness. Trapped in a sexless spotlight, he’s seeking affairs to reclaim some vitality, underscoring the stark irony between his public role and private struggles.

Kevin, 50, is your classic serial cheater. Never faithful to a girlfriend, ex-wife, or apparently, his own conscience. Magnetic? Oh yeah, with a sob story about neglectful, narcissistic parents that could win an Oscar. But guys like him were rare; most weren’t born cheaters, just molded into them by marital famine. Kevin’s the exception that proves the rule: Some dudes treat fidelity like a suggestion, not a commandment, and they cause devastation wherever they go and with whoever is unlucky enough to cross their paths.

The gut-puncher? Scott, 27, married his high school sweetheart at 18. Post-baby #1, she flipped into a verbally and physically abusive nightmare, yet convinced him to pop out #2 five years later. He absorbs the hits to shield his girls, terrified of custody courts that favor moms and cast fathers aside like useless sperm donors. Ashley Madison? His desperate lifeline for a shred of kindness after years of domestic doom. Poor kid’s basically in a horror movie where the monster wears a wedding ring.

I emerged from this digital den of despair with unexpected compassion. Overwhelmingly, these guys weren’t chasing “new pussy” like thrill-seeking predators. They craved feeling desired, not discarded. Science backs it: Men need physical intimacy like plants need sunlight; withhold it, and they wilt into depressed husks. Imagine signing a lifetime contract forbidding touch from anyone else, only for your partner to ghost the bedroom. It’s like being sentenced to solitary confinement with a view of the conjugal visit room.

Where’d they screw up? Communication, or the lack thereof. Every. Single. One. Avoided the tough talk like it was the plague, opting for “go along to get along” until resentment built up like unpaid bills. I pointed out menopause, weight gain, or low self-esteem could be culprits. Doctors fix that stuff all the time. But nope, they stewed in silence.

Why do stats show men cheat more (about 20% lifetime vs. women’s 10%)? Biology’s a bitch: Their wiring screams for physical connection, and without it, they spiral into despondency. Trapped by kids, cash, careers, or custody fears (courts aren’t exactly bro-friendly), cheating becomes the grim escape hatch.

The fix? Pick wisely upfront and master the art of communication and being clear about your needs before popping out babies that will keep you trapped in perpetual celibacy. Happy marriages don’t run on autopilot or passive-aggression.

Bottom line: Denying intimacy is relationship sabotage. He’ll stop asking eventually... and start swiping.

Ladies, heed this: In the age of apps and endless options, everyone’s replaceable. Keep the spark alive, or watch your fairy tale turn into a cautionary tale, complete with alimony payments and a side of regret.

I’m not advocating for cheating or trying to justify it. What I’m pointing out is that there are common patterns behind why men cheat. If you’re interested in reducing the chances of that happening in your own life, it might be worth paying attention to what I’ve learned.

I personally know pastors, ranchers, businessmen, and professionals who are stepping out on their wives, so don’t think it can’t or won’t happen to you. Burying your heads in the sand and proclaiming that there is NEVER any good reason for cheating won’t stop your marriages from crumbling.

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Marriage is a covenant, and it’s just as important for women to see to the needs of their husbands as it is for husbands to see to the needs of their wives. Imagine walking down the aisle and making a deal with someone that you’ll never touch anyone else so long as you both shall live, but after a while that person refuses to let you. That’s where many of these guys exist now, In a constant state of physical famine.

May the odds be ever in your favor!

P.S. If you’re feeling attacked, ladies, I have a follow-up piece to this about why women cheat. Trust me, there is plenty of blame to go around fueling that 50% divorce rate.

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

The political reforms proposed would fundamentally change the structure of the U.S. government, go well beyond policy changes, and envision a different constitutional system.

Here are the platform’s major components.

1. Replace the two-party system with a multiparty democracy
The United States operates as a two-party system with single-member congressional districts and winner-take-all elections. The DSA proposes creating a system more like those of Germany, Sweden, or New Zealand, where several parties routinely win seats. Instead of Democrats and Republicans, there could be Democratic Socialists, a Progressive Party, a Labor Party, a Green Party, Moderate Democrats, Conservatives, and Libertarians.

2. Proportional representation
Today, Congressional seats are won by the party with the most votes. The state delegation is the number of districts in the state, divided between Republican and Democratic districts. Under proportional representation, seats in that state would be allocated to parties based on their share of the vote.

If the vote was: Democrats 45%, Republicans 40%, Labor Party 10%, and Green Party 5%, and the total number of seats was 10, the seats would be allocated as Democrats: 4–5 seats, Republicans: 4 seats, Labor: 1 seat, Greens: 1 seat

3. Expand the House of Representatives
The House has been fixed at 435 members since 1929, even though the U.S. population has more than tripled. The DSA argues that this makes representatives responsible for districts of roughly 750,000 people each. Expanding the House would mean smaller districts, representatives closer to constituents, more proportional representation, and reduced influence of gerrymandering

4. Abolish the Senate

5. Replace the presidency
Rather than having an independently elected president, the platform calls for replacing the President with an executive chosen by and subordinate to Congress. This resembles the parliamentary system used in most European countries.

6. Replace or restructure the Supreme Court
The platform calls for replacing the Supreme Court with a judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress and elsewhere calls for limiting judicial review. The rationale is that unelected judges should not have the power to invalidate laws enacted by elected representatives.

6. Campaign finance reforms
The new platform calls for public financing of elections, eliminating or sharply restricting dark money, reducing lobbying influence, and overturning or otherwise nullifying the effects of the Citizens United decision.

Items 1-5 are characteristics of most parliamentary systems, like those used in Europe. Let’s take a minute and compare the American and European systems.

Parliamentary systems offer better representation because they consider multiple viewpoints. Rather than forcing voters into two broad coalitions, parties can specialize in environmental issues, rural concerns, libertarianism, social democracy, Christian democracy, or other philosophies. Voters can support a party that closely aligns with their beliefs rather than choosing the “lesser of two evils.”

In such a system, parties must negotiate and compromise to form governing coalitions. This can reduce ideological extremes and produce policies with broader support. Power is more dispersed, making it harder for one party to control all branches of government for long periods. Smaller parties can raise issues that larger parties have ignored. Environmental policy is a classic example: Green parties in Europe helped bring climate issues into mainstream politics.

There are also drawbacks to the parliamentary system. Coalition governments can collapse if partners withdraw support. Countries like Italy have historically experienced frequent changes in government, though many modern multi-party systems are more stable than in the past. Negotiating among several parties can delay legislation and make decisive action during crises more difficult.

A party with only 5–10% of the seats may be essential to forming a coalition and can demand policy concessions that exceed its electoral support. When several parties govern together, voters may have difficulty determining which party deserves credit or blame for government performance. When many small parties hold seats, it can be difficult to form stable governing majorities.

The bottom line when comparing the two systems is choosing between a stable government with clear accountability, as in the U.S., and broad representation that gives voters more meaningful choices, as in the European model. The power of the American president is clearly superior in a crisis because the president can act immediately. In Europe, prime ministers have to get permission from their party to move forward, which can take time.

You might be wondering why the DSA is proposing a change to a parliamentary system rather than a socialist one. There are several reasons.

The DSA has moved away from traditional socialism and more toward democratic socialism. That means democratic elections, civil liberties, a mixed or heavily regulated economy, and a much larger public role in providing healthcare, housing, education, and labor protections.

They see U.S. political institutions as the biggest obstacle. Progressive policies are blocked not because Americans oppose them, but because U.S. political institutions distort representation and give too much power to the opposition. Parliamentary systems tend to help smaller parties because a proportional parliamentary system would make it much easier for parties such as the DSA to win seats.

That would allow democratic socialists to become an independent political force rather than operating largely within the Democratic Party. They see the Nordic Model of Northern Europe as a model for the system they are proposing.

The DSA goals, as expressed in their platform, are intended to be incremental. Rather than proposing an immediate abolition of private enterprises, the platform seeks to expand democratic control in steps over time.

Reform democratic institutions to make elections more representative, allow additional parties, including a democratic socialist party, to gain legislative representation, build governing coalitions, and use those democratic institutions to enact progressively more social-democratic and, potentially, democratic-socialist economic policies.

The DSA platform highlights many of the current problems with our federal government; issues that both sides are upset about. Many of these problems stem from elite behavior, as elites are more interested in money than the common man. The same problem exists in Europe, even with a parliamentary system. Bottom line: if the people can’t control the elites, it doesn’t matter what kind of system you live under.

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Changing our system would require Constitutional Amendments, which are not easy to pass. The Amendments required for the changes the DSA is seeking would be resisted by all Americans, across both parties, who want to retain the current structure of the Federal government.

The Socialist wing of the Democratic Party is giddy right now, bolstered by the prospect of more power. They always have a goal to seek, even if it is unattainable. They’ve been waiting 170 years for Socialism to take hold, proving they are very patient people.

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

I have witnessed firsthand many changes in the industry—advances in tech, cash culture, and shifting attitudes toward alcohol have shaped the dining/drinking experience for customers and staff alike—and in the middle of it all, the very idea of gratuity is being questioned. Who in the service industry at large deserves a tip?

(I’ve got one, you say! Get another line of work!)

Inflation! Affordability! It’s the economy, stupid–and it is. Stupid economy… And it’s coming from both ends–as belts tighten for the consumer in an effort to keep every spare dollar, the tip jars, or screens make their way to unexpected places—much to the chagrin of the everyday consumer.

Well, I’ve about had it! On the way to work today, the bus driver asked for a tip. I was so insulted that I complained to the manager of the Tri-Met. He agreed it was truly unprofessional and said he would issue a stern warning and assured me it would never happen again. I was so impressed with him I tipped him twenty and walked the rest of the way to work…

Shit rolls down hill, and perhaps, we have reduced the service industry to beggars…

I understand–every dollar we tip is a dollar we just gave away. But this is America, honeychild! Money is the sweet nectar, o Óleo, that keeps this ship steering the right way. You see–you see–what we have here? A breakdown of a kind, the breakdown of communication, the silence of capitalism. It is the silence of money, and America, if not its inventor, is certainly its perfector.

The tip jar, the screen–it certainly is in your face–is it not, and if I understand it correctly, more so lately than usual? It is a nasty little thing, and nothing is more crass, more nasty than a confrontation over money. You’d rather ask your father-in-law for a kidney before a spare dollar, now admit it!

America’s relationship with money is rooted in a kind of mystique. It is everywhere, it is nowhere. It is in abundance if you know where to look; it is never anywhere that meets the eye. It sits underneath every open bar tab, every shared Uber, every dinner among friends, every gift under the tree that does not ameliorate the shortcomings of last year’s present.

At the restaurant, it is a sigh of relief when someone just offers to pay, and it is settled upon. I offer to pay, too, but probably to buy my way out of any awkward haggling later on. It is expensive to be cheap!

My attitude is this–I always tip. I just can’t help it. The encroachment of any kind of pettiness, I am allergic to. It is a cloak, an attitude I need to survive; I hate cheap people. I also detest money. It isn’t about the money! There is something about cheap people I find lacking that has nothing to do with money; it is a cheapness in spirit I find wanting to piss on…

Anyway, the restaurant industry is fictitious. The bar and hotel, too. The shit has rolled so far downhill–look at wages + cost of living; just do it, you can’t make the equation work without tips. Servers would turn in their aprons, bartenders would retire to philosophy, baristas would remain (the lot of them wouldn’t know what to do with themselves), and every restaurant with any character would turn into a Wing-Stop or gas station-adjacent Subway.

Without the generosity of strangers, without their participation in the farce, the restaurant industry, at large, fails. Co-ops, alternative business models, shared-profits systems exist, but their methods aren’t broadly, culturally time-tested. Alternate systems may flourish here and there in cities that can approach the cutting edge, but there are restaurants all over the country that will continue to rely on gratuity to cover the pay for their workers.

The point is there is no system, only culture, and there is something said about culture and politics–one of them is downstream from the other one, but when they fuse, everything is downstream from that. All the way down to the poor soul who pours your beer, or gets you the extra ranch, or creamer, and depends on your generosity for their living. It’s a Beggar’s Banquet, and I am Mick Jagger, and I can’t get no…

Customer Satisfaction.

Just yesterday a man emptied his change into the tip jar. 67 cents. He was pushing 80 years old. I said, “Please, Mr. Jagger, you’ve done enough! Another gentleman, sporting a touch of gray, ordered a cheeseburger without onions. Says he can’t stand onions. When a man does this, I see his inner child. A boy sits before me now, making an ick face at those slimy vegetable toppings–gross, mom!

The truth is, I get the sense that the rats are fleeing the ship. Money tightens, everyone at the bottom scrambles. We have normalized these positions and then have become complacent with them in the restaurant industry; complacency breeds dysfunction, deterioration.

The conversation between the worker, the tipped soul, and management has been a one-way street for at least two decades. The workers at the bottom are getting crushed, yet expectations keep rising. Years ago, you hardly had to worry about allergies. Now, they are everywhere, and the implications of a mistake feel life-threatening. For someone to order without a following list of modifications and special kitchen requests feels like a lucky break.

Too, a group of six came into the restaurant; after one order of fries for the six of them, a few coffees, an iced tea, the total bill for the table was $55.00. Separate checks, every one of them, all paying with a card, all requesting receipts.

It is the restaurant industry–dealing with people–that makes you wonder how the world functions, how do people survive with such little wherewithal.

But what I do know is the people in the industry are some of the best people I have known. If my experience is any indication of the industry at large, the service workers keep the world moving. They can’t always feel like it, but are mostly willing to perform, determined, and invested.

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For myself–I tip all I can. As a bartender, there is some feeling of obligation, something that compels me. The service industry is full of moving parts, and when you know enough, it is harder to hold it against anyone. The delivery was late, the ice machine broke down, the cook called in, the server’s water broke this morning; it’s all too human of an enterprise. I’m not paying for the service; I am paying for the show.

A tip is a call to action for the spirit! It says pony up to grease the wheels a bit, buy your ticket for the show. The tip is always optional, and so is the performance. Without everybody playing their role, the house lights come on, and the fiction of all this restaurant business is seen in much greater relief.

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

According to early reports, a broader network of mostly millennial Democrats, labor leaders, Bernie Sanders veterans, and community activists had been scouting Maine for a candidate. One publicly identified member of that scouting effort was labor leader Jason Shedlock. After the group approached Platner, Morris Katz, and Dan Moraff, Democratic operatives became the public face of the effort to promote him.

Morris Katz had previously worked on the campaigns of John Fetterman, Dan Osborn, and Zohran Mamdani. Katz helped produce the viral campaign video that introduced Platner nationally and became one of his closest advisers.

Dan Moraff was Katz’s partner in the consulting firm that helped recruit and build Platner’s campaign. Together, they were searching for a working-class populist candidate who could challenge Senator Susan Collins and believed Platner fit that mold.

Graham Platner, a Marine veteran and Maine oyster farmer, emerged as an anti-establishment Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate. He ran as a working-class populist, criticizing both billionaires and the Democratic establishment. His campaign went viral, attracted national attention, and he won the Democratic nomination to challenge incumbent Republican Senator Susan Collins.

Even before the nomination, several controversies surfaced: inflammatory old Reddit posts, a tattoo with Nazi-associated symbolism (which he said had been misunderstood or no longer reflected his views), reports of sexist behavior and inappropriate communications with women, and accounts from former romantic partners describing troubling behavior.

Many supporters argued that any shortcomings were outweighed by his message and military background. Then, the campaign collapsed after a former partner publicly accused Platner of sexually assaulting her in 2021. Platner has categorically denied the allegation. The accusation was accompanied by corroborating evidence that many Democratic leaders considered credible enough to make his candidacy untenable.

Almost immediately, national Democratic figures withdrew their endorsements. Party leaders concluded he could no longer be their nominee. Pressure mounted for him to step aside so another Democrat could run against Collins. Platner suspended his campaign in an 11-minute video.

Rather than apologizing or expressing regret, he denied wrongdoing and argued that Democratic insiders, the media, and political elites had forced him out. The tone of the video drew widespread criticism because many viewers felt it focused almost entirely on himself rather than the seriousness of the allegations.

Platner withdrew as the Democratic Senate nominee on July 10^th. The Maine Democratic Party is now selecting a replacement to run against Susan Collins.

Platner is a symbol of the mindset of the Democratic Party’s Progressive/Socialist faction today. At a news conference late last week, after Platner suspended his campaign, the chairperson of the Democratic Party in Maine complained that Platner’s team was trying to influence the selection of his replacement.

She stated that they would have no influence over who the party chooses. The reason for the attempted influence is obvious. The Platner campaign and its progressive backers DO NOT want the party to select an establishment candidate. They were so desperate to find a “populist” candidate that they fast-tracked the vetting, leaving it incomplete.

The progressive wing, like MAGA, is anti-establishment. They want to field candidates with bona fide credentials, but they also want someone they can claim is a “man of the people.” They thought Platner met those requirements. In the eyes of the progressives, everyone currently in politics is ineligible because they must be establishment, and the establishment wants things to stay as they are. They are at war with those they feel cannot govern.

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With Platner, they were trying to address their gender gap. Men in general don’t like the Democrats’ platform, which is why they moved to the other side in 2024. But the party doesn’t know how to fix that problem, so their solution is to find “a man’s man” to run. That will get more male voters. This concept was applied in a video of Tim Walz changing his oil during the 2024 campaign. “Look, viewers, a Democrat man can do man things.”

This strategy is not going to attract many men because the real problem is the gap between the progressive platform and how most men view the world. Still, they never give up.

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

The proverb, American in reality, stems from the thawing of the relationship between America and Communist China during the early 1970s. More specifically, it refers to President Richard Nixon’s visit to China in February 1972.

While the Communist Chinese had been on the allied side during World War II, their ideology had guaranteed that they would fall under the influence of the Soviet Union once the Cold War began in the late 1940s.

However, relations between the two great powers soon began to deteriorate. When Stalin died in 1953, Mao Zedong rejected Soviet dominance over world communism. As the years passed, relations continued to sour, leading to Moscow pulling all economic and technical advisors out of China in 1960 and eventually to border clashes between the two countries in 1969.

Nixon saw this as an opportunity to put pressure on Moscow, to drive a bigger wedge between the two nations. It began with China and the US table tennis teams exchanging visits, and this “Ping-pong diplomacy” led to Nixon visiting China in February 1972.

Nixon had a well-established reputation as an anti-Communist “hawk.” He served on the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), sponsored legislation requiring Communist Party members to register with the federal government, and was a staunch supporter of Taiwan. In short, his anti-communist credentials were impeccable. Consequently, his conservative critics were unable to accuse him of being soft on communism.

In short: “Only Nixon could go to China.”

Today that term is thought to have a broader meaning. It is taken to mean that only a hardliner can enact a policy that goes against a party’s traditional ideology.

Personally, I think the proverb is dead, and I think Trump, or more specifically, MAGA killed it.

The Kingdom of the Blind

I spent much of 2024 arguing that Trump was the better candidate than Harris. Like many people, I had misgivings, but having seen how dishonest the Biden administration was and fearing Harris would move the Democrats further to the left, I felt Trump was the better choice. Counterfactuals are by their very nature guesses, so it is not impossible that I was right and Harris would have been worse.

That said, Trump has been a disaster. This is not to say that he hasn’t done things I agree with. Securing the border is one example. I try to, as they say, “call balls and strikes” when it comes to policies and consequently have criticized Trump when I disagreed with him. As you can imagine, this has not made me popular with the more, how shall I put it, fanatical members of MAGA.

However, as time has passed, my belief that my credentials as a Trump supporter would mean that “only Nixon could go to China” would protect me when I criticized Trump’s policies and actions.

I was wrong.

More often than not, criticism of Trump is met with accusations that I have TDS, Trump Derangement Syndrome. If I think treating China with kid gloves while engaging in trade wars with allies is bad diplomacy and will result in inflation, then I have TDS.

If I think the only thing a war with Iran will accomplish is higher energy prices and the depletion of vital American military supplies, I have TDS.

If I think the President of the United States should show some class and not engage in online trolling like a 12-year-old boy, I have TDS.

If I remind people that the federal government strong-arming companies into doing what it says is what the Biden administration did during COVID, I have TDS.

If I point out that Trump’s strong-arming of companies is reminiscent of what the Biden administration did during COVID, I have TDS.

If I point out that the federal government taking ownership stakes in private companies sounds a lot like communism, I have TDS.

MAGA has gone from wanting a politician to “shake things up” to being a cult which requires absolute loyalty to the leader. Any mental gymnastics necessary to justify a decision is acceptable no matter how absurd, and any criticism of the great leader is heresy.

Those of us with any knowledge of economics or history must feel a little like Cassandra; we know where these actions are leading, but no one believes us.

This leads to the second proverb that MAGA has killed: “In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.” This is meant to imply that a person with only a little skill or knowledge can easily lead or have an advantage over people who have none. But that does not apply when you are facing a cult. Knowledge, truth, and rational thought are irrelevant to cultists.

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Had Nixon lived today, 20 years of anti-communism would not have shielded him from accusations that he was a communist sympathizer if not an outright communist. In today’s world, all that matters is the eternal now, and all that criticism of ‘the great leader’ will get you is shouted down.

In America today, the embodiment of the Kingdom of the Blind, the one-eyed man isn’t a king; he’s a heretic.

About the Author
Phil is a freelance writer, Canadian Navy veteran, and classical liberal. He has lived and worked in both Canada and the United States and currently resides in Vancouver, British Columbia, where he writes on politics, individual rights, free speech, and whatever else catches his fancy.

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Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

That is the house I came from. That is the creed that raised me. Left-wing ideology is a death cult. It ruins women, murders children, and sickens society until a mother can walk her daughter into blood and still believe she is the kind one.

I was four when I watched my father beat her. Not a story I was told later. A scene burned into me while I was still small enough to believe a house could stop a man’s hands. The terror did not pass through and leave. It stamped itself into my soul and stayed.

Two or three years later she told me she had been raped. No shield. No delay. She put the ugliest night of her life on a child and kept talking. She had been twisted early: abused as a girl, raped as her first sexual experience, then beaten by my father while I watched.

After that I stopped being a daughter. I became the adult in the room. I parented my parent. I watched her face before I watched anything else. I learned how to calm a grown woman while my own body stayed braced for impact. I never felt safe. A child who feels safe does not sleep with one eye open waiting for the next horror.

That is how the cult gets in. It finds a wrecked woman, calls her wreckage wisdom, and uses her to train the next girl.

I was the next girl.

I got pregnant young. Fear made my hands shake. I went to her because some last unkillable part of me still thought a mother might fight for me. She didn’t. She already had two or three abortions behind her. I watched the threat of meaning cross her face. If what was in me was a child, then she had ended children too. She could not survive that. So she reached for the lines that would save her and wreck me: Cluster of cells. It doesn’t matter. Don’t make this a tragedy.

I felt myself tear while she was still speaking. She had to say it didn’t matter. She had to lead me into an evil act so she would not have to repent. That is how a death cult moves from one generation to the next.

It uses a mother’s unconfessed blood as a script for her daughter. I went where she pointed. I ended what she told me was nothing. I have been walking around with that anguish ever since.

When she left, she did not drift. She tried to destroy me first. She raged. She hurled venom at the softest places in me, words built to shred my soul and keep cutting after the door slammed. Shame. Disgust. Verdicts meant to follow me into sleep. Then she left. Every ten years. Exile after execution on repeat. She could not stand that I refused her ideology, so she punished me with absence only after she had tried to leave me in pieces with her venom.

Then she would come back. Soft voice. Clean hands. A thin act of tenderness. That was never repair. That was the countdown. I learned the pattern in my bones. Play nice. Wait. The next cut is coming.

The next came the day after Trump hit Iran.

She blasted me with mentally ill poison and aimed it at the center of who I am. She let me know that I was her greatest shame. Her disappointment. A fraud who only believed what I believed for money and attention.

She said it knowing I had carried these convictions most of my life, through years when they cost me a mother and paid me nothing. She needed me agreeing. If I agreed, then she did not have to face what her politics had made of her: a mother who could flay her daughter and then disappear into faux moral superiority.

The irony would be funny if it had not been my life. She rages about Trump being a pedophile who ruins girls while playing death queen in her own house, a woman who tried to eat her daughter from the inside out and still wants credit for her conscience. She will rager about other people’s sins and never look down at the graves she walked me to.

That is the cult’s favorite costume: public fury, private rot.

I did not come out clean.

The anguish twisted me. I took that memory of my father beating her, the terror burned into a four-year-old’s soul, and I used it as fuel. I learned to hate men with a precision that felt like justice. I tore them apart from the inside. I knew how to get close enough to do real damage and leave them standing in it. Their subsequent abuse, real and imagined, all went into the same fire.

I was not always the safe, Godly woman I am today. I was what that house made me when it finished with a girl’s innocence: not just wounded. Lethal. That memory still sickens me. This ideology does not only take children from the womb. It takes the living woman and teaches her how to ruin other people so she will not have to sit alone with what was done to her.

There are nights it all hits at once. The 4-year-old watching repeat beatings she cannot stop. The child forced to hold a rape she cannot carry and should never have been asked to.

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The young woman talked into a killing so her mother could stay unrepentant. The adult standing in the ashes of another decade-long disappearance. The later knowledge that I had learned how to hurt the way I had been hurt. Anguish corrupts all it touches, but redemption is possible, and I am living proof.

There is blood on my hands, but I will make sure my daughter stays clean. I am raising her with love that does not require her agreement as rent, with values that do not need a dead child to protect a grown woman’s unrepentant sins, with support that lets her remain a child.

She wasn’t told at six that the world is a rape she must manage. She will not watch violence become the family language. She will not be walked into a grave and told it’s normal. She will not learn that love ends in a soul-shredding speech and a slammed door. I will stand between this death cult and the next girl.

The cycle stopped with me.

My daughter will never have to know what it cost.

The case itself is disturbing enough. Three innocent children are dead, strangled to death by their own mother in the basement of their home while their father went to run errands.

Dawson, Cora, and Callan are their names.

Three beautiful children lost to the entire world forever. Dawson wanted to grow up to be a firefighter. Cora really loved princesses. Callan didn’t have a chance to grow up and dream. May they rest in peace.

At first I thought this was strictly a tragic case of poor mental health care (I have since changed my mind based on the facts of the case), and I wrote about what I did to put an action plan in place should I slip into postpartum depression after the birth of our second child.

It included things like telling a close neighbor of mine that I had a problem with my first, and I also told another close friend. It included lining up and developing a relationship with a psychiatrist who could closely monitor me after birth. I also set up an appointment four weeks after birth, right around when my husband was going to return to work. I told my OBGYN team. I also discussed breastfeeding-safe medication with both my OBGYN team and a pediatrician.

My first issue with Lindsay Clancy was why she seemed to be bouncing around and switching providers while in the midst of a crisis. Especially an entirely predictable crisis given her history with postpartum anxiety with both Dawson and Cora.

Why did she not have a psychiatrist picked out ahead of time? After all, she was a labor and delivery nurse. And the issues that children of mothers with postpartum mental health issues are well documented. Things like speech delays and even attachment disorders are much more likely in children with mothers who have untreated postpartum mental health issues.

And while speech and language therapists are wonderful people who do great work, giving your kid attachment disorders can go on to give your children serious disruptions in their social relationships well into adulthood. The infant-mother dyad is one of the most foundational relationships a child has, and it sets the stage for the rest of their life.

In other words, if you’re not willing as a mom to care about yourself because you’re just far too depressed to do so, surely you can muster up the courage to get yourself together for your own children.

If I know this, as a lay person, surely a labor and delivery nurse would know this and know it more intimately than I do. After all, she was on the front lines of maternal healthcare.

And as more details about this case have come to light, the less sympathetic I have become.

She was offered an inpatient medication management program and a general mental health partial hospitalization program at the Women’s and Infants Hospital in December of 2022, and she was told to follow up about those treatment options with her psychiatrist, Dr. Tufts, but she failed to do so, and instead continued with just her short visits with Dr. Tufts.

Furthermore, there was zero sign of any psychosis before the incident; she only heard the voice during the murders, one time. Never once did she tell her doctors that she was having thoughts of harming the children.

She did manage to tell her husband and her mother, though. People point to this to state she was “crying out for help,” but I find it convenient that she told the very people who had no power or ability to help her.

She never told her doctors about her thoughts of harming the kids in spite of the fact that she had an appointment with Dr. Tufts the day before the murders.

You would think, given that this is your psychiatrist, that mentioning the fact that you had thoughts of harming the children would be something you would tell her. Yet neither Jollotta nor Tufts were told. Nor did she tell anyone when she voluntarily checked herself in at the McLean Center.

I guess when I look at all these facts laid out before me, I have a question: What more could’ve possibly been done to help Lindsay Clancy?

And for those who want to blame her family, how long should Patrick and her family have had to babysat Lindsay to prevent the unthinkable, especially when she lied to virtually everyone in her life about her mental state? Should Patrick have known she was lying and never left her alone with the kids despite her outward appearance of health?

He thought she was healthy. She just met with her doctor the day before. He was getting some food and MiraLAX.

When I think about what more could’ve been done to help Lindsay, the only things I can think of would be to roll back HIPAA laws so that Patrick was in full communication with her doctors, and the moment she expressed any thoughts about harming the kids, allowed her husband to involuntarily commit her for an indefinite period of time until she was no longer mentally ill.

You know, like the good old days in the 1950s.

I appreciate the conversation surrounding mental health, but I don’t appreciate the idea that Lindsay didn’t have any agency. Lindsay was in full control of her healthcare, her doctors, and what medications she took, and she had access to some of the best healthcare in the country.

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There is no doubt, based on her medical records, that she was having serious problems finding the right medications and was mentally ill (although I don’t believe the claim of “command hallucinations”).

But it was up to her to utilize the resources given to her. I firmly believe an inpatient stay to figure out her medications would’ve probably saved her children.

Instead, she chose to remain in the home, send Patrick on an errand, and she strangled her children to death.

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

Abbatiello, a Westbury, New York native, 2024 Penn State accounting graduate and Sigma Chi member, has been charged in connection with an alleged cocaine-trafficking operation involving students and two off-campus fraternity houses.

Prosecutors described a coordinated enterprise that allegedly moved significant quantities of cocaine between 2023 and 2024, with packaging sometimes involving fraternity members and pledges. Fourteen people were charged in the broader case; Abbatiello faces 11 felony counts. These are serious allegations, and the justice system must treat them accordingly. They remain allegations, however, until proven beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.

Abbatiello surrendered to authorities on August 18, 2026. He faces the ordinary process of arraignment and preliminary hearing and is entitled to a full defense. Magisterial District Judge Kelley Gillette-Walker denied bail, deeming him a flight risk after he missed his initial appearance, ordering him held at Centre County Prison. Remember, bail decisions are not findings of guilt.

Public reporting has not hesitated to use colorful nicknames drawn from the case materials. Abbatiello has been dubbed “Pablo Pledgescober” in some coverage—a sensational label that risks prejudicing public opinion and potential jurors before any evidence is tested in open court.

Court documents and witness statements cited in the press described alleged trips to New York and Philadelphia for cocaine, packaging at the fraternity houses, the use of debts to involve others, and claims that Abbatiello urged associates not to mention his name once investigators began asking questions. These are allegations contained in charging materials. They are not yet proven facts.

Several publications correctly noted the contrast with Abbatiello’s academic record. He made the Dean’s List for three consecutive semesters, completed a professional accounting internship, and expressed interest in financial technology, accounting ethics, and markets. That record does not decide the legal questions before court. It does remind us that human lives contain more than a single set of allegations. Capability, discipline, and prior achievement form part of a fuller picture the justice system is designed to consider.

Raised in Marianist tradition at Chaminade, both Abbatiello and I were taught to form young men as authentic witnesses—people of integrity, accountability, and hope. The school emphasizes education of the whole man: body, mind, and soul. That formation does not end when a classmate faces the most difficult test of his life. It also includes the capacity for growth after serious mistakes, if mistakes have truly been made, and the insistence of fair process even when the accusations are severe.

Nicknames and sensational framing may shape the narrative and attract attention, but they can erode the presumption of innocence that protects every American citizen. Trial by media is not the same as trial by evidence. The fundamental pillars of our criminal justice system are the presumption of innocence and due process.

The prosecution alone bears the burden of proving every element of the charged offenses beyond a reasonable doubt—the highest standard in American law. The defendant has no obligation to prove innocence, present evidence, or testify. Silence cannot be held against him. Bail determinations and pretrial detention must not be treated as a conviction. Jury instructions will rightly remind fact-finders of these protections.

We have seen before how quickly media narratives around “privilege” and character can harden. A previous Chaminade alumnus, Collin Finnerty, faced intense national scrutiny and framing as a “privileged suburban” athlete during the 2006 Duke Lacrosse Scandal.

He and his co-defendants were ultimately fully exonerated. The Associated Press referred to Finnerity as having “[grown] up in privileged surroundings in the suburbs of [Garden City], New York.” As a former resident, I have heard this charging “privilege” claim quite often from within the courts and local media. Ultimately, the smears of privilege are quite effective, especially today under a racial lens, while they underscore the presumption of innocence and a careful process.

Some are fooled by these embellishments, media sound bites, and caricatured conceptions of rich, privileged, and entitled. Finnerty, a young Catholic and Duke student, was essentially strung up by this characterization. However, the accuser, stripper Crystal Mangum’s false narrative, was taken almost as absolute truth.

The legal fallout from her lies didn’t even affect her, but it did affect Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong, who was disbarred, removed from office, and forced to serve jail time. As for Mangum, in 2013 she was convicted of second-degree murder for killing her boyfriend, Reginald Dayle. She was sentenced to 14 to 18 years. But none of that seems to matter to the press and so-called civil rights leaders. To them, this is the process, and it was well executed.

Whatever the outcome with Abbatiello’s case, Chaminade taught us that character is revealed not only in success but in how we respond to failure, accusation, or crisis—both our own and that of our brothers. We can demand accountability without abandoning the principles of justice and human dignity that our school instilled.

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Let the evidence be tested in open court. Let the process run its course without the community already having rendered a verdict. In the meantime, support for the families involved, respect for the courts, and a steady commitment to due process remain the better path.

I have no personal involvement in this case and claim no private knowledge of the facts. I write simply as a Chaminade alumnus and fellow Long Islander who believes the values we were taught require us to uphold fairness equally—especially when the headlines are the loudest.

Fortes In Unitate.

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

National news organizations have identified about 10–15 prominent congressional and statewide candidates who openly use the label “socialist” or “democratic socialist.” Progressive Democrats, who are a much larger segment of the “Democratic big tent,” when combined with the socialists, create a formidable opposition to the Democratic establishment.

This is the largest wave of openly socialist candidates in the United States since the 1900–1920 period, the peak of the original Socialist movement. At that time, the Socialist Party of America regularly fielded hundreds to thousands of candidates for local, state, and federal office. Eugene V. Debs received nearly 1 million votes (about 6%) in the 1912 presidential election, and the party elected more than 1,000 local officials, dozens of state legislators, over 100 mayors, and two members of Congress. Milwaukee became famous for its long line of Socialist mayors.

The Socialist movement began to collapse after World War I for several reasons. After the Russian Revolution in 1917, people began to associate socialism with revolution and didn’t want America to go that far. The second reason was the Red Scare, starting in 1919, when anarchists organized labor strikes, carried out bombings, and sought to create economic instability.

The federal government arrested and deported hundreds of suspected radicals during the Palmer Raids. Socialist organizations came under intense surveillance and public suspicion. Other reasons for socialism’s wane include the ideological split in the Socialist Party, a period of emerging economic prosperity, and government measures put in place to address public grievances.

After World War II, the onset of the Cold War prevented socialists from regaining momentum, as the Soviet Union was widely regarded as America’s greatest threat. Being a socialist candidate, then, was a guaranteed way to lose an election. Socialism remained dormant until the late 1960s, when anti-establishment ideology began to take hold in academia. By the 1990s, progressives had firmly controlled higher education. Socialists participated in and supported cultural change but remained quiet because their ideology had little public acceptance.

Now, after a hundred years on the sidelines, dissatisfaction with the federal government has reopened the door to socialism. To understand how this could occur, you have to look at how the parties implement their ideologies.

Conservatives have no ideology. They believe in individualism, freedom, and our nation’s traditions. The conservative reaction to ineffective government is to seek a populist leader who will represent them. Trump was in the right place at the right time and assumed that role. Trump’s election was a message to the conservative establishment to fix the government.

On the Democratic side, the situation is very different. When Democrats become disenchanted with their politicians, they have a backup ideology to turn to: socialism. All they have to do is unleash the dormant communists and socialists and let them run.

Bernie Sanders’ popularity during the 2016 election reflected the onset of Democratic voter dissatisfaction, but his constituency was less than a critical mass, and Hilary Clinton rigged the primaries so he couldn’t compete.

What’s different now? We can see several factors at work. Trump’s election to a second term drives the left crazy and heightens frustration with their leaders. They see those leaders as fossilized establishment lackeys, old and out of touch.

The frustrations of Gen Z are also being expressed more strongly than before, as they are older and continue to struggle to achieve the American dream. They are the coddled generation whose helicopter parents did everything for them, and they want stuff. Still, the underlying issue, as with conservatives, is an ineffective government that needs fixing.

Conservatives rely on finding someone who will restructure the government in order to make it more responsive. Right now, Trump has the Republican establishment cowed. If you cross him, you get primaried.

Liberals have a more powerful tool to replace the establishment: a new kind of government that offers a permanent fix. Establishment Democrats are cowed in the face of the socialists, and they are afraid to criticize them. In their hearts, they know the socialists are unelectable, but they’re powerless to resist the progressive tide.

Here are new candidates for the midterms

These candidates come from blue cities in blue states with high concentrations of college-educated liberals. Polls show 66% of Democrats have a favorable view of socialism. Some percentage of those people are more supportive of “Democratic Socialism” than the regime-change full socialism would bring to America.

Mamdani insists this is a national movement, but that isn’t true. We would have to see interest in electing socialists spread to more mainstream Democratic districts for his statement to be believable. Right now, socialist fervor is concentrated.

Let’s pause for a moment to review why socialism doesn’t work. The real world today is made up of democracies and dictatorships, with no socialist states functioning. The reason there are no socialist states is that people have never been willing to choose that kind of government.

People will not support governments that confiscate the fruits of their labor. In the modern world, human motivation comes from the desire to improve one’s life, so no one would be heard saying, “I work hard and wish to give away a large percentage of the benefits I accumulate to the government.”

To make socialism work, there must be an organizational entity at the top of the government that redistributes assets across the nation. People who have more will see their money taken and given to people who have less. That entity must operate as a dictatorial oligarchy, making redistribution decisions that cannot be questioned.

For that reason, it’s not hard to imagine that leadership entity turning into a functioning dictatorship at some point. The leaders would be kings, who reign for life. If they were subject to recall by voters, there would be no socialism, because voters would replace them with non-socialists.

Democratic Socialism is socialism behind the curtain. For years, Bernie Sanders has praised this ideology, citing the Nordic countries as successful examples, but a closer look shows they are, in fact, democracies with large welfare-state components. In Bernie’s telling, the American people will simply elect representatives who will implement the missing components of his welfare-state program: universal health care, guaranteed income, higher taxes on the wealthy, a higher minimum wage, free education, aggressive climate initiatives, and affordable housing.

The “Democratic” in democratic socialism assumes that people will elect candidates who will take their money, which is not going to happen. People vote for candidates they believe will protect their assets: keep taxes low, maintain a strong economy with good jobs, and protect them from both foreign and domestic threats.

The Democratic Party has a serious problem: its constituents’ dissatisfaction with the government has created an opening for the party’s left wing to pursue radical change. The establishment must defer to the left or face attack. The longer it defers, the less time remains to build an alternative case for the American people before the 2028 election.

My opinion is that the socialist movement in the Democratic Party can only be put down by voters rejecting the socialist as too radical and too far from the mainstream, not by the Democratic Party itself. The movement has to be allowed to play out. There is also another problem with the party. A divided party in 2028 could herald a Republican victory, putting the Democrats on the sidelines for eight more years.

It’s interesting to compare the 2028 election with the 1972 election, when Richard Nixon beat George McGovern in a landslide. McGovern was seen by many voters as too liberal because he proposed large cuts to defense spending, supported amnesty for many Vietnam draft evaders, and backed an ambitious expansion of social programs.

The Democratic Party was deeply divided, as many traditional Democratic leaders, labor unions, and Southern Democrats were lukewarm or openly hostile to McGovern and barely campaigned for him. Those same groups are in play this time.

Even though there is no single union position on socialism, most American unions do not identify as socialist. They believe in reaching their goals within the capitalist system. Some unions are more conservative and would never vote for socialist candidates.

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The South is very different from what it was in 1972. Back then, it was socially conservative, often supportive of business and anti-communist and anti-socialist. Today’s Southerners are more moderate than those in the coastal states, unlikely to support Democratic Socialism, and more focused on healthcare, education, jobs, and infrastructure.

Socialists will be in trouble if they run in nationwide elections because they are too radical for most Americans. The elections this fall will be interesting, but the 2028 election is the real test of socialist momentum.

Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.