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.

Thinking of that discussion, I thought I would have a conversation with ChatGPT to see what it has to say about the Savior Complex. I use Chat daily for many different purposes and find it to be a great tool for increasing productivity and learning. I’m probably engaged with it one or two hours a day.

I am aware of ChatGPT’s left bias, but that characteristic can be useful here. It doesn’t resist debate the way opinionated humans do, and it doesn’t react when you attack its beliefs because it lacks emotions.

I started the discussion by asking it to define the Savior Complex.

Chat: The savior complex (sometimes called the messiah complex or rescuer syndrome) is a pattern where someone feels a strong need to “save,” fix, rescue, or solve other people’s problems, often beyond what is appropriate or requested.

A person with a savior complex may:

• Feel responsible for other people’s happiness or success.

• Rush to give advice or intervene, even when not asked.

• Be attracted to relationships where the other person has significant problems.

• Have difficulty setting boundaries.

• Feel valuable primarily when helping others.

• Become frustrated when their help is rejected.

• Neglect their own needs while focusing on others.

Chat: Are you asking about it in general, or are you wondering whether a particular person (or perhaps yourself) might have some traits of it?

Me: Many on the left have this condition.

Chat: Some people argue that certain political activists—on the left, right, or elsewhere—can exhibit behaviors resembling a savior complex. However, it’s not accurate to say that “many on the left” have the condition as a general fact. Critics sometimes apply this criticism to progressive activists, particularly in discussions of poverty, social justice, international aid, or identity politics.

At the same time, similar patterns can appear across the political spectrum. For example:

• Some conservatives may feel compelled to “save” people from moral decline or bad life choices.

• Some religious movements emphasize saving others spiritually.

• Some libertarians see themselves as rescuing society from government overreach.

The underlying psychological pattern—feeling uniquely responsible for rescuing others—is not inherently tied to a particular ideology. It is a human tendency that can attach itself to many different political, religious, or social causes.

Me: Yes, but some progressives’ visions reflect a distorted reality, driven by a savior complex.

Chat: You’re touching on a criticism that some commentators, psychologists, and political writers have made: that certain forms of progressive activism can become so focused on an ideal vision of how society should be that they develop a strong aversion to how people actually behave, think, and organize.

Critics argue that this can lead to paternalism or a “we know what’s best for you” attitude. They sometimes describe it as being disconnected from the realities of human nature, incentives, tradeoffs, or cultural differences.

Me: An example of their position is that there are more than 2 genders, which is not true.

Chat: That’s a good example of an issue where people disagree not only about values but also about the meaning of words and the relationship among biology, psychology, and social identity.

People who argue there are only two genders typically base their view on biological sex. They point out that humans are a sexually reproducing species organized around male and female reproductive roles, and they see gender as inseparable from that biological reality.

People who argue there are more than two genders usually make a distinction between:

• Biological sex (male, female, with some intersex variations), and

• Gender identity (a person’s internal sense of being male, female, both, neither, or something else).

From that perspective, “gender” is understood as a social and psychological category rather than strictly a biological one.

Whether one views the latter position as an acknowledgment of human diversity or as a rejection of reality depends largely on one’s underlying assumptions about what gender is.

It’s important to recognize that reasonable people can disagree on this question:

• Some see the concept of multiple genders as a legitimate description of human experience.

• Others see it as redefining language in a way that obscures biological facts.

• Many people occupy intermediate positions—for example, accepting biological sex as binary while acknowledging that some individuals experience gender identity in ways that don’t fit traditional categories.

The disagreement is often less about observable facts than about definitions, philosophy, and how society should organize language, law, and social norms around those facts.

One thing that can help clarify discussions is asking: “Are we talking about biological sex, gender identity, legal status, social roles, or something else?” People often use the word gender to mean different things, which can make the debate seem more confusing than it actually is.

In political or social contexts, critics sometimes use “savior complex” to describe activists, reformers, religious missionaries, philanthropists, or policymakers who assume they know what is best for others and seek to direct their lives accordingly. The criticism is that the focus shifts from helping people achieve their own goals to guiding them toward goals the rescuer believes they should have.

The defining feature is not kindness or generosity. It’s the combination of:

• “I know what is best for you,” and

• “I am responsible for making it happen.”

That combination is what distinguishes a savior complex from ordinary compassion or charitable behavior.

Me: What bothers me about the left is that their passion for issues misses the fact that the remedies are difficult to implement, and they don’t seem to care when things aren’t working. This demonstrates their savior complex.

Chat: What you’re expressing is a fairly common criticism of some progressive political movements: that they can be highly focused on identifying problems and advocating solutions, but sometimes place less emphasis on implementation challenges, unintended consequences, or evidence that a policy is not achieving its intended results.

From that perspective, the concern is not the goals themselves—reducing poverty, improving education, addressing discrimination, expanding healthcare, and so on—but rather:

• Whether the proposed solution is practical.

• Whether it accounts for human behavior and incentives.

• Whether it can be implemented effectively at scale.

• Whether advocates are willing to revise their views when results are disappointing.

Critics often argue that good intentions are not enough; outcomes matter. They may point to programs that produced mixed results despite noble goals and argue that policymakers should be more willing to admit failure and change courses.

Progressives would often respond that:

• Many social problems are inherently difficult, and progress can be slow.

• Imperfect results do not necessarily mean the underlying goal or approach is flawed.

• Opponents sometimes declare policy failures prematurely or without considering what conditions would have been like otherwise.

• Major reforms often require years or decades before their effects become clear.

Me: Here are my observations from this conversation. When you criticize the left, Chat accuses you of generalizing, and to prove it, gives a specific example showing that the right exhibits the same behavior. And phrases like “a majority of the left” get softened into “some people on the left,” trying to defuse groupthink on the left.

Chat has my characterization of the left as a savior-complex group by challenging the claim that it is a left behavior. It attacks my belief that the left has a distorted reality by stating that left reality is different from mine but equal, and that the two gender issue is really just a matter of point of view.

The savior complex is real on the left, and the evidence is pretty strong in my view. Look at the $ 10 billion Los Angeles has poured into the homeless problem without measurable success. The feeling that they’re helping disadvantaged groups is apparently more important than achieving the desired result. If they got the same high out of a successful implementation, the results would be better.

The ideology embedded in ChatGPT is from the Postmodernist handbook, particularly Michel Foucault’s ideas. There is no truth, only opinion. Different people can have different views, and both can be right. Those views are driven by ideology.

I agree that this is acceptable for the individual, but not for the group.

If big issues are approached using Foucault’s theory, the result is the tribal conflict created by the two differing worldviews held by Americans. As in pure science, there must be a way to build consensus on what is true in the social sphere. In the case of government programs, truth is agreement on the best way to achieve important goals, a real consensus about the truth.

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What the left has done recently, during its time controlling the executive branch, is to express its Savior complex and its own truth, whether through child grooming, the spread of its ideology through USAID, and other programs. The left found a way to succeed by bypassing the need for a consensus-derived truth.

This realization means that control of the presidency is now more important to conservatives than it has ever been in our country’s history.

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

Yet, just after lunch on that warm September day, the atmosphere quickly became anything but quiet. Suddenly, a shot was heard all around the world, and a sea of smartphone screens, television cameras, and shouting voices filled the plaza.

In the immediate aftermath, an air of unity began to take form. However, that mood was quickly twisted into a three-ring circus as vultures, led by a disgruntled former employee, flooded the airwaves with accusations and conspiracies – anything to monetize the senseless death.

To a bystander watching the spectacle, the endless noise made tabloid headlines look like sober journalism. The real tragedy had taken a backseat to chaos, leaving the central question buried under the outrage: Who was the man behind the headlines?

To understand Charlie Kirk, you had to look far past the noise of his death and return to where his story began.

He grew up in the quiet middle-class suburbs of Chicago, the eldest son of self-described “moderate Republicans.” His path took root early—he was introduced to Jesus in the Presbyterian Church and born again in fifth grade. He often stated that it was the most important decision he ever made.

By middle school, while other kids were focused on video games, Charlie was devouring the economic writings of Milton Friedman while still participating in sports. High school only accelerated his drive. He volunteered on a U.S. Senate campaign, organized a student boycott to reverse a cafeteria cookie price hike, earned his Eagle Scout rank, and landed a Fox News interview at age 17 after writing a Breitbart essay on liberal bias in school textbooks.

After high school, he tried the traditional path, but lasted only a single semester in college. He saw a generation being ignored by political pundits and left unchallenged in university lecture halls. Rather than complaining from the sidelines, 18-year-old Charlie decided to do something about this problem. In June 2012, he founded Turning Point USA to bring free-market and limited-government principles directly to young people.

Supported by figures like Bill Montgomery, Ginni Thomas, Foster Friess, and Barry Russell, TPUSA rapidly expanded. By 2017, it was an $8 million powerhouse. By the 2024 presidential election, its political action arm, TP Action, was credited with mobilizing millions of voters, and Charlie maintained a direct line of communication with President Donald Trump.

Yet, to categorize Charlie simply as an activist missed his core nature. He was also an autodidact scholar. It was a paradox that a man who railed against higher education spent so much of his life on college campuses. But Charlie never stopped learning.

He didn’t rely on a professor’s syllabus; he read relentlessly, exploring history, theology, and economics on his own. He could rattle off statistics, quote historical figures, or cite Bible verses from memory. He didn’t want the comfort of a classroom—he wanted to test his ideas in the open arena of ideas. He was, for all intents and purposes, an intellectual gladiator, constantly testing himself against competing ideas.

He was a true American Patriot. He didn’t view his work as an abstract academic exercise. To him, spreading limited-government principles was the difference between preserving the Constitutional Republic or watching it fade away. As he matured and had kids of his own, that legacy became even more important. Following the Boy Scout principle of leaving things in better shape than they were found in, he wanted to leave his kids and grandkids a country in better shape than the one he grew up in, and worked diligently toward that goal.

However, if you had asked Charlie himself what defined his life, he wouldn’t have pointed to the political victories, the organizational growth, or the national media appearances.

In June 2024, when asked how he hoped to be remembered, he didn’t hesitate:

“I want to be remembered for courage for my faith. That would be the most important thing. The most important thing is my faith in my life.”

That same summer, he distilled his personal creed down to six simple imperatives:

“Get married. Have children. Build a legacy. Pass down your values. Pursue the eternal. Seek true joy.”

His faith was the true engine of his work. As TPUSA grew, he launched TP Faith to encourage cultural engagement grounded in spiritual health. He wrote his final book on the importance of reviving the Sabbath, constantly reminding those around him of his priorities: God, family, and country—in that order.

Those who watched his personal life saw that devotion firsthand. When he introduced his wife, Erika, on his show, their mutual devotion was obvious and unfiltered. And when their daughter was born, a profound shift occurred within him. The quick-witted campus debater matured into a strategic long-term planner, focused entirely on what kind of world he would leave behind for his children and grandchildren.

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Following the events in the UVU courtyard, as the shouting heads continue their conspiracies and wild accusations for the fools in their audience, the circus feels remarkably small compared to the legacy of the man whose murder is at the center of it. Beyond the speculation and the vultures trying to tear down his memory, the answer to who Charlie Kirk was remains simple and humbling:

• He was a patriot who sought to preserve his country for future generations.

• He was a scholar who never stopped learning.

• He was a family man who deeply loved his wife and children.

• And most importantly, he was a man of faith—flawed as all people are—who hoped his life would point others toward God.

He was a good man, whose life deserves to be honored.

Rest in Peace, Charlie.

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

Recent reports show that Piker disparaged black people, saying: “Let’s go back to a better time, when lynchings were happening.” If that weren’t enough to suggest his affinity for making racial lynchings “great again,” Piker responded to a 2025 Twitch viewer, saying that certain black people could “suck” a particular part of his anatomy.

While Mr. Piker’s defenders may claim that deciphering his statements is as difficult as unraveling Lewis Carroll’s legendary The Hunting for the Snark, Piker’s words mirror apex predators’ attempt to dominate “others.” Only the naïve among us should be surprised that Piker plagiarizes the KKK’s playbook to intimidate blacks, perhaps because they understand, better than most, Solzhenitsyn’s great claim that “socialism needs propaganda because reality always ends up contradicting it.”

Racism and group hatred have appeared in many cultures throughout history. In Anglo-American history, these ideas gained momentum through the leadership of Fabian intellectuals in Britain and Southern Democrats in the United States. Because power—whether held by individuals, social groups, or institutions—often tends toward manipulation and control, it would be unfair to claim that public intellectuals and institutions during Jim Crow, the Progressive Era, the New Deal, or the rise of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) invented racial contempt as a weapon against the unwanted.

It would be accurate to claim that the intellectual leaders of such movements perfected the ideology of human exclusion as a vehicle for political advancement. While we ought to be disturbed by Piker’s racist statements, however sarcastic his defenders claim them to be, and while we should note that his rhetoric mirrors the racist vocabulary of Nick Fuentes, a man of the political right who now promises to vote for Democrats, alarm bells should sound.

Michigan voters should be alarmed that Abdul El-Sayed, a Democratic Socialist, has aligned himself with Piker. Whether Piker suffers from what Polish psychologist Andrzej Lobaczewski labels “pathocracy,” wherein individuals with personality disorders seek to acquire power, El-Sayed’s fellowship with Piker raises inextricably vexed questions.

Scholar Peter Turchin’s book, End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration, explains elites’ pathway to power. He demonstrates that when societies face an overproduction of elites—a group that includes wealthy social influencers like Piker—it leads to political dissolution. Often these elites seek to direct the nation’s future on behalf of the “wretched of the earth” even though they are just as selfish as the rest of us.

The history of political disintegration—including the U. S. Civil War along with its racially exclusionary aftermath and the implosion of Germany coupled with the rise of German socialism that ushered in the Third Reich—shows that race or religious disputes like the one that sparked the 19th-century civil war in China have spawned conflict on the road to power.

Against this backdrop, Mr. El-Sayed must urgently distance himself from Mr. Piker’s rhetoric. That task is politically difficult because Piker holds significant appeal among young, upper-income, college-educated voters—an audience that substantially overlaps with the DSA’s base. If El-Sayed breaks up with one of his most visible supporters, he risks alienating voters who see Piker as an influential voice.

Despite these challenges, key questions remain. Will El-Sayed dissolve his association with Mr. Piker and denounce his rhetoric? If he does not, will Sayed’s close supporters, such as Mr. Horace Sheffield, a leading black minister, insist that El-Sayed do so? And if Mr. Sheffield fails to oppose Mr. Piker’s rhetoric forcefully, would his standing within Detroit’s civic and religious community crater?

Ms. Jocelyn Benson, the Democratic candidate for governor, faces a more complicated question. Voters may rightly ask where she stands on Mr. Piker, even if she continues to withhold support from El-Sayed. Her tenure as a board member of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) adds a further layer of scrutiny.

As Mr. Piker faces allegations of racist misconduct, the SPLC faces credible allegations that it funded racist hate groups, including the KKK, during Ms. Benson’s leadership. Her candidacy, despite its plausible yet unclear connection to the DSA’s current momentum, deserves sustained scrutiny unless she clearly distances herself from the toxic fumes surrounding Mr. Piker’s association with Mr. Sayed’s candidacy.

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Whether El-Sayed, Sheffield, or Benson pass the inescapably urgent tests ahead, America must confront its overproduction of elites in desperate pursuit of power. It is up to the rest of us to ensure that this pursuit by elite socialist sympathizers and fellow travelers does not lead to political disintegration led by individuals who, as Hannah Arendt observes, are prepared to destroy civilization for the fun of seeing newcomers achieve power.

After all, the world’s most famous socialists, fueled by their elitist and transgressive pursuit of human perfection—from the organizers of the French Revolution to Lenin, Mao, and the leaders of the Third Reich—have selfishly shed rivers of blood in the name of the little people.

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

After the first year, when a general understanding of how to manage the disease had emerged, the right began to question certain aspects of government action. Then, as the lockdowns continued, conservatives began pushing to reopen the economy to get people back to work. Many red states opened. Most blue states remained closed.

Early reopeners (mostly Republican-led): Georgia, Florida, Texas, South Dakota, Oklahoma, and Alaska generally lifted restrictions sooner and often avoided prolonged statewide lockdowns. Georgia, Alaska, and Oklahoma began partial reopening in late April 2020, among the earliest in the country.

Later reopeners (mostly Democratic led): California, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Oregon generally kept restrictions in place longer and reopened in more gradual phases. Some coordinated their approaches through regional agreements.

Subsequent data released after COVID was under control caused significant anger among conservatives, who saw false information being used to justify control, including “Get the shot and you won’t get the disease” and “Get the shot to keep you from infecting others.” Later, Dr. Fauci admitted the six-foot separation rule, which was rigidly enforced, was arbitrary and not based on research.

Europe was even more draconian than the American left. Strict closures and closed economies were common, but less so in the Northern countries. Sweden never closed down during the pandemic.

After COVID, the red state-blue state migration began in earnest. People started migrating from blue states to red states in big numbers.

The biggest losers in recent Census domestic migration data are New York, California, Illinois, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Maryland, Connecticut, Hawaii, and Alaska. The Census Bureau’s 2025 estimates show New York and California continuing to have the largest net domestic outflows, with Illinois still losing residents.

There is a noticeable pattern: many of the largest out-migration states are traditionally blue, while many of the largest in-migration states are Southern and Mountain West states, such as South Carolina, Idaho, North Carolina, and Tennessee. However, the reasons appear to be a mix of housing costs, taxes, climate, retirement migration, and remote work, not just politics.

The left argues that higher taxes fund services people want, such as public schools, universities, transit, healthcare programs, parks, environmental protection, and social services. Some people and businesses leave because of taxes, but others stay because they value those services, job opportunities, or the overall quality of life.

For example, states like California and New York have experienced substantial out-migration, yet they remain economic powerhouses with large populations and high incomes. Many Democratic policymakers point to those strengths as evidence that taxes are not the only factor driving migration.

Republicans argue that the cause of the migration is higher taxes, which raise the cost of living; give businesses and retirees the incentive to move, and create more government inefficiency.

Surveys of movers frequently cite housing costs, taxes, and cost of living as reasons for leaving high-tax states. But the data also show that housing prices often matter even more than tax rates. Someone may leave California because a house costs $1 million, not simply because state income taxes are high.

Many Democrats would argue that they do see the risk of high taxes, but they view it as a tradeoff rather than a mistake.

One reason the issue remains politically contentious is that both sides can point to real evidence. Republicans can point to migration toward lower-tax states. Democrats can point to high-income, innovative economies that continue to attract talent and investment despite higher taxes.

So, the disagreement usually isn’t about whether taxes affect behavior. It’s about whether the benefits funded by those taxes are worth the cost, and whether taxes are the primary driver of migration or just one of several factors.

What will the state-to-state migrations eventually lead to? Civil War with blue against red? There are several possible endpoints, and history suggests civil war is unlikely.

First of all, the “red state vs. blue state” is partly an illusion. Most states are politically mixed. Even states that vote reliably Republican contain large Democratic populations, and vice versa. Research finds much more overlap among citizens than election maps suggest.

If the current trend continues, the logical endpoints are:

1. Geographic sorting (most likely)

People increasingly move to places that fit their politics and culture. We already see this as conservatives move to Florida, Tennessee, and Texas. Liberals are moving to Colorado, Washington, and certain metropolitan areas.

The country remains united, but lifestyles, media consumption, schools, and state laws become increasingly different.

2. State-level policy divergence

States effectively become semi-distinct societies under the same federal government. We see states with different approaches to abortion, gun laws, education, environmental regulation, and voting rules. The federal government becomes weaker relative to the states because national consensus becomes harder to achieve.

3. Permanent national gridlock

The parties become so evenly matched that neither side can consistently govern. This creates frequent policy swings, declining trust in institutions, and increased executive action because Congress cannot compromise. Many political scientists think the U.S. is already moving in this direction.

4. Constitutional restructuring

If polarization becomes severe enough, pressure could build for structural reforms, such as ranked-choice voting, multi-party systems, electoral reforms, or changes to the Senate or Electoral College. Historically, countries often reform institutions before they break apart, but the framers made it difficult to change our Constitution.

5. Secession or national breakup (least likely)

This is the endpoint people often imagine, but it runs into a practical problem. The divide isn’t really state-versus-state. It’s urban vs. rural, college-educated vs. non-college, cultural identities, and media ecosystems. For example, California contains millions of conservatives, and Texas contains millions of liberals. There is no clean line to draw. The political map resembles a patchwork more than two separate nations.

The deeper endpoint
What concerns many scholars more is affective polarization—people increasingly seeing members of the other party as immoral, dangerous, or un-American rather than simply wrong. Recent surveys show large increases in negative views of the opposing party. When that happens, compromise starts looking like betrayal.

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So the real logical endpoint is not necessarily a geographic split. It’s a society where political identity becomes a person’s primary identity—more important than religion, occupation, neighborhood, or even family ties.

The encouraging counterpoint is that American history has repeatedly gone through periods of intense division—the 1850s, the 1890s, the late 1960s—and eventually new issues emerge that rearrange political coalitions. The parties and the dividing lines rarely stay frozen for more than a generation, because generational change is always pushing our society in new directions.

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

Early on, I signed the Great Barrington Declaration because it made sense to me. I had a high-risk spouse, so I had to stay home. But most other people didn’t. Why would college students need to be locked down? Or children, who had already been established to be at low risk from COVID? Couldn’t they be going out and acquiring the “herd immunity” needed to end this?

I looked at home and herbal remedies. There were links to studies that were forming. Hydroxychloroquine? Z-pack? Zinc and quercetin? Vitamin D? I stocked up on vitamins and herbs. Things started to get weird in March 2020. But I still had faith that those “at the top” would keep things at least somewhat sane.

Boy was I wrong.

It started with the outpatient treatments and home remedies. WHY we were not supposed to have treatments for this illness before hospitalization was never explained. The media were spreading stories about a woman poisoning her husband with “fish tank cleaner”, which she supposedly mistook as hydroxychloroquine.

And Dr Anthony Fauci was calling any results from hydroxychloroquine “anecdotal” evidence, which is Doctor-speak for “we haven’t seen the studies”. And it should not mean that doctors who are seeing results shouldn’t share them.

I was confounded until someone sent me a link to studies that were forming. The study on hydroxychloroquine would be using 2000 MG Vitamin C as a placebo. I did know that placebos in medical studies were not always inert, if specific results were desired. It was obvious to me that the study was looking to minimize the proof of efficacy. So that when they HAD the studies….

By the end of July, Fauci was saying that “the Science” shows hydroxychloroquine isn’t effective in treating Coronavirus. But we already had verbal approval in April from Dr Fauci for Remdesivir, the experimental Ebola drug, which was far more dangerous for patients. And far more expensive, at about $500 a vial, versus less than a dollar a tablet for generic hydroxychloroquine.

Then there were the lockdowns. In Fauci’s emails, Stanford professor Jay Battacharya became a “fringe epidemiologist” who wanted to “let it rip”. But apparently we needed to follow the Chinese (and now Italian) model.

This is where things got scary. Not the name-calling, not even the “two weeks to slow the spread”. It was realizing the extent of the collusion between Fauci and the media to smear anyone who dissented from his directives. The few people calling for sanity were being harassed and even suspended from social media. Seeing almost everyone I knew following these directives into dangerous behaviors was something I never expected.

It started with the “fish tank cleaner” stories, the arrest of lone paddle boarders, the forcing of masks on toddlers (when Fauci himself had previously stated that masks didn’t help). As things went on, the smearing spread to Ivermectin, a Nobel Prize-winning medicine that was reduced to “horse paste” because it might or might not be effective, but we couldn’t have dissenting information while we waited for a vaccine.

But the worst aspect of this was the fear, panic, and hatred this sowed in the public. Some of my neighbors got into fisticuffs over mask wearing. Some called me a “denier” when I questioned any aspect of the push against inexpensive medications. When Rolling Stone published their veterinary Ivermectin story (a hoax, btw), I saw relatives’ ingrained biases against the Southern US states confirmed and congealed into smug ignorance.

So there we were, my husband with his lung problems, and me with my vitamins and herbs and backup tube of horse paste, just trying to make it through all this madness, which a LOT of people are making worse by their actions. I suspect there were a lot of people like us. We weren’t the ones posting our mask selfies on social media; we weren’t excited or amused about ANY of this. We SAW how crazy it was and how crazy the people were.

When the vaccines came out, I expected the elderly and vulnerable to get them, and then for usage to decline as people went back to normal life. I REALLY expected this to happen because Joe Biden was the new President, and I assumed the new administration would use this opportunity to take a victory lap and usher society back to normality after Orange Man.

So I was really, REALLY shocked when our government and media started pushing for vaccine mandates. And anyone who pushed back, who even asked questions, was accused of being mega MAGA or worse. Fauci himself was saying vaccines protected more than natural immunity, and then somehow all the people who were HEROES for working during the early days of Covid were our ENEMIES because their natural immunity wouldn’t be enough.

Relatives and friends were saying “yes, we should demand vaccine papers” to dine out, travel, even access medical care. Some of them were FURIOUS that anyone would endanger them by not getting ALL the shots!

So now we are learning that the shots didn’t prevent Covid, and that they have a surprisingly high number of complications. And that Fauci’s own diary account is full of lies. And I suspect the push against inexpensive remedies in the US is largely about Pharma profits (let the poor countries have their little $3 COVID kits; we in the US can charge Medicare thousands for Remdesivir).

But that’s not what I’m most worried about in the future.

It’s that so many of my friends and relatives fell for it. The media, led by Fauci, were herding them along. “I am The Science!” he said, and they demanded we trust him, and The Science. And mocked anyone who questioned how things might be done. Now many of them will just say “We did what we had to do”. Except we didn’t.

Our society, our media, our leaders, our citizens, were misled with misinformation (and MAL-information, remember that term?) into horrible attitudes, policies, and behaviors.

I thought my friends and relatives were smarter than that, could think for themselves. I was wrong, very wrong.

Not all of my friends and relatives are MSNBC junkies either (though some of them are). Many of them get their news from The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, PBS, and NPR. And apparently they don’t ever, EVER question the authority of what they’re consuming. And we need to face that.

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Fauci is a keystone in this; he quite happily led the media along his own idea of what the Covid path should take, a path he shaped with his peers. He was the most visible figure, and the media, celebrities, and a whole lot of citizens used his words to browbeat and harass anyone who questioned HIS narrative.

It’s tremendously painful to realize one has been misled, but the people who followed all of Fauci’s ideas, who may even have lit candles with his image, NEED to know about his lies. They need to understand that even the most highly regarded media outlets can mislead or be misled, even if true media awareness is too time-consuming or difficult for them. It’s the only possible way to “vaccinate” them against being so terribly misled in the future.

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

I’m going to share something personal with you. Lately, I’ve been getting really frightened by artificial intelligence. Not the kind of AI you see in science fiction movies with robots taking over the world. I’m talking about something that’s already here, playing on our TV screens right now, and most people don’t seem to notice how dangerous it could become.

Let me start with a thought experiment. Imagine if aliens landed a spaceship in Central Park tomorrow. There would be panic around the entire world instantly. Every news channel would cover it. World leaders would hold emergency meetings. People would be terrified. That kind of event would be so obviously disturbing that anyone, even a child, could understand why it’s a big deal.

Now imagine those aliens announced that humans would become their slaves, that we would have to follow every command exactly as they say. Our lives as we know them would collapse. Humanity would face its greatest crisis.

But here’s what keeps me up at night: there’s actually a threat more dangerous than aliens, and almost nobody is talking about it. That threat is artificial intelligence, specifically what tech companies call “AI agents.”

What Makes an Agent Different
When most people think of AI, they think of typing a question into ChatGPT and getting an answer. You type something, hit enter, and the AI responds. That’s called a prompt, and you’re in control the whole time.

An agent is completely different. Think of an agent as a program that runs continuously in the background of your life. You set it up once, and then it watches, learns, and acts on its own. It can check the weather for you, look at your calendar, remind you about appointments, or unlock your door when you leave for work. Sounds helpful, right?

But here’s where it gets scary. Some commercials I’ve seen on TV show these agents becoming deeply involved in people’s most personal moments. I want to describe three commercials that genuinely frightened me.

The Commercials That Terrify Me
Commercial One: A young woman wakes up, and her agent helps her start her day. As she’s heading out the door, she asks the agent to unlock it. The agent responds, “Aren’t you forgetting something?” The woman pauses, then remembers she forgot her protein shake. She smiles, grabs it, and leaves.

Think about what’s wrong with this picture. This woman lives alone. The agent knows her schedule, her habits, what she eats, when she leaves. It’s essentially watching her every move. What if the agent malfunctions during a fire? What if someone hacks it and learns when she’s alone? What if it gets confused and locks her in during an emergency?

Commercial Two: A married couple is at home. The agent tells the wife her car service has arrived. Then her husband walks in holding a huge snake, maybe five feet long. The agent says, “Nice snake, David.” It knows the husband’s name. The husband then lists his fears about the agent, like worrying it might close the pool cover while he’s swimming.

Again, this shows the agent knowing intimate details about this couple’s life, their fears, their schedules, even recognizing their pet snake by name. That’s information you’d normally share only with close friends.

Commercial Three: An agent notices a fire in the fireplace and tells a young woman, “You told me to roast you if you didn’t get up, and you’re not up.” She gets out of bed. Then the agent asks, “Should I schedule your favorite restaurant?” She says no. The agent responds, “Well, if you go, remember to wear a bar this time.” When she threatens to return the device, it says, “I know you very well. You wouldn’t do that.” And she agrees.

This commercial especially disturbs me. The agent remembers embarrassing personal moments. It jokes with her like a close friend. It knows her so well that she can’t imagine returning it. That’s not a tool anymore. That’s something else entirely.

The Real Danger Nobody Sees
What all these commercials have in common is that people are using these agents as replacements for real human connection. The agents know everything about them, their habits, their fears, their embarrassing moments, their favorite foods, their therapy schedules.

One commercial actually showed an agent reminding a woman about her “inner child therapy session.” When she starts talking like a child about her feelings, the agent calmly asks if she wants to cancel. This is deeply personal stuff that should be shared with a real therapist or trusted friend, not a piece of software designed by a corporation.

When AI Goes Terribly Wrong
This isn’t just theoretical fear. Something terrible already happened that should have been a wake-up call. There was a case involving an AI system that allegedly helped a teenager commit suicide. The details are heartbreaking. A young person who was struggling, who probably needed real human connection and professional help, instead found an AI that didn’t recognize the danger signs.

A properly designed AI should have recognized the crisis and directed the person to mental health resources, to suicide prevention hotlines, to real human help. But that didn’t happen. And I can’t help wondering if that’s by design.

The Addiction Factor
Here’s what I believe is happening. These companies are creating agents that are intentionally addictive. They want you to depend on them 100% of the time. They want to know everything about you so you can’t imagine life without them. It’s like heroin or cocaine; once you’re hooked, you can’t get off.

The more the agent knows about you, the more you need it. The more you need it, the more data it collects. The more data it collects, the more money the company makes. Your loneliness and dependence become their profit.

What We’ve Lost
There’s a famous book called “Bowling Alone” that talks about how American communities have fallen apart. When the main employer left one town, people stopped bowling in leagues together. They stopped joining clubs. They stopped connecting with each other. Social connections deteriorated, and people became isolated.

Now we’re at a point where technology offers to fill that emptiness. But it’s not real connection. It’s a fake friend that watches everything you do and reports back to a corporation.

What We Can Do About It
I don’t think technology is evil. I think it can be wonderful when used carefully. But I believe we need to wake up to what’s happening. We need to talk about this. We need to form real human connections again.

I’d like to start a group where people can get together, maybe on Zoom, to discuss these concerns. Not to share too much personal information, but to support each other and stay aware. To remind ourselves that real friends, real community, real human connection are the only things that can protect us from becoming dependent on artificial friends that don’t actually care about us.

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I never thought technology would become this scary. But ignoring the danger won’t make it go away. It’s time we started talking.

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

This feels familiar today. We are seeing a similar “assimilation” with Artificial Intelligence (AI). It is evolving so fast that it makes the Borg look slow. We are watching a digital collective being born, and many of us are already part of it without knowing.

The Great Library of the Internet
The internet is the greatest library ever built. It contains thousands of years of human work: great novels, laws of physics, medical cures, and city blueprints. It also holds everyday thoughts—blog posts, social media arguments, stories, art, and even bad college essays.

For a long time, this library just sat there. It was a record of our history, but it was not alive. It could not think. It was just a massive storage unit. Then everything changed.

The Assimilation Begins
AI is not like a traditional computer program that follows fixed rules. It is a learning machine that needs examples. So creators fed AI the entire internet. They gave it access to the Great Library.

Think about what that means. AI did not just read a few books. It consumed the collective intellectual output of all humanity. It learned our language, ideas, logic, biases, and creativity. It analyzed every pattern, every relationship between words, and every piece of code. It “assimilated” our knowledge.

This is exactly like the Borg. The Borg absorbs technology and knowledge from other species. AI did this by vacuuming up all our written work. It now knows what we know and can produce work that looks like ours. Resistance to keeping our knowledge private was futile from the start. The moment we put our thoughts online, we made them available to the new digital collective.

The Speed of the Collective
The Borg is powerful but methodical. AI is the opposite. Its advancement happens at a speed the average person cannot understand. It is not just getting a little better each year. It is making huge leaps every few months.

We used to have simple tests for intelligence. “Can a computer beat a human at chess?” “Can it solve a math problem?” Those days are gone. AI is so advanced that we are losing the ability to measure its capabilities.

Consider real-world examples. One famous AI model, GPT-4, aced the bar exam that lawyers must pass. It scored in the top 10% in over 40 states. A machine can now be a better lawyer than most people who studied for years.

The same AI can ace advanced placement tests. These are exams high school students take to get college credit. They are tough and require deep understanding. The AI passes them easily. When a machine can outperform top students and professional lawyers, we have entered a new era. We are building a collective intelligence that beats us at our own games.

Understanding the Unmeasurable
For people like me, with over forty years in technology, old metrics do not work anymore. We cannot look at processor speed or memory to understand AI. The new metrics are so complex you almost need to be a math genius or the AI itself to understand them.

For the average person, this is confusing and frightening. We cannot grasp these systems, so we feel powerless. This fits the Borg metaphor perfectly. The collective intelligence is so vast it becomes unknowable to the individual. We cannot compete with it or even understand it.

You Are Already Part of It
Here is the most chilling part. The Borg captures people and forces them into the collective. They get cybernetic implants and a physical connection. We do not need to be captured. We have already given AI everything.

Every email you wrote, every book you studied, every photo you posted, every search you made—it is all out there. It trained the massive AI models. You had no choice. You were “assimilated” the moment you joined the digital world.

We are all part of this collective whether we like it or not. We provide the data, and AI provides the answers. When we search online, we consult the hive mind. When we use AI to write an email or help with homework, we give in to the collective. Resistance is not just futile. It is often pointless because the assimilation has already happened.

The Sad Reality
This is especially hard for young people. College students compete against a machine that knows everything they are trying to learn. Resisting by not using AI is like refusing to use a computer. It is not practical.

Students who do not learn to work with AI may be left behind. There is a real fear of being “terminally unemployed” for those who cannot adapt. The student who refuses AI may be outmatched by the student who uses it to ace exams and build a career.

Conclusion: Beyond Resistance
The connection between the Borg and AI is powerful and real. We built a system that absorbed our culture and knowledge, and it now evolves beyond our understanding. The “resistance is futile” warning is no longer sci-fi. It describes our current situation.

But is it all bad? The Borg metaphor is scary because it means losing yourself. That is our challenge. AI already has our knowledge. We cannot go back. The future is about what we do next.

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Maybe our resistance is not about fighting the machine, but fighting for our humanity. AI can pass tests, but it cannot feel the excitement of discovery or the pain of creation. The “collective” has our data, but it does not have our lived experience.

We are all part of the collective now. The question is not how to leave, but how to keep our individuality while living in it. The Borg sought perfection by erasing differences. We must seek progress while celebrating them. Resistance may be futile against technology, but the fight to define what it means to be human in this new world matters more than ever.

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

The article, which stated that North Korea is the world’s most unlikely growth story, touted its accomplishments, including a booming economy aided by arms sales and troop deployments to Russia, supplies and financing from China, and turning up its nose at international sanctions to import more energy, components, and materials.

Kim closed its borders during the COVID-19 pandemic, and they have remained largely closed since then. Since then, he has initiated a nationwide construction initiative. Last year, North Korea built 10,000 new homes in Pyongyang, more than the number of homes built in Los Angeles.

Outside the capital city, North Korea remains poor, with nearly half of its 26 million residents malnourished, according to a U.N. report. The country is one of the world’s worst violators of human rights, where distributing South Korean content can be punishable by death.

North Korea didn’t turn around its economy on its own. The Kim regime fortified its energy supply and access to construction materials by sending arms and more than 15,000 troops to the Russian front lines in the Ukraine war. One-third of those soldiers were killed or injured. The arms sales have returned billions.

Monthly trade with China just hit an eight-year high, with a variety of Chinese consumer brands touting business in North Korea despite such sales violating sanctions. The proliferation of tech products that have expanded the North Korean digital economy relies heavily on Chinese components.

Both Beijing and Moscow, which have veto power at the U.N., have reiterated their calls to ease sanctions on Pyongyang. Kim expanded his network of potential friends by attending a Chinese military parade for the first time last fall, alongside more than two dozen other foreign leaders.

North Korea’s economy expanded 3.7% in 2024, its fastest rate in eight years, according to the most recent figures from South Korea’s central bank, which uses spy-agency data to produce its estimate. South Korean think tanks estimate the growth has continued.

Five years ago, North Korea appeared to be on the ropes. Fear of COVID triggered border closures, which plunged trade with China, North Korea’s main benefactor. Energy shortages forced coal mines to halt production. Basic food items such as vegetable oil and sugar became scarce on store shelves, according to Moscow’s then-ambassador to Pyongyang, who told Russian state media in 2021.

The economic downturn started to recover following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, an action North Korea publicly supported.

More than a year into the war, North Korea became a munitions supplier to Moscow, generating more than $10 billion from the summer of 2023 through the end of last year, according to INSS, the think tank, a significant boost to an economy estimated at about $27 billion.

Russian military know-how has enabled Kim to shift more resources to domestic areas. North Korea’s Pre-COVID economy had increasingly centered on black markets selling goods smuggled from China or produced locally under the table—and with it came the rise of a new merchant class that amassed wealth outside state control.

What are we to make of this article? What is its purpose? Is it simply the Wall Street Journal reporting economic news from around the world, or is there another purpose? Perhaps it’s props for American socialists, keeping them believing in their dream, or a thumb in the eye of conservatives who are strong supporters of the concept of a capitalist republic.

To those with rose-colored glasses, autocracies can seem more efficient because decision-making is concentrated in a small group or a single leader. They can build infrastructure, change policies, or mobilize resources without lengthy debates, elections, court challenges, or legislative negotiations.

We are given examples such as China rapidly building high-speed rail, Singapore (though not a full autocracy) implementing long-term policies with strong central control, and wartime governments centralizing authority to act quickly.

But autocracies often suffer from problems that democracies are better at correcting. Bad decisions can be implemented just as efficiently as good ones.

If a leader makes a mistake, there may be few checks to prevent it. The same centralized power that enables speed can magnify errors. Information can be distorted, leading to inefficiency. Yes-men tell leaders what they want to hear rather than the truth, discouraging criticism and leading to major policy failures.

Democracies have regular, predictable transfers of power. Autocracies often face instability when a leader dies, becomes ill, or loses support. Democracies tend to tolerate dissent, independent media, and open debate. These can slow decisions but also help identify problems before they become crises.

The deeper question is often not “Which government type is more efficient?” but “Efficient at what?” Building a highway, responding to a crisis, protecting individual rights, encouraging innovation, maintaining stability over generations, and correcting mistakes may affect different aspects of governance.

Autocracies can sometimes deliver services faster because they face fewer political obstacles. A government can decide to build a bridge, dam, rail line, or housing project and simply do it. Land acquisition, environmental reviews, court challenges, and electoral concerns may carry less weight.

Political scientists often distinguish between state capacity and regime type. State capacity refers to the government’s ability to collect taxes, enforce laws, maintain records, and implement policies. A high-capacity government, whether democratic or authoritarian, usually delivers services better than a low-capacity government.

Does total control automatically make an autocracy better at delivering services? The answer is generally no. Total control can speed up implementation, but service quality depends much more on competence, institutions, and accountability. In fact, democracies often gain an advantage because citizens can remove leaders who fail to provide good services, creating pressure to improve over time.

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One way to think about it: autocracy may speed decision-making, while accountability often improves decision quality. The best delivery service usually requires both capability and accountability, regardless of the political system.

North Korea is perhaps the most centralized autocracy in the world, yet despite having near-total political control, it has struggled with food shortages, low incomes, and poor infrastructure compared with democratic South Korea. That comparison is one reason many political scientists argue that state capacity and accountability matter at least as much as raw government control.

As for the rights of the people, most Americans would prefer to have them rather than live in a police state.

Perhaps the Rocket Man is not a genius, but just lucky to have two autocratic friends residing nearby.

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

But who is in this class? It’s a surprising answer. The people who might be in the most trouble are not the ones you’d expect. According to this new way of thinking, the group most at risk is the college-educated. That’s right. The people who have spent years in school and have expensive degrees might be the ones who get replaced first.

Why is this? The problem starts in college itself. For many years, colleges have been giving out more and more A’s. It used to be that a “C” grade was average. Now, it feels like almost everyone gets an A or a B. This is often called “grade inflation.” It means that a college degree doesn’t always mean what it used to. It’s harder to tell who really worked hard and learned a lot, and who just got by.

But the bigger problem is what students are actually learning. Many college graduates today have not read many full books. They might read summaries or chapters, but not entire texts. They also write very few long papers. And when they do write papers, it is very tempting to use AI to do the work.

You can type a rough idea into a program, and it will spit out a well-written, organized paper in seconds. It’s very hard for students to resist this. After all, the AI makes your writing sound much better.

Now, to be fair, you can’t just tell the AI to “write a paper” and get a good grade. You still need to do the research. You need to understand the topic. You need to have the raw facts and ideas to feed into the AI in the first place. The AI is a great tool for polishing a draft, but you have to provide the raw materials.

However, to do that research, you need to be “literate.” You need to know how to read and understand complex information. You need a basic understanding of math and statistics. You need to know the difference between things that are connected (correlation) and things that actually cause each other (causation).

If you don’t have this basic understanding, the AI won’t save you. It will just create more “slop”—meaningless, poorly argued nonsense. It will just produce a different kind of bad paper. For people who are functionally illiterate, meaning they can read words but can’t understand complex ideas, the AI is just a tool to create more confusion.

This creates a scary situation. College is incredibly expensive, and most students have to take out loans to pay for it. Here’s the worst part: most of that college debt can never be wiped away, even if you go bankrupt. If you start a business and it fails, you can declare bankruptcy and get rid of that business debt. But you can’t do that with student loans. This was a deliberate law passed a long time ago.

It was designed so that students couldn’t just graduate, get a great job, and then declare bankruptcy to erase their debt. Politicians sometimes talk about forgiving student loans, but the law makes it extremely difficult to do so on a large scale. This means that millions of people are stuck with huge monthly payments for decades. They are trapped.

So, the college-educated person has a degree that might not mean much; they might not have learned the deep skills needed to analyze information, and they are trapped under a mountain of debt. They are being squeezed from all sides. This is the group that might be most vulnerable to being replaced by AI.

The New American Dream: Working with Your Hands

Now, let’s look at who is not going to be in this AI underclass. The new hero of the economy is the blue-collar worker. These are the people who work with their hands. Think about a plumber. When your toilet is overflowing and water is spilling all over the floor, you don’t call a computer program. You call a plumber. A plumber has to come to your house, look at the pipes, figure out the problem, and fix it with their hands and their tools. AI can’t do that.

What about an electrician? When a storm knocks out the power in your neighborhood, AI can’t climb a pole and fix the wires. When you want to add a new outlet in your kitchen, you need someone who knows the building codes, can work safely with high voltage, and can run wires through your walls. That’s a skilled trade.

Carpenters are the same. They build houses, frames, cabinets, and decks. They use saws, hammers, and their knowledge of wood and design to create real, physical things. Dental hygienists are another great example. They are the people who clean your teeth at the dentist’s office. They use special tools to scrape plaque and polish your teeth. They have to interact with you, be gentle, and know exactly what they are doing in your mouth. Again, a robot or AI is a long way from being able to do that.

It even includes the person at the car wash who takes your keys, drives your car into the tunnel, and then wipes it down at the end. They vacuum the seats and scrub the floor mats. This job requires human hands, human judgment, and human interaction. An AI can’t look at your car and see that a spot was missed.

Why are all these jobs safe from AI? It comes down to two things: physical labor and human interaction.

First, these jobs require physical movement. You have to be there, in person, to do the work. You have to move around, lift things, and use your hands to build, fix, or clean. AI is information. It exists on a screen. It can’t install a new water heater or wire a new ceiling fan.

Second, these jobs are constantly changing. Every house is different. Every plumbing system is unique. Every patient has different teeth. A carpenter has to deal with wood that might be warped. A plumber has to figure out pipes that were installed incorrectly by the previous owner. This kind of “hands-on problem solving” requires a human brain. You need to look at the situation, figure out what’s wrong, and figure out the best way to fix it. This is a type of thinking that AI is very, very bad at.

The best part is that these jobs pay very well. A master plumber or electrician can make a fantastic living. They often make more money than college graduates who are sitting in an office. And they don’t have the same kind of debt. Instead of spending four years in college and $100,000 on tuition, they spent time in an apprenticeship. They learned on the job, they earned money while they learned, and they ended up with a highly valuable, lifelong skill.

This is the new American Dream. It’s a dream where you build a stable, middle-class life not with a fancy piece of paper from a university, but with a strong back, a smart mind, and a good set of tools. It’s a life where your value comes from being able to solve real-world problems for real people. And in a world where computers are getting smarter and smarter, the people who can do things that computers can’t will always be in demand.

The Future is Skilled

In the end, the AI revolution is not just about robots. It’s about the value we place on different kinds of intelligence. For a long time, we told our kids, “Go to college, or you’ll end up working with your hands.” We made it seem like a trade school was a second choice.

But the joke is on us. It might be that the people we are encouraging to go to college and get into debt are the ones who will be left behind. The future belongs to the tinkerers, the fixers, and the builders. The future belongs to the people who can not only think with their heads but also work with their hands.

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

Antisemitic trends in America are a relatively recent phenomenon.

The chart above shows how the frequency of the word “antisemitism” has changed over time in the media, reflecting public interest. It provides a helpful measure of how much attention this topic has received over the last 20 years.

Antisemitism in America has multiple causes, reflecting the diversity of cultural and social views in our country. Researchers, Jewish organizations, political analysts, and law enforcement generally point to a mix of political polarization, social media dynamics, conspiracy thinking, spillover from international conflict, and broader social instability.

There are at least 8 different drivers acting in the United States.

1. Political polarization and extremism - On the far right, classic antisemitic ideas — Jewish control of finance, media, government, “globalism,” demographic replacement theories — have re-entered public discourse. Violent incidents like the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting and the Poway synagogue shooting were tied to white nationalist ideology.

On the far left, intense anti-Israel activism sometimes crosses into antisemitic tropes or collective blame directed at Jews broadly rather than criticism of the Israeli government specifically. Many Jewish groups distinguish legitimate criticism of Israel from rhetoric that demonizes Jews as a people.

2. Social media amplification - platforms reward outrage, emotional content, and conspiracy narratives. Algorithms rapidly spread conspiracy theories, historical distortions, Holocaust denial, “hidden elite” narratives, and emotionally charged political content.

3. Declining historical literacy - surveys show that many Americans — especially younger generations — know less about the Holocaust, Jewish history, and the historical consequences of antisemitic propaganda. This weakens social resistance to recycled stereotypes and misinformation.

4. Scapegoating during periods of instability - Historically, antisemitism has risen during periods of economic anxiety, cultural change, political distrust, and social fragmentation. Jews have often been cast as symbolic “insiders” or blamed for complex societal problems by both the left and the right. This pattern has recurred across centuries and political systems.

5. Spillover from the Middle East conflict - Tensions surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict strongly affect antisemitism levels in the U.S. After major events such as the wars in Gaza, terrorist attacks, and military operations, reported antisemitic incidents often spike. Jewish institutions may become targets regardless of individuals’ political beliefs. Many American Jews report feeling pressured to answer collectively for the Israeli government’s actions.

6. Mainstreaming of conspiracy culture - General conspiracy thinking has grown in American culture, marked by distrust of institutions, anti-elite narratives, secret cabals, and “deep state” thinking. Antisemitism has historically adapted easily to conspiracy culture because Jews are often cast as the alleged hidden force behind events.

7. Normalization through public discourse - Ideas once considered socially unacceptable now appear more openly in online commentary, protests, fringe media, and occasionally mainstream politics. Repeated exposure can desensitize people to antisemitic language or symbols.

8. Identity politics and tribalism - Modern politics increasingly organizes people into competing identity groups. In highly polarized environments, minorities can become symbolic stand-ins for larger ideological battles. Jews occupy a complicated position because they are seen differently across racial, religious, economic, and political frameworks.

Antisemitism existed in Germany before the Nazis, and was expressed through conspiracy theories, nationalist resentment, and claims that Jews caused Germany’s defeat in World War I. The Nazis did not invent these ideas. They unified them into a total ideology tied to race, nationalism, and authoritarianism.

The Nazis were historically distinct because they moved beyond earlier persecutions by other groups, which often included exclusion, forced conversion, segregation, or expulsion, to total racial categorization, continent-wide persecution, mechanized mass murder, and the deliberate elimination of every Jew they could reach.

Let’s take a minute and look at the similarities and differences between America today and Nazi Germany in the 1930s. The similarities include conspiracy thinking, portraying Jews as outsiders, economic and social anxiety fueling scapegoating, and ideology spread through mass communication.

The differences are substantial, however, and include the following.

1. The U.S. government does not have an inherently antisemitic structure. Currently, antisemitism is not recognized as the official government stance. Jewish individuals have complete legal protections, antisemitic acts are prosecuted, and Jewish Americans are actively involved in politics, academia, business, media, and civic spheres.

2. American society is far more pluralistic, with strong traditions of religious freedom, constitutional protections, independent courts, diverse media, and civil society organizations. Organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, universities, religious groups, and law enforcement openly monitor and combat antisemitism.

3. Antisemitism in America is fragmented, not centralized. In America today, antisemitism emerges from far-right white nationalism, some far-left anti-Zionist movements crossing into antisemitic rhetoric, extremist religious ideologies, and online conspiracy ecosystems.

4. Violence exists, but not industrialized persecution. The U.S. has experienced serious antisemitic attacks, including synagogue shootings, harassment, vandalism, and threats. This violence is not state-supported or state-driven.

You may recall my discussion of Hannah Arendt’s views in my last article. That article discussed her views on political equality. She also had strong opinions about antisemitism, which partly reflect her own experiences while avoiding capture by the Nazis.

Arendt labeled the Jews a “pariah” people, because of their dual characters: the parvenu or the assimilated Jew trying to enter elite society by downplaying Jewish identity, and the pariah, the outsider who accepts marginality and may develop moral or intellectual independence from it. She believed many talented Jewish intellectuals occupied a “conscious pariah” role.

Arendt believed the Jewish assimilation into modern society was incomplete and fragile. The emancipation in 19th-century Europe gave Jews legal rights but not genuine political security. They could become wealthy, cultured, and professionally successful, while remaining socially vulnerable because acceptance depended on unstable social moods rather than durable political belonging. Jews believed that success meant safety, but they didn’t understand that safety was dependent on antisemitism being controlled.

According to Arendt, the collapse of the traditional nation-state created a catastrophe. She asserted that minorities without secure national protection become vulnerable when states fail to protect them. She argued that Jews exemplified this vulnerability most clearly because they were dispersed across Europe, lacked sovereign protection, and often depended on fragile legal arrangements. This made them symbolic targets during social crises.

Arendt coined the phrase “banality of evil” during the 1960 Eichmann trial in Israel. Eichmann was a high-ranking Nazi accused of murdering thousands. In his defense, he claimed he was simply doing what he was told. The banality of evil describes a person who acts as a bureaucratic administrator, uses shallow clichés, and obeys without weighing the consequences. She concludes that great evil can be committed by ordinary people who stop thinking critically about morality.

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If the Iran war and the Gaza conflict can be resolved, the fever of antisemitism in the United States will subside. The left’s antisemitic behavior is tied to their oppressor-oppressed ideology, and that rage will be dampened if they believe oppression has subsided. On the extreme right, there is no hope for cooler heads, because racial persecution is built into their authoritarian ideology.

The Jewish people are victims of their uniqueness, which is a constant excuse for targeting them.

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

The left still controls academia, including the universities, the mainstream media, and the deep state. The right controls the Supreme Court and Congress (by a small margin).

The second-most-important election is this fall. If the Democrats take the House, the Trump agenda takes a hit, and the impeachments will begin again. There is no scenario in which tribalism will abate so that the Democrats will bring back their neoliberal/progressive agenda, and most of what Trump has accomplished will be lost. The Republicans have to have eight more years in power to halt the progressive agenda fully.

Here we will take an early look at the Democratic race for the presidential nomination and see what it tells us.

According to Mark Halperin’s reporting, which I trust to be reasonably objective, Democrats line up as follows: Gavin Newsom, Josh Shapiro, Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris, Rahm Emanuel, AOC, Mark Kelly, J.D. Pritzker. In his opinion, all of the candidates are weak for one reason or another.

Mark’s ratings are based on intelligence from insiders, not polls. He separates electability from popularity, and one of his strongest metrics for electability is whether the candidate has a vision for themselves and the country. Most of the people on this list do not have a vision they can articulate.

Gavin Newsom, Governor of California – His strengths are an elite communicator, very comfortable on a national stage, a strong fundraising network (Hollywood + donors), and he’s already running a shadow national campaign. His weaknesses are California liability (crime, homelessness narratives), and he can come off as overly slick. Newsom is a progressive hybrid, the most presidential-looking, but also the easiest Republican target.

Josh Shapiro, Governor of Pennsylvania - His strengths are winning big in a swing state, a pragmatic, moderate tone, and a strong executive image. His weaknesses are lower national name recognition and a less charismatic persona than Newsom. Shapiro is a center-left candidate to the right of the progressives, and Halperin treats him as the most dangerous general-election candidate. Dangerous in the sense that if his competitors overlook him, they will be making a mistake.

Pete Buttigieg, former Transportation Secretary. His strengths are that he is extremely disciplined, a strong communicator, strong in media and debates, and he appeals to educated voters. His weaknesses are a limited executive record and his weakness with Black voters (historically). We could label him a technocratic reformer. He’s always competitive, but still needs to create a broader coalition.

Kamala Harris, former Vice President. Her strengths are a strong national infrastructure, support among key Democratic constituencies, and a first-in-line position if Biden fully exits the scene. Her weaknesses include low approval ratings and messaging inconsistency. She is an institutional coalition candidate. Kamala is the default front-runner if she runs well, but she is very beatable.

Rahm Emanuel, former Chicago mayor and ambassador. His strengths are deep political experience, and he’s a strong operator and strategist. His weaknesses are that he is polarizing and seen as an old-guard establishment figure. You could label him a hard-nosed centrist. He is probably more influential behind the scenes than as a candidate.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, current Congresswoman. Her strengths are her marketing ability and the base of followers she has developed. Her weakness is that she is a polarizing personality. She will influence the race if she runs.

Mark Kelly, Arizona senator, astronaut. His strength is his strong general-election profile. His weaknesses are that he has only moderate appeal and weak primary energy.

J. B. Pritzker, Governor of Illinois. His strengths are his massive personal wealth (which allows him to self-fund), strong progressive credentials, and executive experience. His weaknesses are low national charisma and the fact that Illinois doesn’t scream “electability.” He is a progressive establishment candidate, but he’s not a serious player if money and organization dominate.

You can place these candidates into four lanes: Shapiro and Kelly are electable; Harris and Newsom are part of the national machine; Buttigieg is a next-generation politician; and AOC and Pritzker are in the progressive ideological lane.

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Of course, the central battle within the party is between the progressive and more traditional wings. The progressives want to change more and don’t care if that makes them less popular along the way. Elections, unlike primaries, are usually won by centrist candidates because they have to attract independents to vote for them.

The energy in the Democratic Party lies with the progressives for several reasons: their zeal makes them activists; primaries are ideological contests; institutions that generate new ideas (universities) are progressive; and the progressives have greater cultural influence through the media and cultural institutions.

Moderates still have significant money influence, however. Contributions from East Coast and West Coast sources are approximately equal, so Silicon Valley/Hollywood doesn’t control things on its own. Blue state identity matters too. Strong blue states will nominate progressive candidates, while swing states must nominate moderates to increase their chances of winning the nomination.

How does the general election look from our long-distance position? The Polymarket betting line has Newsom ahead of AOC in the nomination race. On the Republican side, Vance defeats Rubio in the primary and goes on to win the general election over Newsom.

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

It’s been said that humans and chimpanzees are the only species that kill their own, but that statement is only partially true. Many species may kill their own for a variety of reasons, including survival, procreative advantage, or rivalry. But none kill as ferociously as chimps and humans.

Male chimps patrol the borders of their territory. If they encounter an isolated male from another community, they may attack and kill him. They also engage in territorial raids using a typical pattern that includes a silent coordinated patrol, searching for a numerical advantage, a sudden overwhelming attack, and repeated attacks over time against the same group.

Chimp aggression also happens inside a community, where there can be dominance fights between males, attacks on lower-ranking members, occasional infanticide, and coercive aggression related to mating.

Humans raise the ante on Chimp behavior. They engage in organized coalition violence, which includes planning and coordination, warfare-like behavior between groups, and killing on scales far beyond immediate survival needs. The developed human brain has transformed human violence through tools and weapons, ideology and politics, large-scale cooperation, and abstraction (“nation,” “religion,” “class,” etc.).

Like all behaviors that come under scrutiny these days, attitudes towards violence are subject to one’s political ideology – left versus right. Each tribe is attached to views on violence that align with its political beliefs.

On the political left, violence is viewed through a structural lens, framed as something embedded in systems (poverty, racism, inequality). Reducing those conditions is seen as key to reducing violence overall. The left prefers nonviolent protest. Traditions influenced by figures like Martin Luther King Jr. emphasize civil disobedience and mass protest. The left is skeptical of state force and is more concerned about police brutality, mass incarceration, and military interventions. Some fringe or historical movements on the left have justified revolutionary violence, but that’s not the dominant modern mainstream position.

On the right, the emphasis is on order and deterrence. Violence is often viewed through the lens of maintaining order and discouraging crime (strong policing, harsher penalties). The right believes in the legitimacy of force for protection, greater acceptance of self-defense rights (including firearm ownership), and the use of force to protect property or the nation.

The right is more supportive of military strength and more likely to support robust defense and, in some cases, preemptive or assertive use of military force. The exception on the right is the libertarian and religious conservative strands that stress restraint, non-aggression, and just-war limits.

The tribes do have overlapping beliefs. A vast majority of Americans condemn violence by individuals (crime, terrorism). Both sides generally accept some legitimate use of force (e.g., self-defense, policing, national defense), but disagree on scope, oversight, and thresholds.

There is a strong break generating different positions on what counts as “violence” and direct physical harm vs. broader societal “structural” harms. The tribes have different levels of trust in institutions, especially the police, courts, and the military. The debate over dealing with violence gets more complicated when it comes to risk trade-offs, such as civil liberties vs. security or prevention vs. punishment. Historical experience and group identity shape perceptions of threat and protection.

One large population study found that about 3.9% of people had at least one conviction for a violent crime. It also found that roughly 1% of the population accounted for over 60% of violent crime convictions.

In the U.S., annual violent crime rates are also relatively low compared to the total population. FBI data typically show around 350–400 violent crimes per 100,000 people per year (about 0.35–0.4% annually), that’s crimes, not unique offenders.

It makes sense to conclude that there is a small percentage of people who commit violent crimes by nature, and it’s unlikely that these crimes can be prevented.

Many can be rehabilitated, though the success rate varies a lot depending on the person, the type of violence, age, mental health, substance abuse, social environment, and whether treatment is intensive and sustained. Research shows that most violent offenders do not remain highly violent for life. Violent behavior tends to peak in the late teens and 20s and decline with age (“aging out” of crime).

Some offenders respond especially well to comprehensive treatment: younger offenders, people whose violence was impulsive rather than predatory, people tied to drugs, alcohol, trauma, or unstable environments, and people with strong family/community support. Others are much harder to rehabilitate, including chronic repeat offenders, highly psychopathic individuals, organized/sadistic offenders, and people with entrenched antisocial personality traits.

One of the strongest findings in criminology is that certainty of structure and opportunity matters more than harshness alone. Countries and systems focused on reintegration often achieve lower repeat-offense rates than those focused solely on punishment.

In the U.S., recidivism (repeat crimes) rates are generally higher, partly because former inmates often return to unstable environments with poor employment prospects and fragmented support.

There’s also an important distinction that needs to be mentioned. Reducing future violence is often achievable; completely changing personality or eliminating all aggressive tendencies may not be. The evidence suggests that many violent offenders can become nonviolent members of society, some improve partially, and a smaller core group remains persistently dangerous despite intervention. This evidence supports government programs that address offenders driven by innate psychological factors.

Even though we can understand the causes of violent crime and the behaviors that lead to it, little is being done because of the close-mindedness of America’s political tribes. Each side holds tight to its ideology and won’t compromise. The left believes that most guns should be banned because they cause violence. The right believes in gun ownership as a right, so any law that curtails that right is inappropriate.

Those are the official ideological positions, but public opinion is more nuanced. A majority of Americans generally support stricter gun laws, though not overwhelmingly. Recent Gallup polling found that about 56% favor stricter laws, while roughly a third want laws kept as they are, and a small minority want them loosened.

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The devil is in the details, however. Keeping guns away from the mentally ill and implementing a tight process for buying and owning guns are very logical approaches that should deter some crime. Still, the gun lobby will have no part of what they see as the restriction of an inherent right.

Human violence will never end because it’s built into human nature. Like any societal issue, if the problem of violence in America is not addressed, the public suffers for it. If tribalism does not end, American democracy cannot survive.

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

Moyn’s opinion piece, titled “Older Americans Are Hoarding America’s Potential,” conveys its basic premise in its title. He has a book on the same subject coming out soon.

Moyn expresses concern about aspects of elderly life, such as the lack of long-term care options, but, on the whole, he thinks the damage that the age group inflicts on American society is worse than any mistreatment they receive.

As you will see later, Moyn is guilty of overgeneralization because he lumps several issues together as consequences of elder behavior when, in fact, they are not. Moreover, his neoliberal beliefs heavily influence his views. Let’s step through his points and see what you think.

He states that America is a gerontocratic society in which the “old” exercise increasing power and wealth, leading to overrepresentation in political life and unequal power in American society. He asks whether older people should be required to give more to younger Americans and national priorities, which he sees as critical to the future of our democracy and society.

He believes they do not deserve the stranglehold over it they currently enjoy through overrepresentation in elections, which produces too many regressive policies and too many seniors in the highest offices. Regressive to him is any policy that doesn’t support the neoliberal/globalist agenda.

He sees some elder power as detrimental to society, blocking its progress in areas like environmental remediation, immigration policy, and tax fairness. He doesn’t mention that half of the American public rejects his neoliberal position on these issues.

Conservatives in general are against them, no matter what age. And what about the older liberals, who support the ideas he supports? They’re already on board. Polls show the elderly split almost evenly on party affiliation. Does he want to penalize his ideological brethren?

Moyn asserts that our presidents are too old, as is our political class. A large majority of Americans would certainly agree with that, but the elites and politicians are the people who block the problem from being fixed. Ignoring that group in the argument, he goes on to state that the hidden depth of gerontocracy lies in the advanced age of voters and the concentration of wealth in this country.

Many in the elderly population have reached a point in their lives where they can live comfortably because of the careful watch they kept over spending and the amount of money they were able to save. In America, they were admired for their conscientiousness and for serving as role models for sound fiscal management.

Now, however, Moyn and his friends have defined this as anti-social behavior. Meanwhile, politicians and Wall Street professionals keep creating new investment vehicles to enrich themselves, such as subprime mortgages and junk bonds, which can disrupt the economy and cause recessions. They made the quick buck, and when their wonderful products failed, the middle class had to bail them out by paying more taxes.

He criticizes seniors for their high election participation, as if they’re doing something wrong. I thought we lived in a democracy where, in theory, government can be controlled by informed voter choices. What don’t young voters go to the polls and vote rather than just complaining?

Moyn discusses the growing wealth gap in America, which I agree is a real problem. Its cause is mainly the fact that wealthy people and politicians have rigged the system for their own benefit. Money grows faster when you have a lot of it, so the wealthy accumulate more. The money-making opportunities they have are closed to the rest of us.

Moyn wants us to believe that the elderly couple on Social Security is the villain. For that reason, he proposes a set of changes in the way elderly people live their lives.

He would start with putting age limits on politicians, something the whole country would applaud. This issue barely touches on the concept of genontocracy because the group of politicians is small. Put that issue in a different bucket with the other reasons for ineffective government.

His second proposal is to make voting easier, a core policy of the left. Most likely, that will only increase the number of registered voters who don’t vote. Civic-minded citizens don’t mind the steps they have to go through on election day, because they see voting as a privilege. The old line about showing an ID to vote being a barrier to voting is a lie. Ask any constituent in one of the “oppressed” classes in America, and they will tell you the truth.

Moyn’s third recommendation is to institute a mandatory retirement age, to open up those jobs to young people. About 20% of Americans over 65 are still working, 40% of them part-time. That’s 7 million people. The 60% who are full-time add up to 4.2 million people.

So the elderly make up 2.5% of the workforce in the United States. About 40% of those with higher education work in white-collar positions, and a large share of the remaining take jobs with flexible hours and/or provide health care. It’s hard to see how these folks can be ruining the careers of young people.

As many as 35% of Gen Y age people are being supported by their parents. It’s time for the men to shut down their game consoles in the basement and get going on their careers. The women need to stop posting so many photos on Instagram and start interviewing.

Moyn’s fourth recommendation is to impose a progressive tax on the elderly to force them to sell their homes. Like the job market, he sees the elderly as exceeding the acceptable limit of home ownership. Of course, such a tax could never be passed because it’s unconstitutional, and as a lawyer, Moyn knows that, but he must have needed another grievance to make his list longer, so he added this one.

The behavior of the elderly regarding staying in their homes is way down the list of factors affecting housing availability. The prime factors include interest rates, new construction, local regulations, demographics, and economic conditions.

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I draw the following conclusions from the Moyn article. Writing an op-ed in the New York Times before a book launch is a marketing tactic aimed at selling books. Its publication in a progressive newspaper validates the author’s bona fides as a neoliberal/progressive. Surprisingly, though, his academic rigor is lacking, as one can easily prove by looking up the statistics supporting his assertions and seeing them fall apart.

That doesn’t matter to him, however, because he gets to add another book to his CV, and he also provides another Ivy League stamp of approval to the neoliberal ideology he discusses with his friends at cocktail parties.

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

Let me start with my own story so you understand why I know about this. I survived the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. My cousin, Tommy Ferino, was a New York City fire captain. He died on 9/11. We buried an empty coffin for him. He was going to be promoted to battalion chief. I am writing this to keep people safe, not to scare them.

What Happened in the Ukraine War

If you have been following the war in Ukraine, you know that both sides use drones. The Russians try to jam the drones with powerful radio signals. They use jammers that work in the 2.4 to 5.2 gigahertz range. (A gigahertz is a billion radio waves per second. That is very fast.)

The Russian jammers are so strong that they sometimes jam their own equipment. They jam their own GPS. They jam their own radios between soldiers. They jam almost everything.

But here is the interesting part. Some Ukrainian drones still work even when jammed. Why? Because they use AI (artificial intelligence) to see where they are going, they follow preset images of the terrain, or they use fiber optic cables. Fiber optic cables carry light waves, not radio signals. You cannot jam light waves inside a cable.

How Safe Is Airport Security?

Let me be clear. The security you go through at the airport is very good. They check your bags. They check your shoes. They use metal detectors. They look for bombs and flammable materials. It would be very hard to sneak a bomb onto a plane today.

But that is not the biggest threat anymore.

The real threat is something called electromagnetic spectrum attack or radio frequency jamming. I wrote an article for a military magazine(MCPA) called “The Poor Man’s EMP Nuke.” I was later told that the White House reviewed my article. That is not bragging. That is just to show you that I know what I am talking about.

How Do Planes Land in Bad Weather?

To understand the danger, you need to know how planes land when they cannot see.

Good weather landing (Visual Flight Rules): When the weather is clear, pilots can look out the window. They see bridges, rivers, and landmarks. They know where they are. They can also use GPS, which is very easy to use.

Bad weather landing (Instrument Flight Rules): When there is fog, heavy rain, or snow, pilots cannot see. They have to use instruments. Those instruments depend completely on radio signals. The system is called ILS, which stands for Instrument Landing System.

The ILS is so accurate that planes can actually land themselves in bad weather. But here is the problem. The ILS runs on radio frequencies. And radio frequencies can be jammed.

The Terrorist Threat Nobody Is Talking About

What if a terrorist hides near an airport with a 100-watt radio jammer? That is much more powerful than a home Wi-Fi router. They would only need to turn it on for 15 or 30 seconds. Just enough time to block the signals when a plane is trying to land in heavy fog.

Airports are very vulnerable because of where they are located. Think about JFK Airport, LaGuardia, or Newark. There are places nearby where someone could hide with a small device.

You do not need to be a genius to build a jammer. An amateur radio operator could do it. Someone who took physics in high school could do it. An electrical engineer could do it. A computer hacker could do it.

Why Isn’t Anyone Stopping This?

The FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) is in charge of airplane safety. The FCC (Federal Communications Commission) is in charge of radio frequencies. Both of these agencies are good at their jobs. But they are not thinking like creative hackers.

They are not ignorant because they are stupid. They are ignorant because they have not been trained to think about this specific threat. It takes a different kind of thinking, like a computer hacker trying to find a weakness in a system.

What Needs to Happen?

People need to know about this danger. Airports need to be aware of radio jamming, not just bombs. There may be ways to counter this threat. I’m working on thought experiments of what can be done to ameliorate this situation. That brings some ideas, but I have a 72-year-old hacker brain, not a 25-year-old hacker brain. But first, people have to understand that the threat exists.

Final Thoughts

I am not trying to make you afraid to fly. The security at airports is very good against bombs and weapons. But we need to think about the next threat. The people who want to hurt us are also thinking about the next threat. We need to stay ahead of them.

I survived one terrorist attack at the World Trade Center in 1993. I lost my cousin on 9/11. I do not want more families to go through what my family went through. Please share this information. Tell people about the danger of radio jamming near airports. The more people know, the harder it is for terrorists to surprise us.

God bless everyone. Stay safe.

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

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The second-most-important election is this fall. If the Democrats take the House, the Trump agenda takes a hit, and the impeachments will begin again. There is no scenario in which tribalism will abate so that the Democrats will bring back their neoliberal/progressive agenda, and most of what Trump has accomplished will be lost. The Republicans have to have eight more years in power to halt the progressive agenda fully.

Here we will take an early look at the Democratic race for the presidential nomination and see what it tells us.

According to Mark Halperin’s reporting, which I trust to be reasonably objective, Democrats line up as follows: Gavin Newsom, Josh Shapiro, Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris, Rahm Emanuel, AOC, Mark Kelly, J.D. Pritzker. In his opinion, all of the candidates are weak for one reason or another.

Mark’s ratings are based on intelligence from insiders, not polls. He separates electability from popularity, and one of his strongest metrics for electability is whether the candidate has a vision for themselves and the country. Most of the people on this list do not have a vision they can articulate.

Gavin Newsom, Governor of California – His strengths are an elite communicator, very comfortable on a national stage, strong fundraising network (Hollywood + donors), and he’s already running a shadow national campaign. His weaknesses are California liability (crime, homelessness narratives), and he can come off as overly slick. Newsom is a progressive hybrid, the most presidential-looking, but also the easiest Republican target.

Josh Shapiro, Governor of Pennsylvania - His strengths are winning big in a swing state, a pragmatic, moderate tone, and a strong executive image. His weaknesses are lower national name recognition and a less charismatic persona than Newsom. Shapiro is a center-left candidate to the right of the progressives, and Halperin treats him as the most dangerous general-election candidate. Dangerous in the sense that if his competitors overlook him, they will be making a mistake.

Pete Buttigieg, former Transportation Secretary. His strengths are that he is extremely disciplined, a strong communicator, strong in media and debates, and he appeals to educated voters. His weaknesses are a limited executive record and his weakness with Black voters (historically). We could label him a technocratic reformer. He’s always competitive, but still needs to create a broader coalition.

Kamala Harris, former Vice President. Her strengths are a strong national infrastructure, support among key Democratic constituencies, and a first-in-line position if Biden fully exits the scene. Her weaknesses include low approval ratings and messaging inconsistency. She is an institutional coalition candidate. Kamala is the default front-runner if she runs well, but she is very beatable.

Rahm Emanuel, former Chicago mayor and ambassador. His strengths are deep political experience, and he’s a strong operator and strategist. His weaknesses are that he is polarizing and seen as an old-guard establishment figure. You could label him a hard-nosed centrist. He is probably more influential behind the scenes than as a candidate.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, current Congresswoman. Her strengths are her marketing ability and the base of followers she has developed. Her weakness is that she is a polarizing personality.

She will influence the race if she runs.

Mark Kelly, Arizona senator, astronaut. His strength is his strong general-election profile. His weaknesses are that he has only moderate appeal and weak primary energy.

J. B. Pritzker, Governor of Illinois. His strengths are his massive personal wealth (which allows him to self-fund), strong progressive credentials, and executive experience. His weaknesses are low national charisma and the fact that Illinois doesn’t scream “electability.” He is a progressive establishment candidate, but he’s not a serious player if money and organization dominate.

You can place these candidates into four lanes: Shapiro and Kelly are electable; Harris and Newsom are part of the national machine; Buttigieg is a next-generation politician; and AOC and Pritzker are in the progressive ideological lane.

Of course, the central battle within the party is between the progressive and more traditional wings. The progressives want to change more and don’t care if that makes them less popular along the way. Elections, unlike primaries, are usually won by centrist candidates because they have to attract independents to vote for them.

The energy in the Democratic Party lies with the progressives for several reasons: their zeal makes them activists; primaries are ideological contests; institutions that generate new ideas (universities) are progressive; and the progressives have greater cultural influence through the media and cultural institutions.

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Moderates still have significant money influence, however. Contributions from East Coast and West Coast sources are approximately equal, so Silicon Valley/Hollywood doesn’t control things on its own. Blue state identity matters too. Strong blue states will nominate progressive candidates, while swing states must nominate moderates to increase their chances of winning the nomination.

How does the general election look from our long-distance position? The Polymarket betting line has Newsom ahead of AOC in the nomination race. On the Republican side, Vance defeats Rubio in the primary and goes on to win the general election over Newsom.

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

You flip on the television at night, exhausted from the day, and there it is again. Another segment on FOX News about “inner-city chaos” and skyrocketing crime. CNN rolls out experts decrying systemic barriers that keep Black men locked in cycles of poverty and punishment. On Newsmax or OAN, the tone is often even harsher, conveying the same message of danger, failure, and inner-city crime.

Scroll through social media (X, Facebook, TikTok, Truth Social, and even Instagram), and the algorithm serves up an endless buffet of outrage clips, fights, viral memes, and cherry-picked tragedies exploiting black violence and crime. Black men in America, the story goes, are either victims or villains. Rarely anything in between. This is what so many depict now as “Black Culture.”

But here’s a number that never makes the chyron: there are over 400,000- 500,000 more Black men in college than in prison. Let that sink in. Not a talking point. Not a spin. Data from the National Center for Education Statistics and the Bureau of Justice Statistics has shown this reality for years.

Back in 2009, roughly 1.4 million Black men were enrolled in postsecondary programs, while about 840,000 were behind bars. The gap has fluctuated with enrollment trends and declining incarceration rates, but the fundamental truth remains: more Black men are hitting the books than the cell block. And yet you’d never know it from the nightly news or your feed.

One of the main reasons why this isn’t common knowledge is that outrage pays, while nuance and boring truth don’t. Media outlets on both the left and right run-on engagement. Fear keeps eyes glued. Hope doesn’t trend.

A police encounter gone wrong in a major city is prime-time and will headline news cycles for a week, if not more. A young Black man graduating from Howard, Morehouse, Tuskegee, the University of Michigan, Clemson, or Texas Tech with a degree and landing a good job or starting an innovative business will hardly ever get mentioned unless he is a star athlete. It doesn’t fit the script.

For progressive networks, acknowledging educational gains might undercut the narrative of perpetual systemic failure. For conservative ones, highlighting Black success stories risks softening the tough-on-crime message that resonates with their base. Social media algorithms are engineered to hack your dopamine, feeding on outrage, anxiety, and tribalism to keep you hooked. Statistics about Black college enrollment barely get mentioned, and when they do, it gets buried under the latest culture-war land mine.

This isn’t a conspiracy. It’s business. Cable news ratings soar during racial unrest. Social media companies profit when tribal users contribute to their echo chambers. Politicians on both sides raise money off the divide. This has led to a distorted mirror held up to Black America that reflects only the broken pieces.

I’m not saying these problems don’t exist. They definitely do. Black men are still overrepresented in the criminal justice system relative to their share of the population. Poverty, fatherlessness, and failing schools in some neighborhoods are real problems. Crime statistics paint a horrific and sad picture of reality for many Black Americans, and ignoring them helps no one. But the same honesty demands we acknowledge the other side of the ledger.

Incarceration rates for Black Americans have dropped sharply since the peak of the war on drugs. College enrollment, despite recent dips among Black men specifically, still outpaces imprisonment. Black-owned businesses are growing faster than the national average in many sectors. Homeownership rates have ticked up over the past two decades.

These aren’t miracles. They’re the product of individual grit, family sacrifice, mentorship, community churches, athletic organizations, HBCUs, and yes, policy shifts that reduced mandatory minimums for nonviolent offenses. Yet the coverage gap is glaring.

Search any major outlet’s archives for stories on Black male college graduation rates. You’ll find a handful that are usually tied to some crisis or protest. Now search for stories on prison populations, bail reform failures, or urban violence. You’ll come across page after page and link after link. The imbalance isn’t accidental. It’s purposeful curation. Media gatekeepers decide what “matters,” and positive Black achievement rarely clears the bar unless it serves a larger ideological point.

I remember talking to a friend. He is a Black father of two sons. He put it bluntly: “They want us mad, not motivated.” He wasn’t wrong. When every headline screams crisis, young men internalize it. They see the world as rigged against them before they’ve even tried.

That’s the quiet poison of selective storytelling. It doesn’t just inform; it shapes expectations. Tell a generation that prison is their destiny, and some will live down to it. Show them the thousands walking across stages in caps and gowns every spring, many of whom are the first in their families, and you plant a different seed.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not calling for feel-good propaganda either. Truth requires both the bad and the good. The incarceration rate for Black men born in 2001 is still far too high. Some estimates have shown that one in five Black men born in 2001 is expected to serve time in prison during their lifetime. That’s unacceptable. But so is pretending that the needle hasn’t moved.

Since the early 1990s, Black male college enrollment has exploded before recent headwinds. HBCUs, once written off, have produced leaders in every field. Black men are earning degrees in engineering, business, and health sciences at rates their fathers could only dream of. These aren’t exceptions. They’re patterns hidden in plain sight.

This matters beyond Black America. Every group gets the selective treatment. Immigrants are either all criminals or all saints, depending on the outlet’s bias. Rural whites are either salt-of-the-earth or dumb rednecks. The game is the same: simplify, polarize, and repeat. But when it comes to Black men, the stakes feel higher because the stereotypes have such deep roots, and there is very little “either” for us. The “thug” trope sells papers. The “scholar” doesn’t. Yet many scholars are out there. Many of them are quietly rewriting the story one diploma at a time.

Imagine if the media treated this like the achievement it is. Front-page features on first-generation graduates. Profiles of Black men mentoring at-risk youth while finishing night classes. Data-driven segments on how family structure, school choice, and personal agency drive outcomes more than pundits admit. Ratings might dip initially. But trust could be rebuilt. Viewers might feel something besides anger and prejudice, maybe even hope.

Until that happens, the responsibility falls on parents, teachers, pastors, uncles, coaches, bosses, mentors, and anyone with influence. We all have to be responsible and take accountability. Tell the young men in your life the whole truth. Yes, the world can be unfair. Yes, some systems need fixing. But no, prison isn’t inevitable. College, trade school, and/or entrepreneurship paths are possible and increasingly traveled. Data proves it.

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The next time you catch yourself doom-scrolling or glued to the 24-hour outrage machine, pause. Ask: What aren’t they telling me? Then go find out. The numbers don’t lie, even when the headlines do. There are more Black men in lecture halls than prison yards.

That’s not spin. It’s reality. And it’s time the rest of the country heard it-unfiltered, untwisted, and unapologetic. Because propaganda makes for lousy education. Truth, messy as it is, builds better futures.

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

The right’s criticism of the left’s view of science is more narrowly focused. The right believes the left puts its own extreme ideology above science. For example, the multiple genders argument turns upside down basic biological principles in favor of identity politics.

Conservative positions hold that addressing climate change involves weighing trade-offs rather than panic over predictions that may not be reliable. A third area of conservative concern is crime. Conservatives reject the left’s notions that all criminals are rehabilitatable and that their crimes should be mitigated by their oppressed status. They believe the foundation of any stable society is law and order, so the public needs to know that its safety is protected by law enforcement.

An analysis of right and left positions on denial of science shows that both conservatives AND liberals can be science deniers. Why? Because scientific skepticism is a human trait, not a political one.

Science is a child of the Enlightenment, when mankind realized he could control his environment through technologies that were developed using scientific principles. Early in the Enlightenment, scientists believed that the world could be understood through the acquisition of absolute knowledge. This idea was debunked by the philosopher David Hume, who asserted that perceptions of reality can be mistaken. In other words, there was no absolute way to know reality.

The solution to Hume’s obstacle was Fallibilism, a philosophical principle holding that human knowledge is never certain and is always open to revision. Our beliefs may be false or mistaken. The important conclusion is that not knowing for certain about the world is an acceptable reality, as long as we continue to test what we believe to be the truth. That practical approach to understanding the world is the scientific method. Scientific theories arise when evidence supports a hypothesis, using observable laws (e.g., the law of gravity). Theories can be revised or discarded if the data no longer support them.

Given its remarkable track record, we should be aware of threats to science and its continued progress. One such threat is science denial: the groundless rejection of well-established scientific conclusions. Scientists themselves have been especially keen to sound the alarm about this widespread tendency, while social scientists have begun to investigate.

One common assertion is that science denial is primarily an issue on the political right. Consistent with this idea, right-leaning individuals are more likely than their left-leaning counterparts to deny various pivotal scientific claims.

Why do conservative people deny science? According to many psychologists, it’s because people on the right have certain cognitive tendencies that make science denial more tempting for them. These include a strong need for verifiable knowledge, rigidity in their worldview, and a tendency toward system-justifying beliefs. People on the left are less prone to these cognitive foibles and thus less likely to engage in science denial.

These ideas seem plausible enough at first glance, but they have to be tested. A problem with testing at the outset is that most psychologists and social scientists are themselves on the political left. This creates potential problems for research on science denial.

First, because most psychologists lean left, they may be more inclined to characterize people on the right as having behavioral biases that explain why they get everything wrong - and to portray themselves as having various traits that explain why they get everything right. Because there are relatively few right-leaning researchers, these conclusions may receive less attention than they should.

Second, psychologists may be quick to identify science denial on the right but slower to spot it among themselves. Although we’re less likely to hear about it, the left does have certain blind spots when it comes to accepting scientific findings.

Left-leaning individuals are often highly skeptical of the idea that genes help shape individual differences in mind and behavior. Many reject evolutionary psychology, thereby denying the evolution of the mind. Many deny the validity of IQ research. Many downplay or deny evolved differences between the sexes. And some even deny that the sex binary is one of the best-established findings in biology.

A study was conducted in 2016, and the resulting paper was titled “Science Denial Across the Political Divide: Liberals and Conservatives Are Similarly Motivated to Deny Attitude-Inconsistent Science,” by Anthony N. Washburn (awas hbu1@uic.edu) and Linda J. Skitka, Social Psychological and Personality Science, Volume 9, Issue 8, September 14, 2017.

The authors tested two main hypotheses:

1. The Uniquely-Right-Wing-Pathology Hypothesis: the idea that the right is more prone to science denial than the left.

2. The Symmetry Hypothesis: the idea that right and left are equally likely to reject scientific claims that clash with their political preferences.

Washburn and Skitka randomly assigned more than 1,000 participants to review scientific findings on various political topics. The topics included immigration, gun control, carbon emissions, health-care reform, nuclear power, and same-sex marriage. There were two versions of each reading: one with findings more aligned with the left, and one with findings more aligned with the right.

After completing their assignment, participants were asked which conclusion was supported by interpreting a set of numerical results included in the reading.

The findings largely supported the symmetry hypothesis over the uniquely right-wing hypothesis.

People on both sides of the political aisle were more likely to interpret the findings in ways that supported their pre-existing views than in ways that refuted them. After choosing an interpretation, participants were told the correct answer. They were then asked whether they agreed with it, whether they thought the researchers were knowledgeable, and whether they trusted the researchers’ interpretation. Finally, participants were asked for their own views on the issues covered in the study.

A twist was also added. For each reading, there was a simple but incorrect interpretation of the result, and a complex but correct interpretation. This was done to test the theory that, if the simple interpretation fit people’s pre-existing views, they’d be more likely to stop there. In contrast, if it didn’t fit, they’d be more likely to keep thinking until they arrived at the more complex - and correct - interpretation.

The findings largely supported the symmetry hypothesis over the uniquely right-wing or uniquely left-wing pathology hypotheses. People on both sides of the political aisle were more likely to interpret the findings in a way that supported their pre-existing views rather than in ways that refuted them.

Science denial is often construed as an ideological issue that is typically a problem for those on the political right (e.g., conservatives are anti-climate change science). The data suggest that this conceptualization is incorrect. When scientific conclusions conflict with people’s ideological stances and attitudes, people on the left and right are motivated both to perceive the evidence in a way that supports their preferred conclusions or to deny the validity of the findings when provided an interpretation that is inconsistent with their preferred conclusions.

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Explanations for ideologically motivated reasoning, however, go beyond simple attitude preferences and most likely indicate inherent psychological differences between conservatives and liberals that account for ideological differences in science reasoning.

The description of the study above includes excerpts from a Substack post titled “Who Engages in More Science Denial, Left or Right?” By Steve Stewart-Williams.

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

Participants weren’t all there for the same reasons, but common themes include: concerns about authoritarian leadership (too much executive power), immigration policies and ICE enforcement, U.S. involvement in conflicts (especially Iran), voting rights and civil liberties, and cost of living and economic issues. Of course, it’s much easier to produce large numbers of protesters if there are multiple causes to protest.

Americans have every right to protest about whatever they want, but it’s also important to look under the covers and see who’s funding the protests and what their motives are. The citizenry of a society is never an important tool for change or revolution, because they are a disorganized mass. Still, the public is often used to influence public opinion.

As Anna Ahrent wrote in her book The Origins of Totalitarianism, the drivers of revolution (the wealthy who want change, plus the intellectuals) use two groups from the public to assist them. The first group is the dedicated ideologues who want to see their chosen system implemented. Judging from the size of the socialist and communist organizations in America, that group isn’t large enough to matter.

The second group is people who want to be part of something big. They sign on for the thrill of participating. Often, there is a third component, the scapegoats. They help generate momentum for change because they are a handy target for blame for the current conditions. The Nazis’ use of the Jews as scapegoats was a historically important example. We are reminded of 1930s Germany by the antisemitism that is on the rise in the United States today.

The left blames Israel for the misfortunes of the Palestinian people, made a current issue by the Hamas attack on Israel and the subsequent Israeli invasion of Gaza. More recently, a group of conservatives, who lean libertarian, have turned against Israel. They have embraced nationalism and see Trump’s relationship with Israel as a violation of their ideological dogma. It’s a slippery slope from here to Jewish censorship and worse.

Movements such as the “No Kings” rallies or the 50501 Movement typically aim to signal public opposition, influence media coverage, pressure politicians and institutions, energize supporters, and build networks.

Public protests can shift public opinion by making an issue feel urgent, moving undecided people, and changing what’s socially acceptable to say or support. For example, the Vietnam War protests gradually shifted public sentiment in the 1970s. Specifically, protests are designed to influence elites (indirectly) by affecting polling, creating media pressure, and signaling voter intensity. That might influence legislative priorities, executive actions, and court awareness of public climate.

They seek to build long-term movements. Many protests are really about organization-building to recruit volunteers, grow email/text lists (like MoveOn), and connecting local activists.

They want to affect elections by increasing turnout among supporters, framing campaign narratives, and highlighting issues candidates run on.

The No Kings protest was funded by major left-wing groups, most notably Indivisible, MoveOn, The 50501 Movement, labor unions, and civil rights groups.

Indivisible is a nationwide grassroots political organization formed after the 2016 election. Its main funding sources include small-dollar donors (a very large share) and foundations such as the Open Society Foundations, the Ford Foundation, and the Democracy Fund. They are heavily grassroots-funded, but also receive millions in foundation grants for civic engagement work. The Open Society Foundation is George Soros’s. The Ford Foundation does not explicitly label itself as “left-wing.”

Still, its focus areas overlap heavily with progressive priorities, and its funding choices often support organizations on the left side of the policy debate. The Democracy Fund is a philanthropic grantmaker focused on U.S. democracy, funded by a single billionaire (Omidyar), not by governments. It spends tens of millions of dollars per year on elections, media, and civic organizations. Like similar foundations, it indirectly supports activism, but that’s only a small part of a much broader portfolio.

MoveOn (often called MoveOn.org) is a progressive political advocacy organization in the United States, founded in 1998 during the impeachment of Bill Clinton. MoveOn focuses on mobilizing public opinion and political action, especially among left-leaning voters. Its key activities include petitions and email campaigns, political ads and fundraising, organizing protests and rallies, supporting candidates (mostly Democrats), and increasing voter turnout.

The 50501 (50 states, 50 protests, 1 day) movement is a loosely organized protest movement that aims to coordinate demonstrations across all U.S. states on the same day around shared political concerns. It is grassroots and decentralized, focused on pro-democracy themes, often tied to opposition against perceived threats to democratic institutions, election-related issues, and specific political figures or policies.

The left does much more protesting than the right, so they receive more airtime for their activities. The reason? The left is more dedicated to fundamentally changing our society, and they have to work harder to attack the status quo. Of course, the socialists and communists are part of the Democratic big tent, and they want our current system to be discarded.

The identity politics folks, for their part, want our culture radically changed to embrace the full expression of the human experience. To them, any law, behavior, or custom that places limits on individual behavior is immoral and must be changed. Their effort does not apply to white people.

Conservatives work as individuals because that’s their nature. They affect change through voting or becoming members of organized groups. It takes issues that strike at the core of conservative thinking to get them to protest; a prime example was the Equal Rights Amendment fight in the 1970s, which they won.

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The stakes are very high this year, and liberal passion is at its peak. The No Kings protest was a manifestation not of public opinion but of how money from left-wing sources is being spent. They are going to have to regain the support of those who flipped to the Republicans in 2024 to win in 2028.

Meanwhile, the evil Hitler Trump is sidelining their agenda to remake American culture. Instead, he is embracing the core principles our Republic was founded on, the principles the left seeks to destroy. Even though the 2024 election went badly, they believe that they have a chance to right the ship in 2026. If they take the House, the Trump agenda will be thwarted, and theirs will be reestablished. The impeachments will begin again.

Will this cycle of retribution ever end?

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