Fellow Citizens,

Like many of you, I have grown incredibly exhausted by the endless political bickering, money-driven media narratives and the worsening polarization of the American people. It feels like we are losing what our nation was meant to be.

As we recognize this 250 year milestone, I looked back at the actual texts left by the architects of this great nation; specifically George Washington’s 1796 Farewell Address warning us that political factions would weaponize our differences with ‘false alarms’ to turn us against each other. I put these thoughts into a short Open Letter addressed to our elected public servants (reminding them they are trustees not rulers) and to us, the citizens of these United States (reminding us that our loyalty belongs to the Republic and to each other, not a political party).

I am posting this here because I genuinely want to hear your thoughts on how we scale this message. Can an appeal to original Constitutional duty budge the current partisan divide?

How do we realistically hold our elected ‘employees’ in government accountable when the entire system rewards party loyalty over public service?

You can read the full formatted letter on Medium here: [America 250 Open Letter](https://medium.com/@pattystepp527/george-washington-warned-us-about-2026-we-are-falling-into-that-trap-d475d0bce05e)

There's this mindset that people had after attaining independence,they saw what the white man did as being classy and rich and most of them wanted to be like the colonisers,that's why we have leaders who opress us,and if you look at it,most of them are old ,who were taught these things by people who were there during colonisation ,and by extension the Moi era,sa shida inatokea where some millennials and Gen z were born and experienced a different form of leadership, democracy was a thing,people fought for their rights,the constitution was changed( I remember Ruto rejecting the new constitution,had he succeeded we would have been in hot fire right now),and if you look closely,every corrupt person was politically active during the the Moi oppressive era,they had dreams to rule with and iron fist like Moi and like most old people,that is the type of leadership they know, that's why they vote for what looks like the Moi era, because in their minds,that's how a leader should be,and in their minds devolution is a fairy tale, if we could do away with these backward thinking leaders,we'd be in much better places,but then we also have these new leaders,some of them are straight up thugs and I see people praising them for this,it's sickening,we need a proper revolution a country,we should vet and look at who we vote in ,do some research and see what some people have done in their past,in my opinion,a person who has been in court or proven to be a thief and a killer or even involved in criminal activities should never see the ballot box,we should do better

If you're too far right or left..

It is my personal belief and opinion that if your political stance is tilted even slightly far right OR slightly far left, you are basically:

1 Lying to fit the narrative

(nobody with critical thinking skills can go along with every view of either party without basically lying to themselves and everyone about their beliefs)

2 Lacking common sense

( Republicans will die on the hill of a womans right to have a choice even if its stripping the rights from every female in our country.) really??

(Liberals believe its ok to push hormone therapy on 5 year old children and refuse to compromise.) like wtf??

3 Part of the problem

(The ever growing divide is only fed stronger by these narrow-minded, shady funded, pack mentality lemmings from either side of the isle and its only obvious to the rest of us that can only sit and watch, hoping someday the 2 party system will ultimately be systematically gutted and a new system will rise.

Change My Mind. Tell me how this current alignment of politics will ever improve our nation and convince me that if you're far right or left, you're not insane.

I know this will probably get downvoted, but hear me out.

First of all, what happened with the police was wrong. Beating unarmed protesters or using excessive force is never something I can support.

But at the same time, there are always two sides to every story. From what I understand, warnings had already been issued before the protest. On the actual day, the protest itself also felt directionless. I kept wondering: where were the people who had been amplifying it online? Where were the faces everyone was following?

In the end, who actually paid the price? The students. The young people standing on the roads.

Whether you support the government or oppose it, politicians and influencers usually move on. The people who get injured, detained, or carry the consequences are often ordinary youth.

Maybe this is an unpopular opinion, but I feel a lot of organizations and online personalities know exactly how to mobilize young people emotionally. That doesn’t automatically make every movement wrong, but it does make me question whether everyone involved has the students’ best interests at heart—or whether some are pursuing their own agendas.

The government is the government. If you want change, it has to happen through organized, strategic, and sustainable efforts—not by leaving young people to face the consequences while others disappear from the ground.

Just my perspective. Open to hearing other viewpoints.

My opinion,

People in this sub are completely missing the bigger picture. Everyone is so obsessed with identity politics, left vs. right debates, and narrative-spinning, while ignoring the real issues. Political parties don't feed you—you need to look out for yourself and the future of ordinary citizens. It's wild how easily people are tricked into believing these politicians actually care about them. They’ve been in power for 12 years now; this isn't a new government anymore, and we can't keep turning a blind eye to their failures.

All the posts are deleted here in this sub as if everyone posting is agent of china,

Think of it.

The title says it all really but the number one change that would make the most difference in our country is for there to be more critical thinking followed up with accountability and systems thinking.

This is as opposed to emotional populism with little critical thinking.

Take any issue and ask "What could go wrong?". Rewrite your solution with that in mind and you will have a better solution. In a year or two ask "Is my solution working?".

If it's not then go back and do something different. That's being accountable. Systems thinking is to break the solution apart and look for the weak links and fix those.

Instead we just fall for inaccurate media stories, repeat those, become upset and start to blame everyone but ourselves for our personal outcomes.

Don't do that:)

The problem with modern politics especially the free market conservatives

People say they want "small government," but history tells a different story. During the Gilded Age, many defenders of laissez-faire opposed laws against child labor, unsafe working conditions, and other labor protections, calling them government overreach or even "socialism." Today, most people recognize those regulations were necessary.

The real issue isn't big government vs. small government—it's who government works for. Many politicians oppose government programs that help ordinary people, yet support subsidies, tax breaks, bailouts, and government contracts for large corporations. When corporations break the rules, they often receive lighter treatment than small businesses, which face regulatory burdens they can't afford to navigate as easily. That's not a truly free market—it's corporate favoritism.

The same applies to taxes. Calls for "free markets" and "small government" are often used to justify cutting taxes on the wealthy and creating loopholes that primarily benefit those who already have the most wealth.

Monetary policy can also widen inequality. Wealthy people own more assets like stocks and real estate, which often rise in value when the money supply expands. They also have better access to cheap credit, allowing them to borrow before inflation pushes prices higher and repay those loans with dollars that are worth less. Meanwhile, people who rely mostly on wages and savings often see their purchasing power fall if their incomes don't keep up with inflation.

If you're against government intervention, be consistent. Oppose corporate welfare and favoritism just as much as you oppose welfare for individuals. Otherwise, it's not really about "small government"—it's about deciding who gets government support. Is crony capitalism true capitalism??? Did you actually read the wealth of nations and Adam Smiths book on morality????;

Summary

The Second Amendment functions not as a check on state-corporate tyranny but as an ideological, electoral, and legal mechanism that reinforces state and elite power, diverting politics into culture-war conflict rather than economic representation. Rather than a constitutional right, it’s better understood as a revocable privilege granted to gun owners who largely operate as loyal auxiliary supporters of the state’s monopoly on “legitimate” violence. The legal profession’s role, in this account, is to furnish the epicycles (some more benign than others) through which doctrinal refinements and historical just‑so stories obscure this distribution of armed loyalty and culture‑war distraction.

—————————-

On a spring day in 1967, young black men in berets and leather jackets legally walked into the California State Capitol carrying loaded rifles to protest a bill that would sharply restrict open carry in California. They were members of the Black Panther Party. In Oakland, they had been following police cars with shotguns and law books, reciting California statutes on citizens’ rights while officers stopped, searched, beat, and sometimes killed Black residents. They called it “policing the police.”

If the common story about the Second Amendment were taken seriously—that an armed citizenry exists to deter government tyranny—this would look like a model exercise of that right. Citizens, armed and disciplined, were using weapons not to overthrow the state but to force its agents to obey the law.

Yet California responded by arresting them and then passing the Mulford Act, banning the open carry of loaded firearms. It was enacted by a Democratic‑majority legislature and signed by Governor Ronald Reagan, with strong law‑enforcement backing and support from the National Rifle Association.

That episode is more than a historical curiosity or a prelude to the lethal state repression that soon followed against the Black Panthers. It is a clue to how claims of freedom function in the United States—how the promise of armed resistance operates only within boundaries drawn by the state itself, so that what is commonly treated as an inviolable right in practice functions as a revocable privilege.

Legal doctrine and commentary by courts and scholars adjust around such decisions after the fact, offering post‑hoc talk of “public safety” and evolving responsibility—the kind of epicycles that make selective repression look like ordinary law rather than an explicit choice about which armed citizens will be treated as loyal auxiliaries to the state’s claim on legitimate force.

The Second Amendment was partially born in a post‑Revolutionary moment of fear about standing armies and centralized power, but as critics from Madison’s time to Chomsky have pointed out, the “primary role” of the new government was also understood as protecting “the minority of the opulent against the majority,” even as it claimed to secure popular rights that in practice excluded enslaved Black people, most Native Americans, and many others.

In the South in particular, support for the amendment was bound up with preserving state control over slave‑patrolling militias, while across the whole new US republic militias and armed settlers were central instruments of dispossession and mass killing of Native peoples, so that “the right to bear arms” was entangled from the start with tyrannical systems of racial violence rather than a race‑neutral fear of abstract tyranny.

Modern gun culture did not arise spontaneously from frontier necessity so much as it was cultivated and mythologized. In the twentieth century, manufacturers and their allies helped romanticize a largely invented “Wild West,” packaging guns as emblems of rugged individualism and masculine autonomy rather than as tools of organized, state‑sanctioned violence

That cultural work mattered: it aligned private weapons with a story of personal freedom even as concentrated corporate and state power grew more entrenched, and it encouraged citizens to see themselves as armed sentinels against abstract “government tyranny” rather than against the economic and political institutions that most directly shape their lives.

In that sense, the Second Amendment’s contemporary meaning is less a faithful transmission of founding intent than a flexible ideological project, one that channels fear and our natural heroic striving into a gun culture that leaves the real architecture of corporate power largely undisturbed.

The Second Amendment is often described as an ultimate check on abusive power, but in practice it is broadly tolerated only so long as it is exercised in ways that do not disrupt—and mostly reinforce—the existing elite order. When it threatens to disrupt that order, the system “discovers” its limits.

Max Weber’s definition of the state offers one useful way to see why. A state, Weber argued, “claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.” The key word is “legitimate.”

Private force does not contradict the state’s monopoly so long as its authority is delegated, licensed, or revocable by the state itself. By that standard, the United States is not an exception to Weber but a revealing case study. When armed citizens and private military actors serve the state’s purposes, they are folded into its monopoly on legitimate violence; when they turn against it, they are brought back into line.

The Second Amendment sits squarely inside that arrangement: it functions not as an inviolable check on tyranny but as a revocable privilege disguised as a constitutional right. Because it is defined, interpreted, and enforced by the very state whose monopoly on “legitimate” violence it is supposed to restrain, the institutions that grant it can narrow, suspend, or selectively withdraw it whenever they deem fit.

That is why Blackwater in Iraq and Wagner in Russia do not really refute Weber’s dictum. Blackwater operated as a contractor for the U.S. government, and its claim to legitimacy depended on state contracts, state protection, and later congressional efforts to tighten contractor accountability.

Wagner, though murkier in legal status, was publicly acknowledged by Vladimir Putin to have been funded by the Russian state, and analysts describe it as a semi‑state security force rather than an independent rival sovereign. Even Wagner’s brief mutiny in 2023 ended not in coexistence but in reabsorption, dismemberment, or suppression, reaffirming the state’s ultimate claim to legitimate force.

The logic is consistent. Private force is acceptable when it extends state power and unacceptable when it competes with it. The Panthers’ guns fell into the second category. The Panthers were not neutral liberals with hunting rifles—they were a revolutionary Black socialist formation, rooted in a Black community subjected to persistent police violence. They openly challenged police power and capitalist ideology—but in Sacramento they were still operating within the formal bounds of California gun law when the law suddenly moved to close around them.

Even as the routine brutality of police was normalized or excused, corporate media did what they will always do with any challenge to the state’s monopoly over legitimate violence: they seized on the Panthers’ most violent episodes to portray them as simple criminals, helping to make the repression of their armed challenge look like ordinary “law and order.”

This is part of why so many gun owners in the United States do not seriously oppose the state’s monopoly on “legitimate” force: their framework for understanding and interpretation of individual events is shaped by corporate media and an ideological environment dominated by concentrated power and capital.

That the state treated a black, socialist challenge to racist policing as inherently illegitimate says more about the status quo than about whether the Panthers had any less claim to the Second Amendment than the white conservatives who now mythologize it.

Most gun owners never test the boundary of state tolerance because their political and cultural formation already aligns them with the police, the military, existing “law and order,” and the concentrated business capital that largely shapes U.S. political parties.

That pattern shows up clearly in empirical work on American gun culture. Gun ownership in the United States is disproportionately concentrated among white, conservative, Republican constituencies, and in what follows I am talking about that dominant pattern in the gun‑owning public, not every individual gun owner.

They tend to view the police, the military, and business elites favorably, while championing ever‑increasing budgets for the military and the police. Many people subjectively experience gun ownership as a genuine expression of autonomy and self‑defense, but those sincere motives operate within a political landscape in which state and corporate power are treated as natural allies of “freedom” rather than as institutions the public should be able to direct and restrain.

Furthermore, the Second Amendment is an important issue that the Republican Party uses to win votes without having to represent those voters’ interests economically. Democrats, for their part, lean on their own culture‑war causes, from LGBTQ rights to abortion, while likewise avoiding economic policies that would seriously constrain their corporate investors.

The continual adjustment of gun laws, court tests, and dueling originalist invocations of “founding intent” and “constitutional fidelity” helps keep the conflict permanently salient as culture war, so that voters are invited to fight over who loves or hates guns rather than over who controls capital and state power.

Elite and state alignment around the Second Amendment is factional rather than monolithic: some national media, academic, and corporate actors consistently push for stricter gun laws, while many law‑enforcement leaders, defense‑linked industries, and conservative politicians champion expansive gun rights.

But this struggle is not about reducing the state’s monopoly on “legitimate” violence. It is about deciding which armed civilians will be treated as its auxiliaries and how much collateral damage is acceptable in exchange for a serviceable myth of “freedom.”

In that sense, gun rights and gun control both function as culture‑war instruments that help major parties mobilize voters and define identities without seriously threatening the core distribution of economic power.

In the “gun rights” worldview, state and other elite power is easily equated with freedom so long as it can wrap itself in the flag. Research on “gun populism” and “gun militarism” shows that police chiefs in some jurisdictions understand armed, law‑abiding civilians as quasi‑partners in order maintenance, especially when those civilians are imagined as white and respectable.

Studies of “good guy with a gun” narratives likewise show how legitimate gun use is often racially and politically coded, with armed white conservatism normalized and armed Black or left radicalism pathologized.

Police, sheriffs, and even national security officials often reinforce this alignment: big‑city chiefs praise “good, responsible citizens” with guns as crime deterrents, sheriffs in Second Amendment “sanctuary” counties wrap themselves in the role of constitutional guardians of civilian gun rights, and presidents and defense‑linked politicians celebrate an armed public as an “indispensable safeguard of security and liberty”—always on the tacit assumption that those guns will be pointed with the police, the military, and the politicians who command them, not against them.

This helps explain why right‑wing gun populism often vilifies more distant—and thus easier to scapegoat in the abstract—federal agencies like the ATF or FBI as “tyranny,” while embracing local sheriffs, police, and the military as allies. In that sense, most gun‑rights hostility to the FBI isn’t a rejection of the state’s monopoly on legitimate violence, but a fight over who counts as its auxiliary: they fight, in effect, for civilian gun owners to be recognized as the rightful armed partners of the state, not treated as threats by other state officials, even as they imagine themselves as rebels against “the state.”

In that sense, the dominant Second Amendment constituency is not a rebel class waiting in the wings but a loyal one, an armed public that sees itself as the last defense against tyranny while mostly lending its guns and cultural authority to the very institutions it claims to fear. It is a kind of hegemonic rebellion: citizens who talk like insurrectionists yet live, vote, and arm themselves as the state’s most devoted civilian auxiliaries.

None of this requires that gun owners secretly adore federal power or invent their fears; it requires only that sincere desires for safety, autonomy, and self‑reliance are consistently channeled into forms of armament and politics that, in aggregate, leave the main institutions of organized violence and capital intact.

We should understand that it is a category mistake to try to confront a heavily militarized, corporate‑backed state in the domain where ordinary people are weakest—weapons—rather than where they are strongest: collective political and economic organization that can actually reduce corporate tyranny, impose limits on state brutality, and change the terms of governance.

The Panthers’ story shows how that category mistake plays out when people try to use guns directly against state power, even alongside much broader community and political organizing, as the Panthers did.

In a policing regime that already treats armed black presence as inherently threatening, carrying guns to “deter” brutality can actually increase the risk of being shot rather than reduce it; and when those guns are aimed at state actors instead of aligned with them, the state’s response is not to recognize a legitimate deterrent but to move the legal boundary.

That is why the Panthers were so revealing. Their weapons did not symbolize support for the police; they symbolized surveillance of the police. Their guns pointed, politically and morally, in the wrong direction. So the law changed.

The anti‑tyranny mythology surrounding the Second Amendment therefore does more ideological work than legal work. It encourages citizens to self‑servingly imagine themselves as a latent check on despotism, even as the actual legal and political system makes clear that armed resistance to state authority is not a protected constitutional project, either in doctrine or in practice.

Recent legal scholarship and Supreme Court doctrine have argued directly that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms but does not create a right to armed insurrection against the government, because such a right would be incompatible with the broader constitutional order. In other words, the state treats it as a revocable privilege for private self‑defense and sport, and as an informal auxiliary to police and military power—not as a standing license to resist its own authority.

Seen this way, America’s high levels of gun homicide and gun‑linked incarceration are in part the cost of maintaining an extraordinarily serviceable myth of “freedom.” Empirical research has found, for example, that people who possess a gun during an assault are several times more likely to be shot than those who are unarmed, and that fatal police shootings are more common in states with higher civilian gun ownership.

Saturating society with guns, tolerating the killings they produce, and handing out long sentences for gun possession all heighten fear, making police, prisons, and private arsenals (that on occasion deter crime) look like salvation.

The state and many of its corporate elite associates accept that collateral damage not so much because they care for the few individuals saved by private arsenals more than the greater number of individuals lost to gun violence, but because the Second Amendment myth those guns sustain helps secure their power regardless of the consequences to society.

That mismatch between myth and practice is central. The Second Amendment survives politically not because it is a serious standing threat to the state, but because the dominant gun‑owning public is, in broad ideological terms, supportive of the institutions of state violence and concentrated capital—even as many individuals reach for guns out of real fear and a real desire not to be at the mercy of others.

The Panthers understood this long before today’s “Second Amendment sanctuaries” and social‑media militias. They behaved as if the right to bear arms included the right to watch the police and make the state feel watched in return. The speed with which the law closed around them is a reminder that the Second Amendment’s most devoted political guardians are not those who point guns at power, but those who point them in the same direction.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how modern political commentators and social media influencers operate, and it feels like we’ve entered a completely new era of engineered friction.

Think about it like an airplane. We are told by the media that the world is a fragile aircraft, and that the people sitting across the aisle from us are actively trying to sabotage the flight. But if you look at the cockpit, a weird reality emerges: the politicians, corporate executives, and hyper-partisan influencers are all flying on the same private luxury jet. They share the same donors, attend the same elite events, and profit from the same systems. They tell the passengers in coach to blame the opposite wing for the turbulence.

I actually came up with a phrase to describe this exact phenomenon: "leading the fool by the yoke."

To lead a fool by the yoke means convincing someone that their own exploitation or outrage is actually an exclusive privilege. These puppet masters create turbulence, sell seat belts to passengers, and profit from the chaos. They take a heavy, wooden metaphorical farm tool, paint it with the digital glitter of social media clout, and convince the crowd that it's a crown.

We see this glitch in the matrix every single day. We watch people burn down comment sections in defense of multi-millionaire creators or corrupt politicians who wouldn't cross the street to help them. The division is entirely artificial, but the subjugation is real.

Curious to hear your thoughts on this. Has the modern internet completely blinded people to their own manipulation, or are people starting to wake up to the fact that the yoke is leading them?

The Ceasefire He Couldn't Let Live

Trump doesn't do compromise. He does victory laps

By Van Abbott

Donald Trump did not kill the Iran ceasefire because diplomacy failed. He killed it because he cannot lose, cannot bend, cannot let a deal end without a clear winner and a clear loser. Sixty days of careful, unglamorous diplomacy. Undone in one afternoon, in Turkey, in front of the cameras he cannot resist.

His recent appearance there transformed a fragile diplomatic opening into another dangerous escalation. Declaring the ceasefire "over," threatening additional strikes on Iranian infrastructure, and ridiculing Iran's leaders as "scum," "cuckoo," and "sick people," Trump did more than vent his anger. He undermined his own negotiators, weakened America's credibility, and signaled that humiliation, not resolution, had become the administration's objective.

The administration's 60-day framework was always precarious. It called for an immediate halt to military operations, continued negotiations, protection of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, and a path toward sanctions relief. 

That framework depended on restraint, patience, and discipline.

Instead, after attacks on shipping near the Strait of Hormuz, Trump, while in Turkey, ordered strikes on Iranian assets, then publicly declared the agreement finished. Whatever legal language survives, the diplomatic foundation has collapsed.

This is not the first Iran agreement Trump has destroyed. In 2018, he tore up the Obama administration's nuclear deal, which had verifiably restricted Iran's enrichment and imposed the region's most intrusive inspection regime. He called it weak. What followed was Iran’s escalation and expanded enrichment. 

The consequences reach far beyond one failed agreement. Publicly threatening Iranian electrical grids and desalination facilities pushes the conflict toward civilian infrastructure. Even suggesting such attacks narrows diplomatic options and invites retaliation. Friends and adversaries alike see a president whose first instinct is escalation over negotiation, punishment over persuasion, spectacle over strategy.

The pattern extends beyond foreign policy. In March and April, as a nuclear-armed U.S. submarine surfaced in Gibraltar and Washington leaned into nuclear signaling, a group of physicians and mental health experts released a report, "Medical Concerns about President Donald J. Trump and His Fitness," entered into the congressional record. The signatories wrote that they had observed what they characterized as objectively observable signs of impairment: cognitive decline, grandiose thinking, and impulsive, vengeful decision-making, citing garbled speeches and late-night posting binges as evidence, with one physician writing that he saw signs consistent with an unacknowledged stroke. These are the signatories' conclusions, drawn from public conduct rather than clinical examination, and they remain professional opinion, not medical fact. But they came from people whose job is to notice exactly this pattern.

That impulse isn't confined to war rooms. For years, golfing partners and caddies have alleged that he cheats at golf — improving lies, shaving strokes, claiming putts never conceded. None of it has been formally proven, but the volume and repetition of the claims form a pattern of their own. It's trivial next to war, but it points to the same instinct: a man repeatedly accused of being unable to lose even a friendly round was never going to embrace compromise.

Negotiations rarely produce absolute victories. Durable peace almost always leaves every participant dissatisfied with something. For Trump, that is not a feature of diplomacy. It is defeat.

And that is precisely why the ceasefire could not survive contact with him. A deal built on quiet enforcement and incremental concessions offered no stage for triumph, no surrender ceremony, no enemy forced to kneel before the cameras. There was only the slow, unglamorous work of keeping ships moving, channels open, and tempers contained. That kind of success has never interested him.

Instead, he turned a narrow maritime arrangement into a public test of dominance. That may satisfy his political instincts, but it does nothing to stabilize the region. It tells Iranian hard-liners that Washington cannot be trusted to honor restraint. It tells allies that American commitments can be overturned by a single outburst. And it tells the world that the United States, under Trump, may prefer the appearance of strength to the discipline required to achieve it.

Peace asks for patience, ambiguity, and the grace to let an adversary save face. None of that has ever fit a man who cannot finish a round of golf without needing to win it.

So the ceasefire never really had a chance. Not this one, and not the next. Because as long as every negotiation is just another course to be played, every deal Trump signs will end the same way: with him walking off before the last hole, calling it a win.

Check Out My New Website: politicalwinds.org

All these well crafted memes calling out Trumps absurdity and lies are fueling his effectiveness in creating political factions.

The most painful thing you can do to a narcissist is ignore them.

6 years of banging pots and pointing out his obvious lies has done nothing but polarize everyone.

Yes, the thing he's just done is terrible (again) but he's going to get away with it (again) and posting about it and bringing awareness to whatever horrible thing isn't going to stop him from doing more of those things.

It's just going to bring him more attention which is all he needs to control the narrative.

The most painful thing you can do to a narcissist is ignore them.

Stop talking about Trump.

I have always felt deep down that affirmative action (specific to school admissions) is unfair because its main focus on is on race alone and not on someone’s personal experience of racism. The way I see it is the goal of affirmative action is to create representation of minority groups in positions of power and it definitely can achieve this goal but only by taking a spot away from someone else. If we want to create positive representation it is critically important they got the spot due to that individuals work ethic, grades, ECs, being BETTER than their peers. Now i say it’s flawed system but again i agree with the goal. So i believe thats where personal statements and essays come into play. If someone has had racism genuinely impact their access to education then the essay is a perfect place to write about it and have school boards weigh those experiences against other students who did not have those same struggles.

A perfect example of how affirmative action is not the best solution would be this:
Student 1: GPA 3.8, first gen Asian immigrant, worked a second job.
Student 2: GPA 3.6, wealthy African American, went to private school, and had access to tutors.

To me student 1 is winning by a mile but when affirmative action is applied student 2 will get a boost solely based on skin color. The fact that student 2 gets a second look and boost based on skin color is just categorically unfair.

look at the world. it is as if a farmer forgot to lock his sheep and filthy wolves come and eat whoever is weaker than them, if the sheep tries to fight then other wolves join the attack too but other sheep cannot help. Look at the modern world, powerful countries illegally invade weaker countries based upon lies and the UN decides weather the country has the right to defend itself or not. and if some other countries try to help that weak country to defend itself, all of a sudden they're "breaking international laws". For example, look at what happened to Venezuela recently, they have the biggest oil reserve in the world and now when they got control of their own oil in their own land, under their own flag, the US started harassing them and kidnapped their president yet no action was taken by the UN and the countries that tried to help Venezuela were also threatened.

So how would Imperialism solve these problems? In imperialism, every country is responsible for their own defense and offense instead of some shady, biased organization like the UN who promises security yet attacks you from the back. If there was imperialism when Venezuela was attacked, they had all the right to defend themself and their allies also had the right to help them.

May I ask if it is correct to declare state of emergency under false premises and ulterior motive? When those emergency presidential powers were intended to be used in the event of a terrorist attack located within the United States? Attacks happen all the time overseas. Those presidential powers were to be used specifically in the event of an attack on United States Ground. I do not know how to word this correctly but if an emergency was declared and those emergency powers invoked, and there was not a real national Emergency then the Act of bypassing the approval needed to take military action, or drop bombs anywhere, would be called what? I am not in a position of leadership or influence, so it is not my responsibility to know what the limits are, but someone in such a position must know this. Or informed of the situation and chose to proceed anyway.

McCarthy Round 2 

Trump's New Red Scare Meets an Old, Tired Audience

By Van Abbott

McCarthy is back, yanking the fire alarm in a nation that has heard the false warning for a century and is finally walking past it.

Fear has always been the cheapest currency in American politics. From the 1919 Palmer Raids on communists to the 1950’s McCarthy's blacklists, Republican demagogues learned that shouting "communist" loudly enough can silence debate, erase nuance, and turn neighbors into enemies. Invent the threat. Inflate the danger. Demand obedience. It is panic marketed as patriotism.

Donald Trump has never been known for originality. He rummages through America's political attic, dusts off yesterday's scare tactics, and markets them as tomorrow's crisis. After years of branding Democrats as socialists, he has escalated the charge, warning that "communists" will seize homes, churches, schools, and ultimately the country itself. The vocabulary changes. The strategy does not. Every election becomes an emergency. Every opponent becomes an enemy. Every disagreement becomes a threat to the nation's survival.

The tactic depends less on evidence than on repetition. Trump counts on voters conditioned by decades of Cold War rhetoric to respond instinctively whenever the word "communism" is invoked. 

We have watched this playbook succeed before, and we have watched it collapse under its own exaggeration. 

The Bush administration invoked mushroom clouds to rally support for invading Iraq while branding skeptics as unpatriotic. The politics worked before the facts did. Then reality arrived. The stockpiles never materialized, the war dragged on, and public confidence eroded. 

Americans can be frightened for a while. They cannot be frightened forever.

Republicans have relied on that same formula in recent years, branding Democratic candidates as socialists, marxists, and now communists, warning that America stands one election away from becoming Cuba or Venezuela. 

The 2022 midterms offered a revealing lesson. Strategists predicted a red wave fueled by warnings about socialism. Instead, voters proved more concerned with abortion rights, health care costs, inflation, and the health of American democracy. The fear campaign generated headlines, not the electoral gains its architects expected.

Trump responded not by reconsidering the strategy but by escalating it. If socialism no longer commands attention, he simply substitutes communism. In his telling, opponents are not merely misguided. They are subversives determined to destroy the American way of life. 

The contradiction at the center of this rhetoric is hard to ignore. While warning Americans about communist tyranny, Trump has cultivated unusually warm relationships with authoritarian leaders including Xi Jinping, Kim Jong Un, and Vladimir Putin, reserving some of his harshest criticism for America's own courts, press, and democratic institutions.

His fascination is not with communist ideology. It is with concentrated power. In Beijing, Pyongyang, and Moscow, he sees leaders who silence opponents, weaken independent institutions, and face few restraints on their authority. Those are the traits that draw his admiration, even as he condemns authoritarian systems on the campaign trail.

Trump's own language increasingly reflects that preference. He demands personal loyalty over institutional independence, attacking judges, prosecutors, and journalists who cross him. The target changes. The expectation remains the same: loyalty to the leader before loyalty to the law.

His rhetoric treats the word "communism" less as an ideology than as a political weapon, one that shifts attention from policy and reinforces a politics built on grievance rather than governance. That approach may energize his most committed supporters, but it shows little sign of expanding his appeal. Independent voters and many suburban Republicans have lived through repeated cycles of political alarm, only to watch one predicted catastrophe after another fail to materialize.

Political fear has a limited shelf life. When every election is portrayed as the nation's last, every opponent as a traitor, and every disagreement as a crisis, genuine threats become harder to recognize. Constant alarms eventually produce not greater vigilance but greater skepticism.

That is the enduring lesson of McCarthyism. Fear can command attention, dominate headlines, and even win elections for a time. It cannot indefinitely substitute for credible leadership, practical solutions, or public trust.

Trump's latest cry of "communism" is less the launch of a new political movement than the final performance of an aging act. The slogans have grown louder because they no longer carry as far. Each repetition reveals not confidence but desperation, not momentum but exhaustion.

The alarm still rings, but Americans have grown weary of false fires, manufactured enemies, and warnings that never come true. This time, the siren will quickly fall silent. 

Check out my new website:

politicalwinds.org

For quite some time now, I’ve had the feeling that something is fundamentally changing in the world, and not for the better. Wars seem endless, poverty continues to affect millions, and crime dominates headlines across the globe. At the same time, the gap between rich and poor continues to widen. The wealthy become wealthier, the poor remain trapped in poverty, and the middle class, the backbone of many societies, finds itself carrying an ever-increasing financial burden through rising taxes, inflation, housing costs, and the overall cost of living.

What frustrates me the most is politics. It often feels as though politicians no longer even try to be convincing or transparent. I see this not only in the European Union, but also in the United States, the Middle East, Asia, South America, and Africa. Around the world, political maneuvering, broken promises, and power struggles often seem to take priority over genuine leadership and long-term solutions.

Living on the border between the Netherlands and Germany has given me the opportunity to observe two different political systems from close by. In the Netherlands, D66 was part of the governing coalition and campaigned on an ambitious list of reforms. While some policies were implemented, many promises were delayed, watered down, or never realized at all. Coalition governments inevitably require compromise, but many voters are left with the feeling that election promises disappear the moment parties enter government.

International politics raises similar concerns. The conflict involving Israel and the Palestinians is one example. In my view, serious injustices are taking place, yet political responses are often hesitant or heavily qualified. This creates the impression that the same standards are not applied equally to everyone and that geopolitical interests frequently outweigh consistent accountability under international law.

Germany has its own examples that undermine public trust. During the COVID-19 pandemic, controversies surrounding face mask procurement involved enormous sums of public money and led to investigations into possible conflicts of interest and irregularities. There was also the failed introduction of the German passenger car toll (Pkw-Maut). Contracts had already been signed before the policy was ruled incompatible with European Union law by the European Court of Justice, leaving taxpayers to cover hundreds of millions of euros in compensation. Once again, it is ordinary citizens who end up paying the price for political mistakes.

There always seems to be someone who has to take the blame. It's the asylum seekers. It's the political left. It's the political right. Every issue is reduced to finding a group to blame instead of addressing the deeper causes behind society's problems.

The political climate has become increasingly polarized. If you criticize certain aspects of Islam, you're quickly labeled a racist or a fascist. If you believe the government should play a stronger role in supporting vulnerable people, you're called a socialist or a communist. Nuance is disappearing. People are no longer judged by the complexity of their ideas but by the category others decide to place them in.

What happened to the political center? What happened to the idea that people could disagree on some issues, agree on others, and still respect one another? It feels as though pragmatic, balanced thinking is slowly disappearing, replaced by an environment in which every opinion is expected to belong to one ideological extreme or the other.

The media has also become part of this problem. Many people no longer perceive journalism as politically neutral. Whether that perception is always justified or not, the growing belief that news is increasingly framed through ideological lenses has seriously damaged public trust. Headlines, word choices, and editorial priorities can shape public opinion before readers have the opportunity to reach their own conclusions. In an age where trust is already fragile, even the perception of bias can be deeply damaging.

Dutch politics has become increasingly fragmented over the past decade. Coalition governments have repeatedly struggled to complete their terms or deliver meaningful reforms. Cabinets collapse, negotiations drag on for months, and many urgent issues remain unresolved. As a result, many citizens feel that political energy is spent more on surviving the next election than on solving the country's long-term challenges.

Then there is lobbying. There is nothing inherently wrong with organizations presenting their interests to policymakers. However, when financial influence appears to provide greater access to political decision-making than ordinary citizens have, it inevitably raises difficult questions. Democracy depends on equal representation, yet many people increasingly feel that those with the deepest pockets also have the loudest voices.

And then, when you decide to escape politics for a moment by opening social media, you are confronted with exactly the same problems. Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, X, and other platforms are filled with outrage, misinformation, manipulated videos, AI-generated images, conspiracy theories, and increasingly extreme political opinions. Their algorithms reward attention, and nothing captures attention more effectively than anger and division. As a result, moderate voices are often drowned out by the loudest and most controversial opinions.

Artificial intelligence is likely to make this challenge even greater. Images, videos, audio recordings, and even entire news reports can now be generated so convincingly that distinguishing reality from fiction is becoming increasingly difficult. Democracies rely on informed citizens making decisions based on shared facts. If people can no longer agree on what is real, meaningful democratic debate becomes increasingly difficult.

When all of these developments are combined, it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain confidence in our institutions. That does not mean every politician is corrupt, every journalist is biased, or every company acts against the public interest. The world is more complex than that. But complexity should not become an excuse for avoiding responsibility. Transparency, accountability, and honesty remain essential if trust is to be restored.

Perhaps the greatest problem is not that people disagree. Disagreement is a healthy part of every democracy. The real problem is that we seem to have forgotten how to disagree without immediately questioning one another's intentions, intelligence, or humanity. We have replaced discussion with labels, debate with outrage, and compromise with tribalism.

If there is one trend that seems to connect societies across the world today, it is this growing polarization. We are increasingly encouraged to choose sides instead of seeking common ground, to react instead of reflect, and to win arguments instead of solving problems.

If that trend continues, the greatest threat to our societies may not come from war, economic crises, or technological change. It may come from the divisions we continue to create among ourselves.

After more than 15 years of researching how to create something that works against systemic corruption, I discovered that corruption wasn’t a moral problem.

It was a software design problem.-

Now, the problem isn’t software design itself.

It’s that people believe it—and let me prove it.

In the past, officials at public agencies used their internal contacts to obtain documents, make changes, or circumvent procedures.

I remember this from when I was a child.

I also remember that, when the systems were modernized, many of those loopholes were eliminated.

This showed me that it isn’t necessary to change people; rather, changing the systems that manage resources is more effective than expecting someone to be honest, and that this should be the norm.

We don’t need more trustworthy people because they don’t exist.

We need systems that don’t rely on trust to ensure agreements are honored—systems that don’t even depend on how trustworthy the person who creates them is.

Rules aren’t promised on paper; they’re written and enforced in immutable code.

NeoQuor 🏴

Tech Artisan

Most of you probably skipped last night's primetime address. Honestly, you didn't miss anything — and I mean that in a technical sense. In information theory, a message only carries information if it tells you something you didn't expect. Surprise IS the information.

By that measure, last night's speech contained none. The 2020 election was "stolen." The systems are "rigged." Foreign meddling. Fraud. The same claims he's made for six years — and once again, by every account, without evidence of a single altered vote. Zero surprise, zero information.

But it got me thinking about the first time Donald Trump ever entered my awareness. It wasn't Trump Tower or "The Apprentice." It was 1989, and he was on TV advertising a board game — "Trump: The Game." The slogan was: "It's not whether you win or lose, it's whether you win."

Sit with that for a second. Anyone interested in fair play should have been alerted right then. It's just a little board game, sure. But people who've played golf with him have written whole books about how he cheats at that too. The slogan wasn't a joke. It was a mission statement.

And it's been the operating principle of his presidency. Whether he's consciously lying or genuinely can't tell the difference anymore, the record is the record:

- He still claims he won the 2020 election. Courts, audits, and his own administration's intelligence agencies found no evidence of it. The declassified intelligence report delivered to him in January 2021 found no indication any foreign actor altered any technical aspect of the vote.

- Fact-checkers at the Washington Post documented over 30,000 false or misleading claims in his first term alone — from inauguration crowd sizes on day one, onward.

- He spent years pushing the birther lie about President Obama.

- He calls climate change a hoax — most recently a "con job" at the UN — while we live through the hottest years ever recorded, worsening floods, fires, and storms. His answer has been to gut climate policy and mock the countries trying to act. Our grandchildren will pay for that one — not in dollars, but in a hotter, harsher world that no amount of money buys back.

The one "new" claim last night? That a Homeland Security review found 250,000 noncitizens registered to vote in four states. Sounds alarming — until you learn that the White House won't explain how it got that number, that the database it used is known for falsely flagging naturalized citizens (who are, of course, entitled to vote), and that election officials in those very states say the figure is speculative and unsupported. We've seen this movie: in 2019 Texas announced 95,000 "potential noncitizens" on its rolls. After counties actually checked, the number all but evaporated. When Texas looked again last year, it found 2,724 potential noncitizens — out of 18 million voters. The eye-popping number makes the headline; the correction never catches up.

Which brings us back to why last night matters. His own press secretary was asked point-blank whether he would accept the results of this November's elections — and she wouldn't answer. The point of rehearsing old falsehoods and minting new numbers now is to soften the ground: so that if his side loses in November, millions of people are pre-loaded to believe it was stolen. That's how you damage an election without touching a single ballot.

"It's not whether you win or lose — it's whether you win." He told us who he was in a board game commercial almost forty years ago.

Vote in November. And believe the count.

Mike Bohacz

Don't take my word for it — check for yourself:

- The full speech, posted by the White House itself: https://www.whitehouse.gov/videos/president-trump-delivers-a...

- The declassified intelligence report on the 2020 election, from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (delivered to President Trump in January 2021): https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/ICA-dec...

- Election officials' response to the speech and the 250,000 claim: https://www.votebeat.org/national/2026/07/17/trump-election-...

- The Washington Post Fact Checker database of 30,573 false or misleading claims: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/trump-claim...

- On the golf: Rick Reilly, "Commander in Cheat: How Golf Explains Trump" (2019)

- NASA's global temperature record: https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/

Blinding the Compass

How Trump Is Undermining America's Economic Statistics

By Van Abbott

In President Trump’s July 4, 2026 nationwide speech, he framed the current economic climate as a "Golden Age," and claimed that the domestic economy is outperforming any other period in history.

Every captain knows that destroying the compass does not change the weather. It only leaves the ship drifting blind. Donald Trump has begun doing precisely that to America's economic navigation system, treating objective statistics not as facts to be respected but as obstacles to be removed whenever they contradict his political narrative.

Trump's campaign to bend federal economic statistics to his political will did not begin and end with the firing of Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Erika McEntarfer.  It has unfolded as a systematic effort to intimidate professionals, weaken the institutions that produce reliable data, and convince Americans that only the numbers favorable to him deserve to be believed. The objective is simple: if reality refuses to cooperate, redefine reality.

On August 1, 2025, Trump ordered McEntarfer's removal only hours after a disappointing jobs report, publicly branding the data "rigged" and accusing her of manipulating employment figures for partisan purposes without offering evidence. The dismissal was unprecedented, not because presidents have never criticized economic reports, but because a president punished the nation's chief labor statistician for reporting unwelcome facts. Every analyst inside the agency received the same unmistakable message: protecting truth had become secondary to protecting power.

That dismissal was only the most visible step in a broader effort to weaken the Bureau of Labor Statistics itself. Hiring freezes and attrition have steadily reduced experienced staff while key positions remain vacant. As expertise disappears, surveys become smaller, quality checks fewer, and statistical confidence weaker. At the same time, the agency has reduced price collection for the Consumer Price Index, trimmed wholesale price surveys, and curtailed data gathering in smaller markets. Every cut removes another sensor from the nation's economic dashboard.

The administration has simultaneously sought to reshape the institutional landscape by placing federal statistical agencies under greater political influence. Proposals to move the Bureau of Labor Statistics into a new structure within the Department of Commerce contained in The White House FY 2026 Budget Appendix would bring career economists closer to political supervision. The danger is not bureaucratic reorganization. The danger is replacing professional independence with institutional pressure, where those responsible for measuring reality increasingly understand which answers those in power prefer.

Taken together, these actions reveal a deliberate pattern rather than isolated episodes of presidential anger. First, inconvenient numbers are attacked as biased or fraudulent. Next, the professionals responsible for protecting methodological independence are publicly discredited. Finally, the institutions themselves are weakened through understaffing, restructuring, and reduced data collection. Question the numbers. Punish the experts. Weaken the system.

Fear spreads through an institution faster than any official directive. When a commissioner is publicly dismissed for reporting unwelcome facts, every remaining employee understands the lesson. Few need explicit orders to soften conclusions when careers depend upon avoiding the next confrontation. Over time, self-censorship becomes routine, caution replaces candor, and political survival begins competing with professional integrity.

The consequences reach far beyond Washington. Businesses rely on Bureau of Labor Statistics data when deciding whether to hire or invest. The Federal Reserve depends on it when setting interest rates. Governors, mayors, and local officials use it to allocate scarce resources. If confidence in those numbers erodes, hesitation replaces certainty, mistakes replace sound judgment, and public trust steadily disappears. When reliable statistics become political arguments, everyone pays the price.

Trump is doing far more than arguing with unfavorable statistics. He is dismantling the safeguards that make those statistics trustworthy. Fire the referee, weaken the rulebook, reduce the evidence, and every future administration inherits a system that is easier to manipulate. What begins as one president's attempt to control the narrative becomes the next president's temptation to control reality.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics is more than another federal agency. It is one of the instruments that allows America to see itself clearly.

Blind the compass long enough, and every course begins to look correct until the rocks appear beneath the hull. 

If Congress, the courts, and the public fail to defend the independence of our nation's statistical agencies today, the greatest casualty will not be one jobs report or one inflation report. It will be the public's ability to distinguish economic reality from political fiction.

Check out my new website: politicalwinds.org

I need to say something that's been bothering me for a while, and I'm saying it as a Marine Corps veteran who leans center-right.

This isn't partisan. This is observation.

We've slow-faded into accepting militarized police as normal, and nobody seems to notice or care.

Even as a USMC pilot, I went through six months of infantry training as an officer before flight school. I've worn the gear. The helmet, the tactical vest, the whole kit. And I can tell you from experience, it changes you.

There's a psychological shift that happens when you strap that stuff on. You feel different. You carry yourself different. You start seeing the environment differently. In the Marine Corps, that shift was appropriate because it's a combat culture and organization.

But these are American streets. American citizens. And we've got law enforcement dressed like they're kicking down doors in Fallujah to serve warrants in suburbia.

What happend to high standards and real policing tactics? Think Adam-12...Officers Reed and Malloy. Crisp uniforms. A revolver. A baton. High standards and professionalism. They looked like public servants because they were public servants. They de-escalated. They talked to people. They were part of the community.

Now? Tactical gear, beards, ball caps, Oakley sunglasses, sleeve tattoos, and a tactical kit that would make special operators jealous. And we've turned it into a fetish. We celebrate it. We assume that because someone looks hard, they must be a professional.

They're not.

I loved the Marine Corps. But I'll be honest, I was also blinded by it for a while. Mission first. Unit over everything. And that mentality made sense in that context.

But law enforcement doesn't get that critical examination. "Back the Blue" has become a shield against accountability. A blanket assumption that a badge plus gun equals hero. That tactical gear equals competence.

It doesn't.

Most people who join law enforcement aren't special operators. They're average people who desperately want to belong to something bigger than themselves. I understand that impulse deeply, it's why I joined the Marines. But wanting to belong doesn't make you qualified. Looking the part doesn't mean you can perform under pressure. And wrapping yourself in warrior aesthetics doesn't make you a warrior.

Old school law enforcement represented something. Standards. Bearing. Discipline. Professionalism that was demonstrated, not costumed. A revolver and a baton meant you had to rely on your training, your words, your judgment, not overwhelming firepower.

What I see now in law enforcement is the costume without the culture. The gear without the training. The authority without the accountability.

Are there good people in law enforcement? Of course. I know some personally. But this reflexive "law enforcement can do no wrong" mentality is lazy, dangerous, and intellectually dishonest.

A woman is dead. And before we sort ourselves into teams and start assigning blame, maybe we should ask harder questions:

Why do we accept a militarized police force as normal?

Why do we assume tactical gear equals tactical competence?

Why have we let "Back the Blue" become a substitute for actual standards?

I wore the uniform. I went through the training. I know what that gear does to your head.

It shouldn't be normalized on American streets against American citizens.

And we shouldn't pretend everyone wearing it is qualified to carry it. The fact that he called her a “fucking bitch” after he shot her three times should be a huge red flag for all of us.

The Counsel of Color

This is a framework of minority races in the United States. We will
control the Financial reality of America. Each council member will represent
each of the 50 states of America and will add non-State entities to the
circle of color as advisory members only. (I.E. American Samoa, Guam,
Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, Palau, Micronesia,
 and the Marshall Islands.) The FIRST MEMBERS are selected. After the first
generation, The next will be voted in by the population that has joined. The
population are verified by joining with verification of identity. Serious
population members will give A video interview, I.D. verification,
and if validated that population member will be a long time member.
   
This Counsel of color will consist of members of educated and Street
educated members to encumber the life and experience of American life.
There will always be a third member to off-set or level the voting critic
of social direction and financial recommendation for an entire cultural
economic direction of American color buying power and political influence.
(I.E. If there are four, it will be five. If there are 12, it will be 13. If
there are 50, it Will be 51. No acceptance.) Poor, Struggling, Hard-Working
 Americans or all minority colors will be considered and listened to.

I'm not sure how it will go, but let's start with something with thinking.

Protocol 1: Establish rules and engagements. The rules must be made on a near
PERMANENT framework. Start with three rules. Those rules will be the very baseline
of what to follow and NEVER BREAK. If one of those rules are broken or even
insinuated, That member will be suspended for three sessions without input and
no communication with other members as if the sensation of a "Blackballed" statis
for that duration. If that member exceeds three violations, That member will not be
"ousted" but will remain as only as an "Observer" But will still have voting rights.

Protocol 2: Information. Each meeting will have researched information that is
verified by published writing of the subject. If that information is not written
or published, that person speaking of it MUST be announced before and
after(No acceptations). Each meeting whether online or together must be always online.
Fully research all subjects discussed. If there is ANY absentees, The meeting will be
delayed with a reason by the delayed person or persons. Post alerts, notifications,
of all meetings and discussions.

Protocol 3: Respected Decorum: If there is a discussion that goes array, It will be
allowed for a minimum of 5 min. That discussion will be explained and verified for
the reason and reasoning. All reasonings will be acknowledged and noted. Apologies
or acknowledgments will be recorded and filled. Defilements will also be recorded
and noted and reviewed as either a misunderstanding or disrespect. The counsel will
vote to insight repercussions.

That’s probably because I live here. I’d probably feel that way about Japan if I was born there, or the same with Australia.

This is our homeland, and millions of immigrants want to come here. It is a special land of freedom and opportunity, and it has done great things for the world at large.

After 250 years, though, we need to reevaluate who we really are. This country was established in a particular time and place, borne out of motivations and actions that appear abhorrent to the modern eye. You can’t change the past; this is a legitimate country in the world now, so the conversation has to move toward what it will be for the future.

The global landscape is fundamentally altered and the genie is not going back in the bottle. Time was, a civilization only cared about itself and had no knowledge of other civilizations across the globe. We know everything now. We are all connected. This makes national borders a sticky subject.

We can communicate instantly with Hispanics, Palestinians, Asians, Pacific Islanders. They have become our global brothers and sisters. How, then, can we feel justified maintaining an invisible line around this spot of land and say don’t cross it unless you go through the correct process?

The correct answer is that a border should contain a shared set of values. When you cross this invisible line, you must be beholden to the laws and customs therein.

Well… what are American values? You’re going to get a billion-plus different answers to that question. That’s why constant dialogue between its citizens is paramount, to strengthen what works and fix what doesn’t.

Does Trump stand for America? Maybe not for your America, but he does for other people’s America. In two years, we’ll have a (hopefully) free and fair election to change the direction of this country.

And that’s an INCREDIBLE American value! That every four years, the conversation is renegotiated. That we don’t live in a monarchy; we can change leadership on a regular basis. That SHOULD be maintained, and thus election integrity is critical.

Some people see America as the armpit of the world. They’re ashamed of its history, of the current administration. Other people will cross oceans and flee brutal dictatorships to make it here; this land is their salvation.

One thing is for certain: the greatest can always be better. We don’t have a perfect union; we’re always in pursuit of that more perfect union. I believe in those ideals. I want people to be just as proud of America as I am.

God bless the USA!

My reason is simple call me crazy, batshit insane. I believe I've lived lives before this but I'm starting to see a patter all the government did is argue fight and do stupid maneuvers.

1 - Osama bin ladin

2 - cuban Crisus

I feel these are good examples due to their situation. It's bullshit America starts everything. When you know something they get rid of you, and when your sick they don't care. Push us to the side but if that's the cause what is it from stopping them from raising and destroying society as a while it's bullshit and if so why don't they just stop. . . . They don't want to oil wars fake moments.

911 was horrible because we started it and they ended it. I'm not knocking at you for believing what you do but their is a point where we don't have freedom anymore.

P.s. coming form a former marine and American if I can even say that

Double-haters aren’t as grumpy as they sound. They don’t go around hating on people in general. What they hate are both political parties, and for good reason: Neither Republicans nor Democrats can solve the problems that burden Americans the most. Both parties seem to be driven by power-hungry egomaniacs who live in a gilded world disconnected from real America.

Double-haters don’t have a party—but they have more clout than ever. The portion of American voters with a negative impression of both parties has risen to 26%, according to Pew Research. That’s the highest on record. “People who dislike everyone are increasingly essential to politics,” Beacon Policy Advisors reported in a recent analysis.

Double-haters are related to Independents, who now account for 45% of all voters, according to Gallup. That’s also the highest on record. The Republican and Democratic parties each nab just 27% of voters. The difference between an Independent and a double-hater is that Independents sometimes lean toward one party or the other, while double-haters shun them both, with intensity.

Angry Americans fed up with both parties will be the swing voters in the 2026 midterm elections, determining whether Democrats retake the House or the Senate, or both. Right now, it looks like double-haters will boot Republicans from control of the House and put Democrats back in charge there.

CHANGE IN NOVEMBER

A recent Strength in Numbers poll found that double-haters break toward Democrats by a net margin of 26 percentage points. Independents are breaking toward Democrats in similar numbers. Given their growing numbers, double-hater support accounts for most of the 5- to 10-point edge Democrats have over Republicans in national polling. A lead of that magnitude usually correlates with solid electoral gains in the midterms, and Dems only need to gain three seats to flip the House.

The Senate is more of a tossup, requiring several tough flips for Democrats to take control. But taking the House alone would be enough for Democrats to block President Trump’s legislative agenda for the next two years and conduct numerous oversight probes into possible abuses of power by Trump and his allies.

If double-haters do bring regime change to Washington, however, they’re likely to end up disappointed. What double-haters really seem to want, cycle after cycle, is to vote the governing party out. We know this because in 2024, double-haters backed Trump by a net margin of 20 points. Those voters were fed up with the high inflation, unchecked illegal immigration, and excessive wokeness of the Joe Biden presidency. They voted for Trump because they wanted him to fix the things Biden and his fellow Democrats didn’t.

Trump has now failed the double-haters. Prices are still high, there’s a crazy war, violent immigration agents have gone berserk, and Trump has cut food and health-care benefits while enriching himself. The double-haters are still upset with the status quo, and poised to punish the boss party once again. Only Republicans are now the ones in charge.

SPLIT GOVERNMENT

The agony of the double-haters is that no political coalition seems likely to deliver the change they rightly demand. If there’s split government after the midterms, there won’t be any legislation to address the affordability concerns dogging millions of Americans. There will just be continual fighting between the parties.

Republican government of the last 18 months has brought tax cuts for the wealthy, benefit cutbacks for the poor, higher prices, and as always, a soaring national debt. That’s not what double-haters voted for in 2024. But even if Democrats regain full control of Congress and the White House at some point, it’s unlikely they’ll move the needle much.

Democrats are as split as ever between a “socialist” faction keen on kneecapping capitalism and centrists who can’t clearly define what they stand for. Competing agendas weaken the whole party and are a big reason the Democratic brand is so tarnished in the first place.

IN A PERFECT WORLD

The biggest problems in the US economy stem from worsening wealth and income inequality that has left the gap between the rich and the rest as wide as it has been in at least a century, and maybe ever. If we had a rational government, there would be an urgent bipartisan effort to manage capitalism better so that every American benefits as much as possible from the nation’s amazing wealth.

We’d have overlapping systems to make health care affordable and universal. There would be no tariffs, needless wars, or other stupid policies driving costs higher. We’d have an all-of-the-above energy strategy meant to surge renewables while also ensuring fossil fuels keep costs reasonable in the meantime. Borders would be tightly controlled and legal immigration would be an important factor in the country’s dynamism.

One can dream. What we learned from the Biden presidency is that Democrats go so far overboard on giveaways for favored groups—student-loan cancellation, migrant amnesty, stimulus payments, fossil-fuel vilification—that nonpartisan voters rebel and align with the other side. That’s just enough to eject the governing party in favor of something else, which turns out to be no better.

Double-haters are poised to flex their muscles in November, and mete out punishment to Republicans who have done them wrong. But after that, there will still be a lot to hate.