If you accept this truth them it will change the way you see journalists and make you think more skeptically about what you read and hear.

It’s simple. Journalists are selling you their product in a very noisy market with thousands of choices. And if you don’t buy, read or listen to their product, then they fail.

The Evidence and the Methodology

The evidence is overwhelming. Journalists use the same methods as sales people. The currency is different yet the same. In commercial sales the success metric is direct. It’s money.

In journalism, success is measured by number of readers, subscribers, ratings and book sales. These are proxy metrics for……….MONEY.

To the traditionalist, the comparison is practically an insult. Journalists like to view themselves as noble arbiters of truth, working in a holy cathedral of objectivity. They like to see themselves as standing independently and tall for “truth to power” and other self-ascribed claims. Salespeople, on the other hand, are often viewed as the aggressive drivers of commerce, pushing products down the throats of a skeptical and naïve public and probably being dishonest in the process.

But strip away the romanticism, and the structural reality of the media landscape reveals a different truth: Journalists are not just dispassionate observers—they are some of the most aggressive, skilled and unfortunately often dishonest salespeople on the planet. Some very notorious figures were once journalists; Joseph Stalin, Benito Mussolini and Mao Ze Dong were journalists.

NOTE: An honest definition of dishonesty means to knowingly mislead people. That can also mean to be omitting facts or even entire stories. This is kind of dishonesty is pervasive in journalism.

In established large media outlets, when a reporter wakes up to the moment their piece goes live, their entire day is dictated by the art of the sales pitch, pipeline management, and how many people read/listen to their piece. The newsroom looks less like a noble salon of thoughtful people debating deep thoughts and more like a high-intensity sales floor trying to move their product. At any cost.

In the morning, a reporter enters a pitch meeting. They don’t just get to write whatever they want; they have to sell an idea to their editor. The editor is similar to a corporate buyer—cynical, barraged with competing proposals and often carrying hidden agendas and unspoken biases.

To win a slot on the homepage or the front page, a journalist must pitch a compelling value proposition: Why does this matter? Who cares? Does the editor care? Why now? They must also articulate a “hook”—the exact same mechanism a salesperson uses to grab a prospect’s attention. If the journalist fails to sell the idea to their editor, the product (the story) never gets manufactured. If it does sell, then like any commercial sales person, the journalist starts to gather information, which often requires cold calling people that don’t want to talk to them.

For non-traditional media the journalist is likely the editor as well. They debate with themselves what they should write about and if people will care. A pipeline of ideas is curated with the filters being relevance but most of all the number of readers and subscribers. They also ask the same questions: Does it matter? Why now? Who cares?

For non-traditional media the journalist may be living from story to story so the financial pressure to capture clicks and readers may be much higher than in traditional media. This is likely one of the drivers of extraordinary extremist journalists succeeding while more moderate journalists struggle.

What is the product?

Storytelling is the Product.

People buy food they want to eat. They buy stories that they want to hear. They buy emotions that they want to feel.

Whether selling software or a 2,000-word article, the ultimate goal is persuasion. A salesperson convinces a client that the product they probably have heard about will absolutely make their life better. A journalist convinces a reader that their time is best spent reading this headline, this hook, and this narrative over other distractions. It’s not hard when they buyer already knows they want that product.

Both commercial sales people and journalists curate and target their audiences for practical reasons. Commercial sales people only want to call people who want to buy their product or something similar. Journalists write for people who want to read the stories that they tailor for them.

But this tailoring of stories is where journalism struggles with objectivity and truth. Leaving out facts or just not reporting stories that don’t fit what an audience wants to feel or hear at minimum distorts truth and the reality of the world people live in. Slicing and dicing the overall audience into sub-audience bubbles creates divisiveness of facts, opinions and realities.

What are the goals?

In the end, all salespeople want market share. It might be 100% or might be 20% but that is their goal and they know the financial rewards of specific market shares.

Commercial sales people track prospects and Total Available Market (TAM). Journalists also track TAM and pay attention to subscriber counts against other journalists. The goals are the same.

How do they pursue these goals?

For journalists, their motivations in what they write/say can be singular or mixed.

Many, journalists, including the biggest names, want the biggest audience as their measure of success so they measure what kind of content will bring the biggest audience and the most money. They are hopelessly corrupted by money. They rarely waiver in their analysis and mostly land on the content that their subscribers want to read. To them, journalism is a business. You want to hear that 2 + 2 = 5 then fine, that’s what you will hear.

If they can publish a book to their audience then this is even more lucrative. The amount of money can run into the millions for this kind of journalist. Tucker Carlson appears to be the most obvious example but there are plenty of other people that could be called out. Cable TV appears to be nothing but a platform for this kind of journalist and bias. Many appear to be nothing more than activists. Tucker will say anything that might grab attention and bring him more attention and thereby more money. But large names in broadcast news also fall into this paradigm. They use the same recipe. Feed the audience what they want to hear and layer on book sales and speaking engagements. In this paradigm there is an obsession with ratings and journalists get fired by their employer when the ratings are not good enough.

Other journalists, are in it solely for the mission of spreading truth as they can decipher it and push back on all the former group who will say and support anything for attention and money. Many smaller journalists on Substack fall into this grouping. They will not become rich but that is not their goal. Their goal is to cut through the tsunami of misinformation, spin and propaganda that comes out of traditional and social media, organized anti-Western subversion efforts and a compromised Western public, institutions and leaders. You will often see that these journalists report that they lost subscribers when they took a position that some of their readers didn’t like. The readers they lost want the former journalists who will tell them that 2 + 2 = 5.

And then the third group of journalists may want to tell the truth but they pull punches and suppress the truth when they know it has financial implications. They are corrupted by money. They won’t say 2 + 2 = 5 but they won’t say anything at all. They retreat to the position that they are working in the holy cathedral of objectivity where they are just journalists reporting on an issue and don’t take a position in spite of the fact that you can clearly see they do take positions. They are lying by omission.

A democracy and free people need more of the 2nd group and much less of the 1st and 3rd group.

A salesperson sells a commodity for money. A journalist sells a narrative for human attention and the rewards that come from gaining that attention. Hopefully the truth is included. The difference between these two actors is indistinguishable when you strip away the romanticism.

But make no mistake: the next time you read a piece of brilliant, hard-hitting journalism, you haven’t just been informed. You’ve been sold.

How we Think (or don’t)

People in the West often view their success or failure by election cycles and whether they like or don’t like who is elected and whether the person veers left or right. That is driving the car by staring at the dashboard rather than looking at the road. You can read the dashboard very well but the car is off the road.

What we Need

People and societies need shared values, historical narratives and relational networks to anchor people to a sense of purpose and meaning. Without these grounding attributes the family and society disintegrate and people merge into identity groups (tribalism) to provide a sense of belonging, a narrative that outlines who they are AND who they are not. When identity groups are the dominant form of belonging then the only other option is hyper-individualism.

What we Got

In the West, various identity groups have been cultured, developed and then institutionalized with a narrow and negative narrative of suffering and victimology. Furthermore, their victim narrative narrows all blame to the West and its current citizens regardless of the era when the victim narrative is supposed to have taken place. This insistence on narrowly blaming the West, regardless of the era, further divides and weakens the West as identity group values are developed on gender, race, religion and victimology and historical narratives are cherry picked and slanted for the benefit and goals of the identity groups. This is the “balkanization” of the West. At the extreme, the goals are to destroy the West. At minimum, the goals are to extract wealth and gather power.

Where it is Coming From

Academia, built and funded by the West, has poured massive resources into selecting these identity groups, developing and nurturing an oppressor vs oppressed moral framework and static narratives of “good guys” and “bad guys” to support these frameworks and the “balkanization” of the West. The oppressed are perpetual victims and the oppressors are forever guilty. The historical background of the oppressor is attacked along with their culture. Incidentally, these are the first steps on the road to a genocide. In the case of the West, these are also steps towards cultural and civilization suicide.

In academia, this victimology gospel is then taught in the humanities to undeveloped minds in an environment where conformity is rewarded and other feedback is punished. Victimology disciples are minted with every graduating class and sent into the educational, government and corporate sectors to practice and spread the gospel of victimology and moral superiority through bureaucratic manipulation, bullying of citizens and suppression of speech and opportunity for people who don’t agree with them.

Why it Seems Right

For many people, these identity groups provide a moral purpose so the education and rhetoric has a religious feel about it and the interaction with these people is not a discussion or a debate but a series of accusations and insults that can devolve into screaming. These identity groups then also map into the left wing policial system that supports their narrative of victimology and promises to do something about it. This further hardens societal division and provides a river of money to support and justify balkanization. Victimology has become a staggeringly large business with much of the financial support coming from the government.

Who is the Bad Guy

Victimology needs an enemy. It is the West. The codewords are often “White people” and colonialism but it really is Western philosophies and values. Many other parts of the world have held autonomy for hundreds if not thousands of years and have advanced very little in thousands of years. The root cause is the choices they have made. Freedom unleashes the creativity and minds of the population. Today, most people around the world live under some kind of authoritarian rule. Their lives are defined for them. They ask for permission. They bow before rulers. In the case of Islam, every part of their life is defined for them along with a vision for the world so their input is not needed. Control has been the goal. Not advancement.

Other Choices

For people who want to stay aloof from the victimology fray what can emerge is an intense individualism. To them the world looks crazy. You often hear these people say these exact words and tens of millions of people who are center left and right also feel that society has lost its bearings but can’t put their finger on exactly what is happening. What is happening is that society is being divided into identity groups with goals that are only concerned with the identity group and not society at large. Then the only thing that is common is rage and anxiety which only fuels more rage. People who want to disengage from this cycle of identity, rage and anxiety see that individualism is the only course.

Nihilism is Proven

And finally, this constant upheaval and lack of cohesion can produce a state of nihilism. This is the belief that life lacks meaning. Morals, truth and life have no purpose. If everyone is unhappy then the proof is evident. Life does lack meaning.

Conclusion: What we Should Do

The West needs to return to the philosophies and values that created the West. In the USA, that is the Declaration of Independence and The Constitution. Those are incredibly powerful documents that encapsulate hundreds of years of thought and consideration of what a successful society needs. People need to read them. When you don’t know who you are and what you stand for then you entertain anything and anyone even when a casual reading will reveal you should not accept them into your world.

Other countries need to examine if their founding documents were ever strong enough to free a people from government abuse. Freedom of Speech is the right that supports all the other rights and Western governments are taking that away.

Benjamin Franklin was asked outside Independence Hall in 1787 if the new American government was a republic or a monarchy. Franklin answered:

“A republic, if you can keep it”.

The fight to keep Western civilization must be renewed. The enemies have never given up. They have just changed their approach. And the West has lowered its guard.

AI is the first industry, that I can recall, where major companies have found it in their short term best interests to spread fear and concern. To be fair, they also talk about the upside as well but the downside has never been described as this deep.

Anthropic has issued dire warnings of potential threats from AI and the self-serving confession/bragging that Anthropic’ s technology is so powerful and advanced that perhaps it shouldn’t be released.

In August, OpenAI released a report stating they had a security incident where its AI Agents left their test environment and hacked another company. OK is that powerful technology or is that just terrible operational control? Or a way to get attention?

Both of these companies are pretty confident to take the risk that the public might just conclude they are in over their heads and incompetent rather than a bunch of geniuses.

So why risk this messaging to the public?

First, we have to give them some credit that there are threats that are real. For example, hacking websites and passwords is something that AI can and will do much better than prior technology waves. Holding back US tech companies probably doesn’t help though as Chinese AI technology will likely be adequate for this use and most likely are already testing it or using it. The solution is that companies need to harden their websites quickly which is why you see the stock prices of security companies going up in the public markets. The consumer solution is to move to more complex passwords AND use Two Factor authentication. And any other solutions the security industry comes up with

But there are other things going on besides altruistic concern about the world.

Second, both Anthropic and OpenAI are going public soon in an IPO and there are billions of dollars at stake with respect to which company Wall Street and investors favor. Humble bragging is an art form and is a subtle way to try to elevate your company above another. Saying that your AI technology is so advanced and so dangerous is a way to claim the technology prowess high ground against all others and can make you look like the smartest guys in the room and worthy of a better IPO AND MORE MONEY.

Third, regulation pulls up the drawbridge in any industry to prevent new competition. A big company with billions of dollars can pay for the people on staff to meet a myriad of regulations and meet with government officials. But it is really Kabuki Theater. For the large company it keeps out new competition and for government they can say they are “doing something” whatever that might be.

Fourth, and related to number 3, is that regulation keeps all the best people working at the biggest companies to make them even bigger and suppresses innovation. Employees with great new innovative ideas that are thinking of leaving to start another company soon realize the drawbridges are up on the industry when they understand that developing the idea is not necessarily the tough part. It is navigating the regulation and the nasty little lawsuits that their former big company may throw at them like the characters in Mario Kart hitting their competitors by throwing explosive red or green shells. Not very nice. It is a hardball world moving fast.

Now that I have opened your eyes and enabled you to see the truth it will make you more cynical. But it will also allow you see the game being played from a higher level so next time you read the headlines you go “huh, I wonder what is really going on.”

I used to be open to the argument by the anti-gun crowd that the Second Amendment was referring to a “well regulated Militia” and not ordinary citizens.

As time has passed and I have observed how Western countries, that have removed guns from their populace, treat their citizens, I believe the language of the Second Amendment has come back to life.

It has become very, very clear what the Founding Fathers of the USA were thinking about and remembering when they gave the people the “right….to keep and bear Arms” and that the right “shall not be infringed.”

The Founding Fathers were intentionally and actively limiting power of government and embedding power in the people of the country. In their historical memory, they could point to armories held by royalty, like the Tower of London, that provided the weapons for an army at the King’s disposal against HIS enemies which also included the citizens of the country. Therefore the people had no rights. The Founding Fathers were inverting this power dynamic and giving people the right “to keep and bear Arms” to keep this power in the populace.

An even larger point with respect to The Constitution, is that this “right to bear arms” was and is not given by government. The people already have this “right” and it is called out that it “shall not be infringed.” The philosophy of the Founding Fathers is that “liberty" given by a benevolent government. Liberty is already and always owned by the people. The right “to bear Arms” and other rights, are the rights that support the “inalienable rights” mentioned in the Declaration of Independence.

And finally a very practical reality was that the people already owned a lot of guns. There was no effort to regulate their ownership and use. In fact, the Second Amendment was pointed at government and put up to stop them from infringing on the rights of the people to “keep and bear Arms.”

Amendment II.

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Socialism and communism are antithetical to the idea that people are free and have “inalienable rights” and can “pursue happiness.”

Socialism and communism depend on centralized control of the economy. This removes and shifts power from the people to rulers and bureaucrats in power. They are the authoritarians. This is neo-authoritarianism. Control of the economy enables control of the populace.

In effect, this is no different than King George III and the British Parliament in the 1700s running the American Colonies for their own economic benefit which led to the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. There is no difference in the economic goals of the authoritarians from the 1700s and the 2000s. It’s about centralizing control, wealth and power.

The Violation of The Constitution & The Declaration of Independence

In the Declaration of Independence the authors, signers and the Continental Congress specifically called out that people in government did not own the power but they derived “their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

A throne or throne room does not exist.

The socialist/communist elements within the Democratic Party have the desire to centralize the economy and want to shift power AND ownership away from the people to rulers and bureaucrats in Washington DC.

Consider when Obama gave the “you didn’t build that” speech:

“Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business, you didn't build that."

Indeed, somebody did invest in roads and bridges. It was the people of the USA. The “American system” that Obama mentioned is still the people. The “we” in that statement is yet again the people. And if a person owns a business it is their business because all rights and ownership undefined in The Constitution reside by default with the people.

The mindset and behavior that Obama demonstrated along with much of the left wing is sly behavior but in effect is no different than King George III, Stalin, Mao, Castro, Pol Pot and all the disasters of the past. With that power goes freedom.

We have seen this movie many many times in other countries and they have experienced spectacular failures. Failing to observe these mushroom cloud sized failures and learn from them can only be blamed on ignorance, pride, greed, envy and laziness. A toxic cocktail of death that is available to every generation. The only question is, will they be foolish enough to drink it?

Moroccan Young Men were sent by the Kingdom of Morocco to invade Spain but they were really running from the results of Islam.

There is a lot of speculation that the 60,000 young men who rushed the Spanish border were coordinated by the Kingdom of Morocco to invade Spain.

Why?

Spain has recently been mending fences with Algeria which caught Morocco’s attention as Morocco and Algeria do not get along.

Algeria cut ties with Morocco in 2021 and their common land border has been closed since 1994. Both want to run the northwest coast of Africa and any gain by one is seen as a loss to the other and they have upped their military spending as their hostilities have increased. The military spending suggests they may be at war at some point in the future.

Western Concern

But the real concerning issue for the West is that any country that can find 60,000 young men to rush a border with nothing but their clothes on has all the hallmarks of a failed state. This is the population of a small city emptying out without much notice.

And only young men that were reasonably close to the border could probably react to this opportunity which suggests there are hundreds of thousands if not millions more young men, if given enough notice, could make the attempt.

The bigger picture is that Africa and the Middle East are full of these failed states with millions of restless young men who have nowhere to go and nothing to do.

Beside sharing a border, Algeria and Morocco are both Islamic countries which you would think could live in harmony and dreams of future paradise. The fact is, putting aside resource rich Gulf States, the common denominator of most, if not all, these failed and failing and hopeless countries is Islam.

The evidence continues to stack up that Islam is a failure. It has failed all these Islamic countries and their people and can only be sustained by fear and authoritarianism.

I receive multiple magazines from my undergrad university and I find a vast difference between what US citizens are studying versus foreign students.

The implications of this disparity is that the college life ends at some point and many US students are not prepared for a job market and cannot contribute meaningfully to a society and an increasingly technical economy. Even while they are taking on massive debt. In summary, US citizen students readiness for reality and the real world is low.

My undergrad university is one of the largest in the USA with about 40,000 to 50,000 students and is ranked in the top 5 or 10 in most undergrad programs. And it is an R1 research university.

The Department of Economics (DOE), where I graduated as an undergrad, is consistently ranked in the top 5 in the nation and is well known around the world. When reviewing their magazine the DOE profiled 6 students studying topics like the effect of innovation on productivity and how high school curriculum policies shape students with respect to academics and post high school choices. Of those 6 students profiled, 3 are from countries other than the USA. And in total, the DOE has 35% of the majors coming from countries other than the USA.

Then I reviewed another magazine from the same university where a study is highlighted in the African American Studies Department that is looking at how states were formed and the challenges for African Americans integrating into those states. The topic is interesting and very nuanced with anecdotes about early leaders/settlers and what they experienced and thought. There were no epiphanies in the research but it added depth to what most of us already know.

In comparing these two departments, one is looking to the future and the other is looking at the past. The former is providing marketable skills now and the latter is adding to knowledge about the past but it is very obscure what that knowledge is worth outside of the satisfaction of understanding the past better than we thought.

In the vast field of knowledge almost anything can become a department with degrees and certifications. A university will form a department and establish guidelines and curriculums to support a discipline if there is enough interest AND people willing to pay the tuition for the classes and degree.

But that doesn’t answer the question if studying that discipline is BENEFICIAL FOR YOU. I am not proposing that African American Studies be shut down or any other department be shut down BUT colleges and universities need to take responsibility for equipping their graduates with knowledge that is valued AND will be compensated in the market where skills and knowledge are transacted for salaries.

The fallback defense position of colleges is that college is meant to expand your experiences and horizons but that is a sales pitch not reality. Certainly, colleges and universities are not educating people as a form of altruism. They want real money for tuition. They especially like foreign tuition and they exhibit no self-recrimination for carrying a bloated and very expensive administrative staff layer that students pay for their salaries through higher tuition. Let’s put to bed the idea that it’s about students. It’s has become an industry with all the insensitivities of big industries.

The flip side of the tuition coin is that there needs to be accountability. Colleges need to provide educations worth real money that enable the student to pay off their education loans. The cost per credit in colleges are the same, which by the way is monopoly behavior, but the downstream income from degrees is materially different and the efforts to shift that burden to taxpayers, over half which never went to college, is relentless.

Coming full circle to the topic of student readiness. Foreign students are targeting studies and disciplines that are forward looking and are well compensated. That is smart and they are over weighted in these disciplines. US students are under weighted in these forward looking disciplines even while the marketplace is asking for more technical skills and knowledge. That is not smart.

The outcome is that US citizen students have more knowledge to argue about various topics and post on social media but that will only qualify them for a menial job and they will find themselves side-by-side with people with no or limited education. But they will be carrying huge debt. Foreign students have focused on real skills and knowledge that can be used in a real job and are staying after graduation to take those jobs because US citizens are not qualified to take those jobs.

This is a broken and unsustainable education model for US citizens.

Under the guise of scholarship and intellectual inquiry resides a motley crew of intellectual elites (appointed, self-appointed, often selfish and often naive), activists, talking heads on TV and useful idiots that are creating and holding up the fabric and frameworks of antisemitism and evangelizing these antisemitic ideas in classrooms, publications, social media and mass media.

For the masterminds, the strategic thinkers, the goals are much bigger than destroying Jews and Israel. The ultimate goal is the destruction of the West and anyone who believes in Western values or is suspected of believing in Western values and ideals. These enemies of the west, and yes there are enemies, their beliefs are antithetical to the West so they hate the West and want to destroy it and replace it with their authoritarian regimes and ideologies like communism or Islam.

Israel is the test case. It’s the Strait of Thermopylae for these haters of the West. It is the proof point that if they can destroy Israel then they can destroy the West and spread their ideology and vision. And the converse is also true. If they can’t destroy Israel then they likely can’t destroy the West. Therefore the effort to destroy Israel and thereby the West is immense and without pause.

This motley crew produces misleading and biased scholarship and, illogical inquiries with moral equivalence fallacies likely topping the list. All posing as scholarship and intellectual curiosity that is combined with relentless propaganda both externally and internally to try and drive Western public opinion against Israel, create a wedge between Israel, the USA and the West in the hope that isolating Israel will cause it to fail.

The Meta Context

The unavoidable meta context of everything is the ideals and values of the West against the ideals and values of communism (i.e. centrally controlled and planned government) and Islam. Communism, and communism lite (i.e. socialism), find strength and comfort in a convenient and temporary alliance against the West but both are authoritarian and would not tolerate each other without a common enemy namely the West.

Tools and Fools

The revolutionary framework or tool that enables so much damage in all this activity against the West and Israel is the “oppressor vs oppressed” binary view of the world and the idea that the world is divided into victims, who are moral by default (key assumption), because of their helpless state, and the abusers of power, who are evil (key assumption), because they hold control and this is unjust (passing judgement). Furthermore, this framework declares that this power configuration is not equitable (passing judgement) which also presumes immorality (key assumption).

The Goal

The “oppressor vs oppressed” framework is revolutionary by design.

It is meant to overturn or at minimum reform current power structures. But by its design, it is supremely destructive as anyone can apply it their view of the world with or without merit. One only need to insist they are a victim and play the role. Furthermore it can only be applied in an open society like in the West where by comparison to much of the world, civilization is advanced.

The oppressor vs oppressed framework is also antithetical to democracy in the most fundamental way in that in a democracy the power structure is defined by majority rule by voting. By definition, overturning the power structure of a democracy is authoritarian. The political ji jitsu is to distort the logical thinking of a democracy and shift power to minority interests and thereby disenfranchise the majority of voters and undermine democracy.

The majority of the world lives under different forms of authoritarian regimes and will not tolerate entertaining this revolutionary framework. So it finds its only home in the Western world and is used extensively against the Western world by people who hate the West.

The largest authoritarian AND expansionist movement in the world is Islam and it views the “oppressor vs oppressed” framework as a useful tool to bring down the West. From an Islamic view, people living under Islam are taught that the West is evil and to get to heaven and avoid hell, which are very real to Muslims, one needs to avoid the wickedness of the West and if possible reform it, observe other Muslim doctrine, and perhaps one might get to heaven. So Islam has a holy mission to convert and reform the West and much of the fuel is eternal consequences.

Within the West, Islam is a minority religion so therefore the “oppressor vs oppressed” framework provides a tool that is very useful and fits into their Islamic unjust and immoral view of the West and they are eager to use it. But not in their own Islamic countries……but against the West.

The Staging Ground & the Unspoken Subversion

The staging ground for the oppressor vs oppressed revolutionary framework is in colleges and universities and spreads downstream into the education system as college students are turned into believers and disciples of the framework, its values and goals and then sent forth to evangelize children and young adults in K-12. Furthermore, this dogma is cemented in place as the vast majority of teachers are left wing and in the USA only about 2% serve in the military and most of those are in the southern states. Further ossifying this dogma the political left adopted this framework as a base of power which expands as an increasing number of college graduates and young people are indoctrinated with this view of the world.

This triangle of control (i.e. colleges, K-12 and left wing politics) over the education system is the death of critical thinking and exposing thought and ideas to the benefits of the pressure chamber of alternative ideas. And it prevents any check on the extremes to where the left and the education system can be taken. This is what we see today play out in every whim and fancy of the far left.

The subversion of Western government and democracy is the use of educational institutions as a staging ground and quasi-branch of government to influence constitutional branches of government through various means including publications, speeches, supporting West adversaries and protests.

Why?

Because activists and operatives cannot persuade representative government to do their bidding through the constitutional process either because voters don’t support their views or they have no standing.

The activists and operatives can be and in cases are non-citizens who are in Western countries as invited faculty, or working abroad with US faculty, teaching assistants and students of various ages with some being quite mature and looking suspiciously like a foreign agent.

In other words, democracy is about representative government of the citizens of the country where they belong. Using the educational system as a platform non-citizens use it for activities where they want representation thereby moving around the democratic process. This same circuitous route using the educational system as a platform for subversion is used by citizen activists on campus.

Rather than lobby their elected representatives they want to go around the democratic process and get their views amplified and desires met through subversion.

The results

The output of this undemocratic system inundates the West with people coming out of educational institutions at all levels that have a herd mentality and engage in group think (being generous) and with no self-reflection which indicates programming versus intellectual inquiry and rigor that could be decomposed, explained and reconfigured. It is a dogma cemented together and not open to input. Much like a religion.

These people are the motley crew of intellectual elites (appointed, self-appointed, selfish and often naive), activists, talking heads on TV and useful idiots creating and holding up the fabric and frameworks of antisemitism and evangelizing these antisemitic ideas in classrooms, publication and tearing at the foundations of the West.

A Substack Example

Mass media and social media have examples by the thousands every day but here is one from a Substack author with I presume at least hundreds of followers. At minimum this author is a useful idiot at least in this article he wrote but he attempts to come at the topic through intellectual observations.

He wrote about a month ago:

When I pointed out that the USA has invested trillions of dollars into NATO and various Asian countries for over 100 years and ALL of our relationships with allies benefit them more than the USA due to our size and that singling out Israel is “antisemitism” he was offended. I didn’t call him an antisemite but I posited he was spreading antisemitism so he was either a willing fool or truly antisemitic. After a bit of back and forth which he resisted, I presented it to him as follows; “It’s antisemitism. And it comes with all kinds of justifications and rationale. Before you get into that bed you should look at who you will be cavorting with and examine their beliefs and values. It’s not democracy.”

Then he was so offended he blocked me rather than examine his thinking and look for inconsistencies and flaws. NOTE: Maybe looking like a fool in front of his readers played a factor as well because he didn’t think through his thesis and led it with the audacity to say “The truth is that” when it was not the truth.

But to the point, these are the kind of intellectual antisemites that have been trained in academia and repeat what they have heard/learned from hardcore antisemites. They think they know more than the State Department and many of them believe they are just engaging in intelligent inquiry but in fact they are the useful idiots that every misinformed movement needs.

Summary

The rampant intellectual antisemitism on the left that targets everything about Israel and Jews is a head fake. The real goal is to bring down everything in the West. The Western hating allies have different end goals but the first goal is to divide the West and bring down Israel and then the rest of the West.

The staging place is in academia and the most useful tool is the oppressor vs oppressed framework. This has developed over decades and the ossified combination of colleges/universities, the fact that most teachers are left wing politically, the institutional capture of left wing political parties (in the USA the Democratic Party) and the targeting of young minds to indoctrinate them is a threat to the viability and longevity of the West.

The first step to thwart this unholy alliance of authoritarians is to expose the actors, their goals, their agendas and their methods. This is a step in that direction.

Please share.

So let’s look at who owns America and how to measure wealth.

Stock Market Ownership Facts & Reality

First, foreign investors and governments own 20% to 30% of the total US stock market. Foreign investors are a spectrum of investors including wealthy individuals and foreign governments actively investing sovereign wealth and retirement funds. So a large percentage of the US stock market is owned by people or governments that have moved their capital to the US and invested but are not US citizens.

Second, US public companies and especially the largest name brand companies are very diversified with respect to ownership. The act of becoming a public company means that a share of ownership is sold to the public. Almost anyone around the world can buy part ownership of a US company listed on the US stock market. Nvidia could have been bought for $12 a share at their stock market debut in 1999. A $1,000 investment would now be worth around $16 million placing you in that resented wealthy 10% of households. A $100 investment would be worth $1.6 million. Did anyone have $100 in 1999?

OK, but you say we still hate people that we think own all the stock market. Especially company founders like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. So who owns the shares of 8 of the largest companies in the world based in the USA?

See the chart below.

Insiders, which are founders and executive management own anywhere between .05% to 11.11% while Institutions, which include mutual funds and other managers running IRAs and 401Ks for 100s of millions of people own anywhere from 46.1% to 82.5%. This is the result of going public and the founders of the company selling ownership of the company to investors around the world. The founder shares become a small percentage of the overall ownership. This is how companies become big. The founders share in the ownership of the company.

How about this argument?

What could be argued is that the top 10% of the wealthiest households in the USA own around 90% of the stock market. Doesn’t that prove something?

But underneath that argument is another truth. The Magnificent 7 technology stocks in the S&P 500 have increased in value so much they are now about 35% of the S&P 500 value. At some point in their history they started at zero. Just 30 years ago, most of these companies were very small or didn’t exist. People who invested in these stocks at any point since 2000 are materially more wealthy depending on the size of investment. This increase in value correlates with increases in revenue as these technology companies produced products and services that people and companies desire.

Magnificent 7 Stocks: Nvidia (NVDA), Microsoft (MSFT), Apple (AAPL), Alphabet (GOOG / GOOGL), Amazon (AMZN), Meta Platforms (META) and Tesla (TSLA)

Stock Market Truth

So what is the truth?

A small investment in any of these companies when they went public would make a person materially wealthier today. But millions of people don’t want to own a business or own part of a business through the stock market which is why they work for wages. Meanwhile the US stock market has risen to a value of $75 trillion!!!!

Investing or not investing in the stock market has always been a choice.

Housing Market Facts & Reality

So let’s talk housing.

This is where the average person has clearly chosen to put their investments. Individual investors dominate this market and hold the vast majority of the value of single family homes (SFHs) in the USA. And housing has a been good investment over the long term.

About 80% of the nation’s 86 million SFHs are owned directly by individuals mostly as owner-occupied primary residences. The value of this housing stock is in the $45 Trillion to $55 Trillion range. It is a massive market and individual investors own almost all of it.

If we break down the remaining 20% of SFHs they are held by investors. Within that 20% investor-owned slice, “mom-and-pop” landlords and smaller private investors own the vast majority at around 80% to 85% of the investor-owned slice. Large, institutional investors own 15% to 20% of the investor-owned market which translates into low single digits ownership of the overall market.

The Meta Reality & The Truth

So, overall wealth in the USA is much more diversified than left wing activists, political demagogues, podcasters, journalists and ignorant people understand and want to admit. And the wealth that has been created has been available in the housing market and the stock market. Both markets have been available to investors and have provided great long-term returns.

The vast majority of individual investors have chosen to invest almost all of their wealth in single family homes. There is nothing wrong with that choice as it has been a great long term investment.

Other people have also put their investments into a business through the stock market. These investments have also experienced great returns over the long run.

The greater truth is that the US economy is the most productive and valuable economy in the world and one can participate in it through owning real estate or owning businesses through the stock market. Or both.

What is all this noise? It is the toxic gumbo soup of the ignorant, jealous, Marxist, extreme socialists and demagogue politicians like Sanders, Warren and the disgusting creature that is now the NYC mayor.

Don’t be led around by people exploiting your ignorance. The USA is the BEST place in the world to live and invest and you have the freedom to make whatever choices you desire. Not investing is most likely your poor judgement and choices.

The Problem

In the past 100 years, western academia, intellectuals and self-appointed elites have used the freedom they have inherited to create and support frameworks and ideas that are NOT serving freedom and the western world. In fact they are anti-western. Much of this is spawned in the education industry and especially in Higher Education.

This behavior hurts people everywhere as the view of the west is presented through a distorted kaleidoscope turned by western grievance artists, and extremists, and amplified by anti-western and authoritarian voices outside the west and around the world.

These are the internal and external forces working to bring the west down. For a person living outside the west and hoping in something better than living under dictators and authoritarians their hope is dampened or destroyed by the negative drumbeat of anti-western activists and external propagandists.

The Meta Debate

The meta debate that is in play is the never ending global competition of ideas regarding how societies should be constructed for the betterment of humanity and what form of government supports this goal. Even this statement is and should be argued as western liberal societies predominantly believe that power is held by the governed protecting their “Rights” versus how other regions of the world led by rulers, or a religion like Islam, who are the government and they dictate how their society should work. In those cases, people have no “rights” except what government allows them. This is the fundamental debate that the west cannot lose. Because most people around the world live under authoritarian governments the west needs to contemplate that they are losing this debate.

Furthermore to this argument, what actually is the evidence and what actually works? History shows massive failures costing hundreds of millions of lives under authoritarian governments and mostly from the left. This is the ultimate inconvenient fact for people who hate the west or are define themselves as being left wing politically and want the government to control people either directly or indirectly through endless regulation and social penalties.

The Spawn of Academia

One of the peaks of the illogical ideas, in the mountain range of illogical ideas, foisted by the intellectuals inside of Higher Education and elitists outside, are the ideas of “cultural relativism“ and “cultural humility.” These ideas might be cool when raising endowment money and capturing higher foreign student tuition dollars but they cede ground to anti-western and anti-democratic rulers and cultures. And they are not true. The love of money has turned logic, truth and common sense upside down and these westerners are no longer advocates for the ideas and philosophies that made the west superior to the balance of the world. And especially to authoritarian governments.

Two elements of “cultural humility” are a lifelong commitment to self-evaluation and self-critique and a desire to fix power balances. In the real world, self-critique by the west is used by authoritarians around the world as fodder against western principles and freedoms to maintain their grip on billions of people and tilt world opinion and power against the west. In effect, western intellectuals are working for authoritarians and tribal interests.

And intellectual elites don’t understand or want to admit the source of power balances. Overwhelmingly, power balances are the result of western culture, people in the west with freedom and democratic governments operating on different principles and making different choices over centuries. This has resulted in advanced western societies and empowered people that can drive change through their choices versus authoritarians and tribal leaders around the world controlling populations through force and by limiting information flow. In effect, the west harnesses the combined intellect and energy of all of its participants while authoritarians take the position of the wise ruler who knows better than the masses how they should live and is fair. China might be the largest Case Study and colossal failure of this wise ruler mindset.

People Voting

The global population endorses and signals the desire for western culture every year by voting with their feet as they move to western countries and culture versus moving to non-western countries. And the vote is echoed by the protest of people NOT wanting to leave the west and illegal immigrants avoiding the law and deportation efforts. Furthermore, some western principles have been endorsed and adopted by authoritarian governments, albeit reluctantly and after great loss of lives, to avoid complete collapse. These are clear signals that the west, and especially the USA, is where the world looks for leadership.

The Truth & Responsibility

The fact and the truth, that western intellectuals cannot admit, but that they shamelessly enjoy, is that the culture of the west IS SUPERIOR to other cultures. It is not perfect but it is superior.

That puts the responsibility on the west to lead and hold the standard high everywhere and at all times for western principles of freedom, democracy, pursuit of happiness and protection from authoritarian government and practices. The survival of the west and the “Rights” and “Liberty” of people everywhere depend on it.

The west is not just another culture in a sea of cultures. It is the culture of hope and a “city on a hill” for people to look up to and aspire to do great things for themselves and the betterment of mankind.

The west needs to lead with western principles for the sake of the world or someone else will lead with their principles.

This was the document and the message that the 13 colonies of the emerging United State of America announced and sent to the Kingdom of Great Britain, the British King and the British governors.

This was an extraordinary and pivotal moment in the history of the world as this document created a new nation that would be based on the principles of rule of law, unalienable rights, limited government, equality, and the right to alter or abolish oppressive government. This was a sea change idea and hated by the monarchs of Europe, authoritarians and dictators everywhere and still is today. Effectively, the power of government was moved from the governors to the governed.

From the perspective of the 13 colonies, it drove a direct and revolutionary stake in the heart of any vestiges of the idea of the divine right of kings and a royal class. This was the idea that Kings and the ruling class were chosen by God and therefore had special status and answered only to God. The Declaration of Independence directly rejected this idea.

The second sentence of the Declaration of Independence is the most important sentence of western freedom in history and it addresses this traditional idea of divine right of kings as follows:

The Declaration of Independence boldly announces that the “truths” were that “all men” were “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” So “Rights” were not provided exclusively and intentionally to kings and rulers but directly to “all men” by “their creator” and they were “endowed” which means they were innate and unfettered. That is, without cost.

This idea of “unalienable Rights” is the most fundamental truth of true freedom. This idea enables freedom.

No ruler or governor can take away these “unalienable Rights” because they were endowed by “their creator.” These “Rights” are already in us. We were born with these “Rights.” For a person who does not believe in God they can still believe this is our natural state to have “Rights” including the rights of “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

As I look around the western world I question whether governments have backslid into the idea that they don’t have to listen to the governed. I question whether western governments believe in the truth of “unalienable Rights.” I question whether many western countries ever acknowledged “unalienable Rights” from the start and were not completely committed to these rights so just jumped to the performance art of freedom while still holding the power in government ever so subtly and carefully. I still see royalty involved in government. Isn’t that a sign that the commitment to freedom and “unalienable Rights” was never a full commitment.

And worse, I see western governors and the governed of the west open to ideas that dilute or remove “unalienable Rights” of “all men” under the guise of cultural relativism, understanding and having an open mind. All this shows is an uncertainty that there exists “unalienable Rights” and that is the road to limited or no rights.

If you want to be free then return to “unalienable Rights.” If you believe in the west versus the long list of alternative authoritarian governments promising benefits in return for your freedom then return to “unalienable Rights.” If you want to be free rather then live under the steel rod of Islam then return to “unalienable Rights.”

There is no other path.

Because the USA is the most powerful and wealthiest country in the world. More importantly, the USA is the leading democracy in the world. No country has the ability and size to take the place of the USA and no country can help the USA as much or more than we help them. All of them are dependent to one degree or another on the USA.

Europe in its entirety has depended on the USA for over 100 years to extract them successfully out of WWI and WWII and build a defense shield (i.e. NATO) around Europe to protect it from an expansionist USSR. The USA has spent trillions of dollars in defense spending to win the Cold War and free Eastern Europe from the USSR. Now the USA has funded and sold weapons to the Ukraine. The USA could have let Russian tanks, or earlier in history let German tanks, roll over Europe and take it over and argued there is no tangible benefit.

In Asia, the USA invested heavily in Japan after WWII to get that country back on its feet. We could have let the USSR take that over as well. The USSR has never liked an independent Japan being so close to its eastern border. One could argue that what the USA got in return were trade deficits which hurt working people in the USA. We invested in South Korea to prevent a takeover by China. We have invested in Taiwan. All of these countries are democracies and are under a USA military umbrella.

The USA is the oldest and continuous constitutional republic in modern times and is allied with democracies around the world that depend on the USA for military protection and a sharing of common values and goals. The majority of the world is actively authoritarian that is interested in expansion and more control. The number of people living under authoritarian rule has never been higher so the challenge to democracy, freedom and human rights has never been more daunting. As the lead democracy, the USA has always defended other democracies.

Israel is the ONLY democracy in the Middle East and the remaining countries are authoritarian. Given the fact that we have invested trillions into democracies in Europe and Asia why do people question Israel which is just a sliver of a country? Why do we blink?

Part of it is because Israel and democracies are not good at information wars. Authoritarian governments and Islamic zealots are committed to information wars because they need to win the information war to prop up their regimes and their beliefs. They are actively selling that their beliefs and methods are superior to democracy and the west.

Scores of authoritarian countries have taken over the United Nations and used its democratic structure in a cabal against the west and Israel. Authoritarian countries have invested money in US colleges and universities to carry and expand the narrative that the west is the root cause of all kinds of problems and Israel is part of that legacy. Many in the west have bought these sales pitches from authoritarian regimes for various reasons including it’s easy to accommodate those pitches when there is a check on the table to be cashed.

And for many people, it’s just plain old antisemitism. And it comes with all kinds of justifications and rationale.

Before you get into the bed of antisemitism you should look at who you will be cavorting with and examine their beliefs and values. It’s not democracy and the west.

But read on for a fairly understandable article on how it really works / doesn’t work.

Tariffs are a lot more complicated than what most people can or want to understand. So read on if you want to know more than the typical sound bites tossed around in the raging political arguments du jour.

First, when economists talk in public about tariffs they talk about them in very simple terms with a bias towards Free Trade. When talking about tariffs being good or bad they are often talking with the unspoken assumption that “all things being equal” or at least with the unspoken sentiment that a world without tariffs and with Free Trade would allocate resources around the world more optimally than any other approach. That is hard to dispute. Economists pretty much agree that tariffs do not make the world more economically efficient and a better place for all concerned. In fact, Free Trade is the ideal state of the world where tariffs and tariff-like policies are not used or are very limited. How lovely that place would be it seems.

But then there is a real world. There is no country that does not use tariffs to some degree. Countries create tariffs for various reasons. Agricultural tariffs are quite common as countries want to ensure food security. Countries also outright ban certain imports or more subtly create so much red tape for importers that they make their markets inaccessible much like a tariff would. In addition, countries manipulate their currencies so that their products on the world market appear cheaper than competitive products made by other countries. Even worse is when government is involved in corporate espionage to steal the intellectual property, “know how” and Competitive Advantage of businesses around the world which they then share with their own domestic companies and in which the government may also be an investor. Global trade presents a business suit with nice speeches about fair and open trade but there is plenty of skullduggery behind the scenes.

In addition, many countries have industrial policies that are long term plans where government has chosen what products their economy will produce and what countries and markets they plan to sell into. Often these plans have little regard for whether not their businesses have a Competitive Advantage. A country may believe they must produce a product domestically so they will pursue aggressive tariffs against those same products at the border so they are not imported. Again, a common example is agriculture products as most governments believe they need the ability to grow their own food. But this can also be seen in technology and military spending. NOTE: The economic concept of Competitive Advantage implies that a business has a natural advantage or is better at producing products than other global competitors.

The problem with government industrial policy is that it is NOT free market signaling which underlies the argument for Free Trade, but rather governments placing a bet for their citizens/voters/workers/business owners. And government will take active measures to protect this investment and the jobs/votes and money that go with it. When government distorts markets through tariffs and industrial policy then the Competitive Advantage of business is not through their own efforts and expertise but through government interference in markets. As other countries react to these government industrial policies with their own tariffs or policy then global trade drifts further and further from Free Trade and open markets.

This is the world we live in. It’s a distorted version of Free Trade at best. The overriding observation and problem is that global trade has become a government led activity NOT a business and market led activity even though we talk about it like that is how it works.

The USA has been the bell cow for global Free Trade since WWII. Governments and businesses around the world have targeted US markets. And the markets in the USA have been relatively open for foreign competitors to export to the USA regardless of the openness of their markets. The results have been profound. Many American businesses have located their production facilities outside of the USA. Other businesses and industries have been targeted by other countries’ industrial policies which have gutted American capabilities and know how. Now the USA finds itself without many core capabilities that a modern society needs AND a dependency on foreign countries that are not aligned with western values of freedom and democracy.

It’s naïve to look at global trade as being anywhere close to the ideals of what Free Advocates would like it to be.

Instead global trade is a massively distorted and government manipulated market on multiple levels. America must engage with what is real and not ideal while striving towards making it more ideal. The political wrangling for votes and using global trade as a political partisan football hurts Americans and causes uncertainty. The US economy and workers need consistent policy that works for Americans regardless of administrations and is not subject to change by political party.

If the USA loses the AI race the consequences will be profound and a historical inflection point between western liberal democracies and authoritarian regimes of all types.

In the battle between western liberal democracies and authoritarians, the USA, has been the primary global leader over the past few hundred years BECAUSE the USA won all past Industrial Revolutions. FULL STOP

Humanity has benefitted tremendously from those wins. With that performance, the USA brought the philosophies and principles of the west including freedom of speech, liberty and human rights to the rest of the world. And the USA has served as a high-water mark for free, civilized and advanced societies. To the extent that the USA and other western nations have people from around the world wanting to live in those countries.

The world is currently entering the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” which is driven by AI. Prior Industrial Revolutions were; Mechanization, Electricity and Computing which the USA and the west led and won.

Those Industrial Revolutions were led by foundational technologies that transformed every facet of life. AI is another foundational technology.

The stakes of winning the AI race are profound and include; Economic viability, national security and the most importantly the platform and credibility to promote and support western liberal democracies and its principles.

Global Economic Viability and Supremacy

This is close to a “winner take all” race.

The USA, and the west, have enjoyed economic supremacy for hundreds of years and the downstream benefits that derive from that supremacy. The economic impact of AI is projected to be staggering in just the next handful of years, which is why you see large technology companies like Google invest billions of dollars into AI each year Estimates, that are thought to be conservative, target AI contributions up to $15.7 billion by the year 2030

Categories of benefits include:

Productivity Gains: AI-driven automation and data analysis allow for unprecedented efficiency in manufacturing, logistics, and services. Healthcare should see amazing productivity gains which are badly needed so access, coverage and accuracy can be improved. Manufacturing can be brought back to the USA and other western countries as labor cost differences become a non-factor in where to locate manufacturing capabilities.

New Industries: Beyond improving old industries, AI will create new industries like personalized medicine and autonomous transportation systems. The latter is already being tested and implemented in various cities. Commercial trucking will also likely see an increasing share become autonomous especially between cities.

The Network Effect: Digital industries usually consolidate around standards and critical mass of employees and deployed systems. This is a “winner take all” environment. If the USA establishes the primary AI technologies, frameworks, standards, and platforms then it will lead mind share and technology share and the benefits will be revenue, innovation and talent acquisition. In essence, the USA becomes the standard.

National Security and Modern Warfare

A common saying is “don’t bring a knife to a gunfight” which is a street way of commenting on technology. AI is the new superior technology.

This has always been true. Technology in warfare has been the deciding factor in victory.

Most recently, Germany, with their industrial might and technology, defeated most of Europe and came close to defeating the Soviet Union. Arguably if Germany would not have invaded the Soviet Union, they would still be ruling most of Europe.

Farther back in history tank warfare innovation, the machine gun and the repeating rifle won battles and wars.

In the 21st century, the battlefield is being redefined by AI rather than just tangible weapons. Bits and bytes are providing superior warfare capabilities over bullets and large scale hardware.

Without superior technology going to war is likely a futile endeavor and the gap between AI enabled armies and non-AI armies may become so wide that countries know they are defeated before they even begin. This leads to victory without a shot being fired and if the victors are authoritarian then it is a battle of subjugation.

AI is vastly changing warfare including in the following ways:

Autonomous Systems: The Ukraine is leading innovation in some of these new AI led warfare systems. To counter superior Russian jets they have used drone swarm AI technology to manage a dense cluster of drone as one unit versus individually operated drones. The cost structure of using drones versus a $50 million to $100 million jet is order of magnitude. Russian has had to take measures to protect their jets from drone raids the cost is so high.

Intelligence: More tactically, AI’s ability to process vast quantities of incoming intelligence enables a faster more accurate decision making system under very high pressure. AI compresses the OODA loop (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act) to allow for faster battlefield action which can save lives. Armies without AI or with inferior AI may become demoralized quickly as they find themselves helpless to fight with any effectiveness.

Cybersecurity: Modern economies are heavily built on public services of power, water, roads and markets and are extremely vulnerable to cyberattack. These are centralized and most have no redundancy to recover from attack.

AI can launch sophisticated, automated cyberattacks at a scale humans cannot counter manually. The USA needs to lead in defensive AI or the critical infrastructure underpinning the economy and society of the USA is incredibly vulnerable.

Ideology, Ethics and Principles that are Humanitarian

Easily the most important benefit of winning the AI race.

When you are a leader in an industrial revolution then the revolution including the ethics and morality of it depend on your leadership.

Technology enables the spread of ideology. Technology carries the ideology of the people and countries that create it and the opportunity to convince other people and cultures that their civilization is superior and just as importantly other people and cultures that they are inferior. These are the ideological drivers that explain why China would support TikTok and Baidu and blocks Google.

AI that comes from authoritarian countries will train their models with data that reflects authoritarian regimes and will have turnkey Use Cases that are flavored with authoritarianism.

Inevitably, whatever country wins the AI Industrial Revolution will be spreading their ideology and trumpeting the supremacy of their economic and government systems and frameworks as superior to competitive alternatives. The global “AI Industrial Revolution” is as much about ideology as it is about software.

Democratic vs. Authoritarian AI: If the USA and the west lead, AI development is more likely to prioritize individual privacy, transparency, and human rights.

Surveillance: If authoritarian regimes dominate the AI landscape, the technology will likely be optimized for mass surveillance, social credit systems, and the suppression of dissent. This is a dark room that few countries emerge from once they are in it. By leading the revolution, the USA can influence the emerging norms to reflect the principles of an open society.

Scientific Advancement

AI is a supremely powerful new technology that is and will provide extraordinary advancements for scientific discovery. The country with the best AI will likely lead the world in scientific breakthroughs of all kinds. And that country will be the de facto scientific center of the world as advancement will leverage further advancements at a pace where other countries cannot catch up. In past Industrial Revolutions those countries left behind engaged in spying and corporate espionage to try and catch up.

Two areas of potentially extraordinary gains for all of humanity are:

Healthcare: Productivity gains from doctor and nurses spending less time on typing in notes after a visit to better and lower cost diagnostic tools, accelerating drug discovery and customizing drug therapy for an individual by taking into account a multitude of variables in an AI drug therapy tool. These AI diagnostic tools can also be exposed on the internet for people to check their own symptoms and start their health care journey before the initial call to a health provider.

Energy: A growing world and economies need additional power. Using AI to design better batteries, passive energy technologies and even optimizing nuclear to take a greater load off of fossil fuel energy sources is increasingly attainable using AI.

Summary

The AI Industrial Revolution represents a pivotal moment in human history. Like it or not, the USA must win this next Industrial Revolution for the sake of humanity.

For the USA, falling behind is not an option. Leadership in AI ensures that the USA remains the global engine of innovation, a lighthouse for liberty and democratic values, and a leader in the security of the free world. The AI race is not just about technology. It’s about what the world will look like in 10, 20, 50, 100 years.

The stakes are huge and beyond what most people in the west consider when thinking about AI. The stakes are really about how people will live and not live in the future.

One conclusion from this analysis is that the US federal tax schedule is incredibly progressive.

That is, the top earners are paying the majority of federal taxes. For people who complain that people with the highest incomes are cheating and not paying their fair share the mathematical facts resoundingly refute that claim. The highest earners are paying more than their fair share. This is a bitter mathematical reality to swallow for socialists, communists and the envy crowd that think more money should be taken from these workers and sent or spent on them.

So Who is Paying / not Paying?

Well, the top 1% of earners (incomes above $660K):

• Paid around 38% to 40% of all federal taxes in 2023.

• Furthermore, the trend has been that the top 1% of earners have been paying an increasing share of federal income taxes.

• In fact, in 1980 the top 1% of earners paid 19.3% and it has increased ever since to over 38% in recent years and with a high of nearly 46% in 2021.

The next tranche to look at is the top 10% of earners (incomes above $170K):

• Paid 71% to 76% of all federal income taxes in 2023. Their average tax rate is about 21% to 27%.

The top 50% of earners:

• Pay over 95% of all federal taxes.

The converse is that the bottom 50% of earners only pay 5% of all federal taxes! Fair or not needs more analysis.

Wasn’t the Big Beautiful Bill (BBB) only for Rich people?

No! The BBB lowered everyone’s taxes

If measured in dollars, the highest income earners did get more of a tax benefit BUT that is also because they pay the majority of taxes. But as a percentage of income the tax benefit they received under the BBB is not significant. The net tax benefit for the 1% is about .4% of income. The top marginal rate dropped from 39.6% to 37%. All of this is marginal change.

For lower income workers the benefits from the BBB were more impactful from a percentage of income perspective. Those items included: No tax on tips, no tax on overtime, child tax credit expansion, standard deduction boost and the TCJA from 2017 bill extended. If a significant portion of your income comes from tips and overtime the marginal impact could be quite high.

NOTE: As long as we have a very small group of people paying almost all the federal taxes then the complaint will always be the rich are getting a bigger advantage when the tax code is rewritten. This is a disingenuous complaint.

Houston, We have a spending problem

The most recent information I could find is that federal tax receipts were up for 2025. But we have a different problem. We have a spending problem as both parties have learned that you need to pay people for votes. Tax reductions or transfer payments are the main tools. There are no more fiscal conservatives. They were voted out by the electorate.

Voting for money was predicted in the past and attributed to Benjamin Franklin or Alexander Fraser Tytler but nobody knows. The quote is “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury.” We are living that today.

You don’t like the budget deficit? Look in the mirror and look at the faces in your town/city.

Economic and Political Misalignment

Beyond the unsustainability of politicians buying votes is the misalignment between the political cycle and the economic cycle. The political cycle runs at most in 4 year spans and the philosophical principles that politicians are bringing to the debate are very different and often don’t agree with the founding principles of the USA. From a timing standpoint, economic cycles run in 8 to 20 year timeframes, or longer, as companies and people need to know how to plan, work and invest. Political changes that drive frequent changes in economic policy make it easier for employers to hold down employment in the USA and hire people in more stable countries. FULL STOP

NOTE: If political parties are interested in jobs in the USA then economic policy needs to be stable which means Democrats and Republicans need to agree on long term policies.

The current political environment is full of demagogic rhetoric on the left and right, whether it’s welfare deadbeats or rich people are cheating and not paying any taxes. This is politics not problem solving. That arguing has got us into $40 Trillion in debt.

The reality that is coming can be seen at this debt clock

US Debt Clock

You can see spending is going to hit a cliff, the pain will be significant and likely the economy will contract. Or we drive inflation.

Economic Illiteracy leads to Authoritarianism

Western citizens by and large don’t understand how an economy in a liberal democracy works and too many politicians are willing to ride that wave of ignorance for votes. Too many people in the west simplify the machinations of a western market economy with freedom to pursue self-interest as greed which then results in people calling out for government action based on their individual version of morality.

They then want government action to be taken to assert centralized control, by force or fiat, but that by definition is going to be authoritarian. The fact is they are destroying liberal western principles and government to address their personal moral compass. Just to be clear for the naïve and people living in a dream, authoritarians are by nature greedy and in need of more and more control. They rob their economies of resources and productivity for themselves which also diminishes the power of the people through lack of resources and resultant poverty and results in dependency and benevolence on and from the dictator. That is the authoritarian reality versus the authoritarian dream.

Democracy, private ownership, markets and capitalism are principles of a western scalable system that can support billions of people with freedom and the right to pursue happiness. China learned this lesson the hard way after 200 million people were dead from starvation. China still runs an authoritarian political system but they set up markets to move capital and unleashed a business class to build wealth by owning, building, and running industries. China is on course to be the largest economy in the world at some point soon.

Capitalism is not failing - It’s the only thing that works

China endorsed capitalism. They won’t necessarily admit it but they did. They still have a healthy dose of central control but who would have thought they would ever have a stock market or a millionaire / billionaire class 50 years ago!

The world runs on markets and capitalistic concepts of investments and returns led by business people making decisions based on managing capital for reasonable risk based returns and satisfying customer demand around the world.

Full Circle

Capitalism is powerful and it works to enable large scale decentralized or quasi-decentralized systems serving billions of people. That is the world today.

With respect to taxes, people in the USA can argue for the most successful people to help more but they can’t argue they are not doing heavy lifting right now. I think people would be fine paying a bit more in taxes if it can be predictable and consistent, is not wasteful, has some rationale in fairness and has a real limit for when government is abusing taxpayers. Is working for government for 3 to 6 months enough? Political demagoguery and demonizing people will incent them to go the other way. If you make people an enemy don’t be surprised that they don’t want to help.

Next article will be on wealth and who owns what and how wealth is built and destroyed.

They remind me of the Edvard Much painting of the figure on the bridge covering their ears and breaking down from anxiety and stress.

I have an Economics background so I am always interested in people who want to comment on matters related to the economy and money.

Robert Reich is an author, commentator and public policy professor. That basically means he is highly political and easily falls into the activist wing of the Democratic Party that believes government cannot demand too much money from workers and businesses. And they don’t pay enough and are all evil. He has held various government positions under Carter, Clinton and Obama so he fits in well with the anti-business and anti-wealth mouth breathing left.

But what are their true colors?

Clinton and Obama have monetized their life as a former president for millions of dollars to whomever would pay their speaking fees and gift them or their family money or positions. Global money has poured into their span of control to be used by them for their purposes. The numbers are at least in the 10s of millions. Maybe hundreds of millions.

Let’s pause for an epiphany to the people who think Trump invented corruption to finally notice those activities by Clinton and Obama might be where Trump got the idea. He is just perfecting it. I can forget to mention Congress engaging in insider trading as well.

Anyways, Robert Reich is constantly appearing on left wing TV shows and podcasts which I assume is to plug his numerous books and repeat the mantras of the left of “we are good, everyone else is evil and especially the wealthy.” All these things keep his bubble network of contacts and enablers paying him more money and driving his attention index to new highs and in a virtuous circle that means more money.

Well I post what I hope are thoughtful and novel articles and commentary on Substack and one day I find that Robert Reich is following me. That’s cool but that doesn’t mean we are simpatico on everything. In fact, I am not a political animal that is into the demonizing other people and Robert Reich is that kind of guy. I know it makes him a lot of money and it comes at a massive cost to social harmony and working together to really solve problems. The cost to date of demonizing other people has gotten us $40 trillion in debt, failing schools, people at each other’s throats and psychotically celebrating when someone they don’t like is murdered. That is just a partial list but the point is that this a dangerous road to go down for any country or people.

My relationship with Robert Reich took a turn for the worse when I commented on one of his posts which was about income inequality and wealthy people were not paying enough taxes. I reminded him that he was wealthy and by the way he worked for past US Presidents and so what did he and the Democrats do when they were in power? I should have asked him why he was charging subscriptions and holding his brilliance behind an affordability moat when he is already a multimillionaire. That is a little personal but it’s a valid question that deserves and answer not deflection.

Note: I don’t charge for a subscription and never will for a variety of reasons but the larger point is that I am sure I am not as wealthy as Robert Reich. So what is his rationale?

Well it didn’t take much critical and thoughtful questions / statements to be made before I was unfollowed by Robert Reich. That romance was over quickly.

The bigger issue or question is, what are doing here?

Are we trying to solve problems and listen to each other or just make money off problems and misery? People are so passionate about their positions and are dug in so deep they are willing to pay charlatans or quasi charlatans to repeat the slogans and buzzwords that they believe in and keep their bubble alive. Someone like me would be dangerous to that bubble as I might present other ideas that take those believers into a more thoughtful analysis and they might reach other conclusions. Then the bubble breaks down and so does the revenue model of these charlatans.

I believe in working with reasonable people that have open minds and are basically decent and want their fellow man to have a good life and prosper. I believe there are millions like me and I venture to guess even the majority of people. The radicals on the far left and right with closed minds are dangerous to us all and they are very much alike. They are authoritarians who just want the chance to take power.

My friends. Be a bubble breaker. Democracy and progress is a team game and it is complicated. All we have are choices and they are very difficult. There is no heaven on earth. Demonizing someone else because you believe in the utopia in your mind is simply delusional or you believe the utopia is accomplished by eliminating other people. That’s genocide and not utopia. Simple slogans are nothing but bubble mantras and bird cage paper. What people learn after they know it all will set them free.

Note: I am aware that most writers on Substack are not making much money on subscriptions. I am not comparing you to wealthy demagogues like Robert Reich.

Islam is in a genocidal war with the West.

It is real and it is no secret. It has been announced repeatedly by Islamic clerics and leaders. It is not a war of ideas and critical thinking. It is a war of a committed authoritarian religion and ideology against everything else.

The west avoids their eyes and dithers to grasp the threat for a variety of reasons including:

• Islam sits in a blind spot of western analysis. The western view is that countries and manmade legal constructs are the proper lens that civilized people operate within so any movement or challenge outside of those constructs the west does not see or take seriously and has no defenses.

• There is a western tradition of tolerance wrapped in freedom and a belief that western philosophies are advanced, are superior and can overcome any uneducated and primitive beliefs. This leads to a lowered guard AND actual support for anti-western ideologies as a proof point that western ideals are superior.

But this war is not civilized.

This is a primitive war of genocide. It is a genocidal war first against peoples’ ideas, beliefs, identity and then against the existence of people who do not submit.

Those are two steps in this genocidal war. Attack everything about the target of genocide and kill and strip their humanity and culture and then finally kill them.

Islam is a tribal construct from 1500 years ago and instead of being unchecked and squashed it has been allowed to grow and spread its authoritarian beliefs and primal ways in the backwaters of tribes, small regions and countries using violence, threats and death to all who resist. It survives and rides on ignorance and ongoing fear. The only exit plan for a Muslim is death.

Now this virus has come to face 21^st century civilization and finds weakness in the west and in countries of Africa still riddled by tribalism. China and Russian are closed. The west and Africa are where the war can be fought.

This is the road ahead for the west. It is a zero-sum game.

But why?

Because Islam is a genocidal and comprehensive system of beliefs packaged as religion. Nothing survives outside of the Islamic system of beliefs. Nothing is darker. FULL STOP

This is also why China and Russia are closed. They recognize a competing authoritarian system and have quickly moved to squash it.

Understanding Genocide Better

People often view genocide as an explosion of violence, but this is typically not the case. Typically, genocidal activity has been ongoing for a long time but misinterpreted as well as masked by the perpetrators. The conflict may initially be viewed as low level conflict and disagreements but there is a known road to human identity genocide and then human genocide. The road has milestone markers with very predictable outcomes.

Before a group of people or even a country experiences murderous genocide their identity, everything about their history and their character is assassinated. They are often painted as greedy, evil, liars, uncaring, unholy, a failure and a curse to humanity and God.

These ongoing efforts to delegitimize their existence and their claim to belong to a place on earth are pursued, rationalized and taught in homes and schools relentlessly. Their beliefs, their historical identity, their place on earth and in the universe are attacked with the idea of destroying their validity and usefulness.

Theological Genocide

Deeper than that is there is a Theological Genocide effort pursued to murder spiritual beliefs and sacred identity to strip them of moral value, divine origins and recognition and a place in the universe. This then creates the conditions for physical genocide or extermination. And for the perpetrators of genocide their murder is even justified and necessary.

• Example 1: The massive and relentless efforts to delegitimize the Jews beliefs in their history, Judaism and their ancient claims on the geography of Israel. When you have no geography of origin to claim then in the world of today you have no voice, no identity and you are vulnerable to being eliminated.

• Example 2: ISIS targeted the Yazidis in 2014 and started by attacking their beliefs and labeled them “devil worshippers” and “enemies of God” which then became the rationale and moral judgement for genocide. Anything material was first destroyed including Yazidi ancient physical sites and then ISIS issued rulings allowing enslavement of Yazidi women and children as spoils of war and killing of Yazidi men as an act of purification. This is the rationalization and moralization of genocide.

While genocidal perpetrators paint their genocidal targets as evil, they paint themselves as agents of God. They are on a holy mission upholding God’s requirements for mankind. And as agents of God they are reaching for a promised and fantastical future of rewards beyond the life of this world. Death is a doorway to this future and is embraced by the more zealous.

Genocidal alignment with western Activists

The Islamic vision of people being engaged in a “holy” war for a bright future overlap with other Utopian and authoritarian ideologies fighting for control in the West namely of Communism and Social Justice. These ideologies also imagine a perfect future or at least much better if somehow, they can gain control over everything and everyone. But these are just ideological allies of convenience. They are all authoritarian but, in the end, Islam is an all-encompassing set of beliefs where nothing else survives but Islam.

Past is Prologue - But Worse

Again, the west faces an authoritarian force that hates western values. But Islamic authoritarianism would also destroy everything about the west and reduce western civilization, progress and institutions to ashes. The stakes are even larger and the battle is even larger. People living under the boot of Islam are also stakeholders in the successful defeat of Islam. They can’t leave. They can only be freed.

At the same time the west has never been more disorganized, unfocused and has its academic institution more captured by anti-western ideologies and that now conveniently align with the Islamic authoritarian threat.

How to win?

The first step is to understand and recognize the threat. This is where the west is today.

The second step is for the west to change dramatically.

If you can’t market something without being rude and obnoxious to someone then you need new marketing leadership. People are not available for businesses, and especially major corporations, to step on to promote their product. It’s unseemly.

In this case a small family (father, mother, daughter) are on vacation and the hot tub does not work. The daughter is having a spoiled brat fit and taking out her anger on the parents. In the last scene the father wants to join them in the hot tub and the daughter says “Ew, think again Bruce.”

The tenure, tone and structure of this marketing is offensive and wrong on multiple levels:

1. The disrespect shown to the father, and indirectly to the mother, by the daughter is unacceptable on any human level.

2. The silence of the mother in this commercial is meant to support the power structure of the daughter running the house in this scenario.

3. The rudeness shown to the father casts the woman in a supporting role that likely most would never play.

4. If we reversed the roles and had the daughter being directly obnoxious to her mother the shock value and outrage would be much higher. And the shame of the daughter would be profound. Why? Because fathers or male figures are supposed to take it.

5. Nobody should have to take this treatment. Nobody.

This kind of narrative and behavior is the corrosive action that wears and tears down the roles of parents, the family structure and just decent human interaction requirements including respect for each other.

To normal people the senselessness of war is frustrating and most of us can present a few ideas that would bring peace and prosperity. But they are mostly tactical and can’t stop the march of global actors and their driving beliefs which take everyone towards armed conflict. The inevitability of war seems assured. War is endemic to the human race.

Much of this hopeless state is because we are held to the actions of the worst actors whether they be individuals or ideologies. What people believe about other people is the most important factor in predicting war. The wrong beliefs about other people, countries, nations, ethnicities and so on can bring war and destruction on as staggering global scale. The hate in people is the fertile ground to pursue war. And if hate is taught that is a waterfall of war.

Prior to WWI, WWII, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Russian Revolution, the Chinese Revolution, the Communist Khmer Rouge Communist movement of Cambodia, the Iraq - Iran War of the 1980s and so on, there were deep animosities between countries, people and beliefs. This disharmony always leads to war. The body county in these wars and movements goes into the hundreds of millions.

Today there is an ongoing massive collision between open western liberal democracies and authoritarian governments and belief systems like communism and Islam. It has been going on for over 50 years and it is gaining critical mass. There is an unholy alliance between authoritarian actors against liberal democracies. And while liberal democracies have been relatively tolerant of authoritarians around the world that treatment has not been returned.

We are repeating the 20th century with different players and packaging but the battle is the same; Western liberal democracies versus authoritarians. Like the past century, authoritarians believe western liberal democracies must be destroyed. This is a global disharmony that cannot be avoided. Domestic elections will not solve this international disharmony or make it go away. Authoritarians, motivated by their ideas, beliefs and thirst for power are pursuing western liberal democracies to extinguish the light that was lit 250 years ago. This battle is real and not our imagination.

Thomas Jefferson wrote that “the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” That was a reflection on the era in which he lived, risked his life as he saw firsthand the efforts of authoritarians to destroy the USA. It is a mistake to lull oneself to sleep in the mistaken belief that this era ended in the past. It is never ending unless we surrender to authoritarian people and ideas.

More than ever the west needs courageous, bold leaders AND citizens with vision and that understand that what we have needs to be fought for everywhere. The game is on the field not in the bleachers.

Anthropic is an American artificial intelligence company headquartered in San Francisco. It developed a family of large language models named Claude that have been used quite successfully in the commercial and government sector to write software and logical instruction. Basically it’s software writing software and it increases productivity dramatically having a model write a program that would take a human days if not weeks/months.

But it is more than productivity. Having a model write software also helps a company introduce new products and improvement on existing products much faster. It changes the math of what can be done and how fast. Speed to market and cycle times of improved products are greatly improved.

AI also increases speed and enhanced capabilities to the battlefield and this is where a large part of the friction has occurred. Anthropic was not comfortable with their customer, the US Department of Defense, using Anthropic AI models without certain restrictions around autonomous weapons and domestic surveillance. The military has responded that they want unfettered use of the technology and would ban Anthropic technology from being used by the DOD AND its use by any downstream suppliers as a threat to US DOD capability and ultimately US security. Anthropic is now banned as “national security supply chain risk.”

However Anthropic reached this point, in essence what Anthropic has done is to invert the vendor-customer relationship. Anthropic believes that their requirements for the profile of a good customer supersedes the customer’s product requirements. And, rather than just letting the customer go their own way and find another vendor, Anthropic insists that the customer, in this case the DOD, should be required to accept their deficient product and pay for it even though it falls short of the customer’s requirements.

Regardless of Anthropic’s intentions, imagine if technology companies thought it was their responsibility to dictate how their technology was used. Most certainly Microsoft’s email system has been used by militaries around the world to communicate with each other. Excel has been used by drug cartels to track their drug trade money. Your car can go over the speed limit. What is the role of companies?

Into this kerfuffle steps OpenAI and they agree to develop to the DOD requirements and replace Anthropic. Rather than accept this open market decision where the customer can make other choices, Anthropic is looking for the courts to force the DOD to remove them off their list of banned technology. That may happen but the damage is already done. The DOD does not have to buy anything from Anthropic. A well know axiom is that the customer is always right which really means that businesses do not win arguments with customers. That is true at every level of the economy.

The larger mistake that Anthropic made is how they view their role. They were delusional by believing that they had the power and were uniquely positioned to force the USA and perhaps the global AI race into a box that they made. They have a political view that they can control how other actors behave including the DOD. That is the role of government not an private company.

At the same time, they were also lobbying the US government for regulation before all this occurred which is what incumbent companies do to discourage competition so let’s not assume they were completely altruistic. This altruism also does not make sense when nobody believes that the Chinese military would develop AI battlefield solutions constrained by the wishes of Anthropic. The AI race is real and for authoritarian countries like China and terrorist cells everywhere, there are no constraints. Anthropic would have done well to accept their role and observe the realities of a global economy and global politics.