“Every two years, Americans spend an average of $15 billion on campaign advertising trying to fend off the wolves attacking them. But we just end up changing which wolves are briefly ascendant. Maybe we could fend off those wolves once and for all—if we could just get our foot out of that dang trap. But what’s the trap? The trap is an electoral system that has been captured by party processes gone wrong. We’ve had decades of changes — some of them well-intentioned, some about accruing power — to how our political parties operate. They have left us in a place where most members of Congress are elected by only 5 to 8 percent of the electorate in their districts. … Every year, our two parties get better at claiming ever more power for a continuously shrinking membership base.” (12/16/25)
“If a new poll is any indication, both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party should be worried about the youth vote in the 2026 midterm elections. According to polling from the University of Chicago, about 60% of Gen Z and millennial voters are dissatisfied with both political parties. This includes 25% of Republican voters ages 18-42 who have an unfavorable view of the GOP, as well as 36% of Democrats in that age range who have an unfavorable view of their party. None of this is really surprising, given that polling across age ranges has shown that voters are unhappy with both political parties. What might surprise party leaders, however, are the specific issues that Generation Z and millennials are worried about.” (12/16/25)
“Postliberals certainly agree that serious political, economic, and cultural missteps have happened under liberal regimes. But their critique runs much deeper than that. They believe liberalism itself is fatally flawed. Although postliberals come in many varieties, a common thread is that liberalism is intrinsically defective — that it inexorably leads to social atomization, cultural degradation, and oppression and inequality. Perhaps the best known purveyor of this view is Notre Dame political theorist Patrick Deneen …. Deneen’s analysis suffers from three basic problems: he misrepresents liberalism’s fundamental principles; he presents a warped history of liberalism that dismisses its achievements and exaggerates its weaknesses; and he offers nothing in place of the liberal-democratic framework he wants to destroy.” (12/16/25)
“Most people would know that totalitarianism is not a desirable social or political set of circumstances. Even the word sounds ominous, but that is probably only to those who already know what it denotes. I have written on it before, in different contexts, but it is now more relevant than ever. We should remind ourselves what Orwell wrote in that uncannily premonitory novel.” (12/16/25)
“Any story about resistance within the military must begin by recognizing that it’s not an easy thing to do. Apparently, that’s true even for a much-decorated retired Navy commander, former astronaut, and sitting United States senator. I’m talking about Arizona Senator Mark Kelly. He was one of six Democratic legislators, all military veterans or former intelligence officers, who, on November 18th, released a 90-second video reminding members of the military that the oath they took on enlisting requires them to refuse illegal orders. The implicit context was the Trump administration’s deployment of National Guard troops to American cities, but their message took on added urgency after the Washington Post published an exposé about an order coming from high up to kill survivors of an airstrike in the Caribbean Sea.” (12/16/25)
“The past decade, since the entry of Donald J. Trump into electoral politics, has been a disorienting one for … well, everyone. But especially, perhaps, for ‘movement’ conservatives who regard the principles they have always held dear to be as sound as ever, but beleaguered in practice by the events of this young century. Conservatism, from this point of view, should have emerged from the Bush and Obama years bloodied but unbowed, ready to refresh and recommit itself to principles of classical liberalism …. Yet that form of conservatism … is now eclipsed by a new right that is in many ways very old and reactionary: preferring authority to law and rent-seeking to free markets, cheap moralism to authentic morals, and a fearful and inward-looking nationalism to a confident, patriotic internationalism.” (12/16/25)
“Within a day after two gunmen killed 15 people during a gathering for the Jewish holiday Hanukkah at Australia’s most famous beach, a very resilient country began to focus on ways to prevent a similar tragedy: Better gun regulations. A warm embrace of Jewish Australians. A sterner check on antisemitism. Tighter surveillance of potential terrorists. Yet a particular act of selfless heroism during the Dec. 14 mass shooting has offered up one more possible solution. A video shows Ahmed al-Ahmed, a Muslim shop owner in Sydney, tackling and disarming one of the alleged Bondi Beach shooters, also a Muslim. This bystander, by bursting bravely into action, may have saved countless lives even as he was shot. ‘God gave me strength’, he reportedly told a cousin from a hospital bed. His father, Mohamed Fateh al-Ahmed, perhaps best described the motives of his son, who gained Australian citizenship in 2022 after fleeing conflict in Syria.” (12/15/25)
“Based on shrewd observation of likely weather patterns and early budding of snowdrops and Indian maize, Madsen has been able to describe the events of 2026 as they actually happened.” (12/16/25)
Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone
“On March 16 of this year, Reuters published an article titled ‘Israeli strikes kill 15 people in Gaza over past day, Palestinian medics say’. Does anyone remember the 15 Palestinians who died on March 16, 2025? Does that day stand out in anyone’s memory as particularly significant in terms of mass murder? No? Same here. I honestly can’t remember it at all. This would have been during the tail end of the first fake ‘ceasefire’, a couple of days before Trump signed off on Israel resuming its large-scale bombing operations in Gaza, so this wasn’t one of those days with huge massacres and staggering death tolls. It doesn’t exactly stand out in the memory.” (12/16/25)
“In theory, tariffs should shift jobs to the protected industries. If these tariffs protect manufacturing, why aren’t jobs shifting there? The argument for tariffs to protect manufacturing relies on an assumption that the imports are of final goods and that the protected country has tariff-free access to intermediate goods (the goods used in manufacturing). In 21st-century America, that assumption doesn’t hold.” (12/16/25)
