Michel C.

[Brivael Le Pogam @brivael]

On my way to the office this morning, I passed a group of young people protesting, a Palestinian flag draped over their shoulders.

And I asked myself a question I can't shake: why does this generation always fall into the same trap? No matter the history. No matter the context. Even the ones from wealthy families, who went to the best schools, who were dealt every good card. Always the same trap.

I don't think it's stupidity. I think it's a mechanism. And a mechanism can be taken apart, piece by piece.

A. The observation: everything the state touches becomes unaffordable.

Look at economist Mark Perry's famous chart, the one people call "the chart of the century." It tracks US prices since 2000.

At the top, what explodes: hospital services, college tuition, textbooks, childcare, housing. Increases of +100%, +150%, up to +250%, far above general inflation.

At the bottom, what collapses: TVs, software, phones, toys, clothing. A TV today costs a fraction of what it did in 2000, for an infinitely better product.

Look at what separates the two groups. It isn't technology. It isn't complexity. It's one variable: how much the state is involved.

At the top, sectors that are subsidized, regulated, shielded from competition, where the state funds demand and blocks supply. At the bottom, sectors where companies fight every single morning to serve you better and cheaper.

B. The mechanism: why it's systematic.

When the state subsidizes demand without freeing supply, prices rise. Every time. Guaranteed student loans, and universities raise tuition. Housing aid plus blocked building permits, and rents skyrocket. Administered healthcare, and bureaucracy eats the budget before it ever reaches the patient.

In France it's even more vicious, because the price doesn't disappear: it hides. You never see the hospital bill, you pay it through payroll contributions. You never see the cost of school, you pay it through taxes. Public spending at 57% of GDP, one of the heaviest tax burdens in the world, more than €3.4 trillion in debt. And the result? Overflowing ERs, falling PISA scores, young people who can't afford to live in the city where they work.

The market didn't fail in these sectors. It was never allowed in.

C. Suffering demands a culprit.

A 22-year-old lives all of this in their bones. They can't find a place to live. Their degree either buries them in debt or opens no doors. The future feels blocked. That suffering is real, and I don't deny it for a second.

But human beings can't stand suffering without a culprit. They need a face. A scapegoat.

And this is where everything is decided: who taught them how to read the world?

D. Whoever tells the story picks the villain.

Schools are public. Universities are public. Culture runs on grants. Film goes through funding committees. Public broadcasting shapes the narratives. The people handing down the interpretive framework are, overwhelmingly, paid by the very system that creates the problem.

Do you really think that system is going to name itself as the culprit?

No. It names the capitalist. The boss. The landlord. "The rich." The multinational. The commercial West. Same role, same casting, every time.

E. One lens, a thousand causes.

And this brings me back to that flag. A generation taught to read every situation through a single lens, oppressor on one side, rich, Western, capitalist, oppressed on the other, will apply that lens everywhere. To housing. To climate. To conflicts on the other side of the world. The cause changes, the lens stays. That's why the trap is always the same: it's not the cause that draws them in, it's the way of thinking that was installed in them.

F. The perfect inversion.

Here's the irony. Capitalism is the force that drove down the price of almost everything it touched. The state is the force that blew up the price of almost everything it captured. And young people blame the first for the crimes of the second.

It's like blaming the firefighter for the fire because you saw him at the scene.

G. The ballot box confirms it.

In the US, a few weeks out from the midterms, a large share of urban young voters is getting ready to vote Democrat for more state, more spending, more regulation. New York elected a self-described socialist mayor, carried by young voters, on promises of rent freezes and city-run grocery stores. Rent freezes, the policy that has made housing scarcer everywhere it's been tried. The cure that worsens the disease.

In France, it's the same play in two acts. Part of the youth votes for the radical left, which promises more state. Another part votes for the center, which promises to "manage" the state well, and has dug the debt deeper than ever. Two different ballots, one shared assumption: the problem is the market, the solution is the state.

H. The way out.

These young people aren't stupid. They're right to be angry. They're just aiming at the wrong target.

The day they understand that their rent, their tuition and their hospital are expensive precisely because the state runs them, their anger will change direction. They'll stop protesting against those who create. They'll start protesting against those who capture.

That day, the greatest intellectual scam of our time will be over.

[Mor Edge Insight @MorEdge_Insight]

Breaking News Coverage:
This is a must watch.

Nobody, but absolutely nobody, speaks with such moral clarity, courage and conviction like the incredible @Erin_Molan of @SkyNewsAust.

Thank you for your words, your strength and for speaking out about it to the world.

If only the whole world were more like @Erin_Molan.

[Vivid.🇮🇱 @VividProwess]

Mosab Hassan Yousef, son of a co-founder of Hamas, is dropping truth bombs about Hamas:

"Hamas wants children to die. This is their game. This is why Sinwar places booby traps all over the Gaza Strip, so that the children can die."

The world needs to see this.

[David Marcus @davidmarcus]

I am crossing the Rubicon and backing the Republican Party and President Trump.

Many — including a former version of myself — get trapped in a mental framework that becomes their identity and prevents them from radically evolving their thinking with new facts and information. I finally broke free from it.

My journey has been a gradual political 180 from where I stood in every previous election. It has been an eye-opening process of disenchantment, zero-basing lifelong beliefs, and rebuilding from there.

In 2017, a good friend enlisted me to pitch the DNC to raise $100M from Silicon Valley founders and executives. The aim was to use these funds and know-how to build a CRM and tech platform to prevent a repeat of Hillary Clinton’s inadequate, outdated 2016 campaign. We met with DNC leadership, who told us we could raise that money, but it would have to go to the general fund; a single-digit percentage would then be allocated to tech. In the wake of one of their most shocking failures, they didn’t want the help.

The next series of realizations began in 2019 while I was at Meta, right after we announced the Libra white paper. I testified before the Senate and the House and subsequently spent significant time in DC, engaging with lawmakers, cabinet members, regulators, and two White House administrations. At the time, I still believed the mainstream idea that Democrats were all about serving the People. However, I was shocked to learn that, for the most part, Republicans cared more deeply about their constituents, while Democrats, in my experience, cared more about government power and control. This is my observation on balance, with many stories to back it up. I also found that more Republicans wanted to understand our project’s goals and took the time to learn about the risks of censoring payments and controlling the network. I found myself remarkably aligned with them.

Then COVID came, revealing more. While I don’t subscribe to the most malicious vaccine conspiracy theories, I do take offense at the censorship machine put in place to hide the origin of the virus from the NIH-funded Wuhan lab and all dissenting voices on vaccinations and lockdowns. At that time, I fully appreciated why Republicans value freedom of speech and preventing censorship.

This trend of spinning and manufacturing a parallel reality to serve the Dem agenda, solidified by complicit mainstream media, hit home with the Hunter Biden laptop story, the coordinated vilification of President Trump and his followers, and President Biden’s cognitive decline — depriving voters of a voice in a proper primary. These examples displayed the hubris of the current Dem leadership. You must think the American people are fools to believe the spin on these issues. I despise this elite vs. general population ideology viscerally.

This version of the Democratic Party is sidelining moderates and centrists and has adopted an increasingly leftist ideology. This drift to the left has dictated policies from which I’ve found myself estranged.

On the domestic front, there has been a total departure from the core American value system of meritocracy, an extreme and weaponized DEI agenda, an open door to massive illegal immigration, and a once-fringe narrative, now mainstream within the party, of vilifying success. This shift is also causing us to fall behind due to an anti-innovation regulatory climate, notably on crypto and soon AI — two non-linear technological breakthroughs that will likely determine tomorrow’s leading countries.

On foreign policy, the administration is exacerbating tensions with Russia through an aggressive NATO expansion narrative focused on Ukraine and prolonging an unwinnable war. This is costing American taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars, the world hundreds of thousands of lives, depleting the U.S. military arsenal and risking World War III. On Iran, this administration is continuing a misguided Obama-era plan to bring Iran closer to the West by unfreezing Trump-era sanctions, thus giving the Mollahs’ regime the ability to fund terrorism and pursue its anti-America, anti-Israel, and anti-Jewish agenda. The withdrawal from Afghanistan was also handled disastrously. We’re leaving a door open for China to invade Taiwan by coming across as weak. Most importantly to me, concerning Israel, the administration is enabling Iran to fund Hamas and Hezbollah, restraining Israel in its fight against its enemies, thus prolonging another conflict, which is costing more lives on both sides and allowing unprecedented levels of antisemitism to rise at home.

I believe we need a President who is unequivocally pro: America, the Constitution, business, Bitcoin/crypto, innovation, Israel, small government, legal immigration, free speech, meritocracy, and common sense — and anti: regulatory proliferation, illegal immigration, unjust wars, Iran’s current regime, and domestic groups that oppose American values. These issues are central to President Trump’s platform.

Naturally, I disagree with President Trump and the GOP on some issues, particularly women’s reproductive rights. While I’ve come to learn that extreme views exist in both parties, I firmly believe that women should have the unalienable right to make their own decisions on this polarizing topic. President Trump confirmed he was against a national abortion ban and supported the Supreme Court’s decision on maintaining access to mifepristone, which was reassuring and a sign that the party was moving closer to the center.

It’s impossible to close this post without mentioning President Trump’s recent assassination attempt. The courage and resolve he displayed seconds after being hit by a bullet was awe-inspiring for his followers and detractors alike. This was a man, however imperfect, who, at that moment, incarnated the American spirit in the most vivid way, starting to bring a split nation together.

Some claim that reelecting President Trump will bring our democracy to its knees. However, the alternative — having unelected individuals with this much power and no accountability run our government coupled with four more years of bad policies at home and abroad — might present a more significant threat. Neither will likely change in a Harris administration and could potentially worsen.

In this pivotal moment, confronted with the choices we have, I am endorsing and supporting a return to a Republican administration in 2025.

[Fox News @FoxNews]

UN revises Gaza death toll, almost 50% less women and children killed than previously reported https://t.co/lUWqTIWByK

[AIPAC 🇺🇸🇮🇱 @AIPAC]

Thank you @RitchieTorres!

[Senator Marco Rubio: Archived @SenMarcoRubio]

At a time when President Biden undermines our strongest ally in the Middle East, it’s reassuring to see 80 former U.S. generals and admirals stand in support of the Jewish State of Israel. 🇺🇸🇮🇱

[Hillel Fuld @HilzFuld]

Yes, YES! God, YES!

If you watch one thing about this war, ONE THING, let it be this!!!

[Gad Saad @GadSaad]

Yep.

[Ben Shapiro @benshapiro]

When the most privileged young people on earth, bored by their wealth and status and given zero moral guidance by their society, look for meaning, they look to revolution. This isn't about Israel or Gaza. These protesters hate America. They hate the meritocracy. There is a reason they are replacing the American flag with the Palestinian flag.

[Marco Rubio @marcorubio]

Today the President of #Colombia, a Hamas supporter, severed diplomatic relations with #Israel

Very sad to see that such an incredible country of great people who have suffered so much at the hands of narco terrorists, is currently ruled by a terrorist sympathizer who wants to be the Colombian Hugo Chavez

[StandWithUs @StandWithUs]

Another important message from @billmaher to the anti-Israel activists:
#standwithisrael

[Rabbi Shmuel Reichman @ShmuelReichman]

A message from Bill Maher to the anti-Israel activists.

Once again, Bill is spot on! 🇮🇱❤️

[Fox News @FoxNews]

Hamas' sexual violence on Oct. 7 revealed in new documentary: 'The world needs to see what happened' https://t.co/Z23ynOTzAs

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

He knows what he’s talking about

[Israel War Room @IsraelWarRoom]

This is how it’s done. Bravo @GovRonDeSantis 👏🏽

[Fox News @FoxNews]

'WICKED IDEOLOGY': Rep. Elise Stefanik uses strong words while calling on the Biden administration to deport terrorist supporters staying in the U.S. on student visas. Why she says it's "past time" for the government to hold schools accountable: https://t.co/dgFtoeWdxN

[Fox News @FoxNews]

'IMMEDIATELY DEPORT': Anti-Israel rioters studying in the U.S. on a student visa might be getting a punishment much worse than school suspension. DHS' statement: https://t.co/cxq6leG9a2

[Gad Saad @GadSaad]

Tommy has more testicular fortitude than 99% of Western academics put together. @TRobinsonNewEra

[Jonathan Greenblatt @JGreenblattADL]

One of the saddest & scariest things about the anti-Zionist "encampments" happening on university campuses is that so many of the students participating in this initiative don’t even know what they’re protesting. It’s pure virtue signaling. It's disingenuous & it's hypocritical.