https://t.co/XSy4LMEeri
Who wants to read a new spooky, fall novel? :) About a town in Iowa that is either a ghost town, internet hoax, or something much worse…
@AlysssaHazel This novel convinced me that it it’s effective to talk about important societal topics by telling fictional stories. I’ve written four like this so far
“I'm not throwing rocks from the outside. I'm writing from inside the wreckage, watching the most talented continent in human history vote, year after year, for its own anesthesia.” 😢
I'm coming from France, from Europe — and for god's sake, don't do that.
I've already watched this movie. I know exactly how it ends. Let me run the tape for you.
We started at the same line. In 2008 the EU economy was actually bigger than the US — about 110% of American GDP. By 2023 it was down to 67%. Over that window the US grew 87%. Europe grew 13.5%.
Per capita it's uglier. European income was ~76% of American income in 2008. Today it's 50%. France — Descartes, the Concorde, the nuclear program — now has a GDP per capita below Arkansas, the 48th poorest US state. Germany sits around Oklahoma. Of the 50 largest tech companies on Earth, four are European. Four. No Nvidia, no Google, no SpaceX, no OpenAI. What we built instead is a regulator that writes a 383-page report explaining why we have no champions — and then implements 10% of its own recommendations.
This isn't bad luck. It's a system working exactly as designed.
Hayek explained the mechanism in 1944 and Europe didn't listen. The Road to Serfdom isn't a slogan, it's a machine. You start with the nicest intentions — fairness, equality, security. To deliver them the state has to plan. To plan, it has to override prices, contracts, individual choice. And when the plan fails — it always fails, because no central planner holds the knowledge that millions of free actors hold — the lesson is never "planning was the error." The lesson is "we didn't plan hard enough." So it takes more power. Then more. Every failure becomes the alibi for the next seizure. Socialism never arrives at its destination. It just never stops paving the road — and the road only goes one place.
Europe didn't go full Soviet. It went soft. It chose comfort over greatness, redistribution over creation, safety over risk — and the result is a continent that is rich, gorgeous, and quietly dying. Managed decline with excellent cheese. The wealthiest museum on Earth.
Now the part Americans need to hear, because you think you're immune. You're not.
Peter Thiel keeps warning about the Antichrist, and people imagine a movie villain. Wrong. The Antichrist never arrives promising war and tyranny. He arrives promising peace and safety. He's the universal manager who will protect you from every risk — climate, inequality, AI, each other — in exchange for one small thing: that nobody is ever again permitted to do anything new, anything dangerous, anything great. He's one-world stagnation enforced by fear. The final committee.
Socialism is his vehicle. It's the ideology that says risk is theft, that excellence is unfair, that the cure for every problem is more central control. It's the perfect on-ramp to a planet-wide regime of safety and stasis.
And here are the stakes nobody says out loud: America is the last engine. The frontier of compute, the people still trying to make us multi-planetary, the builders who'd rather escape the trap than manage it — almost all American. The product of the one place left on Earth that still rewards builders over bureaucrats. If America picks the European path, there is no second America to bail the species out. No frontier left. The engine of human progress switches off — not in a century, in a few years.
Why am I this certain? Because socialism doesn't merely slow you down. It rots everything it touches. It rots the economy — see the numbers. It rots incentives: punish building and reward grievance, and your best people stop building. It rots the culture: a society that resents winners eventually produces none. It rots the spirit: you trade the dignity of agency for the comfort of dependence and you call it progress.
I'm not throwing rocks from the outside. I'm writing from inside the wreckage, watching the most talented continent in human history vote, year after year, for its own anesthesia.
America — you are the control group. You're the thing the rest of us point to when we need to remember what's still possible. Do not become us.
For god's sake. Don't do that.
Communism through (my) ages:
1) When I was 15, a teacher told me "It isn't as bad as they say, and makes a lot of sense."
2) At about 19, college friends, "Socialism isn't communism."
3) At 20, on meeting my grandfather-in-law, "They are evil. We escaped in 1949."
4) At 30, "China is a wonderful developing Democracy"
5) At 35, I was sent to communist China on business. It was a crowded, smelly, dirty, factory of despair and hopelessness. This I saw with my own eyes.
6) At 36, "China doesn't count. Successful socialism is in northern Europe."
7) I moved to northern Europe when I was 40. It was much nicer than China, but also felt like I was living in the past. I had to wait 6 months for a hernia operation.
8) When I was about 45, the migrant crisis began. The socialist/globalist/pacifist allowed them entry into every country, regardless how many crimes they committed along the way. Just 20 minutes from my house, in Calais, I was shocked to see migrants jumping onto trucks, breaking open the doors, scattering the contents across the highway, then climbing in. They went through the Chunnel and got out in England.
9) At 52, the soft socialism around me had transformed into globalism. I was told I had to call people by their preferred pronouns, though it was a lie, and even if I didn't know what the preferences were. I quit.
10) I returned to the US, and am now 60. "Socialism" is no longer a dirty word here. People openly espouse the virtues of it. Politicians run as socialists and win.
Socialism has taken many forms, from the Bolshevism of Russia, to the CCP in China, the Nazis in Germany, Fascists in Italy, and the many forms of it found in Latin America. It is one of the two most destructive ideologies on earth. It is designed to deprive, despirit, and murder everything that comes in contact with it.
Socialism is a great lie at every level. It helps no one, not even those who benefit the most. This is because the cost is the imposition of one's will on everyone else, and that destroys the soul of the usurper and the life of the oppressed.
Socialism always fails on its own, but only after destroying almost everything in its train. It can also be conquered. Those are the options.
Good News and Bad News
First the good news... Covid mortality is almost non-existent, with a CFR far below even the common cold. Down 90% from two years ago.
Now the bad news... Cancer weekly EXCESS Mortality is 75 x the rate of all Covid Mortality.
We are paying the piper - and this goes on for decades...
This has to be one of the bravest videos I have watched on the internet today.
When Charlie Kirk died it hit so many us of really hard. Not only was it a profound loss but the reality was that the left really wants conservatives dead because of political views. They are ok with m*rdering people if you dont conform to their political ideology.
These are dangerous times.
In a way it also (like this man here in the video) "woke" people up. They realized the political propaganda, media manipulation, and the dehumanization occuring by the left and media.
He learned something far more valuable in the death of Charlie Kirk.
This took a lot of guts to post this video online. I commend him.
@japan_nobunaga Child of the seventies, moved abroad in 2000. When I left Kansas then, 10% was the base and more was given for exceptional service. After living in countries where it isn’t expected, it’s really difficult for me to do more than that. Makes me not want to eat out.
LeBron is the Emmitt Smith of the NBA - Great player, all-time longevity stats. On paper, he should be the greatest running back of all time. On paper.
But in reality, if you watched him and Barry Sanders, no one in their right mind is picking Emmitt over Barry. The way Barry moved, we have yet to see anyone else move like him 30 years later just like we have yet to see anyone move like Jordan.
I have a realistic worldview, I know real evil exists in the world, but I still find this a bit overwhelming. Why did they do this? Profits? Control? No wonder Fauci insisted on a blanket pardon.
@BiblicalBeauty I’m not a southerner. I had fond memories of the show growing up. When we started watching it with our kids, both my wife and I couldn’t believe how many episodes centered around lying to one another to save face. That’s when we realized southern culture is an honor/shame culture