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In Joel Bakan’s 2004 book The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit (2004), a book I assign in my undergraduate course Freedom and Social Control, as well as the companion documentary by the same name, Bakan interviews Dr. Robert Hare, the renowned Canadian psychologist who developed the Psychopathy Checklist (PCL-R), a twenty-item diagnostic tool used to assess psychopathic traits in individuals. Bakan asks Hare to apply his checklist to modern corporations since corporations have, by law, been given the status of persons. In the documentary, Hare, in so many words, asks: If the corporation is a person, then what type of person is it? 

When the corporation is analyzed in this way, Hare finds that it exhibits a textbook pattern of psychopathic behavior: callous disregard for the well-being of others, chronic irresponsibility, deceitfulness, incapacity for guilt or remorse, and a tendency to manipulate others for self-gain. Corporations, driven by the singular legal mandate to maximize shareholder profit, routinely externalize harm— deceiving consumers, exploiting labor, polluting the environment—while showing no empathy or moral restraint beyond what regulation or reputation requires. Hare concludes (although he later partially walks this back after receiving backlash from, presumably, corporations) that if such an entity were an actual human being, it would meet the clinical definition of a psychopath: glib, manipulative, remorseless, entirely self-interested—operating without conscience but ostensibly within the letter of the law.

As I was writing this morning (as I do most mornings—thousands of words a day), I reflected on this approach to the study of the corporation and wondered if other organizations and institutions could be given a similar treatment. My mind immediately went here: what type of person would the Democratic Party be if it were a person? Given the party’s penchant for moving from crisis to crisis every week, I returned to my training in psychology and reviewed the inventory of personality disorders.

The diagnosis didn’t take long to form. In the APA’s DSM (the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, published by the American Psychiatric Association), there is a category called “Cluster B,” which refers to a group of personality disorders characterized by dramatic, emotional, or erratic behavior.

Personality disorders are long-standing patterns of behaving, feeling, and thinking that deviate from cultural expectations and cause distress—not only for the afflicted but for those around them. There are four Cluster B personality disorders: antisocial, borderline, histrionic, and narcissistic. That last type immediately struck me as particularly relevant. It is associated with aggression, blame-shifting, manipulation, rage, and savoir complex. These are particularly manifest during what psychiatrists call narcissistic-driven crisis, also known as narcissistic collapse. Bingo.

Narcissistic-driven crisis behavior—and you probably know people like this (I know I do)—is a form of psychological control in which an individual attempts to maintain dominance and emotional centrality by keeping those around him in a state of perpetual upheaval. For the narcissistic personality, stability threatens his sense of importance and power. However fleeting the resolution, the crisis restores it. By framing conflict and setbacks as catastrophes or manufacturing emergencies out of small or imaginary problems, the narcissist ensures that attention, energy, and decision-making flow back to him to feed his ego. This constant state of “everything’s going wrong” keeps others dependent, emotionally off-balance, and reactive, conditions under which the narcissist deflects blame and reasserts control.

Sound familiar? Think about the continual psychogenetic illness and endless protests, from “Pussy Hats” to “No Kings,” that Democrats have visited upon the American public. Hillary Clinton lost the election! How did feminists react? Trump is on track to win reelection in 2020! How did progressives react? Trump won in 2024! How did Democrats react? Trump enforces immigration law. Trump ends DEI. Trump recognizes only two genders. Trump renovates the White House. Trump makes peace around the world (he just secured yet another ceasefire today between Cambodia and Thailand). How does the left react to each of these? With panic, ridicule, refusal, and violence. Can you see the pattern? I cannot unsee it.

Beneath this pattern, in the individual, lies a fragile self-esteem that cannot tolerate being ignored or rendered marginal or unnecessary. And so we can observe this at scale. Democrats cannot tolerate feeling marginalized and powerless. They want total control over the situation. Crises serve as a stage on which the Party can act as the indispensable hero, savior, victim, or visionary surrounded by incompetence and existential threats. How do they portray Trump and MAGA? Backward, deplorable, and stupid. Trump and MAGA are none of these things, but the narcissist needs those around him to see them this way so he can exert control over them. And so deluded is this narcissist that has shut down the government while admitting this action hurts society’s most vunerable.

The crisis cycle the narcissist sets in motion is self-reinforcing: chaos produces the attention and validation he craves. Would anybody deny that the rank-and-file progressive craves attention? Even some of its elites do! The multicolored hair. The extreme body modification. The coming out rituals. Drag Queen Story Hour. The demand that others adopt the rituals of such delusional and contradictory thought-systems as antiracism and gender identity. These people can never not be in crisis. Moments of calm and progress provoke anxiety or boredom, leading them to stir conflict anew. Over time, many of those around such persons become fatigued, guilty, and uncertain, walking on eggshells to prevent the next eruption. These effects are intended by the narcissist’s actions. What looks like drama and misfortune from the outside is a desire to construct a controlled environment, a situation designed to preserve the narcissist’s sense of superiority and protect his fragile ego.

As I write this, I am reminded of Frederich Nietzsche’s remark, “Insanity in individuals is rare; but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs, it is the rule.” This is related to what is sometimes called “wolf pack syndrome,” or more clinically, mass psychogenic illness. Whatever it is called, it is the madness of crowds. Collective dynamics can amplify extreme emotions and erode individual accountability. We observe this tendency in the echo chambers of internet chat rooms, mob behavior on our streets, and the spread of social contagions. But I wonder whether the madness of the progressive individual is not so much the result of her or his tribal affiliation, but rather that the tribe is at scale mad because its constituents are mad themselves.

Considering who Democrats defend and represent, this seems likely to be the case. For many of those identifying as transgender, for instance, what I am describing in this essay is the personality type in operation, along with antisocial, borderline, and histrionic types. The antisocial type disregards and violates the rights of others. The histronic type is marked by a pattern of attention-seeking behavior, dramatic expression, and emotional dysregulation. So, too, is the borderline personality—and, moreover, that type is unpredictable and self-harming. This explains the constant cries of victimhood, the emotional blackmail, and the self-mutilation. Failure is rationalized as “oppression.” The inability to follow rules is rationalized as “resistance.” Acts of harassment, intimidation, and violence become forms of “justice.” Far from the gales of creative destruction (these aren’t genuine rebels and revolutionaries), destruction is sought for the sense of personal empowerment it conveys to a bent and fractured personality.

Is it not obvious that Antifa is largely composed of emotionally dysregulated youth who, anxious and bored, spend their days figuring out ways to create conflict and crisis? Is it not obvious that by behaving in ways and transforming themselves into bodies that don’t conform, while asserting their moral superiority and imagined deep understanding of the world around them, those who embrace the doctrine of gender identity are stepping into oppression? Accusing ordinary Americans of racism, sexism, and all the other labels progressives smear on people—do we not see this for what it is: narcissistic collapse? Democrats tell those concerned with chaos, disorder, and the transgression of boundaries and the destruction of guardrails to calm down. Antifa is “just an idea.” Your distressed teenager is just seeking her “authentic self.” The drag queen is “family-friendly.” Indeed, Democrats embrace these ideas. This is their politics. It’s the party’s personality.

The reasoning behind the government scheme of the American Republic was extensively debated during the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and in the Federalist Papers, authored by James Madison (who also authored the Constitution and the Bill of Rights), Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay. The framers designed a bicameral legislature and a distinct executive to balance representation, protect minority interests, and prevent tyranny. Members of the House of Representatives would be elected directly by the people to represent local districts. Senators, originally chosen by state legislatures to represent the states as sovereign entities, would provide a check on purely popular passions and preserve federalism (Senators are now popularly elected by the people of the respective states). The President, elected by the entire nation through the Electoral College, would represent the country as a whole, balancing regional interests while serving as a single, accountable executive.

The truth Democrats don’t want Americans to know is that President Donald Trump is fully exercising his Article II powers under the US Constitution as a single accountable executive elected by the whole of the people (at least those who choose to participate in democracy, but an outcome that binds us all). As I have shown in essays on this platform, the President is the Chief Executive Officer, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, and Chief Magistrate (top law enforcement officer). He did not claim these powers for himself. His office was bequeathed these powers by the Founders of the American Republic. The Constitution is the Supreme Law of the Land. And it is this law that prevents the emergence of a king or tyrant. (See Our Constitution and the Federal Authority to Quell Rebellion; Concerning the Powers of The US Constitution—And Those Defying Them)

Therefore, the claim that Donald Trump is an “authoritarian,” “fascist,” or “king” follows from this argument: the Founders of the American Republic established an authoritarian government or a monarchy. It’s not Trump who is a tyrant, but the American Republic that’s tyrannical; and it is only not so when the President defers to the administrative apparatus and corporate state built up over decades by progressives and financial and industrial power. In other words, not exercising the full authority of the office and allowing technocratic government to proceed unimpeded is the progressive definition of democracy.

Yet the Founders replaced the Articles of Confederation with a constitution to create a Unitary Executive vested with these awesome powers to protect and defend the nation and advance its interests internationally, not to empower bureaucrats and corporations (see For the Record: The President is Also the Chief Magistrate). Moreover, the main problem that brought the delegates from the various states to Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was the persistent problem of insurrection and rebellion against civil rule—the problem of the mob. The Founders envisioned a President capable and willing to use the Armed Forces to bring order and stability to the Republic and to protect its borders and internal security. Is it any wonder, then, that Democrats oppose Trump’s deployment of the Armed Forces to bring order and stability to America?

Democrats won’t admit this, but it is obvious in their myriad beliefs—and the fact that they decry a President effectively wielding the authority of his office—that they do not believe the American Republic is a legitimate entity. They wish it to be a dead letter. To be sure, they will cite the Constitution when they need an appeal to authority, but in truth, they loathe the document. You see this in their suppression of First Amendment rights, or in the partisan selectivity in their appeals to its clauses. You see it in the unrelenting diatribe about the United States as “founded in slavery” and “rooted in white supremacy”—this in the face of the historical and present-day fact that it is Democrats who were and are the party of race privileging. It was the Democrats who, in the nineteenth century, rejected the Constitution and broke away from the Union, founding their own government, the Confederate States of America (CSA), based on slavery. It is the Democrats who are now raising the specter of the CSA by defying the federal government using the language of neo-Confederacy. “Don’t tell us what to do with our blacks and immigrants!” is the effective cry of their resistance to federal authority. The mayor of Chicago, Brandon Johnson, just explicitly compared illegal immigrants to slaves.

Almost every week, the Democratic Party spins out a new hysteria in its war against the federal government. The failure of the “No Kings” protests of last Saturday and the planned third attempt to reach Chenoweth and Stepham’s 3.5 percent mark necessary for political change (I will explain Chenoweth and Stepham thesis in Tuesday’s essay on Freedom and Reason), has Party propagandists out with a new angle: Republican Party reference to “Divine Providence” signals their desire for a king. Boogeyman Steve Bannon, who frequently refers to Divine Providence, has become a particular target of progressive vitriol on this ground. Reporters are asking the Trump Administration if it is in contact with Bannon, as if there were something untoward ahout talking to a political genius.  

You may recall that, during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, Democrat Senator Tim Kaine, of Virginia, criticized the idea that human rights come from God rather than government, calling it a “very, very troubling” notion. He compared this belief to the theocratic system in Iran, arguing that such a view aligns more with religious authoritarianism than with democratic principles. (How ironic that Kaine’s party is about to elect an Islamist as New York mayor.) Kaine contended that rights are given to man by the government. This is not ignorance about the founding ideas of the American Republic; Kaine does not believe in universal human rights. He believes in big government, and he wants to use government to achieve the ends of his party’s globalist ambitions—even if it means running roughshod over the God-given rights of American citizens. As I wrote in Tim Kaine and the Enemies of Liberty and Rights, this is a totalitarian impulse. 

Party propagandists are following Kaine’s lead. The talk from patriotic Americans about Divine Providence signals their desire to elevate Trump to monarch. That’s the way the way supporters of monarchies talk, we’re told. No, that’s the way the Founders of the American Republic talked. The Declaration of Independence (we celebrate its 250^th anniversary next year) concludes by describing the authority of “Free and Independent States,” which comprises “full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do,” before finishing with this flourish: “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”

The Father of the Constitution, James Madison, the man who authored the First Amendment and its Conscience Clause, often credited in public messages “the smiles of Heaven” and “Divine Providence” for the nation’s blessings. In the First Inaugural Address of the nation in 1789, George Washington explicitly thanked “that Almighty Being who rules over the universe” for his providence in guiding the Revolution and the founding of the nation: “No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the Invisible Hand which conducts the affairs of men more than the people of the United States,” he wrote. Was Washington declaring himself a king? Of course not. Washington was the first President of an enlightened secular republic. 

Benjamin Franklin, not known for his religious devotion, often spoke of Providence as a guiding and moral force. During the Constitutional Convention in 1787, he famously urged those assembled to pray, saying: “I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth—that God governs in the affairs of men.” Famously, Thomas Jefferson, who in private, like Franklin, tended toward deism—believing in a Creator yet skeptical of divine intervention, nevertheless wrote in Notes on the State of Virginia (penned between 1781-1782): “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep forever.”

Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican President, the man who defeated the Democrat insurrectionists on the battlefield (and who was assassinated by a Democrat terrorist for his troubles), spoke about Providence in deeply reflective terms—observing divine will in the Civil War’s suffering. “The Almighty has His own purposes,” he said in his Second Inaugural Address in 1865. Lincoln referred to Providence as a way of acknowledging moral order without presuming to know God’s intentions. Decades later, another Republican, Theodore Roosevelt, often invoked Providence as a moral guide for national purpose and duty. “In the long run,” Roosevelt wrote, “only those are happy who have sought and found how to serve the Lord and their fellow-men under the guidance of Providence.” 

Even Democrats have referred to Divine Providence. Franklin Roosevelt, in wartime exhortations and prayers, asked for “the blessing of Almighty God” and “the favor of His Providence” upon the nation. Harry Truman often sought “the guidance of Almighty Providence.” John Kennedy, in his inaugural address, said, “With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.” Even Barack Obama (although one rightly questions his sincerity) referred to Providence in historical context. “Providence has a way of reminding us that we are not the masters of our fate,” he once said.

So what is Providence? Providence refers to God’s active care, governance, or guidance in human affairs. It implies that events in the world are not random but occur under the direction or supervision of a divine power. Crucially, Providence in the mouths of the Founders served as a deistic and neutral term for God—the “Creator,” “Nature’s God,” the “Laws of Nature”—acknowledging divine oversight without invoking specific doctrines or miracles. To say something happened “by Providence” means it occurred through God’s power, will, or wisdom. 

For the record, I write all this as an atheist. That “filthy little atheist” (as Edmund Burke called him) Thomas Paine referred to Divine Providence—and that’s good enough for me. In Common Sense (1776) and The American Crisis (1776–1783), he invoked Divine Providence to inspire Americans during the Revolutionary War, suggesting that a higher moral order guided the struggle for liberty. In The American Crisis, he famously begins with “These are the times that try men’s souls,” and frames the fight for independence as aligned with a providential purpose, implying that God—or the moral order of the universe—supports the cause of freedom.

But did not monarchies also appeal to Divine Providence? Yes, but the progressive propagandist leaves out a crucial distinction. The divine right of kings was a political and religious doctrine that held that monarchs derived their authority directly from God rather than from the consent of the people. According to this belief, the king was God’s appointed ruler on Earth and therefore answerable only to God, not to any church (an advance in that regard), parliament, or subjects. This idea was used to justify absolute monarchy, especially in Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and to discourage rebellion by portraying resistance to the king as disobedience to divine will. The key distinction between absolutism and republicanism lies in the source of authority: unlike kings, whose power is said to come directly from God, Presidents derive their authority from the consent of the governed. In the American Republic, Divine Providence is experienced not via concentrated power in a single ruler, but by empowering the people to ensure their representatives act responsibly in carrying out their duties, achieving this through regular elections, or under extraordinary circumstances, removal from office, reflecting a collective stewardship under the guidance of higher principles.

Democrats seek something very different, and they have, over many decades, managed to walk the nation substantially down their desired path. In the arrangements they seek, the state functions less as a forum for collective self-determination than as a network of administrative apparatuses—agencies, ostensibly neutral offices, and regulatory bodies—that execute the directives of concentrated corporate interests. While the trappings of a constitutional republic remain—elections, judicial review (a process that has become corrupt with the rise of the rogue judiciary)—they operate primarily as mechanisms of legitimation, giving citizens the sense of influence while substantive decisions are determined by technocratic elites in league with transnational capital. National sovereignty is subordinated to the logic of globalized markets, and policy is calibrated to optimize corporate and international financial priorities rather than the public good. 

In the language of political theory, this is an inversion of classical democratic norms: power is exercised not openly and directly but through complex, diffuse, and opaque administrative channels, creating what Sheldon Wolin terms “inverted totalitarianism,” that is, a managed democracy in which consent is manufactured, and governance is depoliticized in favor of corporate and globalist agendas. (See No Gods. No kings. No elites. The People; Celebrating the End of Chevron: How to See the New Fascism; Totalitarian Monopoly Capitalism: Fascism Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow; Can Fascism Happen in America? Has it Already?; )

When Steve Bannon hammers on about “deconstructing the administrative state,” this is what he means. The populist-nationalism of Trump and MAGA movement is this: to turn back America from the road to technocracy to return to the constitutional foundation of the American Republic—to reclaim the American System designed by Alexander Hamilton and Henry Clay, and abandon the doctrine of free trade championed by the Democratic Party that has, in practice, put America on the path to decline (see Tariffs, Trade, and the Future of the American Worker; With Reciprocal Tariffs, Trump Triggers the Globalists; Why the Globalists Don’t Want Tariffs. Why the American Worker Needs Them; Marx the Accelerationist: Free Trade and the Radical Case for Protectionism; Rejecting Crisis Capitalism). This is why progressives loathe Trump. It’s why they project onto him the authoritarianism that lurks at the core of progressive ideology and practice. 

In one of his most memorable defenses of free speech Christopher Hitchens invokes a story about the great lexicographer Samuel Johnson to illustrate the hypocrisy and irony of censorship.

“When Dr. Samuel Johnson had finished his great lexicography, the first real English dictionary,” the late journalist tells his audience—prompting laughter—“he was visited by various delegations of people to congratulate him, including a delegation of London’s respectable womanhood who came to his parlor in Fleet Street and said, ‘Doctor, we congratulate you on your decision to exclude all indecent words from your dictionary.’ And he [Johnson] said, ‘Ladies, I congratulate you on your persistence in looking them up.’”

The anecdote, almost certainly apocryphal, has long circulated as a testament to Johnson’s wit and disdain for prudery. Hitchens took liberty with the legend. The most common historical version goes like this: a “proper lady” praised Johnson for omitting “indelicate” terms from his 1755 Dictionary of the English Language. Johnson, ever the master of pointed irony, is said to have replied, “What, madam! Then you have been looking for them?” I like Hitchens’s rendition better.

Whether or not the exchange truly occurred, it captures Johnson’s—and Hitchens’s—view that moral pretension often conceals the curiosity it claims to suppress. It’s like the smut police looking for smut to look at it. But there’s something darker here. Consider Elon Musk’s reminder that the social media platform X allows users to mute specific words and phrases so they don’t appear in their timelines or notifications.

You can mute any specific words of your choice on 𝕏

Go to Settings → Privacy & Safety → Mute & Block → Muted Words pic.twitter.com/jimsXbZCJE

— DogeDesigner (@cb_doge) October 23, 2025

I find it hard to imagine that many users would go to the trouble of identifying every word and phrase that offends them, and changing their settings to avoid ever suffering those ideas again. To do this, they would first have to use the very words they dislike—words they have already seen and thought about—in order to not see and risk thinking about them. That would hardly satisfy their impulse.

It’s not that they don’t want to see and think about the words and phrases per se. They think about them constantly. Like the proper lady who congratulated Dr. Johnson for excluding indecent words, the X user with this mentality doesn’t want others to see and think about them. He won’t go to the trouble of muting anything himself; he will instead complain that X fails to censor ideas he wishes others would not entertain.

He’s like those who want to restrict access to art and music. They know about the art and music they don’t want others to see and hear. If it were simply a matter of not personally looking at art or listening to music a man doesn’t like, the man would be content with looking or walking away, or turning down the volume, or changing the channel. No, the busybody’s aim is about something else: controlling what others see and hear. This is the mark of an authoritarian personality. And the busybody had an accomplice in Twitter’s previous owner.

When Twitter punished users for the thoughtcrime of “misgendering” (the act of correctly identifying the gender of a person), this was not merely to spare the man who thinks he’s a woman from having to be reminded of that fact—as if he enjoys in a free society the freedom to not be offended—but more importantly to change the way they talk and therefore think, by participating in the rituals demanded by gender identity doctrine, and disciplining them when they don’t. It was couched as “trust and safety,” but it was really about neurolinguistic programming.

Elon Musk saw through this impulse and gave the world a gift when he bought the platform and altered its algorithms to allow greater liberty in the exercise of free expression—to let people have their own minds, and thus the freedom to perceive and convey reality with accuracy and precision. That is the sign of a scientist and a civil libertarian. For this, America owes Musk a debt of gratitude.

A paragraph in this New York Times article, “Maine U.S. Senate Candidate Says He Covered Up Tattoo That Had Nazi Imagery,” caught my attention. I posted about this on Facebook on Wednesday morning, defending the man—not the Nazi tattoo, but something he posted on social media. Later in the day, I learned that the most interesting thing about this article and other reporting (e.g., CNN) is what is not being widely reported on, which the title of this essay announces. I will come to that later. It will suffice to say for the moment that some outlets are reporting on it now. But before getting to that, I want to discuss what moved me to share the NYTimes article. So, a little suspense.

The candidate is Graham Platner. He’s a Democrat vying for the US Senate in Maine. He’s a former Marine running against Governor Janet Mills, also a Democrat, for the party’s nomination. (You will remember Mills from February 2025, when she was humiliated by Trump after publicly defying the President’s executive order banning transgender athletes from female sports teams.) Platner is a star among progressives. Above is a photo of Platner with Maine Gubernatorial candidate Troy Jackson and US Senator Bernie Sanders, a self-described socialist, at a Labor Day rally. Platner has been endorsed by the United Auto Workers union and Sanders.

The subject of the initial controversy appeared on the podcast hosted by former Obama aides about a tattoo he got in 2007 in Croatia, which he has since covered. He and other Marines had chosen a “terrifying-looking skull and crossbones off the wall,” he explained, because “skulls and crossbones are a pretty standard military thing.” Turns out the tattoo is Nazi symbology. That figures since it was acquired in Croatia, which, like Ukraine, is a country teaming with Nazis. But did these Marines know that? A lot of progressives don’t know about Eastern Europe and the ubiquity of fascist and Nazi beliefs there. I’m sure readers are aware of the ubiquity of Ukrainian flags in social media bios on the left. Then again, maybe Platner did know what the tattoo represents; Democrats don’t seem to have an actual problem with fascism, given their supplication to corporate power, restrictive views on civil liberties, and support for political violence, as evidenced by their defense of Antifa.

But that’s not what grabbed my initial attention. From the NY Times story: “Among the posts that have drawn criticism was one from 2013 in which he responded to a thread asking users what questions they have for people of other races. Mr. Platner asked why Black [sic] people do not tip, something he said he observed while working as a bartender. On the podcast, Mr. Platner said he had been ‘legitimately asking the question,’ because he thought there might be a cultural explanation.”

People are free to criticize others for their views for whatever reasons, of course, but there’s a significant body of academic research that would support the premise that, on average, black Americans tip less in restaurant settings than white Americans. These differences persist even after controlling for education, income, and service quality. Perhaps it overstates the difference to say blacks “do not tip” (although this may have been Platner’s experience), but that they tip less on average is a documented fact. And since it is not due to several control factors, it’s reasonable to wonder if there might be a cultural explanation.

So why is that a problematic question? One hears such problematization in criticism of those asking why there is significant black overrepresentation in the most serious crimes. We know that this phenomenon is not attributable to poverty, since there are more poor whites than blacks, yet whites not only don’t murder or rob at the same rate as blacks, but half of all murders, and more than half of all robberies, are committed by blacks, overwhelmingly male. It is, therefore, entirely reasonable to ask whether there are cultural differences that explain this phenomenon. Yet one risks being accused of racism for asking.

Here’s another example: Suppose one were to ask why recent data show that students identified as Asian and non-Hispanic whites graduate at rates above the national average, while American Indian, black, and Hispanic students graduate at rates below the national average. The racial gap is especially pronounced between non-Hispanic whites and blacks. In Wisconsin, for example, the graduation gap between non-Hispanic whites and blacks is around 25 percentage points. The gap is largest for black males. It’s not that people don’t ask why this is the case; it’s that they demand that we only restrict the answer to “systemic” or “structural racism” or other pre-approved explanations. But is it cultural? Asking that question can get you into trouble.

Platner said of his question about tipping, “It was certainly not meant as a malicious thing.” I can’t know whether there was any malice in his asking the question, but I do know that there is no malice in my asking the question. Sociologists ask questions like this all the time—at least we used to. However, today, many are terrified to ask questions like this—even if they allow themselves to be curious about such things in their heads—because they know they may face criticisms if they do.

What is objectionable are other things Platner has written, posts that shine a light on affiliations that inspire his other posts, those disparaging police officers and calling white Americans living in rural areas (MAGA) racist and stupid—posts that the NY Times and other legacy media outlets don’t dwell on.

Investigative journalist Steve Robinson has found in newly uncovered social media posts that Platner instructs, among others, members of Maine’s Socialist Rifle Association (SRA) in paramilitary tactics. In an August 8, 2020, post, Platner brags about having provided advanced firearms instruction to the far-left paramilitary organization shortly after the Black Lives Matter riots erupted nationwide. Photos Robinson has uncovered show a group with the flag of the anarchist organization Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), another of a group with one member wearing a Transtifa shirt, the one with the Pride Progress flag with an AR-15 across the front, and a photo of pamphlets about anarchism, community defense (a euphemism for armed antigovernment resistance), and instructions on using burner phones.

According to Robinson, the SRA first drew national attention following the assassination of Christian activist Charlie Kirk, amid reports that the alleged shooter, Tyler Robinson, may have had ties to the group. The SRA claims to have more than 10,000 members and has faced media scrutiny over its alleged involvement in armed confrontations with law enforcement. Platner’s loathing of law enforcement and the deplorables is a central feature of progressive Democratic politics. So is supporting Ukraine in its war with Russia, noted above, which I have shown on this platform, was provoked and is prosecuted by an alliance of neo-Nazis and other Ukrainian ultranationalists funded by transnational corporate power and the Western intelligence apparatus.

Robinson isn’t the only investigative outlet plumbing the depths of the left’s affinity with domestic terrorists. While the legacy media dwells on the tattoo and questions about tipping, Axios has uncovered a 2020 comment in which Platner refers to having an “antifa supersoldier” label on his “armor,” a remark he now characterizes as a misguided joke. But it’s no joke, Jack; his affiliation with domestic terrorism is not just a remark. This and other revelations, Axios reports, have thrown his campaign—a progressive effort to unseat Republican Senator Susan Collins—into turmoil.

As noted, Platner’s bid for the Democratic nomination pits him against Governor Mills, the preferred candidate of party leaders and establishment donors. For progressives, Platner embodies the movement’s faux populist and alleged “outsider” energy; for the establishment, his candidacy threatens to hand Republicans ammunition in a crucial Senate race. More than this, it brings the Democrats’ affinity with left-wing domestic terrorism to the fore. Readers must consider whether the idea that there is a gulf between the moderate and progressive wings of the Democratic Party is a perception the Party has manufactured.

The stakes are high for Democrats: Collins remains one of the GOP’s most entrenched incumbents, and Democrats view Maine as a must-win seat in their effort to maintain Senate control via that body’s rules constraining the Republican majority (that’s how Democrats shut down the government). But Platner’s online history—spanning from leftist organizing forums to inflammatory political commentary—has complicated his image and provided fodder for Republican attack ads. It’s not just the “antifa supersoldier” label on his armor. In that same post, Platner encouraged Antifa to “Keep up the good fight.” It’s not the author of this essay associating Platner with Antifa. Platner associates himself with that organization. Platner is Antifa.

As readers know, Antifa has been designated a domestic terrorist organization. Following the assassination of Charlie Kirk, President Trump signed an executive order designating Antifa as such. Democrats dispute this, of course; to many progressives, Antifa is a decentralized, anti-fascist movement unfairly caricatured for political gain. Antifa is just “an idea.” The reality is dark and dangerous. Today’s Antifa is rooted in Antifaschistische Aktion, founded in 1932 in Germany. It was initiated by and under the command of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). The KPD organized violent street action through Antifa. The constant denial of the true character of Antifa testifies to a progressive alliance not only with domestic terrorism but with an anarchist-communist organization determined to overthrow the liberal capitalist order. Among the things Bolsheviks and Nazis have in common is this objective.

Platner’s posts go far beyond the “shit posting” he claims he intended. As noted earlier, he promoted the SRA, a left-wing firearms group that encourages gun ownership as a means of “combating right-wing and exclusionary firearm culture.” In another forum, Platner described participating in his local SRA chapter, noting that many members were military veterans and firearms instructors. In a 2018 comment reported by Politico, Platner wrote that those who expect to “fight fascism without a good semi-automatic rifle” should “do some reading of history,” adding that “an armed working class is a requirement for economic justice.” This is the writing of a revolutionary. The Democratic Party, finding itself increasingly impotent at the ballot box, is turning to street-level violence and color revolution, as evidenced by the “No Kings” protests, which, as has been documented, are funded by the NGOs of the transnational elite. Observers could not have missed the “I am Antifa” shirts and signs worn by attendees at the last “No Kings” rallies.

“I’m not a socialist,” Platner said in a statement. “I’m a Marine Corps veteran.” His campaign declined to say whether he ever attended any Antifa-related events, but readers should be mindful in discussions of socialism. Progressivism is not a species of socialism. Bernie Sanders is not a democrastic socialist. Progressivism is an expression of corporate statism and globalism. (As I observed years ago, one knew Sanders and his ilk came over to that side when they flipped on the open borders questions.) Indeed, progressivism is a species of the same corporatist arrangements that underpinned Nazi Germany, a totalitarian monopoly system that, as I have shown, was neither nationalist nor socialist, but established by financial and industrial power to suppress democracy and liberal freedoms, thus denying the working class their right. Such arrangements are transnational in their ambitions. And they are, as Walter Benjamin explains in the epilogue to “Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” intrinsically warmongering.

Predictably, the true believers in the progressive movement have rallied to Platner’s defense. Representative Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, reaffirmed his endorsement, accusing the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) of engaging in “the politics of personal destruction” to boost Mills’ establishment-backed campaign. The perception being manufactured here is that Platner’s case highlights an ongoing struggle within the Democratic Party between its activist base and institutional leadership. For progressives, the backlash against Platner reflects a double standard—one that tolerates establishment missteps but punishes grassroots candidates for past mistakes. For moderates, the former Marine’s rhetoric embodies the political risks of nominating candidates who carry unvetted or radical baggage into general elections. What is really at issue is whether Democrats should openly embrace what the KPD embraced before them: open resistance to the republic they seek to overthrow in pursuit of a global corporatist order.

Are Democratic Party elites preparing to jettison Platner to conceal their ties to the left-wing paramilitary and domestic terrorist organizations attempting to disorder major US cities at the behest of globalists? It seems so. But they need to be careful. Since they can’t openly cut ties based on what Robinson and others have uncovered, the Inner Party appears prepared to throw under the bus a Democrat asking what progressives regard as racially insensitive questions (as well as some posts that appear based on reporting to downplay the problem of sexual assault). Democrats cannot walk back their support for Antifa. They are on the record on that score. But they can attempt to obscure what that support means.

The Trump Administration should make a big deal out of this. The Department of Homeland Security should follow up. For the rest of America, this is not a matter of whether Platner should leave the race to quieten the media about the issue. It is about exposing what the Democratic Party has in store for America if it ever makes its way back to power. As I have been arguing for years now, the political struggle is populist-nationalist versus progressive-globalist. Only one party represents the American Republic. The other party is prepared to use the same tactics to achieve those ends that elites used against Third World countries to secure the planet for transnational corporate power and profit.

This section was removed from the final version adopted on July 4, 1776, after delegates from Georgia and South Carolina objected. Jefferson is writing about the King (I have taken the liberty to copy-edit the text):

“He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian King of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where men should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce; and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.”

After four days of debate, Jefferson himself is reported to have struck the passage he had authored to gain the consensus of the Second Continental Congress. No kings was the goal, and a compromise had to be made to advance the cause of a democratic republic.

Crucially, the Constitution—drafted without Jefferson’s involvement, as his fellow Virginian James Madison was tasked with that responsibility—was ratified in 1788 and included a clause (Article I, Section 9, Clause 1) prohibiting Congress from banning the importation of enslaved people before 1808. This effectively created a twenty-year moratorium on ending the transatlantic slave trade.

One might condemn such a provision, but in truth, it reflects the intent of many of the Founders to eliminate the trade Jefferson had so forcefully denounced in the excised passage from the Declaration.

This, too, was a compromise meant to secure support from Southern states whose economies depended on slavery. However, once that period expired, Congress exercised its new authority, and, on January 1, 1808 (many Southerners having resigned themselves to the trade’s fate, since the Constitution had been ratified with that understanding twenty years earlier), the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves took effect, officially ending the legal importation of enslaved Africans into the United States.

Thus, we see that the institution of slavery—imposed on the New World by Britain—was opposed by many of the colonists, and now Americans, including some who themselves owned slaves. This puts the lie to the claim that America established slavery rather than inherited it. The truth is that the global slave trade was the prevailing order before America took steps to abolish it.
It is noteworthy that this action closely followed a similar measure by Britain—the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act—which took effect on March 25, 1807, less than a year before the US act did.

Let history record these facts, so often omitted from its teaching for ideological reasons: that the United States and Britain abolished their participation in the transatlantic slave trade within roughly the same year, reflecting a growing transatlantic movement against the trade and inspiring further efforts to abolish it everywhere in the Western world.

Slavery, unfortunately, continues in other parts of the world. Yet these regions are rarely the target of progressive condemnation. Instead, many ideologues seem more intent on erasing the United States’ role in ending the vile trade in human beings. It is an unfortunate reality that such ideologues have colonized our sense-making institutions and acquired the power of what has become, in effect, an Orwellian Ministry of Truth. The acts of a nation that should be credited with are used, through warping or omission, to tarnish a republic founded on the liberty of all individuals regardless of race.

I’ve been writing a lot about the Constitution lately, and the frenzy in the media on whether President Trump directed the Attorney General Pam Bondi to target James Comey, Tish James, and John Bolton for prosecution, a question that functions to socialize progressive presumptions about Executive Power, illustrates the importance of understanding the Constitution.

As I have argued, rather than an authoritarian takeover of the federal government, Trump is returning the Republic to its rational foundation. To wit, in the original constitutional framework of the United States, the office of the President is conceived as a singular and unified executive authority, embodying multiple roles. I have written about them before, but in light of the “No Kings” nonsense out on our streets last weekend, it is worth reviewing the inventory. (See “No Kings” Redux—There They Go Again.)

The “Vesting Clause” of Article II of the Constitution grants all “executive Power” exclusively to the president, placing all executive branch officials under their direct control. This means that the framers intended the President to serve not only as Commander-in-Chief but also the Chief Executive Officer (CEO), charged with administrative matters and the faithful execution of the laws. More than this, as the preceding makes clear, the President is also the Chief Magistrate of the United States.

As Commander-in-Chief, the President holds supreme command over the armed forces. This provision ensures civilian control of the military while providing for a decisive and unified direction in times of conflict. Congress retains the powers to declare war and appropriate funds, but the actual conduct and leadership of the armed forces lies exclusively with the President.

In his role as CEO, the Constitution establishes the President as the central administrator of federal authority. All officers of the United States ultimately derive their authority from, and are answerable to, the President. This design reflects the framers’ rejection of the weak, fragmented executive model that had plagued the Articles of Confederation.

Equally important, and this is the crucial piece here, the President functions as a Chief Magistrate, that is, the head of the nation’s law enforcement and legal administration. The Judiciary Act of 1789 establishes the office of Attorney General, whose role is to serve as the President’s legal advisor and as his chief prosecutor. This is the reality the media obscures: the Attorney General serves at the pleasure of the President and operates under his authority and at his direction. Thus, the President stands at the apex of both civil administration and the enforcement of justice.

In our constitutional design, the presidency is meant to embody unity of action—a single executive, a principle known as the “Unitary Executive,” who leads the nation in war, administers its government, and stands as the chief magistrate, ensuring that the laws of the United States are faithfully executed. This upshot is that, whatever communications the President had with the Attorney General concerning Comey, James, Bolton, or anybody else, is likely not untoward.

Trump was exercising this authority when he tried to get to the bottom of the Biden family’s relationship with Ukrainian oligarchs—an act for which Democrats impeached him. When Trump describes this as a “perfect phone call,” he is right (see The Conspiracy to Overthrow an American President; I Told You Joe Biden is Corrupt and Compromised). He was well within his scope of powers to ask those questions. (See also The Unprecedented Resort to Lawfare—Is it Desperation or Provocation?; Vice-President Biden and His handling of Classified Documents; The Urgent Necessity of Purging the Government of Deep State Actors and Warmongers.)

Progressives don’t want the President to have, in principle, the power the Constitution gives him, illustrated in the historical case Christopher Hitchens provides in the above video clip from a talk he gives on his book about Thomas Jefferson. Had there been the rogue judiciary that we currently suffer, some judge somewhere would have interfered with Jefferson’s war to stop Muslims from enslaving his fellow countrymen.

I am not imagining this. Recall that a judge ordered President Donald Trump to turn deportation planes early in Trump’s second term. James Boasberg, Chief Judge of the US District Court for the District of Columbia, issued a temporary restraining order halting the deportation of Venezuelan nationals under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. Despite his verbal directive to return any planes already in flight, the administration rightly proceeded with the deportations anyway. Of course, Boasberg had the advantage of a communication system that judges in Jefferson’s day did not enjoy. But had they, and had they in their brains the ideology that currently prevails in the courts, they almost surely would have demanded that Jefferson turn back the ships sent to stop the trade in humans.

The analogy Hitchens presents us with, therefore, could not be more apt for the present situation. The “No Kings” fools don’t want democracy. They seek technocracy and a judiciocracy, both under the command of the graduates of the woke university. Never mind that Trump is doing what he said he would do, that he was elected because he said he would do these things, that he won the popular vote, the electoral college, swept all swing states, and secured majorities in both the House and the Senate.

In truth, “No Kings” is an expression of a minority of Americans against the wisdom Americans expressed in November 2024. The throng substitutes protests for popular will, hoping that by documenting their presence in parks and streets, chanting slogans, holding signs, and pumping their fists in the air, a perception will be manufactured that a free and fair democratic moment was really an authoritarian moment. More than this, they wish to form in the public mind the belief that the President does not have the powers identified in this essay, clearly articulated in the Constitution of the United States.

Do the people have the right to assemble and protest? Of course. Assembly and protests are signs of a free and open society. Assembly and protests against the government are not allowed in authoritarian regimes or absolute monarchies. That they could assemble and protest tells us a great deal about the validity of the cause that brings them to march about. It also tells us that they are not defending the Constitution. The project they’ve allowed themselves to deceived into advancing is about subverting the American Republic. “No Kings” is an anti-American movement festooned in the symbols of American patriotism. However lame the attempt, it means to be a color revolution. These are the useful idiots of globalism.

The long-standing project to weaken the executive branch is part of the desire to entrench the unelected and unconstitutional fourth branch of government, what is known as the administrative state. Not just Boasberg, we see this also in the many actions taken by inferior courts in the US judiciary to usurp the power of the Executive. It’s a project to subvert the Constitution. Progressives—functionaries of the corporate state—are attempting to assume command of the Republic by undermining the Constitution. One strategy they use towards this end is confusing the public about the intent of the Framers.

(For your convenience, here are some of my essays on the matter—reaching back to 2013: The Myth of DoJ Independence—and a Note on the Writ of Habeas Corpus; Concerning the Powers of The US Constitution—And Those Defying Them; The Judicial Usurpation of Article II Powers and the Rise of the Universal Injunction; Posse Comitatus and the Ghosts of Redemption; Jefferson’s Warning on the Peril of Judicocracy; Quelling the Rebellion; On the Road to Civil War: The Democratic Party’s Regression into Neoconfederacy; The New Confederates and the Return of States’ Rights; Lawfare Against the People Continues. When is Congress Going to Act? The Insurrectionist Myth.)

How did the organizers of the “No Kings 2.0” protests do? Let’s look closely at the rallies from October 18, 2025, and do a bit of observational, statistical, and analytical work. I have relied on OpenAI’s ChatGPT for reverse image searches, aggregation of estimates of attendees, and statistical calculations using Bayesian modeling.

Organizers have claimed the nationwide turnout was more than 7 million people at around 2,700 events. If taken at face value, that would make October 18 the single largest protest day in US history—bigger than the Women’s March in 2017 and peak Black Lives Matter demonstrations in 2020. 

Keep in mind that similar large estimates for past protests were later revised downward. There are obvious reasons organizers inflate numbers, foremost among them, exaggerating turnout rewards participants and amplifies the protest’s perceived impact. The present exercise is important because these protests, like so many others, are propaganda exercises. We are to believe that the American masses have turned against Trump, believing he is an autocratic ruler. Since polling does not support this claim, organizer and media amplifications are used to manufacture the perception.

If one divides 7 million evenly across 2,700 events, that’s roughly 2,600 people per event. Of course, events are not evenly distributed. Most of the “No Kings 2.0” events were in towns and small and mid-sized cities. I reviewed numerous social media photos from smaller population sites: many show four or five people, a couple dozen, or perhaps a few hundred. One post explicitly notes that he was the lone demonstrator. This suggests that, to reach the millions claimed, turnout in major metropolitan areas would have to be enormous—hundreds of thousands across dozens of cities.

There are images of the larger protests, but what immediately strikes the objective observer is green foliage and other features inconsistent with October 18 in the Northeast and upper Midwest. Yes, it has been a long and warm summer, but skepticism is warranted. When those images are run through reverse-image tools or compared to known archives, many can be traced back to earlier protests. There have been claims that some media outlets used old video or misattributed images—if true, that distorts public perception about turnout. 

A collage widely shared on social media labeled “NO KINGS 2.0” (shared above) shows large protest crowds across multiple cities, but reverse image searches show that several of these images are from the summer 2025 protests, or are repurposed from unrelated events, such as Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, Women’s Marches, or other large demonstrations. Additionally, some of the images are mislabeled. Whenever and wherever these images were taken, the combined estimates of crowd sizes from these ten cities on October 18, 2025, are around 750,000. Lower estimates put the number at fewer than 500,000.

Other social media memes are obvious fabrications. Consider the side-by-side of photos (see above) purportedly comparing Trump’s inauguration (left) to the “No Kings” protest (right) in Washington, DC. The right image has been darkened. Why? Because the original image is not from “No Kings” on Saturday, but Trump’s January 20, 2017, inauguration, a few hours later, after the crowd filled in. If you zoom in, you can see Trump’s face on the big screens. These screens were not there during “No Kings.” This propaganda image does double duty: it misrepresents crowd sizes at Trump’s first inauguration and misrepresents the size of the crowd on October 18, 2025 by using an irrelevant image. What drew my skepticism is that both images appear to be from the same fixed camera angle.

Enhanced and recycled images are used to distract from the weak turnout on Saturday in cities across the country. For example, estimates of the largest crowd during the Wisconsin Act 10 protests in Madison in early 2011 vary, but a commonly cited figure is around 100,000 people on Capitol Square and the surrounding area. I was there protesting against Act 10. The crowd was enormous. If it had not been so cold, the crowds would likely have been larger. The crowd on Saturday in Madison, in good weather, was significantly less, around 15,000. 

If you feed the available data—past protest sizes and downward revisions, population distributions, and photographic evidence—into a prior probabilistic model (Bayesian statistical modeling), it finds that the 7-million claim is highly unlikely. A generous estimate might yield 2–4 million. A cautious, media-skeptical estimate could be 1–2 million. A conservative, lower-bound estimate might be several hundred thousand. Different biases and methods produce different answers, but the bottom line is that 7 million is statistically highly improbable.

Beyond headline counts, there are claims about paid protesters and organized staffing that raise questions. Some professional organizers receive steady funding and compensation; others are day laborers or people who respond to recruiting ads. One sees many of the same faces from “No Kings” at pro-Palestinian and anti-ICE protests. It is well documented that funding comes from NGOs provided by billionaires, such as George Soros and his Open Society Foundations and Neville Roy Singham, currently living in Shanghai and married to Jodie Evans, co-founder of the activist group Code Pink. Singham has funded or been linked to a network of nonprofits, NGOs, and media outlets that promote narratives aligned with the Chinese government (including pro-Beijing or anti-US/anti-Israel narratives).

Soros, Singham, and other wealthy donors are globalists. Of course, they are allowed to spend their money as they wish, but, by the same token, we are free to report on how they spend their money and what ends they seek. These ends are anti-American, technocratic, and transnationalist. The point is that, if thousands were paid to participate, and if protest materials were externally supplied, that would materially affect how we interpret the movement’s spontaneity and grassroots character. Admittedly, the exact numbers of paid protesters and the amount of externally-provided materials are hard to verify, but the fact of paid protestors and externally provided materials is well-documented. Also well-documented is the general ignorance of many in the audience about why they are even protesting. The mainstream media skirts these facts.

EXCLUSIVE: Yesterday in Chicago, on the perimeter of the NO KINGS rally, an activists speaking in front of a Progressive Labor Party sign exclaims, “You gotta grab a gun, we gotta turn around the guns on this fascist system. These ICE agents gotta get shot and wiped out. The same… pic.twitter.com/zKkiyVKe9J

— Christopher Sweat (@SweatEm) October 19, 2025

Finally, while many No Kings events were peaceful and featured patriotic symbolism, there were also documented instances of violent rhetoric and extreme imagery at some rallies. There were protesters in the crowd cosplaying Charlie Kirk’s assassin. There were shirts and signs reading “86 47,” code for assassining the current White House occupant. There is video of Chicago teacher pantomining the Kirk’s execution. And there is video of a speak calling on the crowd to kill ICE agents (see above). These instances were documented on alternative media while mainstream outlets focused on the peaceful majority. That contrast in coverage influences how the events are perceived nationally.

At the very least, one should be skeptical of the headline “7 million” number, which the media admit is the number organizations have provided (the media should be one of skepticism not promotion). It’s prudent to assume a sizeable protest (the crowd in Chicago was quite large, albeit the marches were smartly channeled down streets), but to expect downward revisions as independent counts and photographic verification happen, and to recognize the incentive in exaggerating crowd sizes. Treat claims about recycled images and paid demonstrators as important investigative leads rather than settled facts—they change the interpretation dramatically if proven. Several of the images used have already been exposed as recycled. At the same time, a video of the protest in Boston may have been misidentified by Grok as having been shot during a 2017 protest.

Another thing that’s striking about the protest is how few minorities were present. It’s true that the majority of the US is white, but blacks are around 13 percent of the population, and I see almost no blacks in my review of hundreds of pictures taken of the protest. Granted, many of the pictures are from different angles of the same protests to make the crowds appear larger, but you’d think, given the rhetoric, that the protests were driven in major part by concerns of racism and ethnicism. One would expect to see more minorities. There are also few Hispanics in these pictures. To be sure, most Hispanics are white, and have many shades of skin tone, so I could be missing them in the sea of whites cosplaying civil rights marchers and Antifa members.

Also, while most color revolutions involve youth groups, the “No Kings” protests featured a great many elderly white people. This makes sense because the elderly have time on their hands and often seek community and reputational redemption, the latter since they feel the need to rehabilitate their tarnished image as “Boomers” responsible for the troubles of younger generations. I agree with many commentators that a significant proportion of the elderly were radicals from the 1960s and early 1970s trying to recapture their youthful idealism. Nothing wrong with that, I suppose.

However, that the obstacles faced by the younger generations have to do with progressive governance over the last several decades eludes those out on the streets with signs and symbols manufacturing the illusion that ordinary Americans (MAGA) and a liberal businessman from Queens who love their country are authoritarian is beside the point; this is not a rational expression of actual grievances but the rational deployment of irrational semiotics and symbology by elites to advance the project of managed decline for the sake of globalist ambition. 

A big Halloween party is an apt way to describe the event. Remember when progressives mocked conservatives for wearing bandages on their ears in solidarity with their candidate whose life was nearly taken? Or the ridicule of tea baggers? (I’m guilty of that one, I must confess; I was highly critical of the Tea Party protests, even while I opposed Obama from the beginning.) However, those silly displays can’t hold a candle to what I see in the pictures from yesterday. That was maximum silliness—although I wouldn’t put it past progressives to eclipse October 18, 2025, in the future. Very powerful people have a lot riding on stifling Trump and the America First movement.

The premise of “No Kings” is, on its face, silly. Donald Trump is doing what he said he would do. He was elected because he said he would do these things. He won the popular vote, the electoral college, swept all swing states, and secured majorities in both the House and the Senate. How is that authoritarian? How is that monarchy? The premise of “No Kings” is an insult to the tens of millions of patriotic Americans who voted for Trump—and to the intellect of rational men.

In truth, “No Kings” is an expression of a minority of Americans, organized by elites, against the wisdom ordinary Americans expressed in November 2024. The throng substitutes protests for popular will. They hope that by documenting their presence in parks and streets, chanting slogans and pumping signs, amplified through the mainstream media, which has a well-documented anti-Trump bias, a perception will be manufactured that a free and fair democratic moment was in truth an authoritarian moment. This is a plainly false claim, but they do have the right to assemble and protest. Assembly and protests are signs of a free and open society. It is worth nothing then, then, that assembly and protests against the government are not allowed in authoritarian regimes or absolute monarchies.

One can argue with people over ideas. It can be fun sometimes. But if one’s interlocutor has a cognitive style that is impervious to fact and reason, it can be a significant waste of time. It can also produce rage in people.

I prefer to explore why people come to believe what they do and why they are so resistant to facts and reason. Until one understands the problem of cognitive errors and ideological blinkering, it’s difficult to make progress in persuading people to adopt a more rational position.

It’s like the proverb: “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.” A teacher can explain a concept clearly, but a student must choose to learn it. A good teacher has to understand the obstacles that prevent the student from making that choice.

Understanding the reasons why people resist reason is also beneficial for one’s self-development. By understanding this in others, one can understand it in oneself. Like other animals, even equipped with sapience, human beings do not emerge from the womb capable of clear reasoning. One must learn it. And the socialization process can install obstacles that are very difficult to overcome. It takes awareness, practice, and self-reflection.

One problem in such a pursuit is that helping people overcome their resistance to reason is often perceived by resisters as an ad hominem attack. One can come across as arrogant when pointing out errors and flaws. This is because, while not everybody is reasonable, almost everybody believes they are, and when one criticizes their cognitive style, they take offense.

I have received, over the last several years, anonymous emails from Proton mail accounts, angry with me because I sound like a know-it-all—from those who clearly think they know it all.

Other problems are occupational security and tribal affinity. Upton Sinclair puts it well when he writes, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on him not understanding it.” People often cling to ideas that protect their group membership, professional identity, and social status, even when those ideas are demonstrably flawed. Challenging these beliefs can feel threatening, not just intellectually but socially, which makes reasoned persuasion all the more difficult.

I have been writing a lot lately about this problem on Freedom and Reason (cognitive dissonance, motivated reasoning, and so forth). It’s a pressing problem given the polarization we are currently experiencing. It becomes dangerous when resistance to reason becomes a source of frustration, since this can result in harassment, intimidation, and violence directed at those who challenge cherished beliefs. (see When Thinking Becomes Unthinkable: Motivated Reasoning and the Memory Hole; Living with Difficult Truths is Hard. How to Avoid the Error of Cognitive Dissonance; Bluesky and the Progressive Practice of Cerebral Hygiene; Abigail Spanberger is “Horrified”—How Can Illegally Crossing the Border Be a “Criminal Act”?

I tell my students that my purpose as a teacher is not to tell them what to think, but rather to demonstrate how to think. Although that is my professional role, I do think this approach is generally applicable. But, I confess, it is no less frustrating (beyond the classroom, where it is the task) than arguing points, since people seem to understand that losing an argument calls their worldview into question.

They’re right about this. The structure of a worldview rests on a set of common assumptions; if one assumption goes, the entire structure may collapse. They don’t hear you because they can’t hear you. It’s a defense mechanism. People fear losing their certainty in things they think they know—and what those around them will do to them if they lose faith in doctrine.

This is why, for the most part, I avoid going to other people’s social media pages and engaging them in discussion. I prod people on X, but it is never productive, only a pastime. It’s also why I don’t seek out opportunities to publicly debate issues (besides not wanting to get beaten or shot at). I do recognize that it is the audience that matters more than the opponent. But public debate has become more spectacle than enlightenment. (And it has become dangerous.)

Conservatives share memes and videos of Democrats saying something 180° today from what they said only a few years ago. They should, of course, because people need to be reminded of this. But conservatives must also recognize that the double standard, historical revisionism—all this was anticipated by George Orwell more than three-quarters of a century ago in his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.

It is not that Democrats work from a double standard because they’re hypocrites—they are this, for sure—but because it’s a strategy to disrupt rational thought. The hypocrisy is collective and entrenched. It’s an epistemic, like the principle of Taqiyya is Islam, which permits Muslims to lie about their intentions. It’s presented as a noble lie (self-preservation) while serving the purpose of Islamizing nations.

Recall George Orwell’s concept of “Doublethink” from the novel. That’s the ability to hold two contradictory beliefs or thoughts simultaneously and not feel the need or urge to give up one for the other, as any rational person would. After all, either something is true or false—even if presently undetermined. But if you believe in the integrity of truth, you’re a brute, entirely unqualified to have a say in the destiny of your nation.

Doublethink is rationalized today as the sophisticated intellectual ability to hold or justify incompatible ideas under the guise of complexity, nuance, or “systemic thinking.” The cognitive maneuver is praised as “dialectical flexibility,” a concept popular in academic or political culture, where progressives are licensed to tolerate contradiction without resolution as a form of advanced cognition and sophisticated thinking.

In psychology, this ability is known as “cognitive dissonance management,” the psychological skill of maintaining a sense of internal coherence even when beliefs conflict, typically by reinterpreting facts or rationalizing motives. Other psychological terms describe this phenomenon. “Cognitive polyphasia” is the coexistence of contradictory modes of thought within a single mind or society, each activated depending on context. Then there is “motivated reasoning,” which I wrote at length about recently, where one intellectualizes a contradiction so that it seems principled rather than self-serving (see When Thinking Becomes Unthinkable: Motivated Reasoning and the Memory Hole).

While psychology has shown that this ability, however specified, is in many instances pathological, the pathological instances have been normalized by postmodern relativism, all the fashion in academia, where consistency and truth are treated as “contextual” or “constructed,” even “rigid,” allowing contradictions to coexist without embarrassment. It’s an intellectual shift from brute-force contradiction to rationalized incongruity—an error dressing itself in the clothes of critical theory, pluralism, and sophistication.

The contemporary paradigm is the slogan “Transwomen are women.” The slogan follows the formula illustrated in Nineteen Eighty-Four: “War is Peace,” “Freedom is Slavery,” and “Ignorance is Strength.” As Walter Benjamin, in the epilogue to his essay “Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” told us, continuous war keeps society obedient and unified; in this sense, it “preserves peace” internally. This is a mark of fascism, Benjamin warned. According to the Party in Orwell’s novel, true individual freedom, the freedom to think, speak, and write as you will, leads to chaos. One must avoid “Thoughtcrime,” which your managers will define. Submission to the collective, governed by an enlightened technocracy, is the only real democracy. The ignorance of the populace—“Listen to the experts! Follow the Science!”—is the source of the Party’s power. Today, “Freedom is Slavery,” if rendered explicitly, would appear as such: “Compliance is Empowerment.” So, mind those pronouns!

Each slogan functions as a paradoxical truth enforced by conditioning—training citizens to accept contradiction as coherence. How Neanderthal is the majority for its inability to hold two contradictory ideas simultaneously. Wait, they can? See, that’s why they’re Neanderthal!

Here’s another one from Orwell: “We’ve always been at war with East Asia.” This is the one that Abigail Spanberger, campaigning to be Governor of Virginia, commits without a hint of awareness. As Barzoo asks, “Was she asleep when Obama was deporting children at record numbers?” Remember that from Nineteen Eighty-Four? That’s the technique of retroactive rewriting of history to fit the current narrative needs of the power elite, combined with collective forgetting that the past was ever different. (See What Lies Behind the Double Standard on Deportations?)

We’re not here talking about reinterpreting history in light of new evidence. That is the work of reason. One must change one’s mind when confronted with facts and rational reinterpretation. Rather, here, it is, in the Orwellian sense, the deliberate falsification and reflexive forgetting of the historical record to align with current ideology. Orwell’s “Ministry of Truth” (or Minitrue in Party Newspeak) is the bureau of revisionism. There, to “send something down the memory hole” means to erase all traces of it. There is no literal memory hole; it’s far more sophisticated than that now. The Ministry of Truth of today is comprised of the web of sense-making institutions: culture, education, media—all controlled by the Party.

Spanberger also demonstrates Doublethink in her continued support of Jay Jones, the Democratic candidate for Virginia Attorney General. Private text messages surfaced in which he used graphic and violent language about a Republican lawmaker. In one message, he fantasizes about shooting the GOP House Speaker and even references harm to the Speaker’s family. Once the texts were made public, Jones confirmed they were real and issued a public apology, calling them inexcusable and shameful. But he did not drop out of the race—a race for the state’s top law-enforcement office.

Prominent Democrats who had endorsed Jones condemned his language in strong terms—characterizing it as beneath the standards of public service, disgusting, offensive, etc.—yet most have not formally withdrawn their endorsements. Party leaders have tried to walk a line between acknowledging the seriousness of the comments (putting the assassination of Charlie Kirk and two attempts on Donald Trump’s life out of their minds) and maintaining political unity. Some have said that his apology was sincere and that voters should decide his fate; others avoid direct answers when asked if they still supported him.

In the recent gubernatorial debate between Spanberger and Winsome Earle‑Sears, the Republican candidate, Earle-Sears, pressed Spanberger about whether she still endorsed Jones in light of the text messages. Spanberger called the texts “abhorrent” but declined to withdraw her endorsement of Jones, saying instead that “it is up to voters to make a choice.”

Contrast this with the fallout from private text messages by members of the New York State Young Republicans organization that expressed antisemitic, racist, and violent sentiments. The leak caused widespread outrage and led to swift disciplinary action on the Republican side. National party officials publicly condemned the messages and demanded that those responsible step down. The New York State organization was suspended by the state party, effectively shutting it down, and the individuals involved lost their jobs or resigned from leadership positions.

Finally, Orwell identifies a cognitive strategy called “Crimestop,” the antidote to “Crimethink,” which refers to the act of thinking thoughts that challenge or question Party orthodoxy. Crimestop, the mental discipline of automatically blocking or suppressing any such forbidden thoughts before they take shape.

Crimestop is a tool of cognitive control similar to cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT), or neurolinguistic programming (NLP). (See Why is CBT Credible, but Not NLP? What About Dark CBT/NLP?) Crimestop trains citizens to detect even the faintest impulse toward critical reasoning and to neutralize it instinctively.

These mechanisms work hand-in-hand with Doublethink and historical revisionism. Doublethink allows individuals to hold contradictory beliefs—for example, accepting that the Party has always been right even while knowing personal memories suggest otherwise—without recognizing the contradiction. Historical revisionism reinforces this process by constantly reshaping the record of past events so that the Party’s present narrative always appears consistent.

In combination, Crimestop, Doublethink, and historical revisionism create a self-reinforcing mental environment where reality itself is subordinate to the Party, and citizens are conditioned to police their own minds as thoroughly as the state does. Many rank-and-file Democrats are not deliberately hypocritical. This is the way progressives think about the world. Combined with profound ignorance, reinforced by the collective self-perception of cognitive superiority and the practice of cerebral hygiene, they confidently express their views without reservation (see Bluesky and the Progressive Practice of Cerebral Hygiene). It is also why they feel they are justified in using harassment, intimidation, and violence against those who do not share their worldview. (See Tesla and Propaganda of the Deed; Charlie Kirk’s Killer is in Custody and the Specter of Antifa; The New Fascism of the Left: A Critical Analysis of Contemporary Antifascism.)

Never put it past progressives—the illiberals—to figure out a way around Orwell’s warning. They want to live in Airstrip One. They want you to live there, too. And they know you don’t want to.

The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) is one of the organizers of the “No Kings” protest being held today. AFT says that “America is about democracy, not dictatorship.” This depiction of the American Republic does not reflect well on an organization that claims to represent education. More accurately, America is a constitutional republic with expansive federal authority to defend and protect the United States from enemies, foreign and domestic. A dictatorship, on the other hand, is a system of government in which absolute power is concentrated in the hands of a single ruler or a small group, leaving citizens with little or no participation in political decision-making.

I’m seeing a lot of memes on social media asking how a “No Kings” day could happen in a dictatorship. Not a bad question, but let’s charitably suppose the organizers of these protests aren’t assuming that we already live in a dictatorship, but rather they’re worried that a dictatorship is coming. That means we should see signs of it on the horizon. Let’s take a closer look to see if we can find any, since, presumably, we all agree that dictatorship would be a bad thing. To do this, we need to identify the characteristics of a dictatorship so we know what we’re looking for.

In a dictatorship, authority is highly centralized, and opposition parties, free elections, and independent media are either abolished or sharply restricted. I don’t see any of this. Do you? No opposition parties have been banned. No elections have been canceled. Some might point to the temporary suspension of a late-night television show, but that was a private corporate decision, not a government act. Nothing here suggests dictatorship.

Dictators rule by decree, implementing laws and policies without the consent of the people or a representative body. I don’t see any of this, either. Do you? We voted freely in November 2024, and the current administration has the consent of the people through that election. Executive orders, the authority of presidential rulemaking, have long been used by chief executives of both parties, and those actions operate within a framework of checks and balances. Nothing unusual there. Obama and Biden issued plenty of Directives and Executive Orders.

To maintain control, dictators rely on coercion and force through military or police power. We have to be careful here, since there is nothing intrinsically wrong with coercion and force; the key question is whether the deployment of coercion and force is legal and just. The US Constitution empowers the federal government to use the military to repel invasion, suppress insurrection, and enforce the law. Article II recognizes the president as commander-in-chief and chief magistrate, responsible for maintaining order and ensuring that laws are faithfully executed. All this involves coercion and force—but it is constitutional, not dictatorial. I don’t see anything beyond those limits. Do you?

Historical examples of dictatorships include Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany and Benito Mussolini’s Fascist Italy, both of which certainly illustrate the dangers of unchecked political power. How does anything happening in America resemble those regimes? I’ve studied these historical regimes for many years now, and I think I would know it if I saw their reconstitution in the present day. However, I cannot be sure that others would—hence, “No Kings.”

Right—the event is called “No Kings.” Are kings dictators? Let’s take a look at this, too, keeping in mind that not all monarchies are the same. We’ll keep it simple and look at two types: absolute and constitutional monarchies. An absolute monarchy is one where the monarch has almost total control over the government and laws. A good example is Saudi Arabia, which closely resembles a dictatorship because the ruler’s power is relatively unchecked. Does America look like Saudi Arabia? I don’t see it.

A constitutional monarchy, by contrast, limits the monarch’s powers through a constitution or parliament. The United Kingdom is a good example. In such systems, the monarch mainly serves a ceremonial role, and real political power lies with elected officials. The United States is allied with these types of countries. Does America look like the United Kingdom? Some might wish it did, but the systems are fundamentally different. The US has a constitutional and federal system, which one can easily distinguish from the system governing the UK.

So, no dictatorship appears on the horizon. Nor is there a nascent monarchy in the US. Then what’s the point of the “No Kings” protests? According to numerous sources, the event is funded by several well-resourced organizations and NGOs, such as George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, and the event itself appears as what is classified as a “color revolution.”

Color revolutions are characterized by mass street protests and civil disobedience campaigns that claim to oppose election fraud, government corruption, or “rising authoritarianism.” They feature coordinated youth movements (although in the US there are lot of elderly conscripted into these events), opposition coalitions, and heavy use of colors, slogans, and symbols to create the appearance of cultural and political affinity, shared identity, and social solidarity. legacy and social media play a major role in spreading the message and organizing participants, while also attracting domestic and international attention. NGOs, professional unions (lke AFT in the US), or other external actors help organize protests to advance political objectives, often framed as “democracy promotion.” This can include coordination through social media and networks designed to mobilize participants, raise awareness, and generate attention.

The true purpose of “No Kings” is to confuse the public mind about the peril facing the American Republic. What progressive Democrats commonly call “democracy” is less a true exercise of popular sovereignty (progressives loathe populism) than a system of technocratic control via an administrative state and command of society’s sense-making institutions (academic, culture, media). The very techniques that enable color revolutions—careful coordination of social movements, opposition coalitions, media amplification, and symbolic messaging—reflect a broader logic of managed democracy, in which public participation is channeled, choreographed, and ultimately contained within boundaries set by entrenched power.

Sheldon Wolin, in Democracy, Inc., identifies this phenomenon as “inverted totalitarianism,” a form of governance that does not resemble the overt dictatorships of the past but instead subtly concentrates authority in the hands of bureaucratic, corporate, and financial elites. Fascists aren’t so stupid as to rehash fascism’s historical and transient forms. This is why you have to understand what fascism is at its core, not by its surface appearances, e.g., the coalitions it cobbles together to appear popular, but in its deep structure. What is fascism really? State monopoly capitalism that seeks a world order without democracy. Big corporate and financial power that commands the state and the sensemaking institutions to advance its ambition: a corporate state apparatus that controls the masses.

As a critical analysis of corporate statism shows, just as historical fascism was rooted in a constellation of administrative, corporate, and financial power, its modern instantiations under late transnational capitalism achieves the same ends through ostensibly democratic forms—elections, NGOs, and public protests operate within a controlled framework, giving the appearance of popular engagement while real decision-making remains in the hands of entrenched technocratic and powerful economic entities. The spectacle of mass mobilization, coordinated civil disobedience, and international attention is part of a system that manages consent, rather than allowing genuine democratic self-determination.