freedom and reason

Freedom and Reason is concerned with late capitalism and, heretofore, has, for the most part, dwelt in the real world. However, I am a boxing aficionado and a science fiction fan, and I believe both subjects have their place here. I may publish essays in the future on boxing, and I have previously written about science fiction (long ago), however I have frequently incorporated its themes—artificial intelligence, robotics, etc., albeit no longer science fiction—into my writings. The present essay is a long time coming, much of it sitting for some time in my collection of draft essays (which is enormous). I am moved to finally publish the piece, extensively revised, because of recent developments in the worlds of Blade Runner and Aliens. So science fiction is on the menu today.

The recents developments are exciting. Blade Runner is making a comeback with a new live-action TV series called Blade Runner 2099, set 50 years after Blade Runner 2049. It stars Michelle Yeoh as a replicant nearing the end of her life and Hunter Schafer as a survivalist chameleon. Production has wrapped, and it’s expected to release sometime in 2025 or 2026 (most recent reports suggest 2026 is more likely). The show promises a return to the darker, grittier vibe of the original 1982 film. Those who know me know that I reckon Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner to be not only the finest science fiction movie but the greatest movie ever made. I watch it like I listen to my favorite albums. In fact, I have the soundtrack playing in the background when I write, joined by rain sounds to emphasize the dreariness of Vangelis’ ethereal score.

Alien is expanding with two main new projects. First, Alien: Earth, a TV prequel series created by Noah Hawley, with Scott as executive producer, is set two years before the original Alien movie, exploring early experiments with synthetic-human hybrids and new terrifying creatures. It premiered this August and has received strong critical praise. I watched the premiere on Hulu last night and found it intriguing (I will not be discussing the series in detail today, since there are more episodes to watch and I want to consider how it all fits into canon, but, as readers will, the series will not go unmentioned). Second, Alien: Romulus (2024), a standalone film set between Alien and Aliens, did well and already has a sequel in development. I found Alien: Romulus intriguing, as well.

I am also moved to publish this now because I am preparing to teach my First-Year Seminar for the fall semester titled Becoming Human: People, Machines, and Monsters. I developed the course (which I have twice taught previously) because I find questions about identity, technology, and simulation increasingly urgent. In the seminar, students engage with science fiction films like Alien and Blade Runner, as well as episodes from Black Mirror, a British anthology television series created by Charlie Brooker, alongside Baudrillard’s Simulation and Simulacra, and the film The Matrix, which draws heavily on Baudrillard’s insights. (Other films include John Carpenter’s The Thing and Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. The prescience of HAL9000 is a must-see for students.)

The present essay reflects a continuation of that exploration—how synthetic beings and hyperreal worlds challenge and redefine what it means to be human in a late capitalist society dominated by corporate power and technological mastery.

The worlds of Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979) and Blade Runner (1982), while never officially merged on screen, share strikingly similar DNA. Both depict futures dominated by extreme class stratification, mega-corporations (there are five identified in Alien: Earth), and the technological mastery of artificial humanoid life—the entirely synthetic androids in Alien and the genetically engineered replicants in Blade Runner. Indeed, Alien: Earth draws considerably on Blade Runner mythology, even if this mythology is not explicitly referenced (at least not in the first episode).

Scott has hinted that the events of these films could exist in the same universe, with Weyland-Yutani producing the synthetics and the Tyrell Corporation producing replicants occupying different corners of human cosmological and technological expansion. By aligning their timelines and social structures, I endeavor to show how the interstellar corporate empire of Alien aligns with the grim, rain-soaked streets of Blade Runner’s Los Angeles, depicted as having suffered significant ecological collapse. Yet, in Blade Runner, there still stands over the multicultural chaos beneath golden cities that pierce the haze.

I weave these worlds together in the chronological order established in these fictions. I will leave aside the details of the various movies and focus instead on Scott’s worldbuilding and how they fit together. I will also set aside criticisms of facts that weaken the synthesis I am presenting. I am trying to make a case here, not tear it apart. I will leave the critique of my synthesis to others. As always, I invite critique.

That said, I admit that the lack of explicit intersection between these worlds makes my argument speculative. For example, why are there no replicants involved in the interstellar space depicted in the Alien franchise? (There is something like replicants in Alien: Earth, called “hybrids,” but with creepier differences, which I will discuss in a note at the end of this essay, since it involves the mind-body problem.) I can (and will) make the case that, in my synthesis, replicants are mostly relegated to the Earth, with blade runners (some of which are replicants themselves—indeed many as we learn in Blade Runner 2049) policing renegade replicants. Perhaps less rationalizable is why no synthetics appear in the Blade Runner franchise. The Blade Runner world is Earth-focused, but one might expect that synthetics would appear there, especially given that Peter Weyland (portrayed by Guy Pierce) and Eldon Tyrell (portrayed by Joe Turkel) are competitors, and finctional Weyland’s TED Talk in 2023, discussed in more detail below, is marked by his defiance of rules constraining the development of such beings.

However, one can reconcile the ethics of replicants and synthetics in the following manner: Many on Earth find synthetic humanoids, whether entirely synthetic or genetically engineered, to be generally problematic, thus mirroring concerns that many living in the real world have about the extremes of biotech, AI, and robotics. It’s possible that Weyland lost his bid—especially considering the replicant problem—to populate Earth with synthetics. Moreover, the known replicant problem of free will arguably makes them largely unsuitable for interstellar work (the crux of the Blade Runner story). They, therefore, would have likely been banned from off-world colonies some time after Deckard, the main protagonist of the original Blade Runner (portrayed by Harrison Ford), confronts Roy Batty (portrayed by Rutger Hauer) and his gang of replicants. They were already largely banned on Earth for this reason (albeit we do see later creation of hybrids according to Alien: Earth, and of course there are replicant blade runners as we see in Blade Runner 2049).

Another possibility, practically speaking, is that, given the time between Blade Runner (2019-2049) and Prometheus (2093), the introduction of synthetics like David, portrayed by Michael Fassbender, may have been a later development, suggesting the biotech route to creating androids was, at least in Scott’s universe, an easier path than entirely synthetic humanoids early on (albeit current technological development indicate the opposite to be the case).

At any rate (and I haven’t work all this out in my mind), I spent time with this matter upfront because the synthesis I now present assumes the premises sussed out above to more fully integrate the Blade Runner and Alien worlds. I wanted to make these assumptions explicit.

The original Blade Runner, based on Philip K. Dick’s 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, takes place in a world of ecological decline and sprawling urban decay. The wealthy having already begun migrating to off-world colonies, leaving behind an underclass in deteriorating megacities. The Tyrell Corporation, at its peak, produces Nexus-6 replicants (Batty being one of these types)—bioengineered humans designed for combat and labor—that are at first indispensable to off-world industries (suggesting that Weyland-type synthetics were not yet available). Beneath the hazy neon skyline lies a chasm between the privileged and the forgotten. For the upper tiers, life is contained within corporate towers and private transit systems. For the proletariat and lumpenproletariat, life is a daily grind through overcrowding, smog and acid rain, and surveillance. Surveillance is an ever-present fact in both the Blade Runner and Alien worlds.

This fragile balance is shattered in 2022. In Blade Runner: Black Out 2022, a 2017 tech-noir cyberpunk anime short film directed by Shinichirō Watanabea, presented as canon, a high-altitude nuclear detonation triggers an electromagnetic pulse over the western United States, wiping out vast swaths of the global digital infrastructure. Banking systems, corporate archives, and government databases vanish in an instant. The loss of identity records leaves millions untraceable—and, for many replicants, free from ownership. This sets up the events of Blade Runner 2049, brilliantly directed by Denis Villeneuve.

The chaos of the period between Blade Runner and Blade Runner 2049 unfolds in stages. In the immediate disruption, communications collapse, power grids fail, and transit halts. Law enforcement is paralyzed; without functioning databases, policing becomes guesswork, and criminal syndicates flourish. Corporate secession follows, as wealthy elites retreat into fortified enclaves, relying on private security to protect their assets. Urban breakdown, marked by looting, riots, and black (informal) economies dominating the proletarian zones. Crucially, for the privileged, the disruption is temporary; hardened data vaults and analog backups allow them to recover within months. Presumably, this catastrophe is what allows the corporate elite to become the governing body of the Earth and beyond—an instance of Barrington Moore’s “revolution” from above.” For the underclass, the Blackout ushers in years of instability, cementing a permanent division between the corporate-controlled “clean world” and the lawless, decaying urban sprawl beneath. In this way, Blade Runner is an instantiation of the endpoint of Saskia Sassen’s “global cities”—class stratification in vertical form under technocratic control.

Only a year after the Blackout in the fictional timeline, in a scene from Prometheus viral campaign (which should have been embedded in the film, with some other scenes cut to accomodate, cut as well as because of their excesses—e.g., an exploding engineer’s head), a young Weyland delivers a TED Talk in 2023 (which uncannily anticipates the rise of Elon Musk). In it, Weyland promises to reshape human destiny, claiming, “We are the gods now.” While the underclass still reels from the Blackout, Weyland’s words resonate in elite circles, heralding a new era of corporate ambition. To be explicit, I am inserting Weyland into the Blade Runner timeline. At this stage, Tyrell and Weyland’s domains overlap but remain distinct: Tyrell focuses on replicants—biological constructs nearly indistinguishable from humans, which require the Voight-Kampff test to differentiate them from humans—while Weyland pursues synthetic AI, robotics, and terraforming.

Tyrell’s most notable replicants are the aforementioned Batty and Rachel (portrayed by Sean Young)—and possibly Deckard himself (although I have always resisted this suggestion, as has Harrison). Weyland’s most notable synthetics are Ash (from the original Alien movie, played by Ian Holm), Bishop (from James Cameron’s 1996 Aliens, portrayed by Lance Henriksen), and David (from Scott’s 2012 Prometheus and 2017 Covenant, where Fassbender also portrays David’s identical Walter, albeit with a distinct temperament). In my synthesis, both replicants and synthetics exist in a world where governments and institutions have lost the public’s trust and corporations are viewed as the only reliable sources of stability. Alongside the question of “what is human?”, Scott’s dark portrayal of corporate power is the most compelling angle of both franchises.

The death of Tyrell in the original Blade Runner weakens his company, and by the 2040s, the Tyrell Corporation collapses. Niander Wallace (portrayed by Jared Leto) acquires its assets, reviving replicant production and expanding into off-world colonization. So, at least at this time, replicants could still be found off-world, with the events in Prometheus and Alien still decades away (with the introduction of hybrids in the new series representing something of the replicant 2.0). Wallace’s work in planetary resource extraction dovetails neatly with Weyland’s own ambitions, and one can imagine this setting the stage for the eventual absorption of Wallace technology into the Weyland-Yutani portfolio later in the twenty-first century (although, again, this is not explicit in the films).

In Blade Runner 2049, Earth’s environment has degraded further. Agriculture relies almost entirely on genetically engineered crops and protein farms; natural ecosystems are largely gone, at least in those places where events of the movie unfold. Off-world migration is no longer just an opportunity—it is a necessity for anyone seeking a better life. The clean world of corporate elites thrives in secure districts and orbital habitats, while below remain neon-lit labyrinths of crime, industrial smog, and grinding poverty.

By the time of Prometheus, set in 2093, Weyland stands as an elder statesman of industry and innovation, commanding resources that rival entire nations. His focus is no longer on the decaying Earth cities but on deep space exploration, synthetic human development, and terraforming alien worlds. In my synthesis, the underclass—and the blade runners who police it—still exist, but they are irrelevant to the priorities of interstellar corporate leadership. However, finding it impossible to not work into the synthesis the new television series, the events of Alien: Earth occur in a vast city called New Siam, located in a futuristic Thailand, controlled by the corporation Prodigy, which gives it the feel of the Blade Runner series, especially in the incorporation of Far Eastern culture in the multicultural mix.

(I must note here that the globalist, multicultural vibe is anticipated by Gene Roddenberry in his conception of the Star Trek franchise, set in the mid-twenty-third century, as well as the Khan Project, where genetically enhanced humans culminate in the late twentieth-century Eugenics Wars, resolved by sending the “augments” into deep space aboard the sleeper ship SS Botany Bay in suspended animation. Humanity missed the opportunity to destroy the existential threat augments pose when it had the chance. So did James Kirk, captain of the USS Enterprise in the original 1960s series, which prepared the movie franchise for its best installment, the 1982 film The Wrath of Khan.)

In Alien (set in 2122), Aliens (set in 2179), and Alien: Romulus (set between Alien and Aliens), it is the Age of Weyland-Yutani. Yutani is a Japanese manufacturing powerhouse that appears mainly in the expanded universe with subtle film references—thus Scott conceives a global and interplanetary megacorporation. As in Star Trek, humanity is at this point a spacefaring civilization. Earth remains inhabited and plays a central role in the culture and economy; however, the corporate gaze is cast spaceward, where vast riches await mining. Weyland-Yutani dominates colonization, military contracting, and resource exploitation.

In this synthesis, the hazy neon streets of Blade Runner’s Los Angeles are a historical footnote, remembered—if at all—as the chaotic early days of the megacorporate era. Yet the exploitation, hierarchy, stratification, and disregard for human life that defined 2019 Los Angeles will not have disappeared, just expanded to the stars. However, this dynamic appears in the Alien series, as well. One sees it in life aboard the Nostromo, the commercial towing spaceship featured in the original Alien film (its interior almost identically recreated in Alien: Earth), where the crew are depicted as the expendable peons of corporate power. Moreover, warrant officer Ripley, the protagonist of Alien and Aliens, portrayed by Sigourney Weaver, never returns to Earth; instead, she is drawn immediately into the military mission to LV-426 in Cameron’s Aliens. Crucially, then, throughout the Alien series, Earth (except for the latest offering) exists mainly as a distant backdrop—an implied homeworld largely overshadowed by spaceward corporate ventures. All this makes it easier to integrate Alien and Blade Runner universes.

A worthy question to ask—which may strike some readers as a convenient rationalization—is how humans in the Alien context know whether replicants walk amongst them? After all, the crew of the Nostromo was surprised to learn that Ash is a synthetic. For that matter, how would anybody in the Blade Runner universe know for certain that they are not interacting with one of Weyland’s synthetics? This speaks to the problem with humanoid synthetics designed to look and act like human beings, so much so that tests had to be developed to detect them—indeed, with some perhaps not even knowing themselves whether they are artificial. This raises the philosophical question that obsesses Scott about the nature of humanness, a question central to Alien: Earth with Prodigy’s hybrids.

In reflecting on the worlds of Blade Runner and Alien, Baudrillard’s concept of the “precession of simulacra” resonates deeply. The replicants and synthetics are not merely artificial beings; they embody simulations that precede and ultimately threaten to replace humans. In these narratives, the boundaries between the artificial and the authentic blur, revealing a universe where simulation no longer copies reality but becomes its own hyperreality. In Alien: Covenant, the synthetic David even becomes the creator of life.

I have moved from world-building to the problem of simulation, so I will finish where I started: the problem of synthetic beings. The replicants’ struggle for identity and freedom is a poignant allegory for our own moment, where distinctions between the organic and the synthetic dissolve, and authenticity becomes a contested concept. Batty says to Tyrell before killing his creator, “I want more life, father.” As these synthetic beings simulate humanity so flawlessly, society is left questioning what it truly means to be human, a question that dominates the first episode of Alien: Earth. The corporate empires controlling these technologies mirror Baudrillard’s hyperreal world, where simulations are commodified and wielded as tools of control and power.

Baudrillard’s precession of simulacra compels us to confront a critical paradox: as technology advances, the simulated becomes more “real” than reality itself (this was Tyrell’s corporate slogan—“More Human Than Human”?). With this development, humanity loses touch with an authentic human experience and enters the era of hyperreality. The worlds of Blade Runner and Alien are thus cautionary visions of a future where human freedom and reason are entangled with and undermined by the omnipresence of simulations. Both movies make androids, some sympathetic, others not so much, that murder humans. Thus humanity’s Promethean drive—and transhumanist desire—boomarangs. It is not enough to be human. One desires at least modification. And he desires it at the cost of losing his essential being.

(For two of my earlier essays on problems from the Alien universe (from 2012, recovered from my old blog, hosted by Google’s Blogger), see Ridley Scott’s Prometheus and the Problem of Time Dilation and The Xenomorph Life Cycle Canon.)

* * *

The promised note. Don’t read if you hate spoilers. This note stems from arguments I made over the years with a good friend, my eldest son, my recently deceased mother, and students in my first-year seminar.

In Aliens: Earth, while the hybrid Wendy may subjectively feel like the terminally ill child she once was—and to her own consciousness, continuity seems intact—it doesn’t follow that the original child lives on. This problem makes the new series a very dark exploration of corporate power—and the power of corporate illusion. If we consider that our identities arise not from an immaterial mind implanted in a neutral vehicle, but from the emergent, integrated, embodied unity of brain, body, and experience, then the synthetic body stands as a mere vessel, not with a tranferred consciousness, but a replication of that consciousness. The original child—Marcy—dies when her biological body perishes, and what emerges is, at best, a copy of her mind rather than a continuation (n this way, like Rachel’s memory implants, which are those of Tyrell’s niece Lilith. Hence, despite outward familiarity, the true child is lost, and every consciousness transferred to a synthetic host constitutes a new, artificial life rather than a preserved one. This is the most compelling aspect of the new series.

This tehcnology is developed by Boy Kavalier, the brilliant but psychopathic CEO of Prodigy, who built the company as a child and, by age 20 or so, became the world’s youngest trillionaire (a reworking of Musk’s biography, something a wunderkind who would no doubt attempt the same thing if technology were at this point?). Kavalier develops Prodigy’s hybrid consciousness-transfer program in hopes of ultimately transferring his mind into a synthetic body, perceiving the children he “saves” not as altruistic beneficiaries but as prototypes for his inevitable immortality, a goal sought by Weyland in Prometheus. The theme is wrapped in the Peter Pan thematic, where the superrich desire also to live in Neverland.

This is not the first treatment of this dilemma, which I noted even at a young age. In Star Trek—and in a more grotesque form in Cronenberg’s The Fly—the transporter poses a profound identity problem: every time a person steps into the device, the original is disintegrated, ceasing to exist. What emerges on the other side is not a preserved self but a newly assembled being, a perfect imitation built from a genetic and informational blueprint. This reconstructed person may carry all the memories and personality traits of the original, and thus sincerely believe he is the same individual, but he is in fact a duplicate.

The unsettling corollary is that the system could easily create two (or more) Captain Kirks, the new Kirk the same as food or anything else is replicated aboard the Enterprise, meaning the illusion of a single, continuous Kirk is maintained only by ensuring the destruction of each prior iteration. Dr. McCoy’s oft-voiced complaint about having his atoms scattered across the galaxy misses the deeper horror: it isn’t that his atoms are scattered—it’s that his death is required every time he uses the transporter, a blind spot surprisingly unacknowledged by a twenty-second-century physician.

“In a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” —not George Orwell

Imagine a professor drawing up and circulating a petition to have a student expelled from the university because he disagrees with a student’s belief in creationism or intelligent design. The student runs a platform from which he promulgates this theory, which is widely shared among the public.

As an evolutionist, I am startled by how widespread belief in creationism is among Americans. According to a May 2024 Gallup poll, 37 percent of US adults identify as “creationist purists,” meaning they believe that God created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years. As a libertarian, I am committed to the right of Christians to believe that the Earth is young (or old, from their perspective) and that God created and populated it with all the things we see with our very own eyes.

However, this professor I am imagining, a progressive, insists that, because his identity as an evolutionist is sacrosanct, and the theory calls his identity into question—the theory is bigoted, even dangerous. It offends him and, moreover, makes him feel unsafe. The professor thought the university was a safe space in which he would not have to suffer the presence of students in his classroom—or on campus—who advance ideas that question his identity. The university, therefore, should expel the student. At the very least, the university should issue a statement affirming his identity.

How likely is it that the professor could get other professors to sign his petition? Not very likely, one would hope. Assuming the best of professionals committed to academic freedom and the First Amendment, his colleagues would say that students are free to believe what they will, and that it was not his or their role to gatekeep ideas by punishing students with disagreeable ideas. Indeed, again assuming the best, they would worry that the professor was not committed to or at least sufficiently tolerant of the values of a free, open, and questioning society promoted by the university at large.

After all, academic freedom is not just for professors, but for students, too. Indeed, the noble professors I am supposing consider the problem in this situation not the student but the professor. Some even expect the dean to call the professor to his office and ask him why he would do such a thing. All students are welcome here, the dean would say. Viewpoint diversity is essential to the Enlightenment project.

Now, let’s suppose the theory in question is the proposition that gender is binary and immutable and that this theory is promulgated by a group of students. This view is even more widespread among the public. A 2022–2023 survey by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) found that 65 percent of Americans believe there are only two genders. A Pew Research Center survey around the same time showed that 60 percent of Americans believed that a person’s gender should align with the sex assigned at birth. The 2025 AP-NORC poll reported that approximately two-thirds of US adults agree with the statement, attributed to Donald Trump, that gender is determined by biological sex at birth. The proportion of the population who believes this is on the rise. This is because of the work of this platform and other courageous voices.

Let’s make the professor queer for this example and imagine that he espouses the theory of gender identity. Suppose further that the official position of the university is that it is a welcoming environment for LGBTQIA+ individuals. Does this change anything? It’s hard to imagine that it does. Yes, there will be students who believe in the gender binary. The conservative and classically liberal students will for sure (whatever they stand on other matters, conservatives and classical liberals are clear-headed on this one).

Are such students unwelcome at a public university because they believe in the gender binary? On what grounds can conservatives and classical liberals be excluded from a college education or expelled from the university because of their beliefs? However, conservatives in particular at my institution tell me they feel unwelcome. Few major in my program for this reason. Many more don’t attend public universities. But, for those who come, the university must allow them to matriculate. They’re citizens—and taxpayers. And they are our future.

What do I tell my conservative students? Don’t leave. If a professor says something you disagree with, challenge him. I will have your back.

What if it were the students who believed in the gender binary drafted and circulated a petition to expel the queer professor from the university because they disagreed with his belief in gender identity? What university administration would recognize such a petition as carrying any weight at all? None, I am confident. Nor should they be. It’s not difficult to imagine that the dean of students might call the students into his office and remind them of the importance of the values of academic freedom and a free, opening, and questioning society.

Just because conservative students disagree with the professor is no reason to seek his dismissal. In America, people are allowed to believe different things. To be sure, they have the right to assemble and petition the administration, but their desire to see the professor kicked to the curb is out of step with the ideals of the public university. The petition should not only carry no weight, but it is a stain on the reputations of the students who brought it.

Now, suppose the students who circulate the petition are progressive students who believe in gender identity, and the target of their petition is a professor who believes in the gender binary and its immutability. Now things are likely to become different. The administration does not bring the students into their offices and explain to them the values of a free and open society and the vital importance of academic freedom. The professor’s colleagues don’t support their colleague but instead subject him to an hour-long struggle session, shaming him for his beliefs, wondering what they’re supposed to tell their students about him, while dressing the petition signed by those who appeals to offense-taking and safety in the robes of civic action, actions designed to chill the air and damage the reputation of their colleague.

Imagine the professor is coming up for post-tenure review. In his course evaluations, instead of providing constructive advice about his teaching, some respondents abuse the opportunity to attack him for his views, demanding he be fired. They’re thinking that his colleagues and administrators will read those comments and carry out their will—those such comments presume.

Given the situation, can we blame the professor for being concerned that the university might carry out the will of the group of students who are using these various avenues to secure his dismissal by using the post-tenure process as a proxy for punishing the professor for his belief in the gender binary? 

This is what we mean when we talk about the chill. The professor knows such tactics are effective because he sees the lay of the land, as any rational person would. He knows that ideology undermines fairness and reason in ideologically-captured institutions.

Had these comments been made by conservative students in a campaign to silence and remove from employ a queer professor, complaining about things he had written on his platform, even for things he said in class (professors feel safe in presenting queer theory as obvious truth), appealing to the petition they circulated—nobody seriously thinks the professor should worry about his colleagues and administrators chastising him in a struggle session, or worrying that the post-tenure review process might serve as a proxy for punishing the professor for his belief in queer theory? Not in the least. Nor should he worry. The conservative students are in the wrong.

Why the double standard?

Put aside the guff about power asymmetries. The theory supposing an oppressor and the oppressed, and the judgment that asymmetries gives the latter the power to silence the former, is a cracked theory. It is bereft of reason. It is an entirely artbitrary proposition imposed by those with illegimate power. To be sure, one may appeal to cracked theories, but it cannot determine the fate of individuals in a civilization founded on liberty.

That nobody thinks that a university would abandon a queer professor but would be unsurprised when it kicks a liberal professor to the curb for his commitment to science testifies to how the institution has become ideologically captured by this and other progressive agendas, conscripted, if you will, into carrying out the demand that the ideology of some students be carried out in action—to wit, that belief in the gender binary should be condemned as bigoted and that professors who hold these views be censured or expelled, or at least hassled.

I close with the frame provided by Hans Christian Andersen’s parable “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” What is happening at our universities under the thumb of gender ideology is the persecution of professors for professing scientific truths. We also see this with critical race theory (CRT). The professor targeted by students committed to gender ideology is also a likely target by those committed to “antiracist” action. (For my prior use of Andersen, see Wokism and the Naked Truth; The Emperor is Naked: The Problems of Mutual Knowledge and Free Feelings; Stepping into Oppression.)

The point is that being called to account these days in public universities only occurs when their pronouncements contradict woke progressive ideology. The demand that professors uphold a particular ideology by not criticizing it occurs because, only by preventing mutual knowledge around the truth that men who say they are women are not really women, or that systemic racism is largely mythic, can the fiction that they are or can be, or that America is a profoundly racist country, be preserved. When myths crumble under the force of truth, actions lose their cloak of justice. What is left is obvious illegitimacy. This is why the public sees neo-Nazis not as a social movement but a gang of thugs.

Perpetuating the fiction is what lies behind the demand for affirmation, wrong-gender pronouns, and all the rest of the woke demands. That those around the trans identifying man correctly gender the man reminds him that he is not the gender he wishes to be (for whatever reason). The truth stresses him. If you tell a man who thinks he is God that he is merely mortal, then you will distress him. Especially if the world around the man tells him he is a woman or God.

Manufacturing and entrenching illusions takes a lot of effort, but illusions are always fragile, because they are just that: illusions. To avoid the feelings that come with crumbling illusions, the deluded man demands even more loudly that others misgender him, and if they don’t, in the camera obscura of his ideology, where things are their opposites, he accuses them of “misgendering” him. (See The Faux-Left and the Woke Function; Inverting the Inversions of the Camera Obscura; Manipulating Reality by Manipulating Words.)

Such an offense has for years been practically an unpardonable sin. We’re told that pronouns are no big deal, it’s such a little thing, but then make a big deal over them when the rules aren’t followed. But whose rules? The rules by which humans have operated for millennia? The rules that come with the instinct of natural history? Or the rules of a new minority that demands conformity to a new ideology?

It is particularly helpful to those imposing new rules that the institutions and organizations in which they move demand that everybody follow the new rules. It’s understandable that those who call the new rules into question make those who require the rules to feel unsafe. Truth threatens chicanery. Only treasonous magicians expose the tricks of the trade. Tricks depend on audiences prepared for deception. Trusting magicians with truth begins the end of civilizations.

Every professor who reads this essay knows the new rules and the pressure to follow them. Some embrace the new rules for reputational and professional advancement, even convincing themselves that the new rules are the right rules. Once so disposed, it is nearly impossible to blast them out of their cracked worldview. As the muckracker Upton Sinclair put it: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

Trepidation at violating the new rules is thus palpable. But there are other professors and graduate students who talk about the situation in hushed voices at professional conferences. They’re talking about the emperor and they don’t want the emperor to hear them. They thank me in private DMs for my courage to write posts like this and apologize for not speaking up themselves. I don’t blame them. They see what happened to me (and there are far more serious cases than mine). Yes, the imagined professor in the third scenario is yours truly (see The Snitchy Dolls Return).

Open and free spaces are unsafe because they allow the truth to be spoken and for mutual knowledge to be manifest. These spaces should be unsafe in the sense that the woke have articulated. For if we are forced to appreciate—because some people want to appear hip and smart—the emperor’s new clothes when there are none (or even when the emperor is dressed in false reality, for that matter), then we live in an unfree society. We must feel free to tell the truth. That free feeling is obtained when nobody is told what to say or punished for saying what they’re told they’re not supposed to.

* * *

A brief historical note: Sinclair was a committed socialist. He joined the Socialist Party of America in the early 1900s, ran for political office several times on its ticket, and believed capitalism exploited workers as a fact of its logic. His novel The Jungle (1906) was meant to stir outrage at labor conditions and push the public toward socialism. Instead, his exposé ended up mainly inspiring food safety reforms. For this reason, socialists were often considered part of the progressive movement in the sense of advocating reform, fighting corruption, and supporting labor rights. But Sinclair’s standpoint went well beyond mainstream progressivism, which usually sought to regulate capitalism, not replace it. Sinclair’s muckraking was coopted by elites to make corporate capitalism appear concerned with the average person. This why progressivism appears and history—and persists to this very day.

Imagine if the Republican Party or those sympathetic to the Party’s ideas had governed, profitted from, and defended the slavocracy; seceded from the Union, creating its own nation, and made war on their fellow citizens; killed the President who abolished slavery; created the KKK and terrorized black familes for decades; lynched thousands of blacks, including women and chilldren; established Jim Crow segregation and fought in Congress to keep it; established internment camps for American citizens; assassinated civil rights leader MLK, Jr.

How would the Republican Party and its followers have any credibility in modern politics with this history? Would they not be seen almost universally as the party of white supremacy? It depends of course on whether conservatives and classical liberals controlled our sense-making institutions and were able to (assuming they had the predicate character to spin big lies) twist history in such an Orwellian manner as to make the Democrats appear to be the major party that did all these racist things. But Republicans don’t. And so for a lot of Americans, it’s the Republicans who are the party of white supremacy. (See History as Ideology: The Myth that the Democrats Became the Party of Lincoln; Republicanism and the Meaning of Small Government.)

This is arguably the greatest propaganda accomplishment in world history, and progressives could not have pulled it off had they not been so successful in colonizing the dominant administrative and intellectual apparatuses of the nation—and they could not have done that in a capitalist society without the desire of corporate leaders to see progressive ideology and its telling of history become the prevailing narrative in America culture and politics (and the West generally).

We hear that American is a racist country. I would suggest that, if so, the best evidence in support of the claim is the way the party of white supremacy was able to portray itself as the party of racial justice—and make its opposition wear its dress. Democrats could not have remained in power for so long but for a racist culture that sustained them over the decades. To be sure, racism had to adapt over the years—from slavery to Jim Crow to DEI—but its persistence and permanent home in the Democratic Party, and the success of the Party over the decades, tells us a great deal about the national character. Until we purge the last of these sentiments from our culture (and we came close in the decades following the struggle of the 1960s), we cannot come together finally as one people.

I will continue sharing messages like this to keep folks conscious of the trouble the nation will face should Republicans lose the midterm elections in 2026. It will be here before we know it and we need to keep up the enthusiasm for the long struggle for a more perfect Union. America is a constitutional republic. Elect those who understand its founding character. It is an ideal to be obtained by those who believe in it. Those who don’t, just get in the way.

***

I initially sought a different image for this essay. I went to Grok and prompted it with this: “Union versus confederacy on the battlefield. Over their heads write Democrat and Republican, thus correctly identifying the sides.”

It generated this image:

After a few confused image generations I asked Grok why it kept mislabeling the sides. “I apologize for the confusion. The mix-up likely stems from the evolution of political parties over time. During the Civil War (1861–1865), the Republican Party, led by Abraham Lincoln, supported the Union (North), while the Democratic Party had significant support in the Confederacy (South). However, modern associations with these parties can differ, which might have influenced the initial error. I’ve corrected the depiction to reflect the historical alignment: Republicans with the Union (blue uniforms) and Democrats with the Confederacy (gray uniforms). Thank you for your patience, and I’ll ensure greater accuracy moving forward.”

Grok never did generate an image with the sides correctly identified. So I gave up and used an actual historical image. The AI confusion of sides is a prime example of the effects of progressive ideology and the extent to which it has corrupted historical memory. One can easily imagine a future where the ubiquity of the myth of the parties flipping will be universally assumed as historical truth.

Last night I watched an unofficial documentary on the making of Black Sabbath’s 1972 Vol. 4 album, originally Snowblind, a title the band, under pressure from Vertigo and Warner Brothers, was forced to abandon. The documentary (link provided at the end of this essay) inspires me to revisit Sabbath’s 1972 offering, an album with which I’ve had a love-hate relationship since I first heard it back in the 1970s when I was in high school.

After reviewing the history of the album, I’ve learned that I am not alone in my feelings about Vol. 4. Although the album contains some outstanding production—most notably the track “Tomorrow’s Dream” and the acoustic instrumental “Laguna Sunrise”—much of the record suffers from production choices that have frustrated fans. They have certainly frustrated me. While production is the main problem with Vol. 4, there are other reasons Vol. 4 is a lesser album in the Sabbath catalog.

The recording context and timeline of Vol. 4 are essential to understanding its production flaws, and the documentary I watched last night, its relevant claims confirmed by additional research, was helpful to this end. “Tomorrow’s Dream” was recorded in January 1972, during sessions closely following Master of Reality, the band’s third album, which was recorded in December 1970 through early 1971, and released in July 1971. This track’s relatively superior sound quality stands in sharp relief to the rest of Volume IV, much of which was recorded later that year following the completion of the second leg of the Master of Reality tour. It is in these later sessions that the production quality noticeably declines.

One cannot discuss Vol. 4 without acknowledging the band’s growing cocaine use around 1972. The drug abuse reportedly began during the Master of Reality era but became more entrenched during the Volume IV sessions. Guitarist and principal riff writer Tony Iommi was particularly impacted by the drug. The lifestyle and its associated chaos undoubtedly contributed to the difficulties in maintaining focus and achieving the sonic clarity present on earlier albums. There were other drugs involved, as well. Bill Ward, struggling with alcohol dependency, was almost canned because of his inability to grasp some of the compositional elements in “Cornucopia” and “Under the Sun.”

But it wasn’t just the drugs. Where an album is recorded has a lot to do with the sound. “Tomorrow’s Dream” was recorded at the Record Plant Studios in Los Angeles, the same studio where Master of Reality was recorded (according to the documentary, it was in LA that the band was introduced to cocaine). However, most of Vol. 4 was recorded at Island Studios in London. This likely had something to do with the production. Indeed, in many ways, “Tomorrow’s Dream” stands as a bridge from Master of Reality to the rest of Vol. V.

Critics and fans alike have noted that, for most of the album, the drum sound is underwhelming, with the kick drum buried low in the mix and an overall lack of presence or punch that diminishes the impact of Ward’s performance. Overall, the drums sound thin. The bass guitar similarly feels submerged, failing to provide the driving low end that had characterized previous albums. Most fans would acknowledge that much of Sabbath’s sound is due to Geezer Butler’s bass playing and unique tone. Most glaringly, Iommi’s guitar tone, once thick and heavy under Bain’s guidance, comes across as brittle and thin throughout much of the album—except again on “Tomorrow’s Dream,” which preserves that earlier warmth, as well as the drum and bass sounds familiar on Master of Reality.

One cannot ignore ego in all this. In the documentary, during that period, both Iommi and Ozzy Osbourne express dissatisfaction with Bain’s production, feeling it didn’t fully capture their sound. For Vol. 4, the band, in particular Iommi, served as the producer, with Mike Butcher engineering. In interviews, the band said that Vol. 4 was the first time they really had control over production and could achieve the sound they wanted. Their opinion testifies to the importance of having a producer who is not in the band (Judas Priest’s albums produced by Glenn Tipton likewise suffer from not having a producer like Tom Allom or Chris Tsangarides at the helm). Compare Sabbath’s work produced by Iommi to albums produced by Martin Birch (Heaven and Hell and Mob Rules).

Following Vol. 4, Sabbath’s production improved notably on Sabbath Bloody Sabbath (1973), Iommi co-producing alongside the band and Butcher. This album’s sound is richer and more layered, with greater attention to detail and experimentation in the studio. However, the subsequent album Sabotage (1975) presents a mixed picture. While the production overall is solid, some guitar tones, such as on “Symptom of the Universe” (a killer track otherwise), don’t capture Iommi’s signature tone, with a rawness that some may interpret as either a stylistic choice or the result of technical limitations or time pressures in the studio. I admit that taste is a subjective matter, but it’s worth noting that internal tensions and ongoing substance issues were escalating throughout his period, which could have influenced these inconsistencies. In the end, these problems led to Sabbath firing Ozzy in 1979 and Sabbath charting a new path with Ronnie James Dio.

Black Sabbath Vol. 4 stands as a fascinating yet flawed chapter in the band’s storied career. The album’s production issues, linked to both technical choices and the band’s personal struggles, have left me (and others) wishing for a more robust sonic treatment of the material. The songwriting and performances hold up for the most part. The evolution of Black Sabbath’s production roles—culminating in Iommi’s co-production on Sabbath Bloody Sabbath—signaled the band’s determination to refine their sound despite ongoing challenges. I get the desire (a desire likely driven in part by cocaine-inflated ego). But in the final analysis, Sabbath erred in moving on without Bain or somebody who could capture the essence of Sabbath, which is defined by those first three albums.

Again, my observations regarding the production shortcomings of Vol. 4 are not isolated. Music critics and longtime fans frequently cite this album as having some of the weakest production in Sabbath’s classic era. The drum mix, bass levels, and brittle guitar tones are common points of complaint. At the same time, it is widely recognized that, despite production, the songwriting of the group shines through in songs like “Snowblind,” a remarkable composition somewhat marred by its production. “Supernaut” is another excellent track that suffers from Iommi having taken over at the helm.

Not that all the songs on Vol. 4 are worthy of inclusion on their merit, mind you. One track in particular, “Wheels of Confusion,” despite its promising beginning, collapses into chaos—and not the wicked disjunctures Sabbath is known for. The short “St Vitus Dance” seems hastily written (and fails to capture the magic of “Paranoid,” another short, hastily written track off the band’s sophomore effort). But, again, my main problem with Vol. 4 is the production. This is a shame, since most of the songs on the album are great. “Tomorrow’s Dream,” “Snowblind,” “Cornucopia,” “Supernaut,” and “Under the Sun” are superbly constructed and lyrically sublime.

Unlike the first three albums (excepting “Rat Salad,” a vehicle for Ward’s drum solo, and “The Warning,” a cover song), many of the songs from Vol. 4 don’t make my classic Sabbath playlist. This is true for the next four albums, as well, albeit this is not because of production as much as due to their creativity waning (frankly, I don’t include anything from Technical Ecstacy or Never Say Die). Vol. 4’s production is a real barrier for me, despite an abundance of excellent material, causing me to situate those songs towards the end of the playlist. I do this so my listening experience is not sonically derailed. I’ve tried for years to rationalize the production on this album, but in the final analysis, I can’t.

Needless to say (but I will say it anyway) I am a massive Black Sabbath fan. Sabbath’s first three albums, produced by Roger Bain, stand as the foundation of heavy metal. While other bands of the period produced heavy metal music (Lucifer’s Friend’s “Ride the Sky” stands out), Sabbath is the world’s first true heavy metal band. Bain’s production captured the raw power and doom-laden atmosphere that defined the band’s early sound and established the genre. Rick Beato’s recent tribute to Ozzy Osbourne provides an excellent treatment of Sabbath’s impact on the many species of metal Sabbath inspired. Here’s a link:

In reflecting on Vol. 4, an intriguing question arises: do the master tapes of the recording survive in good condition? If so, there could be potential for reengineering some of the sounds (reamping or rerecording the guitar on some songs), remixing several tracks (to approximate “Tomorrow’s Dream”), and remastering the entire album to bring everything in line. This would address the album’s production weaknesses, bringing greater balance and depth to the drums, bass, and guitars. I am sympathetic to the complaint that rerecording guitar parts alters a historical document. At the same time, a musician as respected as Frank Zappa was known for rerecording parts in pursuit of perfection (incidentally, Zappa was a huge fan of the track “Supernaut”). Such a project would likely be welcomed by fans and critics eager to hear these songs realized with the sonic clarity they deserve. Those fans who object can simply refuse to buy the remixed/remastered offering. And I could have the Sabbath playlist I always wanted.

Here’s a link to the documentary as promised:

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and his team at Health and Human Services (Hatfield and the rest) are not anti-vax. Gene therapy, i.e., mRNA technology, this is not standard vaccine technology—the technology touted by progressives as having saved millions of lives over the last several decades—but a novel experimental product that has caused widespread harm across world regions where citizens were either manipulated or coerced into submitting their bodies—and the bodies of their children—to the jab.

What RFK, Jr. and his team are doing is putting science and public safety before corporate profit by standing up to Big Pharma and subservient technocrats pushing new technologies.

Why were people censored (like me), deboosted (like me), and deplatformed (almost) by telling the truth about mRNA technologies? Why were dissenting physicians and other medical professionals canceled by their employers and Big Tech social media platforms? Why is the corporate media pro-mRNA? Because the Medical-Industrial Complex commands the prevailing administrative and media apparatuses. The answer to the last question is obvious: Big Pharma funds the legacy media through advertising (RFK, Jr. has a plan to deal with that, too).

This development, among other things, is why voting for Donald Trump in November 2024 was so vitally important. Why progressives think that Big Pharma is immune to the incentives that drive Big Ag, Big Chem, and other effective monopolies is a chief symptom of the pathological character of this worldview—a reflection of the corporatist mentality (see The Origins of the Medical-Industrial Complex). RFK, Jr. is taking on corporate power. He would not be in a position to do so if Trump had not won back the White House.

These are the same people who think that blocking the puberty of normally developing children, administering cross-sex hormones, and performing radical surgeries—the amputation of healthy breasts, phalloplasty, vaginoplasty—is not merely appropriate but humane acts of social justice. On the contrary, these are medical atrocities. The Medical-Industrial Complex—endocrinologists, psychiatrists, surgeons—embraces this ideology because it advances corporate profits and generates lucrative career paths.

As I argued recently on Freedom and Reason (see Medical Atrocities Then and Now: The Dark Continuity of Gender Affirming Care), this is what happens when corporate profits, ideology, and science become integrated. It’s what I (and others) have called “scientism.” In popular culture, we see it in buffoons like Steven Colbert prancing about on TV with dancers dressed as syringes. Media personalities work overtime to make those of us who can read and understand science appear as mouthbreathing neanderthals. Industry has a long history of this tactic, which anybody familiar with the Big Ag and Big Chem attacks on environmental activists and health advocates knows all too well.

I remember when many on the left understood this. But by around 2010, most of the left could no longer. Those who still could abandoned the left for higher rational grounds. This is why, before the decade was out, I could no longer associate myself with the left.

“It was a grave mistake to let in so many people of totally different cultural and religious concepts because it creates a pressure group inside each country that does that”—Henry Kissinger, speaking about Hamas-cheering protesters in the West

I want to expand on something I wrote on Facebook a few days ago. I wrote then that the survival of a nation depends on knowing the difference between immigration and colonization. We must make this distinction obvious to the masses. But millions are blind to reality. So I am following up.

Immigration and colonization involve people moving to a new land, but they differ significantly in effects and purpose. Immigration refers to individuals or groups relocating to another country to integrate into the existing cultural, legal, and social framework.

Legitimate immigrants adapt to learn the language and local customs, and contribute to the host society—while respecting its established norms and institutions. Colonization, on the other hand, occurs when newcomers arrive with the effect and purpose of imposing their own culture, governance structures, language, and laws on the existing population, reshaping or replacing the native way of life.

In short, whereas immigration is characterized by assimilation or integration (really, the same thing), colonization involves a transformation of the host society’s identity through displacement and dominance.

This distinction is crucial for understanding contemporary population movements and their consequences for national identity and sovereignty. It is also essential for identifying the enemy from within. When a people are told by their fellow natives—and their children taught—to tolerate foreign cultures and sensibilities via the manufactured ethic of multiculturalism, these natives are exposed as colonial collaborators.

Don’t fear the colonial collaborators. Don’t let them silence you with smears of bigotry, racism, and xenophobia. Shun and shame them. These progressives telling you that you must be tolerant, even affirming, of cultural differences are working at cross purposes with the imperative of national integrity. They do not speak for Americas or Europeans. They speak for the globalists. The globalists mean to dismantle the West to clear the way for a corporatist transnational empire. Encouraging the colonization of the West by Third Worlders is part of their strategy of world domination.

Immigrant or colonizer? How do we tell the difference? This is known by whether the foreigner assimilates or resists integration. The latter must be deported as soon as his intent is obvious. The former? Be on guard. Colonizers lie. So do their collaborators in the West.

Case in point: the consternation over Israel’s plan to occupy Gaza City. Israel has been depicted by progressives as the colonizer for so long that the widespread assumption is that there is something unjust about Israel’s actions in Gaza. But there is a historical analogue that should guide us in deciding what our opinion on this matter ought to be: the occupation of Germany in the aftermath of World War II.

Those who oppose Israeli plans cite the destruction of much of Gaza from bombing campaigns. Even Steve Bannon of the War Room was going on about this on his Saturday morning program. As I have noted before, during World War II, the Allied bombing campaign against Germany, which aimed to cripple its industrial capacity and break civilian morale, left scenes identical to those we see from Gaza (see The Danger of Missing the Point: Historical Analogies and the Israel-Gaza Conflict).

The Allied bombings caused widespread destruction, with estimates of German civilian deaths ranging from 300,000 to 500,000. In addition to the fatalities, many hundreds of thousands were injured or maimed, with entire urban areas devastated and millions left homeless.

Following Nazi Germany’s well-deserved defeat, the country was occupied by the Allied powers. During this occupation period, a major focus was on denazification, which aimed at removing Nazi influence from cultural, political, and social institutions. This included trials for war criminals, the banning of Nazi organizations, and re-education efforts to promote democratic values.

The postwar upheaval caused massive displacement, with estimates of around 12-14 million Germans expelled from various territories they had settled. Displacement created a humanitarian crisis, reshaping the nation’s demographics and postwar recovery. This history is the consequence of Germany’s actions under Nazi rule.

The government of Gaza, organized by Hamas, a modern incarnation of Nazism, right down to the pathological desire to eradicate the Jews, attacked Israel on October 7, 2023. Israel rightly retaliated with a massive bombing campaign and ground invasion to overthrow Hamas and rehabilitate Gaza to ensure it was no longer a threat to Israel. This is near-perfectly analogous to the Allied invasion and occupation of Nazi Germany and Nazi held territory.

So why don’t people see it the same way? Again, because progressives have successfully portrayed Israel as a white settler colonial entity and an illegitimate country. In the end, more destructive to the survival of Israel than Hamas attacks will be the delegitimation project that has transformed Jews into a white settler colonial project in the public mind.

I get why the Israel people tire of war. I understand their concern for the fate of the hostages still held by Hamas. But the survival of Israel depends on annihilating Hamas and sending a signal to the world that Israel will not allow the genocidal desire of antisemites to do to Jews what Nazi Germany—and many others before them—did.

It’s not just the Jews who are being delegitimized in this way by progressive forces. Americans and Europeans are depicted as white settler colonials, too. Just today, I again ran across on X another version of the meme expressing a sentiment along these lines: “If you don’t want immigrants, then stop colonizing the world.” The idea is that the West owes the Third World some debt (we don’t), and to settle up, we have to welcome foreign invaders bent on changing the West to fit a culture and political vision inimical to freedom, humanism, and secularism.

Protesting new electoral maps in their state, Texas Democrats fled to a state—Illinois—that gerrymanders on this scale. Take a look at District 13. This snaking district illustrates how post‑2020 redistricting transformed a formerly swing or Republican area into a solid Democratic‑leaning seat.

Gerrymandering is named after Elbridge Gerry, a Governor of Massachusetts in the early 1800s, who was a member of the Democratic-Republican Party—the political party of Thomas Jefferson. The Democratic-Republican Party was the historical ancestor of today’s Democratic Party. In 1812, Gerry signed a redistricting bill designed to favor his party in state senate elections. One of the resulting districts was shaped so oddly that critics said it resembled a salamander, leading a political cartoonist to label it a “Gerry-mander.”

Gerrymandering often involves drawing districts along partisan lines and racial lines. The latter is known as racial gerrymandering, and it can take different forms depending on the legal and political context. In some cases, courts or lawmakers draw districts with race in mind to ensure compliance with the Voting Rights Act—specifically, to help minority communities elect candidates of their choice. This can and should be controversial, especially when race becomes the predominant factor in district design. Such designs can be challenged as unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

There are millions of Republicans living in

Massachusetts
Connecticut
Rhode Island
New Hampshire
Vermont

And you know how many GOP seats they have in Congress?

ZERO

Democrats have gerrymandered this country for decades & now they’re mad Republicans are finally fighting back pic.twitter.com/ih3Aay8CqM

— DC_Draino (@DC_Draino) August 7, 2025

Illinois is not the only Blue state that gerrymanders. Far from it. Democrats are notorious gerrymanderers. Maryland (7-1 seat advantage), Massachusetts (9-0), New Jersey (9-3), New Mexico (3-0), Nevada (3-1), and Oregon (5-1) rigging districts to heavily favor Democrats. New York attempted in 2021 to design a system that would yield a 22-4 Democrat advantage, but the state Court of Appeals struck it down in 2022 as unconstitutional.

Why do I have to tell you any of this? Because redistricting only matters to the media when Red states do it. However, the redistricting fight in Texas, which the War Room posse (led by the brilliant Steven K. Bannon) elevated to national consciousness, has made it difficult for the corporate state media to hide the true history of gerrymandering.

Progressives are trying to spin the matter, of course. And so we have a new Democratic concept: “competitive authoritarianism,” pushed by Democratic operatives like Norm Eisen (Eisen recently confessed to using color revolution to thwart the democratic will).

What does this term mean? In states like California, where 40 percent of the electorate is Republican, drawing districts that yield only 17 percent of federal seats for Republicans may not be good enough to keep “authoritarianism” at bay. California and other states need to do what Massachusetts does: even though 35 percent of that state is Republican, there are zero federal seats held by Republicans in Massachusetts.

Competitive authoritarianism is not a new concept, albeit it gets twisted in the minds of political hacks like Eisen. The concept was popularized by political scientists Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way in the early 2000s. They argued that this regime type became more prevalent after the Cold War, especially in places where outright dictatorship became less legitimate but full democracy had not taken root.

Levitsky and Way describe a hybrid regime where formal democratic institutions exist but are manipulated by those in power to maintain dominance. Opposition exists, but it’s structurally disadvantaged.

Here’s how it works: the media is controlled or harassed (Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky call harassment “flak”) to favor the ruling party; electoral, judicial, and legislative bodies are biased; the regime uses institutional power and legal means to maintain hegemony (e.g., by changing election laws).

Bottom line: single-party power is secured while maintaining the appearance of democracy. Hungary, Russia, Turkey, and Venezuela are typically given as examples.

In previous essays, I have leveraged Sheldon Wolin’s concept of “inverted totalitarianism” to describe administrative and technocratic rule in the West. Wolin describes a system where corporate power dominates the political system. Democratic institutions are hollowed out not by dictators but by depoliticization and managed consent.

The chief characteristics of inverted totalitarianism: citizens are apathetic, disengaged, and passive; politics is reduced to consumer choices; the state uses fear, propaganda, and surveillance to maintain control; culture and media focus on  distraction and spectacle; control is indirect and internalized, rather than through open coercion. The effect: corporate/elite dominance is maintained while discouraging active citizenship.

It is via inverted totalitarianism that Democrats have created the false perception of being a majority party, a perception that is coming undone with the rise of populist nationalism. This is raising consciousness about the reality that, for years, Democrats have gerrymandered states to disenfranchise Republican voters and put in federal office a majority of or exclusively Democratic politicians.

The other ways that Democrats manufacture the illusion of being a majority party are also being exposed on the daily: command of academia and the science-industrial complex, the admistrative state and technocratic apparatus, the corporate media, and the culture industry (movies, television programming). It’s all unraveling.

The freak out over Texas redistricting, which Texas is pursuing because, as the fastest growing state in the country, its population and its demographics have drastically changed, is twofold. First, it means that Republicans are moving to become more competitive in the inverted totalitarian system designed by Democrats during their period of hegemony. And, second, and this is a self-inflicted wound, because the firestorm over what Texas Republicans are doing is exposing the long-standing practice of Democrats gerrymandering states.

Democrats took the bait and fueled the fire of attention drawn to this issue—which they’re now spinning as a necessary response to redistricting in Red states. As if Democrats are forced to engage in gerrymandering because Texas does. Democrats are so confident in their ability to control the narrative that they think they can keep eyes off their antics. They pretend like Americans haven’t seen their dismal polling. They lie like dogs.

Democrats are deluded about this in the same way they are deluded into believing that they can dissimulate the fact that Barack Obama and those around him committed the worst political crime in our lifetimes—yes, bigger than Watergate by several orders of magnitude. They believe legal and social media can confuse the public about this.

We now have empirical evidence that Google, in the filtering their news tab, buried and continues to bury that story. I warned followers on social media that this was happening in real time. For days, the Obama story never appeared in my Google news feed. And now that it is, it is being dimissed as nothing to see here.

Finally, former President Donald Trump has proposed a new US Census that would exclude individuals living in the country illegally, arguing that it would produce a more accurate population count. Right, because it was wrong for the Democrats to count their slaves to artificially inflate party representation in government—the real meaning of the three-fifths compromise. As with African slaves, Democrats use illegal aliens to inflate their numbers, which they use not only to obtain more resources for their states, but to secure greater representation in Congress. Democrats depend on their serfs.

The county count shows that Democrats are the minority party. Not by a hair—by a lot. In truth, the nation is a sea of Red, yet the House is only a few seats away from a Democratic majority. Democrats may take control of the House in 2027, which will guarantee Trump’s impeachment for another imaginary crime. This is a serious problem for this and many other reasons. It allows the Democrats to enjoy electoral success despite having policies that do not align with the American Creed or the interests of the majority of Americans.

The 2020 Census faced several major challenges that affected its accuracy and public trust. The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted in-person data collection and follow-up efforts, leading to lower response rates, especially among hard-to-reach populations. But it was more than this: the Census Bureau is run by the Administrative State, which was long ago colonized by progressive-minded bureaucrats and technocracy.

Subsequent evaluations revealed significant undercounts of rural populations (which lean heavily Red) and overcounts of urban populations. These (in many cases, engineered) inaccuracies impact congressional representation and the allocation of over 1.5 trillion dollars in federal funding for the next decade. Analysis shows that problems with the 2020 Census disproportionately negatively impacted Red states while benefiting Blue states.

I agree. Redo the census. Include only citizens. Reapportion accordingly.

Paying attention to the text of our foundational documents is imperative to understanding the law in this area.

Article I, Section II, Clause 3 of the United States Constitution: “Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons. The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct.”

Article 1, Section 9, Clause 3: “No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or enumeration herein before directed to be taken.”

These are the sections in the Constitution that bear on the Census. These were approved by Congress 1787.

Fourteenth Amendment, Section 2: “Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.”

This is the section in Amendments section to the US Constitution, approved by Congress in 1868.

The media is hyper-focused on the word “persons.” But one cannot help noticing the word “citizen” appears. This is clarified in the Fourteenth Amendment, where it requires that those male citizens in rebellion against the Union be subtracted from the whole number of male citizens.

Note also that blacks in the US when the Constitution was ratified, were counted only as three-fifths of persons for purposes of apportionment—and American Indians were excluded altogether.

Moreover, American Indians were not assumed in the Fourteenth Amendment, which means that “whole number of persons” was not referring to all people but to citizens. The Fourteenth Amendment concerns freed slaves and white citizens (male and female) not all persons in the United States.

How have such false assumptions persisted all the years? Because Democrats depend on their serfs for political power—and have used political power to perpetuate false understanding of the law to keep their serfs—whether slaves or immigrants. This has been true from the inception of the Republic. Marginalizing the Democratic Party in American politics is long overdue.

On the gerrymander question, ban racial gerrymandering and consider drawing maps with party representation in mind. Consider the falling disproportionalities: CA, GOP is 40% of vote, 17% of seats; MA, 35%, zero seats; CT, 38%, zero seats; NY, 42%, gets 26%; MD, 38%, gets 12%; NM, 44%, zero seats. Keep in mind that even drawing maps with party representation in mind could disadvantage Republicans since many registered Democrats in Southern states vote Republican. But it would be a start.

One function of these strategies would be to force Democrats to return to some semblance of Americanism in search of votes. The dark reality is that if progressivism is allowed to manipulate American politics, then America will soon be America no longer.

I get asked a lot by progressives why I care so much about “gender affirming care,” or GAC. Sometimes, I’m accused of “obsessing over genitals”—an ironic accusation given the left’s obsession over reproductive anatomy inherent in the transhumanist desire to escape natural history. My standard answer is that any decent person with a functioning moral capacity should care about medical atrocities. I cannot disregard my knowledge of the history of such injustices.

The obvious example of historical injustice that moves my objection to GAC is the body of medical atrocities associated with the Nazi period in Germany—at Auschwitz, Dachau, Ravensbrück. GAC bears not merely similarities to these atrocities; there are direct points of contact. I have written an essay on this topic before (see The Persistence of Medical Atrocities: Lobotomy, Nazi Doctors, and Gender Affirming Care), but the importance of the subject deserves revisiting. In today’s treatment, I focus on how the scientific veneer of professional legitimacy shields perpetrators from justice. As readers will see, that veneer is in a major way provided in the current moment by artificial intelligence.

Decades ago, I read Robert Jay Lifton’s 1986 book The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide and was horrified by what I encountered on those 500-plus pages. Lifton, an American psychiatrist, investigated how physicians—trained to heal — became perpetrators of atrocities. (See also Vivien Spitz’s 2005 Doctors from Hell: The Horrific Account of Nazi Experiments on Humans and Richard Weikart’s 2009 Hitler’s Ethic: The Nazi Pursuit of Evolutionary Progress.)

Lifton analyzes how physicians psychologically adapted to the situation by splitting their identities: one part as a healer in some contexts, another as an agent of the corporate state. This is the idea of “doubling,” the psychological mechanism allowing a person to divide into two selves. He uses this concept to explain the corruption of medicine and how ideology transforms professional ethics.

The Nazi human experiments were an ideological project, overseen mainly by the SS medical hierarchy, in particular Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler. The central figure coordinating these across camps was SS-Obergruppenführer Dr. Ernst-Robert Grawitz, the SS Chief Medical Officer (Reichsarzt SS und Polizei). Grawitz had authority over all SS doctors and medical operations in the camps, and he approved experiments on prisoners. There were several doctors under his command. I will discuss two of them here: Dr. Josef Mengele (the “Angel of Death”) and Dr. Erwin Gohrbandt.

At Auschwitz, as part of his eugenics research, Dr. Josef Mengele carried out surgical procedures on twins, including genital mutilation. These surgeries were done without consent (I discuss the problem of consent in the context of GAC in concluding this essay) and caused immense suffering, permanent disfigurement, and sometimes death. The experiments had no legitimate medical value, at least according to those who condemned them, and were later prosecuted as crimes against humanity during the 1946-47 Nuremberg Doctors’ Trial (formally United States of America v. Karl Brandt et al). 

Using false papers, Dr. Mengele fled Europe in 1949 and lived out his life in South America, supported by a network of former Nazis and sympathizers. Mengele lived openly under his name at times and worked as a businessman and farmhand. In 1979, while swimming off the coast of Bertioga, Brazil, Mengele suffered a stroke and drowned. In this way, he escaped justice. He wasn’t the only one to avoid death by hanging or life in prison. Himmler was captured by British forces in May 1945. However, he committed suicide by biting a cyanide capsule before he could be put on trial. Dr. Grawitz avoided trial by blowing himself up (along with his family) with a grenade in April 1945, shortly before Germany’s surrender.

Perhaps the most remarkable case of escaping justice, and this bears directly on the matter of GAC, is that of Dr. Gohrbandt, whom I have written about before (see Fear and Loathing in the Village of Chamounix: Monstrosity and the Deceits of Trans Joy). Gohrbandt conducted human experimentation at the Dachau concentration camp. Gohrbandt was a German surgeon and Luftwaffe medical consultant. At Dachau, he was connected to the camp’s hypothermia experiments, in which prisoners were forcibly submerged in ice water or exposed to freezing outdoor conditions to study survival and rewarming methods, often resulting in death or permanent injury.

Before the Nazi era, in 1931, Gohrbandt—then a prominent Berlin surgeon—performed one of the first documented male-to-female vaginoplasties at the Institute for Sexual Science (Institut für Sexualwissenschaft) in Berlin. The Institute was founded and directed by Magnus Hirschfeld, a pioneering sexologist and LGBTQ rights advocate. Hirschfeld was not a surgeon himself; rather, he provided the medical, psychological, and social framework for GAC, while Gohrbandt (and other surgeons) carried out the operative procedures. Hirschfeld is a celebrated figure in the queer camp and its allies (see Scientific American’s treatment of him in The Forgotten History of the World’s First Trans Clinic). In truth, he was a monster.

The 1931 operation Gohrbandt and Hirchfeld performed on Rudolf (Dora or Dörchen) Richter is well known among queer scholars and activitists. Richter is celebrated as the first complete vaginoplasty of its kind. Richter worked as a housekeeper at Hirschfeld’s Institute. Richter wasn’t the only victim of so‑called “gender affirming care.” The Institute employed many like him and Hirschfeld facilitated many such surgeries in the late Weimar Republic, attracting patients from across Europe. The queer narrative laments that this “progressive work” ended abruptly in 1933 when the Nazis raided and destroyed the institute, driving Hirschfeld into exile.

The characterization “progressive work” is how ChatGPT put the matter when I inquired to determine whether and how much it knew about the case. To be sure, ChatGPT confirmed all my claims. However, the fingerprints of queer theory were all over the framing of its answers. In an extraordinary rationalization, when challenged about Gohrbandt, ChatGPT noted that “Gohrbandt’s career has this striking duality.” It then elaborated without prompting: “In the early 1930s, he was involved in groundbreaking gender-affirming surgery alongside one of history’s most famous advocates for sexual minorities; a decade later, he was connected to unethical Nazi human experiments at Dachau.” This is an instance of Lifton’s doubling. Here, ChatGPT is doing reputational work for a psychopath.

As I have explained in previous essays, ChatGPT scrapes the Internet, where content on this subject is dominated by queer theory and the medical industry, the latter appealing to queer ideas to justify highly lucrative medical atrocities. Progressives long ago captured the sense-making institutions of Western society. It’s therefore expected that the biography of a villain like Gohrbandt would be explained away by an apparent contradiction.

But there is no contradiction. GAC is, at its core, a set of medical atrocities—from puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to radical surgeries, such as phalloplasty and vaginoplasty. The theory justifying these atrocities—that the nonfalsifiable claim of a subjective identity at odds with the karyotype, gametes, and reproductive anatomy is the real stuff of gender—is a paradigm of the destructive practice of fusing ideology with medical science. (For more on this topic, see the essay previously cited: Fear and Loathing in the Village of Chamounix. See also Thomas Szasz, Medical Freedom, and the Tyranny of Gender Ideology.)

It might interest the reader to know that Gohrbandt is not only known for his work on genital mutilation but also for his published material based on the data collected at Dachau, despite its unethical origins and lack of scientific validity. Of course, at the time, the experiments were considered warranted and valid, just as they are today in the GAC field, so really it’s no surprise that these were openly shared in the scientific community in the context of a legitimizing regime. Curiously, however, after the regime was dismantled, unlike some other Nazi physicians, Gohrbandt was never prosecuted at the Nuremberg Doctors’ Trial and instead resumed a prominent medical career after the war, serving as director of Moabit Hospital in Berlin and continuing academic work. He died in 1965, a renowned surgeon and scholar. 

There is an analog to the Nazi medical atrocities in the United States during the same time frame. The Tuskegee Syphilis Study, conducted by the US Public Health Service from 1932 to 1972, produced multiple published medical articles during its run, often in respected journals, which reported on the progression of untreated syphilis in black men without informing them of their diagnosis or offering effective treatment even after penicillin became available in the 1940s. By my count, some sixteen articles and reports were published during the period, normalizing the study in medical literature at the time. Despite the severe ethical violations and public outrage after the study was exposed in 1972, no one was ever prosecuted.

Why no prosecutions? The answer is straightforward, as well as instructive: the study had been conducted by government agencies and endorsed by professional medical associations, including the AMA and the NMA (the latter the leading association for black doctors), under policies that, while unethical, were not clearly illegal under US law at the time. There were no federal statutes explicitly criminalizing nonconsensual medical research on civilians, and the norms for informed consent that exist today were not yet codified into binding law. Instead, the federal government opted for an out-of-court civil settlement in 1974, paying 10 million dollars to survivors and families, and instituted reforms in research ethics oversight rather than seeking legal punishment.  (See Harriet A. Washington’s 2006 Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present.)

Similarly, there were no prosecutions of doctors for the now‑discredited neurosurgical procedure known as the lobotomy, in which connections between the brain’s prefrontal cortex and other regions are severed. The Lobotomy was used to treat severe mental illness such as depression, obsessive‑compulsive disorder, and schizophrenia (disorders that also afflict trans patients). First developed in the 1930s by António Egas Moniz and later popularized in the United States by Walter Freeman, the procedure could involve drilling holes in the skull or inserting an instrument through the eye socket (the “transorbital lobotomy”) to cut brain tissue. As a result, while making patients calmer, many suffered permanent cognitive deficits, emotional blunting, seizures, or profound personality changes. 

At the time, lobotomy was considered a legitimate medical treatment. Surgeons like Moniz and Freeman operated within the medical and legal norms of their era, and in some cases even received honors—Moniz was awarded the 1949 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for developing the procedure. While later decades saw lobotomy condemned as harmful and unethical, its use was phased out through changes in medical standards rather than through criminal trials or legal accountability. Moniz’s Nobel Prize was never rescinded. None of those damaged by the procedure ever saw the perpetrators punished for their actions.

I asked ChatGPT how Gohrbandt avoided prosecution—or even reputational damage. The chatbot explained: “He had been a respected Berlin surgeon since the 1920s and had performed pioneering procedures, including early gender-affirming surgery. This gave him a veneer of professional legitimacy that may have helped shield him after 1945.” In other words, the fact that Gohrbandt mutilated the genitalia of delusional men—men who falsely believed they were women—made him a sympathetic figure, instead of the psychopath he truly was. The surgeons performing GAC today likewise operate with a veneer of professional legitimacy. It is this veneer that allows them to perpetrate crimes against humanity with impunity. 

ChatGPT summarized the psychopath’s infamy in this manner: “Erwin Gohrbandt was a significant figure intertwined with the unethical medical research at Dachau, especially related to hypothermia and altitude experiments. Though not prosecuted, his association with Rascher [Sigmund Rascher, a Nazi SS doctor, executed by the Nazis in 1945] and dissemination of the results implicate him in the broader tapestry of Nazi medical crimes.” The chatbot added a moral observation: “His legacy is a sobering reminder of how science can be twisted when ethics are abandoned.” Indeed. But what about gender affirming care? Is there not a more obvious example of twisted science? ChatGPT cannot see the parallel because the data it scrapes is embedded in the veneer of professional legitimacy. 

As for the monster Hirschfeld, ChatGPT describes him thusly: “His legacy as a groundbreaking researcher and human rights pioneer endures, despite the tragic destruction of his institute and suppression of his work under the Nazi regime.” The language used here—“human rights pioneer” and lamenting the “tragic destruction of his institute”—tells us what we are up against in the actual human rights project to raise awareness of medical atrocities being committed in hospitals across the United States.

As readers are becoming aware, this essay has a twin purpose. While it is mainly concerned with medical atrocities, my interaction with ChatGPT in checking my information (gathered from several decades of research on the topic) reveals the real danger of AI becoming the source of narrative generation. If—or, more accurately, when—AI becomes the chronicler of our common history, the past will be recollected in such a way that sanitizes identical ideologically driven medical atrocities, depending on whether they are embraced or rejected by the prevailing ideology of the day. It’s already putting the history of medical atrocities associated with GAC in a positive light while admitting that the same procedures are recognized as human rights abuses through a historical lens. Today, genital mutilation is framed as “affirming health care,” but condemned as “crimes against humanity” when practiced under illegitimate regimes.

One irony I cannot let pass is that eugenics was a key piece of the progressive movement at its inception. Consider the case of Margaret Sanger, a birth control activist and founder of organizations that became Planned Parenthood. Sanger was an influential figure in the early twentieth‑century Progressive Era, a time when “reformers” sought to apply science and social planning to improve society, i.e., to advance an ideological project. Sanger advocated for women’s access to contraception as a means of public health, a project that engaged the eugenics movement, which promoted selective breeding to “improve” the human population. She argued that birth control could help prevent the reproduction of those deemed “unfit.”

Curious, I asked ChatGPT about this, too. Predictably it put the matter this way: “Her work illustrates how strands of humanitarian reform, public health, and eugenics often overlapped in Progressive Era thought, blending genuine concern for social betterment with beliefs that are now recognized as ethically problematic.” Once again, ChatGPT is incapable of seeing parallels when it exposes the inherent authoritarianism of progressivism. But the more one studies the worldview of the Nazis, the more one becomes aware of the parallels between Nazi ideology and progressivism. Both are paradigms of scientism—ideologies pulling about themselves scientific jargon and enjoying the authority of the state and prominent medical institutions. (This essay is getting long, so I will follow up on this point in a future essay.)

Earlier I noted that one of the problems with the work Nazis did is that it did not meet the consent requirement in human subjects research. Consent is central to the ethical system governing the use of human subjects in medical and scientific work. The most obvious example of medical and scientific work using human beings is forced participation. However, some populations and circumstances present a high risk that consent—while seemingly given—does not truly meet the ethical standard of being voluntary, informed, and ongoing in human subject research. These include vulnerable groups such as children, individuals with cognitive impairments, and people in coercive or dependent relationships (e.g., institutionalized patients, military personnel, and prisoners). 

If it’s unclear whether participants in these situations grasp the nature, risks, and implications of the study, then consent is problematic. In these contexts, the appearance of consent may mask subtle coercion, compromised autonomy, or insufficient comprehension, meaning extra safeguards—independent advocacy, repeated confirmation of willingness—are ethically essential. The inability of children to consent to GAC should be obvious to everybody. Given the significant correlation of mental disorders and trans desire, the inability of adults to consent to life-altering medical procedures is equally problematic.

But even if we presume such adults can consent, this does not relieve the doctors who mutilate them of their complicity in crimes against humanity. After all, surgeons who remove arms and legs from mentally disordered patients who wish themselves amputees are rightly seen as monsters (see The Exploitative Act of Removing Healthy Body Parts). Heaven help those patients if this stops being true. But I fear it will. The term “apotemnophilia,” which the medical profession now refers to as body integrity dysphoria (BID) or body integrity identity disorder (BIID), was coined by John Money and his colleagues in a 1977 article in The Journal of Sex Research. Who is John Money? The man who oversaw the mutilation of a boy’s genitals so he could raise him as a girl (see Fear and Loathing in the Village of Chamounix for details).

This is why it is imperative we learn the lessons of history. This is why I care so much about so-called “gender affirming care.”

A common criticism of tariffs is that they lead to higher consumer prices. The elite and their minions push this point constantly on legacy and social media. Tariffs, they argue, are nothing more than a sales tax. But while rising prices may occur in the short term (see clarification at the conclusion of this essay), raising the costs to importers is precisely the point of tariffs: to protect domestic industry from being undercut by cheaper foreign competition, often in the form of Western corporations offshoring production to lower-wage countries.

The honest interlocutor will admit that, when companies offshore, they reduce labor costs and flood the market with lower-priced goods—and that this is the point of free trade. Whether he admits this or not, this reality creates a false choice for the American consumer: buy cheap, foreign-made products or pay more for goods produced in the United States, where wages and labor standards are higher. 

The consequences of offshoring thus go beyond prices at the checkout counter. Globalization results in job losses, stagnant or falling wages, and a hollowed-out industrial base. It moreover deepens our dependency on fragile or strategically positioned foreign-controlled supply chains. In any case, the economic fate of the nation becomes increasingly subject to the whims of global financial networks and transnational corporate power.

Cheap goods may seem like a win, but they cannot compensate for the erosion of purchasing power that comes with widespread unemployment and wage suppression. And, in fact, wage suppression is the entire purpose of offshoring and so-called “free trade.” Tariffs are thus a corrective mechanism. They discourage offshoring by altering the cost-benefit analysis. If a domestic producer wants to avoid tariffs when importing commodities to the United States, the logical step is to keep production at home. For foreign producers, the only way to dodge tariffs is to move manufacturing to the US—creating high-wage, value-added jobs in the process.

The result of stemming the outflow of capital, as well as reshoring production, is rising domestic purchasing power. When Americans earn more, they can afford goods that might be slightly more expensive, making the relative price increase negligible in real terms. Rising prices are hardly guaranteed, and will vary across sectors, but whether they do or not, the improvement in economic well-being of the general population offsets the price shift.

Meanwhile, institutions like the Federal Reserve—driven by globalist priorities—have kept interest rates elevated, discouraging investment in domestic manufacturing and reshoring. These monetary policies work at cross purposes with industrial strategies intended to reorient the global economy toward American labor—a vision advanced by Trump and his economic advisers. In essence, unelected and largely unaccountable technocrats are undermining industrial policies that voters explicitly endorsed. This is no accident. Trump’s economic nationalism is a disaster for the transnational project.

It’s crucial to understand that price increases under this kind of tariff regime are not the same thing as inflation. Inflation occurs when too many dollars chase too few goods or when the money supply expands to the point that it devalues the currency. Tariffs, by contrast, reflect a deliberate reconfiguration of how and where value is produced. A higher price tag on domestic goods is not “inflation” or a “tax on consumers”—it’s a sign of labor reclaiming its rightful value in the production chain and of a healthier economy with stronger purchasing power.

Americans have a choice: they can pursue a high-wage, value-added economy where people are employed in productive, dignified work and where the standard of living rises in real terms; or they can continue on our current trajectory: a downward spiral in which profits are prioritized over labor, wages fall, unemployment rises, and we become increasingly dependent on foreign imports that erode their livelihoods and sovereignty.

This dynamic was predicted long ago. In the mid-nineteenth century, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels told the world that world capitalism would break down domestic economies and national sovereignty. Marx even supported free trade in a speech that same year—not because he believed in the benefits of global capitalism, but because he saw free trade as a force that would accelerate capitalism’s internal contradictions, increase class antagonisms, and bring about its eventual collapse. For Marx, free trade was a means to an end: communist revolution.

In Chapter I of The Communist Manifesto (1848), Marx and Engels described how capitalism conquers new markets: “The cheap prices of its commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate.” Here, Marx and Engels emphasize that cheap commodities are not neutral economic goods—they are the tools of economic and cultural domination, breaking down sovereign labor markets just as colonial armies broke down borders.

In a lesser-known but revealing speech, “Speech on the Question of Free Trade,” delivered to the Democratic Association of Brussels on January 9, 1848, Marx explained why he supported free trade—not because it was good for workers, but because it intensified capitalism’s contradictions: “The protective system is conservative, while the free trade system is destructive. It breaks up old nationalities and pushes the antagonism of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie to the extreme point. In a word, the free trade system hastens the social revolution.”

Marx’s endorsement of free trade was thus strategic. He believed it would expose the exploitative core of capitalism, leading to its collapse. In short, free trade is a mechanism of capitalist self-destruction. Marx wasn’t celebrating globalization—he was leveraging it as a revolutionary accelerant. (I cover this speech in detail here: “Marx the Accelerationist: Free Trade and the Radical Case for Protectionism.”)

Today’s libertarian free-traders and globalists—whether they realize it or not—are enacting the very same policies Marx believed would hasten capitalism’s demise. But Marx himself acknowledged that communism wasn’t guaranteed. For what should happen if the proletariat fails to seize that moment—or they reject communism? In his later writings (e.g., correspondence and notes), Marx acknowledged that the alternative to revolutionary transformation could be what Rosa Luxemburg would later term “barbarism.”

Marx’s theory of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, developed in Capital, Volume III, offers further insight into the long-term contradictions of capitalism. As capitalists compete, they are compelled to increase investment in machinery and technology (the rising organic composition of capital) in order to boost productivity and lower costs. However, since profit derives from labor—not machines—this process ultimately reduces the share of capital invested in labor and, therefore, the source of surplus value itself. 

Over time, this leads to a declining rate of return on capital. Marx emphasized that this tendency does not operate in isolation; it is offset and modified by countervailing factors such as intensified exploitation (e.g., wage suppression), expansion into new markets, financialization, and technological innovation. But these measures only delay the underlying contradiction—one that free trade and offshoring exacerbate by displacing labor and cheapening its cost globally, further undermining the system’s ability to generate profit without deepening crisis.

The logic of his argument—which history validates—helps us understand the looming threat of the Fourth Industrial Revolution—artificial intelligence, robotics, and automation—as the next phase of capital’s quest to overcome the falling rate of profit. As Marx argued, capitalists are compelled to displace labor with machinery to cut costs and stay competitive, but in doing so, they undermine the very source of value and profit: human labor. 

Today, the replacement of workers by machines—particularly in logistics, manufacturing, customer service, and even white-collar sectors—serves the same function as offshoring did in previous decades: to reduce labor costs and protect margins in a saturated global market. But just like offshoring, mass automation erodes the wage base that supports consumer demand. Fewer jobs, lower wages, and more precarious employment will mean less purchasing power and deeper economic insecurity. (The End of Work and Value. See also my 2009 essays Late Capitalism and Late Capitalism and Permanent Mass Unemployment.)

If offshoring sent industrial jobs abroad, automation threatens to eliminate them altogether—replacing labor with capital entirely. This is not a speculative future; it is a present reality. Considering Marx’s insights, the AI-driven shift is not some neutral wave of “technological progress,” but the logical outcome of a system trying to maintain profitability at the expense of its own foundation.

Another critical factor in all of this is the suppression of wages and erosion of working-class power brought about by mass immigration. While corporate media and political elites frame open borders as a humanitarian necessity or economic inevitability, the material effect is clear: mass immigration expands the labor supply, putting downward pressure on wages, increasing competition for scarce jobs, and weakening the bargaining power of native workers. 

Marx himself noted this dynamic in his writings on the English labor market, particularly in how Irish immigration was used by English capitalists to divide the working class and keep wages low. In a letter to Sigfrid Meyer and August Vogt (1870), Marx wrote, “The ordinary English worker hates the Irish worker as a competitor who lowers his standard of life.” 

In today’s context, mass immigration functions much like offshoring or automation: it’s a tool for capital to discipline labor by creating a surplus workforce. The working class is not enriched by this process—it is fragmented, disorganized, and made more desperate. Controlling immigration, therefore, is not about xenophobia or exclusion; it is a necessary part of a labor strategy that prioritizes the economic dignity, job security, and political power of American workers.

It is more important now to restructure the global economy to favor the American working class. And Trump’s approach is precisely the intervention we need now. 

This is especially true for those who do not wish to transition to capitalism to save us from capitalism’s death. 

Rosa Luxemburg’s famous warning—“socialism or barbarism”—comes from her 1915 pamphlet The Crisis of German Social Democracy. “Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads,” she writes, “either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism.” Later, she sharpens her point. “We stand today,” she writes, “before the choice, either the triumph of imperialism and the destruction of all culture, as in ancient Rome, depopulation, desolation, degeneration, a great cemetery; or the victory of socialism.”

The question is not whether tariffs, reshoring, and immigration control raise prices. The real question is whether we want an economy that supports American workers and strengthens the nation, or one that sacrifices both at the altar of cheap goods and corporate profit. The globalists don’t want Americans to recognize this. They want to keep Americans in a bubble with a short time horizon and no comprehensive grasp of economic history and dynamics.

Whether one agrees with Marx’s vision of the future, his critique of political economy enjoys historical support. No prophet was he, but rather an ordinary man who leveraged the dynamics identified in classical political economy to predict the development of capitalism downrange. This makes it all the more ironic that those on the left still calling themselves Marxists would be so opposed to Trump’s economic nationalism—unless of course, they, too, are accelerationists who want to see the demise of capitalism. 

Why would American workers support the same imperialist strategies that are used to derail development and impoverish working populations abroad? It makes no sense—unless you benefit from capital flight or depend on global supply chains as a shareholder or transnational executive.

See my other writings on the question of tariffs: Protectionism in the Face of Transnationalism: The Necessity of Tariffs in the Era of Capital Mobility; Why the Globalists Don’t Want Tariffs. Why the American Worker Needs them; With Reciprocal Tariffs, Trump Triggers the Globalists; Taking Back Our Country from the Globalists; Fareed Zakaria Says Tariffs Never Work. It’s a Lie; In the Shadow of Serfdom: Revisiting Liberalism in the Age of Progressivism.

* * *

A point of clarification, since there is widespread misunderstanding about this. A tariff is technically paid by the importer in the country where the goods arrive, but who actually bears the cost depends on market conditions. If demand for the good is elastic and there are close substitutes, importers may be unable to raise prices without losing customers, forcing them to absorb the tariff and accept lower profit margins. Conversely, for goods with inelastic demand, such as certain luxuries, more of the tariff can be passed on to consumers. Across sectors, competitive pressure among importers keeps prices down, generally preventing cost pass‑through. Indeed, in some cases, exporters lower their prices to offset the tariff. In practice, the burden of tariffs is shared between importers, foreign suppliers, and domestic consumers, depending on demand elasticity, market structure, and pricing dynamics.

“Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality and even eye color. My jeans are blue.” —Script from American Eagle blue jeans ad commercial

“Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else.” —Kurt Vonnegut, “Harrison Bergeron”

The outrage over American Eagle’s recent ad campaign featuring actress Sydney Sweeney is remarkable. Critics from the progressive left have denounced the campaign as Nazi propaganda, accusing its makers of promoting a eugenic ideal, simply because it presented a traditionally beautiful woman in a manner consistent with prevailing standards of physical attractiveness.

The critique typically takes the form of a split-screen video, with a progressive off to one side decrying eurocentrism and the male gaze. There are too many videos to share here, but if you want to see instances, you can’t swing a stick on the platform X and not hit one.

The vitriol is telling: it reflects a cultural project not merely to broaden conceptions of beauty but to invert them entirely. DEI-aligned cultural critics seek to deconstruct and reconstruct aesthetic norms to favor those purportedly previously marginalized—not by lifting others, but by tearing down and shaming natural excellence. The woke seek to replace the standard embodied by Sweeney with a new one, most notably, obese, intentionally unattractive, and gender nonconforming.

DEI—diversity, equity, and inclusion—is widely embraced across academia, business, and cultural and media institutions as a moral virtue. But beneath the language of its virtuous altruism lies a regime of practices hostile to the very values it claims to uphold. Rather than eliminating prejudice, DEI programs formalize new forms of bias, undermine standards of individual merit and equality, and stifle dissent. Hysteria over Western aesthetics is a predictable feature of the woke worldview.

Here, I will critique all pillars of DEI (admittedly, not my first rodeo); however, their intersection reveals itself throughout this critique. Woke progressive strives to be a total ideological system. I will conclude with the uproar over American Eagle’s ad campaign, which represents the emotional and popular cultural sensibilities of DEI. As DEI advocates find themselves increasingly marginalized, their attempts to keep the project going become more desperate and deranged. The Sweeney ad triggered them something fierce.

I begin with diversity. While diversity ostensibly champions the inclusion of people from various demographic categories—some of which, e.g., the transgender class, are inventions of progressive ideology—it has, putting the matter charitably, devolved into a superficial numbers game focused primarily on immutable characteristics such as race, gender, and sexual orientation. Uncharitably, this was the purpose all along.

Consider the academic job search and screen process. If a list of ten finalists contains none of the categories sought by the DEI officer in the human resources department, a dean will ask the search and screen committee to reexamine the files and adjust the list accordingly. This will necessarily entail the removal of files previously selected based on rational criteria. This practice has its counterpart in commercial advertising. American Eagle deviated from the new norm.

The insistence on achieving demographic quotas—and this is what they are—sidelines individual merit and intellectual diversity. Ironically, in pursuing diversity in this way, organizations perpetrate a form of discrimination by excluding or undervaluing individuals from majority groups or those whose views do not align with prevailing progressive orthodoxies. The selective valuing of identities represents a new kind of prejudice that prioritizes group identity over personal qualification and, in doing so, fosters reverse racism, resentment, and tribalism. 

In the final analysis, diversity in DEI programming constitutes a flipping of the presumed hierarchy, marginalizing conservatives and classical liberals, Christians and Jews, heterosexual males, and whites of both genders.

Equity, unlike equality, does not aim to give everyone the same opportunities but rather to engineer equal outcomes among groups. As I have explained in previous essays on this platform, the meaning embedded in this usage of equity is a new construction, taking what was heretofore a recognition of group differences to achieve positive liberty and substantive equality (e.g., between females and males) and redefining it as equality of outcomes. Equity defined in this way veers into social engineering, requiring unequal treatment under the guise of justice. By assuming that disparities in outcomes must be the result of systemic injustice—a core assumption of the progressive worldview—equity-based policies establish and enforce gender and racial preferences that disadvantage individuals from groups deemed “overrepresented.”

This logic replaces fairness with favoritism—favorites chosen not by emergent sensibilities but by ideologically captured institutions. Far from correcting injustice, equity redistributes it, rewarding some based on identity while punishing others for historical wrongs they did not commit, implicit biases they do not hold, and appearances that embody white cultural imperialism. Such practices mirror the very discrimination DEI claims to oppose, just inverted. Put another way, equity-based programs institutionalize racism, etc., in reverse.

Inclusion is intended to foster a welcoming environment for all individuals, but in practice, it results in bad faith (in the sense that people reflexively lie), censorship, and intellectual conformity. Under the banner of inclusion, dissent is discouraged, dissenting voices—particularly those skeptical of DEI—are marginalized, and speech is policed. If the male gaze falls on Sweeney, it is racism that draws it there.

Rather than cultivating a true marketplace of ideas, inclusion initiatives prioritize emotional safety over open dialogue, resulting in environments where certain viewpoints are systematically excluded, while others are elevated to truisms. The paradox is clear: inclusion, when enforced through rigid ideological filters, becomes exclusionary. This undermines the democratic values of critical inquiry and free expression, replacing them with a culture of ideological intolerance and moral gatekeeping. It means good people aren’t wowed by Sweeney in a muscle car or at the gun range.

Kurt Vonnegut’s 1961 dystopian short story “Harrison Bergeron” offers a vivid literary warning against the kind of coerced egalitarianism embodied in the DEI conception of equity. It’s as if Vonnegut had a crystal ball. In Vonnegut’s imagined future, the government imposes handicaps on the talented to ensure everyone is “equal”—not in dignity or opportunity, but in outcome. Beautiful people must wear masks, the intelligent are fitted with devices to interrupt their thoughts, and the strong are burdened with weights. 

The story’s central premise critiques the same ideological impulse that underlies equity-based initiatives today: the belief that equality must mean sameness, even at the cost of excellence, liberty, and merit. In this light, equity programs appear not as instruments of justice but as mechanisms of mediocrity—compelled leveling that punishes distinction and treats competence as a threat. 

Vonnegut’s satire suggests that the pursuit of equity, if unchecked, does not liberate but enslaves, flattening human potential in a misguided attempt at fairness, resulting in a tyrannical social order that crushes individuality and liberty.

Friedrich Hayek, in The Constitution of Liberty, published in 1960, similarly critiques the philosophical and practical dangers of equity as conceived by progressives. Hayek distinguishes between equality before the law and enforced equality of condition, arguing that the latter necessarily entails coercion and injustice. When the state (or an institution) attempts to guarantee equal outcomes, it must treat individuals unequally—it must allocate burdens, opportunities, and resources not according to individual choice or merit, but according to group identity and a bureaucratic vision of “fairness.” 

Hayek warns that such practices inevitably lead to the erosion of freedom and the rule of law, as administrators are empowered to override emergent, natural, and neutral principles in favor of ideologically and politically determined outcomes. In the DEI context, this means substituting (color)blind justice with partiality based on selected (and arbitrary) identity status. For Hayek, such equity is not only unjust but destructive, undermining the organic order of a free society in favor of a rigid, top-down regime of redistribution and control.

With the American Eagle ad campaign, a striking real-world example of the Vonnegut-Hayek dynamic is manifest. The hysteria eliminates any remaining doubts one might have been clinging to about the darkness that lurks behind the rhetoric of social justice.

Sweeney’s appearance became offensive not because it imposed a new standard, but because it reasserted an old one (and not so old at that): that attractiveness is unevenly distributed and not subject to ideological desire or political will. The left’s angry reaction reveals that at the heart of DEI’s equity obsession lies not compassion, but envy—a desire to socially engineer what cannot be engineered.

Beauty, like athleticism and intelligence, emerges naturally, and any attempt to force its redistribution leads to absurdity and resentment. The fury over the ad campaign thus underscores the broader DEI impulse: to create a culture of coerced affirmation, where traditional standards—whether of merit, beauty, or excellence—must be dismantled not because they are unjust, but because they are unequal.

Friedrich Nietzsche’s notion of ressentiment, developed most fully in his 1887 On the Genealogy of Morals, offers a psychological framework for understanding the emotional engine that drives such outrage, particularly in its obsession with equity and leveling outcomes. 

Ressentiment arises when individuals, unable to act upon their feelings of envy or inferiority through achievement and strength, transmute those feelings into a moral narrative that condemns what they cannot attain. Rather than admiring beauty, excellence, and success, the ressentiment-driven person declares them oppressive or unjust. Within DEI, this moral inversion is evident in efforts to elevate mediocrity under the guise of fairness, pathologizing traditional standards, and stigmatizing merit. 

The Sydney Sweeney episode exemplifies this dynamic in spades: it was not beauty per se that offended (although the uniform unattractiveness of her detractors suggests it played a role), but the reappearance of a standard that could not be democratized. As Nietzsche warned, ressentiment does not produce new values through strength but revalues the world through weakness, recasting virtue as vice, and vice as virtue. This helps explain the punitive fervor in much of DEI discourse: its energy comes not from love of the marginalized (woke progressives really don’t care about poor working class folk—indeed, they loathe the deplorable), but from animus toward the excellent, which for them is often unattainable.

The bottom line is that, even where DEI is administered with noble intentions (and there are plenty of true believers), its execution mirrors the very injustices it seeks to address. By emphasizing emotion over reason, group identity over individual accomplishment, character, and talent, outcomes over opportunities, the primitive over the modern, the unwell over the healthy, ugliness over beauty, DEI represents a program entrenching a new caste system built on gender, race, and rigid ideological alignment, one that overturns Enlightenment standards. 

A genuine commitment to fairness, human dignity, and justice requires rejecting the dogmas of DEI and reaffirming the principles of equality under the law, freedom of thought, individual merit, and the standards of attractiveness that require so much effort to suppress.