“One time I bit hard into a marble ashtray, thinking it was a savory waffle.” – Anchorman 2
I bought The Mrs. a beautiful diamond ring, but she asked why I didn’t spend that money on a car instead. Silly wife! They don’t make fake cars.
I’ve spent hours reviewing why the country I grew up in felt like it ran on autopilot: lawns were mowed, kids were in school, and front doors were unlocked at night and then turned into . . . this. The version I see in 2026 feels like it’s held together with duct tape, threats, with little nothing shared.
Friday, I wrote about how real personal change only happens when emotion rewires values from the inside.
I think that same principle scales up to the societal level.
A highly functioning society doesn’t run on rules and cops. It runs on a shared vision and voluntary self-enforcement: you don’t have fist fights between naked people in Waffle House® at 3AM where I end up losing a shoe because that’s simply not done. When that vision fades, you get more rules, more monitors, more guys with badges and attitude. And the whole thing gets heavier, slower, and meaner. And less free.
I went to my first Fight Club meeting last night. I showed up late so I missed the first few rules, but it was awesome! I love Fight Club!
Let me tell you what doesn’t build a free, cohesive society.
First, someone making people comply. North Korea proves it works if your goal is terrified people who cry when the Dear Leader walks by and you don’t mind the occasional public execution for wearing the wrong socks. Compliance by force is easy. Loyalty? Not so much. People smile on the outside and cringe on the inside. That’s not a society. That’s just a prison with better choreography.
Second, someone with power monitoring me to make me comply. Remember 2020-2021? It wasn’t technically illegal to say no to the clotshot, but tell that to the people who lost their jobs, their airline seat, or couldn’t put their kids in school without it. A whole lot of people who would’ve skipped it folded under the overt pressure of “your papers, please.” Some complied, without believing. Big difference between that and the True Believers.
Third, someone moving society to monitor my behavior. The GloboLeftElite tried to turn the internet into one giant hall monitor. COVID was the big opportunity. Disagree on Twitter® about anything, (masks, origins, side effects) and poof, banned. The goal was simple: only the approved narrative gets to be broadcast. The goal was: brainwash the populace into one artificial shared vision by deleting every other idea.
I was fat but I identified as slim. I guess that made me trans-slender.
But we didn’t need any of that garbage back when the country actually worked. Back then we had a shared set of values. Values kept lawns mowed without code enforcement officers. Values kept people showing up to work, paying their bills, and not stealing the neighbor’s Amazon® packages. Values were the invisible fence that let a free people stay free.
A huge part of the collapse is the deliberate feminization of society. Women are wonderful creatures. Their nurturing and care are the reason families exist and babies don’t die in the woods. But scale that instinct up to the level of national policy and it turns horrifying.
An illiterate military-age man crossing the border illegally triggers the exact same emotional circuit as a crying baby, especially in the spinster wine-aunt who never had kids. The illegal becomes a surrogate for the kid her barren womb never produced. Must help. Must clean it up. Must give it a chance.
And when it rapes or murders? Well, punishing it is so mean. It just needs more care. That same instinct created the victimhood hierarchy we see everywhere now. Who’s crying the loudest today? Which baby gets the most snacks, the most attention, the most special rules? The entire GloboLeft runs on sorting victims by volume.
I heard that one of Bob Ross’ victims said, “I’m scared” as they walked into the woods. Bob replied, “You’re scared? I have to walk out of here all by myself.”
The attempt to replace old values ran for decades through every TV show from M*A*S*H to Maude to Diff’rent Strokes to Golden Girls. Every single “very special episode” was a Trojan horse. Archie Bunker® would land a zinger, then spend the last two minutes being proven to be the world’s biggest idiot.
The message was clear: your grandparents’ values are dumb and mean. Here, try these shiny new ones instead.
The replacement values, however, weren’t built on what is True, Beautiful, and Good.
They were built on lies.
“There’s only one race, the human race.”
“They’re just like us!”
“This isn’t a nation, it’s a country built only on ideas, not on the posterity of the Founders.”
“Every idea is equally valuable.”
“Love is love.”
The biggest lie of all time? “I have read and accept the terms and conditions to use this software.”
I could go on. The lies are finally becoming visible to the general public, the way they always do when reality shows up with receipts. What’s coming back are the old values, because those are the only ones that actually work at scale.
Getting there won’t be easy. Societies don’t pivot on a dime. There will be stunning levels of violence, which is the pain that comes from feminists not understanding that foreigners aren’t the same thing as babies.
The emotional foundation of the country is shift.
I think we will win, because we represent what’s True, Beautiful, and Good, and those that represent that will control the switch on the society that rises from the rubble. If the nation that follows is lucky, they will have the shared values that once made voluntary self-enforcement the norm and not the shattered “all against all” values of an India or a Haiti.
Seriously, is this the world we want?
Rejecting Hollywood’s® propaganda, the GloboLeftist victim Olympics, must be replaced by the old, sturdy values, the ones rooted in family, work, truth, and a common language and culture. Importing millions who share none of that doesn’t enrich: it dilutes until the shared vision evaporates and only the cops remain.
I’m not naive. The GloboLeftElite won’t surrender the microphone quietly. The lies have been lucrative. But lies always collapse under their own weight.
And that shoe I lost at Waffle House®? I’ve developed a solution:
IHOP®.
The programming has been very successful, if you want to destroy a civilization.
“It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt.”
— John Philpot Curran
And that’s what they want to break to break the nation.
Kim looks a lot more menacing slim. He has nukes why no intervention?
No threat to the kippah is why.
Would you jump off a bridge if everyone else was doing it and stranger danger was hammered into us as kids and I am thankful.
The hive is doom and head the other direction as it runs off a cliff.
What?
Dear Leader would have a twelve pack, not a six pack – that’s for mere mortals.
We like to think older movies and TV shows were less toxic than the ones today, but if you go back and watch carefully, you’ll often find they were just better at hiding the poison.
https://gab.com/Zaklog/posts/114506212819019886
When I go back and watch old tv shows, I am actually kind of shocked at how blatant the poison is. I never noticed it in my youth as I could never imagine my govt or the media would do something like that. Now that I am “awake” it is hard to miss and unfortunately, seeing it ruins most of the shows and memories of it that I once cherished.
JB
And so much of it was based on lies.
The West Wing : in my younger delusional days I thought the show was intellectually stimulating.
Now I am disgusted by the blatant propaganda. Self medication may be required to watch the whole series
I’ve actually never seen it, but based on this review I may not own enough booze.
TV really changed in 1970-71, especially CBS. As Pat Buttram (Mr. Haney) noted, “CBS cancelled every show with a tree in it.”
Oliver Wendell Douglas & James West were replaced by Meathead & Maude. UGH.
Can you imagine a special episode of Green Acres where Oliver and Lisa discuss Lisa having an abortion?
And we were also more naive.
Most are still naive otherwise they would be doing things a lot differently as the inevitable draws near…
Yes. Time to wake up.
Well said John. Having watched this society disintegrate makes me skeptical on whether we are the middle class Remus spoke of. Watching kids being abused by the globohomos appears to me the majority of this country has normalized everything e.g. Rush Limbaugh had Elton John sing at his wedding.
https://wealthofgeeks.com/a-baby-cried-for-mama-his-two-dads-laughed-and-the-video-is-now-at-13-million-views-and-counting/
The slope has been slippery and steep.
IHOP. LOL.
Speaking of imparted values, I went to see Rod Stewart at the local Orion Amphitheater, a wonderful venue. I coulda cared less, but my wife swoons on him. He’s beat cancer twice and is a workout fiend so very spry 80+ with a 20 year younger third wife and $300 million net worth from selling his catalog to streaming. Great backup musicians and stage visual setup with huge video screens. Ran thru all the big hits. Then kept going with Killing Georgie about his sad NY gay friend and Jeff Beck’s People Get Ready while blasting out white guilt porn on the screen from 1960s Alabama newsreels. Ended with Love Train backdropped by endless rat-a-tat-tat images of gigantic Trump At War headlines from print newspapers. First time I’ve seen a concert end with a Five Minute Hate.
My wife loved it all. I, however, did not appreciate dropping cold hard cash for an escapism nostalgia concert only to get propaganda shoved in my face by a Brit who said nothing about grooming gangs.
Speaking of which….
https://donsurber.substack.com/p/brits-poorer-than-mississippians
shocking his best bud is Elton the perv
He’s telling you who he is, since in theory no one owns him.
Might be time for a different wife since you don’t have a shared set of values…
Nah. She’s cute, she’s sweet, I truly love her, we share the values that really matter, and once you get to your 70s after 35+ years with somebody you are more than content with, you are just thankful how lucky you are that you got it right the second time around.
“Robert A. Heinlein famously defined the price of freedom as “the willingness to do sudden battle, anywhere, any time and with utter recklessness”. This recurring theme in his work, notably in The Puppet Masters (1951), emphasizes that liberty requires active, often violent defense, rather than being an unalienable right.
Key aspects of this philosophy include:
Active Defense: Freedom is not free; it is paid for with the willingness to fight.
Individual Responsibility: True freedom involves being personally responsible for one’s actions, often requiring hard choices and vigilance.
TANSTAAFL: Popularized in The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, “There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch” implies that everything, including freedom, has a cost.
Vigilance: It mirrors the sentiment that liberty is maintained only through constant vigilance.
Heinlein’s stories, such as Starship Troopers, often tied the right to vote to the willingness to serve and sacrifice for society.”
The goal has been to destroy that spirit. I wonder why?
I actually like watching the lefties do their thing, right out in the open now. I began back in the day being able to know who was left, by who liked All in the Family. Maude used to give me the bends. They make no bones about interfering with the lawful execution of the law, by trying to stop ICE, which of course is communist dogma. It makes it easier to know who is and who is not on the upcoming menu…………And I stay hungry…………..
Well said.