Mark Aungst. Chris Stanton. Jord Meachum. Matthew Perna. All four killed themselves after suffering under an unrelenting and inhuman persecution from the J6 Committee and the Biden Dept. of Justice. Unimaginable anguish and despair led them to this, and there must be justice. Can the families sue the J6 Committee? Can the paper trail be pursued to pinpoint the exact individuals who signed off on this sadistic abuse, who attempted to saddle these men with decades’ long sentences?

Trump’s return seems to have ended a prolonged nightmare that America, and the world, seemed stuck in for far too long. The full pardon of 1,500 J6ers, a reinstating of all military personnel who refused the COVID vax and were thrown out like garbage by Biden, a repossession of the Panama Canal, the declaration of a state of emergency at our southern border, the hilarious refusal to allow Zelensky to attend the inauguration, a small tower of executive orders signed and delivered, there is something new on the horizon for America. A calm, muscular self-assurance saturated Trump’s words at the inauguration. No loud-mouthed grandstanding, no mad emotional swings. He simply stated what he would do, and everyone listening knew he would make good on it. Amateur footage of migrants weeping at our southern border, overcome with the full realization that they won’t get to elbow their way in, is enough to make an American go full Pentacostal, gyrating and speaking in tongues. Domestic enemies have apparently fallen into a slough of despond. Where were they? Where were the molotov-throwing neo-primitives going ape en masse like they’ve done since 2016?

This is America wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross. Contrary to Sinclair Lewis’ ridiculous warning, this isn’t fascism in the slightest, but rather a nation in full control of her destiny. A nation helmed by men and women who care for more than personal gain, who seem to be driven by a zeitgeist that they themselves willed into existence, is one that will endure. Most importantly, there is hope. When was the last time we felt it? The true extent of the hopelessness laying like a lead blanket over America wasn’t truly understood until Biden shambled off into the sunset earlier today. Let’s fully appreciate it, and finally understand the importance of a government, and a leader, who truly puts his nation first.

It’s always best to learn from the mistakes of others, rather than your own. January 6th, 2021, provides just such an example. The massive pro-Trump rally at the Capitol quickly went off the rails, as we’ve seen from the chaotic footage. Yes, it appears that the rally-goers were initially peaceful until a systematic provocation by the police conjured a violent mob out of the protest. Many people were seriously injured, a few died, and other 1,000 attendees have had their lives ruined amid a four-year crusade to jail and/or bankrupt as many as possible by the Biden DOJ. Sure, it’s infuriating, and tragic, and many hope for a blanket pardon by Trump on day 1. I’m hoping for it. But the lesson to be learned is to NOT ATTEND RALLIES like this.

An individual is smart and intelligent, but a crowd is an entirely different animal.  A crowd is irrational, easily spooked, and easily enraged. Turning a peaceful crowd into a violent mob is often as easy as flicking a switch. Evidence abounds of this phenomenon. A few flash bang grenades, a few cops shoving people indiscriminately to the ground, egging protestors to violence, and the mob erupts. This is what happened on J6. This is what our government wanted to happen, of course. The chaos of that day gave our government exactly what it wanted: the justification for hunting down Trump supporters, censoring their views online, and consigning their voice to the outer rim of discourse.

Were undercover agents embedded within the protesters? Of course. This is what governments do. There is something extremely stupid about joining a protest like this and then crying foul at the outcome.We should be outraged, and seek justice, but we must also recognize the thundering stupidity of trying to meet the government on its own turf, and believe that any other outcome than what transpired is possible.

The thing that governments fear most of all is free speech. Unfettered criticism by peaceful writers and speakers moves mountains, and is almost impossible to stamp out in a nation that enjoys the First Amendment. Speech is real power, mindless rallies are not. In fact, they are the opposite.

Never willingly join a mob of protestors. You could easily get caught up in the same thing that the J6er’s are now embroiled in. Be smart. Do the really tough thing, and learn to win over hearts and minds through persuasion.

Their hearts were in the right place for the most part, the J6ers. But many were terminal jagoffs, bringing their kids to the fray, their elderly parents, and then acting bewildered when violence broke out. Governments since the dawn of time love to see their critics amass like they did on J6. Understand that simple fact, and don’t be stupid.

To say that the Great H1B Debate of Christmas 2025 was…heated…is an understatement. Like a lake of magma held just below the surface under immense pressure, several prominent Trump supporters voiced their support for the visa program while insulting American workers themselves, believing they were on solid ground, but unwittingly puncturing the soil and unleashing a caldera that swept them up before they could flee to safety.

Vivek Ramaswamy ignited the debate with his flagrant insults aimed at American culture:

The ensuing criticisms of our overly generous visa program were relentless and unimpeachable, and vaporized everyone attempting a rebuttal. Popular misconceptions of the visa program were suddenly exposed and refuted. Those watching the debate from the grandstands learned more in two days on the topic than they would have in a grad school seminar. What did we learn? That American mega corps are essentially importing slave labor, forcing 80-hour work weeks on them, to do…what? American workers were gratuitously insulted in the process, as if a government should force its own citizens to compete with the entire world for their jobs. Shouldn’t Americans have priority over foreign labor when it comes to employment? The question quickly boiled down to “what is an American?”, echoing the Left’s epic struggles with “what is a woman?”. Is an American someone who moves here and becomes a citizen? Is it instead someone who is born here? How easy should it be to gain citizenship in this country? How easy is it to game the system, not just with citizenship, but with employment? Why is it offensive for American citizens to assert their right to preserve their nation from outside influx?

The entire episode apparently had a deleterious mental health effect on Elon Musk, rabid supporter of H1B’s, and, in a bloodbath of sour grapes, dropped the ban hammer on hundreds of X accounts, removed blue checks, demonetized various and sundry visa critics, basically obliterating his free speech pledge in one fell swoop. See below:

Musk’s response to the ordeal is telling. People have been ridiculing him savagely ever since he bought the platform, but he’s laughed it all off. But the visa criticism was a bridge too far, apparently. Why? Because the flak was being flung from the crowd he desperately wished adulation from, and felt entitled to.

The real question is whether America is a nation first, or an economy first. Is GDP some god that requires constant sacrifice, including rapid and irreversible demographic change? Is GDP maximization a goal to be had at any cost? This is the attitude that girds the position of the visa supporters. “We must compete with China and India!” …Why? We have something that they will never have, albeit in an anemic and diminished form. We have freedom. We are the global destination, we are the Third World fever dream. Not China, not India, America. Could free speech ever take root in China? Not a snowball’s chance. But that simple freedom is priceless next to China’s supposed “competitiveness”. Our kids learn about the glories and beauty of China in our schools, while failing to learn that its citizens are effectively slaves. Can they own a gun, can they insult their leader, do they have a say in their national destiny?

Yes, it is possible to beat and berate a child into becoming a human calculator, deprive them of culture, and a childhood, and then place them into soulless “tech” jobs where they’re willing to work 80 hours a week because they have no self-esteem and no personality. But is that living? Is that the kind of living that should be encouraged here? Part of what makes America great is our culture’s capacity for joy, although that joy is being snuffed out slowly. Should we be ashamed of our joy, and the manifestations of that joy which include prom queens, jocks, hot rods, and, well, good old chaotic fun? Look at who staffed NASA in the 60’s and 70’s. Were those guys nerds? They don’t look like it. Nerds have their place, but I prefer prom queen supremacy, which means an America that holds herself in high regard, rightly so. The nerds are in power, and no single event has made that more evident than the COVID pandemic. The embittered, vengeful nerds locked us down. Sedentary endomorphs issued public health commands and expected us to bend the knee, but the former jocks and prom queens realized that these were just the dweebs from high school, and resisted their rule.

America for Americans, it’s a simple philosophy. And we should stop caring who is insulted by it.

I don’t believe I’ve ever gained more wisdom from a single source than this song, which attempts to convey the most difficult lesson for us apparently to learn: the ephemerality of time. We don’t really realize and appreciate the value of certain milestones, certain eras of our lives, until they’re gone. Our children are young only once, our grandchildren, ourselves. We achieve something and bask in the afterglow for a time, attempt in vain to preserve a certain stage of our life that has outstayed its welcome, consuming valuable time better spent in some other way. Our 20’s are here, and feel limitless at the time, and then they’re gone. Our 30’s, 40’s, and then middle age arrives and we confront the death of our youth, and for many the regret of unlived time. What we didn’t do, rather than what we did. We realize that not all time is equal. The short years of our children’s childhood is priceless in comparison to the years before they were born, or even after they’ve reach adulthood. But do we realize it at the time? I’d bet far more people than who would admit it reach middle age and wonder why no one sat them down and explained to them the importance of paying attention to time itself. Why no one warned them that there is no such thing as “free time”, and why some time is far more valuable than others. If everyone were forced, when young, to live a single year at the end of their lives, would they return to their younger selves and hit the ground running? Maybe appreciate people and moments that they would otherwise not have? Time is a current that carries us along, but it does so silently, and this makes it all too easy to believe that we’re not moving at all.

Mad Men is another Renaissance painting in motion. There is no culture to be had in Yellowstone, Game of Thrones, or all the other grotesque streaming options that killed off the “Golden Age of Television”. But something like this, when production companies were dropping 2 mil per episode, and pouring every last ounce of uncompromising creativity into every scene, the viewer is treated to an immersible masterpiece that elevates their taste, rather than debasing it.

I hear tell that Yellowstone, the most successful instance ever of a western soap opera smuggling in leftist ideology to the whoops and hollers of American conservatives, ended in the only way it could end: the White Man giving his land back to the Natives, who will of course preserve it for all times in its primal state, never developing it for an acre-sized casino, or selling out mineral rights and royalties to the vultures of Big Oil. Of course. And so the Natives reclaim the land, spit on the graves of the Whites, and apparently that’s the end of that. I didn’t watch it. I won’t subject myself to it.

What I will do, however, is revisit a series that every conservative should take the time to watch: The Sopranos. The series that kicked off the Golden Age of TV is almost forgotten now, buried under an avalanche of garbage content. The Sopranos isn’t a throwaway soap opera mired in the spirit of the age: it’s a work of genius.