Excellent news! Slava Ukraini!

I highly recommend reading Ezra Klein’s latest book “Abundance” for a look at why the DNC has been losing the working class. It also offers some optimistic ideas for moving forward.

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?.. The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If…if…We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation… We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”

Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn , The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

I just finished Ezra Klein’s new book and I thought it was great. It illuminates the history that has brought us here and gives some hopeful ideas on how we can fix it. That is, if there is anything left to fix by next year.

Huh. For some reason all I see is *******.

I hear that you’re not anti-immigrant and that your focus is on encouraging higher birthrates among the existing population. That’s a valid position. But I’m still unclear on something: you say “substituting locals for immigrants won’t work”, but what does that mean, practically?

We’re already seeing immigrants and their children working in essential industries, serving in the military, paying taxes, starting businesses, and contributing culturally and economically in every measurable way. In that sense, it is working, not as a perfect system, but as a very real and ongoing contribution to national strength.

So if your point is that we also need pro-natal policies, that’s great, many countries are trying that too. But that doesn’t invalidate immigration as part of the solution. The two aren’t mutually exclusive.

If you believe immigration “won’t work,” can you explain specifically what metric or outcome you’re pointing to? Otherwise, it feels like the disagreement isn’t about whether it works, but about whether we’re emotionally comfortable with who is coming in.

You’re right that immigration brings complexity, it always has. But what you’re describing isn’t a reason to reject immigration. It’s a reason to invest in integration, civic education, and community infrastructure, the very things that made past waves of immigration ultimately successful. The challenges Irish, Italian, and Eastern European immigrants posed didn’t prove immigration was a failure, they proved that assimilation is a process, not a plug-and-play switch. And they eventually helped redefine the idea of who counts as “American.” That doesn’t mean there weren’t tensions, but it does mean people changed, adapted, and became part of the whole.

What I hear in your argument is a belief that culture is static, and that outsiders are always permanent outsiders. That’s a dangerously pessimistic view of human beings. It treats people as incapable of growth, and societies as too fragile to absorb change. But that’s not how culture works, not unless you let fear do the steering.

And yes, importing labor from poorer countries can create tension, especially if the host society is structured in a way that stratifies opportunity. But then the issue isn’t immigration, it’s inequality. The problem isn’t that “the poors” look different. It’s that we’re failing to create systems where they can become something else.

Extremist sentiment is rising in Europe not because immigrants are inherently dangerous, but because politicians and media figures are stoking fear and resentment instead of investing in cohesion. We’ve seen this movie before. It never ends well.

It’s not xenophobic to be concerned about cultural change, but it is misguided to assume that culture is a fixed object that only flows in one direction. America, and much of the West, has always been shaped by the beliefs, values, and adaptations of immigrants. People change, adapt, and contribute in complex ways. Immigrants don’t arrive with a USB stick labeled ‘final values.’ They raise kids here. Their kids go to school here. They vote here. And yes, they bring different perspectives, but so did Irish Catholics, Italian immigrants, and Vietnamese refugees. The melting pot doesn’t mean erasure, it means evolution."

Also, beware of confusing correlation with cause: conservative religious values exist in all societies, not just ‘third world’ ones. We’ve got plenty of evangelical pushback on rights from people born and raised here too. If we’re going to have a conversation about values, let’s do it honestly and not use fear of ‘the other’ as a smokescreen for deeper social anxieties.

Immigration isn’t ‘outsourcing childbirth’, it’s investing in the future of our country. People who come here, build lives, and raise families contribute just as much to our communities as anyone born here. Their children are American in every meaningful way. That’s not a loophole, that’s the foundation of our nation. If we start drawing lines around who counts as a ‘real’ solution based on origin, we’re moving away from what has always made America strong.

Forget the serious debate videos—his supporters aren’t watching those, and even if they did, they wouldn’t care. You want to make a dent? You go after the ego.

Picture this: an endless stream of totally “realistic” phone-recorded AI videos of Trump playing golf. He lines up the putt—misses. Tries again—air ball. It’s literally an inch away now—misses again. Doesn’t blink, just traps it in, smirks, walks off like he nailed it. Over and over.

The key is subtlety. These can’t look staged or flashy—make them feel like someone’s nephew filmed it from the cart. Make it look like he’s genuinely terrible but thinks he’s crushing it.

Then blast them everywhere. Flood the algorithm. Turn his “I’m the best at golf” schtick into a punchline.

This is how you use AI to actually take Trump down—with a thousand tiny ego papercuts.

I don’t usually eat fast food, but one night I was starving, and there happened to be a drive-thru right next to me. I saw only two cars ahead in line and thought it would be quick. I pulled in and waited. Fifteen minutes passed. Then nearly twenty. By that point, a long line had formed behind me, trapping my car.

At the thirty-minute mark, I started asking the cars around me if they could maneuver to let me out. After almost forty minutes, I finally managed to escape.

Frustrated and still hungry, I drove a little further to a local gyro joint. I walked inside, placed my order, and within five minutes, I was enjoying a fresh, delicious lamb platter.

If this had been an isolated incident, I wouldn’t have thought much of it. But the reality is, experiences like this are all too common. Fast food isn’t fast, and to make matters worse, it’s often not even cheap anymore. Unless you’re scraping the bottom of the so-called “value menu”—which has become scarce and filled with low-quality options—you’re likely paying the same, if not more, than you would at a local spot.

When you stack up the cost, the wait, and the disappointing quality, it’s hard to justify why anyone bothers with fast food at all.