It's sad seeing my cherished conservative movement gradually turn against some of our fundamental principles. The horseshoe right and the socialist left are undeniably ascendant, and both won't shut u... View MoreIt's sad seeing my cherished conservative movement gradually turn against some of our fundamental principles. The horseshoe right and the socialist left are undeniably ascendant, and both won't shut up about Israel or their hate for free market capitalism.
You want to complain about affordability? Fine. I’ll join you IF you get the diagnosis correct. During our disastrous reaction to Covid, people like me tried to warn that drastically constraining production (by shutting down the economy) while simultaneously sending people free money (backed by debt-spending rather than wealth creation) would ultimately result in significant inflation. Free-market economists were screaming from the rooftops that such short-sided thinking would result in a future affordability crisis. We were ignored with dismissive retorts like “you only care about rich people” or “but normal people need help right now.” I don’t even disagree that forcing people not to work means it’s not their fault when they suddenly need free money, but that’s all the more reason why we never should’ve shut down the economy in the first place. When the currency drastically loses value, it negatively affects people’s limited budgets for years and years. Even when current inflation rates come back down to “normal” levels (usually around 3%), that does nothing to fix the 9% inflation which previously occurred in mid-year of 2022. People ARE struggling, and I don’t deny that, but they mostly aren’t struggling because of elite Jews or capitalism. They’re struggling because we had above-average inflation rates for three years in a row (2021 - 2023), with no deflation to later offset that damage.
Annual Average Headline Inflation Rates
* 2020: 1.2%
* 2021: 4.7%
* 2022: 8.0% (peaked mid-year at 9.1%)
* 2023: 4.1%
* 2024: 2.9%
* 2025: 2.6%
* 2026 (Mid-year): 3.5% (as of June 2026 data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics)
The last thing people should be doing is looking at the rising cost of living - caused by politicians and populists - and blaming the same capitalism which lifted millions out of poverty for decades. Instead of trying to regulate our way out of an affordability crisis, we should acknowledge that our terrible foray into central planning caused it in the first place.
Expanding our regulatory institutions was historically a common view on the left. Until recently, it wasn't a common view on the right. With Tucker Carlson’s continued devolution, combined with populist talking heads like Steve Bannon, their rhetoric against capitalism and “wealthy elites” often overlaps with leftist political narratives. It's very alarming to see such nonsense taking over the right. We were supposed to be the coalition of freer markets and individual liberty, not the party of government oversight and centralized bureaucratic authority. (Additionally, we were supposed to be the party who vehemently opposed Islamic fundamentalists, not sympathized with them, but that topic needs its own essay, so I digress.)
Does this mean you need to blindly support completely unregulated markets with literally no exceptions? No, not necessarily. Anything which infringes on people's individual human rights, such that it would be poisonous to non-consenting 3rd parties (such as pollution, for instance), is a negative externality I'm open to addressing, so long as it's done in a manner which balances the benefits of economic growth and a need to be globally competitive. Surprise, but I’m fine with outlawing the mass poisoning of a populace. Similarly, I'm in favor of outlawing fraud, since voluntary trade built on misrepresentation fundamentally violates the consent of a trading party, extracting permission under false pretenses. So no, you don’t need to defend toxic water supplies or con-artists and scams to understand that market economies are more functional than centrally planned ones. Where people lose me, however, is when they start blaming the productive, the profitable, and the all important risk-seeking entrepreneurs who innovate on the hopes that R&D costs are one day offset by profits. Attacking free enterprise under the guise of "protection" from inequality or "exploitation" often misdiagnoses our problems while implementing “cures” which backfire. In this case, we created new money without simultaneously producing anything of value for it to represent. WE caused this affordability crisis because we begged our politicians to mismanage our economy, our national debt, and our money supply.
Instead of demanding that politicians centrally plan our way out of a problem that central planning created, how about we learn our lesson and try the opposite?
This isn’t an easy post to write.
I know I’ll be judged for the tone. So be it. I’m just fed up with the state of things, and a little cranky today!
When you’re in fire season, the downtime is every ... View MoreThis isn’t an easy post to write.
I know I’ll be judged for the tone. So be it. I’m just fed up with the state of things, and a little cranky today!
When you’re in fire season, the downtime is every bit as hard as the chaos. “Hurry up and wait” isn’t a slogan out here… it’s a way of life. The hours are long when the work is there. When it’s not, boredom settles in like smoke, and loneliness follows right behind it. You can only be pulled away from home, from normal life, from the people and places that keep you grounded for so long before something starts to fray.
I’ve always kept myself busy by learning and writing… cattle, food, politics, faith, the occasional poem. Nothing is off-limits when something catches fire in my mind. I jump in with both feet. I’m no expert on anything, but I’ve lived enough and learned enough to stand my ground. Out here, though, the usual sources dry up. No television for a month. Spotty service. You grab what you can when the signal holds… reading, audiobooks, the Bible. Glen Tate’s 299 Days has been keeping me company this week, and the parallels to the cultural moment we’re living through are hard to ignore.
Too often the alternative is the endless scroll. I’m not proud of it. It’s an easy habit in isolation, and it exacts a price. Social media is a reliable engine of depression and anxiety for a reason: it strips the mask off. It shows people for who they are, what they actually believe, and what they think of those who still hold to older truths. Echo chamber or not, the picture is real enough. A large portion of the country is telling us exactly what they think of us, of our values, of our God, and of the country itself. We would be fools to look away.
The last decade has delivered things most of us never believed we would see on American soil. Assassination attempts on a president met with open celebration. The murder of Charlie Kirk met with the same. A Muslim mayor elected in the largest city in the nation… the same city that suffered the deadliest terrorist attack in our history… who has shown open disdain for this country and who stood in a mosque reciting prayers that call for jihad and the killing of the “infidels.” And crowds cheer. They march. They treat it like progress.
Scroll any comment section and the ugliness pours out. Ignorance is no longer rare; it is celebrated. People hang on the every word of influencers whose only product is division and whose currency is the lie. Common sense is treated as a threat. Rational argument is met with threats, harassment, and the demand that you be destroyed for daring to speak. Hypocrisy is the air they breathe. Accountability is a joke. This is not a fringe. It is roughly half the country, and a large share of the rest has decided that looking the other way is easier than standing up.
That is why the scroll leaves me hollow. It does not invent the rot. It simply refuses to hide it. And every day the rot spreads.
Today’s generations are softer than the ones who built and defended this place. The men and women who understood that freedom is not self-sustaining, that heritage is not automatic, that American exceptionalism was purchased in blood… they are growing scarce. Too many of the living would not have the stomach for what may still be required. Worse, they would turn on the very people trying to hold the line, never realizing those people are the last thin barrier between what remains of this nation and its consumption by something darker.
I write this because the alternative is silence, and silence right now is surrender.
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