The Total State

After Donald Trump’s stunning victory in the 2024 election, Democrats had to stop and ask what went wrong. One conclusion from the commentary class was that progressives had a serious man problem, and for once they were right. Democrats had made contempt for men, especially young white men, central to their message, and that came with a cost. Any white man who remained on the left had to accept that he was either uniquely guilty or expected to participate in his own dispossession.

Modern people tend to see knowledge as something humanity achieves collectively and then keeps forever. Once a scientific advance or moral truth is discovered, we assume it becomes part of the species’ permanent inheritance. That is false. Truth may be eternal, but our knowledge of it is not. Knowledge can be lost when a civilization stops practicing it. As America celebrates its 250th anniversary, we must understand that remembering our traditions and values is not enough.

The day-to-day status of negotiations may be uncertain, but the Trump administration appears to be doing everything it can to reach a deal and end the conflict with Iran. The war had solid support from Trump’s more Fox News-oriented voters, but it remained unpopular with much of the country. It cost Trump several high-profile supporters. It also earned him the favor of political operators who previously despised him.

For years, June looked like the American Ramadan: an entire month dedicated to the state religion of LGBTQ politics, complete with mandatory observances across every major institution. Gay men exposed themselves to children at parades while police looked on.

After decades of brutal race and gender politics from the left, conservatives began treating identity itself as toxic. That reaction is understandable after fighting a sinister ideology for years, but ignoring identity is not an option. Human beings need a firm sense of who they are and where they belong. Progressives exploited that impulse in twisted, artificial ways, but the impulse remains natural and healthy.

Bodycam footage from the United Kingdom has turned Henry Nowak’s death from a local outrage into a national indictment. The footage appears to show officers handcuffing an 18-year-old stabbing victim, dismissing his pleas for help, and treating him as the suspect while he bled to death. Nowak, an 18-year-old from Essex, reportedly told officers, “I can’t breathe,” and “I’ve been stabbed.” Officers mocked him, denied that he had been injured, and debated whether they had any obligation to check.

Traditionally, one advantage of living in rural America was the ability to escape insufferable leftists. The trade-offs were obvious: fewer jobs, fewer restaurants, less entertainment, and fewer institutions built for upward mobility. But distance from liberal cultural centers meant the average community could preserve a sane, conservative, patriotic outlook — the kind of place where normal people could still breathe without asking permission from their urban cultural commissars.

The artificial intelligence boom has become one of the biggest engines of the American economy. It has also triggered a growing backlash against the data centers that make the boom possible. Tech moguls have rushed to build giant warehouses packed with the computing power needed to run AI systems, but they have done almost nothing to explain to ordinary Americans why those facilities deserve so much land, water, electricity, and political favoritism.

The fact that marriage in America is on the decline is concerning, but few people understand how deep the problem goes. Recent data shows the dismal marriage numbers in the United States. The percentage of married couples, average age at which couples are marrying, and number of children are all in catastrophic decline. The numbers represent a dramatic collapse in the institution that serves as a foundation for successful civilizations.

In our modern world, it is very common to conflate motives we do not understand with some form of mental illness. This is understandable when it comes to horrific crime. A serial killer is so violent and twisted that it is hard for us to comprehend his actions, and there is certainly a fair amount of mental illness that is a factor. Today, however, people often use this explanation when it comes to political disagreements.