It's All About the Midterms
- By Neil Patel
What's gotten better in America since Joe Biden took office? It's hard to come up with a list. The economy is in tatters. Inflation is booming. Food and energy prices are out of control. The poorest Americans are hurting more than they have in years. With an increasingly belligerent China and Russia joining forces, America's national security looks more precarious than it has in decades. In the face of this record, the Biden team has gone low. With no record to run on, Biden's advisers knew they had to flip the narrative. The new strategy is clear: Gin up your own base, and vilify your opponents.
Time for Those in Power to Change Strategies Before It's Too Late
- By Neil Patel
The accelerating pace at which the U.S. is falling apart is matched only by the increasing hope among those in power that all will be solved if they just get Donald Trump out of the way. That, of course, is wishful thinking of the highest order. More than half a decade after Trump first came down the escalator, those running nearly every institution in America still don't realize that he is a symptom of what's going on in the country -- not the cause. Even more damaging, those in power have lost confidence that the political system will get rid of Trump, so they are now resorting to brute force. And now the criticism is not just of Trump or of those who stormed the Capitol and deserve it, but of all Trump's voters as well. Upping the ante like they have has taken a country on edge and moved it that much closer to catastrophe. If there are any cool heads left in American leadership, it's time for them to step up.
Starter Steps in Case Anyone in Washington Is Interested in Fixing Our Broken Political System
- By Neil Patel
One of the biggest reasons American politics have turned upside down over the past few years is growing numbers of Americans do not think leaders represent their interests. That simple sentiment underlies nearly every recent problem in American politics. Yet for some reason, almost nobody has engaged in the process of figuring out how this happened and how to fix it.
It's hard to trust elected representatives if you think they are in it to line their own pockets. Voters also don't trust politicians who seem to prioritize foreign interests or special interests over their own well-being. Those are precisely the sentiments many voters feel today.
The FBI Doesn't Seem to Care Enough to Explain Their Trump Raid
- By Neil Patel
From the moment Donald Trump came down the escalator to formally step onto the political stage, America's leading establishment figures have misjudged what was happening. Most still refuse to think deeply about what drove such massive popularity for Trump. Some of it was his focus on issues, such as extended wars in the Middle East and a lack of border security, where there was a growing chasm between voters' desires and politicians' priorities. The biggest part, though, was a growing mistrust felt by many Americans for their political leaders altogether. There are still so many open questions about the FBI's raid on Trump's Mar-a-Lago home this week, but one thing for sure is it reinforced the feeling many Americans have that the system is rigged. The Biden Justice Department, in other words, just reinforced the sentiment that brought Trump to power in the first place.
America's Leaders Need to Step Up Before It's Too Late
- By Neil Patel
The saddest part of the complete breakdown of trust in America is how little its leaders seem to care. There's been a lot written about the trust freefall. People haven't trusted politicians for years (U.S. Congress: 18% approval), but now even formerly highly trusted institutions like the church (now at 31% confidence) and the U.S. military (trust down 25% since 2018) are in a trust freefall. You may expect national leaders to be racking their brains on how to rebuild this trust, yet there is no sign of that. Instead, the attitude seems to be "what the hell is wrong with the American people?" Leaders bemoan the rise of populism yet refuse to give even the briefest thought to its root causes.
The Media Has Tried and Failed to Sell the Left's Crazy Agenda
- By Neil Patel
Every reasonably honest observer knows the corporate media has a liberal bias. That bias is displayed more often in the topics they choose to emphasize than in outright misinformation. We all know the major narratives that the media is trying to drive home. There is none bigger than the idea that Republicans have become extreme, out of the mainstream and even dangerous. There is certainly some craziness on the American right, but it's misinformation of the highest order to pretend the eccentricities of the right even approach the outright radicalism the left is mainstreaming today. That's the big lie the media is trying to pull off. It's not working.
The Left Is About to Pay for Their Energy Insanity
- By Neil Patel
Most politicians and activists have strong views on every political issue. Those views grow from their fundamental political philosophies and beliefs. The best politicians know how to balance their political ideals with a keen watch on how they affect the lives of everyday Americans -- those who voted them into office. Go too far with your ideological preferences in the face of evidence that it's hurting the American people, and you will not go far in politics. The Democratic Party seems poised to take a beating for forgetting this fundamental maxim when it comes to energy and climate change. They feel so strongly about the issue that many have lost touch with reality. They have entered a sort of make-believe world. The coming election is going to bring them back to reality.
The Democratic Party Is Cracking Up, but Republicans Seem Incapable of Taking Advantage
- By Neil Patel
The real problem for the Democratic Party is not President Joe Biden. He's a huge problem, of course, but their real problems run much deeper. The Democrats have an unmanageable coalition and are unable to cobble it together into anything even semicoherent. If Republican leaders were attuned to this dynamic, they could dominate like perhaps never before, but they have failed to do so.
Biden has been a historically terrible president. Biden was not the first choice for many Democratic primary voters. Democrats turned to him mainly because he seemed like the least risky candidate to run against Donald Trump. He was clearly past his prime, but he was the low-risk alternative with lots of governing experience. The dominant left-wing activist wing of the party had other favorites, but they went along because their fear of a second Trump term outweighed any other consideration.
Avoiding the Approaching American Catastrophe
- By Neil Patel
It's hard not to worry about America's future these days. Warning signs are everywhere. Trust in institutions is at all-time lows. Inflation is out of control. The nation's long-term finances are in shambles. People are at each other's throats. Drug overdoses are booming. Suicide is booming. Growing elements on both the left and the right are convinced the political system is broken beyond repair. Disturbing numbers of Americans are willing to resort to political violence. The country is in crisis.
You have to be willfully blind not to notice the signs, yet there has been very little effort to promote national healing. That's the saddest part. Either nobody cares anymore or people are resigned to the inevitability of an American crash.
America is not perfect; it never has been. But measured by historic standards or comparative world standards, America is an amazing place. Saving it is a worthy cause. Unless more people start taking up that cause quickly, things may slip beyond a breaking point.
It's Time To Move Past the Gun Control Debate Loop
- By Neil Patel
It's almost impossible to think of anything as horrifying as a group of innocent young kids gunned down by a madman in their classroom. Just imagining the terror those kids faced is enough to break even the hardest of hearts. That's the horror America is wrestling with today. What to do about it is a harder question.
Many turn immediately to gun control. The problem is there are few if any gun control measures that would likely help very much. America already has more guns than people. Someone who wants one will find one. New laws will not deter those already committed to breaking the law.
Are Republicans a Bunch of Racists?
- By Neil Patel
Are Republicans a bunch of racists? That's certainly the narrative that the corporate media is pushing as hard as it can. The context this time is the tragic killing spree in Buffalo, New York, carried out by a mentally deranged racist whose online manifesto includes a whole slew of racist and antisemitic conspiracies.
Are those sorts of things part of mainstream Republican thought? As an Indian American immigrant and a conservative Republican, this is not what I have experienced in any manner.
The racism charge today is based mostly on an alleged "great replacement theory," which the left claims a number of top Republicans and conservatives subscribe to. This theory, that a cabal of elites and Jews wants to flood America with a new immigrant minority to displace white Americans, is not something I have ever heard espoused.
Decent People Need to Denounce the Crazy
- By Neil Patel
What's worse, attacking people's homes and neighborhoods or disrupting religious services? The answer, of course, is both are completely unacceptable. These are not things normal people need to debate. A man's home is his castle. Does that ring a bell? It's an English legal concept adopted by the American founders and reflected in the U.S. Constitution's Fourth Amendment. Families shelter in homes to protect each other from the outside world. It's a sanctuary. Accosting people in churches is even worse; they're literally sacred places. Anyone who violates these fundamental concepts will pay a steep price politically. More importantly, anyone taking these radical steps is furthering America's sad decline.
America Is Probably in for a Rough Ride
- By Neil Patel
Buckle up. America is in for a rough ride if the leaked draft opinion from the Supreme Court regarding abortion turns out to be reflective of the final copy. In the long run, this opinion may end up healing the country, at least to some extent. A morally charged and complicated issue like abortion is best decided in the political arena. Allowing the voters of each state to decide the rules for themselves will not satisfy everyone. It may satisfy almost no one since there will be outlier states on both sides that will impose rules unpopular with the other. But the political system at least allows advocates the opportunity to make their case to their fellow citizens. That opportunity itself has value in a democracy, and that's America's best hope for long-term health on the emotional and divisive abortion issue.In the short term, though, look out. The left and right are both in an angry mood. The left, in particular, is in "burn it down" mode.
How History Will View the Biden Years
- By Neil Patel
When historians study the disaster that was the Biden administration, they will find many factors that contributed to the historic level failure we are witnessing. At the top of the list is a president who is clearly just not up to the job. Whether due to age, cognitive decline or general ineptitude, Joe Biden has not been able to lead America. Nobody wants a weak president. People can smell weakness, and Biden reeks of it. The president put himself in a further hole by surrounding himself with a young staff driven more by a rigid, left-wing ideology than a desire to help the lives of everyday Americans. With a leader seemingly too weak to temper his team's radical ideas, the results have been catastrophic.
Conservatives Need to Take Better Advantage of the Gifts From the Far Left
- By Neil Patel
According to Pew, the so-called progressive left makes up only 6% of the American population and 12% of the Democratic Party. This small group is overwhelmingly white (nearly 70%), young and highly educated. They are also extremely engaged politically, voting and donating to candidates at a higher rate than almost any other political grouping. And they are overrepresented in many key positions of influence, including academia, media, Hollywood and, increasingly, corporate America.
A Broken Country Buries a Broken Laptop
- By Neil Patel
There has been a lot of ink spilled over Hunter Biden's broken laptop and the way it was treated in the weeks leading up to the 2020 election, but not nearly enough. Now The New York Times has admitted, almost two years too late, that materials in the laptop were in fact authentic. There is no more perfect encapsulation of the problems in American media and tech than this tragic story.
To recap, on Oct. 14, 2020, just weeks before the presidential election, the New York Post broke a huge story about emails found on a Hunter Biden laptop recovered from a computer repair shop. The corporate media reacted to this story by: 1) calling into question the authenticity of the materials and raising the prospect, without evidence, that it could be Russian disinformation; 2) dismissing the relevance of the information, even if accurate; and 3) based on the first two points, mostly ignoring the report altogether.
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