We live in an era in which cable television news is set to go the way of the 8-track tape player, and the changing media landscape is profoundly impacting how Americans get their political news.
As CNN, Fox, and MSNBC’s audiences shrink and age, the influencer era in American politics is officially underway.
If you need any convincing, zoom in on the Republican and Democratic conventions that wrapped up a few weeks ago. According to a recent RealClearPolitics article, around 200 content creators (or influencers) received credentialed invitations to the Democratic National Convention. This included exclusive access to VIP parties and events, as well as the chance to meet some of the delegates involved in the selection process.
Based on your age, it’s relatively easy to predict how you consume news. Boomers and Gen X primarily watch cable news, while younger generations consult social media, the internet, and podcasts for their information. This makes sense, as younger audiences tend to scroll endlessly through their phones, while older generations like to sit in front of the TV after dinner and watch cable.
This is why so much campaign money was spent on TV ads in recent elections. After all, that’s where you could reach citizens with a higher voting propensity.
But this old model is dated, and here’s why.
2024 is poised to be the first election in which millennials (ages 28-43) and Gen Z (under 27 voters) make up the majority. This new bloc of younger voters isn’t watching cable TV, and they’re definitely not seeing the political ads that cost modern campaigns a significant percentage of their war chests.
Airing ads on TV might have worked in 2004, but it will have limited success in 2024 – and that’s a big deal.
For a variety of reasons, the Republican Party has historically had trouble resonating with younger voters. This partially explains their electoral disappointments in 2020 and 2022, respectively. But instead of trying to rework their strategy to court this demographic, Trump and the GOP are doubling down on an old and outdated model. According to the Wesleyan Media Project, broadcast TV ads supporting Trump ran nearly 44,000 times across the country compared to only 33,000 for Kamala Harris/Joe Biden.
Rather than focusing on the young, independent swing voter, Trump continues to splurge on airwave advertisements. This might effectively get his base riled up and excited about the upcoming November election, but it won’t reach young people.
Today, political independents are the fastest-growing demographic in the country. These voters overwhelmingly skew millennial and are predominantly concentrated in the suburbs. Millennials are drastically different from any generation that’s come before them. They’re the first generation to come of age with the internet, and their consumption habits reflect this.
By all indications, Kamala Harris is working to broaden the Democratic coalition, primarily through her work to reach these independent voters. Team Harris has spent about $72 million through her digital ad campaigns alone compared with Trump’s $16 million.
For example, the DNC featured an influencer named Merrick Hanna. Hanna has more than 32 million followers/subscribers on TikTok alone. Let’s compare this with Fox News, which had 2.27 million primetime viewers for the entire month of August. The irony is that the people watching Fox News likely already know how they will vote.
As you can see, cable TV ads have all but lost their efficacy.
If you want to know why Kamala Harris is ahead in the polls, it’s because she’s making a concerted effort to talk to new and undecided voters outside of her key voting bloc, while Trump continues to preach to his loyal base.
Older generations can roll their eyes at influencers for their flamboyant and excessive behavior. But there is absolutely no denying their effectiveness at reaching mass audiences of young people at a shockingly low cost.
It’s often said that politics is downstream of culture. And culture is incredibly dynamic. Historians and political scientists frequently point to the 1960 presidential debate between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon. People who listened to the radio walked away thinking that Nixon won, while those who watched the debate featuring the handsome and well-tanned Kennedy thought the opposite.
Kennedy was more effective at using television to his campaign’s advantage. Today, whoever is more effective at leveraging social media will see a similar boost.
Old tactics simply don’t work in this new age, and both parties would be wise to recognize this.
Like it or not, the influencer age is here to stay.
Global Cocoa Deficit Deeper Than Expected, US Stockpiles Hit 2009 Lows
Following a massive price surge in cocoa prices in New York earlier this year, where prices topped nearly $12,000 per ton before bottoming out in the low $7,000s and resulting in what technical analysts say is a triangle pattern, prices are expected to stay rangebound as compression indicates a major move nears.
Bloomberg cites new data from the International Cocoa Organization that says demand will exceed production by 462,000 metric tons. That’s about 5.2% more than the ICCO’s May forecast of a 439,000-ton deficit. This is a muchlarger shortage than the initial outlook published in February.
In the Friday report, ICCO wrote that global cocoa supplies remain depressed due to “adverse weather conditions, aged trees, pests and diseases that affected production in major cocoa areas during the season under review.”
Global cocoa production this season is 4.33 million tons, 2.9% below ICCO’s previous forecast. Grinding estimates are expected to be 2.1% lower, at 4.75 million tons.
Bloomberg noted, “New York futures are up around 80% this year as poor harvests in West Africa curbed supplies, though prices have pared back from record highs. The region’s cocoa industry is still grappling with lasting issues like crop disease, and new trees take at least three years to reach fruit-bearing maturity. That’s constraining how quickly production can ramp up to ease the shortage.”
New York bean prices are locked in a triangle formation of compressing price action, indicating that a big move might be on the horizon.
New data from ICE exchange-monitored warehouses shows US cocoa stockpiles have slumped to the lowest levels since early 2009.
Meanwhile, candy companies such as Hershey have been pushing higher cocoa costs to customers. The PA-based company has already slashed its sales and earnings outlook for the year as shoppers have decreased purchases of higher-priced chocolates and candies. In other words, demand destruction has emerged.
Let’s not forget that oil trader Pierre Andurand remains bullish on the view that the stocks-to-grinding ratio for the world at the end of the year will be at its lowest ever “and potentially run out of inventories late in the year.”
Since the 2000 presidential election, the left has worked to undermine the legitimacy of the Electoral College, labeling it a relic of slavery. No doubt, if Donald Trump returns to the White House while again losing the popular vote, these attacks will be renewed with fervor. In fact, it has already begun as commentators denounce the undemocratic nature of the system. Just last month, the New York Times published a piece trashing the Constitution and asserting that the Electoral College’s only purpose was to protect slavery. These critiques are based on misconceptions and hostility toward the very structure of our Constitution.
The History
Our method of electing the president came about through compromise. The framers agreed upon a system that ensured the states had a say in choosing the president. The Constitution gives each state a share of electors, and the states decide for themselves how to select those electors.
At the time of the constitutional convention, popular elections would have favored the North because the North’s population of free persons would have outstripped the South’s. This dynamic is why the South pushed for a system that proportioned the electoral vote based on population, including slaves.
But nothing in the Electoral College system inherently favored slavery. You could have had an Electoral College system that did not count slaves as part of the population for the purpose of distributing electors. Thus, it was the counting of slaves in proportioning electors via the infamous two-thirds clause that protected slavery.
In fact, even if slavery had never existed, the states would never have agreed to a method of electing the president that stripped them of having a say in the matter. Protecting state sovereignty and ensuring less populous states had influence were key features of the compromise. Therefore, slavery may have been one of several reasons for the compromise, but it certainly was not the reason.
The Merits
The way state delegations elect the chief executive may have been the product of compromise, but that does not detract from the merits of the system, which include geographic representation and respect for state sovereignty. This is true even if you believe the Electoral College is a part of slavery’s legacy.
In a national election, in a country as large and diverse as ours, representation based on geographic segments of the population is far superior to the mob rule of a purely popular vote. We are not a monolithic society. Life and perspectives vary based on location. This is especially true when you consider the differences between state governments, which attract different types of people.
America is an enormous nation, and a system based solely on the popular vote would allow densely populated cities to dominate. This dynamic is particularly problematic when one considers that urban populations often want to impose their culture and policy preferences on others, whereas rural populations generally want to be left alone. Just think about how Democrats want virtually everything to be regulated nationally by the feds.
But regardless of this left-versus-right paradigm, it is simply better to give the different geographic elements of the nation and the states a voice on national matters to somewhat lessen the ability of the majority to steamroll political minorities.
Furthermore, as much as the left would love to abolish the states, there is no United States without the states themselves. Our federalist system allows for better representation of different segments of our population and, therefore, allows for better governance. The states, as separate sovereigns, must have a say in who becomes president.
The Electoral College also affects the politics of presidential campaigns. Candidates are forced to consider the respective views held in different states, particularly of those voters in the less partisan swing states. This political circumstance has a way of diffusing power and lessening the focus on densely populated cities, allowing for perspectives outside of the urban thought bubble to participate.
Another popular attack on the Electoral College is that it is undemocratic. But American government was never meant to be based on democracy. Rather, democracy was meant to be a component, albeit an important one, of our constitutional republic. The protection of liberty and the rights of individuals are far more important than the ability of the majority to impose their will.
Moreover, the president is not even supposed to be a representative of the people in our constitutional system. That is what the House of Representatives is for. Thus, the argument against the Electoral College is an argument not just against our Constitution’s federalist principles but against the Constitution’s separation of powers as well.
Our Electoral College system might not be perfect, but it is far better than an election by direct popular vote, which disregards our federalist principles.
Alex Xenos is an attorney and a Young Voices contributor. His writing has appeared in the Boston Herald, The American Spectator, DC Journal, and NH Journal, among other publications. Follow him on X @AMXenos.
Diamond Prices Crash To Multi-Decade Lows As Art, Wine, & Rolex Markets Sour
The downturn in the diamond market is nothing short of breathtaking. Prices are in free fall as cash-strapped consumers have been shunning luxury goods, grappling with failed Bidenomics that unleashed an inflation storm and resulted in high interest rates. Compounding the issue, the rising demand for lab-grown diamonds has pressured the prices of natural stones.
According to Bloomberg data, citing the Diamond Standard Index, diamond prices have plunged to the lowest on record, with data going back to early 2002. The index has lost 45% of its value since March 2022.
Since diamonds are a consumer-driven market, the fierce bear market in prices signals that the industry is in trouble, as well as signals that low/mid-tier consumers are in trouble. In less than a week, Dollar General and Dollar Tree, with tens of thousands of stores nationwide, have warned that their core customer bases are under pressure. These discount retailers offer a unique glimpse into consumer sentiment that is not manipulated by government statisticians at the BLS.
De Beers, the world’s largest diamond producer by value, recorded its worst year in two decades earlier this summer. Its parent company, Anglo American, recently announced plans to divest and spin off its 85% stake in the diamond subsidiary.
CEO Duncan Wanblad acknowledged the challenges De Beers has faced. In May, he said, “It is sitting at the bottom of a cycle. That cycle is more macroeconomic than fundamental.”
The diamond and luxury goods industry was a major beneficiary of the helicopter money the US government dished out during the Covid era. However, as soon as pandemic savings dried up and the Biden-Harris team ignited an inflation storm through failed Bidenomics, consumers had to quickly dial back spending on diamonds, Rolexes, handbags, and Gucci loafers.
There has also been downward pressure from Gen Z’s distaste for marriage. Some millennials are too broke to afford natural stones and have gravitated to lab-grown diamonds. In recent years, the rapid growth of artificial stones has pressured natural stone prices.
In addition to a collapse in diamond prices, the Bloomberg Subdial Watch Index, which tracks prices for the 50 most-traded watches by value on the secondary market, has sunk nearly 18% in 24 months.
Looking at wine prices on the London International Vintners Exchange, the Live-ex Fine Wine 50 index has plunged below Covid lows, with a 5-year return of around 8.4%.
Let’s not forget that classic automobiles, such as Packard Roadsters and Ford Thunderbirds, or mainly classics before the 1960s, are not selling well at auctions. Baby boomers overpaid for these vehicles, while GenXers and millennials instead seek cars from the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, such as 911 Turbos. So much for the old folks trying to dump their 1930s Packards at auction bought a decade or two ago. The market is no longer there.
Overall, this note offers a view into consumer health. Low—and mid-tier households are certainly feeling recession-like pressures. Next up, a pullback in spending from higher income households?
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said on Sept. 4 that Chinese consul general Huang Ping is no longer holding his position after her request to the U.S. State Department that he be ousted. The State Department said the diplomat left because he reached the end of a regularly scheduled rotation.
On Sept. 3, a former top-level aide to Hochul was charged with spying for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Hochul said she reached out to the White House and U.S. Secretary of State after the arrest and indictment of Linda Sun. She asked that the Chinese consul general be removed from his position immediately.
U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said Hochul spoke to Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell on Sept. 4. Miller said the consul general was not expelled but rather reached the end of a regularly scheduled rotation. When it comes to the status of employees at these missions, the department reaches out to the foreign country, he said.
“I have conveyed my desire to have the counsel general from the People’s Republic of China and the New York mission expelled, and I’ve been informed that the counsel general is no longer in the New York mission,” Hochul said at the press conference.
She said her request was meant to send a message.
“I believe that the Chinese government with their behavior in doing this and working with Linda Sun is not acceptable,” Hochul said. “It’s a statement by us, that we’re not tolerating this, and anybody who represented that government needs to move on. That was what we made clear.”
Sun was charged with acting on behalf of the CCP, visa fraud, alien smuggling, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. Her husband and codefendant, Christopher Hu, was charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering, bank fraud, and misuse of means of identification.
Sun was dismissed from Hochul’s office in March 2023 for alleged misconduct, and the governor’s office is cooperating with the investigation.
Hochul said on Sept. 4 that Sun’s arrest showed that governments at all levels “certainly” should be more vigilant.
“This is an individual who started way before my time, was put in the position of liaison to the Asian community and global trade issues,” Hochul said.
Sun held state government roles from 2012 to 2023 and allegedly forged Hochul’s signature on invitations that would allow Chinese officials to illegally enter the United States and meet with government officials. She also allegedly used her position to block Taiwanese representatives from meeting government officials and edit then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s statements to remove references to Taiwan as a country.
According to the indictment, Sun found ways to allow CCP officials to gain access to New York state leaders during the COVID-19 pandemic, at one time even calling an official on her phone during a private conference call between multiple state departments, warning the CCP official, “Keep your phone muted.” The official wrote to Sun that the call had been “very useful.”
The indictment also alleges that Sun received millions of dollars in return for her work for the CCP and never declared her role as a foreign agent or the benefits she received. Sun and Hu pleaded not guilty during their initial court appearance in Brooklyn on Sept. 3 and will be released on bond.
Hochul said at a separate event on Sept. 4 that Sun had no access to security or government documents “so there was a limit to it,” but Sun used her position to promote CCP views in official proclamations while “diminishing any involvement” with Taiwan.
She said Sun had also been able to use her position to obtain visas for CCP officials, and that her office had alerted law enforcement to some “evidence that didn’t look right.”
“To think that any foreign agent, any foreign government to infiltrate a government organization like the state of New York has to be addressed,” she said.
Illegal Weed Growing Operation Found In House Owned By Oakland Police Officer
A illegal weed growing operation was found – of all places – in a home owned by an Oakland police officer this spring.
State Department of Cannabis Control officers discovered about $1 million worth of illegal marijuana in a Bay Area neighborhood in Antioch. One of the three raided houses was owned by Oakland Police Officer Samson Liu, 38, who was placed on administrative leave on April 30.
The Oakland Police Department, citing an ongoing investigation, did not disclose the officer’s name, but CNN identified him. Records show Liu bought a 2,800-square-foot house in Antioch in 2020 for $608,000.
The department said it “is aware of the allegations made against one of our members and is cooperating with outside law enforcement agencies on the case”, according to the LA Times.
The LA Times report says that the raid underscores the scale of illegal marijuana operations in California and the involvement of Chinese organized crime since legalization in 2016, according to the cannabis control agency.
Law enforcement described these operations as sophisticated and linked to “Chinese criminal syndicates” but provided no further details due to ongoing investigations.
A Los Angeles Times investigation recently revealed that contraband pesticide use has spread across California’s cannabis farms, both illegal and licensed, over the past three years.
These toxic substances were found in at least six counties, including Siskiyou County, where half of 25 illegal farms raided in July 2023 had pesticides present, causing three officers to need medical treatment after exposure, according to the report.
HARRISBURG, Pa.—Former President Donald Trump continued his courtship of voters in Pennsylvania, one of a handful of states that could decide the 2024 presidential election, with a wide-ranging town hall discussion on Sept. 4.
Fox News host Sean Hannity reminded the audience at New Holland Arena that the Republican nominee’s Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, declined an invitation to debate Trump that night. That’s why the event instead became a Trump-only town hall.
So far, Harris has agreed to one debate with Trump, set for Sept. 10 with ABC News in Philadelphia. Trump also invited her to appear Sept. 25 on CBS News.
Banter between Hannity and Trump on Wednesday, sprinkled with video montages of Harris’s past statements, filled about 50 minutes that had been allotted—even before a single audience member had been able to ask a question.
Then, Trump suggested, “Let’s make two shows” from the footage; Hannity obliged, and the event continued for about 15 more minutes as Dave McCormick, a Republican candidate for Senate, and four attendees sought answers from the former president. Their questions focused on safety, immigration, and the economy. Trump repeated his past pledges to improve on all three of those fronts.
The network was slated to broadcast the prerecorded Trump–Hannity interview later on Sept. 4; the Trump–audience interactions will air during Hannity’s regular time slot on Sept. 5. Other media outlets, including The Epoch Times, were permitted to report on the exchanges only after the first segment was broadcast at 9 p.m. ET on Sept. 4.
The following are key highlights from the town hall.
ABC Debate: ‘I’m Gonna Let Her Talk’
After Hannity asked what the former president was doing to get ready for next week’s debate with Harris, Trump replied: “I think I’ve been practicing all my life for this stuff. It’ll be an interesting evening.”
The former president said debates are unpredictable, so a candidate needs to be nimble. Many before him have prepped extensively, only to fail miserably in the heat of debate. “Everybody has a plan until they get ‘punched in the face,’” Trump said, quoting Mike Tyson.
“A lot depends on ABC. … I hope they’re going to be fair,” he said, adding that a contract bars the network from providing questions to either candidate in advance of the showdown.
The Trump and Harris camps had proposed different ground rules for the debate; they disagreed over whether the candidates should be seated or standing, and over whether microphones should be muted while the opposing candidate is speaking.
Trump’s strategy? “I’m gonna let her talk,” he said.
That is what he did on June 27 in Atlanta, where CNN hosted a debate between him and President Joe Biden. The incumbent was widely seen to have struggled during that face-off.
Biden withdrew from the race less than a month later and endorsed Harris as his preferred successor.
Fracking a Big Deal for Pennsylvania
Noting that many thousands of Pennsylvanians depend on fracking for their livelihoods, Trump told the audience, “You have no choice; you’ve gotta vote for me.”
Hannity played multiple video clips of Harris making past statements opposing fracking. Trump said he disbelieves her recent statement that she won’t ban the procedure that is used to help extract gas or oil from the ground. He said Democrats’ policies have directly hurt the industry even without an outright ban.
“You have to have fracking. … It’s a massive business for Pennsylvania, and you can’t take a chance” that Harris would eliminate it, Trump said.
Trump Trending Upward
Hannity noted the town hall came at a time when Trump was trending upward in some of the polls. Those include a Trafalgar Group poll showing Trump ahead of Harris in Pennsylvania by 2 percentage points.
The host said the latest numbers seem to suggest that Harris’s “long-lived honeymoon phase now finally, finally appears to be over.”
In the RealClearPolitics average of opinion polls, Harris was holding a 1.9 percent national lead against Trump on Sept. 4. But a few very recent polls were detecting a shift in momentum.
In Rasmussen Reports’ Daily Presidential Tracking Poll on Sept. 4, Trump opened a six-point lead over Harris nationally. But in Rasmussen’s five-day average, he was only 2 percent ahead of her.
Many other polls still show Harris with an edge over Trump nationally, but still within the margin of error, which runs at 3 percent or more for most polls.
An online prediction and betting site, Polymarket.com, on Sept. 4 showed Trump with a 52-percent chance of winning the Nov. 5 election; Harris had a 47-percent chance.
Contrast With Harris–Walz Accessibility
Hannity noted that Harris has given no solo news conferences since she became the apparent Democratic nominee 45 days prior to the Fox town hall.
She and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, participated in an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash on Aug. 29 but disclosed no new policy specifics. And, as of Sept. 4, no policy platform was yet listed on Harris’s website.
Hannity contrasted this with the dozens of news conferences and interviews Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), have given since Biden dropped out of the race.
After Trump passed the 16-minute, 30-second mark into the program, Hannity thanked him for going longer than Harris’s CNN interview; the audience laughed.
Heightened Security
Hannity and Trump have appeared together for many broadcasts since Trump first campaigned for president in 2016. But “never before have restrictions been so tight,” Hannity said.
In the wake of a gunman’s failed assassination attempt against Trump on July 13 in Butler, Pennsylvania, Trump’s security team insisted on a smaller audience for the Fox town hall, Hannity said. Seating arrangements were also strictly controlled.
No attendance estimate was provided, but the arena, which holds 7,300 people, appeared to be about one-third full.
Hannity and Trump expressed sadness over the Georgia school shooting that left at least four people dead and nine wounded hours before the town hall.
In addition, Hannity also noted that FBI Director Christopher Wray recently warned about an unprecedented spike in security threats.
When Hannity wondered aloud why so many problems with violence and threats persist, Trump replied, “It’s a sick and angry world for a lot of reasons,” expressing confidence that he will improve conditions if he wins reelection.
“It starts now, Trump!” one man in the audience said.
Reassuring ‘Hesitant’ Voters
A woman asked Trump what he had learned from his first term as president that could help reassure “those that are hesitant to vote for [him] now.”
Trump replied that he learned the importance of putting the right people into key positions in his administration.
“I put people in, that in some cases were not what I really wanted. … I know the good ones, the bad ones, the weak ones, the smart ones, the dumb ones,” he said, his last phrase prompting a chuckle from the audience. “A big key to running it is getting the right people. … I know now the people, and I know them better than anybody.”
Putin Quips That He Prefers Harris To Trump, Cites ‘Contagious, Expressive’ Laugh
Russian President Vladimir Putin said during an interview at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok that Russia now wants Vice President Kamala Harris to win in November since they had previously supported Joe Biden – and Biden has endorsed Harris.
“I told you, our favorite, if I may say so, was the current president, Mr. Biden,” said Putin, smirking. “He was removed from the race, but he advised all his supporters to support Ms. Harris. So we will do it as well, we will root for her,” he continued.
Putin said Harris “laughs so contagiously and expressively, it shows she’s doing well.”
JUST IN: Vladimir Putin says he supports Kamala Harris for president, says he finds her laugh “fascinating.”
The comments come after the DOJ accused Russia of funding Tenet who then paid conservative influencers for videos.
“And if she is doing well, then … Trump introduced so many restrictions and sanctions against Russia, like no other president had ever introduced before him. And if Ms. Harris is doing well, perhaps she will refrain from doing anything like that,” he continued.
Putin’s comments are likely to be dismissed as a joke by the Harris campaign, while Trump will probably use them to deflect long-standing claims by Democrats that his campaign is supported by Russia.
According to Sky News’ Moscow correspondent Ivor Bennett, “Vladimir Putin is having a little chuckle himself here. His comments are almost certainly more mischief-making than a statement of fact because, as we know, Russia’s president doesn’t always say what he thinks.”
As we highlighted earlier this week, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was asked by pro-Russia TV reporter Pavel Zarubin, “Then who is our candidate now?”
“We have no candidate. But, of course, the Democrats are more predictable. And what Putin said about Biden’s predictability applies to almost all Democrats, including Ms. Harris,” responded Peskov.
The Kremlin spokesman was also dismissive towards Trump’s claim that he could end the war with Ukraine within 24 hours.
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John Mearsheimer & Ron Paul Invade Washington, Blast Permanent War State: “Social Engineering At The End Of A Rifle Barrel”
The man who for decades had been an almost lone Congressional advocate of non-interventionism in American foreign policy is former Congressman Ron Paul. When he ran for president in 2008, he took what the late Justin Raimondo called “libertarian realism” to the masses in the famous moment wherein he tangled with Rudy Giuliani on the GOP debate stage. Paul described that “blowback” resulting from Washington militarism and adventurism abroad was a contributing cause of 9/11. But for a population fed on a steady diet of the world-saving messianism of Wilsonian internationalism, in which America’s mystic destiny is to “make the world safe for democracy” (to quote Raimondo)—Rep. Paul’s policy positions were deemed somehow ‘too radical’ for American voters to swallow at the time (or rather, the mainstream gatekeeping pundits assured their viewers of his “fringe” views). Fast forward to well over another decade of the failed GWOT later, and now a common refrain heard on social media and even in the halls of Congress and occasionally the State Department is: Ron Paul was right.
The US ‘forever wars’ in the Middle East led to a jaded, war-weary, and questioning public which tends to be ever-more skeptical anytime the political class starts talking a new major foreign intervention. This is perhaps why, ever since the Obama presidency Washington has shown a preference for covert and proxy wars, or involvement from the shadows, instead of Bush-style ‘shock and awe’ outright invasions. But currently, the Pentagon and US intelligence are involved in two disastrous hot wars (on a proxy and covert level) which could escalate into massive regional wars, or even world wars, at any moment: Ukraine and Gaza.
Back in 2014, another realist accurately predicted the tragic and disastrous Russia-Ukraine war which would eventually erupt in February 2022 when he said in a University of Chicago lecture: “The West is leading Ukraine down the primrose pathand the end result is Ukraine is going to get wrecked.“ Professor John J. Mearsheimer’s now famous 2014 hour-and-fifteen minute lecture, once it was popularly ‘discovered’ on YouTube after the Russian invasion of 2022, has since racked up nearly 30 million views. We wrote about his insights and forecasts in Mearsheimer’s Ukraine Crystal Ball. And now in 2024 more and more people continue to say: John Mearsheimer was right.
It was perhaps only a matter of time before these two great thinkers who have done so much to expose the follies and dangers of US interventionism abroad would meet and share the same stage.
This past weekend that’s exactly what happened. They addressed the Ron Paul Institute’s Liberty Platform Conference in the Washington D.C. area, with an audience of several hundreds of people in attendance. It was Dr. Mearsheimer’s first time at the annual Ron Paul Institute conference hosted in Dulles, VA.
Paul in delivering his usually strong “end the Empire and end the Fed” liberty message agreed with Mearsheimer’s words, who said of Washington action in the world, “We decided we are going to use that awesome military power that we had to run around the world and do social engineering.” The University of Chicago professor further pointed out: “And of course it’ssocial engineering in many cases at the end of a rifle barrel.”
Both also agreed, as the nation enters a charged election in November, that fundamentally there’s no difference between Republicans and Democrats on the question of foreign policy and Washington’s penchant for constant military interventionism.
Dr. @RonPaul today at the 8th Annual @RonPaulInstitut Peace and Prosperity Conference on what he learned from Ludwig von Mises:
“…there has to be people who know how to take those complex ideas and make them palatable to the people and that’s what I work on daily, trying to… pic.twitter.com/u27Md61E1z
Mearsheimer explained that when he references the foreign policy establishment, “your talking about tweedle dee and tweedle dum.”
He also observed, “Both the Republicans and the Democrats love their ‘color revolutions’.” But given that nation-states do not like other countries running around interfering in their affairs, the enduring blowback and forever wars has led to a “permanent state of emergency”:
“People who don’t understand the limits of what you can do with the military… and think that we have the right and responsibility and the capability to reorder the world in our image, are going to end up creating a highly militarized society. Remember I said that in international anarchy the United States is always going to have a large military. But that’s different from saying we are always going to have a large military that’s fighting wars,” Mearsheimer told the Ron Paul Institute audience.
Interestingly, though Mearsheimer has lectured all over the world, the only time he ever had to cancel a trip and event altogether due to potential threats to his life was when he was set to give a talk in the NATO ‘eastern flank’ country of Poland. He told ZeroHedge that “they could not guarantee my safety”—in referencetothe event organizers and Polish police.
Below are key excerpts from John Mearsheimer’s address given to the Ron Paul Institute’s “Liberty Platform” conference on Saturday Aug.31. [Transcribed by ZeroHedge with subheadings added]
* * *
US power & international anarchy
It’s great to be here. I appreciated all the people who come up to me and talk to me, and I look forward to talking to you about international anarchy and limits of military power. What I want to do here is I want to explain to you why I believe that international anarchy means that the United States will always have a very large and powerful military. And then I want to talk about what the limits are regarding how you use that military.
So to start, what do I mean by international anarchy. As I’m sure many of you in the audience know international anarchy is a catchword for saying that in international politics there is no higher authority that sits above states that can rescue them if they get into trouble. The international system is basically comprised of states – states are the principle actors in international politics. So anarchy, in the lexicon of international relations scholars is the opposite, it’s the opposite of hierarchy. If you live inside the United States you have hierarchy – you have a state that is very powerful that sits above you. It has a police force associated with it, it has courts and so forth and so on. In the international system there’s not higher authority.
Furthermore, it’s very hard to know the intentions of other sates and it is impossible to know the future intentions of other states, because you don’t even know who’s going to be running China, or the United States, or Russia – in five years. So how can you know what their intentions are going to be? So you’re in an anarchic system there’s no higher authority to rescue you if you get into trouble. And there are states out there that may have malign intentions, and furthermore there may be states out there that are really powerful.
China demonstrated what happens to a weak state
So if a really powerful state decides it’s going to come after you, and you dial 911, you know who’s at the other end: nobody. And in a system like that you have no choice but to have a powerful military. Your goal is to be the most powerful state in the system. And you want to be the most powerful state in the system because you understand that if you’re weak and you get into trouble, nobody can help you. It is what we call a ‘self-help system’.
If you have any doubts about this go to China and ask them about the ‘century of national humiliation’. The Chinese were very weak from the late 1840s until the late 1940s: they call it the century of national humiliation. What happened then? China was weak and it was preyed upon – it was preyed upon by the United States, you know the open door policy – Japan, and the European great powers. The Chinese are never going to let that happen again. They want their own state and they want that state to be powerful.
US History: a voracious appetite for conquest
The same basic logic applies to every other state in the system. And this includes the United States of course. The United States you all understand worked very hard to become powerful. It started out as thirteen measly colonies strung out along the Atlantic seaboard. We marched across North America all the way to the Pacific Ocean, acquiring and conquering territory all the way. We invaded Canada in 1812 for the purpose of making it part of the United States. And all those island countries in the Caribbean today would be part of the United States were it not for the slavery issue, because the northern states did not want more slave-holding states admitted into the Union. And course because of the sugar industry there were a huge number of slaves in the Caribbean. So the Caribbean did not become part of the United States.
But we had a voracious appetite for conquest and we built a very powerful military once we became the dominant state in the Western hemisphere. This is just the way international politics works. Now for most of you that’s bad news. But from my point of view that’s not the really important issue. The really important issue is how you use that military power. What I’m telling you is we’re always going to be powerful militarily – the question is what do you do with it? And this is where the United States has gone off the rails – at least since the end of the Cold War and many would argue, before the Cold War.
America’s Unipolar Rise
And what’s happened since about 1989 when the United States became the unipole. You all remember remember the unipolar moment, when we were incredibly powerful relative to every other state on the planet? What the foreign policy establishment in this country decided it was going to do is that we decided we were going use that awesome military power that we had to run around the world and do social engineering. What we were gonna do is we were gonna try and remake the world in our own image. We were gonna spread democracy here, there, and everywhere.
We were gonna spread capitalism and economic independence all over the planet. We were going to take these institutions that we created during the Cold War and we were going to integrate countries all around the world into those institutions, and turn them into ‘rule-abiding citizens’. But the most important thing we were interested in doing was spreading Liberal Democracy. And when I say the foreign policy establishment it’s very important to understand I’m talking about Republicans as well as Democrats. As far as the Republicans and Democrats go on the issue of foreign policy, you’re talking about tweedle dee and tweedle dum [laughter].
Republicans & Dems are the same on Foreign Policy
Just think of the Bush doctrine – and as you all know George W. Bush was a Republican. The Bush doctrine, right, which was enunciated after the Afghanistan war – that was in 2001 – and before the Iraq war, which was of course was March 2003. The Bush doctrine said that what we’re gonna do is gonna go into the Middle East. We’re gonna topple the regime in Iraq, right, we’re going to put in its place a democracy. Right, we’re gonna create democracy, get rid of Saddam, just as we had done in Afghanistan? Remember? […laughter] We toppled the Taliban and we put Hamid Karzai in power in Afghanistan.
We’re gonna do that in Iraq, and then maybe we have to do it in one more country: Syria maybe? Iran? And pretty soon everybody in the region would get the message, they’d throw up their hands for fear that the United States would come after them, and they’d all turn into Liberal Democracies. That’s what the Bush doctrine was about. This is Republicans, and of course the Democrats were no better.
Below: AntiWar.com News Editor Dave DeCamp (with Mearsheimer, right) spoke during the conference’s Friday session…
Both the Republicans and the Democrats love their ‘color revolutions’. What color revolutions? This is where you run around the world, overthrowing regimes, and putting in place pro-Western Liberal Democracies. It’s social engineering. And of course it’s social engineering in many cases at the end of a rifle barrel. That’s what the Bush doctrine was – it was social engineering at the end of a rifle barrel. And you ought to think about what’s going on here. You’re pursuing… a policy which me and my friends call liberal hegemony.. you’re saying you can take this big stick that you have and you can use that big stick – you can use military force – to turn a political tide inside particular countries in ways that are favorable to you.
Nationalism is the fly in the ointment
There’s a fundamental problem with this approach to dealing the world. The fundamental problem is political. Clausewitz said war is an extension politics by other means… he’s telling you that it’s the politics that really matter… Now that’s the real fly in the ointment that the foreign policy establishment faced. That is that the most powerful political ideology on the planet is nationalism… a remarkably powerful force. It’s very hard for Americans to understand this… It basically says the world is divided into nations. The highest social group that we identify with is the nation. Sam Huntington talked about the ‘clash of civilians’. Civilians are not the highest social unit that people will really identify with in a meaningful way: it’s the nation. And what nations want is their own state… think about the concept of a nation-state… that’s nationalism. It has nationalism embedded.
Theodore Hertzel, who was the father of Zionism… his most famous book is called “The Jewish State”… nation-state.. Jewish nation state.. Jewish state. The Palestinians want their own state. They view themselves as a nation, as in they want their own state. You live in a liberal state, in a liberal country… you live in a liberal nation-state. Madeline Albright who was a card carrying liberal of the first order, she was famous for her statement that we are an exceptional nation, we stand tall, we see further than other nations. She understood that we were a nation-state. She was not only a liberal, she was a nationalist par excellence…
And the problem that you face is that nationalism has deeply embedded in it the concept of self-determination: ‘we’re sovereign’. And nation-states do not like the idea of other nation states coming into their territory and doing social engineering. You know how exercised American get when there’s talk about the Russians interfering in our elections? [laughter]…this is American nationalism at play. Countries around the world… they don’t want us doing social engineering… can you imagine us allowing someone doing social engineering inside the borders of the United States? Well as my mother taught me as a little boy what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. Unsurprisingly people outside the United States don’t like that at all.
Vietnam: not about Communism, but Nationalism
In Vietnam… we weren’t fighting communism, we were fighting nationalism. The Vietnamese wanted their own nation state, they wanted self-determination. They drove the French out at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 and they had every intention of drive us out. They didn’t want a bunch of Americans in their country telling what color toilet paper they could use [laughter]. They thought they could figure that out for themselves – that’s nationalism. You go into Afghanistan, you go into Iraq, you are really asking for big trouble. You think you’re gonna do social engineering in those countries? You think you’re going to be able to tell them what kind of political system they can have? It’s not gonna work! [clapping]
Putin doesn’t want Western Ukraine
Take the Russians. The Russians during the Cold War – as many of the old dogs in this audience like me remember – occupied a huge portion of Europe. Most of it Eastern Europe… they were up to their eyeballs in alligators dealing with protests. They had huge trouble in east Germany in 1953. In 1956 they had to invade Hungary. In 1968 they had to invade Czechoslovakia. They almost invaded Poland three separate time. And the Albanians and Romanians were a total nightmare for the Soviets. They were glad to get out of there! [laughter].
You think Vladimir Putin wants to go back there? Putin, as I’ve said on numbers occasions, did not want to invade Ukraine, he knows what happens when you start invading other countries. And he’ll take a big chunk of territory in Eastern Ukraine but he’s not gonna take a big chunk of territory in Western Ukraine cause it’s filled with ethnic Ukrainians.
And you know what that means? That if he goes in there he is going to have an insurgency that is gonna be impossible to stamp out. Because those ethnic Ukrainians are as nationalistic as you can get, and they don’t want Russia running their politics. One of the principle reasons that the Ukrainians are fighting so fiercely – it’s truly remarkable how they’ve been able to stand up to the Russians – is because of nationalism… this is the way the world works.
Israeli plan didn’t work
And just one final example: look at the Israeli case… The Israelis long thought they could use a big stick, they call it the iron wall, to beat the Palestinians into submission to get the Palestinians to accept that it is a Jewish state, that Israeli Jews run the place, and that Palestinians are third class citizens. They have been unable to win with that policy. And what happened on October 7th is just the latest manifestation of Palestinian resistance – which is another way of saying Palestinian nationalism.
Blindness of foreign policy elites spells more trouble ahead
What’s really amazing is the foreign policy elite does not seem to have gotten the message. There’s just no healthy appreciation of the power of nationalism inside the American foreign policy establishment, be they Democrats or Republicans. The end result is we are likely in the years ahead to have more trouble because of our inability to conceptualize just what a powerful force nationalism is.
Blunt killing machines & social engineering?
Militaries are good at breaking things [laughter]. These are giant killing machines. For anybody who spent any time in a military organization, it’s very important to understand: that’s what their good at. You want lots of people who are good at killing people on the other side. When you go to war you have these two huge organizations clashing into each other, armed to the teeth with all sorts of sophisticated weapons. And the A’s are trying to kill the B’s and the B’s are trying to kill the A’s. They’re trained to do that. Well, do you think that that military – just think of the people who will be at the front lines of that military – is gonna be good at doing social engineering in a foreign country… where nobody knows the culture, nobody speaks the language. Really? A bunch of American GIs running around in south Vietnam… what do you think that’s going to end up doing? You are more likely to get a Mai Lai massacre with Lieutenant Calley than you are… and have successful social engineering. Furthermore, even if you brought in a bunch of trained people, and you replaced those GIs with trained experts at social engineering, and you set them at the task of doing social engineering in south Vietnam or Afghanistan. Do you think they’d succeed? I don’t think so [laughter].
Think about the United States. Think about doing social engineering in our own country. Our system is broke and we can’t even fix it. But we’re going to go into Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam. …The Soviets figured this out in Eastern Europe… This is the way the world works [nationalism as the driver]… and it’s a relative recent phenomena – you don’t want to lose sight of that, but it is the most powerful political ideology on the planet.
Permanent State of Emergency
People who don’t understand the limits of what you can do with the military… and think that we have the right and responsibility and the capability to reorder the world in our image, are going to end up creating a highly militarized society. Remember I said that in international anarchy the United States is always going to have a large military. But that’s different from saying we are always going to have a large military that’s fighting wars. That’s they key distinction you want to keep in mind.
And what’s happened to the United States over time is that we not only have a large military but we’re fighting wars all the time. And the end result is that we’re in a permanent state of emergency… it happens to be worse now than it was two years ago or four years ago… but we’re in a permanent state of emergency… when you’re in a permanent state of emergency liberalism begins to erode in serious ways [that is, the classical Liberalism which undergirds the rise of the modern West]. …Liberalism is in my opinion under threat in the United States, and what’s quite remarkable here is that the foreign policy elite, Republicans and Democrats – that have taken us into these wars – have had a worldview that is thoroughly infused with liberal values and liberal thinking… and as I said to you… [they] missed the importance of nationalism. So these people are not anti-liberals at heart, but the policies that they are pushing this country to pursue… those policies are undermining liberalism in the end, which in my opinion is a great tragedy.
A federal judge said far-left New Mexico election regulators and prosecutors had discriminated against a nonprofit group in refusing access to voter registration rolls.
Albuquerque-based U.S. District Court Judge James Browning ruled that state election regulators engaged in viewpoint-based discrimination and free speech violations in denying the Voter Reference Foundation access to voter data and by referring the matter to state prosecutors.
Browning previously ruled that New Mexico authorities violated public disclosure provisions of the National Voter Registration Act by refusing to provide voter rolls to the same foundation, overriding a provision of a state law that restricts the use of voter registration data.
The Friday ruling barred the state from refusing to turn over voter data, bolstering the VRF’s efforts to expand a free database of registered voters in order to assist election-integrity watchdogs in rooting out potential irregularities or fraud.
State prosecutors planned to appeal the court ruling, said Lauren Rodriguez, a spokesperson for the New Mexico Department of Justice.
Democrats inexplicably have fought tooth and nail against all efforts by activists and lawmakers to ensure the sanctity of the ballot, despite the presence of an estimated 10 to 15 million new illegal immigrants courtesy of the Biden–Harris open border policies. Many are automatically added to voter rolls when applying for drivers licenses and other government services unless they pro-actively affirm that they are ineligible to vote.
The VoteRef.com website recently restored New Mexico listings to its searchable database of registered voters—including street addresses, party affiliations and whether voters participated in recent elections.
Democrats have claimed that by granting conservative watchdog groups access to state voter rolls, the lists could find their way into the hands of malicious actors and voters could be disenfranchised through intimidation, possibly by canceling their registrations to avoid public disclosure of their home addresses and party affiliation.
There is no evidence that greater transparency regarding voter registration has resulted in intimidation, and in many states Democrats have registered as Republicans in order to cast votes against GOP nominee Donald Trump.
The foundation’s VoteRef.com site doesn’t list whom people voted for. It preserves confidentiality under a program that shields victims of domestic violence or stalking.
Addresses also remain confidential for more than 100 publicly elected or appointed officials in New Mexico, including Democrats and Republicans, enrolled in a separate safety program enacted in the aftermath of drive-by shootings on the homes of local lawmakers in Albuquerque in December 2022 and January 2023.
The data may, however, assist election-canvassers in tracking the locations of invalid mail-in ballots, particularly in swing states where a narrow margin could impact the outcome.
The VoteRef.com database includes voter information spanning more than 32 states and the District of Columbia. It is run by Gina Swoboda, chair of the Arizona Republican Party and organizer of former President Donald Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign in Arizona.
An audit of Arizona’s 2020 election, commissioned by the state Senate, revealed that substantially more mail-in ballots had been returned in Maricopa County than were documented as having been sent out.
The total number of irregularities identified by the Cyber Ninjas forensic auditing team outstripped the 10,457-vote margin by which state officials claimed Democrat Joe Biden had won the election in Arizona.
