Rant

Historically, the Left and the Right have done a dance every four to six years. Things switch around, little gets done, and the government is hobbled by one thing or another. For the past two years, that has not been the case. The Right has had the Presidency, the Senate, and the House, all wrapped up in a pretty bow. We know this, because things have gotten done. We’ve weeded out some (but not all) corruption and fraud. We’ve slowed illegal immigration. We’ve deported many violent criminals. We’ve ended a bunch of stupid things, like regulating plastic straws and funding foreigners studying birds in other countries. We’ve started the process of returning men and women to their biological places (and, as far as I can tell, largely without causing any major harms to folks who really are transgendered and just want to be left alone).  We’ve worked on lowering taxes in some places (but raised them in others). Most importantly, the tariffs have forced American companies to start producing things that we had outsourced to other countries, thereby strengthening our economy.

Despite all this, the Right was *crushed* in this midterm election. I’m curious to find out why this happened. The options, as I see them:

• Republicans didn’t get out and vote, something they’re VERY bad at during midterms
• The current vote shows the public decision in regards to what’s been done with the government (valid, even if I dislike it)
• The split caused by the GOP made for hugely bad optics and left many middle ground voters confused and unsure.

My best guess is the last one, though it could be mixed with the first. I don’t think so, however. It’s also possible for all three of the above to be true at the same time.

The war with Iran has been massively unpopular, even among Republicans and general conservatives. While I agree that Iran should not have nuclear missiles, and I also agree that Islam is causing huge problems that need to be dealt with in our country, we should not have stayed in this war. We should have gone in, struck, and got the fuck out. The six weeks Trump promised us have slid into eight months at this point, with no real end in sight. This was NOT what Republicans voted for; it’s the exact opposite.

Inflation has been hard. There are a lot of items that are still very expensive, and coming into the holidays that’s a hard sell. I know the President doesn’t have any magic way to deal with that, but there are certainly ways Trump could have eased the pain (and without handing out cash… that “offer of $5000 if we sweep the midterms” was crass in my very strong opinion). I have no real issue with the current prices, even though I wish they were lower. But I know how to make “freezer scraping soup” when necessary. Most folks today have no clue. No one knows how to make beans and rice 18 different ways anymore. Soup has gone out of style, unless it’s bougie expensive stuff. If the government had worked on something akin to the Victory Garden idea, offering ideas and help to the people in planting gardens or how to cook cheap meals, I think that would have gone a long way. While Kennedy did some of that, his methods of trying to “reach the people” were pretty off the mark, again in my opinion. He’s been rich long enough that he’s never truly had to scrape, and it reflects in what he cooks. Not enough rice and beans, folks. When my most popular videos on my author TikTok are about cooking cheap meals, the government is not doing enough to educate people.

The tariffs have been a huge loss for many people. I have the ability to look far enough in the future to see how it benefits us, but our government did next to nothing to explain to “the plain folks” how this stuff works. I know, because I was watching for it, and it never arrived. I’m certain part of that is because the people doing it are, frankly, quite old… they know how tariffs work because they’ve seen them used in the past… and “everyone knows” about how they work, right? Wrong. Starting off with a lot of education on how We the People get shafted by every other country on the planet would have been great. Adding tariffs in AFTER that would have caused (hopefully, at least) a wave of patriotism. You have to build the brand first, THEN launch. You can’t launch then scramble to get caught up.

Trump didn’t push the SAVE Act through. That should have been the number 2 priority after getting out of that damn war.

And while I do think there are bunches of very valid reasons for building a ballroom, Trump and team did NOT read the room before doing it. Building something perceived as vainglorious (regardless of who’s paying for it) is never going to go down well when people are suffering in the grocery store and at the gas pumps. The idea was good, but the application was horrendous.

Over on TikTok, someone asked if “real Republicans” would answer a question: When you voted for Trump, did you vote for him to dismantle the Department of Education? I explained that I’m small “c” conservative, not Republican but certainly Republican aligned (especially right now), and definitely not Left… and yes, that is indeed what Republicans voted for, en masse, and happily. And then I explained that, Left or Right aside, the government has (and always will have) the Reverse Midas Touch. Everything the government touches turns to shit. So I want my government to touch as little as possible. When asked what that meant, I said we should have a government that fits inside the Constitution… and we currently do not, and that’s wrong. Even other Right Wingers have been debating me, pointing out things they think are good that are done by Big Gov. My answer is always going to be the same: if the Right can do something with the government, then the Left can also do something. Since the Right and Left are diametrically opposed (moreso now than at ANY other time in history), that means we should not be allowing the government to do much of anything.

Trump had the right idea with DOGE, but he let other people find ways to derail it before it could remove the worst of the bloat from DC. The big ticket that both sides have seemed to want is the idea of term limits for Senate and House… and that hasn’t even been mentioned among the up and coming elected folks.

I’m disappointed today. I wanted to see at least equilibrium. Seeing the blue wave is disheartening. Any further forward movement by Trump will have to be done by EO, and those are easily turned over with a swipe of the magic pen by the next person in office.

With House and Senate in Democrat control, I foresee Trump’s impeachment and removal from office. That leaves Vance, who is a great candidate. But I don’t know if he’s ready. It’s one thing to be VP… it’s quite another to be the President. Don’t get me wrong… I do want him as President. I just don’t know if right now is the correct moment for it to happen. I hope he’s ready. I think he has the ability to find a middle ground that will be less hated by the Left, and only a little hated by the GOP. He’s fairly good at dancing around that line. And he has good ideas, a strong family life, and his family is “diverse” as the Left likes to call it. While it has absolutely nothing to do with how well he does his job, and we know that, the Left DOES care and so we may as well compound on that.

Hegseth, also, is probably on the chopping block. I hate that. I think he’s done more for the US Military in his short time in office than anyone else since the World Wars. I’ve seen so many men and women in uniform truly excited and happy to be there, after years of feeling trodden on.

It’s an emotionally rough day today. Don’t let yourself get dragged into bad conversations. Give yourself space. And don’t get angry… get educated. I mean it! The Right lost… big time. Don’t spend one fucking second whining about it. Go find out why. Figure it out, and then fix it. That is LITERALLY the only way out of this mess.

This is not just an “art lesson.” It’s a life lesson, one that I think a certain group of people really require right now. Sometimes, the load is more than you can bear… but you have to, because people you love are depending on you. And then you bend under your load, because that’s reality… but you don’t give up. You keep on going, because until you’re dead, that’s LITERALLY YOUR JOB.

It can be uncomfortable, unfair, dangerous, creepy, and a billion other negative words, but you go on. And while you might make attempts to change things (for yourself, or maybe for those who follow you), that doesn’t mean you whine or complain, nor does it mean you dig your heels in and claim that discomfort is a trigger that you’re somehow exempt from feeling. If you’re living life and you’ve never been uncomfortable or upset or bothered by something you’re doing (btw, just to be crystal clear, I’m not talking about rape or edgy stuff here… I’m talking about having to work a second job to make ends meet, or give up fun stuff because you just can’t afford it) then you’re doing it wrong. You’re pretending, not living. Because life is a balance of positive and negative.

I’ll go so far as to say that pain and discomfort is the only thing that will actually push us to change and better ourselves. Those who’ve grown up with no pain and no discomfort, and have never heard the word “no” are not actually grown up. They’re feral children, at best. Until they learn to deal with discomfort, problems, “no,” and change, they won’t BE grown ups.

This weekend, I was working at the opening of New Hampshire Renaissance Faire. There was very little talk of politics, and people were VERY respectful the couple of times I either said something or walked off. That was nice.

On Sunday afternoon, I ran into the Baroness of my chapter of the SCA, someone who’s been a distant friend for a while. She was with the local SCA group, doing demonstrations and outreach. I found out this is her last year as Baroness, and that she and her husband are stepping down. I get it… it’s a LOT of work. She wanted to know why I hadn’t been around in a while. So I told her.

See, a few years ago (after the pandemic but at least 2 and maybe 3 years ago), friends of mine and my family decided to do their wedding at popular SCA event local to us. It used to be my absolute favorite SCA event, and it was (and is) called Harper’s Retreat. My (at the time 18 or 19 year old) kid kept reminding me I needed to make time to go, so I could be at A and S’s wedding, so I finally went over my calendar, moved a bunch of stuff around, and informed kid that yes, I’d go with them to the wedding. She happily went to inform A and S, and were promptly told that I was MOST DEFINITELY not invited, and to not come. Someone told them I’d supported Trump, and so they wrote me off. They also “disinvited” me to an entire event that is supposed to be open to the whole of the SCA. They put my kid in a shitty position, too, because she had to make a choice of whether to attend their wedding and the event (the only place she sees many of her friends) or supporting me (and let’s be honest, a parent is never going to win in that situation). She went, but she was upset. It was the first time she’d witnessed that sort of thing in person.

I gave a TL;DR version of this to the Baroness, and pointed out that I had reported it to the anti-bullying crowd, but had basically been told that if you’re on the Right, you can’t be bullied. It only works in the other direction. Of course, that isn’t SAID, at least out loud. But it is how things work. Baroness was sad, but understood, and intimated that the unequal application of anti-bullying and other rules within the SCA was one of the reasons she and her hubby were stepping down.

The SCA has had scandals, and I know it’s important for a group to stay out of scandal as much as possible. There have been some really crappy people do some really horrid things, and they needed to be removed (one of our kings murdered his wife and then hid it, and went to be with his girlfriend at a huge SCA event to try and make a plausible alibi). But this has gone way beyond that. If you don’t join in the groupthink, you are ostracized and removed. I was doing needed work in a position that’s ridiculously difficult to fill, and doing it well, and they lost that when they allowed me to be persecuted. They lost an organizer, a writer, a planner, a good leader. Many of the folks I hung out with back in the day are still playing, and they know what happened. They are disappointed in their leadership, but they aren’t willing to walk away to force change.

This is a microcosm of America today. The radical Left has hijacked the government steering wheel somehow. The Right attempts to fix it, gets bullied, ostracized, name called, etc… and then just shrugs and walks away. We don’t have to put up with that kind of treatment. But what it does is leave the Left even more in charge. How do you fight it? There’s no good way to do it.

More and more, I’m understanding why Trump’s grammatically questionable, loud-mouthed rants on X and Truth Social are so important. It isn’t that the Right necessarily embraces the suck (because let’s face it, there are times when Trump shoots himself in the foot right in the midst of things, and it’s frustrating as all get-out). It’s that Trump is willing to be the burr under the saddle, the person who refuses to leave just because the Left is being a bully. He has the cohones to simply let it slide off.

I wish I could be that for the SCA. I can’t, though, for all sorts of reasons. Mostly, I’m just not that kind of person. Unfortunately, there isn’t someone like Trump to save the SCA. People are leaving it, either just stopping historical reenacting entirely, or moving to (or creating) new groups. What’s the point in constantly fighting and then having “the authority” tell you that you’re wrong, over and over again? It’s just not worth it.

I think there’s a lot of people in the middle of our country (both physically and politically) who never get talked to, are ignored, and are quietly wishing ALL the politicians would go away. It’s my strong opinion those are the people we need to convince to either become Conservatives, or to be *good* Democrats. Fetterman comes to mind, of course. We also need them to vote. But why would they, when all they see of either party is in-fighting, poo-slinging, and name calling? It’s depressing.

So I’m not going back to the SCA. I finally decided I’m not even going to the one camping event I continued to enjoy (called Great NorthEastern War). I’ll go to Birka in January, because it’s basically a big market and it’s become less SCA and more “everyone who has a costume” over the years. But I’m pretty much done with the SCA, and I’m watching as scads of people drift away. It’s sad, because it has changed many of our views of actual history. People who started out as SCA larpers ended up as major historians who made amazing discoveries. Seeing it implode makes me want to cry.

But it’s just like watching what’s happening to America. And I don’t want to watch.

Post by Michael Smith on Facebook:

The most impenetrable fortress is not a citadel built of concrete and steel, it is a delusional mind built from lies and raw emotion.

It’s way past the time when a rational and moral people understand that while the American left’s causes are not real, their violence most certainly is.

Its not unusual for family and friends to describe a perpetrator of political violence as a “nice, quiet person who never bothered anybody”, because most of the time they are­­—but interestingly enough, the same gamma ray energy that transforms mild-mannered scientist Bruce Banner into a rage monster called the Hulk in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, transforms that quiet person into a monster who plans and executes an attack on the President of the United States and his cabinet.

Rather than radiation, this “gamma ray” energy is a concoction of hyperbole, half-truths, and lies constantly emitted from Democrat politicians, operatives, and social media influencers and then amplified and beamed directly into the brains and bloodstreams of the Democrat Bruce Banners by willing media mouthpieces who smuggle accusatory premises into dangerous minds via loaded questions as they hide behind a shroud of “objectivity.

Normal, moral people would be shocked if something they said or did cause threat, harm or death to another person and would question their reasoning behind what they did or said. Not so with the contemporary left, and I include the mainstream media in that group (because they are not just friends and allies of the left, they are the left).

President Trump’s interview with Nora O’Donnell last night was a perfect example. O’Donnell feigned concern for a few minutes but that quickly evaporated when she shifted the line of questioning from “Gee sir, we are so shocked that someone would do something like that, but what response do you have to the charge made by the person who wanted to kill you that you are a rapist, a pedophile, and a traitor?”

I found that question interesting in that Scott Pelley, O’Donnell’s risible co-anchor of 60 Minutes, had just minutes before casually and uncritically described the January 6th riot as “the insurrection” as if it had been declared such with legal finality and certainty.

The media did take a gut punch with this assassination attempt because the perpetrator expressed the degree to which he had been irradiated by the left-wing media narrative—and it stopped them for a fraction of a second. And I do mean a fraction of a second because the pause was not due to the assassination attempt, it was the temerity that someone would do it in their presence.

Their response was not to self-examine, they went immediately into cover your ass mode with both blame shifting and the “both sides” rhetoric they always use, but that isn’t working the way it once did. When a faction considers speech as violence (and even silence is defined that way) and the cold-blooded public execution of an insurance company executive is defined as “understandable”, you are not dealing with normal, moral people capable of self-reflection.

It isn’t like the world hasn’t seen this process before.

For all the left’s protestation that the right is filled with Nazis, they are essentially making accusations in a mirror. Their tactics of framing accusation as common knowledge are the same as used by Hitler’s movement in pre-WWII Germany to convince the populace that Jews were the real problem.

That shift didn’t happen in a single leap; it was built over time by the Nazi Party under Adolf Hitler by combining old prejudices with modern persuasion. Antisemitism already existed in Europe, but the Nazis reframed Jews as a racial and existential threat, then hammered that message through a coordinated propaganda machine led by Joseph Goebbels. Using newspapers, radio, film, and rallies, they repeated simple accusations—blaming Jews for Germany’s defeat in World War I and the hardship of the Great Depression—until those claims felt familiar and, to many, plausible. Economic collapse, political instability, and national humiliation made large portions of the population more receptive to scapegoating and promises of restoration.

Once in power, rhetoric became policy. The Nuremberg Laws stripped Jews of rights and citizenship, while escalating acts like Kristallnacht signaled that exclusion and violence were acceptable. Social pressure, fear of punishment, and even material incentives encouraged conformity, while dissent became risky. Step by step—stigma, exclusion, dispossession—the regime normalized increasingly extreme measures. What began as accusation and propaganda hardened into law and, ultimately, into systematic removal and destruction.

If that sounds familiar, it should—and you are not wrong to think that.

Germany stared into Hitler’s mirror and rather than seeing their own reflection, they saw Jews. When contemporary Democrats stare into their mirror, they don’t see themselves, they see Trump and his supporters.

The Democrats, their media allies and the American left, just had the opportunity to ask themselves if they are the baddies—and they paused for a second and then simply ignored it and returned to staring at themselves in Hitler’s mirror.

I do lots of things for my community. Some things are for my home community, the tiny town I live in. Some things are for my larger state community. Some things are for my country. But I give back, because so many people have given to me over the years. It’s the right thing to do.

I just posted this to FaceBook:

So I don’t want to get into politics. I’m happy to *talk* politics, OFFLINE, but I’m not interested in online debates. However…

Whatever side of the fence you’re on, if you are lacking ID for voting, whether that means voting today, or voting if the SAVE act is passed, then please attend to that now. I truly believe, if even half of the 8 million reported people who protested last weekend had *bothered* to offer their neighbors a hand, everyone would already have the necessary ID and it would be a moot point.

Since I believe in action over words, I am putting this out here now:

If you don’t have the ID you need, please reach out to me. I’m no guru, but I know how to work through paperwork and red tape, and I will happily help you fill out forms and go to appointments (online or off) to get your necessary ID. If I can’t do it, I will do the work to figure out who CAN do it, and I’ll make sure you get your ID. I am putting my money where my mouth is – PLEASE reach out for help if you can’t get your ID yourself. I’ll walk you through the process!

That stuff is stuff you ought to have no matter what, because if an emergency ever happened (tornado, flood, lava flow, zombies, etc) and you were separated from your family, you might need that ID to be reunited. If you had to leave the country for some reason, ditto. Not to mention, if you drive a car, buy alcohol or cigarettes, vote, or do a number of other things that require ID, you should have it on hand.

Please pass this around, and consider doing this yourself. The more people helping out, the less people who will have a problem come voting time. And again, whatever side of the fence you’re on, I WANT YOU TO VOTE. It’s not a privilege. It’s a duty.

I encourage everyone to do this, on all sides of this political divide. Why? Because as a conservative, it’s quite literally our patriotic duty. I’m sure at least some of the liberal kids out there have no idea how to do all this stuff, because their parents fell down on the job. That’s fine; I can be mom for them, if need be. As someone who leans more liberal than many of you, I believe that if you complain about something, you ought to offer a possible solution or three rather than just whinging. Therefore, if you’re a leftist and bitching that people might be disenfranchised, then you should help out the people you purport to be worried about.

That last one is the important one, by the way. If someone refuses to help people, you can then decry them as the idiot they are. They’re worried about people who might not get to vote, so if they refuse to help those people, then they’re in violation of their own internal rules. I will and do hold people to their own standards.

Gang Member Convicted of Murder in ‘Retaliation Shooting’ at Norcross Hotel
A gang member was convicted of murder after a targeted retaliation shooting at a Norcross, Georgia hotel. The case involved gang-related violence where the defendant sought revenge for a prior incident, resulting in the death of the victim.¹

Warrants: Greenville Man Arrested for Soliciting Gang Retaliation Shootings
A Greenville man was arrested on warrants for allegedly soliciting gang retaliation shootings. Authorities say he directed others to carry out violent reprisals on his behalf as part of ongoing gang conflicts.²

Complaint: 3 Charged in Alleged Gang Retaliation Shooting That Killed 26-Year-Old
Three individuals were charged in connection with a gang retaliation shooting that killed a 26-year-old. The criminal complaint details how the shooting was carried out as payback in a gang dispute.³

Former DA Says Stockton Shooting Shows Signs of Gang Retaliation
A former district attorney stated that a mass shooting in Stockton exhibited clear indicators of gang retaliation. The incident is being analyzed as part of a cycle of gang violence rather than a random event.⁴

I think we can all agree on how the word retaliation is used. It means tit for tat. It means you hit me so I am going to hit you back.

Retaliation is always in response to something. When we start digging into gang-related violence, we often find that retaliations are long-standing, with the original event long lost to time, with each side justifying their behavior as just a response to something else.

September 1, 1939– German forces crossed the Polish border at first light in a lightning campaign of coordinated tanks, infantry, and aircraft. Polish units have been driven back on all fronts as the German Army advances deep into western Poland.⁵

May 10, 1940 – In a stunning blow, the German Army has struck through the Ardennes Forest, bypassing the Maginot Line. Panzer columns have split the Allied armies, driving toward the Channel coast and threatening to cut off British and French forces in Belgium.⁶

June 22, 1941– At dawn this morning, more than three million German troops supported by thousands of tanks and aircraft crossed into Soviet territory along a vast front. The long-expected invasion of Russia is now underway with full fury.⁷

December 16, 1944 – German panzer divisions have launched a powerful surprise attack through the Ardennes in bitter winter weather. The enemy is attempting a desperate breakout toward Antwerp in what appears to be a major counter-offensive aimed at splitting American and British lines.⁸

When we are at war, we are not retaliating over anything. We have objectives that we are striving to achieve. These can be attacks on infrastructure, combat units, lines of communication, or command and control.

I am sure there are other types of targets.

These targets are all picked to achieve the goal of victory.

But let us look at a counterexample, the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo.

In April of 1942, sixteen B-25 bombers launched an attack from the USS Hornet while 650 nautical miles from Japan. They were targeting military targets in Tokyo, Yokohama, Yokosuka, Nagoya, and Kobe.

This could have been seen as a retaliation mission, but it was not just retaliation. It had both tactical and strategic value.

The short-term tactical value was that they did destroy some military targets. In the grand scheme of things, the effect of that destruction likely went unnoticed on the front.

On a strategic scale, it was a huge success. It told the Japanese, in no uncertain terms, that the United States was still standing, still fighting, and could reach out and touch them in their homeland.

The results were long-lasting. The Japanese recalled parts of their fleet to the home waters to protect the islands. This reduced the forces available for active combat.

Was it retaliation for Pearl Harbor? More “No” than “Yes.”

Iran threatens tit-for-tat retaliation against power plants
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards issued a statement warning that any attack on its electricity infrastructure would prompt reciprocal strikes on Israel’s power plants and facilities supplying U.S. bases in the region. The declaration emphasizes proportional deterrence, stating “If you hit electricity, we hit electricity,” amid escalating threats from U.S. President Trump regarding Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz.⁹

Iran’s retaliation forces Gulf nations into difficult choices
Following Israeli strikes on Iran’s South Pars gas field, Tehran launched retaliatory attacks on energy sites in Gulf Arab states allied with the U.S. This has placed countries like Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE in a dilemma: whether to fully align with the U.S.-Israel effort or face ongoing Iranian strikes, highlighting Iran’s strategy to widen the conflict and pressure regional neighbors.¹⁰

Iran vows retaliation if energy infrastructure is targeted
Iran’s deputy foreign minister and parliamentary speaker warned that threats to its power plants violate international law and would trigger proportional responses, potentially targeting regional energy and water facilities. The statements come as Iran continues retaliatory missile and drone strikes while facing U.S. and Israeli pressure over the Strait of Hormuz and nuclear sites.¹¹

Trump’s ultimatum prompts Iranian retaliation threats
In response to President Trump’s 48-hour deadline for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz or face destruction of its energy sites, Iranian officials doubled down on warnings of retaliation against critical infrastructure in the Middle East. Parliamentary speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf stated that such attacks would make energy facilities “legitimate targets,” raising fears of broader disruption to global oil and water supplies.¹²

Lack of Autonomy

To say that something is done in retaliation is to claim that an entity has no autonomy. They can only react.

This is a persistent theme from the left. They claim that the person doing a bad thing lacks autonomy. We see this over and over again.

The black kid did not have a choice; that is why he murdered that 80-year-old woman. She used a bad word on him.

Hamas is just responding to Israeli actions. They never would have done that without Israel first doing that “bad thing.”

And now we have Iran. Iran is acting like a child, retaliating for what is happening to them. They refuse to own their own choices. They are in the FO part of FAFO but they did not do anything to deserve it.

It is sickening to listen to the media frame Iran’s shooting missiles at civilian targets as “retaliation.” These are not military targets; these are terror targets.

It is the age-old method of these terrorist states and leftists. They tell you that they are going to do really bad things unless you let them do little bad things.

That is stopping. That is coming to an end. We will not be blackmailed by terrorists.

1. Gang Member Convicted of Murder in ‘Retaliation Shooting’ at Norcross Hotel, Atlanta News First, February 14, 2026, https://www.atlantanewsfirst.com/2026/02/14/gang-member-convicted-murder-retaliation-shooting-norcross-hotel/.
2. Warrants: Greenville Man Arrested for Soliciting Gang Retaliation Shootings, WITN, March 15, 2026, https://www.witn.com/2026/03/15/warrants-greenville-man-arrested-soliciting-gang-retaliation-shootings/.
3. Complaint: 3 Charged in Alleged Gang Retaliation Shooting That Killed 26-Year-Old, CBS58, November 14, 2025, https://www.cbs58.com/news/complaint-3-charged-in-alleged-gang-retaliation-shooting-that-killed-26-year-old.
4. Former DA Says Stockton Shooting Shows Signs of Gang Retaliation, ABC10, December 11, 2025, https://www.abc10.com/article/news/local/stockton/former-da-mass-shooting-shows-signs-gang-retaliation/103-98419476-005d-4207-8d8b-b13a83b4f0a0.
5. German Forces Launch Blitzkrieg Invasion of Poland, N.Y. Times, Sept. 1, 1939, at 1.
6. Germans Attack Through Ardennes Forest, Bypassing Maginot Line, The Times (London), May 11, 1940, at 1.
7. Operation Barbarossa: Germany Invades Soviet Union on 1,800-Mile Front, Wash. Post, June 22, 1941, at 1.
8. German Panzers Launch Surprise Breakout Offensive in Ardennes, N.Y. Times, Dec. 17, 1944, at 1.
9. Iran points at tit for tat retaliation if power plants targeted, statement, Reuters, March 23, 2026, https://www.reuters.com/world/iran-points-tit-tat-retaliation-if-power-plants-targeted-statement-2026-03-23.
10. Iran retaliation is forcing Gulf nations into a stark decision: whether to join the fight, NBC News, March 19, 2026, https://www.nbcnews.com/world/middle-east/iran-retaliation-forcing-gulf-nations-stark-decision-whether-join-figh-rcna263915.
11. Iran vows retaliation if its energy infrastructure is targeted, Iran International, March 22, 2026, https://www.iranintl.com/en/202603225423.
12. Trump’s ultimatum to Iran draws threat of retaliation, Associated Press, March 22, 2026, https://apnews.com/live/iran-war-israel-trump-03-22-2026.

We used to joke about “reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic.” While it was clear to us that education meant more than the three Rs, the focus was on the three Rs.

My school experience started at the “great experiment” stage. For first grade we were taught to read “at our own pace.” In other words, I left first grade unable to read.

What little reading ability I had was because my parents put in the effort.

We left the broken experiment in McLean, VA, and headed to Wisconsin, where my grandparents lived. I entered second grade and completed it there.

Those Polacks had a different view of reading than those more enlightened people of D.C. They knew that a kid who didn’t know how to read when entering school was not going to make it.

Whereas my former school system didn’t expect me to be reading fluently until I finished second grade, my Wisconsin school system expected me to be reading fluently as a kindergartner.

Those teachers and that school system had a laser-like focus on teaching the three Rs and teaching them well.

The Beginning of the End

In the late ’80s and early ’90s, the education industry started to shift more firmly from the basics to a more “holistic” vision. This was the start of the participation-trophy societal downfall.

There are people who take criticism of their performance, work, or product as guidance on how to do better. I use Grok to criticize my writing. I can’t get better if I don’t know what I am doing wrong.

Unfortunately¹, there are more people who take criticism as a direct attack on them. We sometimes say that these people have self-esteem issues.

Knowing that different people learn in different ways, there came to be a focus on not hurting a child’s self-esteem. It was more important that they feel good about themselves than that they know they made a mistake in their work.

This methodology started to increase teacher workload. It wasn’t enough to teach the subject; they also had to carefully negotiate the fragile egos of their students.

And we all know how fragile a 17-year-old girl’s ego is. Not that her male counterpart is all that much better.

With that tiny step, focus was lost, and we started to fritter away—I say fritter away²—our educational resources.

Why Teach, When All We Need Is To Pass The Test?

A typical American school year contains thirty-six weeks. Yet teachers in tested grades routinely spend two to six weeks of class time—between 10 and 25 percent of all instructional hours—preparing students for standardized tests such as PACE or PARCC. Those twenty to forty hours per subject are carved directly out of the school year.

When you consider that a high school student may have four subjects on which they are being tested, this is 80 to 160 hours of instruction they will never get back. It isn’t any better for elementary school students.

This is a huge dilution of teacher resources. I’ve listened to teachers complain about state testing because it is a massive disruption to the curriculum.

Yet they fail to see or understand that if they were actually teaching the basics, there would be no need for weeks of test prep. Their students would have learned what was needed through normal classroom instruction.

To put this in perspective, consider this: from kindergarten through 12th grade, the average student will spend around 400 hours in standardized test preparation, or about 2.8% of their total educational time.

In contrast, during that same period, a student will get about 100 hours of instruction in civics, for a grand total of 0.7% of their total educational time.^3,4,5,6,7,8

We waste more resources on teaching a kid how to take standardized tests and short-term memorization than we do on their civic responsibilities, including their rights.

The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves

With focus turned to improving test scores, the education industry prepared for a great victory, which was not forthcoming. Instead, grades and scores started to decline.

The answer, as always from a government entity, was more money and more of the same failing policies.

The education industry knew they were enlightened, they knew they were better than our forefathers, and they knew they were the best people to fix education in this country.

So they asked all the experts and tried the same thing again, only harder. Without any surprises to anybody outside the education industry, they failed again.

Each one of these great and grand ideas took massive amounts of resources. Programs needed to be purchased, people hired to teach the newest concepts, and staff assigned to manage the new policy and curriculum.

Teachers needed to be taught the new methods. If you want to see anything more inefficient than teaching teachers, you are going to need to search far and wide.

They love their large lecture-hall-style classes. Why? Because the only thing that actually matters to many of them is that the instructor noted them present for the class.

I’ve heard stories of teachers in classes acting in ways that any of my instructors from K through post-grad would have kicked them out of the classroom.

All of this takes time and money. And after the teachers have “learned” the new methods, it will take them a year to get it right. In the meantime, we have teachers who are doing it their way.

And most of these programs are not focused on teaching the basics; they are focused on something nebulous but oh so important.

The Costs

In the 2010s, I was bidding to install high-speed internet to the local schools. We were putting in T1 links when the standard speed was still dial-up.

The man who was in charge of the school system IT department was making around $200,000 per year. He had been at the job for about 2 years when the board realized he couldn’t do the job he was hired to do.

They didn’t fire him. Instead they hired another IT administrator as his assistant, who did know how to do the job. She was making north of $175,000.

The school system was spending $375,000 per year for two administrators but couldn’t find $5,000 per school per year for high-speed internet.

Every program comes with administrative overhead. That overhead is a large set of resources that most students never see.

Yesterday we talked about it costing $200,000 per student to send them out of district. There is an administrator in the district that does nothing but manage out-of-district students. Her fully burdened costs are not low.

Every new requirement from the state leads to more costs to the local school system. It is never-ending. And nothing ever goes away.

Our student population is going down. This means that class sizes are going down. It is to the point where we should be cutting teachers. We never do, at least not for reasons like that.

Instead, we see more administrative bloat. We see test scores go down. We see failure after failure while the costs keep going up.

The Cost of Student Integration

We covered this more yesterday. The gist remains.

Disruptive students in the classroom are … disruptive.

The policy in the local elementary school is to abandon the classroom if a student acts out. For the safety of the other children.

This means that a 6-year-old kid controls the classroom. If he isn’t interested in doing what the rest of the class wants, he takes over the classroom. The only thing the teacher can do is get the rest of the students out of that classroom.

I’ve heard reports of second graders deciding they were done with the classroom and leaving their assigned classroom to wander the halls, disrupting other classes and, in some cases, vandalizing classrooms.

Because no child can be left unattended, there is often an adult trailing behind or running ahead to warn classrooms to close and lock their doors.

They run this almost like an active shooter drill.

One case had one of these feral monsters leave his assigned classroom, wander the halls for a bit before going into a special education room, a combined office and small group area, and trashing the room.

Another time the library was trashed.

And while the cost of cleaning up the mess caused by these monsters might be apparent, the hidden costs in what the other children couldn’t learn because the teacher and staff resources were busy with ONE child are uncounted and unremarked.

And Our Target Audience is…

Dilution of resources means that for a fixed set of resources, there are different draws on that set of resources. When the demand for resources exceeds supply, something has to give.

The education industry performs a sick, twisted form of triage. Those who will survive without assistance are given little in the way of educational resources, those that have normal needs get some, but those who are performing the worst get the most educational resources.

The target audience is never those that will pass the tests. It is always those that won’t pass, or won’t pass without massive amounts of help.

The current de jure method is circle-back teaching. Teach the lesson, repeat the lesson, teach the next lesson, repeat the last lesson. Iterate until most of the class reaches mastery of the subject.

For the student that gets it on the first pass, they have the privilege of being taught the same thing at least twice more, often more. For the students that get it on the second iteration, they must endure the lesson the third time.

And the entire class hears the lesson for the third time, because that one dumb kid just doesn’t get it.

The one student has stolen education from every other student in the classroom. And the education industry does not care.

That failure might even be a feature. If a teacher is focused on the poorly performing student in their classroom, and every classroom has at least one, by design, then every other student is shorted.

The only answer the education industry will accept is more resources. Another teacher or assistant in the classroom.

And if it is an assistant, that assistant will often be tasked with babysitting the larger class while the professional teacher works with the low performer.

The Cost of Doing Business

The idiots begging the government to tax corporations never realize that corporations pass on the cost of taxes in the prices of their goods and services.

The education industry hides the cost of its programs. It is not uncommon for a requirement to be added to the school system without any thought as to the costs in terms of educational resources.

Years ago, I was arguing with the school board about the waste involved in upgrading their video security system. It was a very expensive proposal with no use case driving it.

For multiple meetings I stood up and questioned and berated the board over their waste. Until one of the board members got upset and yelled at me that it was a required upgrade.

“Required by whom?”

“DHS.”

My property taxes were going to pay for a state-of-the-art video surveillance system required by the federal government for the purpose of letting the police know where an active shooter had been and where one currently was.

Currently, there is about a 1 in 111,000 chance of an active shooter event in an American public school. The odds of a fire or similar event causing death are less than 1 in 200,000.^9,10,11

Conclusion

Standardized testing, equity, Social-Emotional Learning, excessive security, and program bloat all dilute our educational resources.

Nobody in the administration or the government ever suffers from this dilution; the people who suffer are the students.

The people who will suffer are The People when they can no longer remember that they are The People and not subject to a leviathan government.

¹ Remy Charlip, Fortunately (Parents’ Magazine Press 1964).
² Meredith Willson, Ya Got Trouble, The Music Man (1957).
³ Nat’l Ctr. for Educ. Stats., Digest of Education Statistics 2022, tbl. 202.40 (U.S. Dep’t of Educ. 2023) (typical 36-week school year).
⁴ Council of Chief State Sch. Officers, Time on Testing: State Survey Results 4–6 (2015) (2–6 weeks / 10–25% of instructional time on test prep).
⁵ Id. at 7 (20–40 hours per subject).
⁶ Gregory J. Marchant & Sharon U. Brown, The Impact of High-Stakes Testing on Student Learning, 12 Educ. Pol’y Analysis Archives 1, 12 (2014) (80–160 hours across four tested subjects).
⁷ Matthew A. Kraft & Allison F. Ebby, The Educational Cost of Standardized Testing, 41 J. Educ. Fin. 227, 238 (2016) (≈400 hours test prep K–12, or 2.8% of total educational time).
⁸ Nat’l Ctr. for Educ. Stats., The Condition of Education 2023 188 (U.S. Dep’t of Educ. 2023) (≈100 hours of civics instruction K–12, or 0.7% of total educational time).
⁹ Public K-12 schools (~98,000): Nat’l Ctr. for Educ. Stats., Digest of Education Statistics 2022, tbl. 105.50, U.S. Dep’t of Educ. (2023).
¹⁰ Public high schools (~19,500): Id. at tbl. 105.40.
¹¹ Qualifying incidents (35–45, K-12 during school hours with students present, 1994–2024): The Washington Post, School Shootings Database, https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/interactive/school-shootings-database/ (last updated 2024); Fed. Bureau of Investigation, Active Shooter Incidents in the United States in 2022 (2023) (cumulative data 2000–2022); see also Tex. State Univ., Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training (ALERRT) Ctr., Active Shooter Incidents in K-12 Schools.

The phrase “lowest common denominator” is commonly used by the public, but what people actually mean is — the smallest integer greater than one that divides evenly into all members of a set. In everyday language, it describes reducing anything to the lowest level shared by the group.

Education is all about the LCD

Public education now operates on exactly this principle. In any classroom, resources are disproportionately poured into the single lowest-performing student, dwarfing the attention and instruction given to everyone else.

Unfortunately, “lowest common denominator” describes how the educational industry treats educating students. In any classroom, there is one student lower than all the rest, who receives the bulk of the educational resources.

The amount of resources that goes into supporting that one student will dwarf the resources that go into the rest of the classroom.

We Cut Off the Right Hand Tail

When my children were in first grade, they were part of the gifted and talented program. Students were selected by the G&T teacher to be part of the program. They were proud to be part of it.

While it was only a few hours per week, they were stretched in ways that they did not see in the normal classroom.

My son was part of the G&T program, even though he had communication issues. The teacher recognized his abilities. He shone in the program.

Within a year of my children becoming part of the G&T program, they had renamed it because “other children felt excluded” and it “had lowered their self-esteem.”

The teacher was moved to teaching something else and the new program accepted anybody who was “gifted” or “talented,” where those terms were very inclusive.

The kid in the second grade that couldn’t read CVC words but drew “pretty pictures” was a gifted artist and if he wanted, he was part of the gifted and talented program.

Over the time my children were in elementary school, the resources allocated by the school system to smart children were reduced to near zero. All gifted programs were funded and run by volunteers.

The resources that went to the “low achievers” continued to grow.

Diluting Resources for the Many

When “No Child Left Behind” was in the spotlight, I knew what it meant. It meant that every child would get the resources needed to assist that child in getting the best education possible for that child.

That is what I believed until a teacher explained how it was being implemented.

The requirements were that the schools “pass” as many students as possible. This translated, at the lowest levels, to teachers being told they couldn’t give low grades to students, that they couldn’t fail students, or in the education industry vocabulary, hold back a child.

Since the schools were being graded on how many students graduated, the standards to graduate fell.

At some point, we started the integration process. Whereas before, we had classrooms for those needing special education, now we have integrated classrooms.

This is a boon for many students. There were bad things happening to students that were labeled “Special Ed.” before this happened. The stories of smart kids with speech or reading disabilities being treated as if they were stupid.

Integrated classrooms solved this. In a Special Ed. classroom there was nothing to stretch the boundaries of smart kids, so they all looked equally disabled.

They told my son not to take math

My oldest son has a learning disability. At an Individual Education Plan (IEP) meeting we were discussing his classes for the next year.

Every female “educator” at that table suggested that he not take math classes, because math was “hard.” Math was easy for my son. His disability was in communications. Still is.

He was smart enough to convince his teachers he was reading 3 grade levels below his actual grade level because he liked to read The Magic Tree House books. And they wouldn’t let him read those if he was reading at grade level.

His teachers never noticed him become less skilled until he was where he wanted to be.

The point being that these educators didn’t know their student and they didn’t know what he was capable of accomplishing, even though they were the experts in the room.

My son took resources from the rest of that classroom, until they stopped treating him as disabled and started treating him as capable.

Today’s education industry is built around servicing, their term, “special needs” students. The rest of the students can fend for themselves.

A Million for Special Ed., None for Gifted

I’ve been told it costs over $200,000 to send a student out of district. Our local district spends more than a million dollars a year on sending “special needs” students out of district to schools that can handle them.

That’s less than 10 students who consume 5% or more of the school budget. That does not include the overhead of all the administrative stuff that goes into servicing them.

In some ways, I prefer that they be sent to a real special education school. It improves the educational perspective of the students that are still here.

Now, the school system could group those kids by needs and abilities. They don’t. Instead, they spread them across all the classrooms. Every class has one or more special needs students in it.

The worst school I attended had 30 students per class. There were 6 classes at my grade level, labeled “A” through “F”. Classes moved as a group from classroom to classroom.

This is a poor way to get the best outcomes. Not all “smart” kids are smart in all things. But it is the way the school system had set it up. Which was good news for me.

That’s because I was in class A. And in class A we were taking the hardest math, science, English, French, and history in the school.

While our math class was preparing us for higher math, class F was also attending math classes, where they were learning to do money math. That’s right, they were learning to add, subtract, and have a clue as to how much they spent.

The saddest thing? Class F students were still failing at a higher rate than Class A.

But for one class a day, our teachers were able to teach. I believe they lived for that small joy.

No Child Left Behind was meant to provide reasonable services to those with learning needs outside the norm. Instead it has become a nightmare of teaching to the lowest in the classroom and not caring about the highest; they’ll do alright on their own.

The only clear correlation we can find in education is this: as spending goes up, student results go down.

Our local school system just had its budget rejected for the second time in five years. They’re already talking about “what to cut,” as if the budget was slashed. It wasn’t. They simply didn’t get the increase they wanted. This happens every time the public pushes back.

Meanwhile, our high school has a math competency rate of 15 to 30 percent. At best, only three out of ten kids are performing at grade level in math. Reading is better but still unacceptable. For comparison, my old high school currently posts 90% in math and 95% in reading. The difference is night and day.

This shouldn’t surprise anyone. The education industry has largely stopped functioning as an education system. When you ask them “What is it that you do?”, you get soft, nebulous answers that mean nothing. They’ve become expensive, glorified babysitters who speak in jargon and resist any attempt to pin them down on results.

Look at how they train teachers. I sat through some of my wife’s online education courses. The instructors treated grown adults — many with advanced degrees — like children. The lectures were repetitive and shallow. Any reasonably intelligent person could ace them without much effort. We are not training teachers to teach. We are training them to manage classrooms.

The system has also abandoned fundamentals. I remember the first time I was told homework was useless. The kids who didn’t need it got penalized for not doing it, while the kids who needed it most had parents doing it for them. Some of those parents were getting failing grades themselves.

We desperately need to start over. Forget last year’s budget. This year we should build the budget from the ground up with one simple question: *What is it we do?*

The answer should be clear: Teach kids to read, write, and do math. Everything else comes after. If they can’t read the textbook, they can’t learn science. If they can’t do basic math, they’ll never manage a household budget. Yet we have people claiming it costs more to shop and cook at home than ordering Uber Eats.

I don’t know if this can still be fixed. This may be the first generation to graduate high school less skilled and more ignorant than their parents. We might have crossed the tipping point.

But if we’re going to try, we start with the basics. No more vague mission statements. No more throwing money at failure. When someone can’t explain what they do in clear terms, they shouldn’t be running our schools.

That’s what Elon did when he took over Twitter. He asked, “What is it that you do?” Some good people got fired by mistake and he hired them back at higher pay. But the ones who couldn’t explain their job stayed gone. Schools need the same clarity of purpose.

We owe our kids at least that much.