Laying off the sauce. Over the last year, Zach Bryan has not gotten a break from being in the headlines. It all started with his breakup from Brianna Chickenfry, which she alleged he offered her over $12 million to sign an NDA, and that he emotionally abused her throughout their relationship, and most recently involved him getting into a heated argument with Gavin Adcock that led him to jump a barbed wire fence at Born & Raised Festival in Pryor, Oklahoma. While Zach Bryan has been known to have an itchy trigger finger when it comes to a bottle in hand, this altercation was the first time that fans really felt like they saw his drunken fury. But in Bryan’s defense… Adcock had been talking smack about him online. If you’re not familiar with the whole backstory, you can read about it HERE. However, it appears that Zach Bryan is now trying make some positive changes in his life. In the long message to fans and followers, ZB shares that after taking a motorcycle trip across the nation, he decided that he needed help and addressed his relationship with alcohol. “On mental health,  Recently I went on a motorcycle trip across the country. For 20 days, I camped and rode looking for a solution. At the end of the ride, I was sitting in a parking lot in Seattle, Washington, thinking, ‘I really need some f***ing help.’ Being in the military for a decade and then thrown into a spotlight that I hadn’t fully comprehended the scope of, had some subconscious effects on me as a person. I was not content, but I also feared showing weakness because that’s not who I am or how I was raised. To charge forward and never settle was the motto.  I was stuck in a perpetual discontent that led me to always reaching for alcohol, not for the taste, but because there was a consistent black hole in me always needing its void filled.  I have been lied about and doxxed on the internet, I was helping a close friend through a severe mental break, one of my other best friends was put into a coma by a motorcycle accident, and I was touring the country playing five, sometimes six, nights a week.  I was having earth-shattering panic attacks. The anxiety I felt was paralyzing, and I thought since I was successful, had the money I always longed for, and had great friends, that I could tough out anything.  All that said; I went out of my way to find a therapist and made the conscious decision to do something about my toxic relationship with booze and how I cope with major life changes.  I haven’t touched alcohol for nearly two months now- something I had to do for my own personal clarity. I needed to see the world objectively. My family supported every step I took. Conversations about the future, kids one day, my health and Sammy’s happiness made me prioritize not only myself, but my entire family. I feel great, I feel content, I feel whole. There is nothing to get me by anymore. If you or any of your friends are too tough, too scared, or too stubborn to reach out, know that the most stubborn dumba** on the planet did and didn’t regret it.  I don’t believe in absolutes. One day maybe, I’ll learn to control my habits, but for now; I just want to say it is okay to be weak at times and need help. God speed everyone! I pray this helps somebody.” Bryan added to his thoughts in the caption: “In no way is this a greater than thou sentiment and I’m aware I am one of the luckiest men alive. I pray people don’t take this as me taking my blessings for granted. I wanted to share this because I feel like a lot of people go through mental struggles at times and feel alone in them, which leads plenty to suffer in silence. Here’s me on mental health. I hope it helps someone struggling to find words when they’re down on their luck.” Zach Bryan is far from a perfect human, and this post addresses all the conversation online regarding his sometimes reckless choices and the rumors from past relationships about how his drinking led to issues. While I think that Zach Bryan has a lot of work to go before righting all of his wrongs, this is a big step for a guy who normally brushes things off and keeps going on his path, even if it might be destructive. Based on his recent social media posts, it seems he and his girlfriend are living their best life, and now that he’s sober, he looks happier and healthier than ever. I hope that Zach Bryan keeps it up and continues to grow into a better man. Owning up to all of this takes a brave man… and I believe in second chances. Respect. View this post on Instagram The post Zach Bryan Reveals He Hasn’t Drank In 2 Months: “Made The Decision To Do Something About My Toxic Relationship With Booze” first appeared on Whiskey Riff.

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“The world needs a new pandemic playbook,” headlined City Journal on Nov. 13, because “the old one failed to cope with Covid and may even have caused it.” The author is Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, director of the National Institutes of Health, who contends that the old playbook “failed catastrophically,” even though it was “breathtaking, even utopian in its ambition.” (RELATED: Bhattacharya Did Not Follow the COVID Herd) The old playbook charted every existing pathogen and brought biological samples to labs, “often located in city centers like Wuhan, China.” Each pathogen was then tested for its ability to penetrate human cells, “and sometimes even genetically modifying it to make this more likely,” a dangerous practice known as gain-of-function (dGOF) research. (RELATED: The Suppression of the ‘Lab Leak Theory’ Has Collapsed) In laboratory work, even if not classified as dGOF, “there is always a risk that a lab will inadvertently leak a pathogen that poses a catastrophic threat.” The playbook then developed “vaccines and therapeutics” to counter the pathogens. “Crucially, this step involves awarding large contracts to pharmaceutical manufacturers to develop and stockpile the countermeasures,” notes Dr. Bhattacharya, and “every step of this agenda is fraught with risk and danger.” (RELATED: The Wages of COVID — Part Three) For example, the collection of pathogens “risks a spillover of a pathogen that might never have occurred otherwise.” In laboratory work, even if not classified as dGOF, “there is always a risk that a lab will inadvertently leak a pathogen that poses a catastrophic threat.” As the NIH director notes, “lab leaks are common, and biosafety oversight is not harmonized worldwide, meaning these pathogens are often manipulated in relatively low-security environments.” The Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) has problems beyond its location in a city. In a Communist dictatorship like the People’s Republic of China, fidelity to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), not scientific experience and expertise, determines who operates the lab. The Wuhan lab received a cargo of deadly pathogens, including Ebola and Nipah virus, from Xiangguo Qiu, a Chinese national who headed the special pathogens program at Canada’s National Microbiology Laboratory (NML) in Winnipeg. In 2017-18, Dr. Qiu made at least five trips to China, including one to train scientists at the WIV. In 2019, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), funded the WIV to conduct dangerous gain-of-function research. Dr. Fauci believed the COVID virus emerged naturally in the wild and branded those who saw evidence of a laboratory origin as “conspiracy theorists.” The NIH also had a problem with Dr. Bhattacharya. The Stanford professor of medicine joined colleagues from Harvard, Oxford, and many other universities in the Great Barrington Declaration, challenging Dr. Fauci’s rigid lockdown regime. Then-NIH director Francis Collins tasked Dr. Fauci to launch “a quick and devastating published takedown” of the “fringe epidemiologists,” most, if not all, more qualified than Collins and Fauci. (RELATED: Never Forget What They Did to Us Five Years Ago) Anthony Fauci earned an MD in 1966, but in 1968 hired on at NIH. His bio showed no advanced degrees in biochemistry or molecular biology, but in 1984, the NIH made him head of NIAID. Nobel laureate Kary Mullis, inventor of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test, believed that Dr. Fauci did not understand medicine and “should not be in a position like he’s in.” Dr. Fauci remained in the powerful post, and in the pandemic playbook, he is clearly the quarterback. (RELATED: Dr. Anthony Fauci: What Exactly Did Biden Pardon?) Dr. Bhattacharya earned a PhD in economics, and as the NIH director observes, the old playbook creates “a group of well-funded scientists who benefit from scaring the public beyond what the evidence warrants and at the same time falsely minimizing the risk of lab accidents. These scientists make a living doing research for the traditional pandemic preparedness playbook — an extreme conflict of interest.”’ Call it the green side of white coat supremacy, and there’s more to it. The playbook also “creates an industry of vaccine and drug manufacturers to whom the government awards vast sums of money to produce the pharmaceutical stockpile that, by design, has never been tested in human populations.” As the American population might note, the vaunted COVID vaccines failed to prevent infection or transmission, which the fully boosted Dr. Fauci verified by testing positive. (RELATED: The Wages of COVID — Part Two) Instead of “wasting money on the traditional playbook,” the NIH director believes, we should improve understanding of pathogens “we know cause disease in humans” and “develop better prevention and treatment strategies for these existing pathogens.” There’s also work on the organizational side. Dr. Bhattacharya has already eliminated a huge conflict of interest by removing Christine Grady, Dr. Fauci’s wife, from her post as chief bioethicist of the NIH Clinical Center. In her 1995 The Search for an AIDS Vaccine, Grady touted Dr. Fauci but failed to reveal that she had been married to him for 10 years. The Fauci-Grady axis also went missing when the NIH made Grady bioethics chief in 2012. (RELATED: Fauci Allies Sent Packing) The NIH has also removed Dr. Fauci’s successor, Jeanne Marrazzo, and has proposed folding 27 NIH agencies into eight. Never again must a single person control public health policy and funding for medical research in the style of Dr. Fauci, who in 2021 claimed to represent science. On his last day in the White House, Joe Biden pardoned Dr. Fauci, “for any offense against the United States which he may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014, through the date of this pardon arising from or in any manner related to his service as Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, as a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force or the White House COVID-19 Response Team, or as Chief Medical Advisor to the President.” Maybe Dr. Bhattacharya can track down the exact offense that merits a “full and unconditional pardon.” Meanwhile, as the new NIH playbook proceeds, the struggle of the people against white coat supremacy is the struggle of memory against forgetting. READ MORE from Lloyd Billingsley: China’s New Hongqi Bridge Collapses — Could California’s Chinese Bridge Be Far Behind? World Series University: Life Lessons From the MLB Hike Taxes to Help the Homeless? Lloyd Billingsley is a policy fellow at the Independent Institute in Oakland, Calif.

Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral victory in New York City has made him the next star in American politics, with liberal pundits like Robert Reich declaring the young socialist “the bright future of the Democratic Party.” While it’s true that Republicans had a rough off-year election in 2025, there are plenty of tea leaves from election night that prove that Mamdami-style politics was a losing cause rather than a winning formula for Democrats. For starters, Mamdani’s win was not impressive when you peel back the numbers. For starters, Mamdani’s win was not impressive when you peel back the numbers. New York is one of the most progressive cities in America, and Mamdani barely got over 50 percent of the vote while running against the corrupt former governor, Andrew Cuomo, and Republican Curtis Sliwa. For context, Kamala Harris won around 68 percent of New York City last year, which was the lowest vote share for Democrats since George McGovern in 1972, and still outperformed Mamdani across all five boroughs of New York. It was also the highest turnout for a mayoral race since 1969. (RELATED: Mayor Mamdani: A Victory for Champagne Socialism) Luckily for Mamdani, New York is the media capital of America, where someone as youthful and charismatic as he could still run against the corrupt Democratic machine politics of the New York establishment and win. As it turns out, Mamdanism wasn’t selling with voters in other parts of the country. (RELATED: Mamdani: The Miracle Hair-Growth Salesman Who Claims to Have Found the Master Formula) In Minneapolis, the voters made a clear statement by re-electing Mayor Jacob Frey (D) over State Senator Omar Fateh, who was dubbed the “Mamdani of Minneapolis” and ran on a platform of rent control and had the backing of the Democratic Socialists of America. On the campaign trail, Mayor Frey came out strongly against rent control, correctly pointing out that it has failed in every city that has tried it, including neighboring St. Paul. (RELATED: Electing the Image: Mamdani and the Mimetic Turn in Democracy) He even pointed to the development of more housing as a way of making homes more affordable. Frey defeated Fateh by 6 points in a runoff and gave a victory speech saying, “We have to love our city more than ideology,” and the election confirms that Minneapolis voters agree with him. (RELATED: Comrade With a Condo: The Mamdani Myth Exposed) Moreover, in Detroit, Mich., Mary Sheffield, the business-friendly city council president, will succeed Mayor Mike Duggan as the Motor City’s first female mayor. More importantly, she will be a mayor who replicates the free-enterprise policies of Mayor Duggan, which have helped revitalize Detroit’s economy after the 2013 bankruptcy. Since that time, Detroit has had 12 straight balanced budgets with a $500 million emergency fund. Also, the city has moved from junk-bond status to investment-grade status. Mayor-elect Sheffield will continue the austerity approach by investing in business rather than hampering wealth creators, while remaining practical. Meanwhile, Travis County, the fifth most populous county in Texas, with the liberal city of Austin in its boundaries, has seen a boom in homelessness but has no way to end the homeless crisis. Amid rising costs for public services, Austin City Hall voted 10-1 to approve a 20 percent property tax increase. Luckily, Texas law requires voter approval for any tax hikes. Fortunately, its residents voted down the tax increase that the Democratic Party of Travis County overwhelmingly endorsed, a county that Kamala Harris won by about 40 points in 2024. Still, Austin voters rejected this measure by 27 points in a stark rebuke of city officials. Save Austin Now Co-Chair Matt Mackowiak said the vote was a “turning point for our city” and “It’s time to make affordability a real priority.” Tax increases make necessities more expensive, and Austin voters saw through that. Similarly, in New England, the well-known island of Nantucket, Mass., voted in a landslide to allow property owners to extend short-term rentals to guests, ending a five-year dispute over the matter. Opponents of STRs warn that this would lead to unwelcome activity from visitors and would have the support of the top 1 percent, who would never rent out their property. The vote was over 70 percent, a massive win for proponents of property rights and for business owners, realtors, and hospitality workers. Tourism and retail, which are vital to preserving the economy of Cape Cod and Nantucket residents, continue to keep it free from government intrusion. So, while Mamdami’s victory in November was a boon to socialists everywhere, there are still glimmers of hope that Socialism will not make it far outside the Big Apple. READ MORE from Alex Adkins: The Elusive ‘Conservative Consensus’ Meet Graham Platner: The Latest Democratic Dud for Senate Is Ro Khanna the X Factor for Democrats in 2028?

If you want to know what a country will become, don’t ask a pollster — ask a headteacher. The corridors of Britain’s state schools are no longer corridors of power, but corridors of prophecy. The future is not some abstract projection. It is lining up in assembly, being taught phonics, and growing up in a reality utterly detached from the assumptions of Westminster or the nostalgia of middle England. White Britons are projected to become a minority in the U.K. if current immigration and birth-rate trends continue. This isn’t Back to the Future. It’s forward without a map. And the DeLorean isn’t taking us to 1955 but straight into 2066, when White Britons are projected to become a minority in the U.K. if current immigration and birth-rate trends continue. But you don’t need a flux capacitor to see it. Just check the class registers of England’s schools. According to the latest data, 72 schools now have zero White British pupils, and 454 have fewer than 2 percent. In a quarter of schools, White British pupils are now a minority. The historic majority is no longer assumed; it’s disappearing. (RELATED: The Business of Borders: The Economy of Virtue) In Birmingham, England’s second-largest city, White British pupils account for just 24-27 percent of the student population. Pakistani-origin children nearly match and often surpass that number in many wards. At Rockwood Academy in Alum Rock, not a single one of the school’s 1,084 pupils is White British. (RELATED: Ireland Just Sealed Its Fate on Mass Migration) In Leicester, the pattern is similarly stark: White British students make up only 22-23 percent. Indian-origin pupils form 33 percent of the school cohort, with substantial Pakistani, Bangladeshi, and African populations. More than half the city’s students speak a language other than English at home. (RELATED: Asylum to Austerity: Germany Leads Europe’s Retreat From Open-Ended Migration) In Luton, a town of roughly 200,000 people, White British children now represent only 17 percent of the student population. Over 25 percent are of Pakistani heritage, and Arabic, Bangladeshi, and Black African communities further diminish the shared cultural center. Some schools report over 90 percent of students speaking English as an additional language. (RELATED: Britain’s Mass Immigration Scam) In Bradford, White British pupils account for only 40 percent, down from over 60 percent in 2004. Pakistani-origin pupils make up 36-37 percent, and in many inner-city primary schools, the proportion exceeds 90 percent. And in the capital, London, the nation’s supposed cultural beacon, White British pupils now comprise less than 30 percent of the state school population. In boroughs like Tower Hamlets, Brent, and Newham, the figure is often below 15 percent. In dozens of schools, over 80 percent of students speak a language other than English at home. This is not cultural diversity. This is demographic inversion. Britain is no longer a melting pot. It is a mosaic without mortar — each community increasingly living in its own linguistic, religious, and cultural zone. And schools, which once passed down a coherent story of British nationhood, can’t even agree on the script. Policymakers love to talk about attainment gaps and language support. But these are symptoms, not causes. The deeper issue is that the state education system no longer serves national cohesion. When children grow up without shared holidays, literature, or historical reference points, what sort of society is being assembled in these classrooms? White working-class pupils — once the statistical backbone of Britain — now perform worse than almost every other group. In 2021, the U.K. Parliament’s Education Select Committee described them as “the forgotten children.” But “forgotten” implies an oversight. This is abandonment. And it’s not just about numbers. In 2024, Ofsted reported that the head of a state-funded Islamic girls’ school in Birmingham had longstanding ties to a group accused of promoting religious segregation and undermining British values. Despite this, the school passed funding inspections and continued to operate with public support. Integration has become optional. Accountability is selective. We are told not to worry. That this is enrichment. But enriching for whom? For the lone White British child in a class where Christmas and Remembrance Day are footnotes, if acknowledged at all? For the teacher walking on eggshells around topics once considered unifying? For the country that now stammers to explain what exactly it is? Britain is not being overwhelmed overnight. It is being reconstituted by stealth. The state school is the laboratory — and the results are already in. A nation’s identity isn’t codified in constitutions; it is rehearsed in classrooms. When those dissolve, so too does the nation. If you want to see where Britain is headed, don’t wait for 2066. Just visit a primary school in Bradford, a secondary school in Tower Hamlets, or a classroom in Luton. There, the future is already in uniform. READ MORE from Kevin Cohen: Hungary’s Sovereignty Renaissance: The Europe That Refused to Fall Asylum to Austerity: Germany Leads Europe’s Retreat From Open-Ended Migration Ireland Just Sealed Its Fate on Mass Migration

My colleague Roger Kaplan recently wrote an excellent review of the PBS documentary, The Last 600 Meters, which is an excellent description of the battles of Najaf and Fallujah during the Iraq war. The primary assault troops in both battles were U.S. Marines, and the primary figures in the narrative are Marines whose tales are told in their own words. The program is gripping and vivid. It is “must-see” viewing for anyone interested in what really happened in the war. (RELATED: Rolling Them Up in Iraq) Marine Corps tactics in those battles were not an accident. The Corps had been carefully refining its approach to urban warfare since the events in Mogadishu, Somalia, in 1993. Through wargame simulations and physical experimentation culminating in the 1998 Urban Warfare experiments in cities such as Charleston, SC, Jacksonville, FL, and Oakland, CA, the Marine Corps developed new tactics and technologies designed to limit both U.S. and civilian casualties while inflicting unacceptable losses on the enemy. (RELATED: Real Leadership in the Unsung Men of the Armed Forces) These efforts resulted in a philosophy called the “Three Block War,” where Marines were taught to be prepared to fight high-intensity battles in one part of a city, do police-like peacekeeping in another, and humanitarian operations in yet a third. This was particularly important in Najaf, where the Grand Mosque, sacred to Shiite Muslims, was s key objective for both sides. It was critically important to U.S. planners that the U.S. forces not further anger the Shiite majority of the country. The Second Battle of Fallujah was not a Three Block War. American psychological operations effectively caused the vast majority of civilians to evacuate temporarily to refugee centers on the outskirts of the city with the clear message that anyone choosing to stay did so at their own risk. Then the Americans began an urban brawl reminiscent of Stalingrad or Hue City. The disproportionate casualty rate of American to enemy casualties to that of the enemy was a testimony to the thoroughness of Marine Corps preparations. Discerning viewers will note the key role played by Marine Corps armored vehicles — particularly tanks — in the Fallujah fight. The infantry marines used the tanks as rolling pillboxes to cover their maneuver. They also skillfully used snipers and heavy engineers to support them, and that combined arms cooperation is vividly illustrated. (RELATED: US Marine Leader Misread History and the Patterns of Conflict) Today, however, the Marine Corps lacks the tanks and heavy engineers to fight another Fallujah-like battle. Today, however, the Marine Corps lacks the tanks and heavy engineers to fight another Fallujah-like battle. The Sniper School, which produced the expert marksmen so critical to countering Islamist guerrilla snipers, has been closed. If today’s Marines were committed to an intense urban battle, they could not replicate Fallujah. (RELATED: The Feather Merchants: Senior Leaders Subverted the Marine Corps) The reason for this drastic decline in capabilities is a radical shift in the Marine Corps’ mission focus that began in 2019. The then-commandant — General David Berger — decreed that the Marine Corps would put its primary focus on assisting the Navy in gaining control of the South China Sea in any future conflict with the Chinese. He envisioned small units of Marines occupying small islands in the South China Sea, firing missiles at Chinese warships in a defensive concept called Force Design 2030 (now just Force Design). (RELATED: We’ll Need Innovation to Fight China, But Will We Have it?) To buy the new equipment needed to implement this new strategy, Berger divested the Corps of all of its tanks, heavy engineers, and reduced other aviation and field artillery capabilities. The elimination of the Sniper School remains a mystery to informed observers because it was such an incredibly small line item in the Marine Corps budget. (RELATED: The Marine Corps Has Gone Off the Rails) Force Design has come under increasing criticism from retired and active duty Marines — writing anonymously — as well as informed military critics. Its overall effectiveness, logistics sustainability, and the survivability of troops engaged have been systematically eviscerated with very little credible pushback from the current Marine Corps Leadership. However, the current commandant is obviously feeling the heat. He has drastically reduced the number of regiments originally designed to be converted into Littoral Combat Regiments, designed to support Force Design. He has also cancelled the buy of the increasingly vulnerable Tomahawk cruise missile system, and there are rumors that he will also revisit the procurement of the near-obsolete NEMESIS anti-ship missile system. (RELATED: The Best Birthday Present for the Marine Corps) Unfortunately, there are no plans to replace the lost armor and heavy engineer systems lost and the Sniper School remains closed. The capability to wage urban combat in the Marine Corps has reverted roughly to what it was in 1921, with light infantry assaulting heavily fortified positions without adequate combined support. Marine aviation can help, but its capabilities have also been severely curtailed. Even if it started to rebuild its combined arms team to 2018 levels today, it would take a decade. Worse still is the psychological impact. After six years of fostering a defensive mindset, one wonders how that will impact the traditional offensive mindset of the Marine Corps that has been manifest in places like Tripoli, Montezuma, Iwo Jima, and — most recently — Najaf, Fallujah, and Ramadi. In the documentary, one can see on the faces of the young Marines the eagerness and determination to close with and destroy the enemy. The only time the Marine Corps units have ever been forced to surrender was when they were forced into defensive situations against impossible odds at Wake Island and in MacArthur’s failed defense of the Philippines. I don’t think the damage will be permanent if it can be reversed soon, but it must be reversed. Recently, the Marine Corps celebrated its 250th birthday. I sincerely hope it will see another 250, but it cannot afford another six such as it has endured since 2019. READ MORE from Gary Anderson: The Best Birthday Present for the Marine Corps US Marine Leader Misread History and the Patterns of Conflict The Counterattack on Bad Bunny Half-Time Gary Anderson was the chief of staff of the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab during the Urban Warfare Experiments.

If you look back over the last 50 years, you could chart the evolution of how many seconds a person can stay focused on one activity before switching to something else. I’ve known since childhood that human beings are born for slow contemplation. As a kid, I could spend hours — or perhaps millions of hours — quietly staring at one of my new Christmas toys, even without touching it. My personal record is three days staring at the giant screw in a toy toolbox. Screws had always seemed small, gray, and boring to me. The screws we had at home weren’t exactly designed to single-handedly hold up the wall of a nuclear power plant, much less capture the imagination of a child. They were tiny cassette-player screws that often vanished and had to be replaced with tape. But that Christmas, I received a toolbox where everything was big and colorful: I could slip my little fingers through the nuts — an excellent training exercise, as I later proved when I carried three donuts on each finger at Dunkin’ Donuts. The box also included several giant red screws, building blocks, and a beautiful drill that could make almost anything spin. Unfortunately, it made a noise unbearable to the adult human ear — I emphasize adult — and it disappeared from my house overnight without explanation, while my parents and siblings maintained a suspicious silence and, certainly, a guilty conscience. It may have been the worst moment of my childhood. It’s awful not to be a writer with a properly troubled childhood, but overall, I grew up in a happy home despite life’s inevitable setbacks. Still, that damned missing drill left me melancholic for a week. Until I forgot about it. But not entirely, apparently, because I’ve just remembered it — 40 years later. I’m not resentful by nature, but I think I’ll bring it up at the next family Christmas dinner. Almost all children regard their little objects as treasures while they’re discovering the world. When a child first notices their own limbs, or the natural world outside — plants, or the sea — they still maintain a quiet, instinctive sense of wonder. Children begin to experience a bit of anxiety when they interact with the artificial world: city traffic, the rumble of a passing train, or a surprise visit from the mother-in-law. From there, the slope is endless. The biggest leap in a child’s development comes when they start interacting with televisions and machines. When they are very young, these devices attract them mainly so they can throw them on the floor — perhaps a form of self-defense for the future. But as they grow, their attention to and observation of the outside world slows down, and their ability to concentrate is increasingly consumed by moving images. (RELATED: Scatterbrains, Screens, and Our Moral Collapse) As a child, we had a method at home to prevent television from turning us into idiots. It was quite effective. After half an hour of cartoons and a snack, a man would press the off button and tell my siblings and me, “Everybody, go study!” Sometimes it was a woman. They were my father and mother, and they were not high-level diplomats ready to negotiate the matter, but elite snipers defending the little heads of their loved ones, armed with a well-aimed slipper. (RELATED: At the Tip of Your Fingers) Today, it makes absolutely no difference that parents have a TV remote. It’s about as effective as if, when we were kids, my father had tried to turn off all the lights in the room by blowing on the bulbs. It’s a tough (or perhaps fascinating) time to be a parent, because evil, alienation, and poison seep into every corner of the house and society at every moment and settle in the little heads of children. I often think the only way to defend them from this torrential downpour of stimuli and bad ideas is not to stand against the massive wall of water, but to build a sturdy protective dam inside their minds, where conscience resides. (RELATED: The Stare That Broke America) I mention all this because I’ve just read a study — yet another one — claiming that our capacity for sustained concentration is at an all-time low. As we’ve grown accustomed to consuming 20-second micro-products on social media, our ability to stay engaged for longer than that with a book, a friend who is speaking, or even a real-life scene unfolding right before our eyes has been severely diminished. Looking back 50 years shows an evolution of this trend that has accelerated dramatically in recent years. Younger generations, for instance, don’t understand how a writer makes a living. No one ever has, of course, but right now saying I’m a writer is like saying my job is repairing gramophones. This trend has accelerated so much that I wonder whether we’ll eventually see social-media platforms where videos last less than a second. I suppose that will be the moment when we’ll all need to start taking preventive medication for epilepsy. Although my theory, as a Christian, is that God won’t allow us to become quite that idiotic and thoughtless. Or at least that He’ll bring something good out of all this. Even if it’s just a one-second clip with the text: Paenitemini et credite Evangelio. READ MORE from Itxu Díaz: Today’s Teens: The Generation We’ve Totally Annoyed Bill Gates Has Discovered Something More Profitable Than the Climate Apocalypse Fun Returns to the Press: A Rising Star Announces a New 1929 Crash in the Times

from The National Pulse: WHAT HAPPENED: The Maine Supreme Judicial Court is reviewing a case involving a custody order that barred a mother from taking her daughter to church or exposing her to Bible teachings, raising constitutional questions about parental rights and religious freedom. ?WHO WAS INVOLVED: Emily Bickford, the mother, and Matthew Bradeen, the father, are at the […]

by James Howard Kunstler, All News Pipeline: “I’m not controversial, so I like it that way.” — President Donald Trump Isn’t it obvious what’s at the heart of this Jeffrey Epstein psychodrama? The country is sick unto near-death with official secrecy, cover-ups, black ops, stonewalling, and never-ending games of political hide-the-salami — especially when those […]