What really happened to the German gold housed in the United States?

Last January, Glenn covered the story that the German Central Bank was planning to repatriate its gold reserves from the United States and France. Ultimately, it was agreed upon that Germany would only actually take a fraction of its holdings back. Why the sudden change of heart? Glenn opened Wednesday's Glenn Beck Program with a disturbing report about what really happened when the Germany Central Bank decided to repatriate its gold reserves.

Tonight, I want to start here, and this is probably something that we’re going to have to talk about several times because it’s really hard to understand. But we’ve talked about it once before over several months, but I think things have gotten significantly worse, and let me explain. Last January, Germany started asking if they could just come into the Federal Reserve and look at their stash of gold.

This is the gold that the Feds supposedly hold, and the Fed said no. Germany was like I’m sorry, what? Huh? Well, not surprisingly, Germany announced soon after that they wanted their gold back. Because they weren’t even allowed to see their gold, that got them a little nervous. They said we want to repatriate our gold from the Fed.

VIDEO

Bundesbank to bring gold home, plans to hold 50% of gold reserves in Frankfurt by 2020, so 300 tons are going to leave New York, 374 tons from Paris. Well, not quite clear why.

It’s German politics.

Is that what it is?

They want to have it, right? They moved it out of Germany because of the Cold War, right, the threat the Russians would take it? It’s just the same reason most of the gold is sitting in the basement of the New York Fed. In World War II, Europeans moved their gold over here to avoid the war, and now they’re moving back.

What a bunch of bull crap. This is the biggest bunch of bull crap I’ve ever heard. Why does anybody watch these guys? I have no idea. The reason why they moved the gold over to the United States is because we said we would be the gold standard. Yes, they wanted to move the gold over here for security reasons, etc., etc., but we promised them that we would never go off the gold standard, and we didn’t until the 1970s.

Why do they want to move them over? Well, there’s something to tangible gold. Well, no, not if you believe in this. What’s the difference? But if you say hey, can I get into that bank and see my money, and the bank says no, huh uh, I don’t think so, don’t you say I want to take my money out of that bank, and I’m going to store it someplace else?

So the gold supposedly has been sitting in the vaults since the 1950s, and you know, it shouldn’t take any more than a little bit of Swiffering before you send it back. But the Fed said that it’s going to take until 2020 before they can return that gold, seven years. Now, why would it take seven years to dust something off and ship it out? I mean, we have FedEx. I know you’re not going to send FedEx, but we have cargo planes.

Now, that’s what they said last year. They were going to make their first payment on that over the holidays, and they did, but something happened along the way. Apparently we had to melt their gold bars down. The Fed claims that about 6,700 tons of gold from Germany is in their vaults. What Germany is asking to get back is 300 tons, 5% of their stack, shouldn’t be a problem.

It’s been a year since they requested, and the U.S. has just sent back 37.5 tons. That’s 50 tons short of what we need to send each year to meet Germany’s request by the deadline. We didn’t even hit the first payment. Okay, if I’m German, that makes me nervous. Wait a minute, you promised you’d send all of the first year, and you only sent half of it. What’s the problem here?

And here’s the disturbing part, even more disturbing. The reports that are coming out now is that the gold we sent them over the holidays was melted down and recast. This is important. It begs the question why? I can think of several reasons, but none of them really make sense, except the situation is worse than even I thought it was when I talked to you about rehypothecation.

I think there’s a good chance that there’s not a lot of that gold left. But how did that happen? I mean, do we have another Sandy Berger loose, you know, stashing gold bricks in his socks? No, the answer is partially rehypothecation. Now, this is something we talked about on this program before, if you remember.

VIDEO

Glenn: It’s why when they’re taking the gold, and Germany says, I want the gold, return our gold, it’s ours, the Federal Reserve says, Okay, but we’ll return 10% in seven years. Well, how hard is it to return our gold? It’s got the German Republic stamped on it. Give us our gold. The reason why – this is my theory – the reason why they’re not returning that for seven years is because a little phone call came in, and they said to the Germans, hey, rehypothecation dude. If you take your gold, there’s not enough gold here.

We were playing a game. There’s only so many assets, and so we just keep building on those assets in a bogus way. So once people demand their hard asset back, the entire thing collapses, and that’s the last phase of what we’re headed for. Rehypothecation, learn it.

Okay, that’s really important. Let’s start at the basics. The Federal Reserve is a collection of banks. We don’t know whose banks they are. We’re not allowed to look at their books or anything else. They’re the ones that we put the gold in, and then they give us this instead. They print our money. But we’re not allowed to see…we just gave them all that gold? Yes, that unfortunately is the way it works. It sounds like a scam already, doesn’t it?

The money has to be backed by something. It needs to be backed by gold, so we put all of our gold into the Federal Reserve, just a giant bank, and they gave us a stack of cash. And then we said okay, this is the cash the Federal Reserve has. Remember, it’s all backed by gold. Then we convinced that the entire world, not just the U.S. but the rest of the West. Germany gave it to us, Japan, the UK. Everybody gave us their gold to hold like in a safety deposit box for the entire world, okay? Safety deposit box, let me stop there for a second.

I want you to think of the vaults down at the basement of the Federal Reserve in Manhattan as a safety deposit box. You go in. Say you have jewelry, I have my wedding ring. It’s my anniversary today. This is the ring we had made for me. It’s the Klimt, The Kiss on it, and it’s special to me. And if I go to a safety deposit box, I put it in there with all the other, you know, lovely plastic jewelry that I have, and I bring it to the bank. And I say I want to put this in a safety deposit box.

They give me a receipt. They give me a key. I go in, and I put it all into the safety deposit box. I see it the whole way. Anytime I can walk in and say I want to see my stuff in my safety deposit. Yes sir, Mr. Beck. Do you have your key? Yes, I do. We both unlock it. There we have it. We each have a key, and I can see it anytime.

Now, at some point if I go back and I say I want my wedding ring back, and I want all my jewelry, they say, oh, I can’t let you see that – wait a minute, what? What do you mean I can’t see that? And then if they give me not this ring, but they give me another wedding ring, might weigh exactly the same, but it’s not my wedding ring, wouldn’t you ask some questions?

Let me explain rehypothecation one time and then back to what happened to Germany. Why I said originally they weren’t going to give their money back to them for seven years is because rehypothecation is exactly what happened to our housing crisis, and it’s happening to our gold because everybody got greedy. Everybody was greedy in the housing market, not necessarily you but the banks.

Here’s what happened: Let’s say these were just houses. Jeremy here wanted to buy a house. I was a bank. I said okay, I’m going to need your house as collateral. You continue to pay for that, but I’m holding that collateral. But then me as the bank, I need a loan, so I go over here to Germany. And I say hey, Germany, I have this house over here. If you’ll just give me some money for this house, then we’ll be square, but if I don’t pay you, then you can take this house.

Well, wait a minute, I can’t really do that because then he becomes the owner of this house, but I’m the owner of this house as well. And then he says he needs some money, so he sells this same house to Japan and then to England. And we keep selling everything to each other over and over again. There’s no real asset. If he defaults and doesn’t pay me, I default. And because I default, he says I’m going to default, and he says give me the house.

Well, I’m sitting for the house. I need it from him. He needs it from me, but he needs it from him. And he needs it from him, and it goes back around. It doesn’t work. This is what’s happening with gold. I believe rehypothecation, the West wanted a fat and sassy lifestyle that none of us could afford, so the Federal Reserve and the central banks all around the world sold our gold over and over and over again.

We took our gold, and we said okay, we’ve already printed all that money for United States, what the heck, Japan, how much do you need? We’re going to take, and you’re going to make a loan on this gold for Japan. And then Japan said okay, Germany needs some money, and we’ll give it on America’s gold and then England. It’s happening over and over again. That’s rehypothecation. That’s a Ponzi scheme that I believe happened at the Federal Reserve, and it’s starting to fall apart.

Now, picture this deal happening over and over and over again since 1950, hundreds and thousands of times. Subprime crisis, do you remember that? Imagine that crash on a global scale and instead of houses, it’s gold which backs all of our money and gold that is not really owned by anyone. Our money becomes worthless. Not a good Ponzi scheme, right? Everything collapses.

The Fed’s no different right now, but I believe it’s worse than this. I believe not only did they rehypothecate all of the gold, but they also said you know what, I’m going to sell this to somebody else because I as the bank also want that money. Oh, and I’m going to take the German money, this gold, and I’m going to sell this one to somebody else too because I as a bank need some money.

Forget about the countries. We’ve already sold the gold to each other over and over again, but then they just started taking the gold and selling it themselves. Wait a minute, the Federal Reserve, remember what got me here is the Federal Reserve cannot pay Germany back a relatively little sum that happens, a little sum, not this big box, just a little box of their gold. They can’t do it. And when they start asking for it, they stall.

And then something weird happens, nobody’s allowed to peek into the vault. Do you remember Geraldo at Al Capone’s vault when nothing was there, and it was kind of a letdown? This time it won’t be a letdown if nothing’s there. A German reporter with over three decades of experience in financial reporting asked on December 27 Germany’s Bundesbank, their central bank, why the Federal Reserve melted down the gold that was returned.

Here is his e-mail: “Dear Ladies and Gentlemen: I am an independent financial journalist. In connection with the transfer of 37 tons of Bundesbank gold from New York to Germany, I came across the news that the bars were a melted before the transfer. May I kindly ask you the following information: Why were the bars melted at all? And why couldn’t that wait until the bars arrived in Frankfurt? Kind regards, Lars Schall.” Great question, Lars.

The bank’s answer wasn’t really an answer at all. They explained that they have a new storage concept to ensure that certain specifications are met. They claimed the bars had to be melted to meet these specifications – uh huh. Why in the world would you need to melt it down before it got to Germany? Have you ever seen the movie The Italian Job? What’s on that bar? It’s stamped with a dancer, right?

Now, I don’t know what Germany’s has on it. I don’t know, maybe a big beer stein or something, but they’re all stamped. And why are gold bars stamped like that? Do you remember in the movie? What did they say? Everybody knew. Remember, that’s why the one guy got it in the head because he was like oh, this is – BOOM! Everybody knew who owned that gold. That’s why every country stamps it, to authenticate the weight and the purity.

Let’s talk about purity for a second. A few years ago, several years ago, the Fed had to respond to reports that damage had happened to Britain’s gold when Britain asked for some of its gold back and left it with a purity of just 91%. What does that mean? Again, I go to the bank, I give them this, and then I say what’s the purity of this? It was 99.9% pure when I gave it. If it’s 91% pure, there’s a problem.

When you melt down these bars and send them back, you negate the authenticity. We’re not able to send them the right amount of gold at all. We’re not able to send them their actual bars of gold. That’s a red flag to me, and it should have every American and every press organization up in arms asking questions. I believe what’s happening is far worse than rehypothecation.

Not only were the Feds playing the Ponzi scheme of rehypothecation, a game on each other over and over and they all knew it, all the central banks, but I believe they’re also physically selling everyone’s gold. And now they can’t reproduce the stamp, and so they’re coming up with whatever they can.

Remember, when Britain complained that their money was repatriated gold, it was returned with a small piece of impurity. Well, when you have access to that much gold, skimming it becomes quite tempting. Does anybody have a quarter on them? Nobody actually carries any cash anymore. If you think about a quarter or a dollar, you know, an actual coin – you have a quarter? Somebody actually uses the drink machine.

When you think about a quarter, I want you just to think about the thin part for just a second, this part. Pull in as tight as you can, this part, the edge. Is it smooth, or does it have ridges like Ruffles? It’s ridgy, right? Why? Why are those ridges there? Because if you skim it, it becomes less valuable. Think of it like the scene from Indiana Jones. Do you remember this scene? Do we have this? Yeah, remember?

This is the most ridiculous thing because you know how heavy that would be if it was pure gold? But anyway, he takes the sand. It’s not quite enough, so he has to pour a little bit out. Now, what people used to do is they would skim a little bit. This is a very old coin. This is from the time of Christ. This is from the year of the crucifixion. This is a piece of silver.

If you look at this coin, you can see – pull in as tight as you can. If you look at this coin, you can see that it is uneven. Pull in. There you go. It is uneven, and parts of it are cut off. The back is even better to see. Parts of the stamping have been cut off. Why? Because over 2,000 years because it’s solid silver, people would take a little bit and just shave a little bit off. That’s why those ridges are on the quarter, they shaved just a little bit off.

That’s what happened to England when they got 92%. They just shaved a little bit. The world needs to demand accountability from the Federal Reserve. I don’t think it’s going to end well when we do. In fact, I think it ends horribly for everyone but better face the facts right now. The world needs to demand to see proof that America still has its gold, and we still stand for something.

Now, maybe this is just a giant mix-up, and all of it can easily be explained by coincidence. I can’t think of a way it does. My gut tells me that’s not the case. It tells me the more likely scenario is the Fed is playing games, more specifically stealing through a massive Ponzi scheme, and when the rest of the world who has been in on part of that, the rehypothecation, realizes that the Fed and U.S. government perhaps has been taking the gold, not just theirs, yours as well, to fund their addiction to spending or to give the banks more money, there is nothing of value in those vaults, and there is nothing that anyone will put any trust in. The chickens come home to roost.

We have never seen theft like this before. How would you feel if you went to the bank, and they couldn’t give you back anything, your wedding ring, or any of your other valuables? When you got back, they handed you this, except it really was plastic, but it wasn’t plastic when you gave it to them. That’s what’s happening, I think, right now, and it’s happening to Germany. And it will at some point happen when people all over the world and hopefully our country start demanding to see the vaults and the gold.

When the people busted down the doors only to find nothing, what happens to those bankers? What happens to Americans? You will be blamed for stealing the world’s treasure. America is the globe’s banker, and it is only a matter of time before all of the world and the rest of us as well find out we’ve got nothing. Who does?

A Sharia enclave is quietly taking root in America. It's time to wake up.

NOVA SAFO / Staff | Getty Images

Sharia-based projects like the Meadow in Texas show how political Islam grows quietly, counting on Americans to stay silent while an incompatible legal system takes root.

Apolitical system completely incompatible with the Constitution is gaining ground in the United States, and we are pretending it is not happening.

Sharia — the legal and political framework of Islam — is being woven into developments, institutions, and neighborhoods, including a massive project in Texas. And the consequences will be enormous if we continue to look the other way.

This is the contradiction at the heart of political Islam: It claims universal authority while insisting its harshest rules will never be enforced here. That promise does not stand up to scrutiny. It never has.

Before we can have an honest debate, we’d better understand what Sharia represents. Sharia is not simply a set of religious rules about prayer or diet. It is a comprehensive legal and political structure that governs marriage, finance, criminal penalties, and civic life. It is a parallel system that claims supremacy wherever it takes hold.

This is where the distinction matters. Many Muslims in America want nothing to do with Sharia governance. They came here precisely because they lived under it. But political Islam — the movement that seeks to implement Sharia as law — is not the same as personal religious belief.

It is a political ideology with global ambitions, much like communism. Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently warned that Islamist movements do not seek peaceful coexistence with the West. They seek dominance. History backs him up.

How Sharia arrives

Political Islam does not begin with dramatic declarations. It starts quietly, through enclaves that operate by their own rules. That is why the development once called EPIC City — now rebranded as the Meadow — is so concerning. Early plans framed it as a Muslim-only community built around a mega-mosque and governed by Sharia-compliant financing. After state investigations were conducted, the branding changed, but the underlying intent remained the same.

Developers have openly described practices designed to keep non-Muslims out, using fees and ownership structures to create de facto religious exclusivity. This is not assimilation. It is the construction of a parallel society within a constitutional republic.

The warning from those who have lived under it

Years ago, local imams in Texas told me, without hesitation, that certain Sharia punishments “just work.” They spoke about cutting off hands for theft, stoning adulterers, and maintaining separate standards of testimony for men and women. They insisted it was logical and effective while insisting they would never attempt to implement it in Texas.

But when pressed, they could not explain why a system they consider divinely mandated would suddenly stop applying once someone crossed a border.

This is the contradiction at the heart of political Islam: It claims universal authority while insisting its harshest rules will never be enforced here. That promise does not stand up to scrutiny. It never has.

AASHISH KIPHAYET / Contributor | Getty Images

America is vulnerable

Europe is already showing us where this road leads. No-go zones, parallel courts, political intimidation, and clerics preaching supremacy have taken root across major cities.

America’s strength has always come from its melting pot, but assimilation requires boundaries. It requires insisting that the Constitution, not religious law, is the supreme authority on this soil.

Yet we are becoming complacent, even fearful, about saying so. We mistake silence for tolerance. We mistake avoidance for fairness. Meanwhile, political Islam views this hesitation as weakness.

Religious freedom is one of America’s greatest gifts. Muslims may worship freely here, as they should. But political Islam must not be permitted to plant a flag on American soil. The Constitution cannot coexist with a system that denies equal rights, restricts speech, subordinates women, and places clerical authority above civil law.

Wake up before it is too late

Projects like the Meadow are not isolated. They are test runs, footholds, proofs of concept. Political Islam operates with patience. It advances through demographic growth, legal ambiguity, and cultural hesitation — and it counts on Americans being too polite, too distracted, or too afraid to confront it.

We cannot afford that luxury. If we fail to defend the principles that make this country free, we will one day find ourselves asking how a parallel system gained power right in front of us. The answer will be simple: We looked away.

The time to draw boundaries and to speak honestly is now. The time to defend the Constitution as the supreme law of the land is now. Act while there is still time.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

The Crisis of Meaning: Searching for truth and purpose

Mario Tama / Staff | Getty Images

Anxiety, anger, and chronic dissatisfaction signal a country searching for meaning. Without truth and purpose, politics becomes a dangerous substitute for identity.

We have built a world overflowing with noise, convenience, and endless choice, yet something essential has slipped out of reach. You can sense it in the restless mood of the country, the anxiety among young people who cannot explain why they feel empty, in the angry confusion that dominates our politics.

We have more wealth than any nation in history, but the heart of the culture feels strangely malnourished. Before we can debate debt or elections, we must confront the reality that we created a world of things, but not a world of purpose.

You cannot survive a crisis you refuse to name, and you cannot rebuild a world whose foundations you no longer understand.

What we are living through is not just economic or political dysfunction. It is the vacuum that appears when a civilization mistakes abundance for meaning.

Modern life is stuffed with everything except what the human soul actually needs. We built systems to make life faster, easier, and more efficient — and then wondered why those systems cannot teach our children who they are, why they matter, or what is worth living for.

We tell the next generation to chase success, influence, and wealth, turning childhood into branding. We ask kids what they want to do, not who they want to be. We build a world wired for dopamine rather than dignity, and then we wonder why so many people feel unmoored.

When everything is curated, optimized, and delivered at the push of a button, the question “what is my life for?” gets lost in the static.

The crisis beneath the headlines

It is not just the young who feel this crisis. Every part of our society is straining under the weight of meaninglessness.

Look at the debt cycle — the mathematical fate no civilization has ever escaped once it crosses a threshold that we seem to have already blown by. While ordinary families feel the pressure, our leaders respond with distraction, with denial, or by rewriting the very history that could have warned us.

You cannot survive a crisis you refuse to name, and you cannot rebuild a world whose foundations you no longer understand.

We have entered a cultural moment where the noise is so loud that it drowns out the simplest truths. We are living in a country that no longer knows how to hear itself think.

So people go searching. Some drift toward the false promise of socialism, some toward the empty thrill of rebellion. Some simply check out. When a culture forgets what gives life meaning, it becomes vulnerable to every ideology that offers a quick answer.

The quiet return of meaning

And yet, quietly, something else is happening. Beneath the frustration and cynicism, many Americans are recognizing that meaning does not come from what we own, but from what we honor. It does not rise from success, but from virtue. It does not emerge from noise, but from the small, sacred things that modern life has pushed to the margins — the home, the table, the duty you fulfill, the person you help when no one is watching.

The danger is assuming that this rediscovery happens on its own. It does not.

Reorientation requires intention. It requires rebuilding the habits and virtues that once held us together. It requires telling the truth about our history instead of rewriting it to fit today’s narratives. And it requires acknowledging what has been erased: that meaning is inseparable from God’s presence in a nation’s life.

Harold M. Lambert / Contributor | Getty Images

Where renewal begins

We have built a world without stillness, and then we wondered why no one can hear the questions that matter. Those questions remain, whether we acknowledge them or not. They do not disappear just because we drown them in entertainment or noise. They wait for us, and the longer we ignore them, the more disoriented we become.

Meaning is still available. It is found in rebuilding the smallest, most human spaces — the places that cannot be digitized, globalized, or automated. The home. The family. The community.

These are the daily virtues that do not trend on social media, but that hold a civilization upright. If we want to repair this country, we begin there, exactly where every durable civilization has always begun: one virtue at a time, one tradition at a time, one generation at a time.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

A break in trust: A NEW Watergate is brewing in plain sight

Gary Hershorn / Contributor | Getty Images

When institutions betray the public’s trust, the country splits, and the spiral is hard to stop.

Something drastic is happening in American life. Headlines that should leave us stunned barely register anymore. Stories that once would have united the country instead dissolve into silence or shrugs.

It is not apathy exactly. It is something deeper — a growing belief that the people in charge either cannot or will not fix what is broken.

When people feel ignored or betrayed, they will align with anyone who appears willing to fight on their behalf.

I call this response the Bubba effect. It describes what happens when institutions lose so much public trust that “Bubba,” the average American minding his own business, finally throws his hands up and says, “Fine. I will handle it myself.” Not because he wants to, but because the system that was supposed to protect him now feels indifferent, corrupt, or openly hostile.

The Bubba effect is not a political movement. It is a survival instinct.

What triggers the Bubba effect

We are watching the triggers unfold in real time. When members of Congress publicly encourage active duty troops to disregard orders from the commander in chief, that is not a political squabble. When a federal judge quietly rewrites the rules so one branch of government can secretly surveil another, that is not normal. That is how republics fall. Yet these stories glided across the news cycle without urgency, without consequence, without explanation.

When the American people see the leadership class shrug, they conclude — correctly — that no one is steering the ship.

This is how the Bubba effect spreads. It is not just individuals resisting authority. It is sheriffs refusing to enforce new policies, school boards ignoring state mandates, entire communities saying, “We do not believe you anymore.” It becomes institutional, cultural, national.

A country cracking from the inside

This effect can be seen in Dearborn, Michigan. In the rise of fringe voices like Nick Fuentes. In the Epstein scandal, where powerful people could not seem to locate a single accountable adult. These stories are different in content but identical in message: The system protects itself, not you.

When people feel ignored or betrayed, they will align with anyone who appears willing to fight on their behalf. That does not mean they suddenly agree with everything that person says. It means they feel abandoned by the institutions that were supposed to be trustworthy.

The Bubba effect is what fills that vacuum.

The dangers of a faithless system

A republic cannot survive without credibility. Congress cannot oversee intelligence agencies if it refuses to discipline its own members. The military cannot remain apolitical if its chain of command becomes optional. The judiciary cannot defend the Constitution while inventing loopholes that erase the separation of powers.

History shows that once a nation militarizes politics, normalizes constitutional shortcuts, or allows government agencies to operate without scrutiny, it does not return to equilibrium peacefully. Something will give.

The question is what — and when.

The responsibility now belongs to us

In a healthy country, this is where the media steps in. This is where universities, pastors, journalists, and cultural leaders pause the outrage machine and explain what is at stake. But today, too many see themselves not as guardians of the republic, but of ideology. Their first loyalty is to narrative, not truth.

The founders never trusted the press more than the public. They trusted citizens who understood their rights, lived their responsibilities, and demanded accountability. That is the antidote to the Bubba effect — not rage, but citizenship.

How to respond without breaking ourselves

Do not riot. Do not withdraw. Do not cheer on destruction just because you dislike the target. That is how nations lose themselves. Instead, demand transparency. Call your representatives. Insist on consequences. Refuse to normalize constitutional violations simply because “everyone does it.” If you expect nothing, you will get nothing.

Do not hand your voice to the loudest warrior simply because he is swinging a bat at the establishment. You do not beat corruption by joining a different version of it. You beat it by modeling the country you want to preserve: principled, accountable, rooted in truth.

Adam Gray / Stringer | Getty Images

Every republic reaches a moment when historians will later say, “That was the warning.” We are living in ours. But warnings are gifts if they are recognized. Institutions bend. People fail. The Constitution can recover — if enough Americans still know and cherish it.

It does not take a majority. Twenty percent of the country — awake, educated, and courageous — can reset the system. It has happened before. It can happen again.

Wake up. Stand up. Demand integrity — from leaders, from institutions, and from yourself. Because the Bubba effect will not end until Americans reclaim the duty that has always belonged to them: preserving the republic for the next generation.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Warning: Stop letting TikTok activists think for you

Spencer Platt / Staff | Getty Images

Bad-faith attacks on Israel and AIPAC warp every debate. Real answers emerge only when people set aside scripts and ask what serves America’s long-term interests.

The search for truth has always required something very much in short supply these days: honesty. Not performative questions, not scripted outrage, not whatever happens to be trending on TikTok, but real curiosity.

Some issues, often focused on foreign aid, AIPAC, or Israel, have become hotbeds of debate and disagreement. Before we jump into those debates, however, we must return to a simpler, more important issue: honest questioning. Without it, nothing in these debates matters.

Ask questions because you want the truth, not because you want a target.

The phrase “just asking questions” has re-entered the zeitgeist, and that’s fine. We should always question power. But too many of those questions feel preloaded with someone else’s answer. If the goal is truth, then the questions should come from a sincere desire to understand, not from a hunt for a villain.

Honest desire for truth is the only foundation that can support a real conversation about these issues.

Truth-seeking is real work

Right now, plenty of people are not seeking the truth at all. They are repeating something they heard from a politician on cable news or from a stranger on TikTok who has never opened a history book. That is not a search for answers. That is simply outsourcing your own thought.

If you want the truth, you need to work for it. You cannot treat the world like a Marvel movie where the good guy appears in a cape and the villain hisses on command. Real life does not give you a neat script with the moral wrapped up in two hours.

But that is how people are approaching politics now. They want the oppressed and the oppressor, the heroic underdog and the cartoon villain. They embrace this fantastical framing because it is easier than wrestling with reality.

This framing took root in the 1960s when the left rebuilt its worldview around colonizers and the colonized. Overnight, Zionism was recast as imperialism. Suddenly, every conflict had to fit the same script. Today’s young activists are just recycling the same narrative with updated graphics. Everything becomes a morality play. No nuance, no context, just the comforting clarity of heroes and villains.

Bad-faith questions

This same mindset is fueling the sudden obsession with Israel, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in particular. You hear it from members of Congress and activists alike: AIPAC pulls the strings, AIPAC controls the government, AIPAC should register as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The questions are dramatic, but are they being asked in good faith?

FARA is clear. The standard is whether an individual or group acts under the direction or control of a foreign government. AIPAC simply does not qualify.

Here is a detail conveniently left out of these arguments: Dozens of domestic organizations — Armenian, Cuban, Irish, Turkish — lobby Congress on behalf of other countries. None of them registers under FARA because — like AIPAC — they are independent, domestic organizations.

If someone has a sincere problem with the structure of foreign lobbying, fair enough. Let us have that conversation. But singling out AIPAC alone is not a search for truth. It is bias dressed up as bravery.

Anadolu / Contributor | Getty Images

If someone wants to question foreign aid to Israel, fine. Let’s have that debate. But let’s ask the right questions. The issue is not the size of the package but whether the aid advances our interests. What does the United States gain? Does the investment strengthen our position in the region? How does it compare to what we give other nations? And do we examine those countries with the same intensity?

The real target

These questions reflect good-faith scrutiny. But narrowing the entire argument to one country or one dollar amount misses the larger problem. If someone objects to the way America handles foreign aid, the target is not Israel. The target is the system itself — an entrenched bureaucracy, poor transparency, and decades-old commitments that have never been re-examined. Those problems run through programs around the world.

If you want answers, you need to broaden the lens. You have to be willing to put aside the movie script and confront reality. You have to hold yourself to a simple rule: Ask questions because you want the truth, not because you want a target.

That is the only way this country ever gets clarity on foreign aid, influence, alliances, and our place in the world. Questioning is not just allowed. It is essential. But only if it is honest.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.