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The 2016 election will come down to one word: Authentic

April 16, 2015
Wilson

Writer

Phony politicians have crippled American politics for way too long. They pretend to be grassroots, but really they are backed by corporate elites and donors with endless money to spend on influence in Washington, DC. The apathy the American people showed to Hillary’s announcement is just the latest example. People are hungry for the truth. They want authenticity. And it’s not going to come from the establishment of either party.

2016 election is going to come down to one word, and that word is authentic. I really, truly believe if it doesn’t happen this time, we are done as a nation because people are absolutely starving for something or somebody that’s real. We don’t even have to agree with them all the time. We just have to believe that they’re real. If anybody starts smelling like a focus group or you can tell that they’re just going after polling numbers, phony concern, processed language, anything like that, anything that is fake, it is over that fast.

In 2008, Hillary Clinton got wrecked. She was destroyed because he basically showed up in Iowa expecting to be crowned the nominee. So, now what is she doing? She’s going to be just like you. She’s riding around in a van pretending to be an average person, going to Chipotle, you know, like she always does. Come on. She is so desperate to appear normal when we all know she’s not normal. And that’s okay.

Her first campaign ad was excruciatingly boring, but it was real people. You’re made to believe that they are just regular people. They’re just people just like you doing mundane jobs just like you. But they’re not regular people. This woman, show this woman. This woman here, she’s not a regular person just planting her garden. No, she’s in this for a reason, because she is a big-time former abortion lobbyists who was leading a campaign for Wendy Davis. So, having her in this spot was speaking to all of her supporters—see, we’re just like you. We’re abortion activists.

So now Hillary is riding around in a crappy van, and actually it’s not a crappy van. It’s a $75,000 van. Wait. Dana has a great show. She’s going to be talking about the van tonight. But she’s driving around, she’s talking to people at gas stations. When do you think Hillary Clinton actually got out at a gas station and pumped? By the way, I like the Chairman Mao outfit she’s wearing there, I mean, because that’s what the regular people in Iowa wear are designer Mao jackets like that one.

When do you think she actually was at a gas station and was looking through the beef jerky? Really? Do you think she’s actually gone to the gas station and said, “Man, there’s Duck Dynasty T-shirts and key chains and everything everywhere; these guys really are big”? She’s not hanging out at gas stations. It’s not who she is, and that’s perfectly okay.

She was the first lady back in the 80s. Then she was the former first lady. Then she was a senator. Then she was the Secretary of State. Now she’s running for president again. She’s an elite with access and connections to powers that few in human existence have ever achieved. That’s okay. She used to be poor, and then—because they were both attorneys, I mean, poor is kind of relative here. She did go to Yale, but now they’re mega million dollars rich.

She’s a woman with ambition to be president of the United States. Good. I think she’d have a better chance if she were just honest about it and say look, okay, I’m never really quite comfortable hanging out at the gas station. No one’s buying this rollout, and it’s really laughable. Saturday Night Live, did you see it this weekend, hitting her harder than they did the Sarah Palin? It’s rough, and it’s because she’s a phony, and everybody knows she’s a phony. Just accept who you are and be honest about it.

She can’t even be honest about the fans on her social media sites. A study was done of her Facebook page. Again, we had to go across the ocean. We had to go to I think it was The Guardian in England to get anybody in the media to do a job. They found something odd about her followers. Seven percent of her followers were from Baghdad. That’s not really comforting or real. And on Twitter, it was revealed that 15%, about 544,000 of her Twitter followers, are bogus accounts.

If her team is willing to lie about Facebook and Twitter fans and make people up just out of whole cloth, what else are they willing to lie about? Why can’t we just be honest about what we really, truly believe? Honestly, this is why I would love to see a campaign between Ted Cruz and what’s her name up in Massachusetts, Tiffany? The woman, Elizabeth Warren, you know, Cherokee people?

I’d love to see those guys because except for the “I’m from an Indian tribe,” at least they’re honest. Wouldn’t you love to have a debate—we talked about this on radio today, a debate where Ted Cruz is like this is the Constitution, and this is what I believe because I believe in these founding principles and here’s why. And she says okay, that’s fine and everything, but it doesn’t really work. I’m a Socialist. I don’t believe in communist Russia. I believe in Sweden, and we should be more like Sweden, and this is why it works.

To tell you the truth, I think the Sweden argument would probably win at this point in this country, but I could at least live with it because we’d have an honest debate. And everybody right now is just sick of these lies. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, she was asked to answer a simple question on abortion, is it okay or not to kill a seven-pound baby just before birth in the womb? Two networks tried to get her to answer. She danced around this answer every which way so she didn’t have to say yes or no. Watch.

VIDEO

Megyn Kelly: At what point is it appropriate to say it’s no longer just between a woman and her doctor?

Wasserman Schultz: What is appropriate from our perspective, I’ll speak for myself, but I think I can speak for most of my party, and that is that a woman’s right to make her own decisions about her body should be between her and her doctor, and that in terms of personal liberty, we definitely have a different opinion, Rand Paul and I do. And there is a Supreme Court decision though that answers those questions for us.

Megyn Kelly: But that Supreme Court decision, Casey, says the state has a say.

Wasserman Schultz: That’s right, and states have done so.

Megyn Kelly: But what it recognized is that it’s not just between a woman and her doctor; that the state has a right to step in on behalf of the fetus and say at some point that fetus does obtain rights. You know, you would admit that you can’t have women aborting third-trimester babies just on a whim, right?

Wasserman Shultz: Certainly not on a whim.

Not on a whim. Okay, stop. Okay, so she’s fine with killing a seven-pound baby if the mom and the doctor say it’s okay. All right, what’s the problem with that? I disagree with it, entirely disagree with it, but what is the problem with that? The problem is that third-trimester abortions is only popular with about 15% of the American people. You’re down to—let’s be really, really overly fair and say cut that number in half, 7% of the American people would be okay with what she just said. That’s why she’s not saying it, but that’s what she means.

She’s totally fine. You want to kill the baby, if the doctor and the mom say I want to kill it instead of giving birth to it, they’ll kill it right before birth. That’s fine. She is all in favor of giving somebody that choice to commit murder. Okay. But that’s not the way the game is played. She can’t be who she really is because she’s playing politics. The inner conversation that she’s having in her head when they ask that question is if I say something wrong, then the pro-choice people will be mad at me. If I say it’s okay, then I’m okay with killing a baby, so I’ll just really say nothing. I’ll let people read between the lines, and then you get those fake answers—oh, it’s choice, choice, choice.

It’s a bunch of phonies. And this isn’t merely a Democratic problem. This is a political problem. This is a problem that we have accepted. This is all Astroturf. And here are the people that really know it and are not going to put up with it anymore—the college age. If Jeb Bush decides to run, trust me, you are going to see a similar reaction to Hillary’s announcement. Nobody is buying into the organic grassroots Jeb Bush campaign. I’m not falling for it. I don’t think anybody else is.

But the media is all about the establishment. Did you see them today running after Hillary? This is the most amazing video. Okay, here they start running because her van just passed. She’s going to the back. She’s going to the back. Oh my gosh, look, there she goes. There she goes. Quick, everybody grab your cameras. We’ve got to get her out of the car. We’ve got to get that shot. It’s crazy. There are no actual literal people there, just reporters falling all over themselves, and they fall over Jeb Bush too.

But they crucify people like Rand Paul or Ted Cruz, even though there is genuine excitement for those guys. Let’s talk about Ted Cruz here for a second. Say what you want, but the guy is not establishment. That much is really clear. They hate his guts. Now, how much of that is resonating with the public? Well, I think pretty well.

I want you to listen to an answer that Ted Cruz gave that I think is the right answer to give. Now, he happened to give this at an agricultural summit in Iowa, and it would have been very easy for him to give another answer, but he didn’t because it’s not what he believed. This is him saying he was against ethanol with a bunch of farmers in Iowa. Watch.

VIDEO

Ted Cruz: Look, I recognize that this is a gathering of a lot of folks who the answer you’d like me to give is, “I’m for the RFS, darn it.” That would be the easy thing to do. But I’ll tell you, people are pretty fed up, I think, with politicians that run around and tell one group one thing, tell another group another thing, and then they go to Washington and they don’t do anything they said they would do. And I think that’s a big part of the reason we have the problems we have in Washington is there have been career politicians in both parties that aren’t listening to the American people and that aren’t doing what they said they would do.

That is exactly the problem, and it’s exactly what we’re tired of. Most politicians would be too afraid to do just that. It was not that hard. Just tell the truth. He was applauded for telling the truth. That is what people are hungry for, starving for, to be truthful. We’ve had our share of career politicians who have come into office saddled with political debts that they have to pay, and I have to ask you a question, how’s that working out for us? Working out well? The president, no matter which side, the president gets in office, and he’s handcuffed. The country ends up paying the ultimate price because the politicians are too afraid of special interest groups—too many conflicting debts that they have to pay.

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.

A nation unravels when its shared culture is the first thing to go

Spencer Platt / Staff | Getty Images

Texas now hosts Quran-first academies, Sharia-compliant housing schemes, and rapidly multiplying mosques — all part of a movement building a self-contained society apart from the country around it.

It is time to talk honestly about what is happening inside America’s rapidly growing Muslim communities. In city after city, large pockets of newcomers are choosing to build insulated enclaves rather than enter the broader American culture.

That trend is accelerating, and the longer we ignore it, the harder it becomes to address.

As Texas goes, so goes America. And as America goes, so goes the free world.

America has always welcomed people of every faith and people from every corner of the world, but the deal has never changed: You come here and you join the American family. You are free to honor your traditions, keep your faith, but you must embrace the Constitution as the supreme law of the land. You melt into the shared culture that allows all of us to live side by side.

Across the country, this bargain is being rejected by Islamist communities that insist on building a parallel society with its own rules, its own boundaries, and its own vision for how life should be lived.

Texas illustrates the trend. The state now has roughly 330 mosques. At least 48 of them were built in just the last 24 months. The Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex alone has around 200 Islamic centers. Houston has another hundred or so. Many of these communities have no interest in blending into American life.

This is not the same as past waves of immigration. Irish, Italian, Korean, Mexican, and every other group arrived with pride in their heritage. Still, they also raised American flags and wanted their children to be part of the country’s future. They became doctors, small-business owners, teachers, and soldiers. They wanted to be Americans.

What we are watching now is not the melting pot. It is isolation by design.

Parallel societies do not end well

More than 300 fundamentalist Islamic schools now operate full-time across the country. Many use Quran-first curricula that require students to spend hours memorizing religious texts before they ever reach math or science. In Dallas, Brighter Horizons Academy enrolls more than 1,700 students and draws federal support while operating on a social model that keeps children culturally isolated.

Then there is the Epic City project in Collin and Hunt counties — 402 acres originally designated only for Muslim buyers, with Sharia-compliant financing and a mega-mosque at the center. After public outcry and state investigations, the developers renamed it “The Meadows,” but a new sign does not erase the original intent. It is not a neighborhood. It is a parallel society.

Americans should not hesitate to say that parallel societies are dangerous. Europe tried this experiment, and the results could not be clearer. In Germany, France, and the United Kingdom, entire neighborhoods now operate under their own cultural rules, some openly hostile to Western norms. When citizens speak up, they are branded bigots for asserting a basic right: the ability to live safely in their own communities.

A crisis of confidence

While this separation widens, another crisis is unfolding at home. A recent Gallup survey shows that about 40% of American women ages 18 to 39 would leave the country permanently if given the chance. Nearly half of a rising generation — daughters, sisters, soon-to-be mothers — no longer believe this nation is worth building a future in.

And who shapes the worldview of young boys? Their mothers. If a mother no longer believes America is home, why would her child grow up ready to defend it?

As Texas goes, so goes America. And as America goes, so goes the free world. If we lose confidence in our own national identity at the same time that we allow separatist enclaves to spread unchecked, the outcome is predictable. Europe is already showing us what comes next: cultural fracture, political radicalization, and the slow death of national unity.

Brandon Bell / Staff | Getty Images

Stand up and tell the truth

America welcomes Muslims. America defends their right to worship freely. A Muslim who loves the Constitution, respects the rule of law, and wants to raise a family in peace is more than welcome in America.

But an Islamist movement that rejects assimilation, builds enclaves governed by its own religious framework, and treats American law as optional is not simply another participant in our melting pot. It is a direct challenge to it. If we refuse to call this problem out out of fear of being called names, we will bear the consequences.

Europe is already feeling those consequences — rising conflict and a political class too paralyzed to admit the obvious. When people feel their culture, safety, and freedoms slipping away, they will follow anyone who promises to defend them. History has shown that over and over again.

Stand up. Speak plainly. Be unafraid. You can practice any faith in this country, but the supremacy of the Constitution and the Judeo-Christian moral framework that shaped it is non-negotiable. It is what guarantees your freedom in the first place.

If you come here and honor that foundation, welcome. If you come here to undermine it, you do not belong here.

Wake up to what is unfolding before the consequences arrive. Because when a nation refuses to say what is true, the truth eventually forces its way in — and by then, it is always too late.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Shocking: AI-written country song tops charts, sparks soul debate

VCG / Contributor | Getty Images

A machine can imitate heartbreak well enough to top the charts, but it cannot carry grief, choose courage, or hear the whisper that calls human beings to something higher.

The No. 1 country song in America right now was not written in Nashville or Texas or even L.A. It came from code. “Walk My Walk,” the AI-generated single by the AI artist Breaking Rust, hit the top spot on Billboard’s Country Digital Song Sales chart, and if you listen to it without knowing that fact, you would swear a real singer lived the pain he is describing.

Except there is no “he.” There is no lived experience. There is no soul behind the voice dominating the country music charts.

If a machine can imitate the soul, then what is the soul?

I will admit it: I enjoy some AI music. Some of it is very good. And that leaves us with a question that is no longer science fiction. If a machine can fake being human this well, what does it mean to be human?

A new world of artificial experience

This is not just about one song. We are walking straight into a technological moment that will reshape everyday life.

Elon Musk said recently that we may not even have phones in five years. Instead, we will carry a small device that listens, anticipates, and creates — a personal AI agent that knows what we want to hear before we ask. It will make the music, the news, the podcasts, the stories. We already live in digital bubbles. Soon, those bubbles might become our own private worlds.

If an algorithm can write a hit country song about hardship and perseverance without a shred of actual experience, then the deeper question becomes unavoidable: If a machine can imitate the soul, then what is the soul?

What machines can never do

A machine can produce, and soon it may produce better than we can. It can calculate faster than any human mind. It can rearrange the notes and words of a thousand human songs into something that sounds real enough to fool millions.

But it cannot care. It cannot love. It cannot choose right and wrong. It cannot forgive because it cannot be hurt. It cannot stand between a child and danger. It cannot walk through sorrow.

A machine can imitate the sound of suffering. It cannot suffer.

The difference is the soul. The divine spark. The thing God breathed into man that no code will ever have. Only humans can take pain and let it grow into compassion. Only humans can take fear and turn it into courage. Only humans can rebuild their lives after losing everything. Only humans hear the whisper inside, the divine voice that says, “Live for something greater.”

We are building artificial minds. We are not building artificial life.

Questions that define us

And as these artificial minds grow sharper, as their tools become more convincing, the right response is not panic. It is to ask the oldest and most important questions.

Who am I? Why am I here? What is the meaning of freedom? What is worth defending? What is worth sacrificing for?

That answer is not found in a lab or a server rack. It is found in that mysterious place inside each of us where reason meets faith, where suffering becomes wisdom, where God reminds us we are more than flesh and more than thought. We are not accidents. We are not circuits. We are not replaceable.

Europa Press News / Contributor | Getty Images

The miracle machines can never copy

Being human is not about what we can produce. Machines will outproduce us. That is not the question. Being human is about what we can choose. We can choose to love even when it costs us something. We can choose to sacrifice when it is not easy. We can choose to tell the truth when the world rewards lies. We can choose to stand when everyone else bows. We can create because something inside us will not rest until we do.

An AI content generator can borrow our melodies, echo our stories, and dress itself up like a human soul, but it cannot carry grief across a lifetime. It cannot forgive an enemy. It cannot experience wonder. It cannot look at a broken world and say, “I am going to build again.”

The age of machines is rising. And if we do not know who we are, we will shrink. But if we use this moment to remember what makes us human, it will help us to become better, because the one thing no algorithm will ever recreate is the miracle that we exist at all — the miracle of the human soul.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Is Socialism seducing a lost generation?

Jeremy Weine / Stringer | Getty Images

A generation that’s lost faith in capitalism is turning to the oldest lie on earth: equality through control.

Something is breaking in America’s young people. You can feel it in every headline, every grocery bill, every young voice quietly asking if the American dream still means anything at all.

For many, the promise of America — work hard, build something that lasts, and give the next generation a better start — feels like it no longer exists. Home ownership and stability have become luxuries for a fortunate few.

Capitalism is not a perfect system. It is flawed because people are flawed, but it remains the only system that rewards creativity and effort rather than punishing them.

In that vacuum of hope, a new promise has begun to rise — one that sounds compassionate, equal, and fair. The promise of socialism.

The appeal of a broken dream

When the American dream becomes a checklist of things few can afford — a home, a car, two children, even a little peace — disappointment quickly turns to resentment. The average first-time homebuyer is now 40 years old. Debt lasts longer than marriages. The cost of living rises faster than opportunity.

For a generation that has never seen the system truly work, capitalism feels like a rigged game built to protect those already at the top.

That is where socialism finds its audience. It presents itself as fairness for the forgotten and justice for the disillusioned. It speaks softly at first, offering equality, compassion, and control disguised as care.

We are seeing that illusion play out now in New York City, where Zohran Mamdani — an open socialist — has won a major political victory. The same ideology that once hid behind euphemisms now campaigns openly throughout America’s once-great cities. And for many who feel left behind, it sounds like salvation.

But what socialism calls fairness is submission dressed as virtue. What it calls order is obedience. Once the system begins to replace personal responsibility with collective dependence, the erosion of liberty is only a matter of time.

The bridge that never ends

Socialism is not a destination; it is a bridge. Karl Marx described it as the necessary transition to communism — the scaffolding that builds the total state. Under socialism, people are taught to obey. Under communism, they forget that any other options exist.

History tells the story clearly. Russia, China, Cambodia, Cuba — each promised equality and delivered misery. One hundred million lives were lost, not because socialism failed, but because it succeeded at what it was designed to do: make the state supreme and the individual expendable.

Today’s advocates insist their version will be different — democratic, modern, and kind. They often cite Sweden as an example, but Sweden’s prosperity was never born of socialism. It grew out of capitalism, self-reliance, and a shared moral culture. Now that system is cracking under the weight of bureaucracy and division.

ANGELA WEISS / Contributor | Getty Images

The real issue is not economic but moral. Socialism begins with a lie about human nature — that people exist for the collective and that the collective knows better than the individual.

This lie is contrary to the truths on which America was founded — that rights come not from government’s authority, but from God’s. Once government replaces that authority, compassion becomes control, and freedom becomes permission.

What young America deserves

Young Americans have many reasons to be frustrated. They were told to study, work hard, and follow the rules — and many did, only to find the goalposts moved again and again. But tearing down the entire house does not make it fairer; it only leaves everyone standing in the rubble.

Capitalism is not a perfect system. It is flawed because people are flawed, but it remains the only system that rewards creativity and effort rather than punishing them. The answer is not revolution but renewal — moral, cultural, and spiritual.

It means restoring honesty to markets, integrity to government, and faith to the heart of our nation. A people who forsake God will always turn to government for salvation, and that road always ends in dependency and decay.

Freedom demands something of us. It requires faith, discipline, and courage. It expects citizens to govern themselves before others govern them. That is the truth this generation deserves to hear again — that liberty is not a gift from the state but a calling from God.

Socialism always begins with promises and ends with permission. It tells you what to drive, what to say, what to believe, all in the name of fairness. But real fairness is not everyone sharing the same chains — it is everyone having the same chance.

The American dream was never about guarantees. It was about the right to try, to fail, and try again. That freedom built the most prosperous nation in history, and it can do so again if we remember that liberty is not a handout but a duty.

Socialism does not offer salvation. It requires subservience.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.