Government, Politics

Same Story, Different Day

I’m pretty sure I write the same thing every four years. What happened last night was not a debate. A debate is someone putting forth their ideas/opinions and allowing others to present counter arguments in a way that allows the audience to judge who has the better argument. Last night was a real housewives screech-fest, where the goal is to be the best at shouting over everyone and having the best cutting one-liner moment.

According to Twitter/X, whoever your candidate is was the winner. Every pundit has declared that candidate X DESTROYED candidate Y. So the end result is that whoever you supported going in… is still who you support today. What a pointless waste of oxygen.

Here are my takeaways from the little bit I watched last night, combined with reading the “news/analysis” this morning:

  • Everyone except Vivek and DeSantis are Bush era neocon clones who will bumble us into WWIII.
  • Vivek is a Trump clone desperately trying to capture the Trump base.
  • DeSantis seemed the most “presidential”, but had a bad moment with the hand raising thing.
  • Christy is an unlikable anti-trump plant who needs to give up and go back to the buffet.
  • Pence loves the baby Jesus. Did I mention that he really really likes Jesus?
  • Haley is Jeb! Bush reincarnated.
  • I think there were two other guys there, who’s names I don’t know.
  • Trump is still the nominee.

It’s a sad state of affairs. We are at the end stage of the republic, given our current trajectory. And what is the focus the GOP thinks we need to hear about? Some viral song, abortion, and loyalty pledges to Trump. It’s not a winning combination.

The republican house will continue writing sternly worded letters. The senate is already a complete uni-party. The GOP will put forth a nominee who has zero chance of winning. President Newsom will transform this country in eight years to something truly unrecognizable.

All empires eventually come to an end. Fingers crossed ours simply slowly fades away rather than a more violent undoing. I still have some travel plans and landscaping to finish.

Daily Life, Health, Motivation

That’s Going To Leave A Mark

I remember the days when you never had to think about doing things. Jumping over fences, climbing trees, picking things up, and running were all activities you took for granted. You just did them. You didn’t worry about stretching beforehand, ensuring you’d eaten enough protein, or if you were using proper form. I think in my head I still feel like that person much of the time. Reality has a way of reminding you those days are gone.

I did what every old man should avoid. I spent a day picking up and moving heavy furniture. I actually felt pretty good doing it. I never felt like I strained terribly hard or had to struggle to lift something. I was tired at the end of the day, but was pleased with myself for the effort I put in. I went to bed satisfied with a good day’s work.

The next morning I did a sit up to get out of bed and a huge alien looking thing popped straight out of my abdomen. I immediately laid back down. Holy shit, what was that? I slowly sat back up and my abdomen had that same big bulge projecting out in an unnatural way. I gingerly pushed and prodded a bit to see if it would go away. I laid back down and closed my eyes for a few minutes. I had a pretty good idea of what happened.

I was in such denial that I ignored it for most of the morning and went about my business. It was approaching lunch time and I snuck back into the bedroom to lay down and see if it was still there. Crap. I knew I was going to need to see a doctor. I reluctantly called in Mrs Troutdog and showed her. She was understandably alarmed. “Oh my god, what is that?”, she exclaimed. That sealed the deal. Off to the walk-in clinic I went.

Long story short I’ve either torn or separated the linea alba. That’s the connective tissue that holds the abdominal muscles together. Sigh.

I don’t know what it means yet. I have a surgical consult next week to see what, if anything, needs to be done about it. The initial doctor said twisting motions should be fine, but don’t be lifting anything. I’m unclear if I can ride a bike, motorcycle, etc…

My prediction is that the answer will be lose weight, strengthen the transverse abdominals, don’t do crunches, sit ups, or deadlifts, and work with physical therapy for some number of weeks. But who knows? Maybe it will require a surgical repair.

My fear is that my new reality will be a long-term limitation to activities in some fashion regardless of the answer. It also means that getting serious about the weight loss, and proper strength training, are no longer optional. Will I have the discipline to actually follow through with it? It’s ironic – as an RN I lectured countless post operative patients that their quality of life will now be dependent upon how dedicated were towards rehab and PT. I’d give a judgmental look at a patient and just know that they won’t do anything to help themselves, and will show up with the same problem a few years down the road.

Looks like I’m finally going to have to eat my own words.

As Dirty Harry said in the movie Magnum Force, “A man’s got to know his limitations.” Clearly, I didn’t know mine.

Daily Life, Health

Hiring Movers

We recently had to move a bunch of furniture several hours south. Logistically it was going to be complicated. We were going to have to get it offloaded from a semi-truck to one location, and then figure out how to get it all to a different location. Some of this stuff was really heavy and plenty of stairs would come into play. At this stage in my life, my first reaction was that we needed to hire a moving company.

I always worry about hurting my back when lifting heavy things. I worry about damaging stuff because, well, we’re not professionals. I didn’t want to deal with renting a U-Haul trailer. I hate asking for help just in general… asking friends to help move is the worst. It was one thing when we were twenty and people were happy to come over just for the pizza and beer. At this age I’d feel awful if a friend got hurt as we tried to carry something heavy up a flight of stairs.

In summary, I was grumpy about the whole thing before we even started. When the quote came back for a moving company in the several thousand-dollar range, that guaranteed we’d be doing it ourselves. My outlook was not improved.

Despite my sour mood and general grumpiness, somehow things just seemed to work out. The semi-truck driver was a really nice guy and agreed to come directly to our house to offload. We ended up with free use of a nice 16-foot enclosed trailer. A friend called and offered to help without my having to ask. Everything just lined up perfectly.

All this drove home a couple of life lessons:

  • You’re always better off just diving into a project and getting it done. Things are rarely as hard and unpleasant as you make them out to be in your head.
  • Once I embraced the task and broke a sweat, I actually enjoyed getting stuff moved, unpacking, and cleaning up. It felt good to have worked hard and accomplished something.
  • Parents, find a way to teach your kids how to back up a trailer. It’s something I rarely do. It’s embarrassing as an adult male to struggle with this and have lots of people directing and “helping” you in real-time.
  • Don’t let yourself become so deconditioned that you can’t move furniture around.

And last, but not least… strive to maintain a can-do and get shit done attitude. It’ll make you happier and the people around you happier. I’ve certainly lost that lately. Working on it. Recognizing issues is half the battle, right?

Government, Politics

Shoot At The King

As the old saying goes – if you take a shot at the king, you better not miss. Trump took his shot at the deep state and the DNC and missed badly. He thought his name, self-declared fame, and his money would protect him. He was wrong. Trump is done. This is not some MAGA rally where he can throw out pithy statements to thousands of fawning fans. There is a very real possibility he sees prison time. At the very least he’s tied up in very expensive legal quicksand for the next decade.

For all the Trump fanboys who disagree… where’s the judge who’s going to dismiss the indictments? Where’s the RNC who’s going to go to the mattresses to fight this? Trump has burned every bridge possible. What politician or businessman is going to commit their future to the Trump train at this point?

No, the sad reality is that Trump will spend whatever remains of his campaign time fundraising and then siphoning off most of that to his legal defense (he’s already doing that if you haven’t been paying attention. He has the money to repaint his private jet but not for legal fees apparently). He’s too much of a narcissist to admit he can’t win. He’d rather torpedo the rest of the party and play the martyr when Gov Newsom takes the oath of office.

Normally this would be a who cares moment. A politician overplayed his hand and is regulated to the ash heap of history. Happens all the time. But this feels different. This feels dangerous.

The near unchecked power of the deep state and the DNC is frightening. The RNC continues to demonstrate we have a Defacto uni-party. Oh sure, there’s a few republicans that write sternly worded letters but that’s simply throwing spitballs at the castle walls. Currently the power of the federal government is unchecked and is being wielded to fundamentally alter this country.

When this election is over, there will be millions of very angry voters. A MAGA crowd that will feel disenfranchised and betrayed by their country. And that anger is going to be stoked by quite a few people looking to use that anger to their advantage. Odds are that most of that anger will be shouted into the Twitter (sorry, X) void. But… if the right personality comes along… someone with charisma and persuasion ability… someone who can organize and channel that anger into action – bad things could happen.

And President Newsom has already demonstrated as governor that he does not tolerate dissent. Lockdowns and curbing of rights in the name of safety are a given. And that my friends, is a recipe for a real coup. Not a silly J6 coup, but actual violent attempts to overthrow the government. Who knows what happens at that point?

Maybe I’m wrong. Perhaps the angry right is all bark and no bite. Generally speaking, Americans have been turned into herd animals. All we want to do is chew our cud and watch TV. Odds are that we wake up a decade from now and wonder where our country went.

We’ll have given up our freedom and national identity for the promise of safety from mean words, climate change, and science deniers.

Maybe. Who knows? The future is hard to predict. Besides, there’s that minor little WWIII thing developing that could alter everything. Regardless, the next few years are going to be an interesting soap opera to watch.

Cool, Daily Life, Motivation

I Crashed

I crashed this weekend. I don’t really like the word crash. I prefer “a spontaneous, unplanned, rapid dismount”. More than one of those happened. And I was happy about it. Why? Because it was in training and practice conditions, and I got over the fear of dropping my motorcycle.

I took a three-day adventure motorcycle class this weekend. It’s designed to help develop skills needed to ride these ridiculously large motorcycles in offroad terrain that they probably don’t belong in. I already knew I didn’t know much about proper offroad riding techniques – I just didn’t realize how much I didn’t know. Kind of like the Donald Rumsfeld quote, “there are known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns”. This weekend gave me a peek into the unknown unknowns.

We spent hours working on slow speed turns, balance drills, weight transfer, and traction management. We then took those skills and (attempted) to apply them to varied terrain. Deep sand, obstacles, and steep hill descents were all thrown at us with varying degrees of success.

The class also reminded me of a truism I’m learning every time I take any sort of lesson. What I think I’m doing and what I’m really doing are rarely the same thing. For example, I was convinced I was leaning and rolling the bike underneath me like a boss in corners. Like, Instagram and magazine photo level form. One of the instructors pulled me aside and helpfully pointed out my lean was approximately 5 millimeters and that I was going to have to be just a tad more aggressive if I wanted to see any improvement. Ego crushed.

It was a good weekend of learning new skills and pushing past fear. I walked away with a few bruises and the realization that dropping the bike wasn’t the end of the world. Assuming I continue to practice what I learned, I’ll be a much more confident rider moving forward.

Everyone needs to push their limits every now and then. Fear is healthy. It (usually) keeps us from doing really stupid things. But unchecked fear can limit learning, or even prevent you from experiencing life. So go out there and find a way to push past whatever your fear is. You’ll come out the other side a better person for it.

A spontaneous, unplanned, rapid dismount every now and then is good for the soul.

Daily Life, Health, Motivation

I Don’t Understand How This Happens

Years ago I had a pretty good crash on the mountain bike. A broken rib and big-time shoulder pain. Being a dude, I never really did anything about it. Eventually (like a year+ later) the pain in my shoulder became unbearable. Every night after dinner I’d have to sit with a heating pad on my shoulder to calm the ache down enough to be able to sleep. Finally, I went in to have it looked at. An MRI confirmed what the doc suspected with his physical examination – a torn supraspinatus (part of the rotator cuff) and subsequent arthritis since I never did anything about the injury when it happened. Side note – the big-ass needle used to inject contrast dye deep into the shoulder hurt way more than the injury itself.

The doc said that the tear wasn’t large enough justify surgery and prescribed PT. I went for a while. I’ve mentioned before that the gym isn’t my thing so eventually, I abandoned any sort of structured rehab. Fast forward and the end result has been that my shoulder always hurts. Any sort of overhead pulling or pushing motion is a no-go, which has always been my excuse for not doing pullups.

Anyway, over the winter I started using a strength conditioning coach and we worked pretty hard on my shoulder. For the first time I started seeing progress. The pain was going away. My range of motion improved enough that I was able to slowly start working on the pullup motion. Hey, maybe this really was fixable! A pain free shoulder would be amazing.

Well, me being me… I’ve fallen off the workout wagon the last two months. Life, ugly weather, and the previously mentioned hatred of the gym makes it super hard to stay motivated. Yeah, a pitiful excuse I know. It is what it is.

So, three days ago I woke up, rolled over and tried to get out of bed. Intense shooting pain in that shoulder. Unable to even lift my arm type of pain. It’s the exact same spot and exact same pain I had previously. It’s gotten slightly better, but I still can’t lift my arm over my head without pain. It aches all day long.

I have officially reached the age where I manage to hurt myself sleeping. I don’t even understand how this is possible? How in the world do I sleep in a funny position for long enough that it torques my shoulder sufficient enough to re-aggravate an old injury? I mean, seriously? Who hurts themselves sleeping?

To make matters worse, I leave in a week for a three-day offroad motorcycle class. It’s guaranteed there will be multiple crashes and frequent picking up of a 500+ pound motorcycle. I don’t know how this is going to work if my shoulder continues to feel like it does right now.

Currently I’m vacillating between giving in to old age or resolving to spend two hours in the gym every day. Sigh… I’m not going to give in, but man it sure is hard sometimes to remain motivated.

Now I’m afraid to go to sleep for fear of what new injury I’ll wake up to.

Cool

Let’s Make A List

A couple days ago I posted that I was contemplating allowing myself to get sucked into the Apple ecosystem. I still find it ironic that Apple at one time advertised themselves as the anti-establishment brand. Remember the 1984 super bowl ad by Ridley Scott? The PC back then was still associated with IBM and conformity. Now? Apple is the very picture of conformity. All the cool kids want to be in the massive Apple ecosystem. The edgy, rebellious, hackers are all using PC’s, Android devices, and gasp, Linux based machines. Kids of today have no idea.

Anyway, the rest of this post probably won’t be of interest to most folks, other than a few tech-curious people. I’m going to walk through my thought process on maybe, maybe not switching ecosystems.

First up, my current setup. I “work” in two locations, often for weeks at a time. My main location has my desktop PC. It’s about three years old, reasonably beefy (for its time) and capable of decent video and photo editing. My second location has a very old tablet PC (the very first gen Microsoft Surface. 2 cores and a massive 4 GB of RAM) that has never been capable of anything and finally bit the dust.

Option one, in a perfect world, I’d have a powerful video editing machine at each location so that I’m only carrying an external drive back and forth. That option is too expensive.

Option two is to have a powerful machine with a form factor that I can easily transport back and forth.

Option three is just replace the tablet with something inexpensive and continue to do my video/photo editing in just one location.

Here’s what Apples options look like:

  1. The new Macbook Air 15″. 8 core CPU, 10 core GPU, 16GB memory, 512 GB storage, 2 ports. Would not need to buy a monitor. $1,700
  2. Mac Mini. 8 core CPU, 10 core GPU, 16 GB memory, 256 GB storage, 4 ports + HDMI. Will need to purchase at least one monitor. $800
  3. Mac Studio. 12 core CPU, 30 core GPU, 32 GB memory, 512 GB storage, 8 ports + HDMI and SDXC. No monitor needed. $2,000

So my thought process goes like this… Option 1 is clearly the most portable, but I’ve always worked at a “desk” environment. It gives the option to work at a coffee shop, in the backyard, on the couch, etc… but it’s unclear if I’d ever take advantage of that. It’s just not something I’ve ever done.

Option 2 is reasonably portable. Adding a second monitor and keyboard puts the price pretty close to option 1.

Option 3 is clearly the best choice for video editing. But it’s not really portable so I’d have to also buy an inexpensive iPad for location 2 and continue to just edit in one location.

All three options will require buying external drive(s). Apples SSD storage is ridiculously expensive and slow. Additionally, moving to the Apple ecosystem will require buying an iPhone eventually.

So what to do? I think option 3 is out. The Mac Studio is an amazing machine for the money. Maybe someday if I develop a YouTube empire, but probably not realistic for now.

Option 1 feels like it gives the most flexibility. But if I ever decide I want a regular monitor/keyboard experience in both locations, option 2 becomes the most cost-effective choice.

Or maybe… I just get an inexpensive iPad to see if I even like the Apple interface and readdress all this in 2-3 years when my desktop PC is too outdated and/or my existing phone dies?

Analysis paralysis is real my friends. And don’t even get me started on looking for a new office chair…

Cool, Daily Life

It’s All About The Ecosystem

I live in a bifurcated tech family. I worked for Microsoft for much of my career. Mrs Troutdog works for Apple. Somehow, we’ve survived this great tech divide all these years. I will admit that early on I was a bit of a PC snob. As a software engineer, I scoffed at the closed environment of Apple. I laughed at their early attempts to hide bugs and security risks from the users so as not to damage their image. I’d smugly think to myself, any real tech person would want to have access to the inner workings of the machine. And iPads? Please, those were for children and grandmas who only surf the internet looking for recipes.

Time went on and I eventually left the (once) evil empire. My opinion on all things tech have significantly mellowed over time. And Apple, to their credit, have been putting out some serious hardware. A number of my former MS colleagues have gone over to the Apple side of the world.

I don’t have much criticism of Apple these days. Their price points are ridiculously high. They often seem to design products with the sole purpose of making whatever you currently have, instantly obsolete and non-upgradeable. But then again, the diehard Apple fans will happily re-mortgage the house to get the latest and greatest version, so it’s obviously working for them.

At this point in my life, I can honestly say I hold no allegiance to any particular tech platform. I happen to be PC and android based but would happily switch if it made sense. And there’s the problem. Apple has focused on creating a walled garden. An ecosystem that sucks you in and is hard to get in or out of. They don’t play nicely with non-Apple technology. Yes, I can keep my Android phone but I miss out on iCloud syncing, Facetime, etc… For example Mrs Troutdog and I try to share personal calendars, but events coming across from Android to the Apple calendar give her constant errors.

So for me to switch ecosystems, I’d need to change my music service, download new versions of all my software, and switch phones. I have data stored on USB thumb drives that would still require a PC to read. I don’t know if all my little peripherals (keyboards, speakers, monitor, mice, etc…) would be compatible or have to be replaced. None of that would be the end of the world. Just inconvenient and potentially a little costly.

And yet even with all that to consider – drumroll please – I’m seriously considering it.

I have a very old PC tablet that finally went belly-up, so I have to replace it with something. Do I just go get a relatively inexpensive PC based tablet or laptop and call it good? Or do I go all-in and completely switch ecosystems? The problem is that my main machine is a relatively (as of three years ago) beefy PC for video editing. Switching teams would instantly make it a brick.

I spent the morning looking at all the various options Apple has. Wow, there are so many ways to go. Mac Studio and Mac mini. The new MacBook Air 15″ is an amazing machine for its price. The analysis can be paralyzing.

Big bucks to switch everything over now, or spend significantly less money and stay in the PC ecosystem? It’s actually a really hard decision to make. (oh, the first world problems we’re fortunate to have)

Sigh… why doesn’t the tech world play nice together? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could mix and match the best of both worlds? What to do, what to do? Stay tuned.

Government, Politics

Fair And Balanced

If you’re new here, let me add some context to how I think. If you didn’t read the sidebar, I am a Contrarian. So much so, I offer an on-line course teaching Contrarian skills. $29.99 a month will earn you a certificate as a registered Contrarian (I jest… or am I?) As a Contrarian, my view of 99.9% of politicians starts with the word tar and ends with feather. I have no allegiance to any political party. I look at all of them with equal scorn. Why am I telling you this? Well… I was going to stay away from politics for a while, but I couldn’t resist this latest example of bias. I promise we’ll get back to some exciting weight loss news shortly.

We’re going to start by going waaay back to 2016. Don Trump Jr had a meeting with a Russian attorney in his office at Trump Tower, along with other Trump campaign folks. The premise was that the attorney was offering damaging info on Hillary Clinton. The event itself isn’t important, other than the media coverage it spawned. Weeks/months of wall-to-wall, 24×7 analysis by the talking heads on cable “news” and approximately 5 billion words written by print journalists (those are the serious journalists, if you didn’t know). The event even has its own Wikipedia page.

Fast forward to present day. The FBI has produced a document in which a whistleblower alleges the President of the United States, and his son Hunter Biden, were paid five million dollars apiece by a Ukrainian energy company. The FBI was forced to release the document following a game of political chicken and threats of contempt of congress. The document itself is unclassified. Even so, what the FBI produced was heavily redacted.

Yesterday, a US senator went to the floor of the senate and stated that the whistleblower in the FBI document also has audio recordings. 15 of Hunter and 2 of the President, supposedly discussing something about the alleged bribes. I mean, come on, audio recordings are the holy grail of bringing down cover-ups and corruption. For juicy stories, it doesn’t get much better.

Here’s my point – in a normal world, that would be news. Even if it eventually turns out to be nothing more than some sort of Sydney Powell, release the Kraken nonsense, it is news.

In a fair and balanced world, a world of unbiased journalists, this would have wall-to-wall coverage similar to the Don Jr story. Journalists would be racing to be the first to scoop some sort of corruption involving the resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. and his family. Instead… crickets.

All the major news website coverage is Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, DeSantis, Trump, Trump, Ukraine counteroffensive is winning. Virtually zero about this story. Memory holed faster than the Hunter Biden laptop story.

I don’t care what side of the political spectrum you’re on – this should bother you. I get that you want your team to win. But a media that so blatantly suppresses news for one side is scary. The entire point of journalism is to hold the monsters in power at least semi-accountable. When one side can operate consequence-free, bad things happen.

I urge you to check your political affiliation at the door. Become a Contrarian. Be suspicious of EVERYTHING. Be extra wary when there’s a concerted effort to not report something.

Given everything going on in the news, I’m going to double down on my earlier predictions, with one change:

  • Trump will continue running until the bitter end, even if it’s from a jail cell.
  • Trump’s continued campaign will effectively create an RNC split ticket. The MAGA folks will go down with the ship, especially with the latest indictment. They won’t vote for DeSantis. The Never Trumpers are, well, never Trump. Game, set, match. DNC win.
  • The change – Biden is officially out. He’ll either have an unspecified “health issue” or the DNC will hang him out to dry with the alleged bribery allegations. He’ll drop out of the race.

Welcome President Newsom.

Daily Life, Government, Politics

It’s All About Equilibrium

equilibrium noun a state of rest or balance due to the equal action of opposing forces.

Our world will do everything in its power to achieve equilibrium. Fluids, gases, nature, economics, politics, relationships – everything needs balance. Fluids move in and out of cells due to unequal pressures. Remove all the predators from a habitat and the deer population will explode. Our financial markets can’t survive extreme highs or lows indefinitely. Humans don’t thrive without a healthy work/life balance. The world constantly strives to be at a steady state. It’s one of the immutable laws of nature.

The 1950’s ushered in an unbelievable level of prosperity in the United States. That prosperity trickled out to the rest of the world and raised the economic prospects of most nations. The political world, broadly speaking, does everything possible to maintain that prosperity and balance. How it does that is the subject of untold numbers of history books. The Deep State, The Enterprise, The Cabal – whether you think there’s a coordinated group that controls the levers of power or just simply individuals hungry for power and money, the end result is the same. The desire to enforce US hegemony has resulted in a hundred years of the United States pulling the strings and levers of the world.

We’ve initiated coups, fostered wars, manipulated the media, tweaked monetary policy, and controlled industry. All of that is neither good nor bad. It is what it is. It’s a system trying to maintain what it considers as equilibrium. It’s the nature of the world – if we weren’t in control, someone else would be. You and I have been massive beneficiaries of that system. You may not like how the sausage is made, but most people don’t complain about how good it tastes (sorry vegans). There’s a reason a million people a year are streaming illegally across our borders.

So, here’s what’s interesting. Despite the States never ending efforts to prevent you from seeing the sausage making process and maintain what it considers the status quo… we have just enough freedom to question things without fear of the Stasi showing up in the middle of the night and disappearing you (mostly). Recently, the fourth generation of the internet, coupled with Moores law, has enabled the population to share pesky, unpopular, information outside of the mainstream press at a level and speed never before imagined.

We’ve seen it in fits and starts. Alternative, fringe, conspiracy blogs. The Drudge Report (early days). Alex Jones. But now… now we’re seeing non-traditional views carve out a sizable chunk of the mainstream information landscape. I’d argue Joe Rogan was the pioneer. A source of information and views from every side of the spectrum. Uncensored and fed to a massive audience. It’s fair to say he spawned the podcast revolution. More recently, Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter further changed the information landscape. A sudden, shocking dismantling of what was a government influenced censorship tool, to something that has quickly evolved into what looks like a true public square of discourse.

You may not like the discourse – but it’s hard to argue against it being much closer to multiple sides freely shouting whatever they think is the truth (or whatever version of the truth they want to push). I want you to be able to scream whatever cockamamie theory you have at the top of your lungs. What I don’t want is a Ministry of Truth deciding what truth I get to hear.

And now we have the climactic moment of this film. A recent grand trifecta of events. First up is Tucker Carlson. Fox fires him. He quickly starts a new “show” on Twitter. Now you may not like him or anything he says. But his first episode has 110 million views. His just released second episode is at 30+ million views in the first nine hours. Fox News, the highest rated cable show for years, rarely hit more than 2.8 million views for any show. That’s a staggering difference in reach.

Next the FBI just released, under threat of a congressional contempt order, info about allegations that indicate President Biden took a 5-million-dollar bribe from Ukraine. Prior to the new Twitter, that would have been memory holed out of existence instantly (see Hunter Biden laptop). And finally, cough, cough, coincidentally on the same day as that FBI release, former president Trump and the current leading presidential candidate, was indicted for the same thing Hillary and Biden did (possessing classified documents). Hmmm nobody’s above the law, right? The avalanche of online outrage right now is at a level I haven’t seen before.

So what’s my point? I don’t care if you do or don’t agree with Tucker, Trump, DNC, RNC, Elon Musk, the FBI, or the DOJ. Up until this point the State has been able to exert enormous pressure to control the narrative. That dam has been breached. Tucker’s new platform signals the official end of the mainstream media as the primary information source for millions upon millions of people. Tucker and/or his new platform may or may not survive, but it’s a clear sign we no longer have to rely exclusively upon the various news talking heads to feed us the official party line.

The State, and the mainstream media, have pushed the scale of information control so far out of whack, something is going to happen. A very large portion of the population are angry. They’re tired of a narrative being forced upon them. They’re tired of being lied to. I think we’re about to see an absolute flood of information reach the population that is different than what they’ve been told. An angry populace is craving to hear something closer to the truth. You are about to see the field of “non-traditional” journalists explode. Thousands of people jockeying to leak the latest bit of government overreach and corporate manipulation without fear of censorship.

Truth, rumor, scandal, targeted misinformation – all of it is going to be sucked up by millions of people craving something closer to the truth like a dry sponge in a glass of water.

An angry, unsettled population is a dangerous population. The more details about how the sausage is made are made public, the more there will be shouting for accountability and lashing out in frustration. And the more unsettled the population becomes, the more likely it is for the State to crack down. The State will not give up its power and control without a fight. And that my friends, is a recipe for scary times. There might be one or two historical precedents for such scenarios if you wanted to look.

Part of me craves the idyllic 80’s and 90’s of my youth. Oh, the same crap went on behind the scenes… we were just mostly oblivious to it. If Ted Koppel or Dan Rather didn’t say it, it didn’t happen. But now – as the famous saying goes, do you want the blue pill and wake up happy in your bed, or do you want the red pill and see how deep the rabbit hole goes?

Nature craves equilibrium. People are slowly waking up to how unfairly the game is rigged. A whole lot of folks are about to take the red pill for the first time. For good or bad, the scale will eventually find a way to swing the other way.

Let’s just hope we don’t overcorrect.