According to defense attorney Kevin Reddington, Clancy acted as a result of postpartum mental health struggles. Whether or not this claim holds, it does not excuse shifting focus away from the three children murdered in cold blood. Every perpetrator of atrocity may have some history of trauma, abuse, or mental illness, but that history does not entitle a dangerous individual to leniency or public sympathy that overrides the need to protect society.

Perpetrators are being portrayed as the actual victims

There has long been a fringe element that roots for or shows sympathy toward criminals despite their obvious crimes, as seen historically with serial killer Ted Bundy for example. Recent events, however, reveal a broader and growing trend of elevating the criminal while displaying indifference—or sometimes even contempt—toward the victim. In cases such as those of Luigi Mangione and Karmelo Anthony, the perpetrator is frequently framed as oppressed and therefore justified in acting out. This reflects a Marxist framework in which crime, including murder, is attributed primarily to capitalist oppression of the individual. Under this view, the criminal can be cast as rightful or even heroic, performing a revolutionary act against an oppressive society. Such ideology is inherently hostile to the concept of personal responsibility, and instead, it elevates victimhood and oppression as statuses to be celebrated. This worldview proves seductive to some because it requires very little effort to maintain. One simply blames external forces for personal misery rather than confronting individual agency and accountability.

This narrative has become increasingly embedded in Western society, including aspects of its justice systems and policing. A stark illustration is the UK case of Henry Nowak. Officers responding to the scene prioritized handcuffing Nowak—the stabbing victim—based on likely false allegations of racist remarks by the Sikh perpetrator who was carrying a sword, rather than immediately addressing the violent attack. Nowak ultimately bled to death. In Oklahoma, Ghanaian immigrant Jeff Kufi Asare, with roughly two dozen arrests since 2022, was arrested three times in about two weeks for alleged sexual assaults on multiple women in Oklahoma City. Left-leaning District Judge Cindy Truong had previously released him (and, in 2024, had released repeat offender Andre Hunter after his third arrest for illegal possession of a firearm, despite his admission of guilt; Hunter later kidnapped and raped a Lyft driver). The examples of such leniency in recent years are numerous. Who could forget the case of Iryna Zarutska, the Ukrainian refugee stabbed to death on a Charlotte subway train in an unprovoked attack by yet another repeat offender.

These patterns reveal a dangerous inversion of priorities. When public attention fixate on the perpetrator’s purported oppression or mental state while minimizing the irreversible harm inflicted on victims the social contract frays. A healthy society does not deny that mental illness, trauma, or social conditions can play roles in human behavior, but it does insist, however, that accountability remains essential, and that dangerous individuals must be restrained to protect the innocent.

The cultural shift at the moment seems to be pointing toward a greater solicitude for those who commit violence than for those who suffer it. Any hope of restoring balance requires rejecting Marxist ideology that dissolve personal responsibility into narratives of systemic oppression. Only then can Western societies reclaim a moral order that values the lives of the murdered over the narratives of their killers.

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It seems clear that Arday’s tragic death could have been avoided if not for Cambridge University faculty and their obsession with DEI initiatives. Jason Arday might have become an actor or designer, or worked in any industry where his inherent talents could have been fulfilled. Instead, the woke-minded establishment chose to exploit Arday’s penchant for grandiosity and made him their pet project. Hailed as the youngest Black professor ever at Cambridge, the faculty found it important to push Arday into a position for which he was completely unqualified. This obsession with race is completely unnecessary because, as it turns out, people who are naturally talented in academia and interested in achieving a professorate would likely gain that status regardless of their ethnicity. Statistics from the US, for instance, show how the number of people with Black or Hispanic backgrounds earning degrees in higher education has risen exponentially since the 1980s.

Unfortunately, prominent voices in the British establishment and on the far left have instead turned their focus on blaming those who rightfully pointed out the problem of Jason Arday’s plagiarism as being responsible for his death. London Mayor Sadiq Khan described Arday as a victim of “an unacceptable public hounding and campaign of abuse” and “a pernicious public shaming”. These grotesque responses highlight how detached the woke left has become from the concept of responsibility, and it seems they may use this tragedy as an excuse to crack down on any further investigations into DEI hires in the future. Their claim that Jason Arday was investigated only because he was Black does not hold up to scrutiny. Academic plagiarism and related fraud are as old as time and have been investigated for many years in the UK and the western world in general, with multiple academics found guilty of research fraud or data fabrication regardless of their racial background.

The problem with many fraud-related incidents these days apparently seems to be the people pointing them out. Following the Arday incident, the Metropolitan Police decided to launch a four-month investigation into Times Higher Education journalist Jack Grove after he emailed Professor Jason Arday a series of legitimate questions about his academic record. This reflects a growing trend of authoritarianism across the UK where recently wildlife presenter Anneka Svenska was told to take a “thinking skills course” or face arrest after two police officers turned up at her door, after she posted a video online criticizing the way MBR Acres testing site disposed of their dead animals.

What’s happening in the UK is not unique with regards to crackdowns on investigative journalism in the West, as we are seeing in the Stop Nick Shirley Act proposed by the state of California. Nick Shirley has famously exposed billion-dollar tax frauds in immigrant communities in the past year.

As much of governance in western society is increasingly starting to resemble the tactics of the Chinese Communist Party, one could question if Jason Arday becomes the last sacrifice the woke establishment makes on the altar of diversity. Because if nothing changes in the near future, it may become impossible to hold anyone in power accountable at all.

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Journalist Janet Murray has investigated a new report from SEEN Publishing identifying more than 60 children’s books promoting ideas such as being “born in the wrong body”, “women with beards”, and “non-binary guinea pigs”. These books are being promoted primarily through the No Outsiders programme, founded by Andrew Moffat, who is handing out LGBTQ+ materials specifically aimed at young children. Between 2020 and 2023, the organization No Outsiders reached almost 30,000 children and trained more than 9,000 teachers across hundreds of schools in the UK. The parents Murray spoke to questioned why their primary-aged children need lessons about gender identities or the idea of being “born in the wrong body”. These are conversations they feel should be led by parents, and not by schools.

Indoctrination starts early

The targeting of young minds is key to woke educators. Just like in cults, they try to brainwash them with gender theory curriculum from the very beginning where their developing minds are highly plastic and more dependent on authority figures. Teachers then position children as agents of change who return home to “correct” their parents, which is an echo of tactics used during Maoist indoctrination campaigns in China. This strategy seems to be having some success, and many woke teachers are openly bragging about how many they have brainwashed. Stacy Robustelli, Director of Education for HiTops, an LGBTQ+ nonprofit focused on bringing queer theory and gender ideology into schools, says that the most critical time to get in the classroom is grades 5-8, to “catch kids when they’re starting puberty”. She goes on to say that the most rewarding experience for her was after going into an elementary school one time where 5 of the students went to the principal’s office and “came out.”

In addition to the gender curriculum indoctrination, woke teachers are starting to use specific words aimed at trying to separate kids from their parents. A concept like “adultism”, for instance, is in some teacher training courses being used to paint parents and adults as tyrants for setting boundaries for children. It is a concept derived from neo-Marxist theory which suggests that societal norms favoring adults over children constitute systemic oppression, similar to that of “racism” or “sexism.” Many of these terms in the form of “isms” have risen in prominence through academia and activism, aimed at creating divisions in a society in order to break it down and rebuild it through Marxist ideology. Many Marxist/communist scholars knew from early on that it would be difficult to break down much of Western society through a swift revolution, and so instead they focused on breaking down the robust pillars of western civilization bit by bit, such as the family unit, by the so-called “slow march through the institutions”.

There’s now even a book available on Amazon called “Communism For Kids” where the author, Esmond Cooper, claims that “kids will gain appreciation for how Karl Marx’s ideas have made the world a better place”. If there is an award for most ignorant statement made in history, we may have found our candidate.

Another relatively new concept in this regard is that of “chosen family”. Oregon high school counselor Madi Bourdon wrote a kid’s book about “chosen family” which tells kids they can cut off their parents and find a new family if their parents aren’t accepting of their gender identity.

Public education is terrible

With regards to the neo-Marxist woke indoctrination of our children, the future of Western society may look bleak. The UK is now considering passing a bill that could criminalize parents’ well-intentioned and often difficult conversations with their gender-confused children. Parents could even face up to five years behind bars for discouraging their children from embarking on irreversible, life-changing medical pathways.

One way of halting this troubling trajectory is for more people to see state-run education for what it is. In the words of H.L. Mencken, the aim of public education is “to breed and train a standardized citizenry, and to put down dissent and originality”.

One thing is certain; the future of a free and informed public lies not in the hands of government-sponsored institutions, whether these are woke or not.

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Canada’s slide on the quality of life index—from an impressive 5th place in 2013 to 27th place in 2026—reflects a rapid decline more than tempting to link to the country’s liberal woke-leaning government that took power in 2015. Parallel drops have been reported in other indices, like the World Happiness Report, where Canada fell from the top 5 to 18th. Yet these statistics reflect only the tip of the iceberg of Canada’s multiple problems.

At the core of these issues seems to be a reluctance among the country’s predominantly progressive elite to even recognize Canada as a sovereign and coherent country. Other than the growing support for separatist movements in provinces like Alberta and Quebec, Canada also seems to be dismantling itself from within.

Read on as we dive into how progressive virtue signaling has spiraled into a full-blown constitutional crisis over land ownership, the deepening and dangerous ties to the Chinese Communist Party, an economy in shambles fueled by unsustainable immigration policies, and the government’s increasingly authoritarian crackdowns on free speech and dissent…

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“I ran for office several times. Didn’t win, but I did run. And then I’m a songwriter, and then I suppose my transparency. I wouldn’t lie to the people... And I suppose the biggest thing is like I’m just an angry citizen right now, and if I get elected, I’d be an angry senator. And I think that would be their worst nightmare.”

Beyond the questionable qualifications, Webb’s open confession of anger is particularly alarming given the documented increase in spree killings among transgender males in recent years. Equally concerning is Webb’s biological reality as a male who claims to “have a monthly period through his rectum” – a statement that raises serious questions about both his gender dysphoria and his potential physical health issues – as well as his questionable claim that he “wouldn’t lie to the people”.

Mental illness is emerging as its own political identity

While Webb may not win the Senate race, dismissing this as an isolated incident would be dangerously naive. According to 2023 statistics from the National Institute of Mental Health, there is a direct correlation between left-leaning political views and mental illness. A staggering 48% of very liberal (woke) voters now identify as suffering from a mental illness, with another 40% of general left-leaning liberals reporting similar conditions. These rates are more than double those of any other political group, and mental health observers fear these numbers are only increasing. This is especially alarming as individuals with potential mental instability could be positioned to run key administrative functions in our society.

Professor Lauren Van De Hey of Utah State University has confirmed this trajectory in a study published in Political Behavior. Her research found that mental illness is emerging as its own political identity, most heavily aligned with woke leftist ideology. This identity clusters particularly among younger, far-left Americans, with roughly half of study participants who identified as having a mental illness stating that this identity was “very important” or “somewhat important” to them personally. Rather than something to be overcome, mental illness appears to have become almost celebratory among certain political circles.

Politics could become more dangerous than ever before

As Van De Hey correctly notes, these findings have far-reaching consequences for mental health advocacy and the role mental health identity will play in politics, especially as Gen Z matures as a cohort. The implications are deeply concerning. As an increasing number of people with severe mental health issues seek to decide what to do with our lives and money—both as voters and officials—the current political system could become more dangerous than ever before.

One might reflect on past political leaders and their questionable decisions, but what happens when cohorts of individuals with distorted reality perceptions gain political power? What becomes of a society when those making laws about healthcare and biology cannot even distinguish basic biological realities? These questions lead inevitably to consideration of alternatives to our current system—perhaps now is the time to advocate for very limited government, relying instead on voluntary arrangements that don’t place life-and-death decisions in the hands of those unfit or unchosen for the purpose.

The situation demands serious consideration of how we can protect society from the potential consequences of having very mentally unstable individuals in positions of power. Without addressing this growing concern, we risk normalizing the presence of severely compromised individuals in our political institutions, with potentially disastrous results for everyone.

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What psychological and environmental factors make certain people particularly susceptible to “wokeness” later in life?

Elements such as early childhood experiences, smartphone overuse, and pervasive environmental toxins appear to play significant roles. These influences contribute to cohorts of fragile, anxious, and authoritarian-leaning individuals, with traits that align with many manifestations of contemporary woke orthodoxy.

This article does not examine underlying mental illnesses such as sociopathy, narcissism, borderline personality disorder, etc. Instead, it focuses exclusively on research related to environmental factors and upbringing. While there are likely additional causes beyond those discussed here, the factors examined should represent the majority of the available research on the issue.

Early upbringing and smartphones

One major contributor is the modern reliance on daycare during critical early development periods. According to psychotherapist Erica Komisar, many children today develop emotional fragility because they lack sufficient presence and care from their primary attachment figure—ideally the mother—in the first three years of life. Babies are born neurologically fragile, not resilient, as some people think. Without consistent emotional and physical security from this attachment figure, they fail to internalize a deep sense of safety. This elevates stress hormones, disrupting normal brain development and pushing it toward a pathologically adaptive and compromised state. The prevailing cultural narrative usually portrays daycare as beneficial or at least harmless, yet evidence suggests it can potentially cause real harm. A child’s brain from ages zero to three is extraordinarily plastic and vulnerable. Early disruption leaves individuals more susceptible to adversity and stress throughout life. This cultivated fragility—a heightened sensitivity to perceived threats and emotional insecurity—is a common trait among those drawn to woke ideologies, which often frame the world as a constant arena of oppression, victimhood, and existential danger.

The issue of fatherlessness also needs to be addressed. Evidence consistently shows that boys raised without a father in the home face substantially higher risks of criminal behavior and/or violence later in life. For girls, growing up without a stable, present father—or with a dysfunctional one—often creates lasting difficulties in understanding healthy masculine behavior and forming realistic expectations of men. This confusion can foster deep mistrust or idealization/distortion of the opposite sex, making some young women more susceptible to adopting radical gender ideologies that are detached from biological reality. Father absence thus can disrupt healthy development and relationship formation for both sexes, feeding into broader identity-based confusion prevalent in woke circles.

Compounding these early vulnerabilities is the pervasive influence of smartphones and social media, particularly during adolescence. Traditional sources of joy—play, sports, in-person social activities—no longer provide the same dopamine-driven stimulation as digital devices. This leads to cravings for escalating levels of artificial input. Social media fosters a toxic comparison culture that chronically activates the amygdala, the brain’s threat-detection center. Adolescents become hypervigilant and prone to feelings of diminishment, anger, anxiety, or even suicidal ideation. In this state of heightened arousal, political opinions or dissenting views are increasingly interpreted as personal or existential threats. This dynamic helps explain the wave of campus speech cancellations and deplatforming seen over the past decade. In many extreme cases, it has correlated with tragic violence, including the 2025 assassination of Charlie Kirk and many mass shootings where perpetrators expressed allegiance to aspects of the trans movement. Overindulgence in these technologies primes young minds for the moral panic and authoritarian intolerance characteristic of woke activism.

Enviromental toxins can lead people to believe they are transgender

Another under-discussed factor involves environmental pollutants and chemical exposures. Substances such as phthalates in plastics, BPA, pesticides like atrazine, herbicides, microplastics, and estrogenic compounds in soy and processed foods are nearly ubiquitous. Microplastics have been detected in human blood, lungs, testicles, and even remote rainfall. These toxins interfere with fetal and childhood development, disrupting hormone balance (especially in men) by often lowering testosterone and elevating estrogenic activity. Research links such exposures to increased rates of “gender trouble”, higher transgender identification, reduced social drive, shifts in aggression patterns, and social withdrawal. While these chemicals of course do not solely explain a phenomenon like transgenderism, they likely contribute by altering biological baselines in ways that amplify vulnerability to certain identity-focused narratives. The symptoms—dysphoria, withdrawal, and heightened emotional reactivity—mirror traits frequently observed in segments of the woke population.

Some final thoughts

Not every child raised in progressive environments becomes a woke extremist. Those who avoid this path often benefit from relatively stable upbringings which can lead to openness to alternative viewpoints later in life. In contrast, highly morally dogmatic progressive households can instill a chronic fear of offending others. This creates a psychological straitjacket where individuals may not fully internalize woke beliefs but become susceptible to them out of social conformity pressure and dread of ostracism. Excessive moralization in childhood thus primes acceptance of woke orthodoxy as a survival strategy rather than a reasoned conviction.

Wokeness is not merely the product of ideological exposure in schools or universities. It can emerge from a confluence of psychological and enviromental factors, which are too often overlooked when addressing the issue. These factors generate anxiety-prone, fragile individuals more inclined toward black-and-white moral frameworks and authoritarian enforcement of social norms. Addressing these root causes instead of only focusing on removing marxism from academia could help foster more resilient generations less susceptible to ideological capture.

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Recent statistics highlight Europe’s tragic vulnerability to heat. Every year, the continent allows tens of thousands of its citizens—predominantly the elderly—to die from heat-related causes due to an ideological rejection of widespread air conditioning. In a year like the 2022 heatwave, adopting U.S.-level AC penetration could have prevented approximately 26,000 deaths, with major gains possible in Italy, Spain, Germany, and France, where indoor deaths predominate. Despite experiencing fewer extreme heat days owing to its latitude, Europe records the highest per-capita heat mortality among rich regions. In contrast, heat deaths in the United States and Japan have declined sharply over decades in tandem with high air conditioning adoption. At the same time, climate policies driving high energy prices—through renewables intermittency, fossil fuel restrictions, and net-zero mandates—exacerbate deaths from cold. Reports also link fuel poverty to cold homes, with thousands of excess winter deaths in the UK annually. One analysis by the End Fuel Poverty Coalition attributed around 4,950 deaths in a recent winter to these conditions, while Europe saw an estimated 68,000 excess deaths across the 2022-23 winter period. Cold-related deaths vastly outnumber heat-related ones globally, yet policies that raise energy costs reverse decades of progress in heating access.

Authoritarian policies have taken over

The situation grows more authoritarian. In the UK, even as temperatures reached up to 40°C in late June 2026, planning officials under Net Zero directives ordered residents to remove air conditioning units from their homes over carbon dioxide concerns. Critics rightly accuse the government of dragging Britain into a self-imposed dark age, denying citizens modern conveniences taken for granted elsewhere. This zealotry is not limited to Britain. In France, following a recent heatwave that caused multiple deaths, Deputy Mayor of Paris Audrey Pulvar oddly shifted blame to the United States for its “significant responsibility” for global warming. Such deflection ignores how French and European policy choices—prioritizing ideology over resilient infrastructure—left populations vulnerable. Deaths that could have been avoided through practical measures were instead sacrificed at the altar of climate symbolism.

Prominent analyst Bjorn Lomborg has documented how policies emphasizing rapid decarbonization at the expense of affordable energy and sensible adaptation increase overall mortality. By making heating and cooling more expensive, these approaches undermine public health gains. In extreme scenarios, abruptly ending fossil fuel use could trigger billions of deaths by disrupting energy supplies essential for food production, heating, shelter, and basic industry.

Net Zero is a disaster

The selective use of weather events further exposes the narrative’s inconsistencies. Climate policy advocates insist that “weather is not climate” when sudden cold snaps challenge the warming story, dismissing skeptics who sometimes joke about it. Yet the same voices immediately attribute any heatwave to “dangerous climate change” and demand sweeping restrictions on fossil fuels. This convenient flip—”weather isn’t climate, except when it serves the agenda”—illustrates how selective panic is leveraged through media to justify control over energy, travel, and daily life.

Claims that renewables like wind and solar are the cheapest forms of generation are equally dishonest. If true, nations with the highest shares of these sources would enjoy the lowest electricity bills. Instead, they face the highest costs, underscoring the hidden expenses of intermittency and infrastructure.

Whatever the precise trajectory of the climate, realism must prevail. Tampering with reliable energy production is disastrous. Restricting freedoms around air conditioning, aviation, and other modern conveniences in the name of net-zero targets is dystopian and imposes real, immediate human costs.

Whether the climate changes or not, lives today should be protected through adaptation, affordable energy, and technological progress rather than sacrificing them on the altar of unachievable emission targets. The thousands of avoidable deaths already linked to these needless restrictions demand a urgent reassessment before the toll climbs into the millions—or worse.

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Compounding the scandal, officials, police, and social workers often implicitly or explicitly blamed the victims themselves. Girls were dismissed as making “lifestyle choices”, or portrayed as complicit due to their backgrounds. This victim-blaming compounded the trauma and delayed justice for years.

While real, organized violent crime was sidelined, British police redirected resources toward “non-crime hate incidents”. Authorities arrested around 12,000 people annually for online speech—politically incorrect tweets, offensive comments, or other expressions perceived as hurtful. This skewed priority reflects the influence of the woke-leaning ‘College of Policing’ and a broader leftist ideological framework that views society strictly through lenses of race and “oppressor vs. oppressed”. Such a worldview can hinder the prosecution of certain offenders if they are deemed to belong to the “oppressed” groups.

Those who point out the crime are treated as the criminals

This pattern of grotesque leniency toward crime is not unique to the UK; it appears across much of the West, particularly where left-leaning governments and ideologies dominate. A stark example is California’s Proposition 47, which reclassified theft of goods worth $950 or less as a misdemeanor. Shoplifting from open commercial establishments during business hours became a low-priority offense, contributing to documented rises in retail theft, smash-and-grabs, and organized shoplifting rings. As a result businesses suffered heavy losses, and many stores closed or restricted operations. The policy’s roots lie in a woke worldview that casts perpetrators as victims of systemic forces rather than responsible agents.

Tellingly, the outrage from some left-leaning politicians often targets those highlighting the problems rather than the crimes themselves. California’s efforts around the so-called “Stop Nick Shirley Act” (AB 2624) illustrate this. The bill, advanced by Democrats, has been criticized as an attempt to restrict investigative journalism and citizen reporting on fraud—after journalist Nick Shirley exposed massive fraud involving government-funded programs in immigrant communities. Instead of addressing the fraud, the focus shifted toward limiting exposure.

Theft seen as virtuous and necessary

Such dynamics reveal a deeper ideological capture. Crime becomes an inconvenient truth or a “social construct” to be contextualized away. Prominent voices on the left have openly expressed admiration for or indifference to theft. New Yorker contributor Jia Tolentino, who owns a multimillion-dollar Brooklyn brownstone, proudly admitted to shoplifting from supermarkets and stated she would “cheer on anyone stealing priceless art from the Louvre”. Her philosophy hinged on judging theft based on the identity of the victim—typically large corporations. Similarly, well-off communist advocate and influencer Hasan Piker has expressed a similar sympathy for theft.

Communist leaning writer Cassie Pritchard captured another revealing mindset:

“On the left we fundamentally don’t care about crime, it’s morally uninteresting to us—it’s just a thing that happens in the world, like the weather, so we are willing to excuse mentally people for theft, violence, etc.”

“Everyone’s a prisoner of their own cognitive, emotional, neurological limits. And we all have them. No one has unfettered free will.”

This perspective exposes a profound contempt for personal responsibility and human agency. It reframes criminals as passive products of circumstance, shielded by narratives of victimhood, while dismissing the real-world consequences of unpunished crime—especially for the law-abiding poor and working class who suffer most from disorder. Privileged commentators, insulated from street-level realities, romanticize theft as resistance or moral irrelevance. Genuine concerns about justice and societal order are sidelined in favor of woke ideological dogma.

Critics have long accused the political left of softness on crime, sometimes fairly and sometimes not. Today’s pattern, however, has gone way too far. A strange tolerance, selective blindness, or even quiet admiration for certain crimes when they fit a narrative of challenging “the system”. This reflects an outright rejection of accountability.

Societies that admire crime or treat responsibility as a bourgeois illusion invite a complete societal collapse and ultimately fail the very vulnerable populations progressives claim to champion.

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Despite constant claims that socialists are motivated by compassion for the poor, their rhetoric and policy proposals often suggest that their real obsession is not poverty itself, but the existence of wealthy people.

Few examples illustrate this better than Bernie Sanders. For years, Sanders campaigned against millionaires, arguing that they should pay significantly higher taxes. Until he became a millionaire himself. Almost immediately, his focus conveniently shifted from millionaires to billionaires. The irony becomes even richer when one considers how Sanders accumulated his fortune. Some of his wealth came from selling books criticizing capitalism, while benefiting directly from the capitalist system that allowed those books to become bestsellers.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has provided similar examples of the disconnect between socialist rhetoric and reality. AOC once dismissed Musk as “unintelligent.” Whether one likes Musk or not, calling him unintelligent requires a remarkable disregard for reality. Musk has built and led companies that transformed multiple industries, from electric vehicles to space exploration. His engineering achievements and business success speak for themselves. Meanwhile, AOC in January famously couldn’t locate Venezuela on a map, and ‘showed her concern for the poor’ by wearing an exclusive $3,724 “tax the rich” dress at the 2021 Met Gala.

The many gross misconceptions of rich people and wealth

Beyond the hypocrisies lies a deeper problem, that many socialists fundamentally misunderstand what wealth actually is. Many seem to imagine Elon Musk sitting atop a giant mountain of cash like Scrooge McDuck, swimming through piles of a trillion gold coins. Musk’s net worth, like that of most billionaires, consists primarily of ownership stakes in companies. It is largely made up of unrealized gains tied to stock valuations rather than actual cash sitting in a vault or a bank account.

An equally flawed assumption is the belief that rich people can only become rich through exploitation or theft. Certainly, wealth acquired through criminal activity should always be punished. However, that is fundamentally different from becoming wealthy because millions of people voluntarily choose to purchase your products, invest in your company, or use your services. When consumers buy Tesla vehicles or subscribe to Amazon services they are participating in voluntary exchanges. No one is being forced to hand over their money.

This is why the common accusations directed at successful entrepreneurs often seem absurd. Billionaires are frequently portrayed as greedy, evil, incompetent, or parasitic. Yet many of the companies founded by billionaires have created millions of jobs and developed products and services used by billions of people around the world. Modern transportation, communication, technology, and countless other innovations exist because individuals took enormous risks and built successful businesses.

The narrative that wealthy individuals contribute nothing to society simply does not withstand scrutiny. Nor does the claim that the rich never give back. Throughout history there have been countless examples of wealthy individuals donating substantial portions of their fortunes to charitable causes. Many fund educational institutions, hospitals, scientific research, humanitarian projects, and disaster relief efforts. They are also already paying enormous amounts in taxes compared to the average citizen.

Studies reveal ‘envy’ as primary motivator among most socialists

A recent survey found that 94 percent of respondents with zero or negative net worth strongly supported aggressive redistribution measures, including wealth taxes, asset seizures, and mandated income leveling. Some respondents justified their views by appealing to “fairness” and insisting that “nobody should have more than they need”. Such responses reveal a troubling mindset. They rarely involve questions about how wealth was earned, whether the transactions involved were voluntary, or whether the proposed policies would actually help the poor. Instead, the focus is entirely on the existence of unequal outcomes.

The concept of fairness is frequently invoked, yet rarely examined. What exactly is fair about taking wealth from one individual and giving it to another? Why is it considered morally superior to seize resources through political force than to earn them through productive work or receive them voluntarily through exchange?

Further evidence for the role of envy comes from a 2017 study involving approximately 6,000 participants from around the world. The study concluded that envy was a significantly stronger predictor of support for redistribution than concern for fairness. Perhaps most revealing was the finding that “dispositional envy predicted support for policies that punished the rich even when doing so reduced the total amount of resources available to transfer to the poor.”

Why “just tax the rich” is a terrible idea

The popular socialist prescription—“just tax the rich”—carries serious economic problems. High taxes discourage innovation and hard work, which leads to entrepreneurs like Musk to stop creating as much value if most gains are seized. This slows economic growth for everyone.

Wealth isn’t a fixed pie either. Rich people don’t hoard a static amount of money — their capital is invested in factories and stocks that produce goods, services, and jobs. Taxing it heavily removes productive capital from the market and gives it to government, which spends it far less efficiently — to put it mildly. As Austrian economists Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek argued, central authorities cannot match the knowledge of millions of individuals making decisions based on real prices and incentives. Such policies distort the economy and often fail to deliver long-term gains for the poor.

If the goal were truly to prevent honest wealth accumulation, the consistent approach would be to stop buying the products and services that create it. Instead, the intensity of the socialist backlash points to envy.

Rather than resenting entrepreneurship, society would benefit much more from cherishing the voluntary exchanges and innovations that generate wealth for individuals and lift living standards for people all over the world.

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Recent legal victories mark a significant shift. In early 2026, a New York jury awarded $2 million to Fox Varian, who was 22 at the time of the verdict. Varian had received a double mastectomy at age 16. The jury determined that her psychologist and plastic surgeon deviated from the standard of care, particularly regarding informed consent, risk communication, and coordination between providers. This case is widely regarded as the first to reach a jury verdict in the United States concerning malpractice in youth gender medicine.

Dozens of similar lawsuits by detransitioners have been filed since around 2022–2023. As of early 2026, reports indicate more than 28 active or filed cases across the U.S., targeting surgeons, endocrinologists, psychologists, and institutions. One prominent example is Chloe Cole’s ongoing lawsuit against Kaiser Permanente, with a trial scheduled for 2027. Cole received puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and a mastectomy as a minor.

Even 6-year-olds have transitioned

The young age at which some children enter the pipeline of gender affirming care adds to the gravity of these stories. Social and medical transition can begin very early. One high schooler, Branson “Sophie” Waitz, was reportedly transitioned by his parents starting at age 6. Medical interventions, such as puberty blockers, have been documented in U.S. clinics for children as young as 8 or 9 when early puberty is present. Critics argue that these practices are especially insidious because minors, particularly those under 10 or in early adolescence, lack the maturity to fully understand the lifelong consequences of hormonal treatments and surgeries.

Chronic pain and irreversible damage

Personal testimonies from detransitioners reveal profound regret and lasting harm. Claire Abernathy, now 21, described being placed on testosterone at age 14 after doctors warned that “failing to transition could lead to suicide”. No one explored underlying trauma or the normal turbulence of adolescence, especially for girls who had experienced abuse. Just eight months later, she underwent a double mastectomy, as surgeons removed her otherwise healthy breasts. The physical consequences have been severe: urological complications, including intense pain when her bladder is full, bleeding, loss of bladder control, and periods requiring adult diapers due to pelvic floor damage from testosterone. Her voice, once central to her involvement in choir and theater, has been permanently altered. Stories like Abernathy’s reveal how quickly life-altering decisions can occur and how comorbidities or alternative explanations for gender dysphoria may be overlooked.

Quantifying regret and detransition remains challenging. Medical literature on the topic has historically been limited, partly because the subject is taboo within some affirming circles, where practitioners may be inclined to emphasize positive outcomes and downplay negative ones. Loss to follow-up is common in studies, and regret can surface years after treatment. A 2025 study of approximately 1,000 detransitioners identified varied reasons for regret, with roughly 33% citing high decisional regret, identity change, or unresolved mental health issues. Some detransitioners report external pressure from trans-activists or fear of discrimination that discourages them from speaking publicly. Outside the U.S., accounts from as early as 2019 described over 30 individuals in the Newcastle, UK area alone who regretted transitioning.

These emerging lawsuits, testimonies, and data points suggest that more children and adolescents who underwent gender affirming care are beginning to fight back. They are challenging the narrative that such interventions are unequivocally beneficial and low-risk. As courts examine questions of medical standards and informed consent the experiences of detransitioners are forcing a broader reckoning with practices that have now affected an entire generation of young people. Whether this leads to lasting changes in gender affirming “care” remains to be seen. What is clear is that the voices of those who say they were harmed are growing louder and harder to ignore.

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This near-75% dominance by one ideological pole has reshaped curricula and classroom culture, often at the expense of core educational fundamentals. The result is a generation of students who are increasingly both illiterate in basic skills and indoctrinated in a narrow set of woke activist doctrines.

Kids brainwashed into activism

This dominance manifests in public school curricula through programs rooted in updated Marxist frameworks. Traditional Marxism divided society by economic class into oppressors and oppressed. Contemporary versions in schools divide children by race, gender, identity, and perceived privilege. Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) initiatives, for instance, encourage students to interpret common everyday interactions, through lenses of systemic oppression and activism. Critics such as James Lindsay and Christopher Rufo have described SEL as a “Trojan horse” for these marxist theories, training children to view normal behaviors or feelings as markers of privilege or oppression and urging them toward premature political activism.

Parents have reported alarming effects. One New York parent observed that children become “very aggressive now in their views,” enforcing a binary: “if you’re not with us, you’re against us, and you’re the problem.” Another mother from a Los Angeles-area prep school described her son being made to feel “like a racist because of the pigmentation of his skin.”

While every culture has dark chapters that deserve honest examination, the prevailing approach often frames Western civilization as uniquely and inherently flawed, stripping any kind of historical nuance. A striking example occurred in 2025 when a woke history teacher even defended Inca child sacrifices as “kind,” revealing a selective relativism that romanticizes non-Western practices while condemning others.

Gender ideology adds another layer to the madness. Classrooms increasingly teach that biological sex is secondary to subjective feelings about gender, presenting gender as a spectrum or personal choice rather than a grounded reality. This mirrors broader efforts to deconstruct traditional structures such as family and biology under the banner of liberation. Such lessons divert time and attention from essential subjects and introduce complex adult identity issues to children unprepared for them.

Shocking numbers of illiterate children

The consequences for basic literacy and numeracy are stark. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in 2024, 40% of fourth graders and roughly one-third of eighth graders performed below basic reading levels. Only 23% of fourth graders and 26% of eighth graders reached proficiency. These figures reflect a systemic failure in teaching foundational skills, even as teachers pursue other priorities.

Numerous cases highlight misplaced focus. A Canadian academic at the University of Regina, ‘j wallace skelton’ (who insists on lowercase styling and full-name reference instead of pronouns), researches and promotes “queer- and trans-centered spaces” in education, often collaborating with young children—including his own “non-binary ten year old”—on projects about envisioning 2SLGBTQ possibilities in schools through drawing and discussion with ages 3–12.

In december 2025, a teacher named “Debra” filmed himself announcing a personal gender transition to a class, demanding new pronouns and a new name, turning a lesson into a platform for adult personal matters.

The deeper aim clearly appears cultural and political. By embedding bizarre concepts like pronoun obsession and critical race theory, schools position children as agents of change who return home to “correct” their parents—an echo of tactics used during Maoist indoctrination campaigns in China. This strategy seeks to reorient family authority and societal norms through the youngest generation.

Public education’s current trajectory—prioritizing activism over competence—has produced cohorts that struggle with basic literacy while absorbing rigid woke ideological scripts. The evidence of ideological capture, declining academic outcomes, and classroom distractions suggests a compelling case for parents to seek alternatives. Private schooling that emphasize foundational skills, historical balance, and intellectual openness offer pathways to raise educated rather than brainwashed children.

Without course correction, the experiment of ideological woke education risks leaving a generation both less knowledgeable and more divided than ever before.

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The biological realities are, of course, as any non-woke person knows, that there are great differences between men and women—especially physically. On average, men possess greater muscle mass, bone density, lung capacity, and speed. Women’s sports exist precisely because of these immutable biological differences. To deny this is to deny the very reason separate women’s competitions were created in the first place.

Yet trans-identifying male athletes have abandoned sportsmanship and honor for selfish reasons. Recent examples illustrate this pattern clearly. Trans athlete AB Hernandez recently bragged about feeling “amazing” after winning first place in girls’ long jump and triple jump, stating, “Being able to do it my first attempt was astronomically amazing. It was so surreal”. In California, a trans-identified male student, Paul “Lina” Haaga, took first place at a girls’ track championship final, beating his own sister for the gold medal.

Punished for protesting and stating the obvious

A few years ago, Imane Khelif, competed and ultimately won gold in women’s boxing at the Paris Olympics. Many observers noted that Khelif was not biologically female, yet mainstream media labeled critics as liars and transphobes while Khelif easily knocked out his female opponents. Later revelations confirmed that, in biological terms (chromosomes, gonads, and puberty-driven male advantage), Khelif fits the profile of a male with a Difference of Sex Development (DSD) rather than a typical female (XX chromosomes, ovaries, female puberty). Thankfully, the International Boxing Association (IBA) later disqualified Khelif from the 2023 Women’s World Championships based on testing, citing unfair advantages.

In 2025, 15-year-old Frances Staudt, a Washington state athlete, faced a civil rights complaint for refusing to play basketball against a boy. In February, the Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism (FAIR) filed a complaint on her behalf with the Department of Education after the school district reportedly investigated Frances for “misgendering” her transgender opponent. After warming up for a game, Frances told her coach she would not play against the “quite obvious” male on the opposing team. Her mother, Aimee, reported that the school athletic director responded that the district would not discriminate based on gender identity under Washington state law.

The pattern of trans-contempt for actual women extends beyond sports. Examples include those of “Gabrielle” Darone, a trans-identifying man, joined a women’s support group for mothers who had experienced stillbirth after simulating one of his own. He got grieving women kicked out of the group for objecting to his behavior, which included asking women if he could “breastfeed” their infants. Similarly, Kylie Palm, another man, pretended to be pregnant, faked a stillbirth, and tried to raise money for a doll to “help him grieve” for his imaginary baby. Palm also joined a parental grief group and contributed to real mothers being removed from the group.

Major pushback is happening

In February 2025, Executive Order 14201 was signed (“Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports”), directing federal agencies to enforce sex-based categories in federally funded programs via Title IX. That same month, the NCAA updated its rules to restrict women’s category competition to athletes assigned female at birth. Most recently, as of March 2026, the IOC adopted a policy limiting eligibility for female categories at Olympics and IOC events (from LA 2028 onward) to biological females, determined by one-time SRY gene screening. This effectively bars most transgender individuals and certain DSD athletes with male advantages. Nevertheless, woke opposition still persists through lawsuits, activist groups, and delays in some Democratic-led areas, keeping the problem alive.

Wokeism, with its radical insistence that gender is merely a “social construct” and that anyone may redefine themselves at will, has dissolved women as a coherent political and social class. If sex-based protections in sport (and society in general) are abandoned, the future of women’s athletics is finished. Girls who train for years will see their opportunities, records, and safety erased in the name of political correctness. Preserving fair competition requires acknowledging biological reality rather than woke lunatic ideology.

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Then something changed. Around 2012–2013, just as social media started dominating how young people get information, the mood shifted. Suddenly, more people began talking about racism as a major problem, and views on Black-White relations got noticeably worse.

This big turnaround makes you wonder: Was the improvement in race relations being undone on purpose? Recent evidence suggests that some of the very groups claiming to fight racism and extremism have actually been helping create or exaggerate it.

In April 2026, the Department of Justice charged the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) with serious fraud. Prosecutors say that between 2014 and 2023, the SPLC secretly sent more than $3 million in donated money to people connected with violent extremist groups — including factions of the Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nations, the National Socialist Party, and others tied to the 2017 Charlottesville rally.

The SPLC told donors their money would be used “to fight and dismantle these hate groups”. Instead, according to the charges, they paid informants inside those groups while hiding the payments through fake companies, secret bank accounts, and prepaid cards. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said the SPLC wasn’t dismantling extremism, but was instead manufacturing the extremism it claimed to oppose by paying people to stir up racial hatred. This looks a lot like a false-flag operation by the SPLC, creating or inflating a threat to scare people and raise more money.

For a long time, the SPLC has put out lists and maps labeling “hate groups”. But critics point out that it has moved beyond real violent extremists like the KKK. It now labels many mainstream conservative, Christian, and family-values organizations as hate groups just because they disagree on issues like marriage or immigration. This blurs the line between actual dangerous extremists and normal political differences. That kind of labeling has real consequences. In 2012, a gunman attacked the Family Research Council offices and later said he got the idea from the SPLC’s hate map and list.

This pattern fits a broader neo-Marxist-inspired strategy of fracturing society along lines of race, gender, and identity. By pitting groups against each other—creating a sense of perpetual victimhood and grievance—such approaches generate chaos that can be leveraged to demand systemic overhaul, often in a socialist direction. The goal is a division that weakens social cohesion and traditional institutions.

DEI makes everything worse

A big part of today’s approach is Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). At its core, DEI says that racism is “systemic”, baked into society’s institutions. Any time one group does worse than another on average, DEI often calls it proof of racism.

But this idea doesn’t hold up well when you look closer. For example, Asian Americans as a group do better than the White majority in school and income. Instead of rethinking the “systemic racism” story, some woke DEI supporters simply erase or combine the Asian category with White in their data to keep the narrative alive.

The clearest case is elite college admissions. Asian students often have higher grades and test scores, yet they’ve been held to a higher standard and admitted at lower rates under “holistic” review systems. Schools seemed worried that pure merit-based admissions would make campuses “too Asian”. In 2023, the Supreme Court ruled that these race-based policies were unconstitutional because they discriminated against Asian applicants.

Most DEI programs involve workshops on concepts such as “implicit bias”, “white privilege”, and “microaggressions”. The goal is supposed to be better harmony. In reality, these trainings often make people hyper-focused on race. They teach everyone to see ordinary interactions through a racial lens, which often create more suspicion and resentment instead of actually fixing problems.

Race hustling has to be rejected outright

Over the last decade, our culture’s nonstop focus on race has created a whole class of people — activists, politicians, consultants, trainers — who make money and gain status by constantly talking about racism and “anti-racism”. Social media rewards outrage, so extreme stories spread faster.

Of course real racism still exists, but the data from before 2013 shows that racism was at historic lows in the U.S., and most people felt optimistic. The sudden increase in focus on racism, and the worsening of race relations, lines up with the rise of groups and individuals who benefit from keeping the sense of crisis alive.

When actual demand for racism is low, some people apparently feel the need to manufacture or inflate it. This isn’t about ignoring real problems or pretending differences don’t exist. But assuming every gap in outcomes is caused by systemic racism ignores too many other factors — family structure, culture, education choices, personal behavior, and simple variation between groups. It also punishes high achievers (like many Asian students) in the name of “equity”.

If we want to create a healthy and sane enviroment between citizens of all backgrounds, we need to reject this divisive woke nonsense and the race-hustling industry that comes with it. These approaches only turn race into a constant source of grievance instead of something we can move past.

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Official data show that by the end of 2024, Canada had recorded 76,475 MAID deaths since legalization. In 2024 alone, 16,499 people received MAID, accounting for roughly 5.1% of all deaths in the country. Projections based on these trends indicated the total would likely surpass 100,000 by around June 2026—the program’s 10th anniversary—though lags in official reporting mean the grim milestone may have already been crossed or approached by early 2026.

The elderly and vulnerable are being put to death

The program’s broadening criteria have allowed euthanasia for conditions once considered outside its scope. Cases include individuals with seasonal depression, autism, diabetes, hearing loss, poverty, inadequate housing, and other disabilities or social challenges where no terminal illness was present. Some notable examples include:

• In 2022, a 51-year-old woman was approved and euthanized after failing to find suitable housing free from smoke and chemical sensitivities.

• In 2019, a 61-year-old man in British Columbia received approval for euthanasia primarily citing hearing loss, with no terminal condition.

• In 2026, a 26-year-old man was euthanized for “seasonal depression”.

• In 2024, a young woman with autism and ADHD was approved despite her father’s public and desperate pleas to deny the request.

These are not just isolated anecdotes but illustrations of a pattern in which death becomes a default “treatment” for solvable or chronic problems. MAID has been offered or provided to people whose primary issues involved lack of housing, inadequate support for disabilities, or mental health struggles that might respond to better social services or therapy.

In one alarming 2025 case, 84-year-old Miriam Lancaster arrived at a Vancouver hospital emergency room with severe back pain. Before any diagnostic tests or treatment, a doctor reportedly offered her MAID as the first option. Miriam refused, and further examination revealed a treatable fracture. She recovered fully, later walking her daughter down the aisle and traveling abroad. But her story highlights how readily the system can pivot toward death even when underlying causes remain undiagnosed and reversible.

Testimonies from combat veteran Kelsi Sheren and others describe Canadian veterans with PTSD being offered MAID by officials rather than comprehensive treatment or support—raising questions about whether the state, having sent them into trauma-inducing service, finds it easier to provide death than sustained care.

A shift in societal values

When MAID accounts for over 4–5% of Canadian deaths, life itself risks ceasing to be the societal default. The program normalizes death as a solution to suffering, sending a subtle message that certain lives—disabled, dependent, or burdensome on public resources—are less worth sustaining. This creates potential pressure on vulnerable individuals to view themselves as expendable rather than deserving of quality treatment or support.

The expansion reflects a utilitarian calculus. In a strained single-payer healthcare system facing long wait times and resource constraints, facilitating death can appear administratively simpler and cheaper than investing in housing, mental health services, disability supports, or pain management. This inverts the proper role of medicine—from preserving and improving life to ending it when it becomes inconvenient or costly.

International echoes and pushback

Canada’s model is influencing debates elsewhere. In the Netherlands, reports have documented cases of teenagers euthanized primarily or significantly due to autism, sometimes alongside other mental health conditions, with life described as “joyless”. Such developments alarm disability advocates, who see a slippery slope where neurodiversity or chronic but non-fatal conditions qualify for state-assisted death.

Encouragingly, opposition has emerged in parts of Europe. In March 2026, the Scottish Parliament defeated an assisted dying bill by a vote of 69 to 57 after emotional debate and concerns over safeguards for the vulnerable. Earlier that year, a similar UK bill in Westminster also failed to advance amid significant resistance, with procedural hurdles and substantive worries about coercion and protection of the disabled stalling progress.

Canada is resembling Nazi Germany

The scale and direction of Canada’s program invite uncomfortable historical comparisons. Nazi-era doctors who euthanized or eliminated those deemed “life unworthy of life”—including the disabled and mentally ill—were later condemned and punished at Nuremberg for crimes against humanity. Today, a democratic government in Canada has overseen tens of thousands of deaths under a medical banner, often for non-terminal conditions, yet mainstream international media and many governments remain largely silent or muted in criticism.

This silence is striking. While reasonable people can debate the ethics of voluntary assisted dying for competent adults in the final stages of terminal illness with strict safeguards, the Canadian experience demonstrates how quickly boundaries erode once the principle is accepted. When the state offers death as a service for poverty, loneliness, disability accommodation failures, or treatable mental distress, it undermines the intrinsic value of human life and the duty to protect the vulnerable.

MAID’s trajectory reveals a deeper philosophical shift from a culture that used to affirm life’s worth even amid suffering toward one that treats death as an efficient administrative fix. As totals approach or exceed 100,000, the world’s muted response risks signaling acceptance of a precedent with profound implications for human dignity everywhere.

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A recent report from the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF), titled “Manufacturing Consent: Government Behavioural Engineering of Canadians” (authored by Nigel Hannaford in late 2025), sheds light on how governments engineered public compliance. Focusing on Canada, it details systematic use of behavioural science to shape citizens’ beliefs, emotions, and actions, often covertly and at taxpayer expense.

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What sounds like something straight out of a Monty Python sketch actually took place on March 31st at Canada’s New Democratic Party Convention (NDP). This bizarre scenario may perfectly explain why the NDP has recently lost official party status in Canada for the first time since 1993. Following the April 28, 2025 federal election, the NDP suffered its worst result in history and has been significantly diminished in influence at the federal level.

“The Woke Hitler”

What was especially significant however was the chairwoman reprimanding everyone for misgendering her at the convention. Nicknamed “Woke Hitler” by some, Adrienne Smith, has become a prominent figure in woke activism and socialist advocacy. Taking the stage formally dressed and with a haircut similar to that of a Hitler Youth member, she routinely offers guest lectures for academic courses, with a $100 surcharge per incident if you say something which could be perceived as transphobic during a session.

And while the clips of Adrienne Smith acting entitled may be hilarious to watch, there is nothing funny about her agenda or the influence she wields at all. In 2019 she defunded the Vancouver Rape Relief and Women’s Shelter because it wouldn’t (understandably so) admit trans men who claimed to be females into their female only group.

Weakness is gradually eroding our liberties

Even though the popularity of the NDP is in a severe decline the influence of woke narcissists in Western academia and public institutions is very much alive and thriving. This is visible particularly in the trans movement’s current tight grip on freedom of speech. Like the recent example of an Icelandic man, Eldur Kristinsson, who is currently facing two years of prison for stating that men cannot breastfeed, and the Swiss man, Emanuel Brunisholz, who last year served prison time for stating that there are differences between men and women.

What the recent NDP convention reveals is a growing cohort of fundamentally weak young men and women having severe psychological insecurities, high levels of narcissism and a general warped view of reality. Such a growing number of these individuals are not only caused by marxist indoctrination but primarily enabled through having grown up in very privileged households shielded from any discomfort and harsh realities of life. While the historically good times we currently live in have fostered this cohort, it does not necessarily imply that good times have to create weak people. In the case of the growing woke movement, however, we seem to be facing a gradual erosion of liberties and a slow but painful social and financial decline of western society. And if we keep staying quiet about this, these weak people will ultimately create some very hard times.

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Compounding the ethical collapse is the deliberate lowering of entry barriers under diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) mandates. Internal data from UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine, leaked to outlets such as The Free Beacon and cited in lawsuits by the group Do No Harm, show catastrophic spikes in failure rates on standardized shelf exams. In emergency medicine, family medicine, internal medicine, and pediatrics, failure rates in some cohorts reached ten times the national average—exceeding 50 percent in certain subjects. California’s legal ban on affirmative action notwithstanding, admissions officers appear to have prioritized demographic targets over objective metrics such as MCAT scores and undergraduate GPAs. The predictable outcome is a cohort of physicians less prepared for the unforgiving precision medicine demands. While direct causation between any single malpractice incident and DEI hiring remains difficult to prove without internal records, the statistical logic is merciless. When you systematically admit candidates with lower cognitive and academic thresholds, the downstream error rate in diagnosis, prescribing, and surgery must rise. Patients in deprived areas—who already face longer wait times and fewer specialists—will bear the brunt of those errors. Lowered standards due to woke dogma produce avoidable deaths.

The gender affirming madness

Nowhere is the lethal folly of woke medicine more visible than in the aggressive promotion of “gender-affirming care.” Children and adolescents distressed by sex-based reality are rushed onto puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries without robust exploration of underlying trauma, autism, or social contagion. Ideologically captured clinicians treat dissent as bigotry. The human cost is measured in corpses and ruined bodies. Yarden Silveira, a 23-year-old detransitioner who died around 2024, underwent female-to-male genital surgery only to endure years of severe complications. In Yelp reviews posted shortly before her death, she catalogued medical mistreatment, expressed profound regret, and begged for accountability and reversal. Her case is far from isolated. Robin Westman, in August 2025, opened fire inside a church in Minneapolis, claiming multiple casualties before declaring himself “tired of being trans” and a “victim of trans ideology brainwash”. North America has seen dozens of spree killings over the past decade perpetrated by individuals who self-identified as transgender—an unmistakable pattern that ideologues still dismiss as coincidence.

Survey data on detransitioners paint an even darker picture. One U.S. analysis found past-year suicide attempt rates nearly double among those who had detransitioned (12 percent versus 6.7 percent among those who never did). Large detransitioner samples consistently cite dissatisfaction with surgical outcomes, infertility, irreversible voice changes, chronic pain, and the belated realization that dysphoria originated in trauma or mental illness rather than an innate “gender identity.” Nearly two-thirds stated they would never have transitioned had they received accurate information about long-term consequences. Yet ideologues like Dr. Helen Webberley continue to boast publicly about the “trans kids she has saved”, treating regret and suicide as inconvenient externalities. Each suicide or shooting traceable to botched affirmation is a death the healthcare system helped manufacture.

Woke related eugenics

The same ideological contempt for human life that fuels gender medicine animates the rapid expansion of medical assistance in dying (MAID). Canada’s program, frequently praised by woke governments as compassionate progress, has become the industrialized West’s most efficient engine of state-facilitated death. Official figures document 76,475 MAID deaths over the past decade. The clientele has expanded far beyond terminal cancer patients in unbearable pain. Vulnerable populations—those with disabilities, living in poverty, facing years-long waits for housing or treatment, seniors, and even veterans—are routinely offered euthanasia when they request better palliative care or social supports. Critics rightly label this eugenics with better branding, enabled by one of the world’s most ideologically woke governments. The links to woke ideology in this case is undeniable. The same nihilism that tells a distressed teenager her body is disposable also tells an elderly disabled person that her continued existence is a burden.

The pattern is clear. Wokeness replaces the physician’s duty to the individual patient with a duty to political orthodoxy. Until changes occur, the healthcare system will continue to function less as a healer and more as an ideological executioner—dispensing multiple preventable deaths. The bodies already piling up are the predictable harvest of subordinating medicine to woke politics.

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“All people, however fanatical they may be in their zeal to disparage and to fight capitalism, implicitly pay homage to it by passionately clamoring for the products it turns out.” ~Ludwig von Mises.

Over recent decades, the entire world and the United States in particular, has seen remarkable growth in overall wealth and living standards, with free-market capitalism serving as the primary engine lifting billions of people worldwide out of poverty through innovation, entrepreneurship, and voluntary exchange. But, paradoxically, a growing cohort of affluent individuals with political ambitions has emerged from this very system to launch sharp criticisms against it. These figures—often styling themselves as democratic socialists or fierce anti-capitalists—target their message at primarily young, disillusioned voters who may lack historical perspective on the repeated failures of countless socialist experiments, from economic stagnation and shortages to authoritarian repression in places like the Soviet Union or Maoist China (just to mention a few).

Promising an appealing vision of “free everything”—universal healthcare, education, housing, and more—these politicians seduce with slogans like “tax the rich” and calls to “seize the means of production”. Such rhetoric completely ignores basic economics, such as how markets allocate resources efficiently, incentivize productivity, and drive prosperity far more effectively than centralized planning. Instead, it offers a short-sighted appeal to envy and utopian dreams, positioning government as the benevolent provider funded by taxing those who succeeded under capitalism.

What makes this phenomenon particularly insidious is the glaring hypocrisy. Many of these socialist charlatans fail to live by the principles they preach. They champion humility and equality while indulging in personal luxuries often financed by campaign funds—donations solicited in the name of fighting inequality—or accumulated wealth from the very capitalist system they decry. This pattern has rightfully earned them the label “champagne socialists”, those who enjoy elite privileges while railing against the system that enables them.

Staggering examples of socialist hypocrisy

A prime example is Senator Bernie Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist who has long portrayed capitalism as rigged for the wealthy. He even authored a 2023 book titled It’s OK to Be Angry About Capitalism. Yet Sanders is a millionaire, owning three homes: a primary residence in Burlington, Vermont; one in Washington, D.C.; and a lakeside summer home in North Hero, Vermont, purchased for $575,000 in cash in 2016. His lifestyle stands in stark contrast to his rhetoric. During his 2025 “Fighting Oligarchy” tour—where he decried billionaires and championed the Green New Deal—Federal Election Commission filings revealed his campaign spent over $550,000 on private jet travel, including at least $354,000 through one charter service alone. This lavish expenditure, while he labels climate change an “existential threat”, underscores a strange disconnect between his words and actions.

Similarly, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has built her brand around democratic socialism, the Green New Deal, and anti-oligarchy messaging. She famously attended the 2021 Met Gala in a custom “Tax the Rich” gown, an event with tickets costing around $35,000 each. The House Ethics Committee later ruled she underpaid for the outfit and related benefits, deeming it an impermissible gift under House rules and directing her to make additional payments (around $3,000) to cover the market-value shortfall. More recently, her 2025 campaign filings showed over $53,000 spent on luxury and boutique hotels—including high-end stays in Las Vegas, Utah, and New York—plus upscale dining and a nearly $50,000 spending spree in Puerto Rico. This included over $15,000 on San Juan luxury hotels and significant costs for meals, catering, and venue rental at the arena hosting a ‘Bad Bunny’ concert, where she was spotted in box seats. Such expenditures occurred amid her tours and travel, even as she criticized millionaires and inequality.

Representative Rashida Tlaib, another “Squad” member who frequently condemns wealth inequality, corporate greed, and excessive CEO pay, has seen her campaign spend approximately $36,700 on luxury limo services from October 2024 to September 2025. Payments to a high-end transportation company included multiple charges up to $1,300, totaling significant sums for what filings listed as travel and transportation.

Even influential intellectuals like Noam Chomsky, a longtime fierce critic of capitalism and inequality who lectures young audiences on its evils, charge universities $10,000 to $20,000 per speaking engagement (with some reports citing his standard fee even higher at over $20,000, excluding expenses, as noted in older correspondence published in connection with Jeffrey Epstein documents in 2023).

Young Americans deserve better role models who are rooted in reality

These examples highlight a broader trend among self-proclaimed socialists in U.S. politics. They talk a revolutionary game but walk a path of comfort and privilege. Young voters, drawn to promises of a humble, equitable utopia financed by others’ success, often overlook this contradiction. They fall prey to charismatic figures who benefit enormously from the free-market system they attack—while proposing policies that could undermine the very prosperity that made their own lifestyles possible in the first place.

The real danger lies not only in personal hypocrisy, but in the potential havoc from tampering with a system that, despite imperfections often stemming from government overregulation, has proven extraordinarily effective at generating wealth and opportunity. These “champagne socialists” inhabit a dream world where elite perks coexist with anti-capitalist rhetoric, but the bill for their visions falls on the taxpayers and future generations.

Young Americans deserve better than to be scammed by such illusions—ones that ignore history, economics, and the inconvenient realities of their advocates’ own lives. True progress comes from understanding what actually works, not from seductive slogans delivered from positions of unearned moral superiority.

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One of the deepest causes lies in the changing character of generations. Younger cohorts, shaped by an ethos of “safetyism”, increasingly view opposing opinions as genuine, existential threats that must be neutralised. A recent study by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) illustrates the scale of this shift. In its 2026 College Free Speech Rankings, which surveyed tens of thousands of students across the United States, roughly one in three (about 34 %) now say that using violence to stop a campus speech they disagree with is acceptable either “always” or “sometimes.” Of course, not every member of these generations supports crackdowns on liberty. Far from it. However, many seem to take freedom for granted precisely because they suffer from historical illiteracy due to the failure of our educational systems, and have grown up in over-cuddled environments shielded from both real and imagined dangers. When freedom has never been fought for or lost, it is easy to trade it away for the promise of comfort.

This generational outlook feeds a broader and more dangerous polarisation across Western societies. People on all sides increasingly perceive “the others” as existential threats rather than fellow citizens with different views. The result is an “ends justify the means” mentality that opens the door to totalitarianism. While many events in recent years have made the glorification of violence and strong governance more visible on the left, the underlying dynamic is not confined to one political tribe. Once large numbers of citizens come to believe that their opponents pose an immediate danger to their safety or identity, they become willing to accept – or even demand – coercive measures that would once have been unthinkable.

The UK’s dark turn

Politicians have proved remarkably adept at exploiting this hunger for safetyism. The United Kingdom offers a textbook case of how quickly a liberal democracy can slide into what critics rightly call an Orwellian state. The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 dramatically broadened police powers to impose conditions on protests, including restrictions based on “serious disruption” or even “excessive noise” that might cause “serious distress” to bystanders. Vague wording hands officers wide discretion, effectively criminalising demonstrations that were previously lawful and creating a chilling effect on the right to assemble and speak. Two years later came the notorious Online Safety Act 2023, which imposes a “duty of care” on social media platforms and search engines to remove illegal content and mitigate “harmful” material. Civil-liberties groups such as Big Brother Watch have labelled it a “censor’s charter”. Its subjective definitions of harm encourage over-moderation of legal political speech, threaten end-to-end encryption through message scanning, and introduce privacy-invasive age-verification systems. Critics warn that the very vagueness of “harm” will drive widespread self-censorship and export a model of state-directed online control to other countries.

Scotland’s Hate Crime and Public Order Act 2021 (fully in force from 2024) pushes the logic further. It expands “stirring up hatred” offences to new protected characteristics, including age, disability, transgender identity, and variations in sex characteristics. The law reaches into both online and private speech if it is deemed “threatening or abusive”. Within days of enactment, police in Scotland recorded thousands of reports, many involving everyday disagreements. Lawyers, writers such as J.K. Rowling, and free-speech advocates immediately highlighted the alarming effect on open debate and even private conversations.

Governments worry about losing control of the narrative

Much of this regulatory surge has been enabled by the internet’s explosion of free information. When ordinary citizens can bypass traditional gatekeepers and access unfiltered data, governments and mainstream media lose their former monopoly on the public narrative. The panicking response has been the rapid mainstreaming of the “misinformation” concept – a conveniently elastic term used to justify ever-wider restrictions on speech. What begins as a defence against lies soon becomes a licence to police opinions.

Despite these encroachments, large-scale protests against the loss of liberty have remained strikingly muted. This quiet acceptance lends weight to the uncomfortable observation that most people do not actually want to be free; they simply want to be safe. The statement may contain an element of truth about human nature, yet it is also profoundly mistaken. The “safety” promised by ever-tighter state control is a mirage. History shows that totalitarian systems do not deliver safety at all. Instead they trade it for surveillance, conformity, and, ultimately, terror. The cost is paid in the slow death of the open society.

None of this is inevitable. More people are waking up to the pattern of incremental laws, the safetyist rhetoric, and the erosion of norms that once protected dissent. The question that now hangs over Western civilisation is whether this awakening will come in time. Freedom has been won before at enormous cost. Whether it will prevail again depends on whether enough citizens remember that safety purchased through the surrender of liberty is no safety at all. The future need not be totalitarian, but only if we refuse to accept the creeping bargain that is being offered to us piece by piece, law by law, and excuse by excuse.

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