People often confuse "free market" with "what's good for big business." But these are rarely the same thing. Most of the time, big businesses engage in regulatory capture, which means they get to write the rules of the game--they get to decide what "deregulation" means, and very often it means that big business gets all the advantages, gets to decide who owns the best property. Ukraine is a perfect example demonstrating this--and I think it's also at work in the COVID pandemic; while 7 million Americans face eviction after December 31st, 29 new billionaires share with their billionaire friends the $1 trillion in spoils to come out of the year 2020.

I've generally tried to avoid talking about COVID, outside of discussing the response to it--in the form of lockdown protests, business closings, etc.--but recent developments compel me to take a look at the numbers--and to be honest, the numbers are weird.

Protests erupt across Europe against another round of lockdown restrictions, while "Curfew Breakers" in California point out the governor's lack of respect for his own coronavirus restrictions as he dines in high style while others wonder if they'll ever be able to pay rent again, or whether they'll be hitting the road after eviction on December 31st. Meanwhile, Biden promises to heavily tax firearm ownership, and we resurrect Malcolm X from an early grave to explain why that's just about the most un-American thing he could do.

We start with a discussion of more anti-semites in our comments sections, and trying to understand what motivates such people. This becomes a discussion of tribes in general, specifically racial ones, and the ways in which dividing society into tribes can have both positive and negative consequences. Just remember: beneath that well-coiffed exterior of yours, there's a horny, bloodthirsty, hooting baboon who needs to be constantly convinced not to kill people and take their stuff.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation reports that Ring cameras will announce a pilot program to interface their personal-security-camera technology more fully with local police forces, who are already using facial- and object-recognition technology, as well as technology that aggregates data from multiple cameras, to create virtual 100% coverage of entire neighborhoods or towns with 24/7 surveillance. It's Big Brother's wet dream, and yet so far, few if any are speaking out against it.

Republican women flood into Congress in record numbers. Is this a victory for women as a whole, or does it represent a betrayal of women by women? We discuss what it means to "empower" people, whether the vision of the anointed should remain sacrosanct, or whether individual people can be trusted to find their own truth, even if it means I end up empowering someone who turns around and fights against my ideals as a result.

Ted Cruz had just a grand ol' time laying into Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg in the Senate hearings yesterday over Big Tech censorship. We'll see if it comes to anything--it probably won't--but it's interesting to note that Senator Cruz actually has it all wrong: Big Tech is NOT (you heard me) censoring conservatives. Far from it; they're censoring anyone who is outside the establishment-approved mainstream, and as we see in this episode, that includes left-wing outlets as well as conservative and right-wing ones. It always starts with the kooks and the wackos, but sooner or later, they come for you.

A Twitter fight (which always bring to bear the best intellectual firepower our culture has to offer) has broken out over heartthrob Harry Styles' decision to wear a ball gown on the cover of Vogue magazine. While the dispute is in itself stupid, the underlying philosophical question is not: What does it mean to be a man, especially in this age of gender fluidity and binaries in question? Also, we talk about single motherhood and the police.

With Obama's self-proclaimed "chief propagandist" who wants to "rethink the First Amendment," a guy who thinks no one should live past 75 and another guy who thinks Americans should "do as they're told" advising on COVID, and a lobbying-industrial complex rapidly filling the new President's cabinet, we're in for a hard "return to normalcy" where "normalcy" means control by the moneyed elites of everything--and a continued boxing out of progressives and populist conservatives from any of the big decisions of life or government.

Considering the fact that rumor has it Dick Cheney will be advising Joe Biden on foreign policy, that his cabinet will be full of Big Tech people, Big Banking people, and military-industrial complexers, what can We the People do to try and preserve personal freedom and hold back the tide of authoritarian nannyism and faux-victimhood that is rising far faster than worldwide sea levels?