Mercury Confidential: Building a network

By Meg Storm

Ever wonder what goes on behind the scenes at Mercury Radio Arts? Just how do all of Glenn’s crazy ideas get done? Does anyone ever get a chance to sleep? Well, over the next few months we are going to take you inside MRA, giving you the inside scoop on everything from publishing to special events, 1791 to Markdown to GBTV. We will be interviewing members of our New York, Columbus, and Dallas staff, bringing you all the info, so you can know what it’s really like to work for Glenn. Part 1 (Kevin Balfe - Publishing), Part 2 (Liz Julis - GBTV/Special Events)

Joel Cheatwood, President/Chief Content Officer at The Blaze, has lived in just about every major city in the United States, and he has worked for just about every major network. For a man who has spent his remarkable career running news divisions and creating programming for the biggest names in the business, it may come as a surprise that he once hated TV… with a passion.

Cheatwood started his career while he was still in college as a sport’s reporter for a small daily newspaper in Fresno, California. After about a year with the paper, his editor approached him with some bittersweet news.

“One day, I think I had been there about a year, the editor called and said, ‘We are going to lay off a whole bunch of people, and I am keeping you, which is the good news. The bad news is I am taking you off sports, and now you have to go report on city government.’ I had no interest, no idea, no knowledge,” Cheatwood recalled.

Unfortunately, he didn’t have much time to get his head around the idea. The editor gave him an assignment for 7 o’clock that night that had him reporting on a city council meeting. “I showed up and was totally lost,” he said. “I had no idea what they were talking about – zoning ordinances and all this stuff – and I was expected to write a story that night. Fortunately, a veteran reporter saw that I was sweating bullets and pulled me aside and basically said, this is what it boils down to, and she helped me write my story that night.”

The job ultimately led Cheatwood into the television industry, which ended up being a much tougher transition than he anticipated. “I followed my friends into television, and I hated it with a passion,” he said laughing. “I was used to writing these long stories and not worrying too much about editing, and suddenly I had to write these 30 second stories, so that was frustrating.”

On top of that, the technology was extremely difficult to work with. “When I started, way back in the dark ages, we were using film – film and some video – so when you scripted stories you had to script with A-roll, B-roll, gang roll – it was this horrible complex scripting thing that I just couldn’t get my head around and just hated it.”

But everything changed soon after that. “For some reason, after several weeks, I don’t know, but the light bulb went off and I got it, and from that point forward I just fell in love with television. I loved the technical aspect of it and embraced it.”

From there, Cheatwood crisscrossed the country working his way up the ladder. “I went to work at a CBS affiliate in Fresno, California, while I was still in college; and then moved to San Francisco – a CBS affiliate in San Francisco. I became the youngest executive producer in a major market television station. Then I went back to Fresno to be a news director; and then to Richmond, Virginia as a news director; and then Cleveland, Ohio as an assistant news director; and then Miami as a news director at WSVN; and then to Los Angeles to work for Twentieth Century Fox, where I was the vice president of non-fiction programming; and then back to Miami, same station, and took over news programming and promotion; and then we bought a station in Boston, and I oversaw news and promotion at both of those stations; and then to Chicago to the NBC station; then to Philadelphia to the CBS station where I was station manager.”

Is your head spinning? Because he is not done yet…

“From there I became the executive vice president of news for CBS owned and operated stations. I left there and went to CNN, where I became the executive director of program development; and then to Fox News where I was the senior vice president of program development; and then here.”

“I think we have lived in every major city in the country,” he joked.

It was about seven years ago, while Cheatwood was working at CNN, that a little known radio host named Glenn Beck first came across his radar.

“I will never forget it. I got a phone call from George Hiltzik, who is Glenn’s agent,” he said. “For some reason I think I picked up my own phone that day, which was odd, and George said, ‘My name is George Hiltzik, and I am the only agent at NS Bienstock that you haven’t met,’ which I thought was pretty clever. And he said, ‘I have this radio client. Would you do me a favor and just listen to a part of his show because I think he has something, and I would like your opinion.’”

It was fate that Cheatwood even answered his phone, let alone listened to some of Glenn’s radio program. “I also oversaw talent development at CNN, so I was just inundated with this stuff, but for whatever reason, I logged onto the website, and I started listening. I was captivated and listened for like 15 minutes. George called me back, I think it was the next day, and said, ‘Did you listen? What did you think?’ And I said, ‘I think there is something there.’”

It was Glenn’s candidness that made him so attractive to Cheatwood. “I mean the guy is genuine and compelling, and he has whatever that ‘it’ sort of thing is.”

“There is a just a complete genuine nature that you can’t teach because it’s just him,” he continued. “He means what he says and says what he means. And you can really tell. There is a trust and a bond that is built with his audience. You know, outside of Oprah, and I don’t even think she has it, there is not a talent or personality that has that bond with their audience. I mean it is just incredible.”

Because he knew nothing about Glenn other than what he heard on the radio program, Cheatwood asked Hiltzik for a little more information. Hiltzik suggested Cheatwood send one of his people down to Philadelphia (where Glenn was broadcasting from at the time) to sit in on some of Glenn’s radio broadcast.

“So I did kind of a mean thing,” Cheatwood explained. “I decided to send a producer, who shall remain nameless, I mean I love her, but she hates everything to begin with. She is tough to please, and her default setting is cynicism – nobody is as good as they say they are, everybody sucks until they prove differently. So I thought, I’ll send her, she’s going to go down there and say, ‘This guy is a whacko,’ and it will be done.’”

A couple days later, Cheatwood sent his person to Philadelphia. About an hour into Glenn’s broadcast, he got a response from the producer that he never expected to hear.

“I said, ‘Well what do you think?’ And she said, ‘He is amazing.’ And I said, ‘You’re kidding. What happened to you?’ And she said, ‘No seriously, this guy is the real deal. He’s got it, and you can tell he means what he says.’”

Cheatwood knew that if Glenn could impress this particular producer, there was definitely something there to work with. “I think I called George [Hiltzik] this time, and I said, ‘She likes him. My person likes him. So why don’t we set up a meeting?’”

It took a couple of weeks to schedule, but the meeting day finally arrived. Cheatwood remembers Glenn arrived with Chris Balfe, Chief Operating Officer of Mercury, Hiltzik, and another representative from NS Bienstock. In an industry where first impressions are key, Glenn certainly took an interesting approach.

“The first thing Glenn said is, ‘I really appreciate you having us here, but you need to understand that CNN would be the absolute last place I would do television. In fact, I don’t want to do television, but this would be the last place. But, as a courtesy, I decided to come,’” Cheatwood recalled laughing. “I spent the next hour trying to convince him that we were trying to create a place that would be very welcoming for him, and I could see that he was slowly warming up to it.”

By the end of the conversation, Cheatwood had a proposition. “I said, ‘Here is the deal I would offer you. Let’s shoot a pilot. I will pay for the entire thing. All I need is your time and your talent. And the worst thing that could happen is you’ll walk out of here with a DVD that you can use to go to HBO with or go to Showtime with or whatever. The best case scenario is we do something really special, and we do business together.’”

The meeting ended with Glenn agreeing to consider the offer, and Cheatwood got his answer soon after. “I think it was a couple of days later that [Glenn] called and said, ‘Ok, if you are willing to do that, I am willing to give you the time.’”

Little did Cheatwood know, getting Glenn on board would actually be the easy part. “We spent the next couple of months coordinating schedules and shooting this pilot,” he explained. “And then it took me a year to sell it to CNN.”

In January 2006, CNN’s Headline News (now HLN) announced that Glenn would be joining its evening line-up with a daily topical talk show aptly titled, “Glenn Beck.” The show got off to a rocky start, and not long after the show debuted, Cheatwood remembers having a conversation with Glenn that changed everything.

“I probably gained more respect for him from this experience than anything else,” Cheatwood said. “Glenn had been on the air for 30 days at CNN. He walked into my office, and he said, ‘Ok, we have been on the air a month. What do you think?’ It was of one of those things where my door was open and he just walked in, so I told him to close the door.”

“And Glenn said, ‘Well this isn’t good.’ So he sits down, and I said, ‘Glenn, the show is a train wreck.’ And he said, ‘Yeah, I kind of think so too.’ And I said, ‘I know you thought you could walk in and just do TV, but it’s a train wreck.”

Glenn, whose great strength is his ability to convey his passion and connect with the audience, was struggling to relate to the content of the show. “Glenn said, ‘You know, I am just not connecting with the content. I feel like I am just kind of saying the words.’ I said, ‘Okay, starting tomorrow, don’t do any story you don’t feel passionate about.’ And he said, ‘Can I do that?’ And I said, ‘You absolutely can do that. You have to do that. So from now, you only talk about things that you feel you have a passion for – that you feel you can convey that sort of visceral connection to the story to the viewer.’ And he said, ‘You’re right. That is exactly what I am going to do.’”

“And that was the turning point,” Cheatwood said. “From that point forward the show just got exponentially better, and to this day – as a witness every day I can tell you – he will not do a story that he is not somehow connected to.”

Cheatwood ultimately left CNN, while Glenn’s program was still on the air, and joined Fox News as the senior vice president of program development. Cheatwood, who knew the terms of Glenn’s contract, was eager to work with him again.

“I left CNN and had been at Fox for a year. I contacted Chris [Balfe] as soon as I was able to, and just said, ‘Hey, I would love to talk to you about coming over here.’ And those conversations went on for a very long time,” Cheatwood said. “There were at least three or four dinners with Roger Ailes, and really up until a week or two prior, I didn’t think we would be able to make a deal. Glenn was such a different animal for Fox. Fox was used to developing their own talent, but Glenn was already a star, so it was a marrying of cultures to finally get that done.”

Cheatwood remained at Fox News until April 2011, when he left the network to join Mercury Radio Arts, Glenn’s company, full time. He came on as President/Programming of GBTV, and oversaw the launch of the network and creation of its programming. With the merge of GBTV and The Blaze, Cheatwood is now one of four presidents of The Blaze. “I am the chief content officer,” he explained. “So I oversee all content for TV, web,– whatever The Blaze is involved in, I oversee content for.”

This means Cheatwood, maybe more than anyone else, is on the receiving end of the bulk of Glenn’s ideas – which means of a lot of his day is spent figuring out what’s possible and what’s not.

“I mean if Glenn generates 10,000 ideas a day, you somehow have to be able to tell him that 9,990 of them are not going to get done. Or 5,000 of them are just so outrageous, we could never do them,” Cheatwood said. “The major challenge is often just managing his expectations and his creativity.”

It is this same creativity, however, that made working for Glenn so enticing. “I have had the pleasure of working with some incredible creative geniuses. I worked with Barry Diller; I worked with Rupert Murdoch; I worked with Roger Ailes. Glenn is the most creative person I’ve worked for. He sees the world so differently, not just in terms of the ideas that he generates, but he will take ideas that you have and turn them into something you could never imagine. Being in that creative environment is exhilarating.”

“And the second part of that,” he continued, “is you never know what we are going to do, which is great. I am a person that – and as my career hopping would indicate – has a pretty short attention span. I am not the type of person who can work on the same widget every day, and I think this company just moves so rapidly, in so many different directions, it’s just a great roller coaster ride.”

For Cheatwood, who says he was not the least bit surprised when Glenn pitched the creation of GBTV, the merging of GBTV and The Blaze is a natural progression with exciting opportunities.

“I think first and foremost it is the combination of two great resources,” he said. “And we decided to take full advantage of the sum versus just the value of the parts. As we did the equation, it just made all the sense in the world. Suddenly you are combining not only all the physical resources that we have, but all the consumers. And you have this incredible multi-media platform that we would be foolish not to take advantage of.”

He is also looking forward to better utilizing the content The Blaze already creates. “The Blaze will continue to operate as a news and information source, and we think that is just an enormous upside. We don’t think we have scratched the surface in terms of the kind of journalism that The Blaze can provide,” Cheatwood explained. “I think that the TV side will be a direct beneficiary. I would love to see the journalists at The Blaze really play a leadership role in developing the content for all of our shows, so that Glenn is routinely drawing from stories The Blaze is breaking, and Real News certainly, and then new shows that we develop. It’s kind of a goldmine of information and ideas that we can develop for television.”

It will be exciting to see what comes out of this new endeavor, as ideas continue to evolve and new opportunities emerge. Cheatwood’s career has taken him so many places over the years, and he has pretty much experienced it all. Perhaps it is the fact that Glenn never ceases to keep him on his toes that makes their partnership work so well.

When asked to share his favorite story about Glenn, Cheatwood recounted a moment that probably took 10 years off his life, but perfectly sums up what it is like to work with Glenn.

The story involves a live broadcast from Wilmington, Ohio of Glenn’s Fox News show. The broadcast was part of his America’s First Christmas events in 2010.

It was nearing 5 o’clock, and the theater was filled with excited fans. “We are in this theater, and it was packed,” Cheatwood recalled. “You know there was this gorgeous stage and there is great anticipation and electricity.”

Because this was an older theater, the backstage area was very convoluted, with a maze of dimly lit tunnels separating the stage from Glenn’s dressing area. “The floor manager was saying, ‘5 minutes to air,’ so we are trying to get word to Glenn,” he said. “It was just this weird sort of cut up path from where he was to the stage.”

“The stage manager says, ‘2 minutes to air,’ and no Glenn. ‘One minute to air,’ still no Glenn. So I am on stage, and I am just running through my head, Okay, we are going to go live on Fox News at 5 o’clock, what if he isn’t here? And I am thinking, Do I try to find Stu and stick him in front of the camera? Do I walk out there and say, ‘We hope Glenn will join us soon’?”

“I am already envisioning the repercussions. I am going to get this phone call from Roger Ailes, so I am prepping in my head for this catastrophe,” Cheatwood said. “And the stage manager says, ‘30 seconds to air.’ I am literally sweating bullets.”

“At about 30 seconds to air Spencer, Glenn’s security guard, comes barreling from this dark maze, and Glenn is running behind him and looks at me, and I just shake my head. He says, ‘What? I am here. What?’ And literally I would say seven seconds later we were on the air. And this whole time Glenn is like, ‘Hey, what? I made it.’”

“He does that a lot,” Cheatwood said with a laugh. “That’s Glenn.”

Cheatwood is happily married to "the most wonderful woman in the world" who has been his partner in this great adventure. He also has two grown sons and three furry kids who rule the house.

The truth behind ‘defense’: How America was rebranded for war

PAUL J. RICHARDS / Staff | Getty Images

Donald Trump emphasizes peace through strength, reminding the world that the United States is willing to fight to win. That’s beyond ‘defense.’

President Donald Trump made headlines this week by signaling a rebrand of the Defense Department — restoring its original name, the Department of War.

At first, I was skeptical. “Defense” suggests restraint, a principle I consider vital to U.S. foreign policy. “War” suggests aggression. But for the first 158 years of the republic, that was the honest name: the Department of War.

A Department of War recognizes the truth: The military exists to fight and, if necessary, to win decisively.

The founders never intended a permanent standing army. When conflict came — the Revolution, the War of 1812, the trenches of France, the beaches of Normandy — the nation called men to arms, fought, and then sent them home. Each campaign was temporary, targeted, and necessary.

From ‘war’ to ‘military-industrial complex’

Everything changed in 1947. President Harry Truman — facing the new reality of nuclear weapons, global tension, and two world wars within 20 years — established a full-time military and rebranded the Department of War as the Department of Defense. Americans resisted; we had never wanted a permanent army. But Truman convinced the country it was necessary.

Was the name change an early form of political correctness? A way to soften America’s image as a global aggressor? Or was it simply practical? Regardless, the move created a permanent, professional military. But it also set the stage for something Truman’s successor, President Dwight “Ike” Eisenhower, famously warned about: the military-industrial complex.

Ike, the five-star general who commanded Allied forces in World War II and stormed Normandy, delivered a harrowing warning during his farewell address: The military-industrial complex would grow powerful. Left unchecked, it could influence policy and push the nation toward unnecessary wars.

And that’s exactly what happened. The Department of Defense, with its full-time and permanent army, began spending like there was no tomorrow. Weapons were developed, deployed, and sometimes used simply to justify their existence.

Peace through strength

When Donald Trump said this week, “I don’t want to be defense only. We want defense, but we want offense too,” some people freaked out. They called him a warmonger. He isn’t. Trump is channeling a principle older than him: peace through strength. Ronald Reagan preached it; Trump is taking it a step further.

Just this week, Trump also suggested limiting nuclear missiles — hardly the considerations of a warmonger — echoing Reagan, who wanted to remove missiles from silos while keeping them deployable on planes.

The seemingly contradictory move of Trump calling for a Department of War sends a clear message: He wants Americans to recognize that our military exists not just for defense, but to project power when necessary.

Trump has pointed to something critically important: The best way to prevent war is to have a leader who knows exactly who he is and what he will do. Trump signals strength, deterrence, and resolve. You want to negotiate? Great. You don’t? Then we’ll finish the fight decisively.

That’s why the world listens to us. That’s why nations come to the table — not because Trump is reckless, but because he means what he says and says what he means. Peace under weakness invites aggression. Peace under strength commands respect.

Trump is the most anti-war president we’ve had since Jimmy Carter. But unlike Carter, Trump isn’t weak. Carter’s indecision emboldened enemies and made the world less safe. Trump’s strength makes the country stronger. He believes in peace as much as any president. But he knows peace requires readiness for war.

Names matter

When we think of “defense,” we imagine cybersecurity, spy programs, and missile shields. But when we think of “war,” we recall its harsh reality: death, destruction, and national survival. Trump is reminding us what the Department of Defense is really for: war. Not nation-building, not diplomacy disguised as military action, not endless training missions. War — full stop.

Chip Somodevilla / Staff | Getty Images

Names matter. Words matter. They shape identity and character. A Department of Defense implies passivity, a posture of reaction. A Department of War recognizes the truth: The military exists to fight and, if necessary, to win decisively.

So yes, I’ve changed my mind. I’m for the rebranding to the Department of War. It shows strength to the world. It reminds Americans, internally and externally, of the reality we face. The Department of Defense can no longer be a euphemism. Our military exists for war — not without deterrence, but not without strength either. And we need to stop deluding ourselves.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Unveiling the Deep State: From surveillance to censorship

Chip Somodevilla / Staff | Getty Images

From surveillance abuse to censorship, the deep state used state power and private institutions to suppress dissent and influence two US elections.

The term “deep state” has long been dismissed as the province of cranks and conspiracists. But the recent declassification of two critical documents — the Durham annex, released by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), and a report publicized by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard — has rendered further denial untenable.

These documents lay bare the structure and function of a bureaucratic, semi-autonomous network of agencies, contractors, nonprofits, and media entities that together constitute a parallel government operating alongside — and at times in opposition to — the duly elected one.

The ‘deep state’ is a self-reinforcing institutional machine — a decentralized, global bureaucracy whose members share ideological alignment.

The disclosures do not merely recount past abuses; they offer a schematic of how modern influence operations are conceived, coordinated, and deployed across domestic and international domains.

What they reveal is not a rogue element operating in secret, but a systematized apparatus capable of shaping elections, suppressing dissent, and laundering narratives through a transnational network of intelligence, academia, media, and philanthropic institutions.

Narrative engineering from the top

According to Gabbard’s report, a pivotal moment occurred on December 9, 2016, when the Obama White House convened its national security leadership in the Situation Room. Attendees included CIA Director John Brennan, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, National Security Agency Director Michael Rogers, FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Secretary of State John Kerry, and others.

During this meeting, the consensus view up to that point — that Russia had not manipulated the election outcome — was subordinated to new instructions.

The record states plainly: The intelligence community was directed to prepare an assessment “per the President’s request” that would frame Russia as the aggressor and then-presidential candidate Donald Trump as its preferred candidate. Notably absent was any claim that new intelligence had emerged. The motivation was political, not evidentiary.

This maneuver became the foundation for the now-discredited 2017 intelligence community assessment on Russian election interference. From that point on, U.S. intelligence agencies became not neutral evaluators of fact but active participants in constructing a public narrative designed to delegitimize the incoming administration.

Institutional and media coordination

The ODNI report and the Durham annex jointly describe a feedback loop in which intelligence is laundered through think tanks and nongovernmental organizations, then cited by media outlets as “independent verification.” At the center of this loop are agencies like the CIA, FBI, and ODNI; law firms such as Perkins Coie; and NGOs such as the Open Society Foundations.

According to the Durham annex, think tanks including the Atlantic Council, the Carnegie Endowment, and the Center for a New American Security were allegedly informed of Clinton’s 2016 plan to link Trump to Russia. These institutions, operating under the veneer of academic independence, helped diffuse the narrative into public discourse.

Media coordination was not incidental. On the very day of the aforementioned White House meeting, the Washington Post published a front-page article headlined “Obama Orders Review of Russian Hacking During Presidential Campaign” — a story that mirrored the internal shift in official narrative. The article marked the beginning of a coordinated media campaign that would amplify the Trump-Russia collusion narrative throughout the transition period.

Surveillance and suppression

Surveillance, once limited to foreign intelligence operations, was turned inward through the abuse of FISA warrants. The Steele dossier — funded by the Clinton campaign via Perkins Coie and Fusion GPS — served as the basis for wiretaps on Trump affiliates, despite being unverified and partially discredited. The FBI even altered emails to facilitate the warrants.

ROBYN BECK / Contributor | Getty Images

This capacity for internal subversion reappeared in 2020, when 51 former intelligence officials signed a letter labeling the Hunter Biden laptop story as “Russian disinformation.” According to polling, 79% of Americans believed truthful coverage of the laptop could have altered the election. The suppression of that story — now confirmed as authentic — was election interference, pure and simple.

A machine, not a ‘conspiracy theory’

The deep state is a self-reinforcing institutional machine — a decentralized, global bureaucracy whose members share ideological alignment and strategic goals.

Each node — law firms, think tanks, newsrooms, federal agencies — operates with plausible deniability. But taken together, they form a matrix of influence capable of undermining electoral legitimacy and redirecting national policy without democratic input.

The ODNI report and the Durham annex mark the first crack in the firewall shielding this machine. They expose more than a political scandal buried in the past. They lay bare a living system of elite coordination — one that demands exposure, confrontation, and ultimately dismantling.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Trump's proposal explained: Ukraine's path to peace without NATO expansion

ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS / Contributor | Getty Images

Strategic compromise, not absolute victory, often ensures lasting stability.

When has any country been asked to give up land it won in a war? Even if a nation is at fault, the punishment must be measured.

After World War I, Germany, the main aggressor, faced harsh penalties under the Treaty of Versailles. Germans resented the restrictions, and that resentment fueled the rise of Adolf Hitler, ultimately leading to World War II. History teaches that justice for transgressions must avoid creating conditions for future conflict.

Ukraine and Russia must choose to either continue the cycle of bloodshed or make difficult compromises in pursuit of survival and stability.

Russia and Ukraine now stand at a similar crossroads. They can cling to disputed land and prolong a devastating war, or they can make concessions that might secure a lasting peace. The stakes could not be higher: Tens of thousands die each month, and the choice between endless bloodshed and negotiated stability hinges on each side’s willingness to yield.

History offers a guide. In 1967, Israel faced annihilation. Surrounded by hostile armies, the nation fought back and seized large swaths of territory from Jordan, Egypt, and Syria. Yet Israel did not seek an empire. It held only the buffer zones needed for survival and returned most of the land. Security and peace, not conquest, drove its decisions.

Peace requires concessions

Secretary of State Marco Rubio says both Russia and Ukraine will need to “get something” from a peace deal. He’s right. Israel proved that survival outweighs pride. By giving up land in exchange for recognition and an end to hostilities, it stopped the cycle of war. Egypt and Israel have not fought in more than 50 years.

Russia and Ukraine now press opposing security demands. Moscow wants a buffer to block NATO. Kyiv, scarred by invasion, seeks NATO membership — a pledge that any attack would trigger collective defense by the United States and Europe.

President Donald Trump and his allies have floated a middle path: an Article 5-style guarantee without full NATO membership. Article 5, the core of NATO’s charter, declares that an attack on one is an attack on all. For Ukraine, such a pledge would act as a powerful deterrent. For Russia, it might be more palatable than NATO expansion to its border

Andrew Harnik / Staff | Getty Images

Peace requires concessions. The human cost is staggering: U.S. estimates indicate 20,000 Russian soldiers died in a single month — nearly half the total U.S. casualties in Vietnam — and the toll on Ukrainians is also severe. To stop this bloodshed, both sides need to recognize reality on the ground, make difficult choices, and anchor negotiations in security and peace rather than pride.

Peace or bloodshed?

Both Russia and Ukraine claim deep historical grievances. Ukraine arguably has a stronger claim of injustice. But the question is not whose parchment is older or whose deed is more valid. The question is whether either side is willing to trade some land for the lives of thousands of innocent people. True security, not historical vindication, must guide the path forward.

History shows that punitive measures or rigid insistence on territorial claims can perpetuate cycles of war. Germany’s punishment after World War I contributed directly to World War II. By contrast, Israel’s willingness to cede land for security and recognition created enduring peace. Ukraine and Russia now face the same choice: Continue the cycle of bloodshed or make difficult compromises in pursuit of survival and stability.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

The loneliness epidemic: Are machines replacing human connection?

NurPhoto / Contributor | Getty Images

Seniors, children, and the isolated increasingly rely on machines for conversation, risking real relationships and the emotional depth that only humans provide.

Jill Smola is 75 years old. She’s a retiree from Orlando, Florida, and she spent her life caring for the elderly. She played games, assembled puzzles, and offered company to those who otherwise would have sat alone.

Now, she sits alone herself. Her husband has died. She has a lung condition. She can’t drive. She can’t leave her home. Weeks can pass without human interaction.

Loneliness is an epidemic. And AI will not fix it. It will only dull the edges and make a diminished life tolerable.

But CBS News reports that she has a new companion. And she likes this companion more than her own daughter.

The companion? Artificial intelligence.

She spends five hours a day talking to her AI friend. They play games, do trivia, and just talk. She says she even prefers it to real people.

My first thought was simple: Stop this. We are losing our humanity.

But as I sat with the story, I realized something uncomfortable. Maybe we’ve already lost some of our humanity — not to AI, but to ourselves.

Outsourcing presence

How often do we know the right thing to do yet fail to act? We know we should visit the lonely. We know we should sit with someone in pain. We know what Jesus would do: Notice the forgotten, touch the untouchable, offer time and attention without outsourcing compassion.

Yet how often do we just … talk about it? On the radio, online, in lectures, in posts. We pontificate, and then we retreat.

I asked myself: What am I actually doing to close the distance between knowing and doing?

Human connection is messy. It’s inconvenient. It takes patience, humility, and endurance. AI doesn’t challenge you. It doesn’t interrupt your day. It doesn’t ask anything of you. Real people do. Real people make us confront our pride, our discomfort, our loneliness.

We’ve built an economy of convenience. We can have groceries delivered, movies streamed, answers instantly. But friendships — real relationships — are slow, inefficient, unpredictable. They happen in the blank spaces of life that we’ve been trained to ignore.

And now we’re replacing that inefficiency with machines.

AI provides comfort without challenge. It eliminates the risk of real intimacy. It’s an elegant coping mechanism for loneliness, but a poor substitute for life. If we’re not careful, the lonely won’t just be alone — they’ll be alone with an anesthetic, a shadow that never asks for anything, never interrupts, never makes them grow.

Reclaiming our humanity

We need to reclaim our humanity. Presence matters. Not theory. Not outrage. Action.

It starts small. Pull up a chair for someone who eats alone. Call a neighbor you haven’t spoken to in months. Visit a nursing home once a month — then once a week. Ask their names, hear their stories. Teach your children how to be present, to sit with someone in grief, without rushing to fix it.

Turn phones off at dinner. Make Sunday afternoons human time. Listen. Ask questions. Don’t post about it afterward. Make the act itself sacred.

Humility is central. We prefer machines because we can control them. Real people are inconvenient. They interrupt our narratives. They demand patience, forgiveness, and endurance. They make us confront ourselves.

A friend will challenge your self-image. A chatbot won’t.

Our homes are quieter. Our streets are emptier. Loneliness is an epidemic. And AI will not fix it. It will only dull the edges and make a diminished life tolerable.

Before we worry about how AI will reshape humanity, we must first practice humanity. It can start with 15 minutes a day of undivided attention, presence, and listening.

Change usually comes when pain finally wins. Let’s not wait for that. Let’s start now. Because real connection restores faster than any machine ever will.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.