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The 2016 election will come down to one word: Authentic

April 16, 2015
Wilson

Writer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

VIDEO

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

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

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

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

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

Wasserman Shultz: Certainly not on a whim.

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

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

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

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

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

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

VIDEO

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

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

A Sharia enclave is quietly taking root in America. It's time to wake up.

NOVA SAFO / Staff | Getty Images

Sharia-based projects like the Meadow in Texas show how political Islam grows quietly, counting on Americans to stay silent while an incompatible legal system takes root.

Apolitical system completely incompatible with the Constitution is gaining ground in the United States, and we are pretending it is not happening.

Sharia — the legal and political framework of Islam — is being woven into developments, institutions, and neighborhoods, including a massive project in Texas. And the consequences will be enormous if we continue to look the other way.

This is the contradiction at the heart of political Islam: It claims universal authority while insisting its harshest rules will never be enforced here. That promise does not stand up to scrutiny. It never has.

Before we can have an honest debate, we’d better understand what Sharia represents. Sharia is not simply a set of religious rules about prayer or diet. It is a comprehensive legal and political structure that governs marriage, finance, criminal penalties, and civic life. It is a parallel system that claims supremacy wherever it takes hold.

This is where the distinction matters. Many Muslims in America want nothing to do with Sharia governance. They came here precisely because they lived under it. But political Islam — the movement that seeks to implement Sharia as law — is not the same as personal religious belief.

It is a political ideology with global ambitions, much like communism. Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently warned that Islamist movements do not seek peaceful coexistence with the West. They seek dominance. History backs him up.

How Sharia arrives

Political Islam does not begin with dramatic declarations. It starts quietly, through enclaves that operate by their own rules. That is why the development once called EPIC City — now rebranded as the Meadow — is so concerning. Early plans framed it as a Muslim-only community built around a mega-mosque and governed by Sharia-compliant financing. After state investigations were conducted, the branding changed, but the underlying intent remained the same.

Developers have openly described practices designed to keep non-Muslims out, using fees and ownership structures to create de facto religious exclusivity. This is not assimilation. It is the construction of a parallel society within a constitutional republic.

The warning from those who have lived under it

Years ago, local imams in Texas told me, without hesitation, that certain Sharia punishments “just work.” They spoke about cutting off hands for theft, stoning adulterers, and maintaining separate standards of testimony for men and women. They insisted it was logical and effective while insisting they would never attempt to implement it in Texas.

But when pressed, they could not explain why a system they consider divinely mandated would suddenly stop applying once someone crossed a border.

This is the contradiction at the heart of political Islam: It claims universal authority while insisting its harshest rules will never be enforced here. That promise does not stand up to scrutiny. It never has.

AASHISH KIPHAYET / Contributor | Getty Images

America is vulnerable

Europe is already showing us where this road leads. No-go zones, parallel courts, political intimidation, and clerics preaching supremacy have taken root across major cities.

America’s strength has always come from its melting pot, but assimilation requires boundaries. It requires insisting that the Constitution, not religious law, is the supreme authority on this soil.

Yet we are becoming complacent, even fearful, about saying so. We mistake silence for tolerance. We mistake avoidance for fairness. Meanwhile, political Islam views this hesitation as weakness.

Religious freedom is one of America’s greatest gifts. Muslims may worship freely here, as they should. But political Islam must not be permitted to plant a flag on American soil. The Constitution cannot coexist with a system that denies equal rights, restricts speech, subordinates women, and places clerical authority above civil law.

Wake up before it is too late

Projects like the Meadow are not isolated. They are test runs, footholds, proofs of concept. Political Islam operates with patience. It advances through demographic growth, legal ambiguity, and cultural hesitation — and it counts on Americans being too polite, too distracted, or too afraid to confront it.

We cannot afford that luxury. If we fail to defend the principles that make this country free, we will one day find ourselves asking how a parallel system gained power right in front of us. The answer will be simple: We looked away.

The time to draw boundaries and to speak honestly is now. The time to defend the Constitution as the supreme law of the land is now. Act while there is still time.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Why do Americans feel so empty?

Mario Tama / Staff | Getty Images

Anxiety, anger, and chronic dissatisfaction signal a country searching for meaning. Without truth and purpose, politics becomes a dangerous substitute for identity.

We have built a world overflowing with noise, convenience, and endless choice, yet something essential has slipped out of reach. You can sense it in the restless mood of the country, the anxiety among young people who cannot explain why they feel empty, in the angry confusion that dominates our politics.

We have more wealth than any nation in history, but the heart of the culture feels strangely malnourished. Before we can debate debt or elections, we must confront the reality that we created a world of things, but not a world of purpose.

You cannot survive a crisis you refuse to name, and you cannot rebuild a world whose foundations you no longer understand.

What we are living through is not just economic or political dysfunction. It is the vacuum that appears when a civilization mistakes abundance for meaning.

Modern life is stuffed with everything except what the human soul actually needs. We built systems to make life faster, easier, and more efficient — and then wondered why those systems cannot teach our children who they are, why they matter, or what is worth living for.

We tell the next generation to chase success, influence, and wealth, turning childhood into branding. We ask kids what they want to do, not who they want to be. We build a world wired for dopamine rather than dignity, and then we wonder why so many people feel unmoored.

When everything is curated, optimized, and delivered at the push of a button, the question “what is my life for?” gets lost in the static.

The crisis beneath the headlines

It is not just the young who feel this crisis. Every part of our society is straining under the weight of meaninglessness.

Look at the debt cycle — the mathematical fate no civilization has ever escaped once it crosses a threshold that we seem to have already blown by. While ordinary families feel the pressure, our leaders respond with distraction, with denial, or by rewriting the very history that could have warned us.

You cannot survive a crisis you refuse to name, and you cannot rebuild a world whose foundations you no longer understand.

We have entered a cultural moment where the noise is so loud that it drowns out the simplest truths. We are living in a country that no longer knows how to hear itself think.

So people go searching. Some drift toward the false promise of socialism, some toward the empty thrill of rebellion. Some simply check out. When a culture forgets what gives life meaning, it becomes vulnerable to every ideology that offers a quick answer.

The quiet return of meaning

And yet, quietly, something else is happening. Beneath the frustration and cynicism, many Americans are recognizing that meaning does not come from what we own, but from what we honor. It does not rise from success, but from virtue. It does not emerge from noise, but from the small, sacred things that modern life has pushed to the margins — the home, the table, the duty you fulfill, the person you help when no one is watching.

The danger is assuming that this rediscovery happens on its own. It does not.

Reorientation requires intention. It requires rebuilding the habits and virtues that once held us together. It requires telling the truth about our history instead of rewriting it to fit today’s narratives. And it requires acknowledging what has been erased: that meaning is inseparable from God’s presence in a nation’s life.

Harold M. Lambert / Contributor | Getty Images

Where renewal begins

We have built a world without stillness, and then we wondered why no one can hear the questions that matter. Those questions remain, whether we acknowledge them or not. They do not disappear just because we drown them in entertainment or noise. They wait for us, and the longer we ignore them, the more disoriented we become.

Meaning is still available. It is found in rebuilding the smallest, most human spaces — the places that cannot be digitized, globalized, or automated. The home. The family. The community.

These are the daily virtues that do not trend on social media, but that hold a civilization upright. If we want to repair this country, we begin there, exactly where every durable civilization has always begun: one virtue at a time, one tradition at a time, one generation at a time.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

A break in trust: A NEW Watergate is brewing in plain sight

Gary Hershorn / Contributor | Getty Images

When institutions betray the public’s trust, the country splits, and the spiral is hard to stop.

Something drastic is happening in American life. Headlines that should leave us stunned barely register anymore. Stories that once would have united the country instead dissolve into silence or shrugs.

It is not apathy exactly. It is something deeper — a growing belief that the people in charge either cannot or will not fix what is broken.

When people feel ignored or betrayed, they will align with anyone who appears willing to fight on their behalf.

I call this response the Bubba effect. It describes what happens when institutions lose so much public trust that “Bubba,” the average American minding his own business, finally throws his hands up and says, “Fine. I will handle it myself.” Not because he wants to, but because the system that was supposed to protect him now feels indifferent, corrupt, or openly hostile.

The Bubba effect is not a political movement. It is a survival instinct.

What triggers the Bubba effect

We are watching the triggers unfold in real time. When members of Congress publicly encourage active duty troops to disregard orders from the commander in chief, that is not a political squabble. When a federal judge quietly rewrites the rules so one branch of government can secretly surveil another, that is not normal. That is how republics fall. Yet these stories glided across the news cycle without urgency, without consequence, without explanation.

When the American people see the leadership class shrug, they conclude — correctly — that no one is steering the ship.

This is how the Bubba effect spreads. It is not just individuals resisting authority. It is sheriffs refusing to enforce new policies, school boards ignoring state mandates, entire communities saying, “We do not believe you anymore.” It becomes institutional, cultural, national.

A country cracking from the inside

This effect can be seen in Dearborn, Michigan. In the rise of fringe voices like Nick Fuentes. In the Epstein scandal, where powerful people could not seem to locate a single accountable adult. These stories are different in content but identical in message: The system protects itself, not you.

When people feel ignored or betrayed, they will align with anyone who appears willing to fight on their behalf. That does not mean they suddenly agree with everything that person says. It means they feel abandoned by the institutions that were supposed to be trustworthy.

The Bubba effect is what fills that vacuum.

The dangers of a faithless system

A republic cannot survive without credibility. Congress cannot oversee intelligence agencies if it refuses to discipline its own members. The military cannot remain apolitical if its chain of command becomes optional. The judiciary cannot defend the Constitution while inventing loopholes that erase the separation of powers.

History shows that once a nation militarizes politics, normalizes constitutional shortcuts, or allows government agencies to operate without scrutiny, it does not return to equilibrium peacefully. Something will give.

The question is what — and when.

The responsibility now belongs to us

In a healthy country, this is where the media steps in. This is where universities, pastors, journalists, and cultural leaders pause the outrage machine and explain what is at stake. But today, too many see themselves not as guardians of the republic, but of ideology. Their first loyalty is to narrative, not truth.

The founders never trusted the press more than the public. They trusted citizens who understood their rights, lived their responsibilities, and demanded accountability. That is the antidote to the Bubba effect — not rage, but citizenship.

How to respond without breaking ourselves

Do not riot. Do not withdraw. Do not cheer on destruction just because you dislike the target. That is how nations lose themselves. Instead, demand transparency. Call your representatives. Insist on consequences. Refuse to normalize constitutional violations simply because “everyone does it.” If you expect nothing, you will get nothing.

Do not hand your voice to the loudest warrior simply because he is swinging a bat at the establishment. You do not beat corruption by joining a different version of it. You beat it by modeling the country you want to preserve: principled, accountable, rooted in truth.

Adam Gray / Stringer | Getty Images

Every republic reaches a moment when historians will later say, “That was the warning.” We are living in ours. But warnings are gifts if they are recognized. Institutions bend. People fail. The Constitution can recover — if enough Americans still know and cherish it.

It does not take a majority. Twenty percent of the country — awake, educated, and courageous — can reset the system. It has happened before. It can happen again.

Wake up. Stand up. Demand integrity — from leaders, from institutions, and from yourself. Because the Bubba effect will not end until Americans reclaim the duty that has always belonged to them: preserving the republic for the next generation.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Grim warning: Bad-faith Israel critics duck REAL questions

Spencer Platt / Staff | Getty Images

Bad-faith attacks on Israel and AIPAC warp every debate. Real answers emerge only when people set aside scripts and ask what serves America’s long-term interests.

The search for truth has always required something very much in short supply these days: honesty. Not performative questions, not scripted outrage, not whatever happens to be trending on TikTok, but real curiosity.

Some issues, often focused on foreign aid, AIPAC, or Israel, have become hotbeds of debate and disagreement. Before we jump into those debates, however, we must return to a simpler, more important issue: honest questioning. Without it, nothing in these debates matters.

Ask questions because you want the truth, not because you want a target.

The phrase “just asking questions” has re-entered the zeitgeist, and that’s fine. We should always question power. But too many of those questions feel preloaded with someone else’s answer. If the goal is truth, then the questions should come from a sincere desire to understand, not from a hunt for a villain.

Honest desire for truth is the only foundation that can support a real conversation about these issues.

Truth-seeking is real work

Right now, plenty of people are not seeking the truth at all. They are repeating something they heard from a politician on cable news or from a stranger on TikTok who has never opened a history book. That is not a search for answers. That is simply outsourcing your own thought.

If you want the truth, you need to work for it. You cannot treat the world like a Marvel movie where the good guy appears in a cape and the villain hisses on command. Real life does not give you a neat script with the moral wrapped up in two hours.

But that is how people are approaching politics now. They want the oppressed and the oppressor, the heroic underdog and the cartoon villain. They embrace this fantastical framing because it is easier than wrestling with reality.

This framing took root in the 1960s when the left rebuilt its worldview around colonizers and the colonized. Overnight, Zionism was recast as imperialism. Suddenly, every conflict had to fit the same script. Today’s young activists are just recycling the same narrative with updated graphics. Everything becomes a morality play. No nuance, no context, just the comforting clarity of heroes and villains.

Bad-faith questions

This same mindset is fueling the sudden obsession with Israel, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in particular. You hear it from members of Congress and activists alike: AIPAC pulls the strings, AIPAC controls the government, AIPAC should register as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The questions are dramatic, but are they being asked in good faith?

FARA is clear. The standard is whether an individual or group acts under the direction or control of a foreign government. AIPAC simply does not qualify.

Here is a detail conveniently left out of these arguments: Dozens of domestic organizations — Armenian, Cuban, Irish, Turkish — lobby Congress on behalf of other countries. None of them registers under FARA because — like AIPAC — they are independent, domestic organizations.

If someone has a sincere problem with the structure of foreign lobbying, fair enough. Let us have that conversation. But singling out AIPAC alone is not a search for truth. It is bias dressed up as bravery.

Anadolu / Contributor | Getty Images

If someone wants to question foreign aid to Israel, fine. Let’s have that debate. But let’s ask the right questions. The issue is not the size of the package but whether the aid advances our interests. What does the United States gain? Does the investment strengthen our position in the region? How does it compare to what we give other nations? And do we examine those countries with the same intensity?

The real target

These questions reflect good-faith scrutiny. But narrowing the entire argument to one country or one dollar amount misses the larger problem. If someone objects to the way America handles foreign aid, the target is not Israel. The target is the system itself — an entrenched bureaucracy, poor transparency, and decades-old commitments that have never been re-examined. Those problems run through programs around the world.

If you want answers, you need to broaden the lens. You have to be willing to put aside the movie script and confront reality. You have to hold yourself to a simple rule: Ask questions because you want the truth, not because you want a target.

That is the only way this country ever gets clarity on foreign aid, influence, alliances, and our place in the world. Questioning is not just allowed. It is essential. But only if it is honest.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.