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'The Circle' Offers Full Circle Satisfaction: Progressives Unintentionally Reject Themselves

May 02, 2017
Staff

WRITER

It's not good, okay? The Circle is bad --- even by Hollywood standards. It's getting dismal reviews from both audiences and critics alike. Glenn is no exception.

"Please, dear God, do not wish that movie on any human being," Glenn said Tuesday on radio.

Why in the world would conservative mega brain and author Steve Deace urge Americans to see The Circle, calling it the most conservative movie of 2017? In a nutshell, it shows progressives imploding on their own failed beliefs.

"Glenn, always remember this when it comes to our progressive friends: Unintentional self-repudiation is always the best. Always remember that," Deace said.

Listen to this segment from The Glenn Beck Program:

GLENN: Steve Deace is a good friend of the program. Really smart and a conservative that you need to know, if you don't already. He writes for ConservativeReview.com. And I will tell you, I almost ejected him from my friend's circle when he recommended The Circle in one of his articles. The movie, The Circle. One of the worst movies of all time. He starts with this -- with this understatement. It's like saying Hitler sometimes could be --

PAT: Understatement of the century perhaps.

GLENN: -- testy.

He wrote: Make no mistake, The Circle is not a great movie by any means.

Yeah. Yeah, and Hitler was testy.

However, it's a movie I would highly recommend that every American see.

No. Stop. So I thought I would get Steve on the phone, and explain yourself to this kangaroo tribunal here, Steve.

STEVE: Well, first of all, I want to throw myself on the mercy of the court with that setup, for one.

(laughter)

STEVE: But the film does -- I mean, I found myself -- I laughed out loud with my wife at the movie several times.

GLENN: Oh, yeah, me too.

STEVE: And about two-thirds of the way through it, I leaned over to Amy, and I said, "Honey, this might be the most conservative movie that wasn't made by, you know, studios that are favorable to our belief system I've ever seen." Because I don't know, the movie may be so bad, that it's unintentional.

PAT: That's what I think.

GLENN: I think so too. I don't think they had any idea.

PAT: They did it by accident.

STEVE: And that's probably true. But when you look at -- and I point out several places where the movie gives you the full monty, if you will, of progressivism. And it shows, if we're mixing metaphors here, how it literally just chokes the life out of a civilization. And it shows that abundantly.

I mean, listen, the moment where the heroine says -- don't tell me you didn't laugh, Glenn -- when Emma Watson's character says, and here's a piece of protest art. Click on -- click frowns on our social media and send a stern message to the oppressive regime that's being protested, which I'm sure they'll understand.

GLENN: Oh, yeah.

STEVE: That's pretty much the most millennium snowflake thing of all time.

GLENN: But they meant -- but I don't think they wrote that in a way -- they meant that.

PAT: I think so.

GLENN: They meant that.

STEVE: I know. That's what makes it even better, right? When they show you honestly, here's what we really believe, where we really want to take you. The movie really plays up in its trailer, the line with Tom Hanks, says, quote, I believe in the perfectibility of man.

GLENN: Yes.

STEVE: And it really plays that up and then shows his own fallibility on parade. So I think that the fact that they didn't intend that makes it a more powerful apologetic because they think this is an infomercial.

GLENN: Okay. So, Steve, I really think that they were going to make a happy movie called The Circle. And then they realized they don't really have anything there, maybe after they started production.

And then they thought, okay. We'll make it kind of creepy, and we'll show how it can be really creepy. But they didn't want to go all the way and say that this was bad. And so this movie went nowhere.

It didn't have any idea, if it was supposed to be for The Circle or against The Circle.

STEVE: I don't disagree with that at all. And if you want to see a movie that was made earlier this year that is much better made -- it's in a different stratosphere in terms of filmmaking, that also turns progressivism on itself, I would recommend Get Out, which does exactly that.

GLENN: I haven't seen that. Oh, yeah, that's --

STEVE: I mean, Get Out. Blue state progressive. More impervious to racism, and it turns the reflection on themselves. And it's brutal to watch. That's a better deconstruction in terms of filmmaking. But I think -- I think if they had actually embraced the story they told and did that in the filmmaking process and marketed it accordingly, they might have had something. Because let's face it, a lot of Americans, a majority of Americans have -- have turned their backs on utopian schemes of progressivism. They have seen it fully immersed in the last eight years under Obama and realized that this can't deliver. This existentially, this can't do what it promises it's going to do.

The problem with the mainstream studio, with a star like Tom Hanks making a film like that, is it really goes against their stated value system. And so you can sense the conflict.

GLENN: Oh, yeah. I've never felt conflict like that. You could feel the conflict from the writing, directing, the acting. Everything.

STEVE: Yeah.

GLENN: They were so conflicted, they didn't know what to do with this.

PAT: Hmm.

STEVE: Look at one of the supporting characters Mercer.

All right. So on one hand, he throws in one of the -- one of the only real leftist true propaganda moments in the movie, when he says, you know, we have anti-trust legislation to break up all these big banks and big companies. But then this is the white guy who drives a pickup truck who wants to live off the grid, making deer and antler ornaments, and is literally -- is literally pestered by progressives, literally to death in the film.

GLENN: Yeah.

STEVE: That is the exact conflict that exists throughout the course of this movie.

GLENN: Yeah.

STEVE: And it's because, ultimately, when we enact progressivism, gentlemen, when we take it beyond the theoretical and put it in a real world, and we do things that say, no, man is not fallible. No, the world -- the creation is not fallen. And we attempt to impose a square peg in a round hole, we create those conflicts, and we're living in them in our society right now.

GLENN: Steve, can I change subjects with you?

You wrote to me this weekend. I'm having a heck of a time here in Texas finding a school for my kids. Yesterday, this school that had previously told us that it was fine, started hearing I think from parents, et cetera, et cetera, that Mormons might be attending. And so they've rejected us now. And they actually said yesterday to my wife, look, you know, kids can be cruel. And when they find out that your kids are Mormon, I mean, you know, I just -- I hate to say this, but they're going to make fun of them.

Instead of saying, by the way, if we find out any kids are making fun of your kids because they're different, this is a Christian school and, you know, we can't guarantee that that won't happen, but it won't be tolerated. No, no. Instead, they were just telling us that they were going to be made fun of. And even in class, they could be made fun of. Oh, okay.

PAT: Maybe some of the teachers.

GLENN: You know, they said in class. They can't help that. They're going to feel out of place because they won't -- they won't fit in with the --

PAT: You know, sometimes Mormon kids get locked in closets. It just happens.

STU: There are beatings.

PAT: There are beatings. Things happen.

GLENN: It's crazy.

PAT: What's the name of this school?

GLENN: I don't think that that does anything to --

JEFFY: It sure does.

PAT: It sounds like --

GLENN: No, we don't want to go -- I mean, I asked my kids, you know, do you want to go to a school -- and they were like, no. We do not want to go. We're not going.

JEFFY: That would be a shame if other people decided that same thought, if we knew the name.

PAT: So you're not saying it's Liberty Christian? You're not saying that?

GLENN: No, I'm not. No, I'm not saying that. But thank you for that.

PAT: Okay. All right. I'm glad you're not saying it's Liberty Christian. Because we wouldn't want anybody to know about that. Right? Would we?

GLENN: Okay. Thank you, Pat. Thank you, Pat.

So, Steve, if I may, you said something to me this weekend, and you said -- what is the name of this place?

STEVE: Freedom Project Academy is what it's called.

GLENN: Is that the thing you endorsed, Pat?

PAT: Yeah, uh-huh.

GLENN: And you're sending your kids through that, Steve?

STEVE: Yeah. We're going to send our youngest, our son through that. Our -- I hate to use the term "middle child" because I think there's a stigma with that, so I always call Zoe our youngest daughter. She has a couple of learning disabilities. So she requires a different level and kind of education from her mom here at home. But we're going to send Noah through that this fall. And we're looking forward to it. I first heard about these guys -- actually they came to me when you guys were putting the -- the Common Core movie together a few years ago.

GLENN: Yeah.

STEVE: And that issue was a hot burner issue. And the guy who was sort of the dean of the academy, Dr. Duke Pesta, was actually doing a lot of talks around the country, warning people about the perils of Common Core.

GLENN: Yeah, I've looked into them --

STEVE: That's where I first heard about these guys.

GLENN: Yeah, I've looked into them, and they are wildly anti-Common Core, which I love.

PAT: Yeah. It's classic education, which is important.

GLENN: Yeah. And it's a classroom situation. So they're at home. And they're watching -- participating in a classroom.

STEVE: Yeah.

You know, Noah is like pretty much any other boy. You know, we tend to think that if they're not willing to sit still for more than 20 minutes, they need to be drugged. That's kind of how we roll today.

On the other hand, he needs some structure. You know, he needs to be challenged. So mom and I -- we just decided, you know what, let's just do this program and get him a little more structure and challenge him a little bit more intellectually and put him in some inconvenient situations and get him to man up a little bit. So we thought it was the perfect fit for him.

GLENN: And the name of it again is -- what is it?

STU: Freedom.

PAT: Freedom Project.

GLENN: Freedom Project. Okay.

Steve, thank you, brother. And I just want you to know, you are on the edge of the friend's circle by recommending The Circle.

Now, I understand you can take lemons and make them into lemonade, please, dear God, do not wish that movie on any human being. If they find themselves there -- if you're strapped to a chair --

PAT: You can look for some of these things --

GLENN: You're strapped to a chair and somebody says, "Hey, The Circle has just come out, and we can watch it online," as long as they're screaming, "No, dear God, no, not The Circle," but they put it on and you can't stop it, then I understand.

STEVE: Glenn, always remember this when it comes to our progressive friends: Unintentional self-repudiation is always the best. Always remember that.

GLENN: Yep. Thanks a lot, Steve. I appreciate it.

Steve Deace from the Conservative Review, and it's always good to have him on.

The great switch: Gates trades climate control for digital dominion

Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

The Big Tech billionaire once said humanity must change or perish. Now he claims we’ll survive — just as elites prepare total surveillance.

For decades, Americans have been told that climate change is an imminent apocalypse — the existential threat that justifies every intrusion into our lives, from banning gas stoves to rationing energy to tracking personal “carbon scores.”

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates helped lead that charge. He warned repeatedly that the “climate disaster” would be the greatest crisis humanity would ever face. He invested billions in green technology and demanded the world reach net-zero emissions by 2050 “to avoid catastrophe.”

The global contest is no longer over barrels and pipelines — it is over who gets to flip the digital switch.

Now, suddenly, he wants everyone to relax: Climate change “will not lead to humanity’s demise” after all.

Gates was making less of a scientific statement and more of a strategic pivot. When elites retire a crisis, it’s never because the threat is gone — it’s because a better one has replaced it. And something else has indeed arrived — something the ruling class finds more useful than fear of the weather.The same day Gates downshifted the doomsday rhetoric, Amazon announced it would pay warehouse workers $30 an hour — while laying off 30,000 people because artificial intelligence will soon do their jobs.

Climate panic was the warm-up. AI control is the main event.

The new currency of power

The world once revolved around oil and gas. Today, it revolves around the electricity demanded by server farms, the chips that power machine learning, and the data that can be used to manipulate or silence entire populations. The global contest is no longer over barrels and pipelines — it is over who gets to flip the digital switch. Whoever controls energy now controls information. And whoever controls information controls civilization.

Climate alarmism gave elites a pretext to centralize power over energy. Artificial intelligence gives them a mechanism to centralize power over people. The future battles will not be about carbon — they will be about control.

Two futures — both ending in tyranny

Americans are already being pushed into what look like two opposing movements, but both leave the individual powerless.

The first is the technocratic empire being constructed in the name of innovation. In its vision, human work will be replaced by machines, and digital permissions will subsume personal autonomy.

Government and corporations merge into a single authority. Your identity, finances, medical decisions, and speech rights become access points monitored by biometric scanners and enforced by automated gatekeepers. Every step, purchase, and opinion is tracked under the noble banner of “efficiency.”

The second is the green de-growth utopia being marketed as “compassion.” In this vision, prosperity itself becomes immoral. You will own less because “the planet” requires it. Elites will redesign cities so life cannot extend beyond a 15-minute walking radius, restrict movement to save the Earth, and ration resources to curb “excess.” It promises community and simplicity, but ultimately delivers enforced scarcity. Freedom withers when surviving becomes a collective permission rather than an individual right.

Both futures demand that citizens become manageable — either automated out of society or tightly regulated within it. The ruling class will embrace whichever version gives them the most leverage in any given moment.

Climate panic was losing its grip. AI dependency — and the obedience it creates — is far more potent.

The forgotten way

A third path exists, but it is the one today’s elites fear most: the path laid out in our Constitution. The founders built a system that assumes human beings are not subjects to be monitored or managed, but moral agents equipped by God with rights no government — and no algorithm — can override.

Hesham Elsherif / Stringer | Getty Images

That idea remains the most “disruptive technology” in history. It shattered the belief that people need kings or experts or global committees telling them how to live. No wonder elites want it erased.

Soon, you will be told you must choose: Live in a world run by machines or in a world stripped down for planetary salvation. Digital tyranny or rationed equality. Innovation without liberty or simplicity without dignity.

Both are traps.

The only way

The only future worth choosing is the one grounded in ordered liberty — where prosperity and progress exist alongside moral responsibility and personal freedom and human beings are treated as image-bearers of God — not climate liabilities, not data profiles, not replaceable hardware components.

Bill Gates can change his tune. The media can change the script. But the agenda remains the same.

They no longer want to save the planet. They want to run it, and they expect you to obey.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Why the White House restoration sent the left Into panic mode

Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

Presidents have altered the White House for decades, yet only Donald Trump is treated as a vandal for privately funding the East Wing’s restoration.

Every time a president so much as changes the color of the White House drapes, the press clutches its pearls. Unless the name on the stationery is Barack Obama’s, even routine restoration becomes a national outrage.

President Donald Trump’s decision to privately fund upgrades to the White House — including a new state ballroom — has been met with the usual chorus of gasps and sneers. You’d think he bulldozed Monticello.

If a Republican preserves beauty, it’s vandalism. If a Democrat does the same, it’s ‘visionary.’

The irony is that presidents have altered and expanded the White House for more than a century. President Franklin D. Roosevelt added the East and West Wings in the middle of the Great Depression. Newspapers accused him of building a palace while Americans stood in breadlines. History now calls it “vision.”

First lady Nancy Reagan faced the same hysteria. Headlines accused her of spending taxpayer money on new china “while Americans starved.” In truth, she raised private funds after learning that the White House didn’t have enough matching plates for state dinners. She took the ridicule and refused to pass blame.

“I’m a big girl,” she told her staff. “This comes with the job.” That was dignity — something the press no longer recognizes.

A restoration, not a renovation

Trump’s project is different in every way that should matter. It costs taxpayers nothing. Not a cent. The president and a few friends privately fund the work. There’s no private pool or tennis court, no personal perks. The additions won’t even be completed until after he leaves office.

What’s being built is not indulgence — it’s stewardship. A restoration of aging rooms, worn fixtures, and century-old bathrooms that no longer function properly in the people’s house. Trump has paid for cast brass doorknobs engraved with the presidential seal, restored the carpets and moldings, and ensured that the architecture remains faithful to history.

The media’s response was mockery and accusations of vanity. They call it “grotesque excess,” while celebrating billion-dollar “climate art” projects and funneling hundreds of millions into activist causes like the No Kings movement. They lecture America on restraint while living off the largesse of billionaires.

The selective guardians of history

Where was this sudden reverence for history when rioters torched St. John’s Church — the same church where every president since James Madison has worshipped? The press called it an “expression of grief.”

Where was that reverence when mobs toppled statues of Washington, Jefferson, and Grant? Or when first lady Melania Trump replaced the Rose Garden’s lawn with a patio but otherwise followed Jackie Kennedy’s original 1962 plans in the garden’s restoration? They called that “desecration.”

If a Republican preserves beauty, it’s vandalism. If a Democrat does the same, it’s “visionary.”

The real desecration

The people shrieking about “historic preservation” care nothing for history. They hate the idea that something lasting and beautiful might be built by hands they despise. They mock craftsmanship because it exposes their own cultural decay.

The White House ballroom is not a scandal — it’s a mirror. And what it reflects is the media’s own pettiness. The ruling class that ridicules restoration is the same class that cheered as America’s monuments fell. Its members sneer at permanence because permanence condemns them.

Julia Beverly / Contributor | Getty Images

Trump’s improvements are an act of faith — in the nation’s symbols, its endurance, and its worth. The outrage over a privately funded renovation says less about him than it does about the journalists who mistake destruction for progress.

The real desecration isn’t happening in the East Wing. It’s happening in the newsrooms that long ago tore up their own foundation — truth — and never bothered to rebuild it.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Trump’s secret war in the Caribbean EXPOSED — It’s not about drugs

Bloomberg / Contributor | Getty Images

The president’s moves in Venezuela, Guyana, and Colombia aren’t about drugs. They’re about re-establishing America’s sovereignty across the Western Hemisphere.

For decades, we’ve been told America’s wars are about drugs, democracy, or “defending freedom.” But look closer at what’s unfolding off the coast of Venezuela, and you’ll see something far more strategic taking shape. Donald Trump’s so-called drug war isn’t about fentanyl or cocaine. It’s about control — and a rebirth of American sovereignty.

The aim of Trump’s ‘drug war’ is to keep the hemisphere’s oil, minerals, and manufacturing within the Western family and out of Beijing’s hands.

The president understands something the foreign policy class forgot long ago: The world doesn’t respect apologies. It respects strength.

While the global elites in Davos tout the Great Reset, Trump is building something entirely different — a new architecture of power based on regional independence, not global dependence. His quiet campaign in the Western Hemisphere may one day be remembered as the second Monroe Doctrine.

Venezuela sits at the center of it all. It holds the world’s largest crude oil reserves — oil perfectly suited for America’s Gulf refineries. For years, China and Russia have treated Venezuela like a pawn on their chessboard, offering predatory loans in exchange for control of those resources. The result has been a corrupt, communist state sitting in our own back yard. For too long, Washington shrugged. Not any more.The naval exercises in the Caribbean, the sanctions, the patrols — they’re not about drug smugglers. They’re about evicting China from our hemisphere.

Trump is using the old “drug war” playbook to wage a new kind of war — an economic and strategic one — without firing a shot at our actual enemies. The goal is simple: Keep the hemisphere’s oil, minerals, and manufacturing within the Western family and out of Beijing’s hands.

Beyond Venezuela

Just east of Venezuela lies Guyana, a country most Americans couldn’t find on a map a year ago. Then ExxonMobil struck oil, and suddenly Guyana became the newest front in a quiet geopolitical contest. Washington is helping defend those offshore platforms, build radar systems, and secure undersea cables — not for charity, but for strategy. Control energy, data, and shipping lanes, and you control the future.

Moreover, Colombia — a country once defined by cartels — is now positioned as the hinge between two oceans and two continents. It guards the Panama Canal and sits atop rare-earth minerals every modern economy needs. Decades of American presence there weren’t just about cocaine interdiction; they were about maintaining leverage over the arteries of global trade. Trump sees that clearly.

PEDRO MATTEY / Contributor | Getty Images

All of these recent news items — from the military drills in the Caribbean to the trade negotiations — reflect a new vision of American power. Not global policing. Not endless nation-building. It’s about strategic sovereignty.

It’s the same philosophy driving Trump’s approach to NATO, the Middle East, and Asia. We’ll stand with you — but you’ll stand on your own two feet. The days of American taxpayers funding global security while our own borders collapse are over.

Trump’s Monroe Doctrine

Critics will call it “isolationism.” It isn’t. It’s realism. It’s recognizing that America’s strength comes not from fighting other people’s wars but from securing our own energy, our own supply lines, our own hemisphere. The first Monroe Doctrine warned foreign powers to stay out of the Americas. The second one — Trump’s — says we’ll defend them, but we’ll no longer be their bank or their babysitter.

Historians may one day mark this moment as the start of a new era — when America stopped apologizing for its own interests and started rebuilding its sovereignty, one barrel, one chip, and one border at a time.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Antifa isn’t “leaderless” — It’s an organized machine of violence

Jeff J Mitchell / Staff | Getty Images

The mob rises where men of courage fall silent. The lesson from Portland, Chicago, and other blue cities is simple: Appeasing radicals doesn’t buy peace — it only rents humiliation.

Parts of America, like Portland and Chicago, now resemble occupied territory. Progressive city governments have surrendered control to street militias, leaving citizens, journalists, and even federal officers to face violent anarchists without protection.

Take Portland, where Antifa has terrorized the city for more than 100 consecutive nights. Federal officers trying to keep order face nightly assaults while local officials do nothing. Independent journalists, such as Nick Sortor, have even been arrested for documenting the chaos. Sortor and Blaze News reporter Julio Rosas later testified at the White House about Antifa’s violence — testimony that corporate media outlets buried.

Antifa is organized, funded, and emboldened.

Chicago offers the same grim picture. Federal agents have been stalked, ambushed, and denied backup from local police while under siege from mobs. Calls for help went unanswered, putting lives in danger. This is more than disorder; it is open defiance of federal authority and a violation of the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause.

A history of violence

For years, the legacy media and left-wing think tanks have portrayed Antifa as “decentralized” and “leaderless.” The opposite is true. Antifa is organized, disciplined, and well-funded. Groups like Rose City Antifa in Oregon, the Elm Fork John Brown Gun Club in Texas, and Jane’s Revenge operate as coordinated street militias. Legal fronts such as the National Lawyers Guild provide protection, while crowdfunding networks and international supporters funnel money directly to the movement.

The claim that Antifa lacks structure is a convenient myth — one that’s cost Americans dearly.

History reminds us what happens when mobs go unchecked. The French Revolution, Weimar Germany, Mao’s Red Guards — every one began with chaos on the streets. But it wasn’t random. Today’s radicals follow the same playbook: Exploit disorder, intimidate opponents, and seize moral power while the state looks away.

Dismember the dragon

The Trump administration’s decision to designate Antifa a domestic terrorist organization was long overdue. The label finally acknowledged what citizens already knew: Antifa functions as a militant enterprise, recruiting and radicalizing youth for coordinated violence nationwide.

But naming the threat isn’t enough. The movement’s financiers, organizers, and enablers must also face justice. Every dollar that funds Antifa’s destruction should be traced, seized, and exposed.

AFP Contributor / Contributor | Getty Images

This fight transcends party lines. It’s not about left versus right; it’s about civilization versus anarchy. When politicians and judges excuse or ignore mob violence, they imperil the republic itself. Americans must reject silence and cowardice while street militias operate with impunity.

Antifa is organized, funded, and emboldened. The violence in Portland and Chicago is deliberate, not spontaneous. If America fails to confront it decisively, the price won’t just be broken cities — it will be the erosion of the republic itself.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.