Ryan: Hurricane Bernie

October 03, 2019

Photo by Sean Ryan

Kevin is an award-winning writer who focuses on long-form literary nonfiction and investigative reporting.

The tropical storm kept cooking. Hurricane Bernard. A white-haired disturbance. Inland of the Gulf of Mexico 1,100 miles, no signs of stopping. Gale force winds so loud that at least one elderly woman, on that sunny August Sunday at the Iowa State Fair, had ear plugs and a sunhat, ready for disaster.

Photo by Sean Ryan

At about 15:30 hours, I observed a migration of Make America Great Again-hats, drifting westward, slowly but steadily, toward a one Mr. Bernie Sanders.

Photo by Sean Ryan

As you can see on the map here, from the southeast, a cluster of "Capitalism is Evil" sign-bearers building mass. If these opposing fronts collided, it would be catastrophic.

Photo by Sean Ryan

Then, when it could not get worse, an isolated storm to the north began moving south, from a restaurant which happened to sell alcohol, which all parties appeared to have had enough of already, and their tribal outfits differed antagonistically, ramping up the atmospheric pressure.Then came a southeastern oscillation of ditzy stoners who had just seen Bernie Sanders on Joe Rogan's podcast and wondered, would he stay around afterward so they could get a selfie together? Followed by the goat wranglers who had just finished an exhibition.

And all of it was heading to one place. The Political Soapbox stage.

Photo by Sean Ryan

A man in a motorized scooter rolled by the fenced area for media, seemingly the most innocuous of all. No, no. He was wearing a MAGA hat and had a Trump/Pence lawn sign in his front basket. He passed a 20-something who shouted something about, "Did he like his wheelchair?" and "How much will it cost the rest of us?" but the man didn't hear because it was loud and his hearing aid was loose.

Photo by Sean Ryan

Two women held hands, scoping around for people's reactions. Nobody seemed to care.Meanwhile, the anti-Bernie factions had posted up in front of the stage as Bernie's staff was fighting through a squall of reporters and admirers from the west, and the suction energies were colliding. Millibars and millibars of barometric pressure.Sunlight cut through the clouds and the world was bright all of a sudden, too bright. The metal breath of heat, scalp-frumping heat. Viperous and hateful.

A tractor-led train nudged through the rows of Sunday fairgoers, then came to a stop. The cartoon character of a conductor yanked a cord and the train made an electronic "Toot toot!" He yanked and yanked, squinting ahead, edging into a panic. The crowd had overtaken the tractor-train like a handcart lost to quicksand. A horde of people were frenzying around. Cameras, microphones, lots of urgency, lots of shouting. The conductor could see over it all. The people looked like ants carrying an orange slice. Only it was Bernie Sanders at the middle. Everyone recognized that face, that wild white hair, those fingers pointing everywhere, that hunched-back stroll.A young woman passed behind the squall, "Aw, I can see his little head." The bald spot. To her, he was Buddha.

Photo by Sean Ryan

If you turned in any direction you'd see ruddy-faced people griping at other ruddy-faced people, contorting themselves like a mime because we're not great as a country about expressing negative emotions, especially in public.If only National Geographic had covered the event. They would sauce it up with classy references to sociology. Or they'd frame the commotion as a nuanced power struggle acted out as a performance, a dance, between the authoritarians and the revolutionaries, or the such-and-such tribe versus the so-and-so tribe. Or maybe they'd pin it on something like native aggression.

Photo by Sean Ryan

To me, it was greater than that. The air had the eerie weight that precedes a tornado. It stank like when you're near a rattlesnake. It was all energy, the entire country at war in this one locale. And everyone had something to say, wanted something to do, somewhere to go, some way to matter in the rioting disaster of a struggle that is bigger than all of us, and deeper than we know, but still within arm's reach.

All at once, every person started mumbling, in one way or another, and just as quickly people clashed with their enemies and bonded excessively with their allies.

They had no choice. It was "He is red and I am blue." Followed by rictus in the face and words that imply bashing.

Photo by Sean Ryan

And the whole time this wonderful commotion was playing out, you could turn in any direction and get a turkey leg, or fried pork chop, or a bucket of cookies. Imagine if there were concession stands during the Civil War. These are the kinds of silly habits we humans indulge in.

A woman rolled her eyes as she passed the stage, "Political soapbox, ugh."A single engine plane puttered by overhead, pulling a banner that read, "Sen. Ernst what the flood?" with the logo for LCV, League of Conservation Voters, and the hashtag "climate." They want to feel the world getting hotter? Get down here, in the bubbling muck.

Last time Sanders took this stage, a thousand people gathered. Five months later, he nearly beat Hillary Clinton in the Iowa caucus, which was a shady nightmare for Bernie and his unyielding supporters. I'll tell you more about it in the "Embassy Fortress" installment of this series.

Today, Sanders was lither and sharper than he had been any of the times I'd seen him yet.Rachel Stassen-Berger, politics editor for the Des Moines Register, took the stage and introduced Bernie and laid down the ground rules. No heckling, no signs, just be Iowa nice. In some ancient ritual, a group of Trump supporters in red MAGA hats and "Iowa for Trump" T-shirts sang their tribal war songs. Crows on the powerlines stared down lustfully, waiting for someone to drop a fried pickle.

Twenty feet away, at a different gathering of Trump supporters, five middle-school-aged girls shouted as they passed a woman with a "Women for Trump sign." They said, "Racist. Racist. Racist. You're a racist. You're a racist." Every single one of them looked like Billie Eilish.

Photo by Sean Ryan

The woman shrugged, said, "I'm proud to hold this sign."Her high-school-aged daughter, nearby, rolled her eyes, "I don't care what they say."

The largest contingent of Trump supporters populated a patch of land between the fried Twinkie trailer and a lemonade booth. Right then, a massive migration of Bernie supporters, signaling their poisonousness with multi-colored hair dye, was navigating toward the stage. One particular subgroup wore T-shirts with Harry Potter references. Behind them, "Keep America Great" signs jutted up from the crowd like stiff dandelions.

It was possibly the largest Soapbox crowd yet.

"Boy that's a big crowd," Bernie said as he looked out over the stage.

He had hardly made it to the stage. From the moment he stepped through the front gates, he was surrounded by people and microphones and cameras. The New York Times reported that "he spoke to almost no one." Incorrect. He spoke to anyone who approached him. As much as he could, mobbed by media and fair-goers hoisting cell phones. What was he supposed to do, have biscuits over tea?

Out in the tempest, Benny Johnson of TurningPointUSA held a travel-size whiteboard inked with the words "Where has Socialism Worked?" above numbers next to blanks. At any given time, you could look over and see various Bernie supporters vehemently scrawling "Norway" or "Sweden" or "Canada" or "China," followed by his rebuttal and dry-erase ink smears on his hand.

Photo by Sean Ryan

Ten feet away, unaware that Johnson was filming a segment about socialism, a young man in jeans and a bandana and a sports jersey of some kind, scoffed at a roving herd of Bernie supporters. "Socialism sucks," he muttered, too quietly for them to hear, but loudly enough to find satisfaction.

Besides, the small band of Bernie supporters seemed too happy to have cared anyway. They buzzed and chattered like they were pre-teens about to see their favorite band in concert for the first time. A couple of them definitely were pre-teens. But, as is usually the case at a Bernie event, there were supporters of all ages.

A man in faded jeans and a plain red T-shirt passed by the outer edges of the natural disaster. "Who's this," he asked the people around him. "Bernie? Bernie?!" Then he spat. Then he snorted. Then he spat again. Then, with a crooked smile, he shook his fist sarcastically and shouted, "Tax 'em all to death, Bernie! Tax 'em all to death."

In no time at all, Hurricane Bernard had completely riled the environment. Ten minutes earlier, the first subgroup of the Make America Great Again clan was out at the edges of the crowd on their own. But now, they were embedded in the eddying mass, so far from the outskirts. So they waved their "Keep America Great" signs and sang about the good times and argued with college students and men in Chicago Cubs hats about the importance of taxes and health care and the meaning of the soul in relation to a cheeseburger.*

Photo by Sean Ryan

Earlier, rain had passed through just long enough to make for gasping humidity. It was 82 degrees but it felt like 100. People riot in the summers. It's the heat. It makes us crotchety and bold. So the atmosphere around the stage was perfect for combat. Unbearably muggy. Everybody had a temper or some eagerness or both.

As he ascended the walkway toward the stage, Bernie was like a saint or an anti-hero, the way people wanted to see him. No spectrum, only the magnets with a north and a south. People gasped at the sight of his unkempt hair and monastic bald spot.

A twelve-year-old boy in a bright pink shirt jumped and jumped, looking for Sanders. A man in a cowboy hat stroked his gray handlebar mustache as he said, "Bernie," with a pickled reaction. "Uh oh, Bernie. Sanders."Just around the corner, if you could get through the clotted masses, was the "Cast Your Kernel" poll. Passersby placed one corn kernel in the mason jar with their favorite candidates name on it. Later, at the end of the Fair, when the votes were tallied, Republicans would win, with 51 percent of the vote.

Trump would get 97 percent of the Republican vote. The closest Democrat would be Biden, with 23 percent. Anywhere else but Iowa this would mean nothing at all. But the more you learn about the Iowa Caucus, you'll realize that corn kennels in a mason jar would actually be a better system.

By the time Bernie started his speech, there were people all the way across the wide street, a solid battlefield of faces to the deep-fried Snickers trailer. And all around the stage, every side. Easily 700 people. Maybe 1,000. Maybe more, below the Ferris wheel.

Lots of Bernie signs. Lots of sarcastic whooping. Lots of very passionate, aggressive arguments. But also lots of people who'd come to the fair for turquoise rings or leather pants or personalized keychains, and all of a sudden they had been swept into tantrum warfare.

Behind the gated media area, two couples stood side-by-side. One couple had voted for Trump in 2016, the other had voted for Hillary Clinton, reluctantly, because they were Bernie supporters, so now they were shouting along in support of Bernie.

In response, the Trump couple muttered a couple phrases about "Aren't socialist so stupid?" Then the Bernie supporters performed an imitation of Trump supporters. It was fairly graphic and involved a recreation of incest and/or bestiality. Maybe not, it was hard to tell what the couple was miming. But it stoked the Trump supporters, and all of the oblique warfare was off the table. Now, it was hand-to-hand combat.

Photo by Sean Ryan

The woman of the Trump tribe was the more dominant member. The aggression of the Bernie tribe was equally distributed between its two members. This only strengthened and infuriated the Trump woman. She called the Bernie man a "beta." In turn, he lifted his nose to the sky and muttered something about health care and would the lady kindly go to a dermatologist and get the psoriasis figured out? His female counterpart looked at him with a mixture of pride and disgust. The Trump male member pecked at a pretzel with his teeth.The two couples looked similar in age and appearance. Their clothing choices differed slightly, but not enough to signify an ideological divide of such gravity. On any other day, maybe they would have gotten along.

All the while, Sanders shouted into the microphone. His speech blared out air-raid horns 10 feet from the two battling couples. Then, the couples stopped. Laughed. Nodded to each other, distracted by a man in American-flag short-shorts and a sleeveless American-flag shirt and American-flag socks and American-flag shoes and an American-flag cowboy hat and a double-knotted fannypack and a pair of round sunglasses that belonged to a woman. He had a tattoo canvas running down both arms and along his shoulders that featured war-planes dropping giant bombs into the oceans or onto land, it was hard to tell. He was the modern Uncle Sam, hooting and stomping.

"How you gonna do it?" He shouted. "Answer me, Bernie! How you gonna do it?" his American flag shorts billowing in the parched air, signifying the power of a nation at the top of it all.

Photo by Kevin Ryan

In a pinch, he could salute himself. He could stand at attention while "The Star-Spangled Banner" played from a bullhorn and everyone in earshot would straighten their backs and remove their hats and hold their hands over their hearts and tear up. If things ever got bad, real bad, he could hoist himself to the highest mountain as bald eagles screeched "Amazing Grace." And, look, as far as I'm concerned, he's an American hero.

I consider him the eye of the storm

New installments to this series come out every Monday and Thursday morning. For live updates, check out my Twitter or email me at kryan@mercurystudios.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.

The Bubba Effect erupts as America’s power brokers go rogue

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.

Warning: Stop letting TikTok activists think for you

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.

The melting pot fails when we stop agreeing to melt

Spencer Platt / Staff | Getty Images

Texas now hosts Quran-first academies, Sharia-compliant housing schemes, and rapidly multiplying mosques — all part of a movement building a self-contained society apart from the country around it.

It is time to talk honestly about what is happening inside America’s rapidly growing Muslim communities. In city after city, large pockets of newcomers are choosing to build insulated enclaves rather than enter the broader American culture.

That trend is accelerating, and the longer we ignore it, the harder it becomes to address.

As Texas goes, so goes America. And as America goes, so goes the free world.

America has always welcomed people of every faith and people from every corner of the world, but the deal has never changed: You come here and you join the American family. You are free to honor your traditions, keep your faith, but you must embrace the Constitution as the supreme law of the land. You melt into the shared culture that allows all of us to live side by side.

Across the country, this bargain is being rejected by Islamist communities that insist on building a parallel society with its own rules, its own boundaries, and its own vision for how life should be lived.

Texas illustrates the trend. The state now has roughly 330 mosques. At least 48 of them were built in just the last 24 months. The Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex alone has around 200 Islamic centers. Houston has another hundred or so. Many of these communities have no interest in blending into American life.

This is not the same as past waves of immigration. Irish, Italian, Korean, Mexican, and every other group arrived with pride in their heritage. Still, they also raised American flags and wanted their children to be part of the country’s future. They became doctors, small-business owners, teachers, and soldiers. They wanted to be Americans.

What we are watching now is not the melting pot. It is isolation by design.

Parallel societies do not end well

More than 300 fundamentalist Islamic schools now operate full-time across the country. Many use Quran-first curricula that require students to spend hours memorizing religious texts before they ever reach math or science. In Dallas, Brighter Horizons Academy enrolls more than 1,700 students and draws federal support while operating on a social model that keeps children culturally isolated.

Then there is the Epic City project in Collin and Hunt counties — 402 acres originally designated only for Muslim buyers, with Sharia-compliant financing and a mega-mosque at the center. After public outcry and state investigations, the developers renamed it “The Meadows,” but a new sign does not erase the original intent. It is not a neighborhood. It is a parallel society.

Americans should not hesitate to say that parallel societies are dangerous. Europe tried this experiment, and the results could not be clearer. In Germany, France, and the United Kingdom, entire neighborhoods now operate under their own cultural rules, some openly hostile to Western norms. When citizens speak up, they are branded bigots for asserting a basic right: the ability to live safely in their own communities.

A crisis of confidence

While this separation widens, another crisis is unfolding at home. A recent Gallup survey shows that about 40% of American women ages 18 to 39 would leave the country permanently if given the chance. Nearly half of a rising generation — daughters, sisters, soon-to-be mothers — no longer believe this nation is worth building a future in.

And who shapes the worldview of young boys? Their mothers. If a mother no longer believes America is home, why would her child grow up ready to defend it?

As Texas goes, so goes America. And as America goes, so goes the free world. If we lose confidence in our own national identity at the same time that we allow separatist enclaves to spread unchecked, the outcome is predictable. Europe is already showing us what comes next: cultural fracture, political radicalization, and the slow death of national unity.

Brandon Bell / Staff | Getty Images

Stand up and tell the truth

America welcomes Muslims. America defends their right to worship freely. A Muslim who loves the Constitution, respects the rule of law, and wants to raise a family in peace is more than welcome in America.

But an Islamist movement that rejects assimilation, builds enclaves governed by its own religious framework, and treats American law as optional is not simply another participant in our melting pot. It is a direct challenge to it. If we refuse to call this problem out out of fear of being called names, we will bear the consequences.

Europe is already feeling those consequences — rising conflict and a political class too paralyzed to admit the obvious. When people feel their culture, safety, and freedoms slipping away, they will follow anyone who promises to defend them. History has shown that over and over again.

Stand up. Speak plainly. Be unafraid. You can practice any faith in this country, but the supremacy of the Constitution and the Judeo-Christian moral framework that shaped it is non-negotiable. It is what guarantees your freedom in the first place.

If you come here and honor that foundation, welcome. If you come here to undermine it, you do not belong here.

Wake up to what is unfolding before the consequences arrive. Because when a nation refuses to say what is true, the truth eventually forces its way in — and by then, it is always too late.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

Glenn's Show Prep

Ryan: Hurricane Bernie

Why do Americans feel so empty?

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

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

The crisis beneath the headlines

The quiet return of meaning

Where renewal begins

The Bubba Effect erupts as America’s power brokers go rogue

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

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

What triggers the Bubba effect

A country cracking from the inside

The dangers of a faithless system

The responsibility now belongs to us

How to respond without breaking ourselves

Warning: Stop letting TikTok activists think for you

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.

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

Truth-seeking is real work

Bad-faith questions

The real target

The melting pot fails when we stop agreeing to melt

Texas now hosts Quran-first academies, Sharia-compliant housing schemes, and rapidly multiplying mosques — all part of a movement building a self-contained society apart from the country around it.

As Texas goes, so goes America. And as America goes, so goes the free world.

Parallel societies do not end well

A crisis of confidence

Stand up and tell the truth