We are living through such an arrogant era in which too many people “know” preposterous things: Biological sex isn’t real. Muslims built America. Math is racist. Iran is defeating the United States. Joe Biden is “sharp as a tack.” President Trump is a Russian spy. People are certain that “their” side is right and the “other” side is wrong.
There is not a lot of humility in the world today. But, as we see during the LGBTQIA+ community’s various bacchanalia each year, there is a glut of personal pride.
When I encounter people who “know everything,” I like to remind them how wrong some of the smartest people over the last century have proved to be. During a guest lecture at the University of Munich in 1924, theoretical physicist Max Planck recounted a conversation he had with his mentor, Philipp von Jolly, fifty years earlier. After Planck inquired about pursuing a career in physics, Jolly discouraged his young student from doing so, telling him that nearly everything in the field of physics had already been discovered, with little left to do aside from a few final measurements.
Planck went on to win a Nobel Prize for discovering energy quanta — revolutionizing theoretical physics and our understanding of atomic particles, while setting the stage for Albert Einstein’s special theory of relativity regarding space and time. At the turn of the twentieth century, plenty of physicists believed they knew almost everything; quantum mechanics and general relativity proved they knew almost nothing.
In 1919, most astronomers believed that our Milky Way Galaxy comprised the whole universe, that the size of the universe was roughly 300,000 light years across, and that the universe was infinitely old and unchanging. A hundred years later, astronomers estimate the observable universe to be ninety-four billion light years across and 13.7 billion years old. Ten years ago, astronomers adjusted the estimated number of galaxies in the universe from a hundred billion to at least two trillion. And the James Webb Space Telescope has pushed this number to as high as twenty trillion.
Even that number is likely to rise. When our understanding of the size of the universe has gone from one galaxy to tens of trillions in a single century, should we not approach competing points of view with a little more open-mindedness? Does it not seem foolishly arrogant of people such as Barack Obama, Al Gore, John Kerry, and Mark Carney to claim that the “science” of “global warming” is “settled”?
It is important to acknowledge just how little we know about our world. It is important to remember that we have redefined fundamental parts of our physical reality within our own lifetimes. It is important to recognize that even the most universally accepted paradigms have been toppled and replaced.
If our understanding of physics and cosmology can be upended in a few decades, why would we expect the social sciences of politics, economics, and sociology to be more constant? Why would we expect political pundits to have an accurate grasp of the future? Why would we assume that population growth is an existential threat, that sentient robots will replace humans, that debt bombs will impoverish us, or that nuclear bombs will end us? In other words, why do we always assume the end is near?
Our generation is not the first to fear the future nor will it be the last. A thousand years ago, at the turn of the first millennium, there were plenty of people who expected the apocalypse. Instead, their descendants experienced the Renaissance, the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment, and the Industrial Revolution. The second millennium started with the fake threat of Y2K and the real threat of 9/11 and has continued lurching toward economic, military, technological, and political powder kegs ever since.
Twenty-six years of impending doom have had an effect on the world’s collective psyche. Right now there is a dearth of optimism. Although standards of living, lifespans, and the proliferation of luxury comforts have never been higher, people talk about today as if it were the Great Depression.
Almost all of America’s leaders have failed to live up to this century’s challenges. George Bush encouraged us to fight Islamic terrorists “over there” so that we wouldn’t have to fight them “over here”; now we’ve got super-mosques, loudspeakers in major towns calling Muslims to prayer, and apologists for Islamic rapists and murderers running for high office or already serving in Congress.
Barack Obama may have sold “hope and change” to the public in his run for the presidency, but then he went on a worldwide America-bashing apology tour, dismissed the idea that there was anything “exceptional” about our country, pitted black and white Americans against each other, destroyed healthcare with government mandates, and used the USA PATRIOT Act to spy on his political enemies.
Most other prominent political leaders have used the first quarter of the new century to break bad news to the American people. “The borders can’t be properly secured,” they say. “Blue-collar jobs are never coming back home,” they insist. “Global warming is killing the planet,” they claim. “Racist cops are killing black people,” they argue. Bad news rains down on us every day (especially if you watch CNN or read The New York Times).
On the Democrat side of the aisle, patriotism has been wholly rejected and replaced with a litany of anti-American refrains: America is imperialist, colonialist, racist, white supremacist, Islamophobic, transphobic, patriarchal, and whatever new insults Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer’s America-hating, communist party devises next.
When was the last time you heard any global prognosticator speak of America’s future as anything other than one of certain decline?
Perhaps that’s why President Trump appeals to so many Americans. He has been the only consistently positive leader declaring this “America’s century.” While other political leaders — Democrats and Republicans — have spent the first twenty-six years of the new millennium making excuses for why our borders can’t be secured, why our industrial towns can’t be rebuilt, and why violent crime is the “new normal,” President Trump has secured the border, brought American manufacturing back to life, and cut murder and other violent crime rates across the country more sharply than any time since 1900.
Those are astounding accomplishments in a short amount of time, but you won’t hear them being discussed on CNN or NPR. Nor will you hear about all the different ways President Trump has strengthened the security and economic future of the Western Hemisphere by waging war against international drug cartels, promoting hemispheric self-sufficiency, and methodically eliminating the influences of China, Russia, and Iran. Nor will you hear about the ways President Trump is deconstructing Islamic terrorism’s chokehold over energy resources in the Middle East.
You certainly won’t hear how tariffs are forcing once-offshored companies to reinvest in the United States. Nor will you hear that inflation continues to sink, while wages continue to rise — exactly the opposite of Wall Street pundits’ predictions.
You won’t hear any of this positive news because the whole globalist Establishment — the bought-and-paid-for politicians, the multinational investment firm behemoths, the Wall Street and City of London make-nothing vultures, and the corporate news propaganda syndicate — are invested in a future of World Economic Forum oligarchy, Chinese communism, “climate change” totalitarianism, and steady American decline. These parasites intend to discourage you. They intend to exacerbate social conflicts, undermine American influence, disparage American history, mock American greatness, and make you feel weak.
President Trump is leading America back to the moon. We’re going to Mars. Whatever else AI turns out to be, it will have an American accent. The White House has spent all year celebrating Freedom 250 because it wishes for Americans to remember and embrace their history. The loudest pundits know nothing. The revolution is here. This is the American century.
