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Historian Niall Ferguson likens the US situation circa 2024 to a “late, Soviet America.”
He notes that in 1990, observers were noticing a “ghastly and tragic... loss of morality” within the USSR. “Apathy and hypocrisy, cynicism, servility, and snitching,” were running wild. Nearly half the population thought that theirs was an “unjust society.” USSR leaders were old party hacks...
The Soviet economy was largely fake... almost all of it directly or indirectly controlled by the Communist Party. The government ran chronic deficits... supporting a bloated military that looked powerful, on paper, but couldn’t win a war.
“Sound familiar?” asks Ferguson:
"Look at the most recent Gallup surveys of American opinion and one finds a similar disillusionment. The share of the public that has confidence in the Supreme Court, the banks, public schools, the presidency, large technology companies, and organized labor is somewhere between 25 percent and 27 percent. For newspapers, the criminal justice system, television news, big business, and Congress, it’s below 20 percent. For Congress, it’s 8 percent. Average confidence in major institutions is roughly half what it was in 1979."
Bill Bonner
You would be more distressed to know that governments were deliberately covering up the true extent of morality, hoping that the issue would go away over time.
A UK judge has just ruled it will not release the mortality statistics it has on deaths by COVID vaccination status because of the distress the data would cause. Would the distress cause more harm that the lethal vaccines themselves? It might, if millions of gullible citizens suddenly realized their governments forced a genocidal bioweapon on them and their families.
Orban met with Trump at the White House on Friday, masterfully handling a long agenda of items crafted to take both nations and the world closer to peace and Christendom.
Both governments reiterated their commitment to promoting peace efforts in Ukraine. Orbán noted that discussions about hosting a peace summit in Budapest remain ongoing. ‘Hungary offers its capabilities to assist in ending the war in Ukraine,’ he said, repeating his long-standing view that ‘Ukraine cannot defeat Russia militarily’.
Orbán characterized the meeting as ‘a day of Hungary in Washington’, noting that multiple ministerial-level discussions were held alongside the leaders’ summit. He described the talks as those of ‘two allied states with shared interests’, adding that no major disagreements emerged.
‘We identified no issue where our two nations’ positions conflicted,’ Orbán said. ‘There are no strategic differences between Hungary and the United States—only shared goals and cooperation.’
Starts today.
"According to a survey by JL Partners, roughly 765,000 New Yorkers—say they’re preparing to leave because of Mamdani’s election. Another 25%, or around 2.1 million, are considering it. Among high earners—those making over $250,000 a year—7% say they’re definitely fleeing.
"Why wouldn’t they? Mamdani has made it clear he views them as piggy banks. His entire platform is built on extracting their wealth and redistributing it. When you explicitly declare war on a segment of your population, that segment leaves.
"And those are the people funding everything. They’re the tax base. When they leave, revenue collapses—making it difficult, if not impossible, to fund the bloated social(ist) programs Mamdani promised. Then what? More taxes on whoever’s left. Which drives out more people. Which shrinks revenue even further.
"It’s a doom loop—and, again, entirely predictable.
"The end result is that New York’s going to end up looking a lot like the ...
