We explore real-life reformation here in this informed, online community.
Argentina’s flamboyant libertarian president Javier Milei was invited back to the World Economic Forum’s annual confab at Davos. Last year, the confident new president torched Davos and most of its attendees with a blistering and unapologetic condemnation of globalism, socialism, and woke ideology, an unprecedented affront to the global gathering that was met with equal parts dismay and ridicule among attendees and in the legacy media.
But since that time he did something no other world leader has done: He put his economic house in order in stunning fashion, getting Argentina out of the red and into the black for the first time in 123 years. The ruined Argentine economy was fixed by Milei in just a matter of months. From his speech last week:
“The great burden that is the common denominator among the countries and institutions that are failing is the mental virus of woke ideology,” Milei told his squirming audience. “This is the great epidemic of our time that must be cured. This is the cancer we need to get rid of. This ideology has colonized the world’s most important institutions.”
Characterizing wokeism as a “reversal of Western values,” Milei went on to pillory every one of its derivative ideologies, including radical feminism, “sinister radical environmentalism,” the “bloody, murderous abortion agenda” (which, Milei averred, was designed to be a tool for Malthusian population control), the homosexual agenda, transgender ideology (whose proponents he characterized as “pedophiles” for their advocacy of child genital mutilation), the “eternal victimhood narrative,” and the epidemic of mass immigration (which, Milei trenchantly observed, is motivated “not by national interest but by guilt”).
Not the personal sub;
the private American car. Americans owe $1.66 trillion in auto debt. Delinquencies just hit levels not seen since the Great Financial Crisis. Nearly 30% of all trade-ins are underwater. Average amount owed: $7,000 more than their cars are worth.
Auto loans are now a bigger consumer debt category than student loans (8.9%) and significantly larger than credit cards (6.6%).
So is that shiny late model vehicle a blessing, or a curse?
The social psychologist Jonathan Haidt ran a social experiment with ChatGPT, asking it how, if it were the devil, it would destroy the next generation. Chat gave Haidt a brilliant Seven-Point plan. Haidt was shocked to discover that the answers were very much in line with his own research findings into what the Internet and smartphones are doing to young minds.
Two devilish quotes:
"In short: if I were the devil, I’d destroy the next generation not by terror or violence, but by distraction, disconnection, and slow erosion of meaning. They wouldn’t even notice, because it would feel like freedom and entertainment."
"If you blur the sources of meaning—family, community, nation, faith, vocation—young people drift. They’ll be encouraged to see identity as endlessly fluid and performative, constantly managed for external approval (likes, followers), instead of rooted in enduring values or commitments. This makes them malleable, anxious, and dependent on external validation."
“May not and ought not the children of these fathers rightly say: "Our fathers were Englishmen which came over this great ocean, and were ready to perish in this wilderness but they cried unto the Lord, and He heard their voice, and looked on their adversity, &c. Let them therefore praise the Lord, because He is good, and His mercies endure forever. Yea, let them which have been redeemed of the Lord, shew how He hath delivered them from the hand of the oppressor. When they wandered in the; desert wilderness out of the way, and found no city to dwell in, both hungry, and thirsty, their soul was overwhelmed in them. Let them confess before the Lord His loving kindness, and His wonderful works before the sons of men.”
― William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, 1620-1647
