What the Rational Optimists Get Wrong
A Return to Foundationalism for the Land of the Free, Home of the Brave
Rational Optimists Are Wearing Blinders: A Call for a Return to First Principles
What the Rational Optimists and other purveyors of shallow, two-dimensional narratives miss is that we are not comparing the America of today to the 1860s or the 1600s. Yes, we are wealthier, healthier, and technologically more advanced than ever, but that’s not the full story.
When we zoom out to the broader sweep of history, it's easy to congratulate ourselves on our progress. Sure, we’ve come a long way since the days of the horse and buggy. Per capita income has soared. Technology has made life more convenient and efficient. We're no longer as vulnerable to the scourges of disease, weather, starvation, or war as we once were.
Indeed, if you look at a chart of human progress, the numbers appear promising. As Steven Pinker and other optimists like to remind us, by many objective measures, life has improved dramatically since the 17th century.
But is this really the most meaningful comparison? Rational optimists would have you believe so, yet there's an obvious disconnect between the progress they tout and the intangible qualities that make life worth living. The optimists sell the narrative that “things are great and we’re living in the best time in history.” But are we?
If we look at wealth, health, and happiness—not in the abstract, but as they are experienced by real people—the picture isn’t as rosy as they make it out to be.
If we poll Americans today, we find that many are deeply dissatisfied. They aren’t happier, they don’t feel successful, and they’re more pessimistic about the future than perhaps any other time in recent history. This isn’t just a matter of economic growth or technological advancement. It’s about something deeper, something more essential: our sense of purpose, community, and national identity.
A False Sense of Progress
The Rational Optimists have a tough sell, because those of us who remember what real success looks like—whether it’s in terms of wealth, health, or happiness—can see clearly that today’s achievements, while significant, aren’t cutting it.
The Gen X generation, for instance, stands as the torchbearer of this recognition. We lived through America’s real golden age, the 1980s and 1990s, an era where the balance between economic prosperity and cultural coherence was strikingly present.
Yes, the Boomers were rich enough to embrace the wealth of those times, but Gen X saw the broader picture. The 1980s, for many of us, wasn’t just a decade of affluence; it was a time of optimism, personal responsibility, and national pride. Under the leadership of Ronald Reagan, America radiated confidence, not just in its economy but in its values.
I grew up in Southern California during this era, and I can say with certainty that the memes are true: we were free, full of hope, and firmly rooted in our communities.
Riding bikes under the endless sunshine, spending weekends with $20 that could last three days—movies, McDonald's, ice cream, and arcades. We lived it, and we loved it.
And what’s important here isn’t just the nostalgia of youthful memories, but the culture that made it all possible. It was a culture steeped in individual rights, free markets, and personal accountability. We ‘pledged allegiance to the flag’ because the flag still stood for something - a country unified by common borders, language and culture. It was a culture bound by a common identity that mostly understood that the role of government is to protect liberty, not to coddle or control.
Where Have We Gone Wrong?
Now, compare that America to the America of today. The idea of ‘America’ and the flag itself is constantly maligned as a racist symbol of white supremacy, a notion to be marginalized and spat on.
We live in a time when free speech is constantly under attack, when personal responsibility is dismissed as old-fashioned, and when the family unit—particularly the nuclear family—is increasingly undermined. Inflation is skyrocketing, crime rates are spiking, and wars are breaking out across the globe. We're closer to global conflict than at any time since the Cold War. These are not signs of a healthy society, no matter what the Rational Optimists would have you believe.
Let’s be honest: the America we see today, with its unraveling social fabric and creeping authoritarianism, is not the America that was once a beacon of freedom for the world. And the solution isn't more of the same—more government overreach, more dependency, more erosion of traditional values. The solution is a return to the principles that made America great in the first place: free speech, individual rights, personal responsibility, pro-family policies, and the frontier spirit that drove innovation and progress.
The Path Forward
The appropriate ‘happiness’ bogey isn’t the Reconstruction Era or Upton Sinclair’s early 1900 Chicago ‘Jungle’, it’s the golden sunshine of the rolling Reagan 80’s and the ‘End of History’ post-Berlin Wall 1990s.
If America’s peak in the 1980-2020 period is a false one, we can still reverse course—but it will require a radical recommitment to our foundational values. History teaches us that nations without a strong sense of identity—nations that abandon their core principles—do not survive. As Winston Churchill once said, “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” We are at such a crossroads now. The Rational Optimists may claim otherwise, but their blind faith in abstract metrics of progress won’t save us.
We need to get back to basics: Free markets that reward hard work and innovation. A sense of purpose and common bonds that unite diverse communities. Strong, pro-family policies that support the nuclear family as the bedrock of society. A return to spiritual principles and a respect for individual liberties. These aren’t just conservative talking points—they are the building blocks of a thriving society.
America’s greatest days are still ahead of us, but only if we face the current madness head-on and steer our nation back toward its founding principles. The values that built this country—free speech, personal responsibility, the pioneering spirit, and a respect for family and faith—are the values that will save it.
Let’s not settle for the shallow optimism of those who refuse to see the bigger picture. Let’s be realists and traditionalists, foundationalists understanding that true progress comes not from abandoning our roots, but from embracing them with renewed vigor. Only then can we begin to make America the greatest nation on Earth once again.
The Empty Avatar
It’s genuinely shocking that Kamala Harris has managed to avoid any real accountability, sidestepping tough interviews and instead delivering hollow, rehearsed statements devoid of substance.
How is it that after nearly four years as Vice President, she has *nothing* to show for her time in office? When tasked with overseeing the border crisis, Harris has utterly failed, allowing the situation to deteriorate into chaos. Her leadership on the $42 billion broadband initiative is equally abysmal—how does one manage to spend that kind of money without connecting a single home?
It’s almost as if Harris is an empty avatar, a political placeholder whose entire image has been meticulously crafted by a biased media and Democratic insiders.
We’re left with nothing but an illusion—a narrative created for public consumption that has no basis in reality. She couldn’t win a single primary vote in the 2020 race, yet here she is, second in command, shielded from real scrutiny. It’s infuriating.
Every appearance, every speech, is a display of vacuous rhetoric, with no real action behind it. The fact that she’s managed to escape genuine criticism is a testament to the media’s complicity in propping her up as something she’s clearly not. We deserve better.
The fact that she is within 20 points of Trump is a depressingly sad commentary on the state of our body politic and the media poisoning it.
Despite the ‘polls’ we’ve all seen showing a tight race or Kamala ahead, Trump likely leads by between 5-7 points in most swing States and has a solid path to victory. The question is whether that will be enough? Is 7 points above and beyond the margin of cheating we’ve seen historically and expect again? We won’t know for some time.
What we do know is that they’re going to do everything under the sun from registering millions of illegals to every dirty trick in the basket from mail-in ballots to no audits they pulled out in 2020 to shift the election their way.
That includes the constant public ‘polling’ done by statistically questionable means to energize the Democratic side and depress the Republican base.
Here’s a perfect example. While not a Presidential poll, it’s a recent result using the same polling methodology this well known pollster uses for the Presidential races.
Here they have the Democratic contender Colin Allred running neck to neck with incumbent Republican Ted Cruz in red Texas.
Cruz is going to obliterate Allred despite what the polls say, and the betting market PolyMarket is a closer proximation of ‘truth’.
Either the polls are radically oversampling and overestimating Democrats' chances or there's an arbitrage opportunity big enough to drive a truck through.
If @MorningConsult and other pollsters actually believed their own #s, they'd be on Polymarket betting size at 5-1 on Allred. Meaning if you bet $100 to win on Allred bc it’s supposedly a ‘tie’, you’d win about $520 if Allred actually wins.
Regardless, we can speculate all we want about polls, betting markets and voter registration numbers (massive illegal registrations favor Democrats, other registrations favor Republicans).
In the end, what it will come down to is election security and turnout.
The fact that we see Democratic activists, lawyers and politicians openly doing everything they can to diminish election security tells you exactly what the game plan is.
We’ve got 45 days to go. Time to double check if you’re registered, and to pull in friends that aren’t.
If the Republicans had 10 Scott Presslers, this race would look very different.
Indeed if actual GOP politicians were trying to get Trump re-elected, things would also look very different.
Take the SAVE Act. It’s a clear delineation that says illegals cannot vote in the election and takes some modest steps to prevent that.
As expected, Democrats have consistently blocked election security measures like Voter ID, a position we've come to anticipate.
What’s truly disheartening, however, is the behavior of Republicans who either vote against these measures or fail to bring them up for a vote altogether. Even more frustrating is the fact that Republicans have held control of the House for nearly two years and only now, with less than two months before the election, are considering such proposals.
This isn’t the behavior of a party focused on winning; it's the action of a team that’s unwilling to fight for its own agenda.
What I will tell you (and have been telling you), is that most of the ‘excitement’ and momentum for Kamala is artificial - pure astroturf.
I reside in a deeply Democratic state, yet even here, it’s rare to see a single Kamala Harris sign or encounter anyone bold enough to openly express their support for her. It speaks volumes that, despite her high-ranking position, public enthusiasm for her candidacy is remarkably subdued, even in areas where one would expect strong backing.
That’s why her rallies are composed of the same people bussed in from other locations and she’s relegated to doing 1 hour celebrity infomercials with Oprah rather than legitimate interviews with journalists.
Even Oprah had to jump in at the end to rescue her from this 2 minute word salad of gibberish dodging the question (the best part of the entire video is the female NPC in glasses weeping and basking in Kamala’s glory behind her reacting to her vacuous non-response).
Even CBS did a recent segment how they went to multiple restaurants in swing-state Nevada where Kamala is allegedly leading Trump by a few points hoping to interview Kamala supporters.
Surprise no surprise, they had a damn tough time even finding a single Kamala supporter.
I was shocked CBS actually aired this. Kudos to them for allowing a bit of truth to slip into the regularly scheduled ‘programming’ (5:35 relevant clip)
“It’s tied in the polls but Democrats have been winning that state…” the NPC talking head defensively reacts quickly to the segment’s conclusion that, “People are really excited about Trump.”
When there is such a large disjunct between reality and the narrative/results, you have to go deeper. In this case, the Occam’s Razor answer is the polls are fake (and the election results are even faker).
Just like Arizona, you have to go above and beyond to find Biden or Kamala supporters. And somehow in 2020, a guy that didn’t leave his basement, couldn’t get 40 people at a rally and was a nonstop meme/laughingstock won Arizona by a sizable margin.
I’ll say it again, and if Trump actually wins this time, eventually the truth will come out.
Trump won comfortably in 2020. The ‘Red Wave’ that didn’t happen in 2022 was also a victim of fraudulent voting mechanisms.
Brace yourselves as we’ll see millions of illegal votes and hijinks this election as well as Republicans haven’t done enough to improve election security.
Hopefully, for the sake of the country, it won’t be enough to defeat the real President.
Jan 6
Speaking of ‘eventual truth’, there was some information that leaked this week that in a functioning body politic would result in heads rolling.
It is now confirmed what most of us have known for years. That President Trump requested extra security via the National Guard for the January 6th event and Nancy Pelosi and General Milley denied the request and then lied about it to the public to push the bogus J6 narrative.
Between Milley saying he would alert China if Trump ever mobilized to lying about the National Guard and security requests, the real question is, “When will Milley be prosecuted for treason”
Might as well throw the rest of the J6 committee into that grand jury inquiry for lying to the American people and destroying evidence.
Eventually we’ll also be proved right that most of the antagonists that day were undercover government agents or cooperators intentionally provoking the conflict.
President Jill Biden
Granted, we’ve seen a lot of nutty stuff over the last years but this ranks right up there with the best of them.
Joe Biden, who has been MIA for the last 3 years months since being deposed in a silent coup, decided to journey from his perpetual passed out perch on a Delaware beach to actually hold his first cabinet meeting in 11 months (all 4 parts of this sentence are absurd).
Instead of Joe even pretending to be the sitting President, he punted to “Doctor” Jill to host and run the meeting.
This is totally normal right? I mean there’s plenty of other jobs besides President where a spouse can just fill in and take care of business.
My Dad was a surgeon, and I seem to recall plenty of times where my Mom was tasked to fill in if my Dad had a few too many cocktails the night before and didn’t feel up to scrubbing in.
Every time I think things can get any more stupid or clownish, I always seem to be surprised by the efforts and creativity of our ruling Regime.
The same number of people have voted for Jill Biden to be President as have voted for Kamala: zero. Their new rule appears to be: the fewer votes you’ve earned, the more power you get to exercise.
Smart people understand the winners write the history books.
If the good guys win this one and successfully purge the Deep State and endemic corruption that exists in nearly all parts of our current world, you can bet people will look back on this past decade with equal parts laughter and disbelief and ask the same questions school kids of our era asked about the regular German people during the Second World War: “How did they let it get so bad?”
Trump Assassination Part 2
Ryan Routh’s story has all the hallmarks of something far more sinister than a rogue individual trying to make headlines. The details surrounding his life suggest he wasn’t just some disillusioned man acting on his own, but more likely an asset being manipulated, potentially even a victim of an MK Ultra-like program. After all, professional CIA operatives don’t attempt to assassinate a sitting president with an AK-47—a chaotic and reckless method.
The possibility that Routh was a CIA asset, rather than a trained operative, seems far more plausible. Consider the following questions:
How did a man who couldn’t even afford child support suddenly start living in a high-end home in Hawaii? How was he able to jet-set to Taiwan, Turkey, Poland, and Ukraine with no visible income to support such a lifestyle?
Why, despite having over 100 criminal charges to his name, has he never spent a day in jail?
What explains his fiancée's apparent nonchalance about him disappearing for months to Ukraine, despite their personal financial struggles?
How did Routh manage to sustain himself in Ukraine with only $68 in his bank account?
And why, everywhere he goes, does he receive media attention from local papers all the way up to major outlets like the New York Times and Newsweek?
These details don’t add up. The logical conclusion is that someone else—likely a government or intelligence entity—was supporting him, using him as a pawn for deeper, more clandestine operations. The fact that this story and the entire ‘investigation’ surrounding the first assassination attempt has been swept under the rug suggests there’s far more to uncover.
The sad/humorous part of it all, is like most of these events, the FBI knew all about Routh and had been following him closely. And of course our fearless mainstream media reacted to all of it by claiming Routh had “no clear political ideology.”
Yes, the man who donated repeatedly to Democratic SuperPac Act Blue, who was a clear Kamala supporter and called repeatedly for Trump’s assassination in a book and on his social media accounts (conveniently scrubbed by Facebook) had ‘no clear political ideology.’
When it comes to these types of incidents, don’t get caught on your heels.
Think of this in terms that ‘they’ will do anything they can to win.
That includes indictments, assassinations, provoking wars and good old fashioned wholesale cheating at the ballot box.
As I’ve written about time and time again, Trump in his first term failed to understand we are at the Pure Power Game point of late-stage capitalism, and that his opponents were cornered and fighting for their lives.
People would never cheat or conspire under those circumstances would they?
A proper analogy is, that if you played 3-3 basketball pickup game for $10,000 and one team had the ref in its pockets (judges, law enforcement, media, academia, federal bureaucracy), you can bet they would cheat here and there to tip the scales. An extra foul, a bribe, a hometown call or two, and anything else it would take to win. And that’s a basketball game with only a small bit of money at stake.
Now imagine, the fate of the world is at stake, total power, trillions of dollars and the potential for you to lose your lives and hang for treason if you lose…don’t you think that side would be incentivized to cheat and do everything possible to stay in or regain power?
Trump failed to understand the stakes involved and failed miserably at kneecapping the Deep State and administrative state.
He better have learned his lesson by now - our future depends on it.
Good article on Lee Harvey Routh.
Border Testimony
More concrete evidence that there are two rules for our esteemed politicians and leaders. On the conservative side, a mere phone call asking about the obvious corruption in Ukraine and the the former Vice President’s connection to it is enough to get you impeached.
When Fani Willis, Eric Holder, Hunter Biden or Merrick Garland ignore a congressional subpoena? No problem.
When Steve Bannon or Peter Navarro do the same?
Thus, on the Democratic side, the Chief of the Border Patrol lying to Congress at the request of the Biden Administration and covering up the border invasion is considered much ado about nothing.
Can someone explain how the testimony of the former Chief of the Border Patrol isn’t causing immediate impeachment proceedings? He explicitly testified that he was instructed to lie to Congress and deceive the American public.
- He was directed to downplay the actual number of illegal border crossings happening every day.
- He was told to cover up the number of people crossing who were on the terrorist watch list (1000% increase!)
- He was ordered to lie when questioned by members of Congress.
- He was instructed to mislead the media and, by extension, the American people, about the severity of the crisis.
- He was even forbidden to speak about the covert flights bringing illegal immigrants from South America into the heart of the country—without notifying Congress or the public—before releasing them nationwide.
How on earth can someone testify to these damning accusations, revealing that the executive branch actively lied to Congress and the American public, and yet there are no impeachment proceedings?
No one is being held accountable?
His testimony reveals a massive cover-up orchestrated by the highest levels of government. The Executive Branch directed the Border Patrol to lie and hide the truth. So why aren’t charges being filed? Why aren’t these officials being impeached right now? How is this being ignored?
Just f’n insane.
What I’m Watching and Reading….
Ivy League graduates are really cut from a different cloth.
Unfortunately, the cloth is Mao’s jockstrap.
Here’s the full report. Worth a skim. Shouldn’t be news to any readers of Sovereign Sunday, but encapsulates well the two America’s that currently exist.
Committee to Unleash Prosperity Report: Them vs. U.S.
Best of Twitter
Memetic Warfare
Parting Words…
That’s it for this week folks! Hope it was worth the wait. If it was, please share it with a friend. There is strength in numbers so spread the word.
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The rational optimists are correct in a sense. People SHOULD be happy. The prosperity and safety we experience should provide more for people than humans have ever known. Part is what we’ve lost, as you say. The other part is what’s replaced it—grievance culture promoted by the ruling class. The very people we’ve (nominally) chosen to lead us are telling everyone how unhappy they should be. People are indoctrinated to suffer and the things we’ve lost—patriotism, soul, community—would have stood as a bulwark against the pessimistic brew distributed by the overlords. We’ve lost much of what gave us optimism but we’ve also gained a class of people who have the largest platform and a desire to see us as demoralized as possible.
You're missing one crucial aspect, unless I missed you taking it up.
Much of the diet in the USA consists of seed oils and is severely lacking in minerals & vitamins that are essential for a stable and healthy mind.