How America Became So Stupid

The American dream. This is the foundation the US was built on. The idea that anyone could build a good life for themselves through hard work and dedication. Today, though, it's hard to believe this was ever the case. The streets are full of homeless, hopeless people. Everyone's at each other's throats, and building a good life seems almost impossible.

So how did a country that used to be a beacon of opportunity fall apart so quickly? Why did America lose its prestige and place of power on the world stage? And what went so wrong? And are Americans really stupider now than they were before?

But on the surface, it might just seem simple. Europeans, in particular, like to make fun of Americans for being dumb. Seeing these clips of street interviews where people only know two countries in the entire world, three countries besides the USA. "Um, D, any three?" "You know..." [Music] "This Canada, New Mexico, right?" "That's good." "Yeah." Where they think dinosaurs still exist. Would an ordinary person be able to get away with killing a Triceratops? Or is it Donald Trump's kids just being able to get away with that because they're Donald Trump's kids?

"I think they're getting away with it because they're Donald Trump's kids, and I think anybody else would just get in trouble." And they honestly just, I don't know, have no idea which continent they're even on. "Country on this map." "Um, how about this?" "How about this?" And the videos are quite frankly shocking compared to just 50 years ago. And it seems like America has already entered into the world of ocracy.

When I watch these clips for the first time, I couldn't help but wonder what has happened within America in the last few decades to bring about this decline. Of course, it's not all Americans, but it's undoubtedly clear that something has been happening. Don't take my word for it, just look at how American politicians speak to their people. "More inflation? What a stupid sound of [ __ ]!" While American culture is unlike any other nation in the world today, it does a better job of appealing to the lowest common denominator than anywhere else. And with the advent of the internet, the world has gained an all-too-intimate understanding of America. They're assorted with it wherever they open their phones or go online.

So, in this video, we're going to be going over why Americans seem to be coming dumber. How the American people have been stunted and poisoned for profit. How the country is losing the core values that made it so great. And how it's alienating Americans from the rest of the world. And finally, and most importantly, where the future of America is headed and how it can reverse its course. So let's dive in and discover what went so horribly wrong.

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Well, to understand how America can change this, how America can become the greatest nation once again and inspire people around the world, we need to understand how American society got so bad to begin with. And to do this, we need to explore its founding ideals and how each one was eventually turned on its head. Now, if you went to school in America, or anywhere else really, you've probably heard the story over and over again. Sick of British taxation, America's founding fathers fought for their independence, declared that all men were equal, and built a nation founded on the principles of reason. But looking at America today, it's hard to see how a nation founded on rational thinking and logic could become such a contradiction of itself. Were the ideas faulty to begin with, or were they corrupted over time? And who were they corrupted by?

Well, the only way to know it is to analyze where these ideas came from in the first place. And we'll make this quick. This isn't just going to be a boring history lesson. But for context, over the course of the 17th and 18th centuries, Europe was wrecked by a series of bitter religious wars. The break from Catholicism and the split in the church created by the Reformation ripped up the foundations of society. Both nations and families split along religious lines, and eventually, a series of wars was inevitable. They were brutal, vindictive conflicts. They easily surpassed the world wars in their proportional damage. Germany alone lost a third of its population during the 30 Years' War, a religious conflict which occurred in the early to mid-1600s.

But after all the dust had settled, no one type of Christianity became victorious. Instead, the struggles only laid the groundwork for an entirely new way of thinking: the Enlightenment. Over centuries, philosophers and people we'd recognize today as scientists had been building a new foundation. The chaos and destruction made it clear that no one religion could work anymore as a basis for governance. Instead, that would come from the reason of man. The principle on which all the Enlightenment ideas were built. From this came ideas that the equality of man. Man. European society and culture burgeoned. We saw the Renaissance era. Beauty, art, elegance came to the forefront of our culture. However, whilst this was happening, Europe still was aristocratic, and there was barely any movement between social classes. It was almost impossible to become a rich man if you were a poor man. And it would take a new land and a new country to see this idea of liberalism come to fruition.

Religion still had a strong place in society, of course, but the Enlightenment slowly erased the dogmatic thinking that characterized the religious wars. God's place in the world was no longer thought of as tied to religious text. Instead, God was the force that gave man their reason and offered them a way to unravel. People's relationship with their state was also brought into question. People, rational thinkers, and the Enlightenment taught people to be wary of tradition, as it would get in the way of progress and reason. Traditional models of government, like an all-powerful monarch and its subjects' complete subordination, were thrown out. In Europe, this process took centuries, and even today, it's so much harder to climb social classes than it is perhaps in America.

And so, of course, in America, this transition happened almost overnight. Everyone who went there wanted to be free to do something new, to be ambitious, and build something great. And whilst America still was a British colony, it had an outsider perspective. It could see how stifling and constricting the British Empire truly was. They couldn't embrace Enlightenment values whilst being subject to an all-powerful monarch, subject to ridiculous taxes and decrees. There was no true freedom of speech. It was only once America threw the shackles and won their independence reason could prevail. And it's hard to see how this nation founded on the principles of reason, virtue, and rational thinking could be the same USA as we know today. It's a case of selective memory. Some of the ideas stuck and made up the national American character. The idea of freedom, for example, especially from one's own governments, which is one of the best things about America. But over time, other ideals were diluted, and their meaning slowly changed. And the one ideal that underpins them all, reason, was forgotten, leaving America in contradiction with reason, split into by ideology. Which is why the cracks in America have been described as a spiritual war for the country. It's like the Enlightenment never happened, and we're experiencing the same thing once again that happened in Europe with the age of religion. If history is truly cyclical, then we're in for a rough time. It's hard enough to truly see the world for what it is, even harder to tell where it's going. It's a simple fact that indulging in modern society's many, many vices makes you dumber. Rising above it gives you an unassailable advantage. But even just understanding how it's happening helps you avoid the obvious traps. That's a process that you can begin today.

Now that we've got some of the history, though, we can understand how America was founded. And from there, we can begin to explore what went so wrong. The first pill of America's downfall is social media. You'll see how divisions and disunity within America have been exploited by a new class of billionaires and also foreign agents. And once you see how a nation has been turned against itself, you'll begin to understand how detrimental it truly is. You might even get a sense of how dangerous social media could become if it's left unchecked. So let's dive in and explore just how social media is robbing America of its free will.

If you need proof that America is no longer governed by reason, all you need to do is look at social media. The billions of comments, tweets, reels, and pictures that get posted every day are an amazing window into the country's collective consciousness. You don't need us to tell you how distressing and vast this experience truly is. Everywhere you look, it's more and more degeneracy on these platforms. The people who rise to the top are those that sell their soul the most, the ones that scrape the bottom of the barrel for views. In fact, the main influences of 2024 seem like an omen for the collapse of the West. You see, in the past, influences were seen as the most talented, hardworking, and aspiring icons in American culture, like Mark Twain, Presley, and Neil Armstrong. Generations of people all around the world grew up aspiring to be like these American idols. But today, we now look up to American influencers who brag about how many dicks they can suck. "A thousand? Yo, more. I'm just saying." "He answered a thousand, yes." "Swear on my life." "Yeah." [ __ ] themselves for views. "Hur." "Well, how many men sleep with their wife?"

Most people in modern America are assaulted by it on all sides, every day, from when they wake up to when they fall asleep. The content they consume is endless. And what exactly makes up that stream of information? If it's not to generate influences, it's problems in faraway countries that have no impact on your day-to-day life. "Vladimir Putin has just addressed the Russian people moment ago, announcing what Putin called the start of a military special operation in his words, to demilitarize Ukraine." "Israel has formally declared war after that unprecedented multi-prong terror attack from Hamas, shocking the nation, catching its intelligence service by surprise." As well as practically unsolvable issues within American society that are thrown in people's faces every day. And if it isn't some existential problem, it's someone else's success and fortune that's been advertised, making you feel insecure, weaker, and strive for more materialistic and narcissistic pursuits. With social media serving as a reminder of what you don't have, what you can't solve, and that you should be immoral like your favorite influences, it's easy to see how it makes Americans feel useless, powerless, and lacking any virtue, disabling them from impacting the world around them, shining a mirror on the corruption of America itself.

But it isn't just a way for people to see how messed up our world really is. In fact, it negatively warps people's views of the world, and it's this process that literally changes what living in America is really like today. Real communities, especially for young people, are few and far between. There are no communal gatherings anymore. They've slowly and systematically been replaced by the digital world. It's something you've definitely noticed in your life, but for young children, it's even worse. Those key years where you explore and learn about the world through your own senses have been sabotaged. Kids rarely ever go outside on their own. They're learning about the world through TikTok and online content. Content we already know is damaging to people's mental health and even their ability to think clearly. A study of 3,000 students who used TikTok found that they suffered memory loss from using the app, most likely as a response to the stress and negative thoughts it creates. But TikTok is even creating fake Tourette syndromes where it quite literally influences people's behavior so much that they develop tics from TikTok. And TikTok is an entirely different subject, a weapon of the CCP, a way of the Chinese poisoning American society.

The isolation and anxiety we endured because of COVID is having a lasting and unwanted effect on an increasing number of teenage girls. It appears to have given them a kind of Tourette syndrome. They're ticking uncontrollably. Doctors don't understand why, but there's no doubt it's a very real mental health condition. And even more bizarrely, it seems popular TikTok videos are playing a role in it. But this is a topic we've really discussed in much depth. And TikTok is just one part of the social media content diet which we're all eating right now. But something that studies don't get into is the awful effect this is having on American culture and society. It's all because of a phenomenon which sociologists have called the habitat. The basic principle is that when you're exploring the world as kids and learning about our place in it, we react to what we experience. If someone is constantly reassured and made to feel secure, then they'll carry this mindset through into adulthood. If they instead find a hostile world which doesn't care about them or actively attacks them for who they are, then it makes them more resentful, antisocial, and bitter. This process doesn't end as a kid, though. It carries on until the very end. We are always learning and interacting with the world, and we're always being shaped by those interactions.

You can see now why social media is so damaging. On the one hand, it's constantly telling kids that they aren't enough by showing them a parade of artificially attractive, plastic, happy people. Whereas telling them they don't have any agency by showing them impossible problems with catastrophic consequences on the horizon. It's even sabotaged people's role models. Decadent and vapid and consumerist ideals are held above all others in social media, which is completely centered on appearance and money, nothing else. Scam artist influencers sending their new crypto coin, greedy mukbangs stuffing their faces, and a whole host of other degenerates get pushed into kids' faces every day, promoting the seven deadly sins, otherwise known as capital vices or cardinal sins. The most evil things within the Christian religion: lust, the intense desire or need for sex, power, and money; gluttony, an excessive and ongoing eating of food and drink; greed, an excessive pursuit of material possessions and wealth; sloth, an excessive laziness or the failure to act and utilize one's talents; wrath, extreme anger, rage, and hatred that can lead to violence, emotional harm, and self-destructive behavior; envy, a desire for others' traits, status, abilities, or situation; pride, an excessive view of oneself without regard for others, considered the original and most serious of the seven deadly sins. And it just so happens that the most immoral sins are now constantly in our faces, forced onto every American without their will, breaking any moral boundaries that once guided millennia of humanity. These people are the new American role models in practice because the algorithm sees their content as the most addictive and provocative to young minds. The more dirty, immoral, and controversial, the better it is for the views and likes and the algorithm, all based on hedonistic, consumerist pleasure rather than a good, virtuous, moral life. These old values are being lost because there isn't a community anymore to properly teach them and uphold them. Instead of reason and intellect and morality, vapid self-obsession is the new guiding force behind America. These decadent values are instilled in every social media user over time, and if they get taken in, then that person spreads them to the rest of their own small world. Multiply this across the whole country, and you're left with the chaos of today. It's through this process that the modern American habitat has become so corrupt.

But this is only the last 10 years of a shift in American society that's been happening for over a century now. To really learn the root of how America got so messed up, we need to go back and see what triggered America's collapse into ignorance and fear. America is known as the land of the free. But what does freedom actually mean? In one sense, it means being able to live your life and do what you want without being hassled and obstructed by the government. And in a lot of ways, America is still a great country for that. But another sense of the word is being free to think and believe what you want, and being free to share it with the world. This is what's really dangerous for governments and regimes. A freethinking population is less malleable, harder to control. It's harder to get them to do what you want, and when you want them to work, fight, and give their lives for a cause that they might not really agree with. It's even harder.

This was the problem that faced the American government in 1917. Centuries of isolationism and non-interference with old-world wars meant that the people were strongly against directly intervening. It was something they couldn't allow to continue. The history books talk about German submarine warfare as the main reason that the US joined the war. They just kept sinking American ships and killing American sailors and passengers. But while that's part of it, the real reason behind the government's desire for war was financial. Over the course of the conflict, the US had loaned out $7 billion to the Allied powers. In today's money, that's over $140 billion in loans. They were bankrolling half the war. I mean, full perspective here, the UK was still paying some of these loans back in 2015. That's how huge they truly were. But despite how it might seem today, the war was far from won in 1917. In fact, it was starting to look dire for France and Britain. There was dissension in the ranks with soldiers refusing to fight. Germany and a revolution had knocked Russia out of the war, and the tides did look like they might be finally turning. If the Allies lost, how would they possibly repay so much money? So they needed to get involved and win the war once and for all. And to do that, they needed to get the people in line. The answer was propaganda, or as we now know it, a PR campaign.

So the US started pumping out pamphlets, posters, radio broadcasts, leaflets, and newspaper articles which all said the same thing: "We need war." They used patriotism, fear, anger, loss, everything they had at their disposal to sway people's hearts and minds. Of course, while promoting one view was half of the issue, silencing the dissenters was the other portion. The US, like the rest of the warring nations, doubled down on censorship, making sure anyone against the war wouldn't see their message spread. It worked, and slowly but surely, American public opinion shifted. Eventually, in April of 1917, the US went to war. And in doing so, shifted the global balance of power in their favor. It wasn't just their victory in the war that was to blame, though, but the fact that most of Europe was in their debt. The beating heart of the world's financial system moved from London to New York. In trying to set the pace of global diplomacy within the League of Nations, America formally became the premier world superpower.

It wasn't just these massive global changes that set the next 100 years of American history into motion, though. Something else had happened behind the scenes that would change everything. And the person behind the coming silent revolution was a man named Edward Bernays. All of the US government work on propaganda during the war had set the template for the future of America. Whilst he was still a young man, Bernays had learned the ropes, and he saw its potential. In a way, the war was the perfect product for his ideas because it was so imperfect. If the government could sell the horrors of war to so many young men, what else could he sell? Using the same techniques. Or the key lay in communicating with people's unconscious inner desires. If you could position a product to be the answer for those, instead of what it really is, then it could be carried on symbolism alone. Bernays founded his very own PR firm, set on doing exactly this. One of his greatest successes was sending cigarettes to women. It was pretty much a completely untapped market. Cigarettes were seen by society as manly, and whatever the tobacco companies tried, they couldn't shake this image. So Bernays' solution was a two-pronged attack on women's desire to be equal and their desire to be attractive. First, he ran advertising campaigns advertising smoking cigarettes as an alternative to snacking. "Reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet" was a particularly famous one. His other equally insidious ploy was to equate smoking with liberation and fast feminism. He planted paid actresses in smoker women's marches, ran ads in women's magazines tying it with the movement, and actually used smoking's old reputation against itself. And it worked spectacularly. Millions more people would pick up the deadly habit thanks to his work.

But despite how cunning these stunts were, it was the underlying logic behind them that was really impactful. Bernays' work set the stage for modern advertising, and with it, modern consumerism. Until his works influence, commodities and products were seen as necessities rather than objects of desire. People didn't work to get them, they worked to build themselves a better life. Today, it's nearly impossible for most people to tell the two things apart. By connecting products with people's desires, this all changed. Advertisers and companies began hijacking people's innate desires and redirecting them towards their products. They stopped selling the goods themselves and began setting an end to that desire and the suffering that comes with it. Of course, it was never enough. There's always something else to buy and some other hole in the psyche to plug up. But it was the beginning of a growing decadence in American society, which, while interrupted briefly by the Second World War, has carried on accelerating ever since.

But this grand manipulation of the masses had far-reaching effects. Bernays himself wrote about this in his 1928 book, Propaganda, where he lays out how important his work would really become. "The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are our minds are molded, our tastes formed, and ideas suggested largely by men we've never heard of. It is they who pull the wires that control the public mind." And by laying this blueprint for thought control, Bernays had set the groundwork for a century of populist politicians and meaningless slogans. "We will make America powerful again." "It's time to finish the job." "Finish the job." He had, in effect, solved the problem of freethinkers that we talked about earlier. The people living in this new America were still free, for all intents and purposes, but they were from birth guided and directed along set paths and to set consumerist goals. It was like Bernays put blinders on the entire country, leaving them unable to see other paths they could take in life. The genius of the idea was that people barely even realized the change had occurred as American culture slowly warped and changed. But the end result of all of this was a deadly cycle of decadence and excess. Bernays' changes to the American psyche left no other route available except for greater material wealth. But as society changed in other ways, the problem only deepened.

As new progressive ideas took hold over America, traditions and institutions that made up the bedrock of society started to dissolve. Gender roles began to fade and became archaic as women left the home and entered the workforce. Even though they were ruining the family structure, they gained equal rights, at least on paper, and slowly society shifted to accommodate them. The family unit continued to break down, and the definition widened to accept new people. Obviously, none of these changes were bad. They were kind of inevitable. But the old ways still had their reasons and benefits for the functioning of society as a whole. One of the most harsh losses was the sense of community, something that's sorely lacking in today's society. The structure and order they gave people's lives went away, but there wasn't anything left to replace it that was except for the empty consumerism that Bernays had masterminded. When people felt like their lives were missing stability or purpose, the products were there always to step in.

This is the next reason behind America's current predicament: the death of community. Let's see how the foundation of society was slowly stripped away over the course of the 20th century. And from there, we'll see how work, consumerism, and greed stepped in to fill that hole. We'll also witness how a human-centric America was bulldozed and paved over with concrete. And finally, we'll see how this new ideology of profits over people pushed America over the brink. As American society and history progressed, this addiction to consumerism only grew stronger. The gathering place for the community used to be the church. It was the center around which life revolved. You were baptized and named there, you got married there, and you went there every week to see people you knew. Even after you died, it was likely where you would end up. It wasn't about religion and belief itself that was important, but what really tied people together was the sense of community abroad. But as American society got more and more secular, the church stopped playing a big role in society. And as it lost its place in more urban areas, the community that came with it faded into history. Of course, this isn't true of everywhere in the US, but for most places, this is what happened.

Jobs changed as well. Used to be the case that most people's place of work was pretty much on their doorstep. Whether you worked in a factory, a post office, or pretty much anywhere really, you were always far more likely to be closer to home. The process of de-industrialization that began after the wars and that continues to this day is to blame. Instead of doing meaningful work where they actually created something, people were shuffled into stuffy office jobs and cubicles. If you've ever worked one of those jobs, then you won't need us to tell you how soul-crushing they can get. But an often forgotten way that these jobs break American society is the commute. It's not just the way it can waste hours of your time every day, but the fact that the work itself became so detached from the rest of life. Working in a mine or a factory obviously has its drawbacks. It can prematurely [ __ ] you if it involves repetitive, exhausting work, but at least you were spending that time with your friends and your neighbors, members of your community. But instead, when people began commuting to the cities en masse, they started spending a great portion of their lives with people who are pretty much strangers to them. Unless by some miracle you all live locally, your office co-workers aren't your true friends and family. You didn't grow up together. The only experiences you share are boredom and frustration, maybe some after-drinks every now and then. Everyone from the janitor to the CEO instinctively knows this. It's what makes this insistence that your workplace is a family and that you need to band together that much more inauthentic. The majority of the office would rather be anywhere else at any given moment. But because the factories and the old places of work shut down or don't pay nearly enough anymore, it's really the only option you have.

Once people finally get home after each day, they're usually too existentially exhausted to do anything else. And you can't even imagine a better way to break down community ties than with the systematic separation of work and life. It wasn't just society that changed either. This process changed the physical world in which Americans live. City planning changed from being designed around people to being designed around cars. Greenfields and open country got replaced with tarmac and suburbia. America went further than nearly any other country in this respect. It's not uncommon for there to be no sidewalk or pavement for miles on end, just oversized roads and jumbo cars filled with jumbo people. Somewhere in America's transformation, massive parts of the country lost something as instinctual and natural as simply walking in it. Place a mass-produced, cookie-cutter houses, all built to a template and completely bereft of soul. On top of that, the product of this transformation is just plain ugly. It's remarkable the effect this has on your subconscious, living amongst concrete rather than nature. There are plenty of examples of beautiful architecture in the US, and most of them are in the big cities like New York. The other 99%, though, is covered in modern buildings that look exactly the same. The rest of the world, particularly the old world, is different. Over thousands of years, cities were built and evolved based on the natural materials people had available to them, giving cities character. Take for example, the Scottish city of Aberdeen. It's cold, wet, and gray, but it doesn't detract from the city. Nearly everything is built from granite, the same kind found in the quarries surrounding the city. And so the city's history and identity is organic and ever-present. You just look around and you can feel it.

In other parts of the world, we've seen governments and ideology intentionally destroy this character and beauty. Nicolae Ceaușescu is one example. Over his nearly 24 years in power, he spent lots of time bulldozing old historic buildings in Bucharest and replacing them with his own brutalist concrete blocks and towers that were designed to impose over his people, remind them to conform, giving Bucharest this really dry feeling in the air. Every edge was uniform and straight, just like his people were meant to be. This ideologically driven architecture ends up creating domineering buildings that suck the soul out of whoever lives among them. And that brings us to the state of pretty much every town and city in America. Their buildings are driven by ideology as well, just in a different way. Before the age of capitalism, things were built with a purpose that transcended profits and expenditures. The driving forces behind the buildings were based on the people that lived in them, what their needs were, and what was available to them. It's all been wiped out by the need for cost-effective construction and cutting corners wherever possible. Steel, glass, and concrete are the cheapest materials, so that's what people use. The needs of cars are placed above everything else in lots of American cities. A certain amount of parking spaces are mandatory, and massive highways run through the cities like scars, which has had an awful effect that's hard to notice after living around it for so long. People in these giant cities like Los Angeles, Houston, they want to go outside and exist in the world because it isn't made for them anymore. It's no wonder kids don't play outside anymore. It's not just the screens, it's the lack of incentive. There is nothing to go outside for. The effects are pretty much the same as with communist architecture: the people, the community feels alienated by the places they call home. The design of these cities and towns inevitably makes people more isolated from each other. Where there used to be green fields, small houses, and churches, there's now only monolithic cities or sprawling artificial suburbia.

And as the church community faded into history, there were some attempts to replace it. But by the end of the '60s and beyond, the consumerist addiction had overwhelmed most of society. The default meeting place and crux of life changed from the church to the mall. Instead of gathering at a place designed for the community, they went to a place designed to satiate the national addiction to shopping. Now, lots of people are nostalgic for the age of malls these days, and for a lot of good reasons. When you compare it to today, it's like night and day. At least by then, people still met up in person all the time. Kids still have places outside the house that simply exist and have fun rather than being locked indoors being an IP packet. It might have been dominated by shopping and money, but it was still kind of a community space. Despite everything, the core of small communities that make up society were clinging on. Society and people in general were getting more fractured and decadent, and people were beginning to notice they had lost something on the road of progress. And today, we're living in a world where even though stilted communal places don't really exist anymore, instead people's communities have moved online. We've already talked about how massive a problem this is. But why does it matter to you? What makes any of these issues different from the unresolvable, stress-inducing problems that are everywhere on modern social media?

Well, despite the ways that the feeding media presents other countries, America is still the world's premier superpower, both on the political chessboard as well as culturally. This cultural dominance extends to everything, and over the 20th century, we've seen American influence change countries forever. What succeeds over there, whether it's an online trend, a successful tech startup, or a new genre of music, eventually goes international. All of these American problems, even if you aren't American, will soon be your own as well. And that's assuming they aren't you and your country's problems already. Understanding America's problems is like peering into the future. Because of this, America's consumerist culture is the best at locating people's innermost desires, regardless of the consequences. We'll see what they've done to food in a minute, but so many different parts of American culture are like this. They're designed to take advantage of people's psychological weaknesses. This is exactly how Nietzsche defined decadence: when something doesn't appeal to your virtue and instead relies on your vices, it's decadent. Looking at the people that American society rewards shows you this in action. A decadent ruling class takes as much money from society as possible and uses it to fuel their desire for more money, more material wealth, and whatever else they can think of. But with the money over everything attitude, it creates a decadent, ununified society where everyone else learns from them. Perfecting these vices becomes the only way to get ahead. Nietzsche's solution for this was to arrive above these destructive values and create your own based on your own experience of the world. It was hard back then, but today it's even harder. The temptations are so much more potent. It's far easier to be taken off track. To really get ahead, you need to understand what those traps and pitfalls are. We've seen how this corporate isolation has destroyed the American dream of a better life. But other than the physical world Americans live in, what else has it affected?

Now, we'll explore what effects this has had on the American diet and American healthcare. And we'll see how companies manipulated America's weak political system, letting them suck trillions out of a system designed to make people's lives better. And now that we've caught up to the modern day, we can truly explore the main reason behind America's current weaknesses and their future problems. An unhealthy population isn't one that would choose good leaders, make responsible decisions for themselves, or create a healthy society that can stand the test of time. We will reveal the companies behind this and show how their work to systematically undermine the health of the American people has wide-reaching and long-lasting effects.

Healthcare is the defining way that America is different from the rest of the developed world today. It might not be this way for much longer, though. The sheer amount of profits companies can take makes it certain that the American system of medical exploitation will spread across the world. These twin industries of food and healthcare have done the most damage to America compared to anyone else and made trillions in the process. Here's how it made modern America one of the unhealthiest and weakest countries in human existence. But what really paints a good picture of our society's decadence is the food. Stuffed full of fat, salt, sugar, and everything else. It doesn't matter that it barely fills you up or slowly turns your body to mush with chemicals. It's also about the experience and the chemical effect on your brain as it feeds the addiction. This is something that America has exported to the world. Fast, ultra-processed food is intrinsically terrible for people. It ends their lives prematurely, as well as making them tired, fat, and lazy. But what choice do most Americans have? Ultra-processed food makes up 73% of the total food supply of the country. People don't have the time or energy to cook proper home meals every single day. The suffocating work culture makes sure of that, as well as how addictive it is. People naturally fall into the easiest habits possible. It's a survival mechanism. There's no point in wasting energy on something by doing it the hard way. At least that's how the body thinks. But this is severely damaging the country's ability to function, and it makes the average US citizen less able to thrive.

One clear, concrete example of this is in the nation's military. The US Army is currently missing its recruitment goal by 15,000 people every year. It isn't because there weren't enough willing recruits. It's because the people that show up wouldn't be able to perform. Drug use, mental health issues, below-average IQ, and the obesity crisis are all reasons for it. And this is an aspect of what Nietzsche was talking about in relation to decadence. Gluttony and overeating just weren't available as a vice to most people in history. Generally, there was too much physical work and not enough food. Only palaces and mansions could offer food that's rich and plentiful enough to make people obese. But today's modern food and culture has opened up this vice to the masses. And this psychological addiction has trickled down from the ruling classes and penetrated every level of society. Fast food, while being stuffed with fat and sugar and salt, doesn't really ever fill you up because it's stuffed with other chemicals you wouldn't even know the name of. "Taco Bell puts essentially sand in..." "Well, sodium bicarbonate." "Uh, bro, no, silicon bicarbonate, I think they call it silicon." So they're, so they're, their beef filling, they're not allowed to call it beef filling, they have to call it taco filling because it's not beef. The beef has silicon in it to make it fuller and more..." "Look it up." "That [ __ ] that [ __ ] is delicious." "36% beef." It's only 36% beef at Taco Bell. The other 64% is a wide range of fillers, preservatives. That's why after an hour or two, you always want more. That's why Coke feels better after you've had it at McDonald's. These effects only get more pronounced the more of your diet it takes up. The physical addictive nature of processed food can't be underestimated. But it isn't the only reason for the obesity epidemic. It's a reflection of the consumerist ideology that underpins every aspect of modern American society. The hole it seems to leave in your stomach is the same kind of craving as the rest of consumerism: a constant need for consumption that can never truly be quenched.

While this might be true of fast food around the world, American food is especially harmful to the body and the mind. Part of it is a set of dubious decisions that food companies like Monsanto have gotten away with by molding the American palate. "There's, there's, there's many, many diseases that are linked to glyphosate exposure, including, um, uh, non-alcoholic fatty liver, cancers are very, very closely linked, um, a lot of kidney diseases, and then severe damage to the microbiome, um, because it's designed to kill plants. There are structures in your, um, in your gut biome that are critical structures in your gut biome which have plant-like metabolisms which are destroyed by glyphosate. So all the wheat in our country started being sprayed that year in 2006 with glyphosate, and that's the year you saw this explosion of celiac diseases and, you know, gluten allergies and all of this stuff that people, you know, you may have noticed around that. But they also did the first time they were, excuse me, the first time they're, they're spraying it directly on food because it used to be they were spraying it early in the season and it would, you know, it would wash off and the, and the corn would get higher than the, the weeds, and you wouldn't have to do it. But now they're spraying it directly on our foods."

Across the world, companies making processed or ultra-processed food will stuff as much sugar, fat, and salt in as possible. And I'm sure we all know this by now. The largest companies have entire laboratories dedicated to sneaking in as much as possible without going past what consumers will want. It's a calculated decision, as our bodies naturally want all of those things, thus making our food so much more addictive. And America turns all of the system up to 11. Take American bread, for example. If you've ever tried it in comparison to bread from other countries, you'll notice it's much sweeter. And it's because America is alone in adding large quantities of sugar or corn syrup to their dough. On average, two slices of American bread have 3 grams of sugar. Now, this might not seem like a massive amount, but other than a tiny bit for activating the yeast, it's a completely useless ingredient. And so when companies have to try mimic American bread in other countries, they stuff it with sugar as well. Subway stores in Ireland technically don't sell bread, they actually sell cakes. The loaves they use have so much sugar in them that the government considers them a confectionary product. Instead, the 5 grams of sugar in a 6-inch Subway doesn't even compare to the nearly 6 grams in a smaller yet sweeter Big Mac bun. Across the board, American food is just like this. Over decades of conditioning, companies have succeeded in giving Americans a far sweeter palate than any other country. It's something they've done with the full compliance of the FDA. Their regulations are far more relaxed, letting companies put tons of potentially harmful and unneeded chemicals into food. There's a million examples. One is called Acrylamide, or ACA, banned in the EU and the UK for links to cancer and exposed lab animals. The chemical is used to industrially bleach and treat American dough. It's also used to make plastic yoga mats. Another of these chemicals is called Potassium Bromide, which is used in the US to help dough rise but has been linked to kidney and thyroid cancer, being banned everywhere in the world, including China, Brazil, the EU, the UK, and India, just to name a few countries. And yet, it's still widely used in the US.

Why is this the case? It's because the American government and the FDA have even less incentive to fix it than other countries. It doesn't matter how many obese people they make or how unhealthy the real American diet is. In fact, it actively helps them. Their friends in the pharmaceutical industry make all their money from treating the obesity epidemic. They sell pills that treat high blood pressure, and they sell insulin for diabetes. In America, thanks to their lobbying efforts, they sell these crucial drugs for far higher prices than pretty much anywhere else. This commercialization and commodification of life-saving drugs, it's just something the American people have to live with. The degree of corporate control in the American government is far higher than anywhere else in the world. The American government is complicit in this long squeeze, and the effect it's having on their people is slowly coming to fruition.

But what does this mean for the rest of the world? Well, as we've seen, it's a model of running both food and healthcare that leads to far more profits in return for far more suffering. It's unfortunately a model that other governments will be eager to adopt if they think they can get away with it. The most widespread and most dangerous effects of this are on America's people. How many great men and women of the future will never reach their full potential, shackled by addiction, obesity, and lingering health problems, cutting their lives short? This is one way in which the rest of the world has to not emulate America, because it will cut uncountable years of their people's lives. Lobbyists and corporations will push as hard as they can to make this happen. There's too much profit in it to pass up. If you need a few examples, there's plenty to choose from. Take Daraprim, which very produces as a treatment for toxoplasmosis. It's a specialty drug because toxoplasmosis only becomes a problem in people without immune systems that can fight it off. It's only something very sick people need to worry about, which makes it perfect for turning a profit. The sickly and the weak are especially easy targets, which is why their

CEO Martin Shkreli raised the price from under $14 per pill to $750. Now, he's a special case, to be sure, and he's infamous for this sort of thing, eventually even going to prison. You may remember the name Martin Shkreli. He's the hedge fund manager who jacked up the price of a life-saving drug back in 2015. Well, now a federal court has sentenced him to 7 years in prison for defrauding investors out of more than $10 million.

But he's just the tip of a much bigger iceberg. American pharmaceutical companies all do this. He just went one step further and made it too obvious. Drugs that millions of people take, like insulin, also see this kind of price gouging. In 2021, the average price of a vial of insulin in Canada was $12. In the US, it was just under $100. What if this means that Americans pay over $1,000 on average for medication every year, and a third of Americans simply go without life-saving medicine because of the costs?

There are countless stories of people paying thousands and thousands just for ambulance trips. And yet, they created the conditions for modern diseases like type 2 diabetes to find a home with a massively sweet, addictive food and artificial chemicals in all their food, then they profit off the suffering it causes. We don't know all the effects that the American lifestyle has because it interferes with systems we don't truly understand yet. Despite how far medical knowledge has come, we barely know a thing about the more complex, intricate systems of the body. We're still slowly unpacking the secrets of the brain, and we really don't know how other systems can affect it. Gut bacteria is another thing we know too little about.

There are around 100 trillion bacteria inside of you right now, and 5% of them live in your guts. They exist in a natural equilibrium, which changes based on what you eat and drink. We know they play a crucial role in health, and that junk food can destroy most of them, letting a few species break the balance. All the biochemistry that goes on in the body, which you need a medical degree to better even understand, relies on them. This includes all the neurochemistry, all the neurotransmitters, and all the things that decide who you are, how you feel, and what to do. And your gut instinct, your gut instinct is literally a second brain inside of you, and is operating through your gut bacteria. And it's all tied together in an impossibly complex web, and the American diet and lifestyle is slowly tearing it all apart. Polluted water, seed oils, artificial processed chemicals, completely disrupting the natural equilibrium you need in your gut.

Pharmaceutical executives and lobbyists will happily exploit people and tamper with things they don't understand if they charge a bit more or get another overpriced drug patented. Then it means they'll get a bigger private jet or another floor on one of their mansions. In a world like this, where everyone is out for themselves, nobody's really thinking very far in the future. People live in debt to afford the basic necessities, and companies are happy to make an extra buck today, even if it means bankruptcy tomorrow. And politicians are some of the worst offenders. The election cycle and the lobbying means they're always looking at short-term fixes for long-term problems. They only need to get their foot in the door, and the rest is just for appearances.

If you need a good, sobering look at the current state of America, all you need to do is look at its politicians. We'll take a look at an example of how corrupt America's politicians have become. We'll see how they offer us a look into what the ruling classes really think about the American people. So let's us dive right in and find out how corrupt American politics has really become. If you asked about a 100 Americans what they think about their leaders, you probably wouldn't get many positive answers. After decades of betrayals and scandals, everyone knows how dirty and fake politicians really are. Everyone knows how fake Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, and all of this garbage truly is. Unfortunately, exactly what people think, and this is extremely dangerous to our democracy. It's all so much so that tons of people just don't bother interacting with it at all. 80 million eligible people didn't even vote in 2020. And can you really blame them? If you went into a shop and you didn't find anything worth buying, then you'd be fine to just walk out. And with just one mathematically irrelevant vote, how can anyone person actually change anything, especially when they hate other people representing them? Money and connections is the obvious answer, of course. But even without any way to personally impact the system, you can still learn a lot about America by studying what politics has really become.

Empires fall for a number of reasons, including economic turmoil, political division, and social and cultural decay. The US and its current state ticks all three boxes. Empires also crumble when morality, the system through which individuals judge right and wrong, becomes altered and distorted. Morals serve as the dominant principles of conduct, facilitating harmonious living within communities by offering specific behavioral guidelines. Upholding morality often necessitates individuals to prioritize the welfare of society over their immediate personal interests. It also requires telling the truth, and in the US, it seems telling the truth matters less today than at any other time in recent history. And if in doubt, let me point you in the direction of George Santos, arguably the most dishonest politician in US history, and one of many reasons why people are laughing at the once great nation.

In December of 2023, the 35-year-old was expelled by the House of Representatives with a vote of 311 to 114. This decision was made shortly after the House Ethics Committee released a report in November, which provided substantial evidence of the politician's violation of campaign finance and government ethics laws. And rather absurdly, these violations included the inappropriate use of campaign funds for personal expenses, such as Botox treatments and the adult content platform OnlyFans. A scathing House Ethics report, that report concluded there's "substantial evidence that Santos violated federal laws, stole from his campaign, and delivered a 'constant series of lies' to voters." Santos is accused of using campaign funds to pay for Botox, OnlyFans, and leisure travel. In response to the expulsion vote, Santos, who was already facing a federal indictment consisting of 23 counts, including money laundering and theft of public funds, announced that he will no longer run for reelection in New York's Third District. This is a wise choice, as it's difficult to imagine anyone in their right mind voting for a man who has told so many obvious lies and using taxpayer money to pay for OnlyFans.

A year before being expelled, CNN published a scathing piece that delved into a few of the falsehoods Santos had propagated. For instance, he falsely claimed that he attended a prestigious private school in New York City. He didn't. Additionally, Santos claimed that he had previously worked for renowned financial institutions such as Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, a claim that was proven to be utterly untrue. Furthermore, CNN, of all news outlets, uncovered more instances where Santos provided misleading information about his family's background. For example, he claimed that his mother had Jewish heritage. However, journalists consulted by CNN found no evidence to support this claim. In another lie, Santos stated that his mother, who has resided in Brazil for several decades, was a white immigrant from Belgium. Moreover, Santos admitted to fabricating certain aspects of his resume, including falsely claiming to have obtained a college degree. He never even attended college. Furthermore, one of his apparent lies involved his grandparents and claiming that they were survivors of the Holocaust. They're not.

So, is it any wonder that tens of millions of Americans agree that the country is in the midst of a moral nose-dive? In survey after survey, individuals of all age groups, educational backgrounds, political affiliations, and religious beliefs in the United States consistently express that people have become less compassionate, less honest, and less respectful compared to the past. They look around the country and they see people like George Santos, elected officials telling the most outlandish lies. They look around and they see criminals being rewarded for their behavior. Yes, rewarded. The only people who seem to really enjoy living in the US now are criminals. This is especially true of California-based criminals. You see, in recent times in California, the world's fifth largest economy, shoplifting has become something of a statewide hobby. In fact, it's now legal to steal items from stores. Thieves thinking they can steal things with impunity, thinking they will never get caught. It's happened again. Four women run off after stealing from the CVS Pharmacy at Vanessa and Jackson in San Francisco. TVs, laptops, iPads, and iPhones. In the Golden State, just walk in, grab what you want, and walk out the door. You can do it multiple times without any legal consequences because, in truth, most of the US is being overrun by crime, including violent crime. According to a recent report published by Numbeo, 11 US cities now rank among the 50 most dangerous in the world. Which is crazy, knowing the fact that the US was once renowned for upholding law and order. Today, however, it's known for embracing lawlessness and disorder in many states.

So, of course, is it really any surprise then that if lawlessness and lack of moral virtue is becoming normal in areas of the US, that conmen, liars eventually rise to be the leaders of these people? So much so that George Santos really believed that Americans were so stupid he could actually fool them by pretending to be well-traveled and educated. It's a fact that Americans don't value education as highly as other countries. There's still plenty of exam stress and pressure, but it still isn't as much as other countries. With seemingly little to gain from it and less cultural pressure, it isn't surprising that most American kids and young adults won't put in the 12-hour days that are expected of lots of Korean and Chinese students. Add in immigration, and American kids are competing with a whole world of more dedicated, disciplined students for a few more university places at the top. The pipeline doesn't go the other way. In fact, Americans are far less likely to travel and see the rest of the world than people from other countries. Most people in the US don't even have a passport. More than one-third, to be precise.

Now, this is not to pick on people who perhaps can't afford to travel abroad and see no need to own one. More so, this is to shine a light on one of the reasons why America's ignorance is a split phenomenon. It's so problematic. You see, most people in Europe have a passport. For example, only 12% of the German population don't own a passport. More than 70% of Canadians have a passport. But as for Americans with passports, who do travel, where do they even go? Well, Cancun and Canada seem to be the most popular destinations. When most people in the US travel, they never really leave North America. And this could be a problem, as many claim travel broadens one's mind. Traveling to far-away lands has been shown to enhance cognitive function and stimulate creativity. By immersing oneself in unfamiliar cultures, the mind becomes more adept at transitioning between diverse concepts, engaging in critical thinking, and synthesizing thoughts. This allows them to be more open to humans across the world, opening one's mind to new perspectives, new ways of thinking, helping shatter any stereotypical illusions that may have existed before. As the study shows, those who actively engaged with other cultures find it easier to hold multiple contradictory viewpoints simultaneously. In other words, exposure to diverse cultures makes people more intelligent. And yet, for many Americans, they refuse to even travel anywhere else, even if they have the money. As for the ones who do make it onto foreign soil, many thousands of miles away, they actively refrain from engaging in local customs and trying new foods. A significant number of Americans, approximately three-fifths to be exact, confess are not exploring local cuisine while on vacation. Furthermore, over 70% of respondents admitted to indulging in takeout meals during their trips, usually with McDonald's and KFC as the top contenders. But in addition to refusing good foreign food, most Americans have no interest in learning anything about other non-US cultures. Take foreign films, for example, and it seems that Americans are not a fan. In fact, over the last decade, the number of foreign-language films being viewed by Americans has dropped considerably. Why is this the case? Well, it might be because foreign-based films come with subtitles, and if there's one thing Americans hate even more than traveling to foreign lands and trying local cuisines, it's perhaps reading.

But before we get to that, it's important to analyze the implications of all of this and the underlying reasons behind it. Yet another key part of the American identity that's been lost over the years is the idea of a manifest destiny. Through exploration of new lands, Americans could find an opportunity to live better lives. In the past, it was far more literal, of course. If you wanted to explore, you could physically get on a wagon train and travel out west, find gold, find new lands. Today, though, it's a little different. From an early age, kids don't see the value in exploration anymore because there isn't much of a world to explore. Everything's by car, everything's paved out with giant mega-roads, eight-lane traffic jams, and suburban sprawl. As we already talked about, it's all just parking lots, highways, and decrepit shops. Kids can just get all the social reaction they want vicariously through social media, their iPads, TikTok influencers. There's no need to seek out new people and organically experience new things. That loop of boredom leading to exploration and new experiences has been broken by the modern world, and America is ahead of the game compared to the rest of the world in this regard. It's the most advanced technologically, and so it's the first to experience the results of being too advanced. And so, of course, it's beginning to see the results of what happens when an entire society is disconnected by technology. It's why many Americans can be so unlikely to try new foods, experience different cultures, or even travel outside of their own state.

Looking towards the future, though, it's creating a nation where many are just too comfortable and placid, and without any shred of the American spirit that pushed the country into its golden age. Of course, this isn't all Americans, and some states in particular still have that strong American spirit within them, and it's not misguided either. History is obsessed with facts and conditions and geographical influences, and it's not misguided. Obviously, they're important, but it doesn't paint the whole picture if it ignores things like national character. When Rome was fighting the Punic Wars against Carthage, it was pretty much a coin flip on who would win. Rome lost around 60,000 people in one battle, a huge proportion of their population. Any other country would have capitulated, but Rome carried on. Despite the catastrophic losses, they won the war and went on to build an empire that would last for over a thousand years. Their national character changed history. So imagine what would have happened if they were a bit less determined, a bit lazier, a bit more comfortable in their own bubble of decadence. Well, this is exactly what happened to Rome. The fall of Rome was marked by this, by degeneracy, by apathy, by laziness, by being too comfortable from their past successes. And this is perhaps the condition that America is in right now. As many say, every 250 years, great civilizations collapse, and 240 years since America's founding, America is finding itself in a wary position. How can they expect to stay on top for much longer when Americans are being undermined in so many ways by poisoning their people and narrowing the horizons until all they can see is their own hedonistic desires on a hamster wheel? America's ruling class is sabotaging the nation, and you can see why they've done it. An uninformed, shortsighted populace is far easier to control with bread and circuses.

So let's explore how America put aside the written word and replaced it with new, more stimulating attractions. We will see how new technology will be mishandled and misused to push America further into ignorance, and finally, we'll see what all of this is going to mean for America's future. Americans have been falling out of love with reading for so many years, as is true for many of the world. But now things are getting kind of worrying here, as more than 50% of adults have never read an entire book in the past year. Furthermore, a huge amount, 22% of adults, have not read a book in over 3 years, and over 10% have never read a book in more than a decade. Which might be why there's a growing trend of Americans who can't use basic grammar and spell simple words. But this isn't just because they're bored of reading. It's because of the US's warped education system that is now becoming a national issue within the states. As it turned out, 40% of Americans can't name one First Amendment right. Fewer than half of Americans can name the three branches of government. Most Americans can't name a single Founding Father. Millions don't even know who the US fought in World War II. They just know they were bad, and that the US won. So if tens of millions of Americans don't know the basics about their own country, can we really expect them to know or care about what goes on in other countries?

For years, decades even, the education system has failed to do what it was designed to do: educate. Math and reading scores are at their lowest point in decades, even though significant amounts of federal funding has been and continues to be pumped into K-12 schooling. But simply throwing money at the problem won't fix this, because this is so systemic in the culture. Instead of just addressing the crisis by improving teacher training and salaries, or introducing smaller class sizes, lawmakers are now obsessing over the creation of more charter schools and high-stakes testing. An incredibly crucial part of the education system that's failing kids right now, though, is how it fails to teach them to be men. In the US, the 2020 decline in college enrollment was 7 times greater for male than for female students. Among men with only a high school education, one in three is out of the labor force. For those who have a job, typical earnings are $881 a week, down from $1,017 a week in 1979. Mortality from drug overdose, suicide, and alcohol-related illnesses are almost three times higher among men than women. Just a tip of the iceberg of the alarming findings. How many young boys are growing up without a father figure or even any real male role model? With 75% of teachers being women, there's a gender gap that's seriously damaging young men in the long run. It's a reflection of how American society has been changing and shifting away from masculinity. In the more left-leaning parts of America, natural male aggression is seen as something to be ironed out and removed with pills, told by bossy, miserable, fat teachers to sit down and obey. They're scared of masculinity. The extreme left's misguided moralism sees that aggression as the precursor to violent crimes in the future. But by denying it and refusing to accept its existence, it tears these young men apart. They don't get taught to channel it into something more productive because they don't have a role model or a society that will tell them how to do it. That's why you see Generation Alpha, young children looking up to these twisted, degenerate influences. I've made a ton of videos on these kinds of people, but I'm talking about entire generations of school children without any real male role model seeing that the biggest influencers are talking about cucking themselves.

"Hey, so Jason, give me a genuine review." "100% 10 out of 10. And how many dicks they can suck after this?" "We'll show you my phone. You can see all your friends and rappers DMing me. They're in [ __ ] nudes. So, no, I don't have to do any work." At the end of the day, it's just yet another part of the American system that's failed its people. Kids get pulled in 10 different directions by far more interesting things than schoolwork, and it stunts their discipline to ever achieve, which was made whole or worse by the pandemic year where school just went out the window altogether and was replaced instead by Fortnite videos and a huge rise in more degenerate influences teaching your children to think like they do. Going into the narcissistic influencer machine. I mean, ask nearly any teacher, and you'll get the same answer. After the pandemic, kids have been much harder to keep focused. And as you grow older, you slowly learn that pretty much everything in life that's worth seeking out is hard work. Work, health, wealth, lasting happiness for most people is all locked behind years of discipline. This is what the American dream used to mean: the idea that there's a place where if you can apply yourself, you'll be rewarded with a good, happy life for you and your family. Modern America has so many different things working against this idea that most people won't bother trying. They'll get suckered in by fattening, lifespan-shortening foods, addicted to social media scrolling, dating on apps, watching adult entertainment, vaping, and having their culture warped by the most degenerate people out there, the worst among us, teaching your kids how to think before your children have even been able to tie their shoelaces. They'll be under assault from all sides.

So then, what does the future of America look like from such a weak standing point? How will American society deal with the changes to come? Now, America is resilient. Its people are the most courageous out there in the world. Its spirit is magnificent. It is, in all honesty, one of the most free countries in the world. And whilst it has these many problems, it's something to be saved, and something that we should do everything we can to keep afloat. And one of the biggest things that we need to deal with to keep America going and reverse this direction it's headed in, America needs to address the destabilizing effects of AI and other new technologies that are only going to make this problem so much worse. You see, AI is yet another way that kids can easily coast by. Almost everyone can right now. It writes essays for children, their book reports, their math problems, any schoolwork that isn't supervised is fair game. Realistically, only a small number of kids are always going to do the work themselves. And whilst being able to understand AI is probably one of the best skills you can have right now, what does it mean for their general hard work and discipline ethic that it's lost by easily just typing something into ChatGPT? Only a tiny number of kids are ever going to do the work themselves anymore. And you can't rely on parents either. They're too busy working on a hamster wheel of paycheck-to-paycheck living, or too tired or uncaring to ever pay attention due to their just general apathy towards this problem. Every part of being a human that we automate and farm off to the machines is taking a little more of our children's potential. When augmented reality hits the mainstream, it will only get worse. With the rise of Vision Pros, Meta Quests, all of this garbage metaverse stuff will make the distractions ever-present, always floating there at the edge of people's view. And if kids and young adults don't like the world because they don't have a place in this anymore, they'll retreat into new ones. They'll dive into VR worlds and never come out, just like isolated people today dive into the online world and lose out on years of crucial social development. And what world are they going to go into anyway?

A massive problem that America is going to face is the rising inequality that could come from AI. We've already seen the beginning of how this will play out if the American government gives into big business. It's already replacing middle management jobs, lawyers, analysts, consultants, even CEOs in some cases. Not to mention all the jobs that self-checkout machines are replacing already. In China, a Fortune 500 company replaced their CEO with ChatGPT, and ChatGPT even outperformed all other competitors in that niche. We're already seeing a huge homeless crisis within America, tons of layoffs in Silicon Valley. All truck drivers are going, just like the horses who lost their jobs when the car hit the mainstream. Tons of creative jobs already on the way out as well. It seems like America has two massive problems to deal with here. They've got to deal with a huge pool of disenfranchised people who are pushed out of the job market entirely. And people say, "Oh, people will just adapt to the economy." Do you really think truck drivers all around the US will suddenly learn how to code? It's just not going to happen. Millions of angry people who've seen their country's values turned inward, who feel like their vote doesn't matter anymore. These are the people who built America in the first place, and millions of angry people around America is not a recipe for a peaceful, productive society. And of course, many of these problems here aren't just about the US. The US is just at the front of all of these problems because it's the biggest country in the world. All these problems eventually trickle down to the rest of the world. And for all its flaws, America still is in a dominant position on the world stage, nearly every way. Its cultural influence is everywhere. In whichever country you might visit, people eat American food, read American news, watch American shows, and often they live American lives, whether they know it or not. Some countries' news agencies are more concerned with whatever Trump is doing than reporting on massive scandals and stories in their own backyard. With the internet only spreading America's reach further and further, the whole developed world is really just one step behind, inheriting all these problems.

So what can you do to survive this strange world we're finding ourselves in when there's so many things pulling you towards decadence and vice? It's hard to see a way out. And when the world is so harsh, it gets tough to make a good life for yourself, but it doesn't make it impossible. People throw around the idea that "hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men." You've probably heard this before, but despite how simplistic it is, it is a cycle that happens over and over again. And there's no question that we're entering into the hard times with war looming, IQs dropping, society becoming more divided, men who are weak of character leaving us with the crumbs of a corrupted society and milking that society for as much money as they can. But it's in these times of crisis that the next generation of great men emerges and eventually builds something better. All of these problems that we've talked about hit today's young people the hardest, but the ones who survive, who are disciplined, who don't get distracted, will be the ones that save it. And in a million terms, as more and more people lose their potential to addictive algorithms and vices, it'll mean less competition for you. As your contemporaries get distracted by meaningless escapes, you'll have the opportunity to be one of the few people building a better world, one of the people who make history and change the future, not just being a consumer. Now, the victim mentality is everywhere today, especially in America, and it's surprisingly easy to fall into, which often gives you excuses to just give up and check out. America must collectively prioritize intellectual and moral development over material success, greed, narcissism, all the deadly sins that are promoted to you on a daily basis. Through a renewed commitment to truth, community, enlightenment values, America can hope to reverse this trend of declining IQ scores and rationality.

It is at this point, though, that you need to remember the words of Reverend Philip Brooks, an often forgotten figure in history: "Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger."

[Music]

Men.