Election Prediction: The Biggest Loser

Plus, Ron Paul reenters the fray, Mainstream Media, R.I.P. and plenty more...

“Man with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends not only to other men but to the humblest living creature, with his god-like intellect which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar system—with all these exalted powers—Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.”

~ Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man

Joel Bowman with today’s Note From the End of the World: Buenos Aires, Argentina...

Although humans have been leveraging the “will of the majority” to bully their outnumbered beloveds since the dawn of time, it was the Greeks who formalized the practice and bestowed on it a dignified name: 

Democracy, from “demos” (for “common people”) and “krátos” (meaning “force” or “might”), is literally the force of the common people. 

And yes, it was those very same Greeks who put their own beloved Socrates to death… by a majority vote of 361-140.

Call it “tyranny of the mobjority.”

But let us fast-forward a couple-thousand-plus years. Once more, with feeling, the world turns its weary eyes to the Shining City on the Hill, as American voters head to the polls today, election day. 

Someone, Call a Doctor!

Before the long-suffering citizens of the republic stand two merely mortal candidates, mammals both, each bearing the indelible stamp of our lowly origin. One ham-fisted, the other empty-headed, they present their own visions of the future of America. 

And in the background, with multi-trillion dollar deficits as far as the human eye can see, the National Debt clock lurches toward $36 trillion outstanding...$106k per person...$272k per taxpayer. By 2028, on its current trajectory, it will crest $50 trillion...$145k per person...$359k per taxpayer. 

Silently, the noose tightens... the rope burns... the stool wobbles underfoot. 

Ah, but what’s this? 

In an October surprise that the legacy media has assiduously avoided covering, libertarian OG and former US Congressman, Dr. Ron Paul, has reentered the fray... on the side of (what else?) cutting the overfed federal government down to size.

From his Weekly Report (via X): 

With JD Vance and Elon Musk, Suddenly Ideas Are Back in this Campaign

Republican candidate for vice president, JD Vance, mentioned last week that he had come to the view that the Federal Reserve was not the benevolent force for good that its supporters claim [...]

Then, Trump campaign surrogate Elon Musk, made an announcement that no doubt terrified the DC swamp. Were he to get the government efficiency job Trump suggested, he’d start with a bang, cutting off two trillion dollars from the federal budget.  

Dr. Paul went on to note that Musk had reached out directly to him on X and that, encouraged by the outpouring of support from the public, the good doctor had promised to help Musk in “any effort to correct the wrong path we have been going down: a path toward total bankruptcy.”

Musk Goes Full Milei

Gee, if we didn’t know better, we’d almost say the Musk-Paul duo was taking a leaf out of Javier Milei’s playbook. As readers of these Notes well know, Argentina’s self-described “anarcho-capitalist” has been busily lopping off the state’s hollow branches down here with his trademark motosierra. 

The latest bureaucrat body count: 33,000 jobs gone, plus another 10,000 workers due to reach retirement status before 2025, whose positions will not be refilled...along with another 40,000 temporary contracts that are poised to end this year.

Down this End of the World, the trend is clear: Less Marx, More Milei!

Pavlovian Presstitutes

Naturally, the Dept. of Government Efficiency (D.O.G.E.) story went virtually unreported in the US Media, much of which answers to the Deep State establishment like so many Pavlovian presstitutes. But what to do about those pesky independent thinkers exchanging ideas on social media? 

Predictably, the Harris campaign is outraged that X users (including, presumably,  Dr. Paul and the man who owns the platform himself) are able to speak “directly” to the unwashed masses, or “garbage,” as President Biden prefers to call them. Here was the DEI Veep last month, speaking out against X, specifically, and something that used to be called “free speech,” generally...

“They are directly speaking to millions and millions of people without any level of oversight or regulation and that has to stop.”

Nor is Mrs. Harris alone in her salivating censorial impulse. Here is the Biden-Harris Climate Czar and unarmed sock-puppet, John Kerry, bemoaning the impediment posed by the First Amendment to the American Constitution a couple of weeks back at a World Economic Forum conclave:

“You know there's a lot of discussion now about how you curb those entities in order to guarantee that you're going to have some accountability on facts, etc. But look, if people only go to one source, and the source they go to is sick, and, you know, has an agenda, and they're putting out disinformation, our First Amendment stands as a major block to be able to just, you know, hammer it out of existence.”

Mr. Kerry, who evidently sees the First Amendment as a bug, rather than a feature, of that founding document, later lamented that: "Democracies around the world now are struggling with the absence of a sort of truth arbiter, and there’s no one who defines what facts really are."

The “truth arbiter,” of course, is Kerry and his coven of know-all globalist parasites. It is simply not enough that the entire establishment media has kowtowed to the Orwellian diktats of the managerial class, now the public square must be policed for “wrongspeak,” too. 

ChickenHawk Soup

Meanwhile, misinformation and partisan slander is par for the course across the tattered mastheads and polluted airwaves of the once-proud Fourth Estate. 

Recall “objective” 60 Minutes blatantly editing their “hard-hitting” Kamala Harris interview, splicing one answer onto a completely separate question, all in the name of “journalistic integrity,” of course...

Then there’s that other paragon of unbiased, reality-based reporting, Joe Scaborrough, who just this morning repeated the verifiable hoax that Mr. Trump called for Liz Cheney’s “execution.” Here’s the actual clip, which requires a committed failure of fifth-grade listening comprehension to decontextualize:

Old school peaceniks might be wondering when the so-called “left” abandoned its (proclaimed) non-interventionist foreign policy roots and instead embraced the chicken-hawk genetic predisposition of the Family Cheney, which never met a foreign war to which they did not eagerly wish to commit other people’s children. 

Then there’s the “bloodbath” hoax, the “fine people on both sides” shibboleth (recently repeated by Obama) and the relentless barrage of propaganda from the Media Industrial Complex. 

The Media Research Center’s analysis of ABC, NBC and CBS’s coverage of the 2024 election found the impartial media ran coverage that was 84% positive of Mrs. Harris... and 89% negative of Mr. Trump.

AllSides Media Bias Ratings, meanwhile, analyzed the coverage featured in Google search results on issues Americans considered most important going into the election. The results will leave you entirely unshocked:

Acute Mainstream Media Poisoning

“It was a campaign in which the mainstream media completely abandoned any idea of being a neutral source of information and instead jumped into the ring on the side of one candidate,” observed Dr. Ron Paul. “Perhaps the most encouraging development this election cycle, is the well-earned decline in the influence of the corrupt, mainstream media.”

Whatever you think of the candidates themselves, we couldn’t agree more with the good doctor’s diagnosis: America is suffering from an acute case of mainstream median poisoning (MSMP). As the late, great Mark Twain famously observed:

“If you don’t read the news, you’re uninformed. If you read the news, you’re misinformed.”

By this time tomorrow (assuming there’s no funny business with the counting...) one of the two candidates will be headed to the White House... the other to the outhouse. But no matter which of the aspirants triumphs in today’s election, the real loser is clear. 

Mainstream Media, R.I.P.

Stay tuned for more Notes From the End of the World...

Cheers,

Joel Bowman

P.S. Good news, dear readers! From the East to the West… in Americas North and South… from one “End of the World” to another… the message of free markets, free minds and free people is taking hold.

Everywhere, people are beginning to see the mainstream media for the shameless government propagandists they are… and trust in legacy outlets is plumbing historical lows.

A national Gallup poll found that the share of respondents who said their level of trust in the media was “none at all” reached 39%, while those who trusted the media either “a great deal/a fair amount” dipped to just 32%.

A further 29% said they trusted the media “not very much,” meaning 68% of respondents fell into the “not very much/none at all” trust in media segment.

And that was before the whole “this is the best version of Biden ever” saga, the “bloodbath” hoax and the “Joyful Kamala” campaign shenanigans.

Meanwhile, independent sources – such as these humble Notes From the End of the World – continue to reach a larger and more engaged readership than ever. Over the past year alone, our audience has grown to include subscribers in all 50 US states and 135 countries around the world.

Of course, this is only possible through the generous support of our dear Notes members, to whom we are forever grateful. If you enjoy the work we do here, and would like to join our growing community of readers championing free markets, free minds and free people, please consider becoming a member here, today. Cheers!