(End of the American Dream)—When I was young, I often wondered what it must have been like to live during the fall of the Roman Empire. Unfortunately, now I have a pretty good idea. Just like the Roman Empire, the United States is falling. Every day our decline gets even more pronounced, and you can see evidence of this all around us. Virtually all of our major institutions are crumbling, and virtually all of our most critical systems are failing.
We tend to blame our problems on our politicians, but the truth is that the rot that is rapidly spreading throughout our society runs a lot deeper than that. Millions upon millions of us have completely rejected the values that this nation was founded upon, and so now we have a giant mess on our hands. The following are 12 absolutely insane examples that show just how far the U.S. has fallen…
#1 A social media influencer that returned a couch to Costco after using it for more than two years is telling her followers to buy all of their furniture from Costco because “you can return it when you don’t like it anymore”…
A woman named Jackie shared she bought a couch from Costco over two and a half years ago, in a video posted last week to TikTok that’s attracted nearly 3 million views.
Jackie admits she was nervous to return the large item to the warehouse store and felt intimidated by other shoppers staring at her while waiting in line.
“But who cares. Return it. They have an awesome return policy,” she tells her followers. “Buy your furniture from Costco, girl. You can return it when you don’t like it anymore.”
#2 The U.S. Navy is having a really difficult time recruiting young people, and so they have decided that a radical new approach is needed. From now on, a high school diploma will no longer be necessary…
“We get thousands of people into our recruiting stations every year that want to join the Navy but do not have an education credential,” said the branch’s chief of personnel Vice Admiral Rick Cheeseman. “And we just turn them away.”
Now the Navy will accept some of those potential recruits lacking a high school diploma or GED, assuming they’re able to score 50 or above on a qualification test.
The move comes after the service previously lowered their qualification requirements in 2022, again amidst recruitment challenges. The Navy is the only branch of the US armed forces that admits applicants who score below 30 out of 100 on the qualification test. Officials say some positions, such as in maintenance or food preparation, don’t require a conventional education.
#3 Three years ago, the city of Portland decriminalized the possession of all drugs. Let’s check in and see how that is working out…
Oregon leaders have declared a 90-day state of emergency in Portland to battle the city’s debilitating fentanyl crisis three years after decriminalizing possession of all drugs.
Governor Tina Kotek, Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler and Multnomah County Chair Jessica Vega Pederson made the declaration and are directing their agencies to work with first responders in connecting people addicted to the synthetic opioid with resources including drug treatment programs and to crack down on drug sales.
#4 Western Oregon University has found a way to keep students from failing. D- and F grades will no longer be earned by anyone because they are being abolished…
Citing a wrongheaded “GPA fixation,” Western Oregon University leaders have announced plans to abolish D- and F grades for students.
They will replace them with “no credit” in an effort to support student success and encourage struggling undergrads to continue their education despite obstacles, they said.
The public university announced in a news release this month the changes would start in the fall.
#5 From this point forward, every police officer in El Paso, Texas will be forced to ask for the preferred pronouns of every person that they encounter…
The policy, called “Constitutional Policing,” was introduced in December 2023; however, it was not implemented until January 2024 and will require officers to ask every person they encounter, “How would you like to be referred to?”
The gender-inclusive policy was created with the help of the Borderland Rainbow Center, an “LGBTQ Community Center,” in El Paso, Texas, and exists so that LGBTQ “people and their allies can heal, grow, and empower themselves and others.” The director of the center, Amber Perez, told a local news station, “This is just the start.”
“The most important thing is that we can’t change the past,” Perez said. “[B]ut what we can do is take this first moment and run with it and continue the conversation and be able to speak to each other with respect.”
#6 A group of migrants that was caught on camera physically attacking cops in Times Square was shocking released without even having to post bail…
Police officers and other critics are slamming Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg for refusing to seek bail for the rowdy migrants arrested after allegedly being caught on camera attacking NYPD cops in Times Square.
Veteran police officers fumed to The Post Saturday that Bragg made a mockery of the entire justice system by letting five migrants walk after they were arraigned Wednesday on charges of second-degree assault on a police officer and obstruction of governmental administration in the shocking Jan. 27 beatdown.
“Alvin Bragg just showed all New Yorkers that the Police Department doesn’t matter to him,” said an NYPD detective with more than two decades on the job.
It has been reported that the migrants were seen getting on a bus to California, and so hopefully someone can track them down before they disappear completely.
#7 A group of pro-life activists in Tennessee face 11 years in prison for praying and singing outside of an abortion clinic…
Nearly three years ago several pro-Life activists held a prayer rally at a Tennessee abortion clinic.
The Christian protesters prayed and sang hymns.
They were sitting peacefully in the lobby of the abortion center.
The protesters included: Chester Gallagher, 73, of Lebanon, Tennessee; Heather Idoni, 58; Calvin Zastrow, 57; and Caroline Davis, 24; all of Michigan; Coleman Boyd, 51, of Bolton, Mississippi; Dennis Green, 56, of Cumberland, Virginia; and Paul Vaughn, 55, of Centerville, Tennessee.
#8 The 24-year-old aide to U.S. Senator Ben Cardin that was filmed having gay sex in a Senate hearing room will not be charged with breaking any laws…
As reported earlier – The United States Capitol Police have concluded their investigation into a controversial incident involving Aidan Maese-Czeropski, a 24-year-old former aide to Democratic Senator Ben Cardin of Maryland.
Maese-Czeropski had been embroiled in a scandal after a sexually explicit video recorded in the Senate hearing room surfaced online.
The video, which depicted Maese-Czeropski and his partner engaging in anal sex inside the Senate Hearing Room, sparked nationwide controversy. Clad only in a g-string jockstrap, Maese-Czeropski was seen atop the senator’s desk, a setting traditionally reserved for grave legislative deliberations and Supreme Court confirmation hearings.
#9 Violent carjackers are fearlessly roaming the streets of Washington D.C., and anyone that resists one of those young carjackers can end up dead. Sadly, that is precisely what just happened to an official that worked in the Trump administration…
Former Trump Administration official Mike Gill has died after being shot in front of his wife during a carjacking in Washington DC.
Gill, a married father of three, was shot by Artell Cunningham on K Street NW about 5.45pm last Monday and died in hospital on Saturday.
He was collecting his wife, an education lawyer, when he was shot inside the car by the attacker. He stumbled outside the vehicle and collapsed.
#10 The Chinese and other foreign buyers are purchasing millions of acres of U.S. farmland, but nobody knows exactly how much farmland they now own and very few of our politicians are interested in stopping this practice…
America is seeing more and more of its most fertile land snapped up by China and other foreign buyers, yet problems with how the US tracks such data means it’s difficult to know just how much, according to a report.
Foreign ownership and investment in property such as farmland, pastures and forests jumped to about 40 million acres in 2021, up 40% from 2016, according to the US Department of Agriculture data. But an analysis conducted by the US Government Accountability Office — a non-partisan watchdog that reports to Congress — found mistakes in the data, including the largest land holding linked with China being counted twice. Other issues include the challenge of enforcing a US law that requires foreigners to self-report such purchases, the report said, citing USDA.
#11 So many radical Muslims have moved into Dearborn, Michigan that the Wall Street Journal is referring to it as “America’s Jihad Capital”…
A Michigan suburb with the largest Muslim population in the US has upped its security in fear of hate attacks after it was branded America’s ‘jihad capital.’
The headline of a Wall Street Journal opinion piece published on Friday read ‘Welcome to Dearborn, America’s Jihad Capital’ – a title given to the city by the publication because of its residents’ pro-Palestine stances.
#12 A teacher in Massachusetts that had a spotless record for 23 years was fired after she revealed the truth about what was really going on in her school…
“Bonnie Manchester had a spotless record in 23 years as a teacher at Baird Middle School. She laid it all on the line when she saw what was now happening to vulnerable children,” the organization reported. “Bonnie Manchester is a Christian middle school teacher who was fired from her job in 2021. Her ‘crime’ was informing a father and mother that school officials were referring to their daughter as a boy and keeping it secret from them.”
How are people supposed to have faith in a system that is this broken?
Unfortunately, things are only going to get worse.
As a society, we are the most divided that we have been in modern times, and with each passing day more foreigners that have come into this country illegally pour into U.S. cities that are already overwhelmed by crime, drugs, violence, homelessness and depravity.
The stage is being set for chaos on a scale that most Americans never even dreamed would be possible.
The election of 2024 is going to be the most divisive election that any of us have ever seen, our economic problems are rapidly accelerating, and global events threaten to turn all of our lives completely upside down.
So I hope that you have been getting prepared, because things will soon start breaking loose in a major way.
Michael’s new book entitled “Chaos” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
