Alan Dershowitz, the renowned legal scholar and longtime defender of civil liberties, recently found himself at the center of a bizarre confrontation at the West Tisbury Farmers Market on Martha’s Vineyard. What started as an attempt to purchase some pierogis escalated into a public dispute that lays bare the growing intolerance among certain progressive circles.
Dershowitz, who has faced backlash for his past representation of high-profile clients Jeffrey Epstein and his vocal support for Israel, was refused service by vendor Krem Miskevich of Good Pierogi. The incident, now dubbed “Pierogi-gate,” has sparked debates about discrimination, free speech, and the left’s selective application of principles like inclusivity.
According to Dershowitz, the refusal stemmed from his political views and legal history. He recounted on his YouTube channel, “He didn’t approve of my politics so he wouldn’t serve me.”
Dershowitz also drew parallels to protected classes under Massachusetts law, arguing, “You couldn’t say ‘I don’t serve black people,’ you couldn’t say, ‘I don’t serve gay people,’ you couldn’t say ‘I don’t serve Jews.'”
He mentioned arriving at the booth wearing a pro-Jewish T-shirt, which he believes may have contributed to the tension.
Miskevich, who uses they/them pronouns, offered their side in a statement: “When he came to our booth, I experienced a surge of emotion. As a chef, I love to share what I cook with the public, regardless of who they are. In this case, what was in the forefront of my mind was the fact that this was the high-profile attorney who represented several sexual predators and abusers including Jeffrey Epstein.”
They emphasized that the decision had nothing to do with Dershowitz’s Zionism or Jewish identity, but rather his association with Epstein—a point that has drawn scrutiny given Dershowitz’s repeated denials of any wrongdoing in that saga and his successful defamation settlements against accusers.
The fallout didn’t end there. Dershowitz returned to the market days later, confronting Miskevich again in hopes of resolving the matter or perhaps purchasing the dumplings. Instead, market managers intervened, asking him to leave amid rising tensions. Police were called during the initial encounter, and Dershowitz has since announced plans to sue the market, citing viewpoint discrimination. Meanwhile, the vendor has seen a surge in support, with long lines forming at their booth as islanders rallied in solidarity— a clear sign of how polarized communities have become.
This episode echoes broader patterns of blacklisting that conservatives have long decried. During the McCarthy era, Hollywood and academia purged those suspected of communist ties, a tactic the left once condemned as a witch hunt. Today, similar calls emerge from progressive quarters: city councils demanding bans on Trump supporters from campuses, public figures like Daily Beast editor Rick Wilson advocating for “humiliation” and “incarceration” of political opponents, and even suggestions of a “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” to hold conservatives accountable. Lawyers representing unpopular clients, such as those who defended Harvey Weinstein, have faced professional repercussions, including firings from prestigious institutions.
The hypocrisy stands out when compared to landmark cases like Masterpiece Cakeshop, where liberals insisted a Christian baker must create custom cakes for same-sex weddings despite his religious objections, framing refusal as illegal discrimination. Yet here, a vendor openly denies pre-made food to a customer based on political disagreements, and it’s celebrated as principled resistance. If the roles were reversed—if a conservative baker refused service to a progressive activist—the outcry from the left would be deafening, with accusations of bigotry flying fast.
Social media reactions from conservatives highlight this double standard. One user noted, “So much for Democrats being the party of inclusivity. Bunch of liars!!!! If you don’t think like them than your shown hate.”
Another observed, “The modern Left celebrates intolerance in the name of tolerance and blacklisting in the name of free speech as their preferred tactic.”
Such sentiments underscore a growing frustration with what many see as the left’s weaponization of personal beliefs to justify exclusion.
At its core, this isn’t just about dumplings; it’s about a culture where differing views are treated as threats worthy of shunning.
As Jonathan Turley aptly put it in his analysis, “The only thing that is more enticing today than the love for good food is the hate for opposing views. The problem is that feeding on hate will never satiate people; they simply want more servings. That insatiable appetite is destroying this country and now Miskevich is contributing to it one pierogi at a time.”
In a nation founded on pluralism, incidents like this erode the very fabric of civil discourse, reminding us that true tolerance means serving even those we disagree with.
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.
