(End of the American Dream)—Do you remember what happened when the Democrats held their convention in Chicago in 1968? The Democrats are really hoping to avoid a repeat of what we witnessed 56 years ago, and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson insists that law enforcement authorities in his city are ready. We shall see. Tens of thousands of protesters from 264 different radical protest groups have descended upon Chicago, and the war in the Middle East is what they are upset about more than anything else. They are determined to get as much attention as possible, because so far the Biden administration has not been responsive to their demands.
According to Politico, after Joe Biden dropped out of the race and Kamala Harris became the nominee, pro-Palestinian protesters “paused to rethink their approach”.
But then they remembered that Kamala Harris has supported every move that Joe Biden has made in the Middle East, and so they decided to go “full steam ahead”…
“We all came to a consensus that it’s not going to make a difference, that [Harris] represents this administration,” said Hatem Abudayyeh, chair of the U.S. Palestinian Community Network. “We’re going to stay full steam ahead.”
And he noted, his organization referred to Harris as “Killer Kamala” even before she topped the ticket and continues to push for harsher restrictions on the Israeli government, like an arms embargo — something that a top Harris adviser has said she doesn’t support.
So what does “full steam ahead” look like?
According to NBC News, there will be over 20,000 protesters from over 264 different protest groups…
More than 20,000 protesters are expected to cram into a 1.4 mile-long court-approved protest route near Democratic National Convention in Chicago next week, creating a potential standoff between demonstrators and a police department with a history of excessive force.
The 264 protest groups that have said they will participate are primarily focused on Palestinian rights, ending the war in Gaza and reducing U.S. aid to Israel. Others represent a patchwork of left-leaning causes: climate activists, socialists, anti-racist organizations, queer and trans rights groups.
Considering what is currently happening in the Middle East, this is literally the worst place that the Democrats could have picked for their convention.
Today, Cook County has the largest Palestinian population in the entire country…
And they’ve got a lot of power behind them. Cook County, where Chicago resides, is home to the largest Palestinian population in the United States.
“It’ll be the largest protest in the history of Chicago for Palestinian rights, specifically,” said Hatem Abudayyeh, national chair for the U.S. Palestinian Community Network.
Needless to say, they are going to come out in force for these protests.
The first major protest is scheduled for Monday…
There are at least six major protests planned on the streets of Chicago during the Democratic National Convention. The biggest is planned for the first day, Monday, when “tens of thousands” are expected to march just blocks from the United Center, where Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, will give their acceptance speeches.
The “family-friendly march” is organized under a pro-Palestinian umbrella coalition that includes groups devoted to a variety of causes. Organizers are busing in protesters from Michigan, Minnesota, Indiana and Wisconsin, and activists are also coming in from New York and California, too.
Will there be violence?
Let’s hope not.
The city of Chicago has erected a vast array of fences and barricades that are designed to keep protesters in approved areas…
Fences, barricades and parked snow plows have already limited movement in key downtown areas, with helicopters buzzing overhead. Grumpy business owners are worrying about lost sales, and some residents and tourists say it all appears a bit overblown.
Will those measures be enough?
Not taking any chances, some Chicago businesses have already been boarding up their windows…
Several downtown Chicago businesses have been boarded up as concerns run high over protests and potential unrest as the Democratic National Convention (DNC) kicks off on Monday.
“We have experience with this, and the city doesn’t have a great track record with protecting their businesses or their citizens’ property. So we want to be preemptive and board up and in advance of the Democratic convention,” Scott Shapiro, owner of Syd Jerome, told Fox News as he boarded up his business.
If I had a business in downtown Chicago, I would be boarding it up too.
The Democrats are supposed to be against walls, but in this instance they are so terrified of violence that they have actually constructed an enormous wall around their entire convention…
For years now, Democrats have insisted that walls are racist and don’t work but those rules apparently don’t apply when it comes to their safety.
The Democrat National Convention kicks off in Chicago this week and with the anticipation of massive protests by the radical left, Democrats are building a protective wall around the event.
For once, the Democrats have made a wise move.
If that wall wasn’t there, what would have happened?
Thankfully, we will never find out.
Of course prominent Democrats will need to be on guard when they are away from the United Center too.
Axios is reporting that House Democrats are being urged “not to book hotel rooms under their own names” due to the threat of potential violence…
House Democrats attending the Democratic National Convention next week are being advised by congressional security officials not to book hotel rooms under their own names or engage with protesters if confronted, Axios has learned.
Let’s hope that nobody gets seriously hurt over the course of the next week.
Hopefully the protesters will find ways to blow off steam that do not involve causing physical injury to anyone.
Before I end this article, there is one more item that I wanted to mention.
Those that are applying for jobs with the Harris campaign have “nine different options for pronouns” that they are allowed to choose from…
The presidential campaign for Kamala Harris is now including special pronoun options for job applicants, as part of their commitment to diversity and inclusion.
The job application for the Harris campaign includes nine different options for pronouns, including ‘xe/xem,’ ‘ze/hir,’ ‘ey/em,’ ‘fae/faer’ and ‘hu/hu.’
‘Fae/faer,’ indicates a gender-fluid person but non-masculine, sometimes of Celtic origin. ‘Hu/hu,’ pronouns are third person gender-neutral pronouns referring to both a man and a woman.
Can you imagine how exhausting it would be to try to remember the correct pronouns of everybody that you are working with?
Our country is literally going insane, and that should deeply sadden all of us.
I just hope that we don’t see too much insanity in Chicago this week, because political violence is not a solution for anything.
Michael’s new book entitled “Chaos” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.
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.
