21ST CENTURY QUESTIONS: Whither Matrons?

Our society needs matriarchs and patriarchs, or matrons and father figures, if you prefer. Young people are floundering, incompetent, badly educated, possessing few skills, and trained to see everyone born before them as stupid old boomers. What used to be a “generation gap” is now a yawning chasm.

Because of our non-parenting of the past two-three generations, the hierarchy has been inverted. We older people with experience are cast as the dummies, the stupid olds, who don’t know as much as a 20 year old. It’s pure inversion (remember, inversion is the basis of Cluster B/narcissistic/devil thinking).

This means that not only are young people ill-educated in politeness, decent dress, basic human communication skills, along with not knowing arithmetic and not achieving an adult reading level—they’re also hostile to the idea that they don’t know something, or that an older person can be a help to them.

None of this happened by accident.

NEWS YOU CAN USE? Amazon sending out payments in $2.5B settlement over Prime subscriptions. “If you’re one of the millions of people who were signed up for Amazon Prime without your permission, you may want to check your email inbox. The company has started providing automatic refunds from a $2.5 billion settlement it reached with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) earlier this year.”

READER FAVORITE: Orange Ninja 7-in-1 Garden Tool & Knife Sharpener. #CommissionEarned

MAYBE NOMINATE WOMEN WHO AREN’T AWFUL? “Maybe it would be better to ask this other question, my question: When will we ever get to evaluate a female presidential candidate as just another presidential candidate? We’ve been nudged too many times to pick the woman because she is a woman. It makes people wary. I mean, really, why was Kamala Harris foisted on us? So, yeah, she got ‘whomped.'”

WHATEVER THE PROBLEM, SOCIALISM IS ALWAYS WHAT’S TOUTED AS THE SOLUTION: AI-touting technocrats sell socialism as the solution.

ICYMI: In Which We Applaud Fareed Zakaria for Belatedly Seeing the Blindingly Obvious.

TO BE FAIR, THE ALTIMA — THOUGH A PRETTY GOOD CAR — IS OBSOLETE. Nissan’s New Plug-In Hybrid Sedan Makes the Altima Look Obsolete.

THEY’RE CALLED SOCIAL MEDIA: You’re Living Alongside Invisible Wormholes, Scientists Say — and They May Be Warping Your Reality.

THE REMARKABLE THING IS THAT HE HASN’T RUN OUT: Mamdani Just Said He’s a Commie in a Whole New Way.

READER FAVORITE: Projector with WiFi and Bluetooth. #CommissionEarned

GOOD AND HARD, FUN CITY: Zohran Mamdani Just Declared NYC a City of…What?

Mamdani declares New York “is a city of international law,” and as such, “he will do whatever he can to enforce the international arrest warrant against PM Netanyahu if he visits New York, even if it is during a visit to the UN General Assembly.”

"I believe this is a city of international law"

well, it's not. it's a city of american law, and in this country if a lunatic marxist theater kid attempts to arrest a foreign head of state he simply goes to prison. hope this helps. https://t.co/So2xYpdQCr

— Mike Solana (@micsolana) November 17, 2025

As Hugo Timms writes at Spiked, “The theatre kids are threatening to run the show now. We better get ready for more second-rate scripts.”

Even Bill Maher can figure out where this is headed: Socialism ‘will f**k you:’ Bill Maher warns Democrats the radical left is leading party to ruin.

UPDATE:

He is very eager to enforce illegitimate “international law” against the elected leader of the Jewish state, but is explicitly opposed to the enforcement of actual, binding federal immigration law in his city. https://t.co/RoljUkkAF2

— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) November 18, 2025

WELL, GOOD: The Explosion of New ‘Non-Traditional’ Gun Owners Should End the Gun Control Debate Forever.

MODERN PROBLEMS: Tesla safety driver falls asleep during passenger’s robotaxi ride. “In fact, the safety driver fell asleep three times during the ride, which took place a little over a week ago, according to Reddit user ohmichael. In his post, which contains a 12-second clip of a man sleeping and then waking in the front seat of a moving Tesla, the poster says he contacted Tesla to report this behavior but never heard back.”

INSURRECTION, STRAIGHT UP:

🚨 HOLY CRAP: Democrat members of Congress– including Senators Elissa Slotkin and Mark Kelly– just released a video encouraging members of the military to defy orders from President Trump.

The party of "NO KINGS" is now encouraging a military coup.pic.twitter.com/AH2Xf3OPw8

— CJ Pearson (@Cjpearson) November 18, 2025

BREAKING: The House Votes on the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

READER FAVORITE: Brown Washable 2×4 Entry Rug. #CommissionEarned

YOU MIGHT NEED TO LEAVE THEM THERE FOR A FEW YEARS, TOM: Trump’s border czar Tom Homan warns NY will see boost in ICE enforcement ahead of Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani taking office.

I’M NOT SURPRISED THAT EATING MEAT EASES DEPRESSION: Keto diet associated with reduced depressive symptoms, anxiety results remain mixed.

WELCOME TO THE PARTY, PAL: In Which We Applaud Fareed Zakaria for Belatedly Seeing the Blindingly Obvious.

THE RELUCTANCE, I THINK, IS THAT THE “INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY” IS WOUND THROUGH AND THROUGH WHAT WAS GOING ON:

Real Talk? Why do you think successive Presidents have not wanted to open the Epstein Files as completely as they're able to? I understand there's legality involved that prevents all of it coming out. But you'd think Biden wouldn't have liked to protect Trump, nor Trump, Clinton.

— vbspurs (@vbspurs) November 17, 2025

Related: Matt Taibbi: The Epstein Circus Will Shatter Our Last Delusions: Do we want to know how the world really works, or is it too disgusting to countenance?

Democratic Party hysteria over this issue is obviously absurd because “all of the Epstein files” could have been released over the last four years. There must be reasons why the last administration didn’t take that step, and there should be scandal in MAGA-world if those reasons overlap at all with the Trump administration’s. Between Epstein’s own hysterical rants about Trump in the newly released documents (he sounds like Kathy Griffin in some of the emails) and the blue party’s seeming entanglement with Epstein from the Clintons to Larry Summers to Reid Hoffman, it’s hard to imagine where that overlap might be, unless it involves major corporate names and/or overseas relationships. Some of that is suggested in Plaskett’s story. . . . Such realizations make for a wince-hard moment for the whole American population, which may have to adjust its estimation of our politicians down from totally corrupt if all these files are released. As was the case with the Russiagate documents, these releases continue an education in the rotten way things really work in this country that I suspect both parties will quickly regret voting to serve up.

Like I said.

MATH: Ford can’t find mechanics for $120K: It takes math to learn a trade.

Ford pays auto mechanics $120,000 a year, but can’t find enough workers, said CEO Jim Farley on a podcast. Nationwide, employers “have over a million openings in critical jobs, emergency services, trucking, factory workers, plumbers, electricians and tradesmen.”

Farley complained that “we don’t have trade schools anymore,” reports Avi Zilber in the New York Post.

The Ford CEO’s grandfather was one of the company’s early employees, hired to work on the Model T. “We are not investing in educating a next generation of people like my grandfather who had nothing, who built a middle class life and a future for his family,” Farley said.

Ford is spending $4 million to fund scholarship for auto technicians.

They ought to invoice the Department of Education for the $4 million, just to make a point.

JUDGEMENT OF NUREMBERG: The film Nuremberg is almost unforgivable.

● The sub-Dynasty style soap dialogue. For example: ‘Ah’m gonna put Hermann Goering on the stand and ah’m gonna make him tell the world what he did!’ A story like this, ideally, demands a respect for the facts, a verbatim approach where possible and a sober, low-key dynamic. The more you amp it up, the more grotesque it potentially becomes.

● The heavy handed MAGA references. Near the end of the film someone says – or rather shouts – something like: ‘EVIL DOESN’T HAVE TO WEAR A UNIFORM FOR YOU TO KNOW IT’S EVIL!’ Yes, Trump has his flaws. But comparing his administration with the Third Reich is, as even his enemies would surely acknowledge, moronically reductive.

● The ‘Allo ‘Allo! style accents. (E.g. Goering: ‘I em going to es-cape zee hengmen’s noose!’ If only the director had followed the example of Kenneth Branagh’s Conspiracy, about the 1942 Wannsee conference, when Nazi officials discussed details of the Final Solution. Branagh, wisely, told the actors to use English accents as he feared that giving it loads of ‘zis’ and ‘zat’ would be distracting. As a result the film worked well. It became relatable, bureaucratic and, as Hannah Arendt might have said, chillingly banal.

Speaking of Kenneth Branagh’s Conspiracy, that made-for-HBO movie, shot during the election year of 2000, has a line early in its run time, when the actor playing Nazi undersecretary Martin Luther says, “Where will we be in four years, do you think? Living in the White House?” Plus ça change.

COMING SOON: PALEOLITHIC PARK. Scientists extract viable RNA from woolly mammoth remains.

THIS:

As I've been warning for months. Trump is fighting the deflationary war not the previous war on inflation. We do not want runaway deflation anymore than we want runaway inflation. Both are economy killers if allowed to get out of control. The best would be 0% but a target of… https://t.co/IJ1jtbgK5Q

— unseen1 (@unseen1_unseen) November 18, 2025

Going back at least to the Obama years, China’s most important export might not have been cheap consumer goods, but deflation.

Xi has gotten even more aggressive with exports, trying to keep his economy afloat. While I’m not always a huge fan of them, tariffs are the necessary defense mechanism to Beijing’s mercantilism-on-steroids.

Plus, we need to re-shore vital industries.

WORST. HITLER. EVER:

As for being the first “authoritarian” in history to reduce the size of government, Calvin Coolidge would like a word here: In his 1944 State of the Union address, FDR smeared the laissez–faire Coolidge era of the 1920s as “the spirit of fascism.”

FDR ended that speech with one of the most disgusting exhortations against his political foes — and liberty itself — ever offered by an American president in a major address. He said, in part:

One of the great American industrialists of our day—a man who has rendered yeoman service to his country in this crisis-recently emphasized the grave dangers of “rightist reaction” in this Nation. All clear-thinking businessmen share his concern. Indeed, if such reaction should develop—if history were to repeat itself and we were to return to the so-called “normalcy” of the 1920′s—then it is certain that even though we shall have conquered our enemies on the battlefields abroad, we shall have yielded to the spirit of Fascism here at home.

Ah yes, if we go back to the 1920s, an era of rampant prosperity and expanding liberty we will have surrendered to Fascism. That is grotesque.

But it’s a grotesquerie that refuses to die. Which seems odd; as Charles Cooke asked the left during the 2016 election, “Has Donald Trump’s remarkable rise done anything to change your mind as to the ideal strength of the State?”