Paradocracy

Top-ranked chess player Magnus Carlsen  is widely regarded as the best chess player of all time. Carlsen has held the number-one position in the FIDE world chess rankings since July of 2011. Boasting a peak rating of 2882, Carlsen’s is the highest in history, and his time as the highest-rated player in the world is second only to the renowned grandmaster and former world chess champion Garry Kasparov. For the latest generation of chess enthusiasts, Magnus Carlsen personifies perfection in the game; he is the face and the poster child for the modern game. He is, in the current renaissance of this centuries-old game, the Bobby Fischer of his time, bringing attention and publicity to a game otherwise overlooked and under-appreciated, especially among the youth.   What was once a scholar’s and older man’s game with the rare adolescent chess prodigy has, since the 2020 release of the TV series  The Queen’s Gambit , evolved into an internet sensation through a sharp rise in onl...

This Christmas, give the gift that keeps on giving: the gift of knowledge, the gift of critical thought, the gift of awareness and truth. This Christmas, get a copy of  Death by Socialism ; it’s sure to inform as much as it’s sure to inspire conversation on Christmas morning.  Looking to stir the pot just a bit? Looking to break the ice at this year’s family get-together?  Death by Socialism promises this and more: it promises to get the conversation going and the blood flowing; it promises to make this a Christmas worth remembering.  Have a friend or a family member who’s been watching just a bit too much CNN or mainstream media? Know anyone who gets the bulk of her ideas from Joy Behar, Rosie O’Donnell, and Whoopi Goldberg of The View ? If they can even stomach the idea of celebrating Christmas this year, get them their own intellectual first aid kits: their very own copies of this one-of-a-kind treatise on the principles of logic that exist in that massive blind ...

On the night of November 15, 2024, boxing fans from around the globe had their eyes set on a long-awaited match featuring one of the all-time greatest boxers and one of the biggest names in sports: Mike Tyson. Known as “Iron Mike” and “The Baddest Man on the Planet”, Tyson is the youngest boxer ever to win a heavyweight title, but that was thirty-eight years ago, November 22nd, 1986, when Tyson was all of twenty years old. As for the fifteenth of November, 2024, Iron Mike, now all of fifty-eight years, was scheduled to go toe-to-toe with “YouTube sensation” Jake Paul, 27, who’s made a “career” out of reckless antics and childish online videos and, as far as professional boxing goes, coaxing old fighters to come out of retirement.  Despite all of the hype and anticipation in the lead-up to the match, one between old school and new school, one buoyed by nostalgia, conjuring up memories of a bygone era in sports, and capturing the imaginations of the many who witnessed Tyson in h...

As of this hour, former President and now President-elect Donald Trump has secured his second term as the forty-seventh President of the United States. Trump’s victory comes after winning key battleground states Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada, Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Georgia.  As for the popular vote, Trump was victorious there as well, winning by a two-percent margin. Despite these results, it’s evident that there remains a significant social and political problem in the United States, where politically-motivated violence, social unrest, crime and general instability have become rampant over the years since the death of George Floyd.  However, I’d say the fact that it was even this close is ominous for the years ahead. This was as clear as it gets for an election, that the clear and obvious choice (considering the lackluster alternatives outside of the two major parties and the dropping out of a key contender, Robert Kennedy, Jr.) was Donald Trump, the candidate championing t...

The nightmare, the hammers, the sickles ahead, The future is bleak, it is black, it is red The history of horror, the miseries ones fled Hosting fresh Histories, deciding what’s said The practice, the shortages, the scarcity of bread The masters, the deciders, they decide what is fed The death, the despair, the piles of dead The records, the mysteries of those who have bled The judges, the masters pick who fights in their stead No sacrifice, no compassion for those who have fled They hold the future in charge of what’s read They spare the truth, no need, not a shred No care for the people, not Sally, not Ned They hardly hesitate to do away with the head No more individuals, debate put to bed Prioritizing one thing, their crates full of lead Acronyms galore, ‘A’ through to zed Some friendly, familiar, names such as FRED It’s treachery, it’s over the cliff on a sled It’s sleeping in slums, no homes but a shed  Subjecting the people to wars of great dread The future, the truth, their ...

The weight of big government ultimately becomes so unbearable that even the most battle-hardened warriors come to fear it over death itself.  As Pvt. David Kenyon Webster described his time in the U. S. Army during World War II, they are “more afraid of defying the authority of an officer, backed up by the whole Army and a court-martial composed of officers like him, than we are of death by shell fire.”  He continued: “Discipline is fear, not leadership, and we are afraid — not of [the officer] but of the irresistible force that he represents. Afraid for our lives, we are more afraid of the system that holds us in thrall, and so we lie here and wait to be killed, because an officer tells us to lie here.”  This is the state of the soldier “in thrall” as it is the state of things under the weight of any massive bureaucracy or tyranny of any kind.