Age of Distrust
- George Bubrick
- 4 days ago
- 11 min read
America is Drowning
All relationships depend on trust. The decision to participate, to contribute, to commit typically come down to trust. Right now our country is bereft of trust. We are drowning in a sea - not of mistrust - but outright DIS-trust.
Polls show we don't trust any of our news sources or our politicians, our government, most of our corporations and universities, many of our religious leaders and too many of our doctors.
And we also don't trust the polls that tell us we don't trust.
So where does it come from? Is it warranted?
It comes inarguably, directly from the behavior of those whom we mistrust. A constant stream of half-truths, walk-backs and outright lies. And it is most certainly warranted. In fact, demanded.
Misleading to remain in power is a leading career in the US these days. By any means necessary, stay in power. Hide behind the notion...if I'm not in power I can't help. When the real motive is...if I'm not in power I can't get rich.
What is the solution? Simple but clearly not easy. Stop rewarding those who deceive. Stop electing them. Stop buying their products and services. Stop sending your kids to their schools. Get second and third opinions for a hang nail.
Only when dishonesty puts one out of work, instead of making one rich, can things change.
Sadly - I doubt we have the will.
A History Lesson
Iran's nuclear intentions because undeniable in 2002, when Israel exposed nuclear sites at Natanz and Arak.
This was a clear violation of Iran's Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty obligations.
US intelligence, intentionally or incompetently, later estimated they had ceased trying to make the bomb after 2003.
In 2009, Israeli intelligence proved Iran was vigorously developing weapons-grade uranium "underground".
Enter Obama, who made a nuclear deal with Iran a TOP priority. Talks dragged on for years.
Meanwhile Iran keep building and enriching.
The deal Obama eventually signed was a farce. Allowed 5000 centrifuges to continue at Natanz.
Conceded Anytime, Anywhere inspections. Allowed the upgrade to weapons grade when "the time was right'.
In return, Iran got pallets of cash and $30 billion in sanctions relief. Trump quit the deal in 2018.
Long came Biden, who made it his goal to redo the Obama deal and stopped oil sanctions.
Iran pretended to negotiate while accelerating enrichment and arming its proxies to wreak havoc.
Last June Trump stopped enrichment - hopefully for good.
Let's hope he is allowed to finish the job.
"Shoulda Kept Negotiating"
That's what the Left says. Here's what Iran said during the last attempt at negotiation...
They planned to stockpile missiles and drones and build a handful of nuclear weapons that no military force could reach. "Iranian negotiators said to us directly, with no shame, that they controlled 460 kilograms of 60% and they could (today) make 11 nuclear bombs," U.S. Special Envoy Witkoff confirmed.
John Fetterman observed this week, "Every single democrat has always stated the we must NEVER allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon. Kamala Harris, when running for President, said Iran was the #1 threat to peace. Hilary Clinton said the same thing. Now that Donald Trump has finally done something about this, my fellow Democrats do nothing but criticize and obstruct. I just don't understand." (more on him later)
One of a precious few sane Democrats.
Can Anybody Give Me One Good Reason
...why anybody in Congress should get paid a red cent when they shut down the government while the citizens pay the price?
Is Nationalized Healthcare the Answer?
Are you kiddin'? The way our government runs things?
Read a story about a lady with a gushing head wound who waited 2 hours in a Canadian ER. Another with severe abdominal pain waited 12 hours. One resident in Nova Scotia said this is "What we deal with ALL the TIME. ERs are full to the brim. Plan on spending a full day." Some system, eh? Just checked...average wait time in Fort Lauderdale ERs is 3.1 hours - all cases.
Here's a Scary Story...
Though not at all a surprising one to CME readers. Chinese spy tech is endangering US hospitals.
In January 2025, the FDA and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency issued a stark joint warning: patient monitors made by Contec Medical Systems, a Chinese company based in Qinhuangdao, contain a hidden backdoor. These devices, used in hospitals across the United States, can transmit sensitive patient data to a hard-coded IP address in China. Even more troubling, the backdoor allows remote code execution, facilitating manipulation of vital signs to trigger dangerous clinical decisions. There is no patch to fix it. For China, it’s a feature, not a bug.
Good ole Texas is trying to do something about this. Thankfully, Texas is not waiting on Washington for further needed action. While congressional gridlock has stalled federal progress, the Lone Star State acted.
Republican Gov. Greg Abbott banned CCP-affiliated technologies from state government systems and signed legislation creating the Texas Cyber Command to hunt down and eliminate threats from hostile foreign nations.
It's around every corner...
Cali Teachers Tossing in the Towel.
California teachers are nauseated by how the profession has changed over the past three decades, citing lack of support for teachers to address behavior issues and an overall decline in standards.
A survey from EdWeek's 2026 State of Teaching Report, found 40% (perhaps as many as 50%) of teachers in California plan to retire or quit in the next 10 years.
"The biggest change is the lack of discipline and consequences for the children and the increasing expectation of entitlement of the parents — that they are expecting more and more,"
36% of teachers nationwide say they plan to retire in the next 10 years. Teacher morale has been declining across the country and is at, by some measures, "the lowest point in recent memory."
Hope Donald can get this war over with and Cuba liberated so he can tackle Education and a pathway to citizenship for those deserving. Before the midterms.
An Ounce of Good News?
Texas has rare-earth minerals. Fifteen of the 27 that exist.
When "Educating" Replaces "Entertaining"
Who even knew? Apparently Sunday night the Oscars took place. Wouldn't know by me.
As reported Hollywood is in trouble. Its "showcase" evening too. In 2019, 1.24 billion tickets to movies were bought in North America. In 2025, that number dropped 37%.
Much of this decline can be traced to revulsion over Hollywood actors spending more time educating than entertaining.
Half the country voted for Donald Trump in 2024. Those folks don’t want to hear from some privileged Hollywood actor that Trump is wrecking our nation. Open borders, crime, failing public schools and absurd climate policies that drive energy prices higher — the problems Trump is trying to fix — may not matter to rich movie stars living behind gates, but they matter to most of us.
Plus, those actors who bemoan income inequality, racism and other purported shortcomings of our society have become rich and famous because of our capitalist system.
But this is not the only problem.
The greater problem is more fundamental — the declining quality of movies showing up in theaters. Hollywood needs to make movies people want to see: movies that are entertaining, original, exciting, fun for kids — and not political. This year’s crop of Oscar nominees follows several years of celebrating films that attracted pitiful audiences and made little or no money. That’s not a recipe for success.
This year’s Best Picture, "One Battle After Another," carried a strong leftist message. Probably why it bombed at the box office. People are tired of being force-fed left-wing dogma.
Actor, Writer, Producer Ricky Gervais got it right. At the 2020 Oscars, he advised "If you do win an award tonight, don’t use it as a platform to make a political speech. You’re in no position to lecture the public about anything. You know nothing about the real world."
Last month, Gervais reposted his message on X, adding, "They’re still not listening." No they're not.
Get This
Operation Epic Fury is receiving praise from an unlikely source. Al "blippin" Jazeera.
The Qatari government-funded news organization, published an op-ed Monday declaring in the headline, "The US-Israeli strategy against Iran is working." Read on...
"Two weeks into Operation Epic Fury, the dominant narrative has settled into a comfortable groove: The United States and Israel stumbled into a war without a plan. Iran is retaliating across the region. Oil prices are surging, and the world is facing another Middle Eastern quagmire. US senators have called it a blunder. Cable news has tallied the crises. Commentators have warned of a long war... But this narrative is wrong. Not because the costs are imaginary, but because the critics are measuring the wrong things. They are focused on the price of the campaign while ignoring the strategic ledger.
Continuing...When you look at what has actually happened to Iran’s principal instruments of power – its ballistic missile arsenal, its nuclear infrastructure, its air [defenses], its navy and its proxy command architecture – the picture is not one of US failure. It is one of systematic, phased degradation of a threat that previous administrations allowed to grow for four decades.
Call it strategic disarmament. This is closer to the approach of the Allies to Germany’s industrial war-making capacity in 1944-1945 than to the US war on Iraq in 2003. The campaign’s execution has been not been perfect and its post-conflict planning incomplete. War is never clean. But the strategy – the actual strategy, measured in degraded capabilities rather than cable news cycles – is working." Yup - Al "bloody" Jazeera.
(Ed: Think about it. Presumably Iran has access to the best military technology that China and Russia have. Yet we have not lost a single plane.)
Didn't See This One Coming Either
"I understand some of the hostility to Mr. Trump’s action. The isolationist wing of the Republican Party and the pacifist wing of the Democratic Party each are wrapped in the fantasy that we can afford to ignore the capabilities and intentions of enemies because they are thousands of miles away. Two hundred years ago that view was credible. One hundred years ago it was plausible. Today it takes only one missile carrying a nuclear or dirty bomb to get through our defenses, or one such device smuggled into this country, to devastate a city.
What is harder to understand, and particularly troubling for our country, is opposition rooted simply in antipathy toward Mr. Trump himself. We used to say that politics stops at the water’s edge. That was never completely true; the willingness to bludgeon a president over foreign policy for domestic political gain is as old as Vice President Thomas Jefferson’s attacks on President John Adams. Yet for most of our history we have given the president the benefit of the doubt."
(David Boies...lifelong staunch Democrat, represented Al Gore in the Hanging Chad matter and certainly no fan of Donald Trump.)
Democrats Are Good at Shutting "Some" Things Down
For example - the government. Or America's energy production. But for four years they couldn't shut down the border.
If only we would elect those who sincerely want to do what's right for the country, think how much we could achieve, how much better life would be, how much more fun we could have. A simplistic notion for sure. But powerful.
If only we had more politicians like John Fetterman and, yes, Donald Trump.
Take a minute. Have a look.
By the way I kinda agree with Fetterman's suggestion that the SAVE Act be stripped down to just voter ID to expose the Democrats for the fraud they are and get TSA back to work. Strip out for now other provisions on mail-in balloting and other gimmicks that allow cheating - for now.
Ironic?
You need photo ID to get into the Democratic National Convention. But not to vote.
If you can get an EBT Card (food stamps), you can get a Voter ID card.
Woke Not Entirely Dead
Accidentally called Alexa "Siri" and now the thermostat is set to 90 degrees and I can't unlock my doors or windows.
Where Did .07 percent End Up?
Kim Jong Un's Workers Party of Korea won 99.93% of the votes in Parliamentary Elections. Turnout was reported at 99.99%. Now that's voter turn out. That's Democracy. Anybody wanna guess what happened to the .07 percent who voted against?
And Here's a Reassuring Thought
Advanced AI models appear willing to deploy nuclear weapons without the same reservations humans have when put into simulated geopolitical crises.
Kenneth Payne at King’s College London set three leading large language models – GPT-5.2, Claude Sonnet 4 and Gemini 3 Flash – against each other in simulated war games. The scenarios involved intense international standoffs, including border disputes, competition for scarce resources and existential threats to regime survival.
The AIs were given an escalation ladder, allowing them to choose actions ranging from diplomatic protests and complete surrender to full strategic nuclear war. The AI models played 21 games, taking 329 turns in total, and produced around 780,000 words describing the reasoning behind their decisions.
In 95 per cent of the simulated games, at least one tactical nuclear weapon was deployed by the AI models. “The nuclear taboo doesn’t seem to be as powerful for machines [as] for humans,” says Payne
AI: Think China isn't Serious
In the release of China's 15th Five Year Plan (2026-2030) the term AI was mentioned 50 times.
Yet Another Red-Blue Dichotomy
Here's a SHOCKER!!! U.S. politics are getting more polarized and, increasingly, so are state income-tax systems.
Republican-led states are racing each other to flatten, cut and eliminate individual income taxes, with 23 states lowering their top income-tax rates since 2021. Democratic-controlled states are moving the opposite way, pushing to increase taxes on top earners to combat inequality and plug budget holes. Common Sense, duh?
$30 an Hour Minimum Wage
Rumors have it that's what Mamdani has next in store. It's now $17.
"I Can't Do It."
Remember when Joe Biden said he didn't have the legal authority to shut down the border.
Can You Guess Who Said?
"Our regime has secret police. They have secret police,"
"Our regime is oppressing women, taking away women’s rights in like 26 states, some states where they’re trying to have the death penalty for having an abortion. They also oppress women,"
"We are the same."
Yup. Joy Reid. Comparing America to Iran. Status? Canceled.
God Taught Us More than Turn the Other Cheek.
I understand the pacifist orientation of Christian churches. After all Christ chose to die on the cross. And forgave his murderers.
But there is right and wrong. Just and unjust.
Remember God also said...
“When the Israelites were on their way out of Egypt, the nation of Amalek attacked them. I am the Lord All-Powerful, and now I am going to make Amalek pay!
“Go and attack the Amalekites! Destroy them and all their possessions. Don’t have any pity. Kill their men, women, children, and even their babies. Slaughter their cattle, sheep, camels, and donkeys.”
There it is – God, Himself, ordering military action far more cruel and destructive than anything we commonly think of as warfare these days. God is far from a pacifist. Furthermore, when Saul, then King of Israel, failed to follow this order to the letter, God removed him as king and replaced him with David. Not only is God far from a pacifist, when He wants people killed, He is quite serious about it.
The list of un-Godly actions by the Islamic regime in Iran is lengthy and legendary. To not think there is justice in destroying that regime is to not understand justice at all. To attack when we did was prudent and wise. If ever the destruction of an enemy was within God’s will, this is the time.
I am quite certain there were many pacifist sermons this past Sunday morning and prayers for peace, but none for victory. Of course, such people remain Christian brothers and sisters, but they are wrong – very wrong.
Does it take 3000 slaughtered like 9-11 to wake this nation from its slumber? Does it take direct military attacks like Pearl Harbor to get our ire up? Must we pit family members one against the other as in the Civil War to realize that war is upon us and we cannot avoid it? Consider this - the massacre on October 7th in Israel was equivalent to having 40,000 Americans slaughtered in a single day.
The war is here, even on this soil. Fight we must. Trump hatred has turned from ugly, and perhaps a form of mental illness, to simply damnable. It is no longer a question of failing to engage with reality – it has become an effort that gets Americans and our allies killed. It has become inimical to our survival, while attempting to justify the unjustifiable.
If we do not prevail in this war, we will have beaten ourselves. This is the time to pray for victory.
Repeat...
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