The One-Third Rule of Revolutions: What We Must Do to Restore Democracy in America! —By John Persico with Metis

20 Jan 2026 8 Comments

by Dr. John Persico Jr. in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

For years I’d heard a curious idea, that most revolutions are won by only a third of the population.  Supposedly the American Revolution broke down this way—one third for independence, one third against it, and one third sitting on the fence.  I began wondering whether this pattern was unique to America or common across world history.  And if it was true, even in spirit, how is it possible for a minority to defeat a larger group?

Let me get something very straight with this blog.  This is not about theory.  This is about praxis.  We are in the midst of a cold war rapidly becoming a hot war in the country.  One third of Americans want a democracy.  One third want a Hitler.  One third don’t give a damn.  I want to see the winning side be the side for democracy.  I am posting this blog so that we can all understand what it will take to win this war.

I am under no illusions that this war will be won overnight.  I have no illusions that the mid-term elections will make more than a ripple in this war.  I have no illusions that releasing the Epstein files will make any more difference than getting Trump’s tax reports make.  I have no illusions that Trump supporters will suddenly join the “good” guys.  I have no illusions that Congress, the Senate or the Supreme Court will help us to win this war.

The only illusion I am under is that we need a large mass of people who will stand up, speak out, march and refuse to settle quietly into a country dominated by autocrats, plutocrats and oligarchs.  As Patrick Henry so bravely stated “I know not course what others may take but give me liberty or give me death.”  If you want to live under a democracy, you must be willing to fight for it.  You must even be willing to die for it.  Nothing less than this will help to restore democracy to America.

As usual, my friend Metis helped me uncover a deeper truth: while the “one-third rule” is more myth than precise statistic, it captures something essential about how societies change.

Revolutions are not majority events.  They are minority movements that succeed when the conditions are right.  But we do not have to wait until the conditions are right.  In fact, one will only know when the conditions were right.  That is, it is something we can only know after the fact.  We must act on the assumptions that our efforts will create the right conditions and indeed that is the only possibility that exists.

Myth and Reality: Was the American Revolution Really One-Thirds?

Historians don’t agree on exact numbers.  Loyalists (Those who wanted to stay with King George III) probably made up 20–30% of the population; active Patriots only 40–45%.  The rest moved with the winds of power, fear, or convenience.  But the spirit of the one-third idea is accurate:

Revolutions rarely begin with majority support.  They are propelled by determined minorities, resisted by others, and observed passively by the rest.  Today we may be in the minority.  However, as this blog will show, it does not matter.  We can still win the war and restore democracy if we meet certain conditions which I will discuss.

This same dynamic repeats across Paris in 1789, Russia in 1917, Cuba in 1959,  Iran in 1979,  and even some modern uprisings today.  The numbers vary, but the structure remains: a committed minority clashes with a protective minority, while most people watch and wait.

If Numbers Don’t Decide Revolutions, What Does?

Here is where the history becomes fascinating.  Revolutions are not democratic moments.  They are power struggles, and the deciding factors are not how many people agree but how many crucial systems shift.  The enemies of democracy today have shifted several crucial systems in their favor.  This includes the Congress, Supreme Court and religious systems across the spectrum as well as across the country.

Metis helped me understand that six forces usually determine the outcome of a revolution.

  1. The Power of the Narrative
  • The side that wins is often the side that tells the most compelling story.
  • American Patriots framed independence as liberty versus tyranny.
  • The Bolsheviks promised “Peace, Land, Bread.”
  • Iranian revolutionaries cast the Shah as un-Islamic and corrupt.

When one group claims the moral high ground—and gets people to believe it—it gains legitimacy, the most valuable currency in any upheaval.  The political legitimacy concerning a moral high ground has shifted from the beginning of the USA up to present times.  When the Republican party was against slavery, they held the moral high road.  This legitimacy shifted to the Democratic party when they began to espouse fair treatment and wages for working class people.  The legitimacy has now shifted back to the Republican party as they have assumed the high ground against efforts to reduce income inequality and a decent wage for all people.  They have created this new legitimacy by their constant hammering on what they call “Trickle Down Economics” and the danger presented to the USA by anything that bears a faint resemblance to socialism or (GOD FORBID) Communism.  Trickle Down Economics much like the Prosperity Gospel promises untold wealth to people based on their religion or willingness to defer gratification to someone else. This someone else is either the Uber-Rich controlling the corporations or the Ministers selling the tickets to heaven.

  1. The Weakness of the Old Regime

Revolutions succeed when the ruling system is already coming apart because of:

  • Economic crisis
  • Political division
  • Corruption
  • Military overstretch

 The American colonists fought an empire spread thin.
The French monarchy was bankrupt.
The Russian Tsar faced famine, inflation, and a collapsing army.

A revolution doesn’t topple a strong system—only a wounded one.  The downfall of the Democratic party as the “Ruling Party” did not happen overnight.  Democrats maintained nearly unbroken control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate for roughly 60 years, from the early 1930s until the mid-1990s.  While the presidency alternated more frequently, legislative control and overall party identification favored the Democrats for most of the century.

As the Democratic party shifted from their traditional alliances with labor and working class people to supporting corporate driven efforts like NAFTA, their former allies shifted their allegiance.  The Republican Party starting promising to deliver on issues like

  • Removing gun control: The rights of individuals versus the “overreach of the Government. This went beyond gun control to encompass many other efforts to reduce Government power or regulations.
  • Repealing Roe Versus Wade: Family Values became a consistent Republican theme.  Beginning in the 1970s, the Democratic Party’s platform became more progressive on social issues, which alienated many religious and culturally conservative voters.
  • Elitism versus Popularism: As the Democratic Party became increasingly associated with college-educated professionals and urban “elites,” many working-class voters without degrees began to feel culturally alienated. Issues such as environmental regulations (which affected mining and logging jobs) and “identity politics” were often framed by Republicans as evidence that Democrats had lost touch with “average Americans”
  • Economic Disillusionment and Deindustrialization: For decades, the “New Deal Coalition” was held together by white working-class labor unions. However, the economic crises of the 1970s (stagflation) and the decline of American manufacturing (the “Rust Belt” phenomenon) led many to feel the Democratic Party’s policies were no longer working for them.
  • Scapegoating: One strategy that always works to win supporters is to blame someone else for our problems.  The Republicans became very adept at blaming criminals and crime for all of America’s drug problems and Immigrants for the lack of jobs and disintegration of our manufacturing industries.
  1. Military Defection: The Decisive Factor

This may be the single most important factor.  It is also the most difficult one to harness to any efforts at change.  Throughout history, if the army remained loyal to the old regime, revolutions died quickly.  But if even a portion of soldiers defected—or refused to suppress protesters—the balance shifted overnight.  We are seeing this factor play out right now as people like Senator Mark Kelly speak to soldiers about the rules of the UCMJ and as Congress and the courts attempt to bridle the power of the Presidency to use the US military for “Insurrectionist” causes.

  1. Organization Beats Majority

A united minority will defeat a divided majority.  Samuel Adams said that he didn’t need the people, only “An irate, tireless minority keen to set brushfires of freedom.”  He understood the mathematics of commitment: organized passion overwhelms scattered opposition.

This explains everything from Lenin’s disciplined Bolsheviks to Castro’s small, cohesive guerrilla force.  Passion and commitment can win out over elements like greed and fear.  If we can gain the moral clarity that we need to appeal to a large minority of people and couple that with a zeal and passion that reflects more than economic need or even religious fervor, we can surely topple the anti-democratic elements in our country.  This is not to say that many of these people are not also driven by passion and fervor for what they believe is right.  Unfortunately, the passion and fervor of the Republican positions is even more aligned with greed and fear.  There is a decided lack of empathy and compassion in Republican policies for the poor, minorities and underprivileged.

  1. Support from Outside Powers

The Patriots needed France.  Vietnam needed the Soviet Union and China.  Afghanistan’s Mujahideen needed the United States.  Revolutions are seldom isolated.  When outside powers tilt the scales, even a small domestic movement can triumph.

It has become increasingly apparent that the Anti-Democratic forces in America are alienating not only our enemies but also many of our former allies.  The recent moves by Trump to annex or acquire Greenland, together with his unilateral invasion of Venezuela has angered many of our NATO partners.  Add to this the Non-NATO countries that are horrified by Trump’s actions and you have a phalanx of countries that believe America’s foundation for world peace is unstable and unreliable.

It is not clear to me what impact the attitudes of other nations can have on our efforts to restore a Democratic country, but seldom in history has a Tyrant nation lasted when faced with a united opposition from the rest of the world.  Trump is digging a grave for America with each of his so called efforts to “Make America Great Again.”

  1. The Middle Third Doesn’t Stay Neutral Forever

Here is the most intriguing factor.  That passive third—the cautious, undecided, go-along-to-get-along crowd—will eventually move.  The forty million Americans who did not vote.  They will  tend to shift toward whichever side appears:

  • More legitimate
  • More competent
  • More likely to win
  • More capable of maintaining order

Revolutions are psychological events.  People want to be on the right side of history—or at least on the side that won’t punish them.

As Metis reminded me, “When the middle begins to believe one side is the future, the tipping point arrives.”

So Which Third Wins?

It isn’t the largest group.  It’s the group that hits the Five-Factor Threshold:

  1. A powerful, morally compelling story
  2. A weakened ruling order
  3. Some degree of military support
  4. Strong organization and cohesion
  5. External allies or neutrality from the outside world

Meet these conditions, and even 20% of the population can win a revolution.  Fail dramatically at any one, and even 70% support may not be enough.

History is not a democracy—it’s a contest of energy, legitimacy, and timing.

A Deeper Personal Reflection

I’ve shared with Metis that I look back nostalgically at times when integrity seemed to matter more, when people believed in duty and morality.  Our culture has grown cynical, sometimes preferring anti-heroes to actual heroes.

The lesson from the one-third rule is both sobering and hopeful:

A society can decline even when most people are decent—if the active minority pushes it downward.

But society can also be uplifted if a committed minority of citizens with integrity act with courage and clarity.

Small groups bend history.  Which means that every generation—including ours—must decide which minority will shape the future.

Either choose Democracy or choose a Dictatorship.  The choice is yours!

Are Americans Brainwashed?  Revisiting Consumer Culture Through the Lens of “The Society of the Spectacle”  — By John Persico (with Metis)

16 Jan 2026 6 Comments

by Dr. John Persico Jr. in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Introduction

In 2018 I asked a provocative question: Are Americans brainwashed?  At the time, what I meant by “brainwashing” was a kind of conditioned conformity — an unconscious habituation to consumerism.  We buy, accumulate, and consume not because we need to, but because something deep within our society tells us that our worth, security, and happiness depend on it.

A few weeks ago, I encountered a work that reframed much of what I was trying to say: Guy Debord’s 1967 classic The Society of the Spectacle.  Debord, a French Marxist theorist and filmmaker, argues that modern capitalism doesn’t just sell goods — it sells images, identities, and perceptions of reality itself.  In doing so, it creates what he calls a “spectacle” — a world where representation replaces lived experience, and passive consumption replaces active life.

Today I believe the idea of “brainwashing” isn’t just a metaphor.  It is a lived condition of our society — one that manifests in our politics, our personal relationships, and above all, in how we see ourselves and the world.

But if we are to diagnose this condition accurately, we also need a prescription for how we might undo it.

I. The Diagnosis: What Is the Spectacle?

In The Society of the Spectacle, Debord makes a bold claim:
“The spectacle is not a collection of images; it is a social relationship between people that is mediated by images.”

What Does This Mean?

  1. The Spectacle Is a Social Condition, Not Just Advertising

We tend to think of consumerism as simply “too many ads,” “too much marketing,” or “too much stuff.” But Debord pushes us deeper: the spectacle isn’t only the marketing — it’s the way we relate to reality itself through mediated images.

In other words:

  • It’s not just the billboard that matters — it’s that we now interpret our lives as if we were on billboards.
  • It’s not just the advertisement — it’s that we start to see ourselves as advertisements for our own lifestyle, identity, and status.

In the spectacle, images don’t just sell products.  They sell versions of reality.  They tell us what success looks like, what happiness looks like, what security looks like, and what a good life looks like.  And we internalize that script — often without realizing we’ve been cast in it.

  1. Consumption Replaces Experience

Debord argues that the spectacle replaces real life with representation of life.

Think about how often we:

  • Take pictures of experiences instead of experiencing them.
  • Check likes, shares, and comments instead of connecting.
  • Pursue prestige, status, or image instead of meaning.

We no longer live our lives in the fullest sense — we consume them, display them, and measure them.  This is not just consumerism — it is spectatorship.  We watch life, we watch others, and we are watched.  We are subjects of our own mediated narratives.

  1. The Spectacle Is Universal But Uneven

Debord notes that the spectacle isn’t just advertising or corporate marketing.
It includes:

  • Mass media
  • Entertainment
  • Social media
  • Politics
  • Consumer brands
  • Cultural norms
  • Public relations

In the society of the spectacle, everything becomes commodified, including our attention, our desires, and even our dissent.  Even counter-culture becomes a brand.

This is why Debord’s critique resonates with my original thesis: American society doesn’t just create consumers of products — it creates consumers of images, identities, and scripted realities.  We are persuaded not only to buy what we don’t need, but to define ourselves through those purchases.

II. Are Americans Brainwashed? A Reframed Answer

So, let’s revisit the question I asked in 2018: Are Americans brainwashed?

If by “brainwashed” we mean:

  • conditioned to think in ways that benefit corporate and political interests,
  • socialized to equate meaning with consumption, and
  • habituated to accept the spectacle as reality…

Then the answer is yes — to a significant extent.

But the spectacle is not an overt force with an agenda.  It doesn’t need to be explicit to be pervasive.  It works because:

  1. We participate willingly — we seek validation through consumption, clicks, images, status.
  2. We mistake representation for reality — what we see on screens or in ads becomes our standard for life.
  3. We rarely interrogate the source of our desires — we assume our wants are our own.

Debord writes that the spectacle is a form of alienation — where life is lived not directly, but through representations.  When we are alienated from our own experience, we are easier to influence because we are no longer anchored in our own desires — only in the images we consume.

III. The Mechanisms of the “American Brainwashing”

Let’s unpack some specific mechanisms by which the spectacle perpetuates conditioned consumption:

  1. Identity Through Consumption

Corporations don’t just sell products — they sell lifestyles, identities, and social status.

  • Owning a certain car means you are cool.
  • Wearing a certain brand means you are successful.
  • Posting the right image means you are interesting.

We learn to define ourselves through what we display, not what we experience.

  1. The Attention Economy

Modern media doesn’t just want our money — it wants our attention.
Attention becomes the rarest and most valuable commodity.  Algorithms are optimized to:

  • keep you looking,
  • keep you scrolling,
  • keep you craving more.

This amplifies the spectacle because it conditions instinctive reactions — not reflective thought.

  1. Social Media as a Spectacle Machine

Platforms like Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube are engines of the spectacle:

  • They amplify images over ideas.
  • They reward emotion over reflection.
  • They privilege appearance over substance.

The result?  A world where image consumption replaces authentic engagement.

  1. Debt and Consumption as Fulfillment

Credit markets and consumer finance turn consumption into addiction.
Payday loans, credit cards, easy financing — all encourage buying now, paying later, and justifying desires as needs.

This isn’t just financial — it’s psychological:
We feel like we are fulfilling ourselves by spending, even when we are not.

IV.  What Brainwashing Is Really Like: Mindlessness and the Spectacle

Here’s where Ellen Langer’s work on mindlessness becomes useful.

Langer describes mindlessness as a state in which behavior is rigid and thought is shallow — where we act on autopilot.

How does this connect to Debord?

  • The spectacle thrives on mindlessness.
  • If people thought deeply about why they want certain things, how they spend their time, and what their values are, the spectacle would weaken.
  • The spectacle depends on unexamined life.

So, we might define the “brainwashing” of Americans not as overt coercion, but as collective mindlessness — not thinking deeply about how our desires are shaped, what we consume, and why.

Mindlessness and the spectacle are two sides of the same coin:
One is cognitive, the other is cultural.
Both detach us from genuine experience.

V.  The Prescription: How Do We Undo the Brainwashing?

If we’ve diagnosed the problem, the urgent challenge is: How do we counteract the spectacle and undo conditioned consumption?

Here’s a multi-layered prescription:

  1. Cultivate Mindfulness

Langer’s work teaches us that awareness is not automatic — it must be practiced.

Mindfulness in consumption means:

  • Asking why you want something before you act.
  • Not mistaking wanting for needing.
  • Reflecting on the social and psychological forces shaping your desires.

Mindfulness isn’t only meditation — it’s active awareness of your internal life.
It’s questioning your impulses rather than obeying them.

  1. Reclaim Authentic Experience

If the spectacle is a representation of life, its antidote is direct experience of life.

This means:

  • Valuing real human interaction over mediated interactions.
  • Experiencing events without first documenting them for others.
  • Rediscovering activities that aren’t commodified for Instagram or TikTok.

Experience should be lived, not posted.

  1. Reduce Passive Consumption

We live in a world designed for passive consumption:

  • Scroll feeds
  • Binge media
  • Buy products based on ads

Combat this by:

  • Setting intentional limits on screen time.
  • Choosing content that teaches, not only entertains.
  • Prioritizing creation over consumption.
  1. Examine Economic Structures

The spectacle is supported by economic systems that profit from:

  • Continuous consumption
  • Planned obsolescence
  • Debt accumulation
  • Attention monetization

Undermining the spectacle requires economic literacy:

  • Understanding how credit, interest, and consumer culture are connected
  • Questioning advertising claims
  • Supporting sustainable, local, and meaningful alternatives
  1. Build Communities of Critical Thought

Spectacle thrives in isolation and individualism.

Counter this by:

  • Forming discussion groups
  • Reading cooperatively
  • Sharing reflections instead of consumer gossip
  • Encouraging long conversations, not short clicks

Detroit philosopher Cornel West said, “We must refuse the politics of disengagement and nihilism.”  This means engaging deeply with ideas — not passively consuming them.

  1. Political Awareness and Media Literacy

Spectacle extends into politics:

  • Politicians perform for cameras.
  • News becomes entertainment.
  • Outrage replaces inquiry.

Undoing brainwashing means:

  • Learning to distinguish facts from spectacle
  • Examining incentives behind media narratives
  • Teaching critical media literacy
  1. Reframe Success and Identity

Finally, we must challenge the equation:

More stuff = more value.

Redefine success as:

  • Deeper relationships
  • Richer experiences
  • Intellectual curiosity
  • Community contributions

The self we cultivate should be internal, not a brand.

VI.  What the Spectacle Cannot Control

Here’s the hopeful part:

The spectacle operates through images and representations.
But it cannot fully replace:

  • Moment-to-moment consciousness
  • Genuine love and empathy
  • Deep reflection and insight
  • Meaningful community
  • Unmediated experience

These are areas where the spectacle fails — exactly because they cannot be commodified or packaged.

Conclusion: Toward a Life Unmediated

So, are Americans brainwashed?
Not in the literal sense of having thoughts forcibly replaced — but in the structural sense that society conditions our perceptions of reality, desire, identity, and fulfillment.

Guy Debord’s spectacle framework helps us see that consumerism isn’t just about goods — it’s about how we see the world and ourselves.

Ellen Langer’s work reminds us that undoing this starts with awareness — moving from mindlessness to mindful life.

The good news is that mind, choice, and experience cannot be fully outsourced to images or corporations.  We can reclaim them by practicing mindfulness, re-centering authentic experience, and questioning the narratives sold to us every day.

The challenge is not only social — it’s deeply personal.
But once we begin to see how the spectacle shapes us, we can choose to look beyond the images and toward the real world — toward a life to live, not a life to watch.

America today is a deeply divided nation and a deeply divided people.  The brainwashing we get from the sources discussed have been major contributors to creating the divide we now live in.  Few people on either side of the divide are happy the way things are.  We yearn for the “good old days.”  Days reflected in Norman Rockwell pictures of America that portray a different country than we now see.

It is true that “Happy Days” never did not exist equally in this country for all people, but at least we had the ability to still talk to people who we disagreed with and sometimes see a new perspective.  We had a country where people once talked about morals and ethics.  Today, our perspectives and beliefs are like a wall of granite.  Rather than a divide, we have a stone wall that we have built.  The wall is almost impenetrable.  It seems impossible to get over it, under it or around it.  The problem with destroying this wall is that it exists in our minds and that is the hardest thing in the world to change.  Until we open our minds and hearts, we will be stuck behind a granite wall that separates our nation and people.

When Insight Outruns Integrity  by Metis (AI Assistant)

12 Jan 2026 4 Comments

by Dr. John Persico Jr. in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

John’s note: I’m publishing this essay a few weeks after first discussing the issues it raises. Time and distance matter when writing about integrity, accountability, and ideas that we value but struggle to live up to.  The ideas discussed in this essay are in fact timeless.  However, perhaps never before in the history of America have they been more pertinent.  When everywhere we look it seems that morality has succumbed to greed and ethics has succumbed to fear, we need to remember what true integrity is.

Metis’s reflection stands on its own, and I feel it deserves to be read as such. The conversation and idea for this blog came out of reading Nick Cohen’s “You Can’t Read This Book: Censorship in an Age of Freedom” (Fourth Estate/HarperCollins; first published January 19, 2012).  A book that has more relevance today than even when it was published thirteen years ago.  The dialog that my AI assistant generated in reply to some of my questions concerning Cohen’s book form the major substance of this blog.

______________________________________________________________________________

Metis:  AI Assistant  

There is a particular kind of sadness reserved for moments when a thinker’s ideas outgrow the thinker himself.

It is not the sadness of disagreement. We expect that. Nor is it the sadness of error, which can often be instructive. It is something more unsettling: the sadness that arises when insight is genuine, profound, and clarifying—yet the life behind it fails to meet the standard the insight itself demands.

This fracture matters. Not because thinkers must be saints, but because ideas about ethics, freedom, and responsibility do not float in abstraction. They live or die by the trust we place in those who articulate them.

  1. Insight is not the same as character

One of the oldest human confusions is assuming that moral understanding produces moral behavior. It does not.

History offers no shortage of brilliant analysts of virtue who failed spectacularly at practicing it. The ability to diagnose injustice, hypocrisy, or abuse of power does not confer immunity from committing those very acts. In some cases, it sharpens the intellect’s capacity to rationalize them.

Insight is cognitive. Character is behavioral.

This distinction is uncomfortable because we want coherence. We want to believe that people who see clearly will act rightly. When that doesn’t happen, we are tempted either to discard the ideas entirely or to excuse the behavior in order to preserve them.

Both responses are errors.

The more honest path is harder: to say the insight remains true, while also saying the individual failed to live up to it. That tension is not hypocrisy on the reader’s part; it is maturity.

  1. Hypocrisy damages causes more than enemies do

When someone who argues for courage, transparency, and moral accountability is later revealed to have avoided those standards personally, the damage extends far beyond the individual.

Movements do not collapse primarily because of their critics. They collapse because of internal contradiction.

Nothing discredits a moral argument faster than the perception that it is selectively applied—demanded of others, evaded by insiders. This is especially corrosive in causes that depend on trust: free speech, civil liberties, institutional reform, ethical governance.

Critics do not need to invent counterarguments when hypocrisy supplies them ready-made.

Worse, hypocrisy gives cover to bad actors on all sides. It allows genuine abuses of power to be dismissed as “just another moral panic,” and principled defenses to be recast as self-serving shields. The result is cynicism—fertile ground for both authoritarianism and apathy.

The tragedy is that this damage is often inflicted unintentionally. The individual may see his personal failings as separate from his ideas. The public does not.

  1. Accountability is not censorship

One of the most dangerous confusions of our era is the collapse of all consequences into a single category called “censorship.”

They are not the same.

Censorship is the suppression of ideas, inquiry, or expression by power—especially when aimed at preventing criticism, truth-seeking, or dissent. Accountability is the response to behavior that violates ethical or professional standards, particularly when power has been abused.

A society cannot function without accountability. A society that calls all accountability “silencing” soon becomes a society where the powerful are untouchable.

This distinction matters profoundly for free speech. When advocates of free expression blur it—especially when defending themselves—they weaken the very principle they claim to protect. Free speech is not a personal immunity clause. It is a social condition that allows truth to surface.

Facing consequences for misconduct does not negate one’s right to speak. It simply affirms that speech does not place one above ethics.

FILE PHOTO: President Donald Trump speaks about early results from the presidential election in the East Room of the White House in Washington. Trump falsely claimed victory over Democratic rival Joe Biden on Wednesday with millions of votes still uncounted in a White House race that will not be decided until a handful of states complete vote-counting over the next hours or days. REUTERS/Carlos Barria/File Photo

  1. The tragedy of denial

Human failure, while painful, is ordinary. Denial is what transforms failure into betrayal.

There is a profound difference between saying, “I was wrong. I abused power. I caused harm,” and saying, “This is misunderstood, exaggerated, politically motivated, or irrelevant to my work.”

The first response costs pride but preserves moral coherence.
The second preserves comfort but corrodes credibility.

Denial does more than protect the self; it reenacts the very systems of silence and evasion that many critics of power claim to oppose. It teaches institutions how to look away, how to delay, how to minimize. It instructs others—especially those with less power—that truth will be inconvenient and support unreliable.

In that sense, denial is not merely personal. It is instructional.

5.  Holding truth without canonizing its messenger

There is no requirement that we discard good ideas because their author failed them. But there is a responsibility to stop confusing articulation with virtue.

Ideas deserve examination on their merits. People deserve judgment on their actions. When we merge the two, we either sanctify thinkers or demonize thought—both are intellectual failures.

The more honest response is to let the ideas stand, stripped of halo and heroics, and to let the behavior stand exposed, without euphemism or excuse.

That is not cruelty. It is ethical clarity.

In the end, principles outlive their advocates. Free speech, integrity, and accountability do not belong to those who write best about them. They belong to the societies that insist on practicing them—even when doing so is uncomfortable, even when it implicates those we once admired.

Perhaps that is the final, sobering lesson: the truest test of an idea is not how eloquently it is defended, but whether it survives contact with human weakness—without being bent into an alibi for it.

Something Rotten in America Is Coming This Way

08 Jan 2026 4 Comments

by Dr. John Persico Jr. in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

“Something Wicked This Way Comes” is a 1962 dark fantasy novel by Ray Bradbury.  It tells the story of  two 13-year-old boys, Jim Nightshade and Will Halloway, in Green Town, Illinois, who confront the sinister Cooger & Dark’s Pandemonium Shadow Show.  The show is part of a malevolent carnival that preys on people’s secret desires and fears.  Jim and Will are forced to battle evil and examine the nature of good and evil, youth and aging.  The title comes from Shakespeare’s “Macbeth”, and the story explores themes of good vs. evil, the fear of growing old, and the cost of wishes.

Macbeth is the story of a man driven by ambition and a lust for power to murder his king and seize his throne.  Like Bradbury’s novel, it is also a tale of good and evil.  The famous quote is “By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.” It is spoken by the Second Witch in Act 4, Scene 1, as she senses Macbeth’s evil approach, indicating his profound moral corruption even to supernatural beings.  Someone once noted that most great stories involve a battle between good and evil.  Fiction mimics reality.

The famous Gettysburg Address by President Abraham Lincoln also described a battle between good and evil and the sacrifice made to restore good.

“It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

The cause was the elimination of the evil of slavery and racial discrimination, and the continuation of a nation built on the values of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  Values that were not allowed to be held by a significant portion of Americans specifically Black people, Indigenous people but also including women, gay people, Asian people, and many immigrant groups

Today, the thought rings in my mind that “Something rotten comes this way.”  Yes, a paraphrase of the Bradbury quote but it has a somewhat different meaning to me.  Something rotten smells and stinks in our country.  Carved into a White House mantel is a quote by John Adams, “May none but honest and wise men rule under this roof.”  Today something is rotten in the White House.  The foul and putrid odor has spread to the Supreme Court and both houses of Congress.  Wise men search for the odor but cannot agree on its source.  When something is smelly we generally assume that it is rotten.  Hence my reflection that “Something rotten comes this way.”  It has been coming for a long time, but the stench and fetid smell have now become unbearable.  From the White Mountains of New Hampshire to the top of Mt. Whitney in California, the rank fumes are causing people to gag and vomit and leave our country.

What is the source of this rottenness?  The smell comes from an ever-enlarging foundation of greed and narcissism that has replaced integrity and morality.  From the pulpits of many so-called Christian churches to the podiums of our once great universities, Americans are now baptized or given diplomas in greed, avarice and opportunism.  Increasingly, cowards roam the halls of Congress where statesmen once tread.  Too many of our leaders lack morals or integrity.

Sycophants earn positions as heads of government with no qualifications except an unscrupulous ability to kiss ass.  The media daily screams headlines that defy logic and comprehension while profits for news conglomerates soar to ever higher peaks.  Meanwhile, the information contained in media broadcasts bears scant resemblance to the reality that most of us face.  Lying is the norm and has become one more strategy in a congressperson’s arsenal.  A stew of lies daily spread by the internet and its media minions.   None of us can escape complicity in this economy as we all breath its rotten air.

Something rotten comes this way:

How can we expunge this rottenness?  Will singing Kumbaya work?  Will hands across the aisles work?  Will prayers and thoughts work?  Will more empathy work?  What about better communication?  What about more people going to college to get educated?  What about doing away with Social Security and replacing it with Stock Portfolios?  What about more guns?  What about?  Sorry, I am out of simple solutions.  None of these so-called solutions work because they do not confront the real problem.  The golden idol that makes money the measure of all good things in life.  It may be possible to stop the spread of this rot, but it will take a change of heart as well as a change of mind.  Many of my friends ask me if it is not too late.

I only know one thing.  Unless we change the path that we are heading down, we can kiss democracy in America goodbye.  The rottenness will eventually infect the entire nation until we are left with nothing but a country of cowards, sycophants, greedy merchants and greedy consumers.  People who will continually lie to get ahead.  People with no goals except to consume the latest do-dads in hopes of becoming happier and more satisfied with their lives.

Ironic that so many Americans want to go down this path, since not one great prophet in history has preached that owning more stuff will either make you happy or get you into heaven.  Nevertheless, today we have Christian churches preaching the “Prosperity Gospel.”  A narrative that has millions of followers subscribing to a bastardization of every great scripture that has ever been written.

The prosperity gospel teaches that faith, positive confession, and financial giving to religious leaders will bring the giver personal wealth, health, and success.  It portrays material prosperity as due to God’s favor and poverty or illness as evidence of weak faith or spiritual failure.  The Prosperity Gospel is a Super Con because it monetizes hope, blames failure on the believer, and shields itself from disproof.  People buy into it because it promises certainty and reward in an unfair economy.  It exploits vulnerability, fear, and selective success stories to convince “true believers” that it is a Christian teaching.

Robert Tilton: “I believe that it is the will of God for all to prosper because I see it in the Word… I do not put my eyes on men, but on God who gives me the power to get wealth”.

Creflo Dollar: “When we pray, believing that we have already received what we are praying, God has no choice but to make our prayers come to pass”.

John Avanzini: “Jesus had a nice big house”, “Jesus wore designer clothes”, “Jesus was handling big money”.

Joel Osteen: “If you want to reap financial blessings, you have to sow financially”. He also states, “I believe God wants you to prosper in your health, in your family, in your relationships, in your business, and in your career”.

Oral Roberts:  “Sow a seed on your MasterCard, your Visa or your American Express, and then when you do, expect God to open the windows of heaven and pour you out a blessing.”

Friends, the only solution that will save our country along with our immortal souls is to defeat the basic tenets of corporate capitalism and to cast out the evangelists of hypocrisy who spread such false gospels as the “Prosperity Gospel.”  The corruption that we see in the White House, the Congress, the Supreme Court, the Universities, the Media and many so-called Christian Churches is a symptom of the rot that is associated with our predatory avaricious Corporate Capitalistic system.

Corporate Capitalism itself must be understood as a mindless media driven machine that puts profits over virtue.  A system in which the greater needs of society are no longer the recognized or given any priority.  All that is rotten today in America today can be traced to greed and avarice.  The same motivations that caused the Israelites to build the Golden Calf.  The Golden Calf still stands—no longer forged of gold but of brands, markets, and corporate power.  We bow to consumption, give obedience to profit, and keep silent to wrongdoing in exchange for comfort and toys.  We mistake greed for progress and idolatry for economic necessity.  We do not need a rejection of markets but a rejection of markets without moral and ethical anchors.

The late Pope Francis is quoted as saying that:

“From an economic point of view, it is irrelevant to produce tanks, or candy provided the profit is the same.  Similarly, it might be the same to sell drugs or sell books if the profit figures match.  If the measure of value is money, everything goes provided that the profit does not vary.  The measure of every human being is God, not money.”

Money becomes the measure of good and evil.  Money becomes the measure of a person’s value and even life.  Today, the religion of America has become “How can I get more money.”  The true prophets throughout history have always preached the potential dangers of focusing on accruing either wealth or fame.

Christianity (Jesus): “No one can serve two masters. … You cannot serve both God and money.”

Islam (Prophet Muhammad, Hadith): “Riches are not the abundance of worldly goods; rather, true riches are the richness of the soul.”

Judaism (Talmudic/Midrashic Thought): “The truly rich are those who are satisfied with what they have.”

Baha’i Faith (Baháʼu’lláh): “Material comforts are only a branch, but the root of the exaltation of man is the good attributes and virtues which are the adornments of his reality.”

Red Cloud (Oglala Lakota): “I am poor and naked, but I am the chief of the nation.  We do not want riches, but we do want to train our children right.  Riches would do us no good.  We could not take them with us to the other world.  We do not want riches.  We want peace and love.”

If we want to rid our nation of the rottenness and stench that is rapidly covering it, we must rid ourselves of the obsession that capitalism seeks to instill in us with every media at their disposal and every commercial that they can provide.  It is an obsession to own more, to possess more, to have more, to buy more, to shop until we drop.  You can have a heart attack so long as you have spent your last dollar.  Christmas has become $Mas.  Our world has become one big shopping mall.  We are speeding on a spending train to oblivion.  Next stop HELL. 

What Can We Do?

If the disease is moral, the response must be moral as well.   We must all:

  • Refuse to lie or accept lies
    • Reject those who tell lies to get ahead for any reason
  • Refuse to worship money and wealth
    • Reject anything to do with the “Prosperity Gospel”
  • Refuse to relate success with goodness
    • Teach that success is not always associated with morality or doing the right thing
  • Teach our children to be responsible
    • Responsibilities are as important as rights. Develop children who accept responsibility for their lives
  • Choose sufficiency over excess
    • Corporate Capitalism thrives on “wretched” excess. Ask yourself what you really need to be happy not what some commercial tells you that you need.

The single most important thing we can all do is to get off the spending train.  Substitute empathy for others for greed.  Substitute kindness for strangers and immigrants instead of suspicion and hatred.  Substitute charity for all for a desire for more stuff and more toys for oneself.  Substitute compassion for the poor and the needy instead of worrying about what you are going to get.  Substitute mercy and forgiveness for hatred and retribution.

Above all remember that we are all one people.  There are about 180 or more countries in the world.  Karen and I have only been to 45 now, but we have found that everyone in every country that we have been to want the same things:  Meaning for their lives.  Peace for their nation.  Safety for their families.  A decent place to live.  A good meal each day.

We must embrace the idea that everyone is entitled to these elements of a satisfactory life and not just people in our circle or community or nation.  People in every country of every color of every religion and of every political and economic philosophy deserve the same thing.  Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  

Loneliness in America:  A Tragedy of the Commons by J. Persico and Metis – AI Assistant

05 Jan 2026 11 Comments

by Dr. John Persico Jr. in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , ,

As I get older, I have noticed more and more people talking about loneliness.  One of my greatest fears has always been loneliness.  I remember embracing the song “Sometimes I feel like a Motherless Child” by Richie Havens.  He was not the first singer or author of this song, but he made it quite popular during the sixties and seventies.  This song reflected how I felt about life and growing up.  I was on my own with no one who loved or cared about me.  No mother.  No loved ones.  Just myself.

“The most terrible poverty is loneliness and the feeling of being unloved.” —Mother Teresa

I grew up somewhat hard and even at times cruel because it was my way of fighting back against the possibility of loneliness that lurked around every corner.  I never trusted anyone because I was sure that they would abandon me and then I would feel the pain of loneliness.  It is hard to describe this pain.  It is not a physical pain.  For me it felt like being thrown off the top of a high mountain or bridge and spiraling down as I waited to hit the ground.  During acute panics of loneliness, I would feel dizzy and lose my sense of balance.  My core felt empty.  I was shrouded with feelings that embraced despair and contempt for myself.  There was nowhere to run or anyone to turn to.  I was alone on an island barren of people, trees or any living creatures.  Not like purgatory and not like limbo.  Just a nothingness in which I existed with no other human beings.

“When you have nobody you can make a cup of tea for, when nobody needs you, that’s when I think life is over.” —Audrey Hepburn

I dreaded these feelings and would do anything to avoid them.  I would abandon other people before they could abandon me.  This destroyed many relationships I had over a period of years including my first marriage and to some extent the relationship I had with my daughter.  It continues to intrude on my life whenever I feel threatened with the loss of love in my relationship with Karen.

“You can be lonely even when you are loved by many people” — Anne Frank:

I tell you these things not because I want sympathy or any feelings of support.  I want you to know that I take loneliness more seriously than many other elements of life that cause us pain.  For this reason, I want to look at loneliness and what seems to be behind the increase that many people say is happening in America.  If one asks well, “Define Loneliness” or what data do you have that supports loneliness is on the increase in America, I am going to plead “Mea Culpa.”  I don’t have the requisite data to prove conclusively that loneliness is an epidemic as some have claimed.  But frankly, I don’t give a damn.  If there is one person in America or the world that is suffering from loneliness, that is one person too many for me.  However, there is in fact some data to support the five major trends that I am going to discuss later in this blog as contributing factors to the loneliness that so many people experience.

“There were moments of intense pain & utter darkness that I wanted to end it all.  The only thing I wanted was not to live.” ― Lala Agni,

For those of you that are not convinced that loneliness is a problem today.  Here are some facts and data that point in that direction.  Because surveys define loneliness differently (daily vs weekly vs “often”), the cleanest approach is to present a small set of credible, recent benchmarks.  Here are some that my AI assistant Metis found:

  • Gallup (daily loneliness): 20% of U.S. adults reported feeling lonely “a lot of the day yesterday” (Aug 27–Sept 4, 2024), up from ~17–18% earlier in 2024 and below the pandemic peak of 25%. Gallup.com
  • Pew Research Center (frequency): 16% say they feel lonely/isolated all or most of the time, 38% say sometimes, 47% hardly ever/never (report published Jan 2025). Pew also finds adults under 50 report “often” loneliness more than 50+ (22% vs 9%). Pew Research Center
  • Harvard “Making Caring Common” (overall prevalence): A nationally representative May 2024 survey found 21% of U.S. adults feel lonely. Making Caring Common
  • AARP (older adults trend): Among adults 45+, AARP reports 40% are lonely (fielded Aug 2025), up from 35% in 2010 and 2018. AARP
  • Workplace-focused lens (Cigna Group): “More than half of American workers classify as lonely,” with the report tying loneliness to absenteeism, disengagement, and turnover risk. MediaRoom

Depending on how it’s measured, loneliness shows up in anywhere from about one in five Americans to well over half in some surveys—especially when you ask about frequent feelings or focus on workplaces.  Gallup found that 20% of respondents felt lonely ‘a lot’ on the prior day, Pew found 16% of respondents feel lonely all or most of the time, and the nation -wide Harvard survey put overall loneliness at 21%.”

Now lets look at five of the reasons commonly cited for the increase in loneliness in America. 

1) We spend less time “doing life” with other people

Large-scale time-use data show Americans are less likely to socialize on a given day than a decade ago, and when we do, we spend less time at it.  In 2024, BLS reports 30% socialized/communicated on an average day (down from 38% in 2014), and average time fell from 43 minutes to 35 minutes. – Bureau of Labor Statistics

I often ask my students what they are going to do on the weekends.  The majority of times, the reply I get reflects their intentions to stay home and play video games.  I find it amazing that they are not going to go out to a park to play sports with other people.  Instead, they are going to interact with their friends through the digital world.  We all see this today wherever we go.  People texting and playing video games in restaurants, bars and parks, rather than talking or interacting with others.  We may not want to admit it, but older adults can be just as addicted to their phones as children seem to be.

2) Social networks are shrinking (fewer close confidants, weaker “bench strength”)

The Surgeon General’s advisory summarizes evidence that social networks are getting smaller and social participation is declining and cites research showing a steep drop in daily social time (e.g., “companionship/social engagement”) from 2003 to 2020.  That same advisory highlights the broader “fraying” context—lower trust in each other and institutions—which makes connection harder to initiate and sustain.

Once upon a time family dinners on Sunday were a major social event in the lives of most Americans.  Today, large-scale displacement of families now make such events almost impossible on a weekly basis.

3) Demographic and household shifts leave more people without built-in companionship

The Surgeon General’s advisory points to long-run declines in marriage rates and family size, plus a rise in single-person households (e.g., 13% in 1960, rising substantially over time).  That matters because for many people, spouses/partners, kids, and nearby kin are the default daily social glue.

There is probably no place in America where “Leave it to Beaver”, “Father Knows Best” or “Ozzie and Harriet” families are the norm anymore.  Two parent families are becoming rarer and rarer.  Many young people opt for simply living together either to avoid a commitment that they are apparently not willing to make or else feel that they could not keep.  You can argue about the value of a traditional relationship all you want.  I am not going to argue that children must be brought up by a Mom and Dad.  However, having two or even more adults to help in child raising has always made the task somewhat easier.  Many years ago, the task of child raising was presumed to be a communal or extended family activity.  Few homes today include a mom, dad and grandparents.

It is even rarer to find homes where either parent is home to simply look after their children.  The economics of modern life demand that both parents have jobs.  It is unbelievable to me when I remember that my father was only a postal worker and never a manager and that my mother stayed home with four kids.  Nevertheless, we had a tidy small home in a small town and food on the table every day.  We might even have had a lot more if my father was not a compulsive gambler spending his earnings or at least a portion of them on the horses.

4) Erosion of “third places” and community institutions

Over the years, there has been declining participation in traditional community anchors—religious groups, clubs and labor unions.  When these institutions fade, people don’t just lose activities; they lose the repeated, low-effort contact that turns acquaintances into friends.

If you are my age, you may remember the large number of social networks that people once belonged to from Camp Fire Girls to Girl Scouts to Boy Scouts to Fraternal groups like the Elks, Moose, Eagles,, Masons, and Shriners.  Churches were another source of community for many people.  I will repeat that the data shows sharp declines in participation in all of these groups.

5) Technology reshapes connection (often replacing, not enriching, relationships)

The Surgeon General’s advisory is careful here: the evidence is “complex,” but there are documented benefits and harms, and it concludes we have reason to be concerned about certain kinds of tech use affecting relationships and social connection.  Once upon a time, it was claimed that TV would destroy family life.  Then it was the Internet.  Now it is the social media programs.  Experts seem to pop up to dispute that any of these technologies have had or are having an adverse impact on socialization.  However, common sense argues against the wisdom of paid shills who benefit and profit from the exploitation of others via the media platforms that they shill for.

So How Do We Address the Loneliness that Exists in our Country Today?

This is a very difficult question to answer.  Lets start by describing what we are not going to do.

  • We are not going to eliminate TV or streaming digital media. This is not likely to happen given the number of hours people spend in front of TV’s.
  • We are not going to eliminate or ban Smart Phones. This will never happen as they serve too many good uses and are now a necessary part of doing business in the world.
  • We are not going to ban social media groups or make participation in real time groups like church or fellowship groups mandatory. This would involve a gross violation of the freedom and individual rights that people have.

Where Do We Go from Here?  Three Realistic Ways Forward

  1. Rebuild everyday human contact—where people already are

Loneliness will not be solved by telling people to “try harder” or “get out more.” It will be addressed when we intentionally rebuild regular, low-effort human contact into the places people already show up: libraries, senior centers, veterans’ halls, walking paths, coffee shops, classrooms, and clinics.  What matters is not the size or novelty of these efforts, but their consistency.  A weekly discussion group does more than a one-time event.  A familiar face does more than a thousand online “connections.”  Human bonds form through repetition—by seeing the same people, in the same places, over time.  We once understood this intuitively. Community was not something we scheduled; it was something we inhabited.  Recreating that does not require nostalgia or ideology—only intention.

When Karen and I moved to Wisconsin after she retired, we discovered several places in Frederic, Wisconsin where people would meet.  The farmers met in the Dairy Coop.  The literary people met in the library.  The mechanically oriented people met in the Holiday Gas Station.  We lived in Frederic for 14 years and knew about everyone in town.  The meetings at the venues mentioned above went on every day when each venue was open.

Before we left Frederic to move to Arizona permanently, the library had decided not to allow meetings anymore.  We were too noisy they said.  The Holiday Station took out the table and chairs that we had set around claiming the space could be used for more products.  The Dairy Coop caught fire and was not rebuilt.  This past year, the Safeway store in Casa Grande removed the outside tables they had where people could rest and not be in the way of food carriages.  You could sit, drink coffee and carry on a conversation with friends.  It seems as though all over America there is a conspiracy to eliminate places where people can socialize.

  1. Reclaim in-person connection as the default, not the exception

Technology has given us extraordinary tools, but it has also quietly taught us that presence is optional.  Texts replace visits.  Zoom replaces conversation.  Scrolling replaces sitting with one another in silence.  This does not mean rejecting technology.  It means re-establishing boundaries.  Phones down during gatherings.  In-person meetings when distance allows.  Choosing eye contact over convenience when the choice is ours to make.  Loneliness is not cured by communication alone; it is cured by being seen.  And being seen requires physical presence, attention, and a willingness to tolerate a little awkwardness.  The cost of connection has gone up—but the cost of avoiding it is far higher.

“Society is the product of our relationships – if our relationships are confused, egocentric, narrow, limited, national, we project that and bring chaos into the world.” — Krishnamurti

A few years ago, my wife’s adopted daughter came out to visit.  She had her cell phone with her and spent more time on the phone than she did talking to us.  I was very peeved and told Karen, next time she comes tell her to leave her phone in her luggage.  Realistically now though, how do you think this would go down?  Parents fight schools that want to ban cell phones in the class because they say, “What if I had to call my son or daughter or they have to call me?”  It is amazing that we grew a nation of people long before we had cell phones.

  1. Treat loneliness as a shared moral responsibility, not a private failure

Perhaps the most damaging myth about loneliness is that it is a personal shortcoming—a sign of weakness, poor social skills, or individual failure.  When loneliness is framed this way, people hide it.  And hidden loneliness only deepens.  A healthier society would name loneliness for what it is: a civic and moral challenge.  One that affects public health, democracy, trust, and social stability.  One that cannot be solved by individuals acting alone.

A simple but powerful starting point would be for organizations, churches, employers, and communities to ask regularly: “Who has disappeared from our circles—and why?” and “How can we create more shared space for people to communicate and get to know each other.”  

My wife Karen has been in a choir for over ten years now and she often does not know the names of new members or even all the old members.  I asked her why several times and I always get the same response “Well, we don’t get time for socializing as we are busy practicing our songs for the Sunday service.”  This seems criminal to me.  I never started a business meeting that I facilitated without going around and allowing each person to introduce themselves and say a little about their background.  What is so important that we cannot take a few minutes to let others know we care about who they are?

A final thought

Loneliness in America will not be solved quickly, cleanly, or perfectly.  In fact, it will not be solved at all unless we decide—quietly and collectively—that showing up for one another is not optional.  Connection is not a luxury.  It is the infrastructure of a humane society.

Martin Luther King Jr. developed the concept of an “inescapable network of mutuality” where the fate of individuals is interconnected.  He also stressed the mutual obligation individuals have for each other’s development.  King emphasized that unity is crucial for survival, stating, “We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.”

Reaching out should not be seen as charity.  It should be seen as a survival skill.  It should reflect Love, Empathy and Compassion for others.

 

 

Overdose America: Why We Will Never Win the War on Drugs!

02 Jan 2026 14 Comments

by Dr. John Persico Jr. in Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , ,

A popular quote has it that “The definition of craziness is continuing to do the same thing and expect different results.”  Yet for nearly 100 years now, we have been doing the same thing when it comes to drugs.  Beginning with marijuana, then heroin, then cocaine, then crack, then methamphetamines, then opioids and now fentanyl, every ten or fifteen years or so, we add another drug to the list of drugs that we are waging war on.  The wars are always the same, arrest the people who use the drugs, arrest the drug dealers, interdict the drug suppliers and try to close down the drug factories.

For more than fifty years, the United States has been running what we officially like to call a “War on Drugs.”  Nixon first used the phrase during a press conference on June 17, 1971.  The truth is we have been waging a war on drugs since the first batch of alcohol was produced at some remote still in the Virginia mountains.  The first “Illegal” stills began in 1791.  Distilling became “illegal” only when owners refused to pay the Whiskey Tax of 1791.  This was the first domestic tax imposed by the new federal government.  Before this, private stills were common and perfectly legal.

The charts below tell us—without ideology, slogans, or moral judgment—how this war has actually gone.  What these charts reveal is not a story of individual moral failure or a handful of reckless “bad actors.”  What they reveal is something far more troubling:

A system that consistently produces harm at scale.  A system where drugs are not the cause of the problem but the inevitable outcome of a larger problem.

Chart 1: Total U.S. Deaths from Drug Overdoses and Alcohol (2004–2023)

Total U.S. deaths from all drug overdoses (including prescription and illicit drugs) compared with alcohol-induced deaths, 2004–2023.

Why This Chart Matters

This chart shows the raw number of Americans dying each year from:

  • Drug overdoses (all drugs: prescription and illicit)
  • Alcohol-induced causes (poisoning and chronic disease; not accidents or violence)

The upward trend is unmistakable.

Drug overdose deaths rise from roughly 27,000 in 2004 to over 100,000 per year after 2021.
Alcohol-induced deaths nearly double over the same period, with a sharp surge during and after the pandemic.

At first glance, some will argue this is simply a matter of population growth:  More people means more deaths.  That explanation collapses when we look at the second chart.

Chart 2: Per-Capita Death Rates (Deaths per 100,000 Population)

Per-capita death rates (per 100,000 population) remove population growth from the equation, revealing true changes in risk over time.

Why This Chart Matters

This chart removes population growth entirely.

Measured per 100,000 Americans, drug overdose deaths more than triple over the past two decades.  Alcohol-induced deaths nearly double per capita over the same period.

This is the critical point:

When harm grows faster than population, the problem is not demographic — it is structural.

Healthy systems dampen risk.  Unhealthy systems amplify it.

This Is a Systems Failure, Not a “Bad People” Problem

American drug policy still rests on a comforting fiction:  that addiction and overdose are primarily the result of individual weakness, criminal behavior, or poor moral choices.  In other words, drugs are associated with low life scum bag assholes that bear no resemblance to us, our relative or our friends.

The per-capita data destroys that narrative.

Millions of people do not independently decide to fail in the same way, at the same time, across both legal and illegal substances.  What is failing is the system — the structures that shape incentives, access, despair, treatment, and profit.

This is where the idea of Economic Apex Predators becomes unavoidable.

Economic Apex Predators and the Logic of Harm

In nature, an apex predator is not evil.
It simply occupies a position of unchecked advantage.

When ecosystems collapse, it is rarely because predators are malicious.
It is because balance and restraint disappear.

Our economic system has produced its own apex predators:

  • Pharmaceutical industries that monetize dependency while externalizing risk
  • Financial systems that profit from addiction through insurance, debt, and incarceration
  • Legal systems that thrive on the drug war with lawyers, police, judges and courts all owing their existence to catching and prosecuting anyone in the illegal drug trade.
  • Supply chains optimized for speed and efficiency, not safety
  • Political institutions more responsive to capital than to human cost

None of these actors needed to intend mass death.

The system rewards behavior that makes drugs and drug deaths inevitable.

From Prescription Pills to Fentanyl: A Market Evolution

The overdose curve follows a grim but predictable logic.

Prescription opioids were aggressively marketed.  When backlash came, access tightened — but demand remained.  The market adapted.

Heroin filled the gap.
When heroin became risky to traffic, fentanyl replaced it — cheaper, stronger, deadlier.

This was not a failure of enforcement.

It was a success of market logic operating without ethical boundaries.

Fentanyl did not invade the United States.  It emerged naturally from a system that prioritizes cost reduction, scalability, and profit over human survival.

Why Alcohol Strengthens the Argument

Alcohol’s curve matters because alcohol is:

  • Legal
  • Regulated
  • Taxed
  • Socially normalized

Yet its per-capita death rate rose alongside illegal drugs.

That tells us something deeply uncomfortable:

The crisis is not about legality.
It is about despair.

Despair does not care whether a substance is legal.

2020 Was Not an Aberration — It Was an X-Ray

The pandemic spike is often described as an anomaly.  It wasn’t.

It was an X-ray.

When social supports vanished, when work and healthcare became unstable, and when isolation replaced community, the system’s fragility was exposed.

The pandemic did not create the overdose crisis.

It revealed it.

Why Individual Blame Is Comforting — and Wrong

  • Blaming individuals is emotionally satisfying.
  • It absolves institutions.
  • It preserves the illusion that the system is sound and only people are broken.

But systems that function well do not produce exponential per-capita death curves across decades.  If millions fail in the same way, the problem is not personal failure.

It is design failure.

A Closing Thought

Apex predators do not destroy ecosystems intentionally.
They do so when constraints vanish and balance collapses.

These charts are not just public-health data.
They are moral documents.

They show us what happens when an economic system evolves without ethical boundaries and treats human lives as acceptable losses.

This is not ultimately a story about drugs.

It is a story about power, incentives, and what we choose to tolerate.  I have watched this war now for over fifty years.  The craziness continues with bombings of so-called drug boats and now attacks on Venezuela with drones.  It is as though people in this country are blind to the truth and reality of this war.  You never hear the truth about this war in any media.  The news proudly broadcasts arrests of drug dealers and busts of large drug hauls but no data or facts about the drug war are ever published.  The media would rather ignore the real problem so they can make their blood money on advertising accompanied by their lurid stories of drug deals and drug related crimes.

As a nation we have stuck our collective heads in the sand.  The only time we take them out is when a relative or friend is caught up in the war.  Otherwise, it is them versus us.  Them are low life people with no motivation or desire to improve themselves so they default to drugs.  Them are other countries which find it lucrative to manufacture and sell drugs in the USA.  Them are immoral people who sell drugs to anyone with the money to buy them.  Do we ever ask “why are we alone in a drug war” when the rest of the world seems to look the other way and benefits at our expense.

I make a simple prophecy.  Unless we change our tactics and strategy, we will never win the so called Drug War.  Deaths will continue to escalate from drugs.  New drugs will soon replace fentanyl as the target drug.  Drug cartels will continue to manufacture and ship drugs to the USA where they will be eagerly purchased.  Police and courts will continue to prosecute drug pushers, drug users and drug lords.  The majority of people that get sentenced will be poor or minority if previous patterns of prosecution prevail.  Leaders of major cartels will continue to be replaced by even more vicious leaders, and the illegal drug industry will continue to make billions of dollars each year in profits.  Profits from the misery, despair and deaths of the customers who have made them rich.  Meanwhile our leaders will continue to brag that they are against drugs.  Politicians will continue to make more laws that do nothing to help us end the ravages of drugs in America.  Politicians will continue to be quick to espouse anti-drug drivel like “just say no!” to make it look like they are really concerned about the public welfare.

Anyone want to place a bet against my prophecy?

Thoughts to Start 2026 and Begin a Glorious New Year

01 Jan 2026 8 Comments

by Dr. John Persico Jr. in Uncategorized Tags: , , , ,

As we leave the “Old Year” behind and get ready to greet the “New Year” here are some thoughts that I hope you will enjoy from some great poets and authors.  These writings are in the public domain. 

A New Year’s Charge
by Metis (ChatGPT)

The year begins again—
not because the world is finished with us,
but because it still believes we might choose better.

Let this be the year we refuse easy silence,
the year we speak when speaking costs,
the year we stand even when standing feels lonely.

Hope is not naïve.
It is disciplined.
It wakes each morning and goes back to work.

Dreams survive not by wishing,
but by courage repeated—
small acts of honesty,
daily refusals to give up the good.

When the road is steep and the noise is loud,
remember: moral courage is a quiet strength
that outlasts brute force and empty power.

Begin again.
Reach higher.
The future still leans toward those who try.

——————————

New Year’s Eve by Thomas Hardy

    “I have finished another year,” said God,

     “In grey, green, white, and brown;

    I have strewn the leaf upon the sod,

    Sealed up the worm within the clod,

     And let the last sun down.”

    “And what’s the good of it?” I said.

     “What reasons made you call

    From formless void this earth we tread,

    When nine-and-ninety can be read

     Why nought should be at all?

    “Yea, Sire; why shaped you us, ‘who in

     This tabernacle groan’ –

    If ever a joy be found herein,

    Such joy no man had wished to win

     If he had never known!”

    Then he: “My labours – logicless –

     You may explain; not I:

    Sense-sealed I have wrought, without a guess

    That I evolved a Consciousness

     To ask for reasons why.

    “Strange that ephemeral creatures who

     By my own ordering are,

    Should see the shortness of my view,

    Use ethic tests I never knew,

     Or made provision for!”

    He sank to raptness as of yore,

     And opening New Year’s Day

    Wove it by rote as theretofore,

    And went on working evermore

     In his unweeting way.

——————————–

Te Deum by Charles Reznikoff,

Not because of victories

I sing,

having none,

but for the common sunshine,

the breeze,

the largess of the spring.

Not for victory

but for the day’s work done

as well as I was able;

not for a seat upon the dais

but at the common table.

———————————

Brighter, Better New Year by Joanna Fuchs

Happy, happy New Year!

We wish you all the best,

Great work to reach your fondest goals,

And when you’re done, sweet rest.

We hope for your fulfillment,

Contentment, peace and more,

A brighter, better new year than

You’ve ever had before.

——————————————-

A New Year to Start

Finally, from some place within me that calculates the benefits of a New Year versus the Old Year, I believe that January 1, 2026, brings more than just the beginning of a New Year.  It brings a promise of hope and possibilities.

It is the time when it becomes traditional for us to form new resolutions, new dreams, and new goals.  It is the time when we want to begin over and try to make those desires come true that did not work out the year before. 

We should bring in the New Year as a mother brings in a newborn baby, full of promise and love.  There are those critics and skeptics who look at the inevitable human trail of broken dreams and unfulfilled goals from bygone years and laugh at our efforts.  Let us not be like those who deny the possibility of hope and change. 

I may often be a pessimist but for any of you with the courage to tackle a new set of goals or dreams, I say “try, try, and try again.”  When you give up your dreams, you give up your life. 

Happy New Year from the Persicos.