Why are things the way they are?

Why does it feel like things were better before?

Having a society of people walking through life in a drab stupor will, believe it or not, have strange impacts on the way the world goes.

No, that’s not exactly right. Everything — emphasis on thing — wasn’t better before. Well, maybe it’s the people then. Yes, that’s it — the people. Why does it seem like people were better before? No, that’s not it either. Not quite. People weren’t better before. There have always been the wicked and the evil and the lazy and the annoying. The world has always had problems.

Well, what is it then? What is it that I am feeling, you are feeling, and we all are feeling? Why does everything feel “off” for lack of a better word?

There’s a lot of answers, and a lot of them are pretty good. Answering questions this big is like looking at an object at a table from different directions. There are multiple correct descriptions of what is sitting in front of everyone, and all the answers help paint a clearer picture.

Ostinato of apathy

But is there an answer, a detail, a fact, or an X factor that sits under all the other things and runs like an ostinato through seemingly unrelated domains connecting the dots in a strangely unifying way?

Perhaps.

And if I were to try to list a single X factor that weaves like a thread through all the various forms and domains of decline, descent, malaise, and dysfunction, I might conclude that the fact that connects all these problems is something insurance covers, doctors prescribe, and we are all supposed to nod along with.

SSRIs and other forms of antidepressant medication.

I saw a video recently of an extended family. In a self-satisfied, joke-y sort of way, they all listed the medications they were on. It wasn’t a real joke, it was clear they were all actually on these things, but the video was joking about how funny it is, or something. Like many things TikTok, the tone was a plain, mundane, nihilistic, uncapitalized “lol.”

Of course, TikTok isn’t real life. But it isn’t exactly fake life either. This family of drug-dependents might be a bit of an exaggeration, though not necessarily a fabrication. Spiritually, the video is correct. More people are on these drugs than ever before, and that’s an undeniable fact of reality.

Drugs not hugs

This kind of thing didn’t exist when I was young. Drugs existed, both legal and illegal ones. Prescription drugs to help you be less depressed existed too. There were jokes and themes about Prozac in the 1990s, and before my time, in the midcentury, they were juicing disturbed people up on all sorts of stuff too. But the prevalence of them, overuse of them, and unabashedly flippant taking of them was nowhere near what we see today.

When I was young, the only people who were on this stuff were people who were decidedly “messed up.” Those who had genuinely tried to commit suicide or were really on the brink. And it wasn’t a good thing, and it wasn’t used flippantly. It was serious stuff. Somewhere in the last few decades, this attitude changed.

SSRIs and other antidepressants are the X factor under so much of the general malaise and dysfunction in our perplexing and seemingly decaying culture. At first, it doesn’t really make sense, or it just seems like a bit of a stretch because people think these drugs just “make people happier,” but that’s not exactly what happens. Even if they do seemingly “make people happier,” or at least less depressed, that isn’t the only thing they do.

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Dead inside

Listen to people who have been on these drugs describe how they make you feel. The picture isn’t exactly a rosy one. It’s better than suicide, but it isn’t normal. A very common observation you hear from people is that they make you feel dead or like you don’t care about anything. They also lower libido and what might be described as general drive.

These drugs don’t only impact one’s happiness. They bleed out and into all these other things, and when you have people taking them at the scale we do in the U.S., the culture shifts in ways that are unintelligible and confusing to those of us not on anything. Having a society of people walking through life in a drab stupor will, believe it or not, have strange impacts on the way the world goes.

Because of all this, our society is more full of de facto zombies than ever before. No wonder young people feel listless. No wonder achievement and striving for greatness seem naive or corny.

No wonder people aren’t partying.

No wonder the birthrate is in the tank.

No wonder the Democratic Party has become what it is when so many of its voters exhibit depression and anxiety.

No wonder everyone dresses like slobs.

No wonder there is a general apathy that bleeds through everything we see and hear.

No wonder the interior design is bland and factory-like.

No wonder everyone feels like tomorrow is going to be worse than today.

No wonder — to answer our first question — things are the way they are.

​Antidepressants, Ssris, Family life, Psychiatry, Overmedication, Lifestyle, Culture, Depression, Anxiety, Health, Make america healthy again, Democratic party, The root of the matter 

What does it actually mean to be an American?

This question sits at the center of the right and left’s diametric opposition on matters of immigration and citizenship. But the divide wasn’t always this sharp. For decades, says BlazeTV host Nick Freitas, the idea of an “American” was essentially “creedal.”

“It’s the idea that ‘well, if you kind of believe in the general idea of what America is, well, then you too can be every bit as much an American as anyone else,’” he explains.

But as the country becomes increasingly ideologically divided on national identity, the question of “what is an American?” demands a real answer.

On this episode of “Making the Argument,” Freitas provides exactly that by outlining the three things that decide who is an American — and how that differs from a true countryman.

“This is going to be controversial,” he warns.

Freitas highlights JD Vance’s recent speech, in which he argued that a creedal definition (i.e. “agreeing with the principles, let’s say, of the Declaration of Independence”) is an insufficient standard because it’s both “over-inclusive and under-inclusive.”

Freitas agrees. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D) doesn’t share the founding principles of the Declaration, he points out, and the Democratic Socialists of America aim to “overthrow the United States Constitution as it currently exists,” but that doesn’t mean their candidates and voters are not technically Americans. At the same time, there are foreigners who genuinely support America’s creed, but that also does not make them Americans.

So what does? Freitas highlights three determining tests.

1. “Legally, you’re an American if you have U.S. citizenship.”

2. “Historically, you’re an American if you’ve actually been in this country for any period of time and you can actually draw roots back to it, which actually signifies some sort of continuity within the same place and the same traditions.”

3. “Creedally or culturally, you’re an American if you actually appreciate the various social, political, economic, and theological underpinnings of what created the United States and what has sustained it.”

Combined, these standards, Freitas argues, determine if someone is “comprehensively American” — but it’s the third that ultimately determines who true “countrymen” are.

“The people that I really see as my countrymen are the ones that have come to fully understand what it means to be an American, loves the principles and the philosophies and the traditions, and wants to advance them into the future,” he says. “That’s my countryman — whether you came here yesterday or your family came here 250 years ago.”

“Making the Argument with Nick Freitas” is available on BlazeTV+, YouTube, and major podcast platforms.

Start watching Nick Freitas NOW at blazetv.com and use the promo code NICK40 for $40 off your BlazeTV+ subscription.

​Nick freitas, Citizenship, Immigration, Blazetv host 

You can have very low interest rates, and you can have debt-driven inflation. You just can’t have both at the same time. That is the reality President Trump refuses to recognize.

At the core of the president’s half-baked plan to resuscitate the economy is a return to the good old days of near-zero interest rates.

The Federal Reserve can set the short-term rates as low as it wants, but the bond markets will continue to rebel and reflect reality.

“We should have the lowest interest rates anywhere in the world,” Trump said last week in response to a reporter’s question in the Oval Office.

“In the old days … if we announced good numbers, interest rates went down. Now, if you announce good numbers, interest rates go up because they’re so afraid of inflation.”

It’s hard to make sense of that statement, but it reflects a grievance Trump has voiced consistently. He wants endless spending for his projects, he doesn’t want the inflation it causes, and he wants to pay near-zero interest on the resulting record debt. Don’t we all?

Perhaps in another lifetime, God will create such an innovative world. In this one, when you have protracted inflation and must sell endless Treasuries to service the debt, you cannot offer near-zero interest to buyers of that debt — especially at a rate below inflation.

We had multiple periods of near-zero interest rates this century, including during COVID. We also spent trillions of dollars we did not have during Trump’s first term and Biden’s presidency. That helped fuel the inflation surge of 2021-22. Prices have continued rising even as the inflation rate slowed, while the debt keeps exploding. Year-over-year inflation has now remained above the Fed’s 2% target for 65 consecutive months, with most months above 3%.

Far from being “artificially high,” as Trump contends, rates have been held artificially low. After the federal funds rate peaked at 5.5% during the inflation fight — a historically unremarkable level — the Fed cut rates six times beginning in 2024. The effective rate now stands at 3.63%, below the long-run average.

So what did the bond market do? The 10-year Treasury yield is roughly as high as it was when the federal funds rate peaked in 2024, and the 30-year yield is at levels not seen since 2007.

The Federal Reserve can set short-term rates as low as it wants, but the bond market will still reflect fiscal reality. There is no way around crushing debt other than cutting spending.

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That was on vivid display late last month when Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent instituted a “twist” operation: The government bought back more long-dated Treasuries while relying more heavily on cheaper short-term bills and notes to finance the deficit and the purchases themselves. The goal was to reduce the supply of long-duration debt, support bond prices, lower long-term yields, and exploit the fact that short-term rates remain below 10- and 30-year yields.

The response from the bond market?

After a few hours of lower yields, by the next morning they were back near their pre-announcement baseline.

The 10-year yield is now around 4.75%, higher than at any point since April 2007. Back then, the effective federal funds rate was 5.25% — 162 basis points above today’s rate. The bond market is telling us that long-term rates are not high because the Fed forgot how to cut. They are high because investors demand compensation for inflation, deficits, and debt risk.

There is a simple reason the Fed can no longer wave a magic wand, return rates to near zero, and service the debt on the cheap as it did from the post-9/11 recession through COVID. On September 11, 2001, gross federal debt was about $5.77 trillion, roughly 55% of GDP. In April 2007, before the financial crisis, it was about $8.84 trillion, or 63% of GDP. Today it exceeds $40 trillion and is roughly 123% of GDP.

RELATED: Democrats want amnesia on inflation

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The long-term trajectory is even worse, because faster debt growth creates a vicious cycle: Treasury needs more buyers, inflation and fiscal risk force yields higher, and more existing debt rolls over at those higher rates.

After an election fought in part against Bidenflation, nearly $4 trillion in new debt has been added since January 2025. Across Trump’s two terms, roughly $11.7 trillion of gross federal debt has accumulated. There are still more than two years left in his term, and there is no serious plan to bend the trajectory.

Naturally, all this new debt is being accumulated at higher interest rates. But the sheer magnitude of the debt also makes Trump’s dream of permanently cheap money impossible.

We all share Trump’s desire to service the debt on the cheap. He probably should have thought harder about that desire when he pressured Republicans in March 2020 to shut down the country and then pass trillions in new spending. Unfortunately for him and his delayed second term, what goes around in debt comes back around as inflation and higher interest rates.

​Bidenflation, Federal reserve, Inflation, Opinion & analysis, Spending, Treasuries, Interest rates, Debt, Joe biden, Donald trump 

If you use an Android phone, your device could be in line to get a privacy upgrade. Google’s bringing a new web standard to its mobile operating system to protect your web traffic from potential spies. However, only a small number of devices will have access to it at launch, and there is a caveat that could slow down the rollout indefinitely.

Unless you have a trusted VPN installed on your device, your web traffic is openly visible to a number of third-party groups, namely your internet service provider and your network administrator (if you’re using a public network). On top of that, every website you visit can see your IP address, device type, browser type, and more.

Google’s new tools are meant to make your phone and your apps safer, more secure, and private.

Even as websites have adopted HTTPS encryption to protect the data exchanged within your favorite sites, your ISP still knows every online spot you visit in a given day, month, or year. This allows outside sources to track your activity, both for innocuous and nefarious reasons.

Google’s new privacy upgrade aims to change that.

The new standard, dubbed Encrypted Client Hello, hides your web traffic from outside sources by encrypting destination websites, thus obscuring your browsing habits and making them harder to track. It’s not just the web either. ECH can also protect web traffic within your favorite apps. Furthermore, apps will be subject to Local Network Protection, another new feature that blocks the apps on your phone from scanning your Wi-Fi network for other connected devices without your permission.

Together, Google’s new tools are meant to make your phone and your apps safer, more secure, and private, but how do you enable it? To get ECH up and running on your Android phone, there are several things you’ll need before you’re protected.

First, ECH is only available on devices that run Android 17, which is a relatively small pool of candidates at the time this was published. Users that own a Google Pixel 6 and newer, or a Samsung Galaxy S23 and newer, either already have Android 17 or will get access very soon. To check the Android version on your device, open the Settings app, find the “About phone” section, and you’ll see your Android version under “device details” on Pixel or “Software information” on Galaxy.

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Second – and this one is the big caveat – many of those same groups that can currently track your web activity have to enable ECH before it will work. That means websites, app developers, and internet service providers all have to implement ECH, otherwise your traffic will remain visible, just as it is today. Even worse, these same groups can actively opt out of supporting ECH, rendering the new standard completely useless.

For what it’s worth, Google claims that it’s lobbying “industry leaders, service providers, and app developers to accelerate ECH adoption,” but it faces a difficult road ahead. Since the standard isn’t mandatory, plenty of groups will likely ignore Google’s attempts to make ECH a mainstream part of Android. In truth, the groups that implement it will be the ones that had no interest in tracking users’ browser activity in the first place, while the groups that are monitoring activity will simply ignore ECH altogether.

In this way, ECH is unlikely to offer much privacy to users in the Android ecosystem, at least not anytime soon. If you really want to protect your internet traffic, you’re better off with a trusted VPN instead.

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​Android, Google, Privacy, Internet, Internet privacy, Tech