The Trifecta of Stupid

And how our young people are unaware of what happened here.

The hollowing out of America was not an accident, not some inevitable consequence of globalization or technological progress, but rather the deliberate result of policy decisions made by a political and financial elite that saw more profit in dismantling the world's greatest industrial economy than in preserving it. The story begins with what can only be called the Trifecta of Stupid - three catastrophic policy moves that reshaped the American economic landscape in ways from which we have never recovered. Naturally the Democrat / Republican UniParty was responsible:

• First came NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, which flung open the gates for American manufacturers to relocate south of the border where labor came cheap and regulations were few.

• Then arrived the World Trade Organization, a globalist bureaucracy that locked the United States into a system of trade rules designed to benefit multinational corporations at the expense of national sovereignty.

• Finally, and most devastatingly, came the granting of permanent normal trade relations to China, a decision that effectively signed the death warrant for what remained of American manufacturing.

These policies, implemented across three administrations from Bush to Clinton to Bush, were sold to the American people as economic progress, as the inevitable march of history. The media cheerleaders of the 1990s, in those pre-internet days when a handful of newspapers and television networks controlled The Narrative, presented these changes as modern and sophisticated, while those who questioned them were dismissed as protectionist dinosaurs. I remember those days well, watching as the factories that had sustained generations of American workers were shuttered gradually, their operations sent to places where labor was cheap and environmental regulations were nonexistent. The once-mighty industrial cities - Gary, Camden, Pittsburgh, Detroit - began their long decline into oblivion and social decay, while the financial elites who engineered this transformation grew richer, all the while convincing you that getting a toaster oven at Wal-Mart for $11.99 was the American Dream.

What few understood then, and what even fewer understand now, is that tariffs - currently being attacked by the Keepers of the Narrative in our current political discourse - were actually the traditional American way of conducting trade policy. The Founding Fathers envisioned tariffs as the primary means of funding the federal government, a system that worked remarkably well until the income tax amendment fundamentally polluted the relationship between citizen and state. When Donald Trump began speaking about tariffs in the 21st century, the reaction from the political and media establishment was one of horror and derision, as if he had proposed some radical new concept rather than a return to traditional American economic practice. The Top of the Pyramid simply does not want the grift to end. Tariffs aren’t bad at all. The truth is that tariffs serve as both a source of government revenue and a protective mechanism for domestic industry, allowing nations to maintain control over their economic destiny rather than surrendering it to the so-called free market, which in reality is anything but free.

The case of solar panel manufacturing provides a perfect illustration of how this system has been rigged against American interests. Today, some 98 percent of solar panels are manufactured in China, not because Chinese companies are more innovative or efficient, but because they operate under an entirely different set of rules. Where an American factory must comply with environmental regulations, workplace safety standards, and fair wage laws, its Chinese counterpart faces no such constraints. Industrial waste can be dumped directly into rivers, workers can be paid pennies on the dollar, and safety standards can be ignored entirely - all of which adds up to a massive hidden subsidy that makes genuine competition impossible. When American solar manufacturers tried to compete on this uneven playing field, they were inevitably crushed, their factories closed, their workers laid off. This is not free trade by any reasonable definition, but rather a system of economic warfare in which the United States has been systematically disarmed.

Yet our educational system ensures that young people remain blissfully unaware of this reality. The average high school student today could tell you that climate change is an existential threat requiring immediate transition to renewable energy, but would likely have no idea that this transition has effectively meant transferring yet another critical industry to Chinese control. Pollution and carbon emissions apparently are OK - as long as they are in the Far East.

They are taught to view tariffs as some primitive relic of a bygone era, rather than what they truly are - tools of economic self-defense in a world where other nations openly flout the rules. The very concept of economic nationalism has been rendered taboo in polite society, dismissed as some antiquated notion with no place in our modern, interconnected world. Meanwhile, the consequences of this ideological blindness are all around us - in the closed factories, the declining wages, the crumbling infrastructure of what was once the world's mightiest industrial power.

It isn’t a mystery why Gary Indiana and Camden New Jersey are a mess. Campbell’s Soup headquarters and factories used to prop up Camden. Now it’s an economic disaster zone.

The deeper one looks into this phenomenon, the more apparent it becomes that the destruction of American manufacturing was not merely an unfortunate side effect of globalization, but rather part of a larger pattern of national weakening. Consider the historical context: from the end of the Civil War through the early 20th century, the United States operated largely on a gold standard, with minimal federal taxation, no welfare state to speak of, and yet managed to become the world's foremost industrial power without engaging in massive foreign wars. This was the America that saved Britain in World War I, the America whose productive capacity proved decisive in World War II.

Think about this. Britain, the Empire upon which the sun never set, had to go to the United States for help fighting Germany in WWI. That’s how independent, isolationist, and conflict averse America was back then.

That America no longer exists, and its disappearance did not happen by accident. The same forces that pushed for NAFTA, for the WTO, for normalized trade with China, are the forces that have worked tirelessly to erode national sovereignty across the Western world, always in the name of progress, always under the banner of inevitable historical forces.

What becomes clear when examining this pattern is that a strong, independent United States represents the single greatest obstacle to the establishment of a true global order. The architects of this new world - whether we call them the Davos elite, the managerial class, The New World Order, the laptop class, the Empire that never ended, the Promethean’s, or simply the powers that be - understand perfectly well that their vision cannot coexist with robust nation-states populated by citizens who still believe in concepts like sovereignty, self-determination, and economic independence. This explains the relentless assault on every institution that might hold such beliefs, from the family to the education system to the very concept of national history. Young Americans today are taught to view their country's past with shame and contempt, to see patriotism as somehow suspect, to regard economic nationalism as a dangerous fantasy. They are carefully shielded from understanding how the world really works, how power actually operates, and most importantly, how they are being systematically disinherited from the prosperity that was once considered every American's birthright.

The solution to this crisis, if there is one, lies in education - not the official Clown World curriculum peddled by the system, but real education, the kind that exposes young people to the truths they are never taught in school. They must learn how trade actually works, how monetary policy shapes their lives, how political decisions made decades ago continue to affect their prospects today. Most importantly, they must come to understand that the world they inhabit was constructed through a series of deliberate choices, not some inevitable unfolding of historical forces. The factories didn't leave because they had to - they left because powerful people made decisions that made them leave. Wages didn't stagnate because of abstract economic laws - they stagnated because the bargaining power of labor was systematically undermined. The American dream didn't fade away naturally - it was dismantled piece by piece by those who stood to profit from its destruction. Those people, through their agents in the Corporate Media, are howling with anger now, trying to “teach” Americans now that tariffs are bad, because Orange Man.

This is the knowledge that can set us free, the understanding that can help rebuild what has been lost. The Trifecta of Stupid - NAFTA, the WTO, and China trade - were not acts of God, but of men, and what men have done, men can undo. The first step is recognizing the truth, the second is teaching it to those who never heard it, and the third is having the courage to act on it.

So think about that when you look at your friends on social media, or you talk to them at work, and they're talking about how horrible things are now, and all the nonsense going on, and how bad it is.

Ask them why. Just do that. Why? What's the problem with the tariffs? Why is it so bad? And see what they say.

Then you'll finally understand how I do things. I feel I'm mostly right. I don't have a monopoly on the truth, but this is how I see it from my intellectual background and reading.

This is how I speak to young people, both through this outlet and others. And I urge you to do the same thing, because there are a lot of smart people who follow this, and they can do just as well or better than I do.

Our young people deserve to know why their world looks the way it does, and more importantly, they deserve to know that it doesn't have to be this way. The future remains unwritten, and the story of American decline is not yet over. With knowledge comes power, and with power comes the possibility of renewal. That possibility, however faint it may seem today, is what we must fight to preserve.

Nock knew all those years ago….

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