China Controls the Stuff Your Life Runs On.

Every era gets the slogan it deserves. Ours, apparently, is :“Great Powers 2.0.”If you have not run across the phrase yet, you will. It is shorthand for a now-fashionable claim: that the long post-Cold War experiment in open markets and rules-based cooperation is finished, and that the world has reverted to an older, harder logic of rival great powers fighting over territory, technology, and above all raw materials. The United States, China, and Russia are said to be circling one another again, and the new currency of power is not just armies but supply chains, rare earth elements, and the chokepoints that connect them.Malone News is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.This is the story that the current administration is telling itself, and it is being used to rewrite American policy and reorder the economy, and it deserves to be examined before we sign on to everything done in its name.Where the slogan came fromThe initial aspect to observe is the highly commercial nature of the branding. The original phrase “Great Powers Era 2.0” was popularized in early 2026 by Rare Earth Exchanges, a critical-minerals industry outlet that openly claims to have coined it. That is not a knock on the underlying idea, but it should set the right expectation. An organization that profits from elevating the strategic importance of minerals in the world order then coins a phrase that promotes minerals as the master key to world order. Branding is a business.The deeper idea is genuinely old, and the “2.0” is mostly marketing. The phrase “Great power” goes back to the Concert of Europe after 1815. The modern “return of great power competition” has been a fixture of American defense documents since 2017 and 2018, developed by serious scholars long before anyone thought to attach a software version number to it. The new slogan dresses up a decade-old thesis in fresh clothes, and adds a resource-and-supply-chain spin that happens to suit the people selling the slogan.It is also worth noting that many serious analysts do not agree that the premise is even true. Read the Munich Security Conference, and you will find no consensus on whether the world today is unipolar, bipolar, or multipolar, or on which countries count as poles at all. One school argues that America remains dominant and that “multipolarity” talk mistakes potential for realized power. A more pointed critique holds that “the return of great power competition” is partly a way for Washington to describe its own relative decline. The point is not that the slogan is wrong. The point is that it is contested, and a contested idea treated as destiny is one to watch closely, because somebody always benefits from that treatment.From slogan to policySlogans would be harmless if they stayed slogans. This one has become set in policy, mostly aimed at critical minerals, and the policy machine behind it all is large.The reality is both real and uncomfortable. China controls roughly 70 percent of global rare earth mining and nearly 90 percent of rare earth refining and magnet manufacturing. In 2024, the United States produced about 1 percent of the world's critical minerals, and Congress shut down the Bureau of Mines in 1996.The Biden administration talked extensively about the importance of critical minerals and supply-chain resilience, but its response largely consisted of subsidies, grants, and government planning while continuing to support a regulatory environment that makes opening new mines and processing facilities in America extraordinarily difficult. Washington cannot simultaneously declare rare earths a national-security priority and then allow permitting delays, lawsuits, and bureaucratic obstacles to block domestic production.When Beijing responded to American tariffs by restricting rare earth exports, it exposed just how dependent the American defense and technology base had become on China. A country that cannot source the magnets for its own fighter jets without permission from a strategic rival has a genuine problem, and pretending otherwise is not realistic. It is denial.The response from the Trump White House has been sweeping. In rapid succession, the administration rolled out a Section 232 national-security review of mineral imports, a 12-billion-dollar public-private stockpiling vehicle calledProject Vault, and a new diplomatic bloc calledFORGE,pitched as the successor to the Minerals Security Partnership. It signed bilateral mineral deals with Australia, Ukraine, Japan, Malaysia, and others. It floated minimum import prices, which is to say government-set price floors, to keep cheap Chinese material from undercutting Western miners.These are big interventions, and they are exactly where the American right divides against itself. On one side are the America First conservatives, who view economic security, industrial capacity, and national sovereignty as inseparable. To them, rebuilding domestic manufacturing, securing critical supply chains, and reducing dependence on strategic rivals such as China are legitimate functions of government and long overdue acts of national self-preservation.On the other side are the country-club Republicans, old-school free-market conservatives, and traditional Chamber of Commerce Republicans who view such policies with deep suspicion. They see tariffs, industrial policy, and government-directed investment as market distortions that inevitably expand state power and invite political favoritism.To one camp, these measures are overdue statecraft, a country finally acting like it intends to survive. To the other, they are the state quietly seizing the commanding heights of the economy under the most elastic of political justifications. That split is the real argument beneath the slogan, and it is worth having out in the open. First, though, the part neither camp can wish away: the bill.The bill comes dueThe most underappreciated feature of Great Powers 2.0 is the one that shows up at the grocery store and the car lot, rather than in the foreign-policy section.For roughly three decades, globalization was a quiet disinflationary engine. Bringing China and other low-cost producers into world trade pushed down the prices of manufactured goods year after year. While headline inflation hovered around 2 percent, goods prices were often flat or falling, and the cost of a television, a tool, or a toy drifted lower in real terms for an entire generation of American families. That benefit was real.So was its underbelly, the dark side of globalism, which the cheap-goods accounting always left out: the same decades hollowed out factory towns, broke up communities built around making things, and told a generation of workers that their livelihoods were an acceptable price for everyone else’s lower checkout total. The dividends went disproportionately to the bi-coastal capitals and to Beijing. A good deal of the loss landed on the American interior, the “flyover states.”Great Powers 2.0 deliberately reverses many of the policies that drove globalization and lower consumer prices over the last several decades. The objective is to reduce dependence on strategic rivals by moving production, supply chains, and critical industries to politically reliable countries or back to the United States itself. The tradeoff is simple. Security costs more than efficiency. Producing goods domestically, maintaining excess industrial capacity, and sourcing from trusted partners instead of the cheapest supplier all raise costs. Higher prices are not a policy failure. They are the price of greater economic and national security.So tariffs directly raise the cost of imported goods. Reshoring, the process of moving manufacturing and critical supply chains back to the United States from overseas, raises costs again because domestic production is often more expensive than production in lower-wage countries. In many cases, that is precisely why subsidies, tax incentives, and other government support are needed to make such investments economically viable. Domestic-content requirements, procurement preferences, and other policies designed to favor American production raise costs a third time, intentionally. The goal is not to maximize efficiency or minimize prices. The goal is to build a more secure and resilient industrial base.Analysts have taken to calling the result "stagflation light," a combination of slower growth and persistently higher prices, and the International Monetary Fund has trimmed its global growth forecasts accordingly. Central banks that once benefited from globalization's downward pressure on prices may now find themselves keeping monetary policy tighter than they otherwise would.The public deserves to be told plainly why costs have been increasing and why policymakers believe those costs are necessary for the nation's long-term economic health. A government that won partly on the cost-of-living issue is pursuing a course whose near-term effect is to raise the cost of living in exchange for greater industrial capacity, economic independence, and national security. That can be a defensible trade. But Americans should not be told that prosperity can be built on dependence. For decades, the United States accepted lower prices in exchange for outsourcing production, surrendering industrial capacity, and becoming reliant on strategic competitors. The bill for that decision has now come due. The policies of Great Powers 2.0 are a strategy to pay for it.The Great Divide on the RightThe most consequential debate over Great Powers 2.0 is not occurring between Democrats and Republicans. It is occurring within the American right. Both America First conservatives and traditional free-market Republicans recognize that dependence on China for critical goods, minerals, and manufacturing poses a serious strategic risk. The divide concerns what should be done about it. America First conservatives view tariffs, industrial policy, and strategic government intervention as necessary tools to restore American industrial strength. Traditional Republicans see many of those same tools as threats to economic freedom and limited government. In short, both camps agree on the vulnerability. They disagree on whether dependence on China or expansion of state power poses the greater long-term danger.The populist-nationalist caseFor America First, the stockpile is the whole point, and it is not really about money. A country that cannot forge its own magnets, fill its own prescriptions, or arm its own soldiers without a rival’s permission is not sovereign. It is a client. Cheap televisions are poor compensation for that kind of dependence, and the bill for those cheap televisions was never as low as the price tag suggested. The disinflation of the globalized decades was real, but so were the shuttered plants, the gutted towns, and the communities informed that their way of life was a rounding error in someone else’s efficiency calculation. The gains flowed to capital and to Beijing. Many of the losses landed on working Americans who were told to learn to code and get over it.From this perspective, tariffs and reshoring are not simply taxes on consumers. They are an attempt to reverse decades of industrial decline and rebuild the productive capacity that once underpinned American prosperity, national security, and a strong middle class. Paying somewhat more for goods made by fellow Americans, in factories that cannot be shut down by a hostile government or disrupted by a foreign crisis, is viewed not as an unnecessary expense but as an investment in national resilience. The objective is not merely economic growth. It is economic independence.Nor is the state’s role in this viewed as something to apologize for. Every major power uses policy to protect and develop industries it considers strategically important. China does it. Japan does it. South Korea does it. Even many European nations do it. The United States is unusual in having spent decades assuming that market forces alone would preserve its industrial strength, even as competitors used state-directed policies to build their own.The Trump administration has fallen short in explaining this argument to the American people, including many of its own supporters. The public has been told that tariffs will strengthen America, but it has not been clearly told why prices may rise in the process. Rebuilding domestic manufacturing, restoring critical supply chains, and reducing dependence on China all carry costs. If the administration believes those costs are necessary to restore American industrial power, it should say so directly. Americans are more likely to accept a temporary sacrifice when they understand its purpose and can see the long-term national interest being served.The libertarian caseThe libertarian shares the worry about China but distrusts the cure more than the disease; that worry deserves a fair hearing, even from readers inclined to wave it off.Tariffs and price floors are taxes that fall hardest on the very working families the Trump administration wants to lift, because lower-income households spend the largest share of their budgets on exactly the tradable goods that become more expensive.Then look at who collects. Subsidies and protected markets do not reliably build national strength. They reliably build lobbies. The firms that win tend to be the ones with the best lobbyists rather than the best mines, and “national security” is the most elastic phrase in Washington, expanding over the years from missiles to steel to sugar to whatever industry can afford the right consultant and lobbyist. History is unkind here: protection meant to be temporary and strategic has a habit of becoming permanent and political.The deepest libertarian point is one that an America First advocate should not dismiss too quickly. Monopolies built on artificially low prices are fragile. The moment Beijing flexed its leverage, it summoned competitors, substitutes, and private capital that would, over time, erode its influence. The market is already moving. The real risk, on this view, is that a permanent industrial-policy apparatus, set up to meet an emergency, outlasts the emergency and quietly curdles into a racket that serves the connected rather than the country.Where the two can meetNotice that the camps are not actually arguing about the goal. Both want an America that cannot be strategically blackmailed. They are arguing about the means, and that argument has a workable middle.Target the genuinely strategic and leave the rest alone. The case for guaranteeing a domestic supply of defense-grade magnets is strong. The case for protecting the national toaster industry behind a flag is not. Prefer the tools that grow capacity without permanently increasing the state.Those tools would include faster permitting, an end to the regulatory paralysis that makes it take a decade to open a mine, sound money, and an open door to allied and private capital. And put a clock on the interventions that cannot be avoided, so that subsidies and floors are emergency measures with sunset dates rather than entitlements with constituencies.America First can champion strategic independence and still insist that the rebuilding be honest, time-limited, and aimed at the nation rather than at the well-connected. That is not a betrayal of the project. It is what keeps the project from being captured by the very interests it was meant to discipline.What the timeline actually looks likeStrip away the urgency, and the realistic timeline is sobering for anyone hoping America “wins” the minerals race quickly.By around 2028, expect very little to change at the structural level. Mines can be opened in a few years, but the hard part, refining rare earths and turning them into the magnets used in everything from fighter jets to electric motors, takes much longer to build. China also controls most of the technology and expertise needed for those processes.The one significant near-term change is a Pentagon rule that, beginning in 2027, prohibits the use of Chinese rare earths in many defense systems. That creates a guaranteed market for American producers, even if their products cost more. As a result, by 2028, the United States may have a small but secure domestic supply chain for military needs and a growing strategic stockpile. For most civilian industries, however, dependence on China is likely to remain largely unchanged.By around 2032, if the subsidies and guaranteed demand hold for six straight years, a real parallel supply chain could mature for defense and some commercial uses. China’s pricing power would weaken at the margins. But Beijing would almost certainly still dominate refining and magnets, and it has a proven weapon: flood the market, crash prices, and bankrupt Western competitors before they reach scale. It did exactly that to lithium. Sustained American success, therefore, depends on sustained American resolve across multiple election cycles, which is a real question and not a rhetorical one. Hence, the 2028 election results are critical to this effort.The encouraging counterpoint is the libertarian’s, and it is worth holding alongside the rest. The very leverage Beijing flexed in 2025 is what woke the rest of the world up and set capital in motion. Private ventures, including mining startups backed by names like Bezos and Gates, are moving into the space because the prices now justify the risk. Some of the work of breaking the chokehold will be done by markets responding to those prices, not by Washington alone, and the cheapest thing the government can do is clear the permitting and regulatory underbrush so that capital can move faster than Beijing can retaliate.Congo: where the story meets the worldIf you want to see the limits of a worldview that treats resources as the master key to everything, look to the Democratic Republic of the Congo.The DRC is the indispensable source of cobalt and a major supplier of copper, both essential to batteries and electronics. Washington, fully in Great Powers 2.0 mode, treated this as a geopolitical prize. It brokered a 2025 peace deal between the DRC and Rwanda explicitly tied to mineral access, signed a strategic partnership giving American firms preferential entry, and watched a billion-dollar private exploration deal follow.The trouble is that the peace has not held. Rwandan-backed M23 fighters kept advancing and seized the eastern cities of Goma and Bukavu. American sanctions on the Rwandan military were widely judged symbolic. Congolese citizens and lawyers, far from grateful, filed a constitutional challenge and voiced a familiar complaint about outsiders arriving to extract their wealth. A foreign policy built on transactional resource grabs tends to generate exactly this kind of resentment, and resentment is not a stable foundation for supply security.Then geography complicates the story further, in a way the headlines blur. The strategic cobalt and copper sit in the relatively stable south, in the old Copperbelt, where Chinese firms are deeply and quietly entrenched. The war is in the east, where artisanal mining of tin, tantalum, tungsten, and gold finances armed groups. And as of May 2026, the east is also where a fresh Ebola outbreak erupted. The World Health Organization declared it a public health emergency of international concern, and it has been especially dangerous because it is caused by a strain for which no approved vaccine or treatment exists. The disease tore through the very provinces, Ituri and the two Kivus, where the fighting has left clinics non-functional and millions hungry. A grim summary of the situation is that hunger and disease are old companions.The lesson is straightforward. You cannot build a supply chain on a battlefield. You cannot secure strategic minerals in a region controlled by armed groups. And you cannot turn resource wealth into economic strength when disease, hunger, and political instability are overwhelming basic civil society.Washington can negotiate agreements, sign memoranda, and announce strategic partnerships, but none of those documents can make a failed province function. The assumption behind Great Powers 2.0 is that access to resources determines power. The Congo reminds us that security, governance, and public health come first. Without them, the minerals stay in the ground.Where This Leaves the CitizenSo where does this leave those of us who want a strong America, but who are also wary of the endless spending, bureaucracy, and foreign entanglements that Washington so often wraps in the language of national security?First, recognize that the core America First argument is correct.A nation that cannot manufacture critical goods, produce essential medicines, refine strategic minerals, or build the components needed for its own defense is not truly independent or sovereign. For decades, America’s political and corporate elites shipped factories overseas, hollowed out industrial towns, and became dependent on foreign supply chains in pursuit of lower costs and higher profits. The result was predictable: greater dependence on China, a weakened industrial base, and growing vulnerability in areas vital to national security. The problem is real. Ignoring it is not a serious option.But neither is giving Washington a blank check.The challenge is to rebuild American strength without recreating the very system of government dependence, cronyism, and corporate favoritism that helped create the problem in the first place. Every dollar spent, every subsidy granted, every regulation written, and every emergency power claimed should be judged by a simple standard: Does it make America stronger, or does it merely make a politically connected interest group richer?Where possible, the answer should be to remove obstacles rather than create new programs. Reform permitting. Cut unnecessary regulations. Open access to domestic resources. Encourage investment. Build things again. A nation becomes stronger when its citizens and businesses are free to create wealth and produce what the country needs, not when they become dependent on government support.Most importantly, Americans deserve honesty. Rebuilding an industrial base after decades of neglect will not be free. Some prices will rise. Some adjustments will be painful. If policymakers believe those sacrifices are necessary, they should explain why and make the case directly to the public rather than pretending there are no tradeoffs.The question facing America is not whether we should become stronger. We should. The question is whether we can rebuild our industrial strength, secure our supply chains, and restore economic independence without creating a permanent system of subsidies, bureaucracy, and special interests along the way.That is the test.America First should mean making America stronger, more productive, more self-reliant, and more prosperous. It should not become another excuse for Washington to grow larger, spend more money, and reward its friends. The difference between those two paths may determine whether Great Powers 2.0 becomes a national renewal or just another chapter in the long history of government promises that enriched the insiders while leaving ordinary Americans to pay the bill.Thanks for reading Malone News! This post is public so feel free to share it.ShareBibliography and key referencesThe narrative itself• Rare Earth Exchanges, “Entering the Great Powers Era 2.0?” (January 2026).https://rareearthexchanges.com/news/entering-the-great-powers-era-2-0/• Rare Earth Exchanges, “The Brilliance of Trump: The Man Who Forced the Great Powers Era 2.0” (the coinage claim).https://rareearthexchanges.com/news/the-brilliance-of-trump-the-man-who-forced-the-great-powers-era-2-0/• The Diplomat, “Trump 2.0: Great Power Politics and the New World Order” (February 2025).https://thediplomat.com/2025/02/trump-2-0-great-power-politics-and-the-new-world-order/The skeptics on polarity and the return of great power competition• Munich Security Conference, Munich Security Report 2025, “Introduction: Multipolarization.”https://securityconference.org/en/publications/munich-security-report-2025/introduction/• Second Line of Defense, “Beyond Great Power Competition: The Rise of Middle Powers in a Globalized World” (July 2025).https://sldinfo.com/2025/07/beyond-great-power-competition-the-rise-of-middle-powers-in-a-globalized-world/Inflation and the cost of deglobalization• The Asset, “Deglobalization, reshoring fuel inflation.”https://www.theasset.com/article/47205/deglobalization-reshoring-fuel-inflation• Fiduciary Trust, “The World is Deglobalizing: Do Investors Need to Care?”https://www.fiduciary-trust.com/insights/the-world-is-deglobalizing-do-investors-need-to-care/• BOK Financial, “Tariffs, trade realignments accelerating deglobalization” (the efficiency-to-security shift).https://thestatement.bokf.com/articles/2026/01/is-the-us-leading-the-dance-of-deglobalization• AOL / BBC, “How tariff disruption will continue reshaping the global economy in 2026” (IMF growth revisions).https://www.aol.com/articles/tariff-disruption-continue-reshaping-global-000044040.htmlThe US critical-minerals policy machine• CSIS, “New Executive Order Ties U.S. Critical Minerals Security to Global Partnerships” (the January 2026 Section 232 order).https://www.csis.org/analysis/new-executive-order-ties-us-critical-minerals-security-global-partnerships• CSIS, “Critical Minerals Ministerial Introduces New International Cooperation Strategy” (FORGE and price floors).https://www.csis.org/analysis/critical-minerals-ministerial-introduces-new-international-cooperation-strategy• Chatham House, “America needs partners to challenge China’s critical mineral chokehold” (Project Vault, the scale of dependence).https://www.chathamhouse.org/publications/the-world-today/2026-03/america-needs-partners-challenge-chinas-critical-mineralChina’s dominance, the timeline, and the market case• NAI 500, “Can the U.S. Finally Break China’s Rare Earth Grip? Is Domestic Substitution a Solid Investment Bet?” (patents, cost gaps, capacity).https://nai500.com/blog/2026/05/can-the-u-s-finally-break-chinas-rare-earth-grip-is-domestic-substitution-a-solid-investment-bet/• Fortune (via AOL), “Beijing’s dominance in rare earth processing leaves others scrambling to close the gap.”https://www.aol.com/articles/beijing-dominance-rare-earth-processing-072921074.html• The Daily Economy, “China’s Rare Earth Monopoly and Why Markets Will Break It.”https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/chinas-rare-earth-monopoly-and-why-markets-will-break-it/Congo: the deal, the conflict, and the human cost• Human Rights Watch, “Minerals for peace? How to make the Rwanda-DRC deal stick.”https://www.hrw.org/news/2025/07/07/minerals-for-peace-how-to-make-the-rwanda-drc-deal-stick• CSIS, “Critical Minerals, Fragile Peace: The DRC-Rwanda Deal and the Cost of Ignoring Root Causes.”https://www.csis.org/analysis/critical-minerals-fragile-peace-drc-rwanda-deal-and-cost-ignoring-root-causes• Oakland Institute, “US-DRC Strategic Partnership Agreement Faces Constitutional Challenge in Court.”https://www.oaklandinstitute.org/press-release/us-drc-strategic-partnership-agreement-faces-constitutional-challenge-court• Al Jazeera, “We are exploited: Congolese fear losing out as US makes minerals deals.”https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2026/2/4/we-are-exploited-congolese-fear-losing-out-as-us-makes-minerals-deals• Yahoo / AFP, “DRC and M23 rebels sign US-brokered ceasefire” (the KoBold Metals private investment).https://www.yahoo.com/news/drc-m23-rebels-sign-us-103150243.htmlThe 2026 Ebola outbreak• World Health Organization, “Epidemic of Ebola Disease caused by Bundibugyo virus in the DRC and Uganda determined a public health emergency of international concern” (May 16, 2026).https://www.who.int/news/item/17-05-2026-epidemic-of-ebola-disease-in-the-democratic-republic-of-the-congo-and-uganda-determined-a-public-health-emergency-of-international-concern• UN News, “Ebola outbreak in DR Congo collides with conflict and hunger, WHO warns.”https://news.un.org/en/story/2026/05/1167592• Doctors Without Borders (MSF), “Ebola disease outbreak 2026: How MSF is responding.”https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/latest/ebola-disease-outbreak-2026-how-msf-respondingNote on sourcing: several of the sharpest claims that China’s grip will not break come from rare-earth industry outlets, which are reliable on technical detail but have a commercial interest in emphasizing both the threat and the investment opportunity. Weigh their facts more heavily than their framing.Malone News is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Summary: Breaking free will cost you.


A Birthday Worth Defending

Fora generation, Americans have been taught to approach their own country’s birthday as a dark day in history. The founding, we are told, was irredeemably compromised. The men who created the nation were hypocrites who spoke of liberty while tolerating slavery, and the proper response to 1776 is not gratitude or admiration, but discomfort.Eric Metaxas rejects that view, and thank God for that.Revolution: The Birth of the Greatest Nation in the History of the Worldarrives at exactly the right moment, as the nation approaches its 250th anniversary. It does something that much of our educational, cultural, and political establishment has spent decades discouraging. It celebrates the American founding.Metaxas argues that what emerged in 1776 was not merely a successful rebellion against British rule. It was a genuinely revolutionary event that changed the course of human history. Unlike the French, Russian, Chinese, and countless other revolutions that promised liberty and delivered tyranny, the American Revolution produced a constitutional republic built on individual rights, self-government, and the radical idea that legitimate power comes from the consent of the governed.Very little in our culture today encourages Americans to understand what was achieved in 1776, much less take pride in it. Metaxas reminds readers that the American story is not one of perfection. It is the story of an imperfect people who created something extraordinary. A nation that forgets how it was founded will eventually lose what made it worth preserving in the first place.At its heart, this book is a reminder that our inheritance is real, that it is worth defending, and that Americans should not be ashamed of it.Thanks for reading Malone News! This post is public so feel free to share it.ShareThe New York Times moved the date on purposeA few years ago, The New York Times advanced the argument that America’s true founding was not 1776, but 1619, the year the first enslaved Africans arrived in Virginia. This was not simply a dispute over dates. It was an attempt to redefine the nation’s origin story.If the country begins with slavery rather than liberty, then the Declaration, the Constitution, the Founders, and the principles of self-government become secondary at best and fraudulent at worst. The founding ideals are transformed from aspirations into excuses.The problem was that many of the project’s central historical claims did not withstand scrutiny. Criticism came not only from conservatives but from prominent historians on the political left, several of whom publicly challenged key assertions. In response, The New York Times quietly revised portions of its presentation. Yet by then, the objective had largely been achieved. The debate was no longer about whether the founding principles were true. It was about whether they deserved to remain at the center of America’s inception. They put the idea in the minds of everyday Americans that the founding was based on maintaining slavery and not on freedom, democracy, and a constitutional republic.That is the challenge Metaxas takes on directly.The title alone makes the case. Revolution requires no qualifier because, in Metaxas’s telling, the American Revolution stands apart from every other event that has claimed the name. The French Revolution descended into terror. The Russian Revolution produced totalitarianism. Again and again, revolutions have promised freedom and delivered concentrated power.The American Revolution was different because it began with a radically different premise: that rights do not originate with governments, kings, legislatures, or political movements. They are inherent to the individual, endowed by God, and therefore beyond the legitimate reach of any ruler to grant, redefine, or revoke. Everything else follows from that proposition. It is the foundation of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the American experiment itself.This is also why the debate over 1619 matters. At its core, the argument was never about chronology. It was about whether America’s defining principle should be liberty or oppression, whether the nation’s story should be understood through its highest ideals or its greatest failures.The two visions cannot occupy the same place in the national narrative.Metaxas unapologetically places the American founding and the principles that animated it back at the center of the story. More importantly, he spends more than six hundred fascinating pages demonstrating why they belong there.A storyteller, not a lecturerWhat saves this from being a sermon is that Metaxas can actually tell a story. The author understands something many historians do not. People learn through stories. Ideas matter, but ideas become real when they are attached to events and the men and women who lived them.Rather than treating the American Revolution as a collection of dates and documents, Metaxas tells it as a story.He begins before the shooting starts, with what John Adams called the “revolution before the Revolution.” The story unfolds through the legal and political battles that preceded open conflict: the challenge to British authority, the Stamp Act, the Townshend duties, the growing military presence in Boston, the Boston Massacre, and the Boston Tea Party. By the time Lexington and Concord arrive, the reader understands that war did not emerge from a single incident. It was the culmination of years of escalating conflict between a people who increasingly saw themselves as free and a government determined to treat them as subjects.From there come the moments every American recognizes, even if many no longer know them well. Henry Knox hauling artillery from Fort Ticonderoga through winter conditions that few thought navigable. Washington crossing the Delaware and launching the Trenton campaign when the cause appeared close to collapse. Saratoga. Valley Forge. Benedict Arnold’s betrayal. Yorktown.Metaxas tells these stories with energy and detail, but the storytelling serves a larger purpose. He is not asking the reader to admire a set of abstract principles. He is showing how those principles survived because ordinary and extraordinary individuals chose sacrifice, risk, and perseverance when failure would have been easier and surrender more comfortable.That is ultimately why the book works. The American founding emerges not as mythology, but as the product of real people making difficult choices under extraordinary circumstances. The ideas matter because the people who carried them forward were willing to pay the price required to make them real.The warning: A republic, if you can keep itThe most important part of the book may be the epilogue.There, Metaxas turns to a question that modern Americans often avoid: What made the American experiment possible in the first place? His answer, drawn from the words of the founders themselves, is that the Revolution and the republic it produced rested on a moral and religious foundation.He points to John Adams’s warning that the Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people and was wholly inadequate for any other. He recalls George Washington’s caution in his Farewell Address that religion and morality were indispensable supports of political prosperity and national character.This is not an argument for theocracy. It is an argument about the limits of government.Metaxas, drawing in part on the work of Os Guinness, argues that freedom requires virtue, virtue requires moral formation, and moral formation depends on institutions and beliefs that exist outside the state. A free society can sustain limited government only if enough citizens possess the character and self-restraint necessary to govern themselves. The government cannot create those qualities by decree.That insight lies at the heart of the American constitutional system. The founders did not believe that liberty would survive automatically. They understood that self-government ultimately depends on a culture capable of sustaining it.Which brings the reader back to Benjamin Franklin’s famous response after the Constitutional Convention. Asked what form of government had been created, he answered: “A republic, if you can keep it.”That is the question hanging over America’s 250th anniversary.The celebration of America's founding is deserved. The achievements are real. But anniversaries are not merely occasions for remembrance. They are opportunities for self-examination. The generation that inherited this republic is now responsible for preserving it."Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction."-Ronald ReaganMetaxas’s concern is that many Americans no longer understand the principles that created the country, the sacrifices that sustained it, or the civic character required to keep it free. Whether one agrees with that conclusion or not, it is the question that runs beneath the entire book, and it is the question the nation will carry into its third century.Be clear about what Metaxas has written.This is not a conventional academic history. It is not detached, ironic, or hesitant. It is written by an author who believes the American founding was one of the most consequential events in human history and who is willing to defend that proposition without apology.That alone will make many liberal readers uncomfortable.For decades, much of America’s historical and cultural establishment has approached the founding primarily through the lens of its failures and contradictions. Of course, the United States is not perfect, and the past deserves honest examination. But a nation cannot endure if it remembers only its sins and forgets its achievements. A people taught to be ashamed of their inheritance will not preserve it for long.Metaxas takes a different approach. He does not ask readers to ignore the imperfections of the founders. He asks them to understand what those founders accomplished, why it mattered, and why the principles they articulated changed the course of history.Whether one agrees with every argument in the book is almost beside the point. The larger contribution is that Metaxas is willing to state plainly what many modern writers seem reluctant to acknowledge: the American experiment was extraordinary, its success was far from inevitable, and its continuation is not guaranteed.That is why this book arrives at exactly the right moment.As the United States approaches its 250th anniversary, Americans face a choice. We can teach the next generation that our history is little more than a catalog of grievances, or we can teach them that free people built something remarkable, flawed but worthy, and that its preservation now rests in their hands.Read this book before Independence Day.Then give it to your children, your grandchildren, or someone young enough to inherit the country we leave behind. The American Revolution created a republic. Every generation since has been responsible for keeping it.Revolution: The Birth of the Greatest Nation in the History of the Worldis published by Odysseus Books.Availablefrom Amazon at this link, and from all good booksellers.Malone News is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.TURN: Washington’s Spies and the America We Have ForgottenIf you have not watchedTURN: Washington’s Spies, you should.Based on the story of the Culper Ring, George Washington’s intelligence network during the Revolutionary War,TURNfollows farmers, merchants, sailors, and families caught between loyalty to the Crown and loyalty to a revolutionary cause. It portrays the American founding not as an inevitable march of progress, but as a dangerous gamble undertaken by imperfect people who believed liberty was worth fighting for.That alone makes it unusual television. The show is also edge of the seat suspenseful and it is hard not to binge watch all the the way through. It is that good.Much of today’s historical programming approaches America through a different lens. The dominant theme is failure. Every story becomes an indictment. Slavery. Racism. Imperialism. Economic inequality. The nation is presented less as an extraordinary political experiment and more as a catalog of its sins. The audience is taught to view American history primarily through oppression rather than aspiration. The message is familiar to anyone who followed the debates surrounding the 1619 Project: America is not a remarkable achievement with flaws, but a flawed enterprise whose achievements are largely incidental.TURNoffers a needed corrective.The series treats the struggle for independence as something noble. It assumes that creating a constitutional republic was a remarkable achievement rather than an embarrassment to be explained away. The men and women in the story are flawed, frightened, and often conflicted, but they are also brave. They risk their lives, their families, and their livelihoods for an idea. That perspective has become surprisingly rare.Now, historians will undoubtedly object. They will point out that the series compresses timelines, combines characters, invents conversations, and occasionally takes liberties with the historical record. Fair enough. But those criticisms miss the larger point.TURNsucceeds where most modern historical programming fails. It captures the spirit of the Revolution. It helps viewers understand why ordinary people would risk everything to create a new nation.That said,TURNcontains a great deal of violence. It does not shy away from battle scenes, executions, injury, torture, or the brutal realities of eighteenth-century warfare. This is most definitely not a show for children.A healthy nation should be capable of acknowledging its failures without becoming obsessed with them. History should tell us what was wrong, but it should also remind us what was right. Americans do not need more documentaries explaining why they should be ashamed of their inheritance. Americans need stories that help them understand why previous generations believed the country was worth building in the first place and why they should to.For that reason alone,TURNis worth your time. It reminds viewers that the American Revolution was not merely a collection of grievances and contradictions. It was also an act of courage, sacrifice, and conviction. A country that forgets that part of its story risks forgetting why it exists at all.

Summary: Eric Metaxas has written the book Americans should read before the nation's 250th birthday. The reaction from its critics explains why.


Raw Milk: The Wrong Lesson

Raw Milk: The Wrong LessonA scandal of corruption and filth became a permanent case against fresh milk. It was the wrong lesson.New York distillers poisoned thousands of infants with filthy milk, and the politicians paid to stop them took bribes instead. Then the government drew exactly the wrong lesson. Rather than remove the conditions that caused the disaster, it treated the symptom, protected the system, and taught generations of Americans that the cow was the problem.Malone News is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.She was not.In the spring of 1858, a New York publisher named Frank Leslie received milk at his door that was blue, watery, and contaminated with pus. He ordered an analysis, disliked what he found, and sent reporters and illustrators to trace the milk to its source. What they uncovered was not a quality control failure. It was an industrial scandal that had become a business model.The distilleries of Manhattan and Brooklyn produced enormous quantities of spent grain mash. Disposing of it cost money. Feeding it to cattle produced profit. Distillers built cow sheds against their whiskey operations and packed them with animals standing in filth, tethered over troughs and fed steaming waste from the stills. The diet destroyed the animals. Teeth loosened. Sores opened. Udders became diseased. Cows too weak to stand were suspended in slings and milked until they died.That milk was sold to the public.Because it was thin and blue, it was adulterated first. Chalk and plaster for color. Flour and starch for body. Molasses for appearance. Water for volume. Wagons labeled “Pure Country Milk” carried it through the city while families believed they were buying fresh milk from the country. Contemporary estimates attributed thousands of infant deaths a year to it.The corruption that protected the trade should sound familiar.When public outrage forced an investigation, inspectors warned the operators before arriving. The barns were cleaned. The conditions were staged. The committee toured the sanitized sheds, declared the danger exaggerated, and recommended better ventilation. One member, Charles Haswell, filed a dissent describing the fraud and warning that children were dying. He was ignored. Years of pressure passed before the state acted.The story is usually told backward.Nothing about the swill milk scandal shows that milk was inherently dangerous. The deaths came from confinement, diseased animals, contaminated feed, adulteration, and political corruption. The milk was dangerous because the system producing it was dangerous.There were two ways to respond.One was to fix the source. Take the cattle out of the distillery sheds. Clean up the conditions. Test the animals. Keep the herds healthy. Produce milk under conditions that do not cause disease.The other was to leave the industrial system in place and try to neutralize the result after the fact.The second path won.Pasteurization was not the choice made in 1858. It did not yet exist as a practical milk intervention. Pasteur’s early work was on wine; milk pasteurization did not take hold in the United States until decades later. The officials who inspected the swill dairies were not choosing heat over reform. They were choosing corruption over reform.That distinction matters.Decades later, when the federal government did push pasteurization, it conceded that the method was not ideal, only practical under existing conditions. In plain terms, restructuring the production system was harder than heating the final product. The industry was already large, centralized, and politically connected. Heating the milk was easier than fixing the barn.There is another part of this history that deserves the same scrutiny, and it cuts against the regulators as much as against anyone else.There was a genuine disease that traveled in milk. It was tuberculosis. But the historical record blurred two organisms. Mycobacterium tuberculosis is primarily a human pathogen, spread person-to-person. Mycobacterium bovis is primarily a cattle pathogen that can infect people, most often through raw milk.The two diseases can look identical, and for most of this history, physicians could not tell them apart. Species-level identification was usually impossible. Cases were classified by symptoms, by age, and by the site of disease rather than by direct proof. Extrapulmonary tuberculosis in a child was often assumed to be milk-borne and therefore bovine. That assumption is not the same as demonstrating M. bovis, and the reasoning frequently ran in a circle.This is why the old body counts should be read with caution. The round figures still quoted today, such as fifteen thousand American deaths in 1917, are contemporaneous official estimates, copied forward for a century with little hard counting beneath them. The confidence with which they are repeated now exceeds the evidence that produced them.None of that makes bovine tuberculosis imaginary. Where investigators actually typed the organism, by culture and animal inoculation, they found it. Park and Krumwiede did this work in New York in 1910. Fraser showed in 1912 that much of the bone and joint tuberculosis in Edinburgh children was bovine. Three British Royal Commissions, working between 1890 and 1911, settled that the cattle organism does infect people. In those studies, the bovine type accounted for roughly a quarter of childhood tuberculosis cases and about half of tuberculous neck gland cases before milk was made safe. The honest reading is that the disease was real and laboratory confirmed in children and in the non-pulmonary forms, while the sweeping national totals were not.Modern data argues for the same restraint. Across much of the world, raw milk and informal dairy remain common, yet zoonotic tuberculosis is generally estimated to be a small share of human tuberculosis, often one to two percent, and likely undercounted in some regions. WHO-linked figures put it at near 140,000 human cases per year, out of millions of total cases. That is real. It is not nothing. It is also not the blanket case against fresh milk that regulators imply.So the honest statement is narrow. M. bovis was a real risk where infected cattle were present, and milk was drunk untreated, and it was most dangerous to children. The remedy was not to heat all milk and restrict the alternative. The remedy was to clean up the herds, and where that was done thoroughly, the disease collapsed. The United States tested and removed infected cattle and largely eliminated it. Countries that relied on pasteurization alone and left their herds infected kept the problem for decades.The lesson is not that raw milk causes tuberculosis. The lesson is that diseased herds are dangerous.Test the animals. Remove infected cattle. Document herd health. Maintain clean production.Raw milk from a tested, healthy herd is a different product from milk drawn from animals of unknown disease status. The deciding factor is not temperature. It is the health of the animal. Tuberculosis testing. Brucellosis testing. Clean conditions. Real surveillance, proven rather than assumed.The real lesson of the swill milk scandal is not that milk is dangerous. It is that any system, industrial or otherwise, becomes dangerous when corruption, convenience, and profit replace accountability.The cow was never the central problem.The conditions were.The fraud was.The corruption was.Citations1. “Exposure of the Milk Trade,” Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, May 8 and May 15, 1858. The Henry Ford Digital Collections.https://www.thehenryford.org/collections-and-research/digital-collections/artifact/871412. “The 19th-century milk scandal that killed thousands of babies.” Big Think, 2023. Source for the contemporary New York Times estimate of thousands of infant deaths a year and historian Catherine McNeur on the committee’s better-ventilation recommendation.https://bigthink.com/the-past/swill-milk-scandal/3. “The Swill Milk Scandal That Poisoned Thousands of Babies in 19th-Century New York City.” Atlas Obscura, 2025. Source for the milk-and-pus origin, the tipped-off inspectors, and the staged inspection.https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/swill-milk-scandal-new-york-city4. “Swill Milk: When Distilleries Defiled Dairy.” The Saturday Evening Post, 2025. Source for the cow suspended in a sling and milked until death and the shed conditions.https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2025/07/swill-milk-when-distilleries-defiled-dairy/5. “The Surprisingly Intolerant History of Milk.” Smithsonian Magazine, 2018. Source for the 1908 federal report stating pasteurization was “forced upon us by present conditions.”https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/surprisingly-intolerant-history-milk-180969056/6. Bradish Johnson, Wikipedia. Corroborating source for the chalk and flour adulteration, the slings, and the “Orange County” pushcart branding, citing contemporary New York Times reporting.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradish_Johnson7. “The Swill Milk Scandal of 1858.” Stuff You Missed in History Class (transcript). Source for Councilman Charles Haswell’s dissenting minority report and the staged inspection.https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-stuff-you-missed-in-histor-21124503/episode/the-swill-milk-scandal-of-1858-85039095/8. “The Fight for Safe Milk: Pasteurization.” Neatorama, 2011. Source for Pasteur’s early work on wine and the late arrival of milk pasteurization in the United States.https://www.neatorama.com/2011/01/24/the-fight-for-safe-milk-pasteurization/9. “The Crusade for ’Pure’ Milk.” Postcard History, 2021. Source for the slow adoption of pasteurization in New York.https://postcardhistory.net/2021/12/the-crusade-for-pure-milk/10. “A 100-Year Review: A century of dairy processing advancements.” Journal of Dairy Science, 2017. Source for the timeline of US compulsory pasteurization laws and Koch’s linkage of cow health to milk-borne disease.https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002203021731057311. “Pasteurize or Certify: Two Solutions to ’The Milk Problem.’” A Campaign for Real Milk. Source for the period debate over pasteurization versus certified clean milk.https://www.realmilk.com/pasteurize-or-certify/12. Park, W. H. and Krumwiede, C. (1910). “The Relative Importance of the Bovine and Human Types of Tubercle Bacilli in Different Forms of Human Tuberculosis.” Journal of Medical Research 23: 205-268. The foundational US study typing the organism in human cases by culture and animal inoculation; indexed in PubMed.13. Fraser, J. (1912). “The Relative Prevalence of Human and Bovine Types of Tubercle Bacilli in Bone and Joint Tuberculosis Occurring in Children.” Journal of Experimental Medicine 16(4): 432-442. Found a large proportion of childhood bone and joint TB in Edinburgh to be bovine in origin, introduced through cow’s milk.https://rupress.org/jem/article/16/4/432/6823/14. Royal Commission on Tuberculosis, Final Report (Griffith, A. S., 1911), with contemporaneous coverage of the Commission’s experimental program of 1890 to 1911. The Commission’s own animal experiments established that the bovine bacillus infects humans, overturning Koch’s 1901 claim that it did not.https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5205861/15. “The History of In Vivo Tuberculin Testing in Bovines: Tuberculosis, a One Health Issue.” Frontiers in Veterinary Science, 2018 (via PMC). Source for the New York neck-gland data, about half bovine before pasteurization and only a handful after, nearly all in raw-milk drinkers, and for the observation that cattle economics rather than the human toll primarily drove British eradication.https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5900347/16. “Milk and Tuberculosis.” PMC. Source for the high tuberculous-lesion rates among cows slaughtered in London in 1901 and continued high cattle infection into the 1940s.https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5068040/17. Olmstead, A. L. and Rhode, P. W. “An Impossible Undertaking: The Eradication of Bovine Tuberculosis in the United States.” Journal of Economic History, 2004; and the 2012 comparative chapter. Source for the estimate that probably 10 percent or more of US TB sufferers had the bovine form, concentrated in non-pulmonary cases and in children, and for the United States leading Europe in controlling the disease through test and slaughter.https://faculty.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/alolmstead/Recent_Publications/Impossible_Undertaking.pdf18. “Bovine tuberculosis in India: The need for One Health approach.” PMC. Corroborating source for the 1917 US test-and-slaughter policy and the scale of cattle testing and culling.https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9932178/19. de la Rua-Domenech, R. “Human Mycobacterium bovis infection in the United Kingdom.” Tuberculosis, 2006. Source for M. bovis as a distinct organism transmitted chiefly through raw milk and for its small share of modern TB cases in industrialized countries.https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S147297920500047820. The older aggregate death tolls. The estimate of roughly 15,000 US bovine TB deaths in 1917 is an official estimate of the era, repeated in later reviews such as Waters et al., “Bovine tuberculosis vaccine research,” Vaccine, 2012, and is best read as a contemporaneous estimate rather than a measured count.https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0264410X1200183121. “About Bovine Tuberculosis in Humans.” US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2025. Source for pasteurization eliminating M. bovis from milk and for the national eradication program.https://www.cdc.gov/tb/about/m-bovis.html22. “Bovine Tuberculosis in Cattle.” US Department of Agriculture, APHIS. Source for the National Tuberculosis Eradication Program (begun 1917) and the fact that infected cattle are typically asymptomatic.https://www.aphis.usda.gov/livestock-poultry-disease/cattle/bovine-tuberculosis-cattle23. “Zoonotic tuberculosis in human beings caused by Mycobacterium bovis: a call for action.” Lancet Infectious Diseases, 2017. Source for the modern position that the human burden of M. bovis is uncertain and likely underestimated, because routine laboratories cannot distinguish it from M. tuberculosis and surveillance is largely absent in endemic regions.https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S147330991630139624. “Mycobacterium bovis and its impact on human and animal tuberculosis.” Journal of Medical Microbiology. Source for the modern estimate of roughly 140,000 human zoonotic TB cases a year, about 1 to 2 percent of human TB, with a reported range across studies of 1 to 28 percent.https://www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/journal/jmm/10.1099/jmm.0.001769Note on the evidence. Before the 1930s, clinical diagnosis could not distinguish M. bovis from M. tuberculosis, so the pre-typing death tolls are contemporaneous estimates rather than measured counts, and the swill-era infant deaths of the 1850s were generally acute deaths from contaminated milk, not tuberculosis. The firm historical evidence comes from the laboratory-typing studies, Park and Krumwiede in 1910, Fraser in 1912, and the Royal Commissions of 1890 to 1911, and it is specific to childhood and non-pulmonary disease rather than to total tuberculosis.Thanks for reading Malone News! This post is public so feel free to share it.ShareMalone News is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.


Sunday Strip: Funny How That Works...

Thanks for reading Malone News! This post is public so feel free to share it.ShareMalone News is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.JGM

Summary: California, where voting reality goes to die.


Are We Measuring Ticks or Measuring Fear?

Every season brings a new health scare, a new public health grift. This spring it is ticks.Open a newspaper, turn on the television, or scroll through social media, and you will be told that America is facing a terrible tick season. Lyme disease is spreading. Alpha-gal syndrome is lurking in the woods. Emergency rooms are seeing record numbers of tick bite patients. Public health officials are warning the public to take precautions.The evidence most often cited comes from the CDC’s Tick Bite Tracker. Earlier this year, the agency announced that emergency department visits related to tick bites were running at the highest level for this point in the season since 2017, when the program began.That sounds alarming until you look at what is actually being measured.The CDC is not measuring ticks. The CDC is tracking people who seek medical care in emergency rooms after a tick bite.Furthermore, the CDC database lists only three years in total, as shown below.  The data for 2018-2024 are unavailable.  Three data points, that’s all we have:Also note that this is an expression of tick-bite chief complaints per emergency department visit, not all tick bites, or even tick bites at doctors’ offices.  Only people who were so scared of a tick bite that they went to the emergency room, as opposed to a doctor’s office.  That just reeks of fear porn driving this epidemic of tick bite-related ER visits.Those are not the same thing.A rise in emergency room visitscould, theoretically,reflect an increase in tick activity.It could also reflect increased media coverage, greater public awareness, more physician referrals, more urgent care advertising, more telemedicine consultations, and greater anxiety.The surveillance system does not distinguish between these possibilities. It simply counts visits. It could also reflect that during the COVID years - which for some, included 2025, many people stayed mostly indoors, particularly in the winter/spring - during “flu, RSV, and COVID season.”Yet the headlines routinely leap from “more people sought medical care” to “there are more ticks” and then from “there are more ticks” to “the danger is increasing.” And finally, to conclude that tick populations are increasing.  Without any evidence whatsoever. This is the usual corporate (pharma-sponsored) and social media (often also pharma-sponsored) fear porn marketing cycle.  In other words, the Grift of Fear.That is not what the data show.The distinction matters because the public conversation around tick bites has changed dramatically over the last decade.People who grew up farming, hunting, logging, surveying land, hiking, or working outdoors will remember a very different message. A tick bite was considered an exposure. You removed the tick. You monitored for symptoms. You paid attention to your health. Most people did not rush to an emergency room after finding a tick attached to their leg.  Real farmers and sportsmen recognize that this would be a waste of time and money.Today, the message is different. Tick bites themselves are increasingly treated as medical events. Public health agencies, healthcare systems, media outlets, and advocacy organizations routinely encourage people to seek professional evaluation following tick exposure. The bite is no longer merely an exposure requiring observation. It is increasingly presented as a reason to enter the healthcare system.That shift alone has the potential to change surveillance numbers.The CDC can tell us that more people are showing up at emergency departments because of tick bites. What it cannot tell us is why.How much of the increase reflects more ticks?How much reflects more disease?How much reflects heightened awareness?How much reflects changes in medical guidance?How much reflects media coverage?How much reflects public anxiety?The current crude surveillance system cannot answer those questions.  But it can be weaponized very nicely to promote fear.  A self-licking ice cream cone.From the perspective of agnotology, the study of how ignorance and misunderstanding are created, maintained, and then utilized for ulterior purposes (propaganda) in science, this is an important distinction. An increase in medical encounters can be presented as evidence of a worsening threat even when part of that increase is driven by awareness campaigns, media attention, advocacy efforts, or changes in public guidance rather than a proportional increase in actual disease.The data alone cannot disentangle those factors.That does not mean Lyme disease is not real. It is.That does not mean alpha-gal syndrome is not real. It is.Nor does it mean that tick populations have not expanded in some regions.What it means is that healthcare utilization is not the same thing as biological risk. Yet much of the reporting (and social media “outrage farming” hype) treats the two as interchangeable.The timing of this year’s coverage makes the problem even more obvious.Over the past year, Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has elevated Lyme disease and related tick-borne illnesses to a national priority. Federal initiatives have been announced. Roundtables have been convened. Diagnostic programs have received attention. HHS communications have repeatedly highlighted Lyme disease and alpha-gal syndrome.Malone News is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Awareness campaigns work.When government officials spend months drawing attention to a condition, more people think about it. More people look for it. More people seek care. More people report exposures that previously would have gone unreported.That is not a criticism of Kennedy. It is simply a fact of public health surveillance.The same thing happens with influenza awareness campaigns. It happened during COVID. It happens with skin cancer screening campaigns. Public attention campaigns change public behavior, and often in unintended ways.What is remarkable is that almost no one discussing the CDC’s numbers seems interested in acknowledging this possibility.Instead, every increase in healthcare encounters is quietly interpreted as evidence that the underlying threat must be worsening.Perhaps it is.But that conclusion has not been demonstrated.If public health officials want to prove that 2026 is an unusually dangerous tick year, there are far better ways to do it.Show us field surveys demonstrating higher tick densities.Show us standardized tick-drag studies.Show us infection rates in collected ticks.Show us evidence that Lyme disease, ehrlichiosis, babesiosis, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, or alpha-gal syndrome are actually increasing beyond historical trends.Show us measures that are independent of media coverage and healthcare-seeking behavior.Instead, the public is being asked to infer a biological conclusion from a behavioral metric.That is a surprisingly weak foundation for such confident headlines.Even worse, alternative media is chock full of wild stories of swarms of ticks being dropped from helicopters, Bill Gates having millions of GMO ticks being released in the USA,  boxes of GMO ticks being found on farms and forests, and humans being enslaved by GMO ticks that cause alpha gal. An X search on ticks pulled up absolutely crazy stuff. Don’t fall for the hype - this is about clicks, likes, follows, and X monetization.  Once again, for emphasis and comprehension, outrage farming.  Fear porn.Perhaps this really is an unusually active tick season. Time may prove that to be true. But the evidence most commonly cited today does not establish that conclusion. It establishes something much narrower. It tells us that more people are showing up to emergency departments after tick bites than were showing up a few years ago. All the while, the fear porn over tick bites grows larger and larger.The question that matters is the one nobody seems interested in asking.Are we measuring ticks or tickbite frequency/risk?Or are we merely measuring fear of ticks?Until public health officials can answer that question, a great many of the headlines should be read with considerably more skepticism than they currently receive.Thanks for reading Malone News! This post is public so feel free to share it.Share