Authored by J.B. Shurk via American Thinker,

All human societies have informal social classes or formal social castes that separate groups of people within the same community.  Generally speaking, notions of aristocracy and hereditary nobility started on the battlefield.  Warrior chiefs of clans became minor kings after killing more rivals without dying themselves.  Rather than remaining in a constant state of tribal conflict, the chiefs of other clans bent the knee and became lesser lords.  Because kings and lords prefer their heirs to be kings and lords, too, bloodlines afforded children the social status that their ancestors had earned on the battlefield.

A ruling king who provided security and stability earned deference from those under his protection.  Over time, tribes combined to become nations.  Chieftains cooperated to form royal courts.  And the heirs of warrior chiefs adopted customs and traditions that symbolically separated those who rule from those who are ruled.

During social upheavals, the ruling aristocracy is often overthrown.  This provides hereditary nobles an incentive not only to quell rebellions quickly but also to find ways to keep the interests of non-nobles aligned with the aristocratic class.  Gifts of land, titles, and property buy a certain amount of loyalty.  The creation of minor offices apportions power to those deemed “worthy” of holding it.  The historic growth of administrative bureaucracies creates a path for non-nobles to exercise their talents in the service of those who rule.

To the consternation of Europe’s aristocratic class, the Great War ushered in a popular revolution against the hereditary order.  Several centuries of a growing middle class, increased literacy, industrial innovation, entrepreneurialism, and more widespread property ownership helped to create the social conditions for broad swaths of Europe’s populations to question why bloodlines should matter more than intelligence, talent, and hard work.  Many European families who lost fathers and sons during the First World War blamed European nobles for the calamity.

By the time the Second World War had provided an extra helping of self-destructive ruin, many of Europe’s noble houses were no more.  Those that had survived were acutely wary of suffering the fates of so many cousins who had been hanged, burned, or shot.  For the surviving members of Europe’s aristocracy to endure, they had no choice but to hand considerable political powers to the common people.  The twentieth century shepherded government reforms, suffrage for men and women without property, public welfare statutes, and expanded opportunities for common people to become part of the State’s governing bureaucracy.

While these reforms were celebrated as triumphs for “democracy,” it is important to understand that they did not completely supplant the vestiges of European aristocracy.  In the United Kingdom, the House of Lords still recognized the inherent right to rule of certain families.  Men with noble titles still ran central banks, trading houses, and clandestine agencies.  The attachés of those administrative lords still came from the “best families” and attended the “finest schools.”  Increasingly, however, the children of middle class families competed for and secured positions within the larger bureaucratic staff.

This twentieth century transition — in which citizens from low social classes were more broadly included in the functions of government — marked the social pivot to what Westerners call “meritocracy.”  

No longer would a person’s bloodline serve as the limits of what that person might achieve in this life.  Instead, natural intelligence, hard work, and determination could provide a person of any means the opportunity to rise as high as he might wish.

“Meritocracy” was an alluring idea to sell to the common people who had already destroyed so much of the aristocrats’ cherished social order in the first half of the twentieth century.  

Out with the nobles!  In with the people who deserve to have power!  From the point of view of someone in the lower or middle classes, a system that rewards skill, smarts, and determination sounds much fairer.

However, “meritocracy” provides an ancillary benefit to a ruling class seeking to maintain control: It keeps the most ambitious members of the non-noble classes competing against each other for a small number of powerful positions and reinforces the legitimacy of the governing system as a whole.  People who study, sacrifice, and struggle to obtain a little power within a governing bureaucracy are not inclined to question, criticize, or delegitimize that system once vested with a modicum of authority inside of it.

With the rise of the “meritocracy,” residual ruling class families found endless opportunities to keep unsuspecting commoners chasing their tails.  

A hundred years ago, “gentlemen” in positions of power had, at most, a college education.  The transition toward “meritocracy” convinced members of the lower classes that they needed all kinds of postgraduate degrees to prove their “expertise.”  

Just keep studying, kids, and you might finally have the right credentials to do the same job as a bunch of lords once did before they had reached the age of twenty-two! 

 In the meantime, stay poor, follow the rules, question nothing, and the ruling class might find a position for you once you’ve begged long enough.

In pursuit of “meritocracy,” commoners have been conditioned to believe that you cannot be successful without at least a college education.  In turn, the remnants of the noble ruling class have turned colleges into indoctrination laboratories that reinforce the ideologies of the ruling system.  Members of the Old Guard, in other words, have found the perfect mechanism through which to subordinate the very people otherwise inclined to overthrow them.  

Say ‘Hello’ to the new nobility; it looks just like the old one!

Unfortunately for the powers that be, there are widening cracks now in the “meritocracy” illusion.  Those cracks began with “affirmative action” programs in the United States that perpetuated racial discrimination, and they have continued to expand this century with the broad initiatives across the West in support of so-called “diversity, inclusion, and equity.”  Preferential admissions and hiring decisions in favor of special classes of people identified by their skin color, ethnicity, sexual disposition, disability, or perceived “victimhood” have blown up the perception that “meritocracy” exists at all.

Instead, what is increasingly obvious is that the same aristocrats who have always made the rules are once again decreeing which classes of commoners will be allowed to mingle among their ranks.  

Out with the meritocratic!  In with the multi-racial trans-furries who have trouble doing math!  As institutions in the West expose themselves as part of an unjust and prejudicial political system, the legitimacy of the ruling class is increasingly under attack.

For the first time in many decades, Westerners have begun to notice that much of the old aristocracy supposedly supplanted by the “meritocracy” remains nonetheless in charge.  Surprise!  A century after the supposed end of hereditary rule, men and women with feudal titles still control the European Council, transnational governing bodies, international treaty organizations, and all the central banks.  In other words, the illusion of “meritocracy” gave the ruling class just enough camouflage to survive several more generations.

What happens now?  

The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, says that artificial intelligence will soon replace most human jobs.  

He insists that there will be a universal high income that every common peasant receives.  He says people will want for nothing…except purpose.

Perhaps Musk is right.  

Perhaps the lower classes will consent to a small number of elites ruling over them in perpetuity.  

Perhaps they will consent to mass surveillance, censorship, and State-sponsored “truths.”  

Perhaps they will agree to let the families of billionaires behave as entourages within royal courts in support of a coterie of technocratic kings.

Or perhaps we are destined for social upheaval.  

Perhaps what started on the battlefield will return to it. 

 Perhaps the ruling aristocracy will finally be overthrown.  

Regardless, the future will be interesting.

With Zelensky having much-belatedly dropped aspirations for Ukraine’s NATO membership, European officials are now openly admitting what pretty much everyone knew but was afraid to say.

EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Kaja Kallas has newly acknowledged in fresh remarks that Ukraine’s membership in the military alliance is now obviously “out of the question” – but that the European Union now needs to provide concrete security guarantees.

“Now if this [Ukraine’s NATO membership] is not in question, or this is out of the question, then we need to see what are the security guarantees that are tangible. They can’t be papers, or promises, they have to be real troops, real capabilities,” she told reporters ahead of an EU Foreign Ministers meeting.

Kallas asserted that “in the last 100 years, Russia has attacked at least 19 countries,” and so this means “the security guarantees are needed for all other members” in the EU.

Image via European Union

Europe is likely still going to propose some scheme not acceptable to Moscow, such as “Article 5-style” security guarantees, falling just short of NATO membership. But Russian leaders are just going to see keep viewing this as but a recipe for future conflict. 

This is precisely what Zelensky is now demanding in place of dropping the NATO bid. “We are talking about bilateral security guarantees between Ukraine and the United States — namely, Article 5-like guarantees … as well as security guarantees for us from our European partners and from other countries such as Canada, Japan and others,” he recently told Financial Times.

While rejecting the US deal which hinges on significant territorial concessions, Zelensky is hailing his new stance as some kind of grand compromise.

“These security guarantees are an opportunity to prevent another wave of Russian aggression,” he had said over the weekend. “And this is already a compromise on our part.” But this should have been taken off the table all the way back in February of 2022, on the eve of the Russian invasion, or even well before. Of course, he’s much too late ‘offering’ this ‘concession’. 

As we pointed out earlier, the open secret has for years been that the Washington and EU establishments know full well that it was historic and recent constant NATO expansion which led to this horrific, grinding war. This reality is so well understood that in their private, non-official commentary even former top Biden officials fully admit the fact.

Yet these same Biden officials had while in government pursued policies fueling the Ukrainian proxy war as they wanted to ‘weaken’ Russia. They considered the issue of NATO expansion as a prime rationale of Russia’s invasion to be an off-limits talking point.

All of the above developments suggest that diplomacy is still going nowhere, also as Kiev has still not been induced to offer anything ‘real’ (from Moscow’s perspective) that would be enough to permanently end the war and achieve lasting peace.

According to a recent podcast appearance by geopolitical analyst and University of Chicago professor John Mearsheimer, “there is virtually no reason to think that a peace agreement can be struck to end the war, despite all the diplomatic maneuvering that has been taking place in recent months.”

He continued… “For sure, diplomacy is a good thing in principle, but in practice it is going nowhere in this case. Russian demands are completely at odds with Ukrainian and European demands. And neither side is willing to budge an inch. Moreover, many seem to think that the proposal the Trump administration is pushing is a joint US-Russian plan — one that both Moscow and Washington support — when in fact there is no evidence that the Russians have accepted Trump’s 27-point plan.”

“Indeed, that proposal is unacceptable to the Russians as they made clear on December 4th. Diplomacy will only become relevant when there is a major development on the battlefield that tells both sides that it is time to negotiate an armistice, turning the hot war into a frozen conflict.” Watch the full interview below:

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times,

The FBI is in the process of pursuing members of the 764 criminal network, Deputy Director Dan Bongino said in a Dec. 12 post on X.

The 764 is a violent network, operating within the United States and around the globe, that methodically targets and exploits minors, according to the FBI.

“These networks use threats, blackmail, and manipulation to coerce or extort victims into producing, sharing, or live-streaming acts of self-harm, animal cruelty, sexually explicit acts, and/or suicide,“ the FBI stated. ”The footage is then circulated among members of the network to continue to extort victims and exert control over them.”

Bongino wrote on X: “We are hunting down the members of the 764 network with unprecedented arrest numbers, and a tireless focus on developing new investigative leads with our state, local, and global law enforcement partners.

“We will not allow them to target our children.

“You cannot hide behind a keyboard.”

The 764 network comprises “Nihilistic Violent Extremists” who support the production and sharing of child sex abuse material and extreme gore media, the Department of Justice stated on Nov. 20.

Members “often conduct coordinated extortions of teenagers, blackmailing the victims to comply with the group’s demands.”

On Nov. 20, a federal grand jury indicted a 20-year-old member of the 764 network over allegations that the person persuaded and coerced three minor females to engage in sexually explicit conduct.

“This is one of the most serious issues in America and the @FBI numbers reflect it—500 percent increase in Nihilistic Violent Extremism arrests over last year and 20 percent increase in confirmed 764 arrests,” FBI Director Kash Patel said in a post on X. “Every field office is fully engaged and we’re not slowing down.”

The FBI stated: “Victims are typically between the ages of 10 and 17 years old, but the FBI has seen some victims as young as 9 years old. These violent actors target vulnerable populations to include children as well as those who struggle with a variety of mental health issues, such as depression, eating disorders, or suicidal ideation.”

Malicious actors groom their targets by establishing trusting, romantic relationships with victims.

The agency asked family and friends to watch out for potential indicators and warning signs among minors, including sudden changes in behavior or appearance, dropping out of activities and becoming more isolated, scars, carvings on the skin such as words or symbols, scratches or bruises, burn marks, wearing long sleeves or pants in hot weather, harming of family pets or other animals, and receipt of anonymous gifts.

Protecting Children

In a Dec. 12 FBI podcast, Supervisory Special Agent Abbi Beccaccio, who oversees specialized child sexual exploitation investigations, said the members of violent online networks get their victims to engage in horrific activities because of “their underlying desire to sow chaos.”

“Essentially, they want to target the most vulnerable populations, and in doing so, they hope to bring down the fabric of society, whether or not they actually have the ability to do that,” Beccaccio said.

This week, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) introduced three bipartisan bills to protect children online that focus on sentencing laws, child extortion, and violent online criminal networks, according to a Dec. 9 statement from the Senate Committee on the Judiciary.

The Sentencing Accountability for Exploitation Act requires the U.S. Sentencing Commission to develop a new child sex abuse material (CSAM) sentencing guideline that takes into account modern indicators of dangerous conduct, such as a person taking part in a CSAM online group.

The Ending Coercion of Children and Harm Online Act seeks to tackle the issue of individuals coercing children into harming themselves, other people, or animals by proposing life in prison for such crimes.

The Stop Sextortion Act targets people who threaten to distribute CSAM with the goal of coercing, intimidating, and extorting children.

“Changes in technology have created new opportunities for criminals to harass, exploit, intimidate, and harm American children. These horrific crimes—often committed by violent online groups who take advantage of our nation’s outdated laws—have gone unchecked for far too long,” Grassley said.

“Congress must stand up for American families and finally address the online rot that is hurting children nationwide.”