{"id":22267,"date":"2026-03-26T03:15:59","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T03:15:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/2026\/03\/26\/everything-is-fake-now-and-its-worse-than-you-think\/"},"modified":"2026-03-26T03:15:59","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T03:15:59","slug":"everything-is-fake-now-and-its-worse-than-you-think","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/2026\/03\/26\/everything-is-fake-now-and-its-worse-than-you-think\/","title":{"rendered":"Everything Is Fake Now \u2014 And It\u2019s Worse Than You Think"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">Outside of the Revolutionary War era, it would be hard to find another period in American history when Americans have been more reluctant to pay their taxes \u2014 and justifiably so. At this point it\u2019s understandable if your eyes start to glaze over when you hear about yet another massive fraud scheme that\u2019s been engineered by foreigners to steal millions of dollars\u2019 worth of your money. We\u2019re talking about <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/minnesota\/news\/billions-paid-out-by-medicaid-in-minnesota-may-be-fraudulent-us-attorney\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight:400\">billions of dollars<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight:400\"> in Medicaid fraud, in just the state of Minnesota alone, every year. Think about that for a second. In just one state, Medicaid fraud all by itself \u2014 which is enabled by insurance companies and the Democrat Party \u2014 accounts for billions of dollars in theft.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">In response, the Trump administration has launched an \u201canti-fraud task force,\u201d led by JD Vance, to prosecute some of the worst offenders. But the truth is, an anti-fraud task force can\u2019t actually solve the problem. Playing whack-a-mole with fraudsters isn\u2019t going to work \u2014 they\u2019re too creative, and our system of taxpayer handouts is effectively based on the honor system. In order to understand what I mean, we\u2019ll start with a fun little exercise, where we all play detective. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">Watch this footage from an alleged armed robbery in Georgia, and try to identify what \u2014 if any \u2014 type of fraud might be occurring here. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">Also, for your own amusement, watch very closely when they zoom in on the alleged \u201cattack\u201d on the store clerk. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">Here it is:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"ggUDtE-Y27M\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"\u2018Comical\u2019 Video Shows Gas Station Clerks Staging Robbery for $5,000, Getting Busted by Police: Cops\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ggUDtE-Y27M?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/p>\n<p>Source: Law &amp; Crime Network\/YouTube.com<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">First of all, if you\u2019re going to stage a robbery to steal $5,000 from the store, you\u2019ve got to make it look more convincing than that. LeBron James would be embarrassed by the flop. For $5,000, you\u2019ve got to make contact, at the very least. And it would probably be smart to have your accomplice leave the premises for a bit, instead of sticking around and pouring the cash all over the ground when the police show up.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">But that\u2019s all besides the point. The point is \u2014 if you were a detective assigned to this case, what are the possible motives you\u2019d come up with? Besides the cash, what would someone named \u201cPatel\u201d possibly have to gain by staging a robbery like this?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">To answer that question, we need to go back to a much different time in America \u2014 the year 2000. That was before we imported tens of millions of foreigners and transformed the entire country. By some estimates, 38% of all immigrants currently living in the United States arrived after 2010. And 21% arrived between 2000 and 2009.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/episode\/ep-1756-the-matt-walsh-show?elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowHeadline=Recent+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-976065\" src=\"https:\/\/dw-wp-production.imgix.net\/2025\/09\/Matt-watch-now-1-1024x171.jpg\" alt=\"DailyWire+\" width=\"1024\" height=\"171\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dw-wp-production.imgix.net\/2025\/09\/Matt-watch-now-1-1024x171.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/dw-wp-production.imgix.net\/2025\/09\/Matt-watch-now-1-300x50.jpg 300w, https:\/\/dw-wp-production.imgix.net\/2025\/09\/Matt-watch-now-1-768x128.jpg 768w, https:\/\/dw-wp-production.imgix.net\/2025\/09\/Matt-watch-now-1-1536x256.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/dw-wp-production.imgix.net\/2025\/09\/Matt-watch-now-1.jpg 1800w\" sizes=\"auto,  (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">Before all of that migration, America was a very high-trust society. And that\u2019s why, in 2000, the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act passed the House and Senate with only one \u201cno\u201d vote. The entire House and Senate agreed on this legislation, and the only holdout was upset about the deficit \u2014 he didn\u2019t actually object to the bill. So what did the legislation do? It created a new \u201cU Visa,\u201d which allows illegal immigrants in the United States to obtain legal status, as long as they\u2019re the victim of a serious crime \u2014 including a violent assault.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">At the time, no lawmaker \u2014 in either the House or the Senate \u2014 even considered the possibility that large numbers of foreigners would stage their own violent assaults, in order to qualify for this new \u201clegal status.\u201d But that\u2019s exactly what\u2019s happening at the moment in the United States. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">This is a recent <a href=\"https:\/\/www.justice.gov\/usao-ma\/pr\/eleven-indian-nationals-charged-visa-fraud-conspiracy\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">press release<\/a> from the DOJ. Bear with me here as I try to read these names.<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><em><span style=\"font-weight:400\">Eleven Indian nationals have been charged in connection with a conspiracy to carry out staged armed robberies of convenience stores for the purpose of allowing store clerks to falsely claim they were crime victims on immigration applications. The following defendants have been charged with one count of conspiracy to commit visa fraud: 1. Jitendrakumar Patel, Maheshkumar Patel, Sanjaykumar Patel, Dipikaben Patel, Rameshbhai Patel, Amitabahen Patel, Ronakkumar Patel, Sangitaben Patel, Minkesh Patel, Sonal Patel, and Mitul Patel.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">Yes, every single one of them is named \u201cPatel.\u201d (Which incidentally, is the same name as the cashier in the video above, although to be clear, that particular Patel hasn\u2019t been accused of visa fraud \u2014 he was supposedly after insurance money). <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">As for these 11 other Patels, according to the DOJ: <\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><em><span style=\"font-weight:400\">Rambhai Patel and his co-conspirators set up and carried out staged armed robberies of at least six convenience\/liquor stores and fast food restaurants in Massachusetts and more elsewhere. It is alleged that the purpose of the staged robberies was to allow the clerks present to claim falsely that they were victims of a violent crime on an application for U non-immigration status.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">As you might imagine, this kind of fraud is very difficult to detect. So we can assume this is happening constantly, all over the country. Unless these people are monumentally dumb, they won\u2019t get caught. They\u2019re taking advantage of laws that were passed when America was a very different place. And unless we repeal all of these laws, we\u2019re going to see a lot more fake crimes, and a lot more fraud. Every other day, we\u2019re learning about a new scam. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">The New York Post, along with Nick Shirley, have just uncovered <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2026\/03\/23\/us-news\/congress-launches-probe-into-california-hospice-fraud\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight:400\">rampant hospice fraud<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight:400\"> in California, to the tune of $100 million. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">For example, take a look at the empty building below.<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">LA\u2019s shameful hospice fraud crisis laid bare \u2013 and the tens of millions of your cash going down the drain <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/RMuCh2Pf53\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/t.co\/RMuCh2Pf53<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/tRFwSOWWqa\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">pic.twitter.com\/tRFwSOWWqa<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 New York Post (@nypost) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/nypost\/status\/2028136843334582356?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">March 1, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Source: @nypost\/X.com<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">According to the Post, a grand total of 12 \u201chospice and home health care agencies\u201d are registered to operate from this one vacant strip mall, in the San Fernando Valley. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">And there\u2019s plenty more where that came from.<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><em><span style=\"font-weight:400\">St Rita\u2019s Home Health, which data shows billed Medicare about $4.3 million between 2019 and the first-half of 2025, was registered to a vacant Van Nuys strip mall with a \u201cfor rent\u201d sign outside \u2026 The Post contacted several of the companies allegedly operating inside the building. \u2026 One hung up when asked to confirm its location, another said it moved \u2014 despite still being listed on the [California government] database at the North Hollywood address \u2014 and a third went to a voicemail for \u201dAlexander from Southern California Auto.\u201d One alleged hospice fraudster had the audacity to show off her $4 million Carmel-by-the-Sea home for a news outlet just days before being arrested and charged with stealing $3.2 million from Medicare.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">CBS did its own investigation, and found the same. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">Watch:<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">A CBS News investigation into hospice fraud in California is prompting a congressional review. House Republicans called the findings \u201calarming evidence of fraudulent activity.\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/ok74kuzmcW\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/t.co\/ok74kuzmcW<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/Jg2vE7Hp1k\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">pic.twitter.com\/Jg2vE7Hp1k<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 CBS Evening News with Tony Dokoupil (@CBSEveningNews) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/CBSEveningNews\/status\/2036579399768723528?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">March 24, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Source: @CBSEveningNews\/X.com<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">700 fraudulent hospices. And those are just the ones CBS found. Obviously, if journalists and YouTubers can uncover fraud like this, there\u2019s no excuse for state and federal regulators. They\u2019re obviously complicit in an unprecedented fraud on the taxpayer. And unless we simply turn off the funding, the looting will continue indefinitely. It\u2019s not enough for Republicans to \u201clook into it.\u201d They need to turn off the funding entirely.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">At the same time, as disastrous as this fraud is, it\u2019s important to understand that it\u2019s just one symptom of a much larger problem, one that every American recognizes. So today I want to move past the issue of immigrant fraud and see if we can get to something deeper. A problem that has been on my mind for a long time now. A problem I think everyone has noticed. And that problem is that virtually everything is fake now. In high-trust societies, there\u2019s a general expectation that people tell the truth, and everything is transparent. But in the society that we have now \u2014 partially as the result of foreign migration \u2014 the opposite is true. You can\u2019t get a straight answer on anything. And very little of what you see \u2014 whether online or in the real world\u2014 is authentic.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">Take something as fundamental as food, for example. Johns Hopkins recently <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/publichealth.jhu.edu\/2024\/ultraprocessed-foods-account-for-more-than-half-of-calories-consumed-at-home#:~:text=A%20new%20analysis%20led%20by,U.S.%20come%20from%20ultraprocessed%20foods.\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"font-weight:400\">found<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight:400\"> that \u201cmore than half of calories consumed at home by adults in the U.S. come from ultraprocessed foods.\u201d These are foods with ingredients that are often impossible to pronounce, contain no nutritional value, and significantly increase your risk of cardiovascular disease, obesity, and colon cancer \u2014 which as we all know, is now dramatically more common in young people. One of these ultraprocessed ingredients is called TBHQ (or \u201ctert-butylhydroquinone\u201d). It\u2019s found in a large variety of \u201cshelf-stable\u201d foods, because it prevents the fats and oils from breaking down. Common products with TBHQ include microwave popcorn, potato chips, pretzels, frozen meals (including pre-packaged dinners and frozen pizzas), fast food, cooking oils, peanut butter, packaged cookies and pastries, and so on. In high enough doses, TBHQ has been found to cause liver enlargement, convulsions, tumors, and weakened immune systems. While the FDA has classified TBHQ as \u201csafe for consumption,\u201d there\u2019s a caveat \u2014 it can only account for 0.02% of total fat or oil content in a product.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">In that respect, TBHQ is similar to aspartame, the fake sugar that\u2019s found in Diet Coke and many other \u201cdiet\u201d products. In moderation, it\u2019s generally considered to be safe. But several studies \u2014 including one published in 2023 from an agency of the World Health Organization \u2014 classified aspartame as \u201cpossibly carcinogenic to humans\u201d if consumed in large quantities. Some previous studies had found that it can cause cancer in rats, in high doses. But again, in \u201cmoderation,\u201d it\u2019s supposedly okay \u2014 just like cell phone use. But most people don\u2019t realize any of this. They don\u2019t understand that food is intentionally made to be more dangerous \u2014 and more artificial \u2014 because it needs a longer shelf life.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">And that\u2019s not even getting into foods that are fraudulently labeled in the first place. Something like 50% of Parmesan cheese isn\u2019t authentic, for example. The outlet \u201cFood &amp; Wine\u201d just reported on the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.foodandwine.com\/food-fraud-in-common-groceries-11892646\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">extensive fraud<\/a> that affects a variety of food products in the grocery store. <\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><em><span style=\"font-weight:400\">In 2024, The Guardian reported that olive oil fraud reached an all-time high in the European Union, with most of the fraudulent olive oil mixed with cheaper alternatives and several labeled with \u201cmisleading origin\u201d labels. \u2026 In Turkey, one of the world\u2019s largest honey-producing nations, authorities seized nearly $30 million worth of fraudulent honey over the course of just a few months in 2025 alone. Spices are another concern, with the FDA explaining that not only do people sometimes mix in other plant parts to bulk up production, they may also use \u201cdyes to give spices a certain color, especially when the color strongly impacts the perception of quality.\u201d It added, \u201cLead-based dyes and other industrial dyes that can cause adverse health problems such as cancer have been found in spices such as chili powder, turmeric, and cumin.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">Even cheese is often misrepresented. A few months ago, we talked about how one company, Leprino Foods, makes roughly 85% of the cheese that goes on pizza \u2014 whether you buy it frozen, or at a restaurant. They have a variety of patents for making cheese as efficiently as they can. But most companies that supposedly sell \u201ccheese\u201d in this country aren\u2019t bothering with that. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">Take Cheez Whiz for example. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">Here\u2019s the label:<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"image\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/i5.walmartimages.com\/asr\/bf0ec6de-c9f4-4291-b9a6-3b46d2b388de.9a2e69daab96045455ace94e237d6acb.jpeg?odnHeight=768&amp;odnWidth=768&amp;odnBg=FFFFFF\"\/><\/div>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">It\u2019s an incredible list of ingredients. You\u2019ve got your whey, canola oil, corn syrup, protein concentrate, mustard flour, garlic powder and sorbic acid. Less than 2% of the product, according to this label, is \u201ccheese culture.\u201d So they add a microscopic element of cheese in the product, and that gives them the go-ahead to claim that their product is \u201cMade with Real Cheese\u201d and \u201cReal Dairy.\u201d But there\u2019s nothing \u201creal\u201d about any of this. It\u2019s all fake.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">What you want in actual cheese is a much simpler list of ingredients: Pasteurized Milk, Cheese Cultures, Salt, and some enzymes. And this is one area where federal regulators have actually made authentic products easier to identify. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">Watch:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"t_7JZUqUXzE\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The Truth About \u201cCheese\u201d: Why Labels Matter More Than You Think\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/t_7JZUqUXzE?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">Source: History of Food\/YouTube.com<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">What\u2019s interesting about the video I just played is that it\u2019s probably not real, either. The facts are real \u2014 I verified them. But I have no idea if there\u2019s an actual person narrating that footage, or if it\u2019s AI. No narrator ever appears on camera. He maintains the same cadence throughout the entire thing. All of the footage is stock imagery. No one has left a comment. And the script is all based on information from government websites, like the FDA, so for all I know, an AI wrote the script, too.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">That brings me to yet another area of life that\u2019s becoming almost entirely fake, which is social media. Bots and AI have overrun pretty much every social media platform. Go on Facebook, and you\u2019ll get bombarded with AI videos everywhere you look. Some of the most popular genres involve fake stories about celebrities, complete with sob stories or some other lazy emotional hook.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">Here\u2019s Peyton Manning going to a funeral for a fan he\u2019s never met. People loved that one. There\u2019s a whole genre of Peyton Manning AI slop along these lines. <\/span><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_1066531\" style=\"width:355px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1066531\" class=\"wp-image-1066531 size-large\" src=\"https:\/\/dw-wp-production.imgix.net\/2026\/03\/pmfuneral-345x576.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"345\" height=\"576\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dw-wp-production.imgix.net\/2026\/03\/pmfuneral-345x576.jpg 345w, https:\/\/dw-wp-production.imgix.net\/2026\/03\/pmfuneral-180x300.jpg 180w, https:\/\/dw-wp-production.imgix.net\/2026\/03\/pmfuneral-768x1283.jpg 768w, https:\/\/dw-wp-production.imgix.net\/2026\/03\/pmfuneral.jpg 864w\" sizes=\"auto,  (max-width: 345px) 100vw, 345px\"\/><\/p>\n<p id=\"caption-attachment-1066531\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Source: Magic Clement<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">Then you have videos like this one.<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">incredible things are happening in the facebook AI slop arena <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/aI5uJt3WSG\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">pic.twitter.com\/aI5uJt3WSG<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Daniel (@growing_daniel) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/growing_daniel\/status\/1844069925700370787?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">October 9, 2024<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Source: @growing_daniel\/X.com<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">Apparently, an awful lot of people think giraffes are rescued with cranes. There\u2019s something like 23,000 likes on this video. And that sounds pretty bad, but then you realize that those 23,000 likes might not be real, either. A lot of them are probably bots, which drive up engagement for the video. And when engagement goes up, the algorithm is more likely to show the video to more people. And that means more ad revenue for the creator. So social media is full of artificial content generated by bots, and liked by bots, and commented on by bots. It\u2019s bots talking to bots. Layer upon layer of fakeness.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">As a result of fraud like this, the truth is, you really can\u2019t tell how many people are actually watching any particular piece of content. It\u2019s also hard to know if you\u2019re debating a real person, when you respond to a comment. And the flip side of this problem is that, very often, legitimate channels (and outlets) will be accused of buying fake engagement, when there\u2019s actually no evidence that they\u2019re doing it. You\u2019ll also see accusations that AI was used to create artwork, just based on a hunch that some people have.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">I don\u2019t need to belabor the point. Most people who watch my show are already aware of AI slop. What\u2019s important is recognizing that, as much as we\u2019d like to dismiss AI slop as a unique phenomenon, it\u2019s actually part of a broader trend where reality becomes much harder to discern. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">A few weeks ago, we talked about the home buying process, and how many new homes are in very poor condition, even though they were advertised as move-in ready. Many homes also have fake wood and fake wood exteriors now, to the point that it\u2019s hard to buy a home with natural wood. You\u2019re likely to get stuck with \u201cluxury laminate flooring\u201d or vinyl flooring instead. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight:400\">That vinyl flooring is a lot cheaper. It doesn\u2019t scratch easily. It\u2019s waterproof. And it looks like wood, at a distance. The problem is that you\u2019ll almost certainly have to replace it in 20 years, once the top layer is damaged. It starts to fall apart very quickly after that. You can have genuine hardwood floors that last a century, or you can have the imitation that falls apart in a decade.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">And increasingly, the fake option is winning out. A decade ago, according to one survey, vinyl flooring accounted for just 6% of all new home flooring. Now it accounts for 30%, making it the second-most popular option (behind carpeting). On the other hand, real hardwood was used in around 37% of new builds back in 2017, but now it\u2019s down to less than 7%. These are estimates, but they give you an idea. People\u2019s homes \u2014 the single most important purchase of their lives, the place where they spend the vast majority of their time, the place where they raise their children \u2014 are becoming demonstrably more fake, along with everything else.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">What do you lose, as a country, when inauthenticity runs that deep? And in the same vein, what happens when fake jobs are created solely for the benefit of women and so-called \u201cpeople of color\u201d? There\u2019s an awful lot of those fake jobs, as you might have noticed. Around 80% of government employees at the local, state and federal levels are just as incompetent as the DMV or the TSA \u2014 and they have the same demographics (which is almost certainly a violation of federal civil rights law). It\u2019s just that you never see these government employees, and they never show up to work. They\u2019re basically in a jobs program.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">Not that the private sector is much better, in some cases. 90% of HR Departments serve no purpose. They exist to discriminate against white men and foster a culture of constant paranoia. Meanwhile, Silicon Valley is full of \u201cproject managers\u201d who are ripped straight from \u201cOffice Space.\u201d They\u2019re supposedly good at \u201ctalking to engineers\u201d or whatever, but in reality they spend half their days posting TikToks about all the perks they get at work, like the free lunches and spa days. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">Thankfully, ever since Elon Musk fired 90% of Twitter employees, these videos have been harder to find. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">But just in case you forgot, here\u2019s one of those videos, from 2022 \u2014 just before Elon took over:<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"tiktok-embed\" cite=\"https:\/\/www.tiktok.com\/@utchattanooga\/video\/7154023454415637803\" data-video-id=\"7154023454415637803\" data-embed-from=\"oembed\" style=\"max-width:605px;min-width:325px\">\n<section> <a target=\"_blank\" title=\"@utchattanooga\" href=\"https:\/\/www.tiktok.com\/@utchattanooga?refer=embed\" rel=\"noopener\">@utchattanooga<\/a> <\/p>\n<p>Check out a day in the life of a Twitter employee, and UTC graduate Kaylah Santos! Thank you so much to Brittany, Taylor and Kaylah for participating. We are so proud of your accomplishments \ud83d\udc99\ud83d\udc9b <a title=\"utchattanooga\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.tiktok.com\/tag\/utchattanooga?refer=embed\" rel=\"noopener\">#utchattanooga<\/a> <a title=\"gomocs\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.tiktok.com\/tag\/gomocs?refer=embed\" rel=\"noopener\">#gomocs<\/a> <a title=\"utcnewmocs\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.tiktok.com\/tag\/utcnewmocs?refer=embed\" rel=\"noopener\">#utcnewmocs<\/a> <a title=\"utcgrad\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.tiktok.com\/tag\/utcgrad?refer=embed\" rel=\"noopener\">#utcgrad<\/a> <\/p>\n<p> <a target=\"_blank\" title=\"\u266c X World - Muspace Lofi\" href=\"https:\/\/www.tiktok.com\/music\/X-World-7114694722316142594?refer=embed\" rel=\"noopener\">\u266c X World \u2013 Muspace Lofi<\/a> <\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">It\u2019s a \u201cday in the life\u201d video and she doesn\u2019t say a word about her actual job. She just strikes a bunch of poses, plays with some pillows, gets lunch, shows off the kitchen, and gives clich\u00e9d life advice with the maximum possible amount of vocal fry. This is not a job. It is, as it has been described, adult daycare for women. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">It\u2019s a phenomenon that you see when interest rates are extremely low, and investors want to maximize their returns \u2014 so they send all their money to tech companies, who effectively get billions of dollars in free money.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">Now that the economy has changed, and Elon\u2019s philosophy is more common in Silicon Valley, you see less of this. But that just means that the women have stopped bragging on TikTok about their six-figure tech jobs. Based on the employment numbers, many of them are still \u201cworking,\u201d somewhere, in some capacity. They\u2019re just wasting some other employer\u2019s time, in some other fake job.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">We could go on and on. People adopt fake genders now. They chase fake money and fake art, which is what the NFT craze was all about, and various scam cryptocurrencies are still all about. Fake friends and girlfriends are more common than ever, as well. In fact, one of the most popular scams right now involves getting a text message that appears to be a \u201cwrong number\u201d situation. And then when you respond that the person has a wrong number, they\u2019ll text back, try to get to know you, and then they\u2019ll convince you to log onto their scam crypto website so they can steal your money. One guy in California lost a million dollars in a scam like this. This is a longer video, but we\u2019ll play it because it\u2019s a very common situation. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">Watch:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"Ml87O5Pj0YU\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"California widower lured to fake romance, loses $1 million in &#039;wrong number&#039; crypto scam\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Ml87O5Pj0YU?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">So if you\u2019re following along, his wife dies in December of 2024. And less than a year later, he\u2019s madly in love with a girl he\u2019s never met, who\u2019s much younger than he is. And, at her direction, he\u2019s emptying out his retirement. Now he\u2019s lost a million dollars, and on top of that, he owes $300,000 in taxes for all of those withdrawals, so he might lose his house.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">It\u2019s easy to say, well, he\u2019s just an old boomer, he doesn\u2019t understand technology. But the problem here isn\u2019t technology. It\u2019s that he can\u2019t discern reality from fantasy. And that\u2019s a problem that\u2019s only going to get worse, because everyone \u2014 from a very young age \u2014 is exposed to a wildly distorted perspective on reality. Take music, for example. Autotune used to be a gimmick that one or two performers used, like T-Pain. They even had a T-Pain app on the iPhone, so you could sound like him. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">Now all of the performers use it.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">Here\u2019s a couple of before-and-afters, to give you an idea:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"onsu_RNhdas\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Autotune Vs No Autotune (Ed Sheeran, Katy Perry &amp; More!)\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/onsu_RNhdas?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/p>\n<p>Source: RoomieOfficial\/YouTube.com<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">In the first case, she clearly has no talent. The autotune is intended to compensate for that. In the second case, later in the video, Ed Sheeran can obviously sing, at least to an acceptable standard. But they autotune him, too. None of it\u2019s real.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">And by the way, the musicians don\u2019t even look real anymore, either. Take Sabrina Carpenter and Nicki Minaj for example. After the apparent lip injections, Botox, and hair dye, they\u2019re unrecognizable. No normal human being looks like that. Cosmetic procedures are more popular than they\u2019ve ever been. Even if pop stars are leading the charge when it comes to turning their bodies into a mesh of silicone and plastic, it\u2019s not just rich pop stars. Millions of normal women are doing the same thing. So the epidemic of fakeness extends not just to social media or food or your fake wood floors, but even to the bodies of the people who are interacting with this stuff.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">And instead of encouraging people to look the way they naturally look, the most popular influencers are pitching \u201cdouble jaw surgeries\u201d and \u201clooksmaxing.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">Watch:<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Clavicular explains his upcoming $35,000 double jaw surgery that will ascend him 1.5 points\u2026<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey basically make a cut on the lower jaw and move it forward, and apply screws, and the same with the upper jaw\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/Fi6SK0JCHM\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">pic.twitter.com\/Fi6SK0JCHM<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 The Iced Coffee Hour (@TheICHpodcast) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/TheICHpodcast\/status\/2028564751492530319?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">March 2, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Source: @TheICHpodcast\/X.com<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">Getting back to my point about bots and fake engagement, there\u2019s another point to be made about this guy, \u201cClavicular.\u201d To be clear, I\u2019m not accusing him of \u201cbuying viewers\u201d or anything like that. But you have to remember how he rose to fame. It happened very suddenly, out of nowhere, in December of last year, when he supposedly ran someone over with his Cybertruck. The story was, the guy was harassing him, got in front of his car, and Clavicular ran him over.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">Was that staged? We have no idea. It\u2019s certainly reasonable to ask: Why didn\u2019t the police charge anyone? Why did they immediately determine that \u201cno criminal act\u201d had taken place, and drop it entirely? Why was there no follow-up to that story at all? Whatever the case, he clearly has a very good PR team behind him. They used those viral incidents \u2014 real or not \u2014 to promote his brand. And now he\u2019s everywhere. In the span of three months, he\u2019s gone from a complete nobody, to the alleged \u201cvoice of a generation.\u201d He turned a stunt into total social media domination.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">Just a few years ago, that kind of stunt wouldn\u2019t be anywhere near as effective. A lot of podcasters \u2014 people like me \u2014 got an audience by talking to people, every day, in their cars. I didn\u2019t run someone over with my car, or drop a piano on someone\u2019s head. But that\u2019s now a winning strategy, evidently. Now we have fake influencers giving fake advice about how you can make your body look extremely fake, just like they do.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">It\u2019s important to understand that, at some level, people find this to be a very unsettling state of affairs. I\u2019m not convinced that people have any desire to live in a fake world. It\u2019s probably a good sign that Mark Zuckerberg just cancelled his Metaverse after spending $80 billion on it. He also changed the name of his company from Facebook to Meta, on the theory that people were really into fake universes that they could explore in virtual reality. But that didn\u2019t pan out \u2014 possibly because, when you spell it out for people, it\u2019s not remotely appealing. There\u2019s something very interesting about that. We are surrounded by fakeness everywhere. And yet when Zuckerberg built a fake world that we could go pretend to live in, and spent $80 billion on it, nobody took him up on the invitation. Is that because deep inside we still yearn for authenticity? Or is it because the real world is already so fake that the metaverse seemed redundant? Or is it a bit of both? I think probably both.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">So what is the antidote to fakeness? It\u2019s clear that everything around us is fake. The food is fake, the houses are fake, the music is fake, the movies are fake, social media is fake, the people are fake. What\u2019s the cure? How do we break free from this overwhelming, choking fog of fakeness? Well it isn\u2019t something a government can mandate. It\u2019s not a policy that can be instituted on a mass scale at this point. It has to be done on the individual, personal level. And at the risk of oversimplifying things, the antidote amounts to something of a cliche: \u201ctouch grass.\u201d Put the phone down. Immerse yourself in things that are real and immediate. Take on challenges that require you to work with reality rather than construct a fake one. This could be anything. Exercising. Shooting. Hunting. Anything at all. This is one of the reasons I love to fish. It gets me out in nature, in something that is real, doing something real and ancient, in an environment I can\u2019t control, a place that was not constructed by an algorithm specifically to appeal to me. So find your fishing. Find your thing that immerses you in what is real.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">Also establish real human connections. This is why you should get married and have children. And focus on the deeper meaning in life. All of this fakery basically carries with it the message that nothing matters, nothing means anything \u2014 just make up your own reality and amuse yourself. This is why humans need faith. The only other option, as we\u2019ve discovered, is artificiality and nihilism. Despair. This was basically Kierkegaard\u2019s point, as I understand him (which is only barely, I admit).<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">And while you\u2019re at it: Read novels. Listen to good music. Watch good films. Even though they\u2019re telling made-up stories in some cases, they\u2019re still speaking to truths about the human condition that can\u2019t be said any other way. This is why I hate AI art so much. It can\u2019t possibly speak authentically about the human experience, which is the whole point of art. These are the things that keep us tethered to reality. Nature. Family. Faith. Art. These are the sources of authenticity. The streams, the tributaries, that fill your life with what is real, what has meaning.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">Now imagine the life of a godless, childless liberal who lives in the city and spends their free time ingesting brain rot algorithmic slop. They are living, literally, a life of fakeness. This is the matrix. A life totally devoid of anything real. Nothing tethering them to the deeper realities of existence.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">And as depressing as that life is, it\u2019s easy to fall victim to it. That\u2019s especially true for children, who are growing up in a fundamentally different world than any previous generation. We\u2019re talking about a world in which deception is ubiquitous. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">The armed robberies are fake. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">The social media platforms are fake. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">The insurance claims are fake. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">The music and the streamers are fake. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">The crypto is fake. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">The houses are made of fake materials. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">The text messages are fake. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">The Facebook posts are fake. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">The jobs are fake.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">The cheese is fake. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">Can you control any of that? No, you can\u2019t. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">But you do have the power to control whether you become fake as well \u2014 whether you become a vessel for all of this deception. And no matter how popular \u201cdoomerism\u201d may be, and no matter how intoxicating it may be to say that there\u2019s no way out of this particular doom loop, that\u2019s actually a lot of power. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight:400\">Every one of us should make the conscious decision, every day, to use it.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><script async src=\"\/\/www.tiktok.com\/embed.js\"><\/script><br \/>\n<br \/><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/news\/everything-is-fake-now-and-its-worse-than-you-think\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Outside of the Revolutionary War era, it would be hard to find another period in American history when Americans have been more reluctant to pay their taxes \u2014 and justifiably so. At this point it\u2019s understandable if your eyes start to glaze over when you hear about yet another massive fraud scheme that\u2019s been engineered [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22268,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-current-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22267\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}