SteevHat

What if the education system isn’t broken… it’s just not designed for what you think it is? This footage is from Charlotte Iserbyt — former Senior Policy Advisor at the U.S. Department of Education under Ronald Reagan. Decades ago, she raised a controversial concern: “These experts in brainwashing are using the Department of Education to brainwash our children… If you want to convert a country… the best way is to start with the children. Change their attitudes, values, and behavior.” Whether you agree with her or not… pause there. Because if you zoom out historically, institutions like the Carnegie Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation played a major role in shaping modern education. Their influence helped shift schooling toward standardization, behavioral frameworks, and workforce preparation—not just academics. Some critics argue this replaced classical pillars like reading, writing, math, civics, and moral reasoning with systems that prioritize conditioning, compliance, and social alignment. This isn’t fringe—it’s a documented debate. Now step out of politics for a second and look at the biology. Children’s brains are highly programmable. ✔️ Repetition wires belief ✔️ Authority shapes perception ✔️ Social belonging regulates behavior So if a child spends 12+ years in an environment where approval = compliance, success = correct answers, and belonging = agreement… what do you get? Not independent thinkers. You get well-adapted participants. And often that looks like: ✔️ Reduced tolerance for ambiguity ✔️ Discomfort questioning authority ✔️ Outsourced thinking (“what’s the right answer?”) ✔️ Fear of being wrong or standing alone ✔️ Performance over curiosity ✔️ Validation over internal certainty ✔️ Conformity disguised as intelligence And what gets blocked? ✔️ Original thought ✔️ Healthy defiance ✔️ Deep focus ✔️ Self-trust ✔️ Critical thinking under pressure ✔️ True leadership Outcomes tell the truth. Not intentions. Not everyone can pull their child out of the system. And let’s be honest—most parents were shaped by it too. You don’t have to escape the system to see it. You just have to stop unconsciously feeding it. Because even inside the system… you still have influence. More than you think. So what can you actually do? ✔️ In how you speak to your child: Don’t rush them to the “right” answer. Ask what they think first. Let them question—even you. Not oppositionally, but through curiosity. Reward curiosity, not just correctness. ✔️ In how you relate to authority: Don’t model blind obedience or constant rebellion. Model discernment. Show them how to respect structure without surrendering thought. ✔️ In how you model thinking: Say “I don’t know.” Let them watch you change your mind. Teach them how to evaluate information, not just consume it. ✔️ In how you build their internal world: Normalize being different. Normalize being misunderstood. Normalize standing alone and still trusting yourself—that’s where leadership begins. You may not control the system your child grows up in… but you shape the mind they bring into it. The system trains them to comply. You teach them when not to. Education isn’t just what they’re taught. It’s what they learn to accept… without question. And once you see that—you can raise something very different.

Ryan wasn’t in this intervention at all, so it’s unfair to pin it on him. But he reminds me that we had mutual friends who were very successful in tech & publishing. At that level of success careers stretch into long plateaus punctuated by short meteoric rises when a book or app or movie breaks out. Many of these people are obsessed with breaking the plateaus. They have remarkable methods for doing it. I learned a lot being around them. But each new level gets harder. The world tires of them. They run out of tricks. At that point, most turn spiritual. Another thing about very successful people of this sort: PTSD is rampant. Most carry childhood trauma. A few earned theirs through excessive drug use. Coping with PTSD is usually what teaches a Type A personality to compartmentalize and focus on the work. A spiritual awakening is seen not only as a way to reach a new level, but to heal the soul. I grew up in the Bronx during the height of its troubles. Riding the firetruck to a five-alarm fire on my dad’s lap is one of my best childhood memories. In their minds, that was child abuse, no different from an infantry soldier dragging his kid into a combat zone. The point: in their eyes, I had massive trauma to work through. So a few of these friends staged an intervention. They were convinced I needed a spiritual awakening. Problem was, I had been raised by a devout Catholic father, and my paternal grandfather was a Methodist minister. I had fallen far from the church, but I never cut the umbilical cord to Jesus. So I resisted. They weren’t pushing any single solution. The menu was wide: Buddhist, Taoist, Wiccan, deep meditation, Jewish, Muslim, tantric, DIY yoga. “Any path you want.” There was no overt anti-Christian pressure. Jesus simply wasn’t discussed. If someone brought him up, faces would tighten, & the conversation moved on. Thankfully, I resisted. Two reasons. First, many who “find inner peace” lose all drive to succeed. Second, a few months before the intervention someone entirely outside this group m tried to recruit me into a full satanic temple in LA. I rejected it flat out, and the experience left me repulsed by any spirituality on offer. The lighter advances like were easy to push off. You’re encouraged to experiment, find the one that “fits your soul.” They’re open to any new age method that delivers focus, connection, and inner peace. But here’s the thing: I never felt broken inside. I had witnessed trauma as a kid & at sea, but it never settled into my soul. So I rejected the quest. Not for others, just for me. “Not for me, but if it works for you, go for it.” I did read most of the major religious and new age texts but out of intellectual curiosity, not personal need. Many years later, I found my way back into the church. Back into the embrace of Jesus. I’m not writing this to shame anyone or to convince you to believe in Jesus yourself. I’m writing because today it’s abundantly clear what was going on. Jesus hasn’t offered me inner peace. The trauma still speaks loudly in my soul. Jesus offered me love and truth, not peace. If anything, he opened my eyes to more tragedy & pain around me. I don’t think a retreat in Sedona could cure my inner pain. Love is pain. The spiritualism DOES “work” for these people , but for a very specific reason. The ptsd events were encounters with real evil. The demons are still there, causing turmoil & psychological pain. I can manage my own demons because I know they have no power over my love of Jesus. They are an annoyance. They do not rule my mind. What happens on these inner spiritual journeys is simple. To accept the peace, you have to believe in the process. In doing so, you implicitly reject Jesus. The demons causing turmoil in the soul of these people are satisfied by that rejection & stop stoking the ptsd, knowing they have won. “Inner peace” is the demons giving up on you because they have won Because the opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s apathy.

Everyone keeps asking “why isn’t America drilling more oil” when oil is at $100 a barrel and gas is at $4.18. The answer is natural gas. And the reason is the Biden administration. Let me explain because nobody in the media is connecting these dots. When you drill for oil in America — especially in the Permian Basin which is our largest producing region — you don’t just get oil. You get natural gas as a byproduct. It comes up with the oil. It’s called associated gas. Every barrel of oil you pull out of the Permian produces more natural gas alongside it. And right now, natural gas prices have collapsed. Henry Hub futures are sitting around $2.63. That’s down 20% from a year ago. Why? Because there’s nowhere to put it all. And there’s nowhere to send it. The Biden administration spent four years blocking, delaying, and slow-walking every pipeline and LNG export terminal that would have moved American natural gas to markets that desperately need it. They paused LNG export permits in January 2024. They delayed pipeline approvals. They let environmental lawsuits stall critical infrastructure for years. The Mountain Valley Pipeline — a project that would have moved Appalachian gas to market — was held up for so long that Congress had to intervene directly to get it built. It didn’t start operating until June 2024. Appalachian production — which accounts for 32% of all US natural gas output — has been constrained for years because of pipeline capacity limitations. The Haynesville Shale in Louisiana and Texas sits right next to the Gulf Coast LNG terminals. It should be booming. But the terminals that were supposed to be online years ago are just now coming into service. Golden Pass LNG — delayed because a contractor went bankrupt. Corpus Christi Stage 3 — just now starting up. Port Arthur LNG — not expected until 2027. Rio Grande LNG — not until 2027. If these facilities had been approved and built on schedule, they’d be absorbing the natural gas glut right now. American gas would be flowing to Europe at $15 per million BTU instead of sitting in storage at $2.63. Europe is paying 500 million euros PER DAY for their energy crisis. They need American LNG. They’re begging for it. And we can’t deliver it fast enough because the previous administration treated pipelines and terminals like environmental crimes instead of critical infrastructure. So what happens? Oil companies look at the math and say “if I drill more oil, I produce more gas. But gas is worthless right now because there’s nowhere to send it. So I’m not going to drill.” The EIA projects Permian oil-directed rig activity will remain “relatively low” even as oil prices stay elevated. Read that again. Oil at $100 a barrel and companies aren’t drilling because the gas economics don’t work. That’s not a market failure. That’s a policy failure. Four years of blocked pipelines and delayed terminals created a bottleneck that is now suppressing oil production at the exact moment America needs more of it. The good news? Five new LNG export facilities are coming online between now and 2027. Pipeline capacity along the Gulf Coast is seeing its largest buildout in over a decade. The Trump administration has reversed the LNG permit pause and is fast-tracking approvals. But infrastructure takes years to build. And the years that were wasted under Biden are years we can’t get back. Every dollar you’re paying at the pump above $3 is a tax you’re paying for four years of energy policy run by people who thought blocking pipelines would save the planet. It didn’t save the planet. It just made gas more expensive. Write that down. ☕🦋

BREAKING: Maine Gov Janet Mills drops out of Dem race for Senate against controversial candidate Graham Platner, signaling she struggled to raise enough money

🚨OH MY GOSH!!! Two police officers were HOSPITALIZED and 9 people were arrested when over 1,000 "teens" rushed ICON Park in Orlando FL for a "teen-takeover" event. Parents of the teens are now demanding POLICE OFFICERS BE SUSPENDED for "unnecessary force..." WHAT??!!!!!!