Notice the title is not “Canada: Don’t Make America Your Enemy.” I couldn’t give a rat’s a** what one country thinks of another. Don’t get me wrong—I do believe in sovereign nations, for the most part. A country is made up of generations of its people, who create a cultural identity that should be preserved. But politically? Nope. You can be proud of your culture as it sits within the borders of a country, and thus be proud of the country itself (because of the people in it). And yes, the culture of a country can be somewhat identified by the diverse cultures within it. But there are limits to this idea I won’t go into it here, because that’s not what this article is about.

What I care about right now—and what I’m writing about—are people, not countries. The people of Canada should not make the people of America their enemies. And many of them seem hell-bent on doing just that.

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Imagine all the world’s leaders—and yes, I know not all of them are technically “guys,” but they might as well be[1]—completely separated from the people they are supposedly elected or appointed to serve.

Imagine them cut off from any genuine concern for the lives, families, comforts, dreams, or purposes of the “useless eaters.” The people still exist to them, of course. They are simply no longer seen as citizens with inherent rights and dignity. Instead, they are reduced to pieces on a global chessboard: resources to be moved, manipulated, exploited, or killed when convenient.

Killing us when “necessary” is the easiest part. Wars, engineered famines, weather manipulation, experimental vaccines, assisted suicide programs—the methods are many and creative. After all, there are far too many of us to begin with. The game only requires enough warm bodies to keep the machinery of money, power, and control humming along with sufficient drama and productivity.

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Dear pack,

After months of clawing through code, wrestling with design, and nipping at a few tech gremlins, I’m thrilled to announce that The View of the Shrew now has its own dedicated website:

www.theviewoftheshrew.com

This is the official online home for the book The View of the Shrew: Unmasking the Truth in a Confused World 2022–2024. If you’ve been reading the Shrew Views Substack over the past few years, you already know what this collection is about. It’s a curated, re-edited anthology of 42 of our sharpest essays—raw, unfiltered dispatches from the front lines of the madness we’ve all lived through.

From the slow boil of compliance and the death of real science to masked zombies, lost empathy, and the deeper psychological currents pulling us toward control, these pieces cut through the fog. They’re equal parts mirror, battle cry, and reminder that a small but ferocious pack of truth-seekers can still see clearly when the rest of the world is sleepwalking.

If you’ve ever nodded along (or furiously agreed) with one of my Substack posts, you’ll feel right at home in these pages.

Get the Ebook – Cheaper and Better Here

Want the digital version? Skip Amazon’s markup and grab it directly from the site for only $5.60 USD. (about $7.65 CAD, Amazon.ca it is $9.59 CAD)

For that price you get both formats:

• A clean ePub perfect for your Kindle, Apple Books, Kobo, or any e-reader

• A high-quality PDF you can read on any device or print if you like

That’s a better deal than you’ll find anywhere else, and it supports the pack (and future shrew projects) directly. Head to the store section on the new site and snag your copy today.

www.theviewoftheshrew.com/shop

The Store – Shrew Swag Has Arrived

But wait—there’s more. The best part of the new site might just be the store. We’ve got proper shrew merchandise now: hats, t-shirts, tote bags, coffee mugs, and more. Wear your defiance, carry it with you, or sip your morning coffee while reminding yourself (and everyone else) whose side you’re on.

These aren’t just random items—they’re little badges of the pack. Small but mighty, just like us. Support the cause!

Join the Shrew Book Club

If you haven’t already, sign up for the Shrew Book Club while you’re there. It’s where we’ll dig deeper into the book, discuss the ideas, share thoughts, and keep the conversation going beyond the Substack. If you’re already on the list, you’re good—just make sure you’re confirmed on the new site too.

Other Books & What’s Next

While you’re browsing, check out the Other Books section. I’ve got more projects in the works, and this is the place to see what I’m up to beyond The View of the Shrew. The pack keeps growing, and so does the resistance through words.

The View of the Shrew Volume 2!

And while you’re there, keep an eye out for the brand-new second volume — The View of the Shrew: Unmasking the Truth in a Confused World 2025. This next collection brings another 40+ sharp articles from this past year’s Shrew Views posts, continuing the fight to cut through the ongoing fog of confusion, control, and collective madness. It’s shaping up to be just as fierce (if not fiercer) than the first. Look for it later this year — hopefully by summer.

How to Get the First Volume

• Ebook (PDF + ePub): Best price and direct support → www.theviewoftheshrew.com

• Paperback: Available on Amazon (links on the site). If you’d rather avoid Amazon, there are options to buy through Lulu or directly from me—but fair warning, shipping from me or Lullu is brutally expensive right now, so Amazon is usually the practical choice.

Bottom line: If you’ve been with Shrew Views from the early “Deep Sea Fishing” days, through the frog-in-the-pot realizations, the zombie analogies, and everything since, this book is for you. It’s our shared chronicle, our defiance in print, and a reminder that we’re not alone in seeing through the illusions.

Come on over to www.theviewoftheshrew.com, poke around, grab some merch if it calls to you, pick up the ebook, and join the book club. Let’s keep building this little corner of clarity in a crazy world.

As always—stay sharp, stay unbowed, and keep nipping at the heels of the narrative.

With gratitude and a healthy dose of shrew spirit,

Todd

P.S. If you love the site (or even if you have constructive feedback), drop a comment below or shoot me a note. This is our pack project as much as mine.

CLICK HERE TO GO TO SITE!

What in God’s name has happened to our youth? Not all of them, not yet—but the affliction is spreading fast. What contagion has taken hold? I could name a dozen, but the one that troubles me most—and the one that flows from all the others—is the loss of depth. By that I mean the quiet abandonment of any real pursuit of meaning, the evaporation of purpose, and the slow death of genuine passion.

Am I merely an alarmist? Would most people push back and say I’m exaggerating? Possibly. People have probably been saying similar things about the young for centuries—about my generation fifty years ago, about the one before that, and so on, stretching back a thousand years or more. Maybe this drift toward spiritual shallowness began generations ago. I suspect humanity has been sliding along a very slow trajectory toward inner emptiness for a long time, though the decline wasn’t steady or steep until perhaps the mid-19th century. Since then, especially with the erosion of spiritual awareness, it has accelerated dramatically.

The causes are tangled and overdetermined. It’s hard to pin the blame on any single cultural shift—the fading belief in God, the moral unravelling of society, or the rise of smartphones and social media. I sound like an old preacher on a soapbox, Bible in one hand, fist shaking at the sky, preaching fire and brimstone.

To be fair, in some measurable ways humanity has improved. We no longer tolerate the routine horrors once considered normal: the systemic subjugation of women, the open acceptance of slavery, the casual use of torture as public spectacle, or the brutal treatment of children and the mentally ill. Life expectancy has risen, literacy is widespread, and basic human rights have gained ground in many parts of the world. Yet I struggle to reconcile these gains with the deeper rot I see. Maybe I’m just an incorrigible doomster. Or maybe, after the apparent optimism following World War II—when it seemed we might finally make peace with centuries of ugliness—things quietly went off the rails.

Look around today: the Epstein scandal and its lingering shadows, what many describe as genocide in Gaza, the explosion of powerful synthetic drugs, widespread child trafficking, rampant pornography that has warped entire generations, endless foreign wars, the normalization of surveillance states, and what appears to be a reckless, almost wanton effort to injure or kill large swaths of the global population through a novel pharmaceutical intervention pushed with unprecedented coercion. It feels as though the devil has finally claimed the throne he has coveted for millennia.

But I digress—or do I? Let’s return to the young and their apparent surrender of purpose and the search for meaning. In my practice, I see many people between eighteen and thirty. The majority show signs of this peculiar zombie-itis. Don’t misunderstand me—by conventional modern standards, many are “successful.” They chase high-earning careers that promise shiny toys, luxury homes, expensive cars, and attractive partners. Yet beneath the surface, their relationships are often dysfunctional, their own children seem headed for the same void, and real contentment is rare. Yes, therapists mostly see the troubled ones, so I can’t claim a perfect sample. Still, I witness the same pattern in my personal life, on social media, in films and television, and in the broader culture. It’s everywhere.

These young people fixate on making as much money as possible with the least effort, dressing in the finest clothes they can afford, acquiring the biggest house and flashiest car, and securing the most physically appealing partner available. Few show interest in the deeper workings of the world they inhabit—beyond having convenient targets for outrage (Trump, naturally, and nearly everything associated with him). Hobbies rarely extend beyond gym routines. Learning for its own sake, travel as genuine exploration, or any serious engagement with religion or spirituality for inner growth? Almost nonexistent. The conscious pursuit of meaning and purpose simply isn’t on the menu.

Are they happy? I don’t believe so. Some convince themselves they are, as long as the stream of instant material gratification keeps flowing. For brief intervals, the dopamine hits mimic happiness. But the feeling fades quickly, leaving them emptier than before.

How long can a culture sustain itself on such shallow soil? Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World offers a chilling blueprint. In that dystopia, society engineers happiness through genetic conditioning, consumerism, casual sex, and above all, the drug soma—a perfect pharmaceutical that delivers euphoria without hangover, physical dysfunction, or disruption. Soma doesn’t just numb pain; it erases any need for depth, reflection, or struggle. Citizens remain placid and productive precisely because they never confront discomfort, loss, or the big questions of existence. The “happiness” it provides is stable and endless—until the rare Savage from outside the system introduces real feeling, at which point the fragile illusion cracks. In our world, the modern equivalents of soma (endless scrolling, consumption, pharmaceuticals, and curated outrage) seem to work much the same way: they sustain a zombified equilibrium far longer than one might expect, precisely because they starve the soul of anything real.

That said, there are bright exceptions. Not every young person has been fully captured by the mold the prevailing agenda has cast. Many who pursue serious art or music operate from an entirely different paradigm—one that values creation, beauty, and inner exploration over external metrics. The same often holds for those drawn to skilled craftsmanship, deep philosophical inquiry, genuine community service rooted in compassion, or any disciplined spiritual path that demands self-confrontation. And then there are those rare souls who, for whatever mysterious reason, simply never swallowed the poison—perhaps protected by family, temperament, or sheer stubborn grace.

Still, the trend is unmistakable and accelerating. A society that loses depth in its young eventually loses its future. Without purpose, passion, and the willingness to wrestle with meaning, we drift toward a Huxleyan stasis—comfortable, efficient, and profoundly hollow. The real question isn’t whether this loss is happening. It’s whether enough of us still remember what depth feels like, and whether we can model it fiercely enough for those coming after to recognize its absence—and begin, once again, to seek it.

Am I biased? Someone recently asked me that, and I replied, ‘Sure I am—we all are. But my strongest bias is for truth, not for any particular viewpoint.

Ha. That sounds pretty arrogant, doesn’t it? Yet it’s true. The real problem, however, lies in determining what is truth. And how does one typically arrive at it? Usually through one of two primary channels: empirical evidence or external information. Both come with complications. There is, I suppose, a third way—intuitive knowing—but that path is even trickier.

Let’s begin with intuitive knowing. I place a great deal of trust in this form of truth-seeking. It often serves as the first subtle twinge that something I’m being told doesn’t quite ring true. I frequently draw support from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay Self-Reliance, which champions trusting one’s inner compass (see my article on that piece if you’re interested).

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I was recently watching a James Corbett episode of New World Next Week, and one story caught my eye about some weird nonsense they were calling “The Trillion Gene Atlas.” This is a colossal 2026 initiative by Basecamp Research, in partnership with Anthropic (creators of the Claude AI), Ultima Genomics, PacBio, and powered by NVIDIA infrastructure. It aims to sequence genomic data from over 100 million species worldwide, expanding known evolutionary genetic diversity by a factor of 100 and amassing a trillion-gene scale dataset. The goal? Train massive “biological language models” on DNA as a programmable code to accelerate AI-designed therapeutics and “evolutionary pattern recognition” for on-demand medicine engineering. In other words, turning the entire biosphere into a giant training corpus for the next leap in technocratic god-play.

What?

As my head spins, I realize how utterly, inconceivably complicated the world has become. There was a time, not that long ago, when a reasonably intelligent person could at least comprehend most of what was going on around them. Sure, there have always been depths of knowledge only a select few could successfully navigate, but even if the shoe cobbler did not know exactly how to wield the blacksmith’s hammer, he could comprehend what his skill was and how it manipulated metal. That time is long gone.

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So, fellow shrews, tell me if I am crazy. What I am seeing makes no sense, and I am curious to know if any of you see this as well.

A colleague—one I have helped quite a bit in their career—took me out to dinner the other night. We went to a Canadian favourite, “The Keg,” which is a typical medium-to-high-end steakhouse chain. After a nice filet, a drink, salad, and dessert, the bill for two people landed at nearly $400. Four hundred dollars!! Good lord. And the place was packed. The lobby was so jammed with waiting steak consumers you could barely squeeze through.

“The Keg” is like yesterday’s “Bonanza Steak House” concerning its clientele. Not to sound like a snob (because I am including myself here), but most of my fellow diners were not part of the elite of Aurora. Sure, some had money—a few doctors, lawyers, and car-sale managers—but most were kids (anyone under thirty is a “kid” according to my old self), and the rest were just plain ol’ folks out for a steak and potato meal. The casual T-shirts, relaxed chatter, and easy laughter made it feel like just another Thursday night out, not some rare special occasion reserved for the wealthy. Maybe they all do this only once or twice a year, but I don’t think so. The energy in the room suggested this level of spending has become normalized for many, even as headlines scream about affordability crises.

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I remember a time in my long, eventful life when people were actually curious. Hardliners still existed, of course—quick to dismiss anything without ironclad proof—but it didn’t take divine intervention to get folks to at least peek at things from a different angle. People back then seemed more willing to entertain contrary evidence. If a long-standing belief came under fire, they might grumble or roll their eyes, but they’d often give it a fair hearing: read the piece, watch the film, or at least argue about it over dinner without immediately branding the conveyor of such contrariness a dangerous crank.

Take The Word as a prime example of different attitudes when I was a teenager. Irving Wallace’s 1972 novel (turned into a compelling 1978 CBS miniseries starring David Janssen) centers on the discovery of an ancient manuscript—an alleged lost gospel written by Jesus’ own brother James. This “Resurrection Two” document supposedly reveals previously unknown details about Christ’s life and challenges core pillars of the New Testament. A slick PR executive is hired to promote it as the foundation for a revolutionary new Bible, only to find himself caught in a whirlwind of controversy, institutional panic, and personal crisis of faith.

The story runs on the implicit assumption that if this evidence surfaced and held water, it could genuinely shake the foundations of Christianity—sparking worldwide debate, forcing institutions to adapt or crumble, and compelling millions to rethink what they held sacred. Viewers and readers in that era were invited to feel the gravity: “What if this is real? What if the truth actually got out?” Enough people still possessed the intellectual humility, or plain old curiosity, to at least entertain the possibility. They might not swallow it whole, but they’d engage. They’d debate. They’d wonder. Today, they wouldn’t even consider it.

That same spirit animated plenty of other stories from the era. In Capricorn One (1977), a faked Mars landing is exposed, revealing government and NASA collusion to maintain the illusion. The film bets that if the public saw the staged footage, the threats, and the human cost, trust in official narratives would erode and demand accountability. The China Syndrome (1979) dramatizes a corporate and regulatory cover-up of a nuclear plant near-meltdown; the clear message was that compelling evidence of wrongdoing would force real change. Even real-world parallels like All the President’s Men (1976) operated on the same faith in public curiosity—Watergate wasn’t just scandal; it was proof that persistent digging could topple a presidency because enough citizens still cared enough to pay attention.

You could go further back with allegories like Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) or The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), where hidden forces erode humanity or exert control from within. The unspoken pact with the audience was always: “If only people knew—if they saw the pods, heard the warnings, grasped the manipulation—they’d wake up and resist.” Filmmakers and authors bet on curiosity as a spark. They believed (or at least hoped) that truth, backed by evidence, had the power to shift minds, challenge power, and alter the course of events.

I’m not saying everyone back in the ‘70s or ‘80s was a wide-eyed truth-seeker. Remember the famous “Bat Boy”? That grotesque, pointy-eared, fanged half-human, half-bat creature “discovered” in a West Virginia cave and splashed across the front page of the Weekly World News in 1992? The tabloid ran with the story for years—Bat Boy escaping, being captured, helping the government, running for president, you name it. It became a pop-culture phenomenon, selling nearly a million copies on its debut and inspiring an Off-Broadway musical and Halloween masks. Or the endless Bigfoot sightings in the Pacific Northwest and the blurry photos of the Loch Ness Monster gliding through Scottish waters. Most people saw the untruths (or at least the exaggerations) in most of these tales—although even today, I believe there could be a kernel of truth in some of them! Plenty clung to their certainties then, too. But there was breathing room. A willingness to at least look. “Bat Boy” and Bigfoot were very popular! People did question, they were sometimes awestruck, and most were genuinely curious. They might chuckle at the absurdity while still wondering, “What if . . . ?”

Today, that space has collapsed. The machine doesn’t need to hide the evidence as desperately—it just needs to ensure that when it surfaces, no one bothers to examine it. Truth could slap people square in the face—complete with documents, whistleblowers, leaked data, and irrefutable patterns—and the response is often a shrug, a scoff, or an immediate pivot to the approved narrative. “That’s just conspiracy stuff.” “Misinformation.” “I trust the experts.” The curiosity that once fueled debate has been replaced by a reflexive dismissal. Evidence? Brushed off. Contradictory studies? Ignored or memory-holed. Personal testimony from those who’ve seen behind the curtain? Dismissed as anecdotal or tainted.

Why the shift? Part of it is the slow boil we’ve all been simmering in—the normalization of control, the weaponization of “trust the science” into dogma, the flood of information that paradoxically makes real inquiry feel futile. But deeper down, it’s a death of wonder. When curiosity dies, the agenda thrives. No need for heavy-handed censorship when people police their own thoughts and label anything uncomfortable as dangerous. The shrew’s piercing gaze gets called paranoia; the sheep’s blind graze gets called prudence.

Curiosity, it turns out, is lethal to the agenda. Because without it, even the most explosive truths will fizzle out, unnoticed, while the pot keeps boiling.

Obviously, this is all a huge problem. It is deeper than you think as well. The death of curiosity is fundamentally the death of the human in material form—without it, there isn’t much point in being a human. Everything dies then: creativity dies, all genuine advancements in technology and medicine die (which may not be a bad idea in our current technocratic fever dream), even love dies. Certainly meaning and purpose die. We would be living a life of dull, compliant repetition—breathing, consuming, obeying, and slowly dissolving into the gray uniformity of a managed existence, more automaton than soul.

From the agenda’s point of view there couldn’t be anything better. Without curiosity, we fall straight into the hands of the evil doers. If we question nothing, we become perfect livestock: docile, predictable, and endlessly exploitable. No awkward rebellions, no dangerous “what ifs,” no inconvenient searches for truth. Just obedient sheep grazing contentedly while the shepherds lead us exactly where they want—toward whatever shiny new control grid or biosecurity utopia they’ve cooked up next.

Our only real weapon against this slow-motion burial of the human spirit is to keep that spark alive in ourselves and, wherever possible, fan it in others. Poke, prod, question, wonder—even when it feels futile. Because once curiosity is truly extinct, the game is over.

Stay curious. It’s the last truly subversive act we have left.

Can you say “drone warfare”? That’s really all you need to know to grasp where this is headed. The final goal seems clear: no more sending a single human into harm’s way. Any war will be conducted from the comfort of a La-Z-Boy lounge chair, complete with a beer holder and a little TV tray for the pizza.

All this hyper-advanced war technology reminds me of an old Star Trek episode from the late 1960s titled “A Taste of Armageddon.” In the episode, the crew of the Enterprise visits the planet Eminiar VII, which has been locked in a 500-year war with its neighbor Vendikar. Rather than engaging in messy, destructive battles that would ruin their civilizations, the two planets fight entirely through computer simulation. Attacks are calculated, casualties are tallied by algorithm, and then—according to a cold treaty—the “losing” side’s designated citizens must voluntarily report to disintegration chambers to be painlessly executed. The deaths are real, but the horror is sanitized and kept at arm’s length. No blood, no rubble, no screaming on the battlefield—just efficient numbers on a screen and quiet compliance.

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I was having a recent conversation with a fellow shrew about a friend of theirs who was having difficulty with a very basic employment situation. Most of you—especially the Canucks among you—are aware of the issues regarding our Tim Hortons employment here in Canada.

Tim Hortons is Canada’s iconic coffee and doughnut chain, a cultural staple known for its double-doubles, Timbits, and drive-thru culture. In recent years, the company and many of its franchisees have faced sharp criticism for their heavy reliance on temporary foreign workers (TFW), particularly from India. Tim Hortons has lobbied the federal government to raise the cap on these workers from 20 percent to 30 percent for certain locations. The result has been growing resentment among Canadians who see entry-level service jobs—once filled by local students, young workers, and recent graduates—increasingly going to imported labour. Whether driven by genuine labour shortages or simple cost-cutting, the pattern has created language barriers, cultural cliques, and a widespread feeling that basic Canadian jobs are no longer meant for Canadians.

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Humans do not come out of the box in a group, with one of its kind the ruler over the others. There certainly is anthropological argument regarding tribes, groups of humans fending for each other and all that. Evolutionary biology and anthropology tell us our ancestors banded together for survival—safety in numbers against predators, cooperative hunting of big game that no lone wanderer could take down, sharing food and child-rearing duties so the group could thrive instead of merely scraping by. Small bands of twenty to fifty souls, nomadic, following the game and the seasons. It wasn’t about some grand hierarchy; it was practical. A singular human roaming the jungle or savanna was easy pickings—predators, starvation, isolation. But the group? That was insurance.

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Just when I thought it was safe to go back into the water, the ubiquitous shark of wokeism raises its ugly head. I’m using this as the first sentence mostly to be dramatic; it’s not entirely truthful.

First of all, I know damn well it will never be safe to go back into the water—at least not in my remaining lifetime. Second, my tentative toe-dip wasn’t consciously an escape from our turbulent times. Though I must admit, I didn’t expect what happened next.

The water I dipped into was the grand ocean of musical art—opera in particular. Most of you know I’m a trained musician; music was my first passion and remains a lifeline. To stay sane, I periodically (less often than I should) venture into pure musical ecstasy. For me, “musical” means the old stuff: Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Wagner, et al. Recently, I booked a seat at a Cineplex for the Met’s live HD stream of Wagner’s colossal classic, Tristan und Isolde.

This opera is a favourite for several reasons. First, it’s Wagner—one of my top composers, not just for his music but for his profoundly Jungian, archetypal approach to myth and the psyche. Second, Tristan und Isolde itself is a deep dive into one of my best-loved archetypal themes: anima projection! In fact, it’s probably the most prominent and accurate artistic presentation of this subject in all of opera. Robert Johnson, the renowned Jungian scholar and author, wrote a whole book (We) about this roughly 800–900-year-old medieval myth (in its written forms) that Wagner based his opera on.

Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde (premiered 1865) retells the core of this medieval romance with profound psychological depth, emphasizing the archetype of anima projection—that intense, unconscious projection of one’s inner feminine ideal (the anima, in Jungian terms) onto a real person, creating an overwhelming, almost mystical romantic obsession. Tristan, the heroic Cornish knight, has slain Morold, the Irish champion and Isolde’s betrothed, in single combat to end Ireland’s tribute demands on Cornwall. Mortally wounded himself in the fight, Tristan disguises his identity as “Tantris” and sails to Ireland, seeking the famed healing arts of Isolde, daughter of the Irish king. She nurses him back from the brink, only to discover—through the matching sword fragment—that he is the killer of her fiancé. In a pivotal moment, she raises his sword to slay him but spares his life when their eyes meet, allowing him to depart with his promise not to return.

Later, Tristan returns—not to keep her for himself, but to claim Isolde as bride for his uncle, King Marke, in a political match that humiliates her further and dishonours the mercy she once showed him. This betrayal, layered atop the death of Morold and the shame of having healed her enemy, ignites Isolde’s burning hatred and sense of wounded pride as she is transported across the sea to wed the aging king.

Aboard the ship to Cornwall, a fateful mix-up occurs: Isolde’s confidante Brangäne substitutes a love potion for the death potion Isolde intended them both to drink in despair. The elixir ignites an all-consuming passion between Tristan and Isolde—an ecstatic, forbidden love that overrides duty, honour, and reason. This is no ordinary romance; it is the anima unleashed in its most destructive form. Tristan projects onto Isolde his longing for wholeness, transcendence, and escape from the daylight world of social obligations and ego-bound existence. Isolde, in turn, sees in Tristan the animus figure who completes her, drawing her into a realm beyond ordinary life. Their love becomes a totalizing force: day (the world of convention, King Marke, marriage, continuity) is the enemy; night (the realm of passion, dissolution, and mystical union) is the only truth.

The tragedy unfolds inexorably. Their affair is discovered, leading to betrayal, exile, and mortal wounds. In the final act, Tristan, dying from a lance blow, awaits Isolde in delirium. When she arrives, she sings the sublime “Liebestod” (“love-death”), dissolving her individuality into the “world-breath” in ecstatic annihilation. There is no reconciliation in life, no progeny, no legacy—only complete surrender of the ego, body, and all material ties. Wagner’s vision refuses partial fulfillments or sentimental redemption; the soul’s quest ends in utter dissolution into the numinous oneness, where love and death become indistinguishable. This is the radical, unsparing core: projective love destroys everything in its path, demanding total annihilation rather than any softening compromise with the world.

What a story.

This kind of all-consuming passion rarely plays out in its absolute entirety in real life, but it certainly flares up partially in countless relationships. Look at other famous renditions of such unions: Romeo and Juliet, Antony and Cleopatra, Lancelot and Guinevere, Heathcliff and Catherine in Wuthering Heights, and Paolo and Francesca from Dante’s Inferno.

Humans have repeatedly wrestled with this archetype in their desperate effort to meld with the divine through another person. That is what this kind of love truly is—at its core and in its feeling. When it is allowed to reach its full conclusion, as Wagner does so uncompromisingly in Tristan und Isolde, it demands a complete departure from the earthly world. Everything material is consumed in the fires of love: other relationships, other allegiances, careers, ambitions, possessions, even one’s own ego and individual identity—everything.

In real life, most of us pull back from the abyss long before reaching this total annihilation. The ego is a stubborn survivor. Society, family obligations, fear of complete psychological dissolution, and the sheer demands of daily existence all act as powerful brakes. We compromise. We soften the projection. We settle for manageable affection, domestic comfort, or even the quiet comfort of children and legacy—the very things Wagner refuses to allow his lovers. We do this because the full Tristan path is terrifying: it is not just romantic love, it is ego-death. Most humans have tasted at least a shadow of this intensity—the overwhelming projection, the sense that this one person holds the key to transcendence—and most have had to contend with the painful necessity of pulling back from the edge.

This is precisely why Tristan und Isolde is such a powerful symbol. It takes the anima projection to its most extreme, logical, and honest conclusion. Wagner does not flinch. There is no softening, no redemption through progeny, no “life goes on” consolation. The “Liebestod” offers only ecstatic dissolution into the world-breath. In doing so, the opera holds up a mirror to the terrifying beauty of what this love actually wants: not happiness, not continuity, but total surrender. It is pure genius how this is conveyed in Wagner’s creation.

Then the woke-shark raises its ugly head.

This Met production—a new staging by visionary director Yuval Sharon, premiered March 9, 2026, with the formidable Lise Davidsen as Isolde—decided to “update” Wagner’s masterpiece for our wonderful, fully safe, fully sanitized, modern woke world by making Isolde pregnant.

You read that right. Pregnant.

After all that buildup, all that annihilation of ego and world, Isolde enters the final scene (Tristan already dead or dying at her feet) visibly carrying a child in her womb. They didn’t dare rewrite the libretto to justify this narrative-busting addition—no lines about conception or gestation—but the visual was unmistakable. She even gives birth onstage, right beside Tristan’s body. Brangäne lovingly tends to the newborn while Isolde sings the Liebestod—whose meaning is now twisted into something entirely different. After her ecstatic dissolution into the “world-breath,” the non-world, Brangäne hands the infant to King Marke, who gently kisses its forehead as the curtain closes.

Unbelievable.

I nearly stood up in my Cineplex seat and booed the screen. How could they get this so catastrophically wrong? And why?

All I could think was this: our woke-era agenda demands that everything remain safe, antiseptic, and affirmational. No raw suffering, no unmitigated tragedy, no silence after the fire has burned everything to ash. The producers and director—intentionally, as Sharon has explained—frame the opera as a meditation on cycles of death and rebirth. The central tunnel set doubles as a near-death experience and a birth canal. The pregnancy and onstage birth transform the ending from Wagner’s grim, uncompromising finality into an “ecstatic mystery of renewal.” Love destroys, yes—but look, there’s a baby! Life goes on, continuity is assured, everything is redeemed through procreation. Sounds like a nice idea, eh? But it is uptopic in this context, and thus dystopic.

This is the precise inversion of the opera’s spiritual core. Wagner’s Liebestod is a vision of total annihilation: Isolde dissolves every material tie—body, ego, individuality, future, progeny—surrendering utterly to the numinous oneness. The myth and the music refuse partial fulfillments, the sentimental cushions most people clutch to soften the ache of impossible love: sex, family, children, legacy. The soul’s quest ends in complete refusal of the material world, not its affirmation. There is no “hope” here, no renewal. There is only terrifying beauty in the void.

By inserting a superfluous infant and turning the Liebestod into a “life goes on” moment, this production domesticates the archetype. It offers emotional safety instead of the soul-shattering surrender Wagner demands. It reflects the broader cultural refusal to face unsoftened tragedy. This is wokeism at its most insidious: not overt politics, but the quiet tearing down of the past, the watering down of profound human truths, the sanitizing of suffering and the human condition itself. We cannot bear the archetype’s demand for total dissolution, so we slap a bow of regeneration on it and call it progress.

This isn’t a misunderstanding. It’s a deliberate rejection of the tragic design. And in a world already drowning in nonsense, it’s one more veil we must continue efforts to pierce.

What enrages me most is not the artistic choice itself—it’s what it reveals about our era’s cowardice. This is the same evasion I see daily in therapy: clients who refuse the slightest discomfort, who won’t look squarely at the tragedy buried in their unconscious, who flee pain rather than feel it long enough to heal. They want transformation without sacrifice, wholeness without shadow.

Wagner’s opera refuses that lie. Its genius lies in showing love as the moth driven inexorably to the flame—what must we annihilate, what must we give up entirely, to be engulfed by love’s full fire? The ego, the future, continuity itself—all consumed. Throwing in a baby at the opera’s final moments ruins that unflinching truth. It doesn’t symbolize hope; it symbolizes denial. “Don’t look too closely at the abyss—see, here’s a baby, all is redeemed, life goes on nicely.”

We don’t have to abandon hope. But real hope begins only when we stop pretending life is all beauty and perfection. Truthful life has shadow, sacrifice, unbearable pain—and that’s not a flaw to fix; it’s the human condition to face. The original opera doesn’t end happily, and that’s precisely why it’s profound. Learn from it. Honour the tragedy. Let the music burn away the illusions. No Disney ending needed—just the courage to sit with the ashes and embrace what remains.

I gotta admit, I miss the good ol’ days when every time you turned around something bad—or at least something deliciously, ridiculously obvious—was happening. Every other person you ran into (or more!) was masked up tighter than a bank robber, dutifully following the arrows plastered to the grocery store floors like good little trained seals, and proudly sporting those smug little badges proclaiming what superior humans they were for lining up for the latest booster.

I miss the days when people were blathering away on Facebook about how the unvaccinated were murderous grandma-killers who should be denied medical care, how ivermectin was nothing but toxic horse paste peddled by dangerous quacks, or how each new jab transformed them into caped crusaders single-handedly saving humanity. “Two weeks to flatten the curve” morphed into never-ending sermons of “safe and effective,” with any heretic who questioned it instantly branded a science-denying domestic terrorist.

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I’m not going to name names here because I really don’t want to offend anyone or get myself into hot water, but I know someone rather well who is a classic “know-it-all.” Now, we all know such people, so this isn’t going to be news to you. I remember my first encounter with one of these types. It was back in university, and I was in the middle of a rehearsal for one of my compositions. We were on the rehearsal stage, and my musicians were playing through the first movement of a chamber piece using a rather strange combo of instruments (a flute, an English horn, and a bass clarinet). From the wings of the stage, after we’d run through a particularly tricky passage, I heard an excited voice yell out, “That’s supposed to be a Bb in the English horn! She played a B natural!” Everyone in the group turned in bewilderment. Who the hell was that, and why was this any of his business? And how did he know what pitch the English horn was supposed to be playing? (I never did figure that out.)

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I was a ham radio operator when I was a kid. I was really into it, but never had enough dough to really do it right. I’ve played with the idea of getting back into it now that I’ve got a few nickels to rub together, but don’t seem to have the time. I often wonder if now there is a true need for us shrews to create some way of communicating if the world really does go up in flames.

I wrote an article a while back (you can check it out here) where I suggested this idea of shrews brushing up on their morse code and creating some kind of shrew radio network. It might be worth the trouble. In that piece, I dove into the basics: how amateur radio, or “ham” as we call it, could be a lifeline for critical thinkers like us in a blackout scenario. I talked about low-power setups, antennas you can hide in your backyard, and why Morse code is the shrew’s best friend—simple, efficient, and hard to jam. Some of it holds up fine, but let’s update a few bits. For instance, I mentioned concerns about big-money players like George Soros snapping up radio stations (real ones, not amateur) to control narratives. Well, that’s not outdated; it’s only deepened.

Back in 2024, Soros Fund Management scooped up over $400 million of Audacy’s debt on the cheap, paving the way for effective control of the second-largest U.S. radio broadcaster—hundreds of stations reaching over 165 million listeners in major markets. The FCC green-lit the bankruptcy restructuring and license transfers late that year, handing the reins to Soros-affiliated entities despite fierce pushback from Republican commissioners and Congress over potential foreign influence and a suspiciously expedited “shortcut” process.

Fast-forward to 2026, and Audacy’s still operating under that shadow—Soros-linked control holds firm, even as probes linger, foreign ownership tweaks get made, and the company trims podcast sides while expanding other deals. It’s a stark reminder that even traditional broadcast airwaves aren’t immune to agenda-driven consolidation. If the mainstream frequencies keep getting co-opted, us independent shrews might need our own frequencies more than ever.

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What compels us to believe something is true? In an age where photographs can be fabricated, film can be manipulated, and speeches are crafted to deceive, our traditional markers of truth have lost their footing. So, the question becomes: what do you look to as your measure of what is real?

I recently came across a post claiming that the newly released Epstein files prove Donald Trump is a pedophile. It presented what appeared to be a detailed set of documents, emails, perhaps, describing an encounter between Trump and a thirteen-year-old girl allegedly brought to his hotel by Jeffrey Epstein himself. I’ll admit I only skimmed it. Reading anything on Facebook demands serious vetting, at least for me. But as I scrolled through, I couldn’t help thinking of the Trump haters who would devour it without a second thought, because when it comes to belief, bias often does the heavy lifting.

And I’m not exempt from that. I catch myself gravitating toward reports that frame certain Trump decisions as sound or even shrewd—not necessarily out of admiration for the man, but out of something more like desperate optimism. Call it hopium, if you must. I simply want something, anything, to be going right out there. So, when a report suggests that a particular move was intelligent or calculated, I feel a wave of relief, and I tend to believe it. Though not always. I do make a habit of looking for corroborating sources before I fully buy in.

What can we actually believe? Am I dismissing the pedophile story simply because believing it would force me to despise Trump? And am I accepting the more flattering accounts of his decision-making for reasons that are purely emotional, dressed up as logic? Or is it genuine common sense telling me one story is implausible and the other more grounded? The trouble is, I’m fairly certain the people who believe the pedophile story, the Trump haters, are equally convinced they’re applying common sense. So, whose common sense is more reliable, and by what measure? Nobody can answer that clearly.

And this is where we find ourselves in an AI-infested world: our old tools for sorting truth from fiction have been quietly retired. There was a time when the information we encountered came from sources that had earned at least a baseline of trust. Journalism once operated by a strict code, no story ran without multiple corroborating sources, on-record confirmation, editorial oversight, and a clear chain of verification. Photographs were considered credible. Film was considered ironclad, nearly impossible to fabricate in any convincing way. Those days are gone.

Mainstream news has largely squandered whatever credibility it once held. And AI has finished off the rest. Any image of any person, doing or saying anything imaginable, can now be generated on demand. Which brings me to something else I recently came across: a photograph of Bill Clinton in a dress and tiara, bent over a table, surrounded by people doing things I won’t describe in detail lest I am accused of pornography. Real? A few years ago I would have said almost certainly not. Now, genuinely, I’m not sure. And that uncertainty is the point, because there are people who looked at that same image and said, “obviously true, it fits everything I know about him,” while an equal number said, “absurd, I refuse to believe that about Bill Clinton.” Both camps decided instantly, and neither questioned themselves for a moment. That is a deeply troubling place for a society to be.

So, then, what actually makes something believable? Is it purely bias, a narrative we’ve already committed to, which determines in advance what “the impossible” looks like? Or is there still a role for common sense, the instinct that rejects certain conclusions simply because the world, however dark, cannot be quite that broken?

I also recently watched a clip of Bill Maher doing something rather remarkable — walking back his long-held mockery of QAnon’s claims about elite-level child trafficking and pedophilia. Maher, who spent years dismissing those claims as paranoid fantasy, acknowledged that the evidence of systemic child sexual abuse among powerful people is real enough that he can no longer laugh it off. He has come, reluctantly, to believe it. And yet, in nearly the same breath, he drew a firm line at cannibalism. Eating children, drinking their blood? No. That’s where Bill gets off the train.

But here’s what I find genuinely fascinating about that distinction: what, exactly, is the difference? If you’ve already accepted that powerful, celebrated, presumably sane individuals are systematically sexually abusing children—why does adding cannibalism to the picture suddenly strain credulity? At what point on that spectrum of depravity does the brain say, “too far”? And what does it tell us about the nature of belief itself that the line exists at all?

And that, perhaps, is the most honest answer any of us can offer. Belief has a ceiling, a point beyond which even the most committed mind refuses to go. That ceiling is different for every person, shaped by upbringing, experience, temperament, and yes, politics. What one person considers an obvious truth, another considers unhinged fantasy. And in an AI-manipulated world, nobody—not you, not me, not Bill Maher—has a reliable map anymore.

There is a concept worth mentioning here: confirmation bias. It isn’t new, and it isn’t unique to any particular tribe. The human brain is wired to seek out information that reinforces what it already suspects to be true, and to unconsciously discount what challenges it. We have always done this. But there was a time when the sheer scarcity of fabricated information acted as a natural brake on the process. You couldn’t just manufacture a convincing photograph, a credible document, or a realistic film clip. The effort required was enormous, and the sources producing information were finite enough to be monitored and challenged.

That brake no longer exists. The floodgates are open, and what pours through is an undifferentiated torrent of the real, the doctored, the partially true, the completely invented, and the strategically misleading, all formatted to look identical. Your Facebook feed does not distinguish between a Reuters dispatch and a basement fabrication. Your eyes cannot tell a genuine photograph from a generated one. And your gut, that old faithful compass, has been so thoroughly manipulated by years of targeted content that it may now be pointing in whatever direction an algorithm has decided is best for your engagement metrics.

So where does that leave us? It leaves us, I think, with only a handful of tools worth trusting, and none of them are passive. The first is ruthless sourcing, not just checking where a story comes from, but asking who benefits from you believing it, and why it is appearing in front of you right now. The second is a tolerance for uncertainty, which is the willingness to say “I don’t know yet” rather than filling the gap with whatever feels satisfying. The third, and perhaps the hardest, is self-suspicion. The moment a story feels deeply gratifying, the moment it perfectly confirms your worst fears about your political enemies or your most hopeful fantasies about your allies, that is precisely the moment to slow down.

I started this with a simple question: what compels us to believe something is true? I don’t have a clean answer. Nobody does anymore. But I do know this: the people most confidently certain of what is real right now are almost certainly the most lost. The rest of us, stumbling through the fog with our skepticism intact and our certainty appropriately rattled, may be the closest thing left to clear-eyed.

Believe carefully. That’s the best any of us can do.

📢 Attention Shrew Views family — if you haven’t grabbed your copy of The View of the Shrew yet, NOW is the time!

The book is available right now on Amazon — links for both the US and Canadian stores are below. And here’s my strong recommendation: go for the paperback. A physical copy is yours forever — no one can reach into your hands and take it back. (Unlike Kindle, where a Whispernet deletion notice can make your ebook disappear overnight — it’s happened before!)

For those of you who’ve already picked up a copy — ebook or paperback — please take a moment to leave a review. It makes an enormous difference. More reviews mean more visibility, and more visibility means more readers discovering a book I truly believe matters.

This community means the world to me. Let’s keep standing together — and let’s get this book into as many hands as possible! 💪

How much of what you believe is truly yours—and how much has been shaped for you? Narratives are manipulated daily, bending truth into stories designed to control. The Voice of the Shrew is a rallying cry for those who dare to question the mainstream and reclaim their power of thought. Don’t let silence or conformity define you—arm yourself with ideas that matter.

Ebook on Amazon.ca

Ebook on Amazon.com

Hey Dear Shrews!

I did another interview last week with my pal Jeremy Nell of Jerm Warfare. This one is about a lot of different things! This interview can be found here:

UK Column. Jerm Warfare.

On the very popular show UK Column!!

BE SURE TO CHECK IT OUT!!!

Todd

Let me, for a moment, join all of you Trump haters. Well, no, I won’t call you “Trump haters” because that’s not really who I am addressing here. “Trump haters” are different from the folks (shrews, no less) who have analyzed the Trump situation very carefully, intelligently, and critically, and have concluded that he is clearly part of the New World Order and Deep State. Not that he is the sole cause of the world’s collapse, but he has been put into place to facilitate it.

As you all know, I have sat on the fence regarding Donnie. Most people probably think I adore him. I don’t. But I certainly did believe he could have been all that he has claimed to be. There are many people out there I admire greatly who stand by Trump and support him staunchly. Yes, I did want to be one of those people, so I told myself I would not seriously bash Trump as long as I saw things he was doing that made at least some sense to me.

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Gee, that’s a good question. Once again, I’m dividing “us peons” into two distinct groups, because what each believes is best for them appears radically different—even though, deep down, their genuine needs are almost certainly the same.

You already know the labels: sheep and shrews. If anyone finds them offensive, tough. I used to feel a twinge of guilt calling people sheep. Not anymore. Most of them have been openly hostile toward me and my fellow shrews, so any lingering remorse using the descriptive label has evaporated. That doesn’t mean I wish them harm—I don’t. Some of my dearest friends are sheep, and I love them still. But I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore.

The sheep’s willful blindness, their automatic herd conformity, is the single biggest reason we’re in this mess. I’m done apologizing for the word. If the shoe fits, wear it. Buckle up, buttercup.

Whew.

Now that that’s out of the way . . . let’s start investigating what is best for us. Ultimately, I suspect both groups would agree on the essentials. After all, we’re all human (I’m speaking only of the peons here, not the ones holding the whip). We all certainly want to feel safe, within reason, we want to be happy, within reason; we want to be creative and in control, within reason, we don’t want to suffer, within reason. And we want to feel we have meaning and purpose in our lives, within reason.

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