Years before he ran for office, Donald Trump cultivated a style of speaking that was brash, blunt, and (in his opinion) totally honest. “I tell it like it is,” Trump said repeatedly on the campaign trail in 2016, breathing new life into a slogan used by politicians dating back to Richard Nixon, and hinting at a powerful rhetorical mode first described by the ancient Greeks.
In The Constitution of Athens, Aristotle tells a story of the tyrannical ruler Pisistratus, who went into the countryside to observe the farms upon which he imposed taxes. Seeing a farmer working a dry piece of ground, Pisistratus approached the man to ask what the land produced for him. Not recognizing Pisistratus, the man replied: “Aches and pains! And that’s what Pisistratus ought to have his tenth of!” As king, Pisistratus had the prerogative to kill the farmer on the spot, but he was so impressed with the man’s frank speech – his parrhesia – that he exempted the farm from taxation.
Since the beginning of Trump’s political career, nothing has bothered the establishment more than the way he speaks, and what he says. Whether the criticism is valid is irrelevant because Trump’s parrhesiastic style of speaking helped put him in the Oval Office.
In a series of lectures titled Fearless Speech, leftist French philosopher Michel Foucault derives five criteria that must be met to classify speech as parrhesiastic:
- The statement must be completely frank – the speaker cannot hold anything back and must “say everything.”
- It must be the truth as the speaker understands it.
- It must be unadorned: It cannot obscure the meaning with rhetorical flourishes, implicit claims, or abstractions.
- It must be critical: It voices criticism of the audience and tells them things they don’t want to hear.
- Finally, in order to qualify as parrhesia, the speech must entail some risk for the speaker
Leftists have long celebrated those bold enough to “speak truth to power,” and this phrase is an apt encapsulation of the concept of parrhesia. But as the American Left consolidated its control of the country’s most powerful institutions, they have become increasingly intolerant of speaking truth to power – at least when the power is theirs.
Unlike Pisistratus, who rewarded the farmer’s bold honesty with a tax exemption, American elites are intolerant of any criticism of their rule. They silence it when they can, and punish it when they can’t. Their refusal to accept and respond to criticism is a powerful demonstration of their unfitness to rule: They see themselves as above criticism, and they see parrhesia as a threat to their power. Thus, the self-appointed defenders of “our democracy” show themselves to be the enemies of democratic deliberation. Attacking and intimidating critical voices eventually can cause people to stop criticizing – and that is the antithesis of democracy and democratic deliberation.
Over the last 15 years, the institutional Left has aggressively censored and destroyed their critics. As a result, many people – at least those with something to lose – have gone silent. For a long time, the establishment took the absence of criticism as a tacit endorsement of their governance. Then came Trump, who only spoke louder as the censures, attacks, and penalties grew.
When the Left claimed that Trump was an elitist billionaire out of touch with regular people, those close to him defended him as a man of the people. His children recalled how their father talked to the workers at construction sites. “One of the reasons he has thrived as an entrepreneur is because he listens to everyone,” Ivanka Trump said in her 2016 speech at the Republican convention. “Billionaire executives don’t usually ask the people doing the work for their opinion of the work. My father is an exception.” Many corporate and government executives use power to insulate themselves from both their customers and the workers who create their products. Trump is different, Ivanka said, because he wants to see for himself whether things are working the way he’s been told. In other words, Trump wants to know the truth, as did Pisistratus in Aristotle’s story.
There’s a practical reason behind this: A leader needs good information to make sound decisions.
In 2017, when his three- and four-star generals advised that the best way to end the war in Afghanistan was by sending more troops, Trump dismissed his generals and called for a meeting with lower-ranked combat veterans who had experienced the war firsthand. “I don’t want any generals in here. I don’t want any officers,” Trump said. “I’ve heard plenty of ideas from a lot of people but I want to hear it from people on the ground.” They told him we were losing the war; they said it was unlikely we would prevail. The parrhesia of the enlisted troops impressed Trump, so he scheduled another meeting. Later, huddling with senior military officers in the Situation Room, Trump channeled his own parrhesia, saying that the troops knew “a lot more than you generals.”
For 10 years, Trump has built his political career upon frank, unadorned criticism of the institutional power base in this country and abroad. And although he occupies the most important position in the world, it would be a mistake to say that his parrhesia risks nothing. The entrenched power structure weaponized intelligence agencies against him, impeached him twice, unleashed personal attacks, exacted onerous legal penalties, barred placement of his name on state ballots, and, ultimately, tried to kill him. It’s not because he’s a boor; he’s always been one. It’s not because he’s rich; many wealthier people elude such persecution. It’s not because of his fame; those who seek to destroy Trump love celebrity. It’s because of his speech – what he says and how he says it. Trump doesn’t hold back. His critique of the system is plain, succinct, and brutal.
And that is what the establishment can’t stand.
Adam Ellwanger is a professor at University of Houston – Downtown, where he teaches rhetoric and writing. Follow him at @1HereticalTruth on X.
John J. Waters is a lawyer. He served as a deputy assistant secretary of Homeland Security from 2020-21. Follow him at @JohnJWaters1 on X.
Bypass Big Tech Censors
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
