This article was written by Brandon Smith and originally published at Birch Gold Group
There’s a lot of black-pilling Republicans out there this week after a handful of elections in the northeastern US led to “sweeping” Democrat victories in New York, New Jersey and Virginia. As is always the case whenever Republicans lose any race no matter how insignificant to the bigger picture, suddenly the sky is falling and doom is about to come crashing down on America for all eternity. The panic has become quite tiresome.
Keep in mind, the gloom is limited mostly to social media and is exacerbated by a few hundred conservative influencers. As usual, these people still don’t realize that the social media world is not the real world.
If you were shocked by someone like Zohran Mamdani winning the mayor’s race in New York for example, then you have not been paying any attention to what’s been happening in blue cities lately. I predicted that liberals would turn out in droves to vote for the guy back in July. In my article “Batman vs The Joker: Democrats Will Double Down On Chaos To Save Their Party”, I noted:
“Leftists in the US will rally around uncompromising socialists like Mamdani because they’re tired of pretending that they care about “democracy”, free markets, property rights, moral codes or freedom in general. They need an all encompassing vision, even if it’s a monstrous and dystopian one. And, they want leadership that is transparent and unapologetic in its psychopathic intent. They don’t want to play the role of humanitarians anymore – They want to take the mask off and taste the flavors of blood and power…”
It’s New York, folks. It’s one of the largest hives of far-left scum and villainy in the world and conservatives only make up 26% of the city’s population. OF COURSE Mamdani won. He represents everything the political left wants; a radical repudiation of western culture and free markets. Let’s not forget, these are the same people who celebrated the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
The same goes for New Jersey. In Virginia, the GOP decided to run a woman (Winsome Earle-Sears) who positioned herself as a “Never-Trumper” in 2022. She claimed that Trump was a liability for the Republican Party and that he should step aside. She then suddenly flipped in 2024 after Trump won again. OF COURSE she lost the race in Virginia. Conservatives have scruples about their candidates. They aren’t going to show up at the ballot box for someone who trashes their party leader and then jumps on the bandwagon at the last minute.
My point is, the hysteria going around social media over these “losses” is limited to a tiny bubble of people bouncing their ideas around in perpetuity. These few elections are in no way an indicator of America shifting far-left. They are, however, a reminder that our country is thoroughly divided on almost every issue and policy. Conservatives and progressives could not be more opposed in every way.
And, as I keep saying but I’m not sure if conservatives are hearing, it’s a reminder that leftists and Democrats are fighting A WAR while conservatives continue to play politics. The leftists are consolidating around communist figures and ideas of radical insurgency. Meanwhile GOP members and influencers are freaking out about “how to get more college-age white women in NYC” to vote for them. It’s pure stupidity.
I would like to use the EBT/SNAP debate as a model for this divide because I think it’s revealing. Food subsidies are the epitome of socialism and the growing dependency on government that they create cannot be denied. Over 42 million Americans are now collecting SNAP; that’s 12.5% of the population. When the program first started in the late 1960s (on a national level), only 1.4% of the population qualified.
When SNAP was created it was promoted as a stop gap, a temporary safety net for people out of work and looking for employment. The primary focus of welfare benefits was supposed to be the disabled and the elderly, not able bodied working-age people (who now make up 80% of SNAP recipients). The program was a helping hand and then it became a crutch or a trap.
Right now the government shutdown is up in the air and emergency funds will do little to keep food subsidies running. The crux of the shutdown is the debate over healthcare benefits (more socialism) going to illegal immigrants (at least 1.8 million illegal migrants collected ACA in 2024). Only 5 Senate Democrats are need to vote for a clean funding bill, but they have refused 14 times.
As I have been warning for the past couple months, the Democrats are hoping for food riots that can be blamed on Trump and conservatives. Another few weeks and yes, this could happen in some major cities where Democrats refuse to enforce property theft laws. The Democrat message is this: “We will use mob violence and chaos to FORCE you to give us what we want. Even if you win elections, we are in control…”
It’s political extortion. Give them what they want and they will only continue to mobilize angry mobs over and over again to exert leverage over government decisions.
But what will the result be? Corporate chains and grocers will inevitably close up shop and those cities will become permanent food deserts. Leftists can’t force retailers to stay open, stock shelves and put employees at risk. Food riots will not have the effect that Democrats are hoping for. Businesses will leave these cities. Smart people will leave these cities. And the Democrat politicians still running the cities will be targeted by the same criminal mobs they have allied with.
There are certainly a number of people out there that are in actual need. I would never hold it against someone if they turned to a government program for support when life goes wrong. If they’re trying to rebuild and get a job and they need a short term boost, that’s okay. I prefer charity be private and personal rather than government enforced, but I grew up dirt poor; I know people will take whatever help they can get and usually they don’t care if it comes from the government.
The problem arises when welfare becomes a social mainstay, or an expectation. The level of entitlement surrounding SNAP is truly incredible. The number of people taking to the internet to call for blood because “Trump is stealing their SNAP” is disturbing. It’s the same thing that always happens with socialist projects – They draw support because they start small and innocuous. Then, they turn into an expensive society draining monstrosity that the populace is addicted to.
A number of commentators have been ringing warning bells about potential food riots, but I would like to point out some positives if cuts to SNAP continue.
First, the program was never supposed to become as large and costly as it is today. Reducing it to people who are truly in need (disabled, elderly and short term jobless) would help to reduce government spending which helps to reduce national debt and inflation.
Second, with 42 million people on food subsidies, grocery retailers are collecting billions in taxpayer dollars through artificially created demand. This demand eats up supply and, in turn, helps to drive up food prices. Cutting down SNAP would lead to a reduction in grocery traffic and deflation in prices for everyone.
Third, if labor shortages are persisting as the BLS claims, then able bodied people living on SNAP for years will now be forced to go back to work, filling the labor pool and solving the shortage problem. All the talk of migrant deportations leaving industries without workers? That goes away.
Free stuff is not free stuff. There is always a terrible price to be paid for government subsidized living. There are only two kinds of people that support long term welfare for the able bodied – Entitled people who are lazy and don’t want to work for what they have, and the politicians that want those people to vote for them.
Zohran Mamdani won in New York in part because of his many promises of socialist handouts, from government run grocery stores with cheap food to a rent freeze to free public transportation and subsidies for minorities and low income residents. Mamdani is growing a “free stuff army” and the only way he can fund these programs is through overt taxation; he has admitted this.
He claims rich individuals and corporations will pay the heft of the bill, but we’ve seen similar attempts in cities like Seattle and San Francisco. They all end the same way – With wealthy residents leaving the city by the thousands and taking their businesses with them. The socialist politicians are then left with only middle-class taxpayers who then bear the pain of funding those programs.
The goal of the far-left is to make everyone equal: Everyone becomes equally poor. Meanwhile the wealthy have the ability to simply leave and go to economies where they are more appreciated. Socialism and communism lead to a larger wealth gap, not a smaller wealth gap.
Mamdani will likely attempt a capital flight tax, which will not work. Businesses and money will rush out of New York like blood from an arterial wound. The rent freeze will push many property owners to stop leasing or sell, which will result in a shrinking rental market for the poor and middle class. Within 2-3 years the metropolis will be an economic wasteland.
Socialism only works when you can force everyone to participate in the scam, and even then it still ends with a far lower standard of living for most people. The only places where this doesn’t happen are highly homogeneous countries with small populations and vast natural resources. In every other case, progressive economic policies encourage dependency and then trigger disaster.
Is America facing food riots if the shutdown continues? Probably. In limited pockets of the country certainly, but mostly in places where Democrats are already running the economy into the ground. In other words, people who vote far left will suffer the most. The riots will take place in their backyards.
Is the increasing radicalism of the left a sign that the US will descend into full bore communism? Is Mamdani just the beginning?
No, that’s not going to happen. Even if GOP fears over the mid-terms turn out to be accurate, elections are not the only determinant of the direction of a nation. Millions of conservatives and patriots are not going to allow widespread communism/globalism to take hold. We’ve already got a taste of that under the Biden Administration. We’ve also seen many progressives brag about how they plan to take revenge on us (for winning in 2024) once they get back into power.
Conservatives need to STOP constantly worrying about the next election and start considering what needs to be done now. They need to stop playing politics and start defending themselves against the insurgency that is targeting them. Many of us are prepared to fight an internal war before we become a punching bag for the political left (there will never be another covid shutdown, for example). And if a war happens, the left will lose.
Let’s hope violence isn’t necessary. Let’s hope that a political solution is possible, but let’s prepare accordingly anyway. The only way war can be avoided is if the political left changes their ways and stops poking the bear. Who actually thinks they will change?
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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.