America and China: Enemies Who Cannot Afford a Divorce

 

America and China are pointing economic guns at each other—forgetting that pulling the trigger could blow holes through both economies. In plain terms, America has the chips. China has the rare earths. If this economic war explodes, there may be no clean winner—only expensive casualties.

America and China keep talking about each other like two angry neighbors standing across a fence with baseball bats.

“You need us.”

“No. You need us.”

“We can crush you.”

“Try it.”

It sounds tough. It looks tough on television. Politicians can pound podiums. Officials can announce tariffs. Beijing can restrict minerals. Washington can restrict chips. Everybody gets to look patriotic for the cameras.

Then Monday morning arrives.

Factories open.

Ships leave ports.

Farmers need customers.

Technology companies need components.

Chinese manufacturers need advanced technology.

American manufacturers need critical minerals.

Suddenly, the shouting match becomes awkward.

Because beneath all the chest-thumping sits an inconvenient economic truth: America needs China, and China needs America.

I am not saying the two countries are friends. They are strategic rivals. They compete over technology, manufacturing, artificial intelligence, military power, Taiwan, global influence, supply chains and the rules of international trade. Some of those conflicts involve legitimate national-security concerns.

But economic reality does not care about political theater.

And reality has a nasty sense of humor.

America possesses some of the world's most powerful technology, especially in advanced computing and the semiconductor ecosystem. Washington knows exactly how valuable that advantage is. That is why the U.S. Department of Commerce introduced sweeping export controls in October 2022 designed to restrict China's ability to obtain certain advanced computing chips and semiconductor-manufacturing technology. The rules targeted advanced chips, supercomputing capabilities and equipment needed to manufacture cutting-edge semiconductors. Bureau of Industry and Security

That is economic power.

Washington can essentially tell Beijing, “You want some of the world's most sophisticated computing technology? Not so fast.”

But China can reach into another pocket.

Rare earths.

And then Washington stops smiling.

According to the International Energy Agency, China accounted for about 60% of global mined production of magnet rare earths in 2024. That figure alone is impressive. But mining is not even the scariest part of the story. China accounted for about 91% of global refined magnet rare-earth output and an astonishing 94% of sintered permanent-magnet production. IEA

Read those numbers again.

91%.

94%.

That is not some tiny corner of the global economy selling chopsticks and plastic toys. These materials and magnets matter to electric vehicles, wind turbines, electronics, industrial equipment and other advanced technologies.

So the economic gunfight becomes almost comical. America reaches for the semiconductor holster.

China reaches for the rare-earth holster.

Both stare at each other.

Nobody laughs.

I call this mutually assured disruption.

During the Cold War, the terrifying phrase was “mutually assured destruction.” Nuclear powers understood that launching the missiles could invite missiles flying back in the opposite direction. Economic warfare is obviously not nuclear warfare, and I would never pretend that the human consequences are comparable. But the strategic logic offers a useful analogy: when both sides can inflict serious damage, pulling the trigger becomes considerably less attractive.

America can hurt China.

China can hurt America.

Congratulations. Everybody wins the ability to lose.

We have already watched a version of this movie.

In 2018, the United States imposed tariffs on a broad range of Chinese imports. China retaliated against American products, including agricultural goods. Then American farmers discovered something politicians sometimes forget: your enemy can also be your customer.

And customers have weapons too.

They can stop buying.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture later estimated that retaliatory tariffs reduced American agricultural exports by an annualized $13.2 billion from mid-2018 through the end of 2019. Soybeans took the biggest beating, accounting for nearly 71% of those annualized losses, or roughly $9.4 billion. Iowa suffered estimated annualized agricultural trade losses of $1.46 billion, while Illinois lost about $1.41 billion.

That is where trade-war slogans meet dirt.

A soybean farmer does not deposit patriotism at the bank.

He deposits money.

China had been a gigantic buyer. In 2017, China represented 65% of global soybean imports. American soybean exports to China were worth $12.3 billion that year and represented 63% of all U.S. agricultural exports to China.

Then came the economic fistfight.

China slapped a 25% tariff on American soybeans in July 2018. In January 2018, China bought about $2.5 billion worth of U.S. soybeans. By July, purchases had fallen to roughly $140 million. By November, they had fallen to $0.

Zero.

That is what an economic punch looks like.

But here comes the punchline.

China could not simply wave a magic wand and replace every American soybean.

During the first half of China's 2018–2019 soybean marketing year, Chinese imports of American soybeans dropped by nearly 22 million metric tons, or 89%, compared with the same period a year earlier. China bought more from Brazil and Canada. Yet those additional purchases still failed to replace everything China had lost from the United States. China's total soybean imports during that period ended up nearly 9 million metric tons, or 20%, lower.

Beautiful.

America hurt.

China adjusted.

China hurt America.

America adjusted.

Everyone paid somebody.

And politicians called it winning.

Rare earths tell an equally revealing story. The problem is not new. In 2012, the United States, Japan and the European Union challenged Chinese restrictions involving rare earths, tungsten and molybdenum at the World Trade Organization (WTO). The dispute involved export duties, quotas, licensing requirements and other restrictions. In 2014, WTO rulings found key Chinese restrictions inconsistent with China's obligations. China subsequently removed the measures that had been found inconsistent.

Why did major industrial economies care enough to fight China at the WTO?

Because these obscure-sounding materials sit quietly inside the modern industrial machine.

Nobody wakes up in Baltimore screaming, “Where is my neodymium?”

But people want cars, iPhones, electronics, power systems, defense technology and advanced machinery. Somewhere behind many modern products sits a complicated supply chain involving minerals, magnets, chips, specialized machinery, software, intellectual property and manufacturing capacity.

That is the dirty little secret of globalization.

Countries can hate each other's governments while their factories remain practically married. And the marriage between America and China is ugly, suspicious and argumentative, but it is still enormous.

U.S. Census Bureau figures show that in 2025 America exported about $106.0 billion in goods to China while importing about $308.7 billion from China. That is roughly $414.6 billion in 2-way goods trade in a single year. Even during the first 7 months of 2026, U.S. exports to China totaled about $65.2 billion while imports totaled about $156.4 billion.

Those numbers expose the comedy better than any speech I could write.

Imagine two businessmen screaming, “I want nothing to do with you!”

Then one writes the other a billion-dollar check.

“Still hate you!”

“Same here.”

“Shipment arrives Tuesday?”

“Tuesday.”

That is the U.S.-China economic relationship.

Of course, America should diversify critical supply chains. Depending heavily on a strategic rival for materials essential to national defense and advanced manufacturing is dangerous. China, likewise, has obvious reasons to reduce its dependence on American and allied technology. No serious country should voluntarily place its economic throat completely inside another country's hand.

But diversification is different from fantasy.

The fantasy says America can economically crush China without feeling serious pain itself.

The opposite fantasy says China can economically cripple America and walk away smiling.

History says otherwise.

Supply chains are not light switches. A government cannot spend 30 years building an interconnected global production system and then yell “divorce!” on Friday afternoon and expect a clean separation by Monday morning.

Factories must be built.

Mines must be developed.

Minerals must be processed.

Engineers must be trained.

Customers must be found.

Capital must be invested.

Contracts must be rewritten.

Infrastructure must be constructed.

Technology must be developed.

And somebody must pay.

That somebody eventually includes ordinary people.

The bill arrives disguised as higher prices, lost exports, disrupted production, government subsidies, weaker profits or fewer economic opportunities.

So when I hear Washington and Beijing talk as though economic warfare is a painless game of national toughness, I reach for the popcorn.

America says, “We have the chips.”

China says, “We have the minerals.”

America says, “We have the world's largest high-income consumer market.”

China says, “We have enormous manufacturing capacity.”

America says, “We can find other suppliers.”

China says, “We can develop our own technology.”

Fine.

Do it.

Both countries should reduce dangerous dependencies where national security genuinely demands it. But neither side should confuse resilience with economic suicide.

Because the real contest is not about proving who can hurt whom.

We already know the answer.

Both can.

The smarter question is how much pain each country is willing to inflict upon itself just to make the other country bleed.

That is why I reject the childish picture of America and China as economic enemies who can simply destroy each other and ride triumphantly into the sunset. Their relationship is much uglier and much more interesting. They are competitors tied together by supply chains, consumers, technology, commodities, capital and industrial necessity.

They can weaken those ties.

They can diversify them.

They can weaponize them.

They can even spend decades trying to replace them.

But today, neither side can pretend the other is economically irrelevant.

America needs China, and China needs America.

That may offend nationalists in Washington. It may offend nationalists in Beijing. Too bad. Economics does not salute flags.

And if America and China insist on behaving like two men fighting inside the same lifeboat, each punching holes under the other's seat, eventually they may discover the oldest lesson on the water:

It does not matter whose side of the boat has the hole.

Everybody gets wet.

 

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Nigeria: Where State Governors Fly While Citizens Cry

 

Broken roads below. Costly airlines above. Nigeria’s governors call it development—but who pays when their flying ambitions crash into public poverty? Before you applaud another state airline, ask what your hospital lost. Political prestige takes off while essential services struggle to survive.

 Several Nigerian state governments want their own airlines while their citizens battle broken roads, weak railway connections, insecurity, and inadequate public services. I find that ambition laughable. Nigeria already has a grim history of government-owned airlines leaving unpaid bills behind. Yet governors keep reaching for aircraft as though the missing ingredient in a struggling state is a painted tail and a boarding announcement.

“Why an airline?” I ask.

“To connect our people.”

I look at the road leading to the hospital. Apparently, that connection can wait.

I understand the attraction of flying. Nigeria is vast. Roads can turn a routine journey into an endurance test. Rail service remains too limited to offer dependable alternatives across much of the country. Insecurity adds another ugly calculation: arrival time versus survival odds. For genuinely isolated places, air connections can serve a serious economic purpose.

But I cannot follow the argument from dangerous roads to government-owned aircraft without stopping at the obvious question: why does the road remain dangerous?

An airline allows some people to escape a problem that everybody financed the government to solve. The governor calls it connectivity. I see selective evacuation. Those who can afford tickets climb above the trouble. Those who cannot remain below, paying taxes and praying that the next journey ends at home.

Ebonyi supplies the expensive close-up.

Radio Nigeria reported in September 2023 that the state’s airport had cost about ₦36 billion ($27.16 million) and already required a runway rehabilitation contract worth more than ₦13 billion. Its inaugural test flight had taken place in April. By September, the aviation commissioner said no aircraft had landed there for two months because of the runway’s condition.

I pause at that sequence. Construction. Celebration. Defect. Reconstruction.

Nearly ₦50 billion in construction and early rehabilitation commitments, and the runway was already demanding another appointment with the contractor. I have seen second-hand cars offer more reassuring introductions.

“Is the airport ready?”

“For commissioning.”

“And aircraft?”

“Let us handle the ceremony first.”

That is the political joke I cannot shake. A project can be ready for cameras before it is ready for customers. The ribbon behaves perfectly. The runway has other ideas.

I want to know who approved the original work, who inspected it, and who answered for the repair bill. Public money does not become less public after concrete covers it. If a new runway needs major rehabilitation almost immediately, I expect accountability before another cheque.

Instead, Ebonyi’s ambition acquired wings.

The state announced aircraft procurement while questions about the airport’s value remained painfully alive. I see the logic: the airport needs traffic, so buy an airline. The airline needs support, so provide more money. When the accounts become uncomfortable, explain that the government cannot abandon its investment.

I recognize that trick. Throwing good money after bad becomes a development strategy once the paperwork carries an official stamp.

Enugu makes the case harder to sell. Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) identifies Abakaliki and Afikpo among the cities served by Akanu Ibiam International Airport. New Telegraph reported that Enugu’s airport was about 65 kilometres from Abakaliki, describing the journey as less than 1 hour. Road conditions can change the timing, but the nearby alternative is real.

I would start with reliable access to that airport. Repair the route. Improve safety. Arrange dependable transfers. Encourage existing airlines to serve genuine demand.

But those solutions have a terrible political flaw: they work without looking magnificent.

A connecting road does not come with cabin crew. A shuttle service does not give the governor an aircraft to stand beside. Maintenance rarely produces a glamorous campaign photograph. I suspect that is where practical transport loses the argument.

“We must put Ebonyi on the map.”

I thought it was already there. Perhaps the map needs a business-class section.

Bayelsa’s proximity to Port Harcourt raises a similar question. I accept that airport access, schedules, local industries, and passenger demand require examination. But I want the examination before the expenditure. A neighboring state’s airline does not create a business case. It creates temptation.

Governors are human. Unfortunately, public treasuries cannot afford every human weakness.

Domestic passenger figures offer little encouragement for this rush. FAAN data reported by Nairametrics showed traffic rising from about 12.54 million in 2024 to 13.09 million in 2025. That represents growth of 4.33%, roughly 4%. I see modest expansion. I do not see a market begging every governor to arrive with aircraft.

Those figures count passenger journeys, too. Frequent travelers appear repeatedly. I cannot turn an executive’s regular flights into proof that an ordinary family can afford air travel.

“Everybody wants to fly.”

Certainly. Everybody also wants to eat. I suggest checking which desire has money behind it.

Most Nigerians cannot casually buy an airline ticket. The National Bureau of Statistics’ 2022 multidimensional poverty survey found that 133 million people, or 63% of the population, experienced multidimensional poverty. It documented deprivation involving healthcare access, sanitation, food security, and housing.

I read those findings and see a brutal spending choice. Public money can improve daily life for people struggling with basic needs, or it can enter a difficult commercial business whose services many cannot purchase.

The governor gets to call both options development. The citizen gets to experience the difference.

I can picture the household arithmetic without inventing a household: transport fare, food, school expenses, medical bills. Every payment pushes against the next. Then an administration announces an airline and expects applause from people calculating whether they can afford tomorrow’s bus.

That applause should come with a refund.

Nigeria Airways already taught us how long an aviation bill can survive its aircraft. The carrier stopped operating in 2003. Former workers pursued unpaid benefits for years. In September 2026, Premium Times reported that the federal government had settled outstanding severance benefits for 2,100 former employees, with another 600 being processed. The reported exercise covered ₦18 billion across 2,700 beneficiaries.

More than two decades later, the financial aftermath was still demanding attention.

I find that history more persuasive than another launch speech. Officials can leave office. Airlines can stop flying. Workers remain. Families remain. Obligations remain.

The ceremony lasts an afternoon. The consequences can grow old.

Still, I will acknowledge Ibom Air. Akwa Ibom’s carrier began operations in 2019 and offers a serious example of commercial progress under state ownership. Its June 2025 public Annual General Meeting (AGM) announcement reported ₦96 billion in revenue and ₦6.8 billion in net profit for 2024, following an ₦8.7 billion net loss in 2023.

I respect that result. I also refuse to crop the loss out of the picture.

Ibom Air demonstrates what planning and capable management can achieve. It does not establish that every state should own aircraft. Copying a successful carrier’s branding is easy. Copying its discipline requires something more demanding than a governor’s enthusiasm.

“Ibom Air made money.”

Then study how it operates. Do not study where to place the logo.

Fuel suppliers expect payment. Engineers expect proper maintenance arrangements. Aircraft financing carries obligations. Currency movements can hurt the accounts. Empty seats remain empty even when a commissioner calls the route strategic.

I want those realities in the business plan before they arrive in a supplementary budget.

Ebonyi’s promised aircraft make that demand urgent. Governor Francis Nwifuru announced on January 1, 2026, that the state had procured 3 aircraft expected to arrive that month. Punch reported that their whereabouts remained unclear by July 1. It also reported allegations that ₦50 billion had been released for aircraft acquisition. Those allegations do not establish theft, but the reported absence of the promised aircraft demands a detailed public explanation.

I want delivery dates, contracts, payment records, and responsibility for delays. I want answers sturdy enough to survive outside a press conference.

“Where are the aircraft?”

That question should require an address, not a lecture about patience.

My objection is specific. I oppose unnecessary state airlines consuming scarce public resources while roads, security, schools, clinics, and ordinary transport remain inadequate. I oppose spending more simply because an earlier expensive project needs rescuing. I oppose making citizens finance commercial risks that officials have failed to explain.

A credible airline proposal can defend itself with evidence. Prestige needs a microphone.

Before another governor announces takeoff, I want to see what happens to the people who remain on the ground. The farmer moving produce. The patient seeking treatment. The teacher travelling to school. The trader carrying goods along a damaged road.

Their journeys count even when nobody serves refreshments.

I am tired of being told that a state is moving forward because its government wants an aircraft. Give me roads that work, safer travel, functioning services, and honest accounts. Then we can discuss the departure lounge.

Until then, I see the arrangement clearly: governors buy wings, citizens eat dust, and the treasury pays for both.

 

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Your Youth Is Gone. Stop Asking It to Come Back.

 

Modern America has declared war on aging. We now live in a culture where aging must be denied, disguised, Botoxed, filtered, dyed, injected, surgically tightened, digitally edited, motivationally rebranded, and finally buried underneath slogans about how “age is just a number.” Botox is ammunition, filters are camouflage, and denial is the battle cry—but biology keeps winning.

 

Let’s face it, guys: there are things you are now too old to pretend you still love them.

There. I said it.

I know somebody just got offended. Good. Sometimes the truth has to kick the door open because nostalgia keeps changing the locks.

I am talking about those of us who have crossed 50 and occasionally catch ourselves staring backward like escaped prisoners looking at the fence. We remember Friday nights when Friday night actually meant something. We remember loud music. Packed clubs. House parties. Road trips planned with $37 and absolutely no common sense. We remember staying awake until 3:00 a.m., sleeping for 4 hours, getting up, taking a shower, and somehow functioning like nothing happened.

We remember flirting without reading glasses.

We remember dancing without wondering what our knees would say about it tomorrow morning.

And, yes, we miss some of it.

Science practically expects us to. Researchers have documented something called the “reminiscence bump,” the strange tendency for people to remember a disproportionate number of experiences from adolescence and early adulthood. One large study involving nearly 3,500 participants found this pattern clearly. Another study using data from 3,088 people between ages 50 and 107 found that 80% reported important memories from ages 20–29, compared with 47%–66% for other periods of life.

So when I sit somewhere at 53 and suddenly remember the music, clothes, parties, girlfriends, friends, foolish adventures, and reckless confidence of 22, my brain is not malfunctioning.

My brain is doing exactly what human brains do.

But here is where things get ridiculous.

Remembering 22 is not the same thing as being 22.

That distinction has apparently become offensive in modern America. We now live in a culture where aging must be denied, disguised, Botoxed, filtered, dyed, injected, surgically tightened, digitally edited, motivationally rebranded, and finally buried underneath slogans about how “age is just a number.”

Of course age is a number.

So is your blood pressure.

Try telling your doctor numbers do not matter.

I can appreciate youth without filing an application to rejoin it. I can hear a song from my younger years, turn it up, smile, remember exactly where I was when I first heard it, and still understand that I do not need to recreate the entire night. That is memory. That is nostalgia. That is being human.

But when a 63-year-old man squeezes himself into nightclub clothes, arrives at 11:30 p.m., orders shots, starts yelling over music loud enough to rearrange his dental fillings, and announces, “Man, I still got it!” I have questions.

Got what?

Ibuprofen?

Because we may need it.

The body keeps receipts.

The National Institute on Aging reports that muscle mass and strength generally reach their peak around ages 30–35. After that, muscle power and physical performance gradually decline, with the decline accelerating later in life. That does not mean we become helpless at 50. Far from it. Exercise and strength training can preserve function, health, mobility, and independence as we age.

But biology does not negotiate because I found my old leather jacket.

My 20-year-old self could jump out of bed after a wild night and ask, “What are we doing tonight?”

My 50-year-old self may wake up after sleeping wrong and ask, “Who attacked my neck?”

Nobody attacked my neck.

The pillow won.

That is aging.

And there is nothing shameful about it.

What is strange is pretending it is not happening.

Take alcohol. In our 20s, drinking could become an event. Somebody shouted, “Another round!” and suddenly everybody became an economist explaining why spending another $80 was financially responsible.

At 50?

“Another round!”

My liver looks across the room and whispers, “Don’t you dare.”

There is biology behind that joke. The National Institute on Aging warns that alcohol can affect people differently as they grow older because aging changes how the body handles it. The same amount someone tolerated when younger may have a stronger effect later. Alcohol can also interact with medications and increase risks involving balance, falls, fractures, and crashes.

In other words, Jack Daniel’s did not change.

We did.

That is the part nostalgia conveniently edits out.

Nostalgia is Hollywood.

It remembers the soundtrack and deletes the hangover.

It remembers the nightclub but forgets standing outside for 40 minutes.

It remembers the beautiful woman across the room but forgets that she ignored me.

It remembers the road trip but deletes the broken-down car.

It remembers being young but somehow forgets being broke.

That is why I refuse to worship my younger years. I enjoyed them. I treasure them. I would not erase them.

But I will not lie about them.

Research makes the nostalgia trap even more interesting. One analysis of 16 published autobiographies identified 1,911 life events. Although the period from ages 18–32 represented only about 22.77% of the authors’ lives at the time their autobiographies were published, events from those years occupied about 42.52% of their autobiographical pages.

Think about that.

Youth can occupy more mental real estate than the calendar says it deserves.

No wonder somebody turns 55 and suddenly decides 1989 was civilization’s greatest achievement.

The music was better.

The parties were better.

Dating was better.

Cars were better.

People were nicer.

Everybody had more fun.

Really?

Or were we younger?

That is the question nobody wants to ask.

Maybe the nightclub did not contain magic.

Maybe I supplied the magic because I was 23.

Maybe that ordinary song became extraordinary because I heard it while falling in love. Maybe that cheap restaurant became legendary because my friends were there. Maybe that rusty car became priceless because freedom was sitting behind its steering wheel.

The object was not always special.

The age was.

That is why recreating the object cannot necessarily recreate the feeling.

I can buy the same record.

I cannot buy 1994.

I can visit the old neighborhood.

I cannot purchase my old nervous system.

I can find the same bar, assuming somebody has not turned it into luxury apartments.

I cannot walk through the door as the man I was at 25.

That man is gone.

And that is okay.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics gives us another useful reality check. In 2025, Americans ages 45–54 averaged about 4.30 hours per day in leisure and sports activities, while those ages 55–64 averaged 5.21 hours. So aging does not mean fun disappears. But the way leisure is spent changes. People ages 45–54 averaged 2.26 hours of television per day, compared with 1.77 hours among those ages 15–24. Meanwhile, the younger group spent much more time playing games and participating in sports, exercise, and recreation.

Translation?

Fun did not die.

It changed clothes.

That is where I think people over 50 make themselves miserable. We sometimes compare today’s pleasures against yesterday’s adrenaline.

That is an unfair fight.

At 21, excitement may have meant getting into a packed club at midnight.

At 51, excitement may mean finally paying off the mortgage.

Try telling a 22-year-old that.

“Dude, I had an incredible weekend.”

“What happened?”

“I refinanced at a lower rate.”

He will stare at me as if I escaped from a nursing home.

But wait until he is 51.

Suddenly, financial security can produce emotions no nightclub DJ ever managed.

And let me say something even more controversial: some things are supposed to become less appealing.

I should not desperately need the approval of strangers at 50.

I should not need to be seen at the hottest club.

I should not need to prove I can drink everybody under the table.

I should not chase every fashion designed for somebody whose birth year begins with 20.

I should not confuse attention with attraction, noise with excitement, or exhaustion with fun.

Most importantly, I should not be embarrassed because my definition of pleasure matured.

There is dignity in saying, “I had my turn.”

That does not mean surrender.

It means evolution.

I can travel. Dance. Exercise. Date, if single. Go to concerts. Wear fashionable clothes. Learn new technology. Start businesses. Make new friends. Fall in love – if I’m single. Stay out late occasionally. Laugh until my stomach hurts. Do ridiculous things.

Age 50 is not a funeral.

But neither is it age 20 with gray hair.

That distinction matters.

Even sleep refuses to participate in our fantasy. The CDC says adults ages 18–60 should generally get at least 7 hours of sleep per day, while those ages 61–64 are advised to get 7–9 hours. Yet somehow we celebrate the middle-aged warrior who parties until 4:00 a.m. as proof that age has not caught him.

Congratulations.

You defeated bedtime.

History will remember your sacrifice.

I would rather accept reality.

I miss some things about being young precisely because they are gone. Their disappearance gives them value. If I could recreate them every Saturday, they would stop being memories and become appointments.

The real danger begins when nostalgia becomes denial.

That is when the 50-year-old starts competing with the 25-year-old.

Bad game.

Wrong opponent.

I do not need to prove that I can party harder than somebody half my age. I have something he does not have.

I have survived long enough to know which parties were never worth attending.

There is power in that.

So, yes, I may miss those wild teenage years. I may miss my 20s. I may even miss parts of my 30s. I can miss them deeply. I can hear an old song and feel the years collapse for 4 minutes. I can remember old friends, old loves, old mistakes, old cars, old streets, old dreams.

Then the song ends.

And I come back.

Because nostalgia should be a place I visit, not an address where I move back in.

Let’s face it, guys: there are things we are now too old to pretend we still love them. Not because life after 50 is boring. Not because pleasure has an expiration date. Not because we should surrender to rocking chairs and orthopedic shoes.

Because we have earned the right to stop performing youth.

I do not want to be 22 again.

I want to remember being 22.

There is a difference.

At 22, I wanted the night to never end.

At 50, I understand something my younger self could not possibly understand.

Every party ends.

The lights come on. The music stops. Somebody stacks the chairs. Somebody sweeps the floor. Everybody eventually goes home.

The tragedy is not that the party ended.

The tragedy is being the last man standing in an empty room, still dancing, pretending the music is playing.

This article stands on its own, but some readers may also enjoy the titles in my “Brief Book Series”. Read it here on Google Play or in Barnes & Noble bookstore: Brief Book Series.

 

America’s Midterm Reckoning: The Price Tag at the Ballot Box

 

America’s Senate may be decided by empty wallets, $4 gas, crime fear, and grocery receipts screaming louder than every campaign lie. Indeed, the GOP faces a brutal checkout-line reckoning: voters are broke, afraid, angry, and ready to make somebody pay.

I have watched politicians promise the moon while voters stood in a grocery aisle counting dollars like they were counting rosary beads. That is the American election in its rawest form. Forget the polished speeches. Forget the campaign music. Forget the flag pins, the television panels, and the fake smiles that look like they were stapled onto somebody’s face. The political wind in America runs on four brutal things: cheap gas, cheap food, cheap groceries, and low crime.

Everything else is background noise until those four things go bad.

A voter can hear a senator talk about freedom, foreign policy, border walls, climate, taxes, democracy, and the soul of America. Then that same voter walks into a supermarket and sees a bag of groceries that used to cost $80 now chewing up $130. Suddenly, the soul of America looks a lot like a receipt. A long, ugly receipt.

The 2026 election is scheduled for November 3. From September 29, that is roughly 5 weeks away. In several states, early-voting activity begins this week or shortly after, depending on state law. That means the race is no longer sitting in a smoke-filled back room. It is walking out the door. Votes are about to start locking in while cable-news clowns are still arguing over who “won the week.”

So, will the GOP lose the Senate?

I would not bet my rent money on a clean answer. The Senate is not the House. The House can move like a bar fight: one national mood, one bad economy, one presidential headache, and seats fall everywhere. The Senate is meaner, smaller, and more local. It is 1 candidate at a time, 1 state at a time, 1 mistake at a time. A national blue wave can crash into a red-state Senate race and break like cheap glass.

But the Republicans are walking into this election with a problem that no press secretary can explain away: people do not live inside economic statistics. They live inside their checking accounts.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that consumer prices rose 0.4% in August 2026, while unemployment stood at 4.1%. On paper, 4.1% unemployment does not look like an economic funeral. It looks manageable. But voters do not eat unemployment rates. They eat eggs, chicken, beef, rice, bread, vegetables, milk, and whatever is still left after the rent gets paid. Food prices were rising around 3.0% over the prior year, according to the latest economic reporting. That is not a Wall Street problem. That is a kitchen-table ambush.

Gasoline is the same kind of political poison. In August, average gasoline prices were reported around $4.19 per gallon, up from about $4.06 in July. A 13-cent increase may look small to a political consultant who rides in a black SUV on somebody else’s budget. To the rideshare driver, the delivery worker, the nursing assistant, the warehouse employee, and the parent driving children to school, it is another hand in the pocket.

Gas is not just gas. Gas is the price of getting to work. It is the price of food getting to the store. It is the price of every delivery truck, every plumber’s van, every contractor’s pickup, and every late-night run to the pharmacy. When gas goes up, it does not knock politely. It kicks in the front door and raids the whole household budget.

That is why politicians fear the gas pump. The pump has no party loyalty. It does not care whether a voter watches Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, TikTok, or nothing at all. It flashes a number in bright red digits, and every voter understands the language.

“I do not need an economist,” the voter says. “I need this tank to stop robbing me.”

That sentence can flip a seat.

History keeps leaving fingerprints on this crime scene. In the 2010 midterm election, with anger still boiling after the financial crisis and unemployment remaining painfully high, Republicans gained 6 Senate seats and 63 House seats. The economy was not the only issue, but it was the loudest drum in the parade. Voters blamed the party in power because that is what voters do. When the house is on fire, they do not hold a seminar on the wiring. They throw somebody out the window.

In 2014, President Barack Obama’s party took another beating. Republicans gained 9 Senate seats. Turnout was only 36.4%, the lowest midterm turnout since 1942. The GOP did not need every American to love them. They needed enough unhappy people to show up while disappointed Democrats stayed home. That is how politics works when hope runs out of gas. One side storms the polling place. The other side stares at the ceiling and says, “What is the point?”

Then came 2018. Democrats won back the House with a gain of 41 seats. Donald Trump was in the White House, and the backlash was real. But the Senate told a different story. Republicans gained 2 Senate seats because the map favored them. That is the Senate’s dirty little secret: national anger matters, but geography can wear a bulletproof vest.

The 2022 election gave both parties another lesson. Inflation was high. Gas was expensive. Crime was a major concern. Republicans smelled a red wave. They talked like the Democrats were already buried. Then the wave arrived with a broken surfboard. Republicans won the House, but by a narrow margin. Democrats held the Senate. Abortion rights, candidate quality, and fear of political extremism cut through the economic anger.

That is why I do not buy the lazy argument that cheap groceries alone decide every election. They matter enormously. They can decide whether a voter is open to change. But they do not erase everything else. A voter can be furious over the price of ground beef and still refuse to vote for a candidate he considers reckless, dishonest, cruel, or flat-out unfit for office.

Crime works the same way. Low crime creates calm. High crime creates political opportunity for whoever sounds toughest, whether that person has a real plan or just a louder mouth. If people feel unsafe walking to their car, waiting at a bus stop, or sending their child to school, they will not be soothed by a politician saying crime data improved somewhere else. Perception can be a political weapon. A city may show a decline in certain violent-crime categories, yet voters may still see videos of robberies, carjackings, assaults, and random violence every day. The numbers may be real. The fear is real too.

And fear votes.

The GOP’s weakness is that it owns the governing burden now. Republicans cannot spend every day acting like angry outsiders while holding power. That trick has an expiration date. If voters feel gasoline is too high, food is too expensive, groceries are still punishing families, and public safety is shaky, then the party in charge gets served the bill.

Democrats, however, should not start measuring the drapes. They have their own problem. Voters may blame Republicans for the present and still distrust Democrats with the future. Independents are the hinge. They do not march like party loyalists. They shop, commute, pay bills, watch the news, get disgusted, and sometimes vote like they are firing a contractor.

“If both parties messed up,” the independent voter says, “why should I hire either one again?”

That is the question hanging over the Senate.

I see three possible endings. A blue wave happens if affordability pain becomes unbearable, Republican candidates stumble, Democrats keep their coalition awake, and independents decide the GOP has had enough time to fix the mess. A split happens if Democrats gain ground in the House while Republicans hold enough Senate seats through red-state advantages, local candidates, and close races. The third ending is the ugly one: chaos. A few Senate contests decided by razor-thin margins, lawsuits, recounts, television lawyers yelling into cameras, and each party claiming the republic will collapse if it loses.

Nobody knows which ending America gets. Anybody who tells you he knows is probably selling a poll, a podcast, or a prayer.

But I know this much. Voters may forgive a politician for a bad speech. They may forgive a policy mistake. They may even forgive a scandal if they think the other side is worse. But they do not easily forgive being broke at the gas pump, humiliated at the grocery checkout, or scared in their own neighborhood.

That is where this Senate fight will be won or lost: not in Washington, not in a donor ballroom, not in a television studio. It will be decided under fluorescent grocery-store lights, beside a gas pump, and in neighborhoods where people are tired of being told that things are fine when their wallets are screaming otherwise.

 

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Scroll, Laugh, Repeat: Why Nigerians Are Abandoning Nollywood for Online Content Creators

 

Nigeria’s movie empire is under siege: independent creators with phones and jokes are taking viewers Nollywood can no longer command. For Nigeria’s hungry content creators, YouTube has become the new stage, studio, and money machine: just hang your star there and watch how brightly it shines—or shock the world.

I have watched the Nigerian entertainment market change its clothes in public. Yesterday, Nollywood was the big man in the room. It owned the DVD stall, the satellite channel, the cinema poster, and the family sitting room. Today, the phone has entered that room without knocking. It has sat in Nollywood’s favorite chair, grabbed the remote, and announced, “Move over. We are watching Chief Imo.”

That is the ugly truth. For Nigeria’s content creators, the Internet and AI age has become a lucrative do-it-yourself operation. I do not need a studio gatekeeper, a film distributor, a cinema owner, or a television executive with a fat stomach and a thin imagination. I need a phone camera, a ring light, a sharp idea, an editor, an Internet connection, and enough madness to keep posting when nobody is watching. Then I hang my star on YouTube or TikTok and wait to see whether it shines—or crashes into the gutter.

The old entertainment business was built like a palace. Too many doors. Too many guards. Too many people collecting money before the artist got paid. Nollywood producers raised funds, rented cameras, hired actors, fought with electricity, battled piracy, prayed for distribution, and then hoped the film would find an audience before the pirates found it first. The creator economy has kicked down that door. It is not perfect. It is not clean. But it is fast, cheap, and ruthless.

A skit maker can write a comedy about a foolish landlord in the morning, shoot it at noon, edit it in the afternoon, and upload it before dinner. By nightfall, Nigerians in Lagos, Abuja, Enugu, Port Harcourt, Baltimore, London, and Toronto can be laughing at the same foolish landlord. That speed is murder for the old movie model. A Nollywood film can spend months crawling through writing, casting, shooting, postproduction, marketing, and distribution. Meanwhile, a creator with a cracked phone screen has already made 20 jokes about the same social problem and collected the audience’s laughter, comments, shares, and money.

I see this shift every time a Nigerian opens YouTube “for just 5 minutes” and wakes up 2 hours later. Nobody begins with a plan to watch 14 videos. The algorithm makes the plan. One clip of Chief Imo Comedy becomes another. Then comes “Oga Sabinus”, with his helpless face and perfect talent for turning stupidity into a business plan. Then Mark Angel Comedy appears with a child delivering a line sharper than a knife. Then Brain Jotter walks in looking confused, which is often the beginning of trouble. Sydney Talker arrives with his loud, elastic expressions. Taaooma becomes 6 family members in one video and exposes the Nigerian home with the accuracy of a police investigator. Kiekie storms in with her theatrical confidence. “Josh2Funny” adds musical nonsense, character comedy, and chaos. Mr Macaroni enters with his “freaky freaky” manner and reminds viewers that Nigerian comedy can also carry a political punch.

These creators are not merely entertainers. They are small media companies wearing sneakers. They act, write, direct, edit, market, read comments, chase trends, negotiate brand deals, and study the audience’s appetite like market women studying tomatoes. They know that the audience does not owe them patience. If the first five seconds are dull, the viewer swipes away. If the joke is slow, the viewer leaves. If the story feels fake, the comment section will beat the creator like a rented drum.

That pressure has made online comedy and reality-style content more direct than many Nollywood films. The content is short. The characters are familiar. The problems are local. The mother shouts. The landlord lies. The boyfriend cheats. The pastor performs. The police officer demands “something small.” The unemployed graduate is desperate. The rich man is foolish. The poor man is also foolish, but in a more affordable way. Nigerians recognize these people because they meet them every day.

This is why I say Nollywood should worry. Not because Nigerians have suddenly stopped watching films, but because most viewers now give their quickest attention, loudest laughter, and strongest loyalty to independent creators. The word “most” is difficult to prove with a single nationwide survey, and I will not manufacture evidence to make a dramatic sentence sound respectable. But the direction is plain: the independent creator has become a serious rival for Nigerian screen time. That is the battlefield that matters.

DataReportal reported that YouTube advertisements reached 25.3% of Nigeria’s Internet users in January 2025. That is not a small side street. It is a major highway. The same report placed YouTube’s advertising reach at 11.5% of Nigeria’s total population. Those figures do not count every person who watches shared phones, downloaded clips, reposts, or videos circulated through WhatsApp. In Nigeria, one smartphone can become a neighborhood cinema. One person watches, 4 others lean over, and everybody laughs before the owner of the phone gets it back.

TikTok has made the attack even more brutal. TikTok does not ask a viewer to commit to a 2-hour film. It asks for 20 seconds. That is how it gets you. A quick skit becomes another skit. A dance clip becomes a fake sermon. A street interview becomes an argument about marriage, money, tribal identity, or bad government. By the time the viewer realizes what happened, the evening has gone missing.

AI is now adding another weapon. A young creator can use AI to draft captions, generate subtitles, clean audio, translate dialogue, design thumbnails, create visual effects, and test titles. AI cannot automatically make somebody funny. A machine can produce words, but it cannot fully understand the wicked pause before Chief Imo’s next line or the social insult hiding inside a Sabinus reaction. Still, AI cuts the cost of production. It gives a lone creator more tools than a small production company had 10 years ago. That is not magic. It is leverage.

Nollywood has been here before. Its original strength was always speed, low budgets, and local stories. In the 1990s and 2000s, it bypassed the expensive cinema system through direct-to-video films. According to a 2007 Wired report, Nollywood was producing roughly 2,400 films yearly, often with budgets between $5,000 and $10,000. The industry grew because it understood something simple: Nigerians wanted stories that sounded like home. Now independent creators are using that same old Nollywood instinct against Nollywood itself.

The irony is thick enough to cut with a machete. Nollywood built an empire by bypassing old entertainment gatekeepers. Now YouTube and TikTok creators are bypassing Nollywood’s own gatekeepers. The hunter has become the goat.

Still, I do not think Nollywood is dead. That would be lazy talk. Nollywood still has actors, production skill, deep stories, cinema successes, television deals, and a global diaspora audience. What it has lost is its automatic crown. It can no longer assume that a Nigerian viewer will sit through a weak 1-hour film simply because it has familiar actors and a dramatic title. The viewer now has alternatives. Fast alternatives. Funny alternatives. Free alternatives.

The creator does not need permission. That is the real danger. The creator can fail today, learn tonight, post tomorrow, and win next week. Nollywood often moves like a government office. The independent creator moves like a bus conductor chasing the last passenger at night. One is waiting for approval. The other is already gone.

In this new Nigeria, talent has become less democratic than people claim. The platforms still reward noise, outrage, repetition, and sometimes plain foolishness. Many creators earn little, despite the glamour. The Guardian reported in 2026 that more than 50% of African creators earn less than $100 a month. So I will not sell a fairy tale. YouTube is not a gold mine for everybody. It is a crowded street where thousands sing, dance, joke, and beg the algorithm to look their way.

But for the ones who break through, the message is cold and clear. I do not need Nollywood to make me visible. I can make the audience my distributor. I can make my phone my studio. I can make my comments section my focus group. And if Nollywood refuses to adapt, it may discover that the loudest laughter in Nigeria is no longer coming from its movie sets. It is coming from a phone in somebody’s hand.

 

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America Wants Its Backbone Back: Why Nearly Half the Nation Misses the Old Rules

 

Nearly half of Americans would trade modern convenience for an era when parents led, schools disciplined, churches mattered, and criminals feared consequences.

I understand the temptation. I really do. Nearly half of Americans say they would rather live in the past, especially when they think about parental authority, teenage behavior, school discipline, religion, and crime. They look at the present like it is a filthy subway car at midnight: loud, foul-smelling, overcrowded, and headed somewhere nobody trusts.

Then they look backward and see a clean front porch, a father with a belt, a mother with rules, a teacher with a stern face, a pastor with a Bible, and children who supposedly said “Yes, sir” before they knew how to roll their eyes.

It is a powerful picture.

It is also partly a lie.

Not a complete lie. That is what makes it dangerous. The past had things that many people now miss: clearer boundaries, stronger neighborhood ties, less digital noise, and a public expectation that children were not tiny emperors with smartphones. But nostalgia is a smooth-talking con artist. It shows us the old family photograph and hides the unpaid bills, the domestic violence, the racial terror, the untreated depression, the drunk driver, the locked closet, and the child who learned fear before he learned multiplication.

Still, people are not crazy for wanting to go back. They are responding to something real. They are sick of living in a country where every child carries a glowing machine that can deliver porn, gambling, humiliation, political propaganda, and strangers into his bedroom before breakfast. They are sick of watching adults negotiate with 7-year-olds as if every bedtime is a United Nations summit. They are sick of schools that sometimes seem more afraid of disciplining a student than the student is of disrupting a classroom.

“Back in my day,” the older man says, shaking his head.

“Back in your day, you had lead paint and polio,” somebody answers.

Both men are right. That is the ugly joke.

Science and technology have improved life beyond anything our grandparents could have imagined. Americans live longer than they did in the early 20th century. Vaccines wiped out smallpox and pushed polio, the disease that once terrified parents every summer, to the edge of extinction in the United States. Antibiotics turned many infections from death sentences into routine doctor visits. Modern surgery repairs hearts, replaces joints, and saves premature babies who would once have been buried before their first birthday. A smartphone can call an ambulance, translate a language, locate a missing child, teach algebra, and connect a lonely person to the world.

But that same smartphone can turn a teenager into a sleep-deprived hostage of algorithms designed by men in expensive hoodies.

That is the bargain nobody read before signing.

A 2026 report on an NBC News survey of 3,009 Americans ages 18 to 29 found that 47% said they would prefer to live in the past. These are not old men in barbershops dreaming about rotary phones. These are young adults who grew up with Wi-Fi in the walls. Many pointed to constant subscriptions, invasive devices, addictive social media, weak product quality, artificial intelligence anxiety, and a sense that modern technology no longer serves people. It watches them. It sells them. It needles them. It keeps them anxious, broke, distracted, and permanently available.

The machine was supposed to make life easier. Instead, it made life noisier.

I do not think people mainly want to return to 1955, 1975, or 1995. I think they want to return to a time when the rules felt visible. A child misbehaved in class, and an adult stopped it. A teenager came home late, and there were consequences. A neighbor saw a child acting foolishly and felt free to correct him. A family attended church, synagogue, mosque, or another gathering place where people knew each other’s names and business. The system was not always fair. But it was legible.

Today, too much feels like a foggy courtroom where nobody knows the charge, the judge, or the rules.

Parents feel that loss first. Pew Research Center reported in 2023 that 43% of parents said they were raising their children similarly to how they were raised, while 44% said they were trying to do things differently. That is almost an even split. It tells me something important: America is not merely fighting about parenting. America is unsure what parenting is supposed to be.

One camp sees discipline and hears “abuse.” The other sees empathy and hears “weakness.” One says, “That child needs structure.” The other says, “That child needs understanding.” Meanwhile, the child is in the corner watching TikTok and learning that every limit is oppression.

Let us call a spade a spade. Some parents have become scared of being parents. They want to be liked. They want to be the cool mother, the gentle father, the household ambassador who explains every rule in four paragraphs. But children do not need a public-relations team. They need love with a backbone. They need to know that “no” is a complete sentence and that freedom without responsibility is just a playground with no fence near a highway.

That does not mean we should romanticize the belt, the paddle, or the slap. The old ways were often cruel. In many homes, “discipline” was a fancy word for adults dumping rage on smaller people who could not fight back. In too many schools, harsh punishment fell hardest on Black students, disabled students, poor students, and children already struggling under heavy burdens. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that 19.3% of high-school students said they had received unfair discipline during the previous 12 months in a 2021 survey. The past was not some golden schoolhouse where every teacher was wise and every punishment was just.

But the answer to unfair discipline is fair discipline. It is not no discipline.

Teachers know this. The National Education Association reported in 2025 that 4 out of 5 educators and education support professionals viewed student behavior as a serious problem. That is not a right-wing slogan. That is a distress signal from people standing in classrooms every day. A teacher cannot teach fractions while breaking up fights, begging students to remove headphones, and dodging profanity from children who know the system has tied the adult’s hands.

A school without order is not progressive. It is a warehouse.

Then there is religion. Many Americans miss it, even when they do not miss the theology. They miss the rhythm. They miss the moral vocabulary. They miss the idea that not everything is negotiable, marketable, or subject to a comment section vote. When religion weakens, people do not automatically become wicked. But they can become untethered. They start building their morality out of brand slogans, political tribes, celebrity moods, and whatever gets applause online.

Gallup found that 49% of Americans said religion was important in their daily lives in 2025, down from 66% in 2015. That is a 17-point drop in 10 years. Some people celebrate that as liberation. Maybe part of it is. Religious institutions have earned plenty of distrust through hypocrisy, scandal, greed, and politics dressed in Sunday clothes. But a country cannot remove its old moral furniture, throw it into the street, and then act surprised when people have nowhere to sit.

Crime is where nostalgia becomes most deceptive. Americans often believe crime is rising even when national data show the opposite. Pew Research Center reported that FBI and Bureau of Justice Statistics data showed dramatic declines in violent and property crime from the early 1990s, when crime rates were much higher. The FBI reported that violent crime fell 4.5% in 2024, while murder fell 14.9%. Property crime fell 8.1%.

Those are facts.

But facts do not erase fear.

If a mother sees a video of a random assault on her phone, the fact that national violent crime has declined does not comfort her much. If a shop owner watches thieves strip shelves in broad daylight, a national chart feels like an insult. If a family hears gunshots at night, they are not going to say, “Well, the aggregate trend is encouraging.”

They will say, “What happened to this country?”

And that question is not really about crime statistics. It is about trust. Trust that adults are in charge. Trust that rules mean something. Trust that a child can go to school and learn. Trust that a police officer, a teacher, a parent, a pastor, and a neighbor all understand the difference between compassion and surrender.

The past was not better in every way. In many ways, it was brutal, sick, segregated, sexist, and unnecessarily cruel. I would not trade modern medicine, civil rights protections, women’s opportunities, disability access, or scientific progress for a black-and-white fantasy.

But I will not insult people by pretending their longing is stupid.

They do not miss every part of the past. They miss consequences. They miss community. They miss adults acting like adults. They miss a world where technology was a tool in the garage instead of a landlord in the mind.

America does not need a time machine. It needs nerve.

 

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