Even though Donald Trump is no longer on the national stage as president, populism appears to be here to stay. Populism can be defined as the reaction when ordinary people feel like they are being disregarded by elite groups. Many events over the last few weeks are feeding a populist perspective.

Consider the topic I discussed yesterday. An average group of investors decided to buy stock of GameStop in order to hurt Wall Street hedge funds. A digital distribution platform banned their account. Another locked their online trading accounts. All seemed coordinated to help the elites in the hedge fund.

At the White House press conference, a reporter asked for a response from the Biden administration. The press secretary started by talking about Janet Yellen becoming the first female Treasury Secretary. They didn’t want to talk about it because she was tied to those hedge funds.

One headline writer had some fun at her expense by writing, “In Historic First, Janet Yellen Becomes First Female Treasury Secretary to Request Ethics Waiver for Wall Street Speaking Fees.” She received more than $800,000 in speaking fees from Citadel, a hedge fund connected to the GameStop saga.

Another story I mentioned yesterday is the story of Google, Apple, and Amazon deplatforming Parler. We can also add the decision by Twitter and Facebook to block the New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop. People were even blocked from talking about the story.

So many average Americans feel like the political and economic system is rigged for the elites and against them. The populist perspective might wane if the elites begin to reform themselves and the institutions. But do you think this will happen any time soon? I don’t.

David Sacks is one of the founders of PayPal, so he certainly understands the tech world. He sees significant similarities between the latest GameStop stock controversy and social media censorship.

The first involved hedge funds, which he refers to “as the apex predators of capitalism” who drive down companies and are “feasting on the carcasses.” The story is fairly simple. Various hedge funds “shorted” the stock of GameStop, and a group called WallStreetBets decided to damage those hedge funds by buying stock and thereby raised the price of the stock by 1,700 percent.

A digital distribution platform banned the WallStreetBets account for “hate speech” and for “spreading misinformation.” Sacks observed that the “quoted justification sounds familiar” because it was nearly identical to the justification given by Google, Apple, and Amazon for deplatforming Parler just a few weeks before. Also, WallStreetBets was locked out of their Robinhood online trading accounts.

Sacks has been warning about the tech censorship ever since Parler was taken down and the sitting president was removed from all social media platforms. He asks why the platform choose to enforce its “Community Guidelines” at that particular time. Could it be due to the fact that the hedge fund ox was being gored? The platform may have warned WallStreetBets, but they could actually warn virtually every large message board on the Internet.

He reminds us that “censorship is about who has the power to censor, and what checks are placed upon that power. Right now, tech companies have all the power, and they exercise it as a like-minded cartel.” You know we have a problem when a tech insider is warning us about censorship. I am grateful he took the time write about this danger.

Why is there so much panic and tension in our world today? There are probably lots of explanations, but Michael Brendan Doughterty puts his finger on our smartphones. He acknowledges that the pandemic and the lockdowns have contributed to the unease we feel. He also concedes that the polarization of our politics is also having a significant impact.

But he goes on to explain that the smartphone is a “novel substance in our environment.” He believes it is “inducing people to a kind of low-level panic and paranoia, especially in conjunction with social media.”

Much of the impact, he believes, is physiological. For example, a smartphone uses a small, backlit screen that emits blue light. There is quite a bit of research that documents the effect of blue light on circadian rhythms that are an important part of our sleep. Blue light apparently suppresses the secretion of the hormone melatonin.

Another physiological factor is the posture many have while holding a cell phone. People spend time with their shoulders falling forward, hunched over with a sunken chest, and head tilted downward. This apparently dramatically increases the release of stress hormones.

He also provides some documentation on brain activity. For example, online gamers shows gray-matter atrophy in the motor areas of the brain. This can have an negative impact on impulse control, planning, and organization.

Add to all of this to the reality that social media can leave typical users nervous, frazzled, and overstimulated. The physiological factors coupled with the electronic stimulation may explain so much of the tension we feel in our society today.

I think it time for us to consider a digital fast. Turn off the phones. Log out of social media.

I had Professor Robert George (Princeton) on my radio program recently to talk about the dialogue he has had for a number of years with Professor Cornel West. They certainly qualify as “the odd couple” given their differences in political perspectives and their different racial backgrounds. But they have forged a partnership based on mutual respect and a desire for civil dialogue.

Months ago, they published an op-ed that was summary of their common commitments. They reminded us that “To unite the country, we need honesty and courage.” Here are four of their many aphorisms in that article:

“We need the honesty and courage to speak the truth — including painful truths that unsettle not only our foes but also our friends and, most especially, ourselves.”

“We need the honesty and courage to recognize the faults, flaws, and failings of even the greatest of our heroes — and to acknowledge our own faults, flaws, and failings.”

“We need the honesty and courage to express dissent — to say, “No, I will not go along” — when conscience tells us that our own ideological or political tribe has gone astray or gone too far or become fanatical and blind to integrity and the dignity of all.”

“We need the honesty and courage not to compromise our beliefs or go silent on them out of a desire to be accepted, or out of fear of being ostracized, excluded, or canceled.”

America is divided country, and we need to work to end this polarization. These wise statements provide a foundation to do just that.

The political divisions in America are evident to just about anyone. Which leads to a sincere question: Are there any issues with significant bipartisan support? Actually, there are quite a number as George Barna discovered in a post-election survey.

As he surveyed Republicans and Democrats, he found a half dozen issues that are supported by a supermajority of voters in both parties. Americans may be divided, but you can still find issues which voters support in overwhelming numbers.

More than four out of five Americans (83%) support the idea of expanding the domestic manufacturing base. Four out of five adults (81%) support the notion of investing heavily in the improvement of our national infrastructure.

Making Social Security and Medicare financially solvent is another bipartisan issue. Eight out of ten adults (80%) back such a concept.

Reducing the federal debt is another popular idea for three-quarters (77%) of adults. Likewise, reducing the federal income taxes for individuals also appeals to nearly three-quarters (73%) of adults. A large majority of Americans (73%) want to give parents more school choices for their children.

By contrast, George Barna found a clear lack of bipartisan support for many of the key issues in the Biden administration agenda. That would be such items as increasing the number of US Supreme Court judges from 9 to 13 and eliminating the use of fossils fuels as part the “Green New Deal.”

If you look at his polling results, you realize that there are many important issues where Republican voters and Democrat voters can find common ground. But few of those issues are being promoted.

Often it seems to me that many of our political leaders want to increase conflict and polarization rather than solve problems that have overwhelming support.

We certainly need government regulations, but sometimes those regulations can be burdensome and therefore unnecessary. Former President Trump understood this because he came from the business world. One of his first actions was to require that two regulations be removed for every new regulation.

One of the first acts by President Biden was to reverse Trump deregulation. But Biden’s latest executive order goes much further. Don’t take my word for it. Listen to what progressives and conservatives say about it.

James Goodwin is a senior policy analyst at the Center for Progressive Reform. He exclaimed, “I realized what I’m about to say to you sounds absurd. It has the potential to be the most significant action Biden took on day one.”

Clyde Wayne Crews is a regulation expert at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. He warned that this executive order is “likely to do away with cost-benefit analysis by elevating unquantifiable aims as benefits and deny costs of regulation altogether.”

No longer does the federal government have to consider the costs of a regulation if the benefits accrue to minorities or gender equality or help advance Biden’s agenda to fight climate change. This is a fundamentally different way to evaluate government policy.

Federal regulations currently cost us $1.9 trillion in annual costs. This is an enormous hidden tax on you and your family.

That is the cost right now before the Biden administration goes to work on creating new regulations and trying to bring back previously cancelled regulations. In short order, I believe we may consider this executive order more damaging than the dozens of others already signed.

Recent surveys show that millions of Americans doubt that the 2020 elections were run fairly. That is why a number of state legislators are filing bills and considering what changes need to be made before the next election cycle. In fact, Senator Rand Paul announced on one TV program what he will be “spending the next two years going around from state to state and fixing these problems.”

He and other members of Congress might also spend a significant amount of their time in Washington, trying to fix a bill that will likely pass the House and could even pass the Senate. The “Democracy Restoration Act of 2021” is H.R. 1, meaning it is the first bill in Congress. It is similar to the “For the People Act” I discussed last year and was passed by the House of Representatives.

Instead of trying to address some of the concerns millions of voters have with the way the 2020 elections were run, this bill attempts to go even further in the wrong direction. The bill essentially requires states to do away with nearly all election rules that exist to prevent election fraud.

All states must have mail-in voting. All states must have automatic registration to vote. All states must have a period of early voting. All states must allow anyone to register the same day as an election. A state “may not require an individual to provide any form of identification as a condition of obtaining an absentee ballot.”

The bill vastly expands ballot harvesting. It says that a voter can “designate any person to return a voted and sealed absentee ballot to the post office, a ballot drop-off location, tribally designated building or election office.”

There’s much more in this bill, but you can see just from these few key points that this isn’t election reform. It’s a prescription for more problems in the next election.

Representative Dan Crenshaw started his commentary about lockdowns but quickly focused on how our brains process risk. He wanted to help us understand why Americans see the pandemic and the lockdowns very differently.

He cites research that discovered that “Democrats and Republicans differ in the neutral mechanism activated during risk-taking exercises, specifically in the amygdala region. This demonstrates measurable physiological differences when confronted with risk.” For example, “conservatives overwhelmingly fill the ranks of physically riskier jobs such as the military, law enforcement, and loggers.”

What does that mean in terms of the pandemic we have faced this last year? Conservatives are less risk averse to physical threats and less likely to favor more extreme actions to mitigate risk. Liberals, he argues, are more likely to believe that government can solve problems and are more willing to accept such measures.

He also quotes the research of Dr. Jonathan Haidt (who has been on my radio program to talk about his latest book). He found that liberals overemphasize “caring” and “fairness” above other moral considerations. Conservatives favor these moral categories but also value moral authority and tradition, liberty, and loyalty. This also explains why “liberals routinely denigrate contextualized COVD-19 data – such as accounting for age and co-morbidities when assessing fatalities” because this see this as “downplaying the virus.”

If we are to have a civil debate about responses to the pandemic, then we need to understand the differences between us and frame the discussion accordingly. Representative Crenshaw wisely reminds us that some of the differences we have about government policy are affected by how our brains process risk and emotions.