Category: The Washington Free Beacon
Trump Pulls Page From Iraq War Playbook In Escalation Against ‘Narco-Terrorists’
‘To protect Americans from the scourge of deadly fentanyl’
Police ‘Froze’ As Terrorists Massacred Jews on Bondi Beach, Eyewitness Accounts and Videos Suggest
An eyewitness from Sunday’s massacre at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia, stated police officers hesitated as two terrorists sprayed bullets at a group of Jews gathered to celebrate Hanukkah, while video analysis indicates law enforcement waited several minutes after arriving on the scene to engage the shooters.
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Ilhan Omar accuses ICE of ‘racially profiling’ her son during traffic stop
Democrat Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota was quick to play the race card after her son was pulled over by ICE in a traffic stop Sunday.
Omar’s son was pulled over by ICE after making a stop at Target, and he was asked to produce his identification, according to the congresswoman’s account. Despite Omar’s accusations of racial profiling, her son was let go by ICE after producing his passport.
‘There’s nothing worse than when a person comes in and does nothing but b***h.’
“They are racially profiling,” Omar said of the ICE raids in Minnesota. “They are looking for young men who look Somali that they think are undocumented.”
“Yesterday, after he made a stop at Target, he did get pulled over by ICE agents,” Omar added. “Once he was able to produce his passport ID, they did let him go.”
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Christian Monterrosa/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Omar’s political allies quickly came to bat for her and her son, doubling down on the narrative that he was pulled over for racial reasons. Notably, neither law enforcement nor the congresswoman have clarified why her son was pulled over in the first place.
“Congresswoman Omar’s son was pulled over by ICE while he was following the law, on his way home from Target,” failed Democrat vice presidential candidate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said in a post on X. “This isn’t a targeted operation to find violent criminals, it’s racial profiling.”
Despite the left decrying alleged racial motivations, President Donald Trump has maintained his criticisms of Omar and Somali migrants in Minnesota, citing their lack of assimilation and the disproportionally high rates of fraud.
“There’s nothing worse than a person that comes in and does nothing but b***h,” Trump told Blaze News in the Oval Office Friday, “and comes from a place where she shouldn’t be telling us what to do. She shouldn’t be telling us. And everybody agrees with me.”
“What’s happening in Minnesota with Somalia, where billions of dollars are being stolen like candy from a baby, we’re not going to let that go on.”
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American muscle-car culture is alive and well … in Dubai
One of the first things I did when I moved to Dubai was buy a Dodge Challenger. Not the volcanic Hellcat or the feral Scat Pack — the SXT, the V6 base model.
Nevertheless, for those nine months in 2023, the car carried itself like it had seen things it couldn’t legally discuss. I miss it the way a grounded teenager misses his phone — painfully and often. The car was, in many ways, gloriously pointless. But to me, it was absolutely perfect. Nobody buys a Dodge for practicality. You buy one because fun is a dying art and driving is supposed to feel alive.
America insists this is why we can’t have nice things. The UAE shrugs, inhales some shisha, and says, ‘Great, we’ll have them instead.’
What fascinated me then, and still does now, is how the Middle East has quietly become the last stronghold for real American muscle.
Dubai drift
While America agonizes over emissions charts and frets about carbon neutrality, Dubai is out there treating a supercharged V8 like a household appliance. You hear them everywhere — echoing off glass towers, screaming down Sheikh Zayed Road, prowling through parking lots like metal predators looking for prey. It’s the sound of a culture still in love with combustion, unashamed of horsepower, and utterly allergic to guilt.
The region adores these cars. Worships them, even. In the West, muscle cars are increasingly treated like contraband with headlights, monitored by regulators the way principals monitor school corridors. But in the UAE, they’re symbols of power, freedom, excess, and the simple joy of pressing a pedal and feeling physics panic.
The numbers back it up. The UAE’s classic-car market is projected to grow from roughly $1.23 billion in 2023 to nearly $1.83 billion by 2032, with collectors routinely paying well above American estimates. This is particularly true for rare models, such as the 1971 Plymouth Hemi ’Cuda convertible that sold for about $4.2 million in Dubai, roughly 35% above its American estimate.
Men in flowing robes and sandals race around industrial estates with the confidence of emperors and the cornering ability of a wardrobe on wheels. Somehow, by the grace of God (not Allah), it all works. There’s something delightfully surreal about watching a man dressed like he stepped out of the book of Exodus drift a Challenger with monk-like serenity.
Combustion cosplay
Back home, Dodge now calls its new EVs “muscle.” But that’s like a woman getting very expensive surgery in a very private place and calling herself a man. Without the roar, the vibration, the combustion, it’s cosplay — an impersonation that fools no one except the marketing department. You can’t call something a muscle car if it sounds like a dentist’s drill.
Real muscle needs rumble. It needs that primal, throat-deep growl that shakes your sternum and announces your arrival three zip codes away. Take that away, and you’re just a sad sack who should have bought a Tesla and called it a day.
When muscle cars disappear, the loss isn’t just mechanical but cultural. For decades, when the world pictured America, it didn’t picture Washington or Wall Street. It pictured steel, cylinders, and a V8 rumble rolling across a desert highway.
Hollywood hardwired that association into the global imagination. “Bullitt,” “Vanishing Point,” “Smokey and the Bandit,” even the “Fast & Furious” franchise, for all its awful acting and cheese thick enough to insulate a house. I still remember being 8 years old, watching “Gone in 60 Seconds,” and thinking, Yes, this is what adulthood should look like.
You could grow up thousands of miles away, never having set foot on American soil, and still recognize the sound of a Mustang firing up. It was the unofficial anthem of the greatest nation on Earth, a national ringtone encoded in exhaust fumes. It symbolized everything the country loved about itself: rebellion, possibility, the belief that any man with a heavy foot and enough premium gasoline could outrun his problems. It was an identity as much as a mode of transport.
RELATED: ‘Leno’s Law’ could be big win for California’s classic car culture
CNBC/Getty Images
Revvers’ refuge
And that’s the tragedy. A silent America isn’t an America anyone recognizes. The muscle car was more than a vehicle. It was a character, a co-star, an accomplice. Kill it off, and the whole story changes — and not for the better.
And oddly, it’s the Middle East that seems most intent on preserving that myth. It’s as if the region has been appointed the accidental curator of America’s automotive soul. The UAE, in particular, feels like the final refuge where these cars can run wild. Environmental regulations exist there, but only in the same way that scarecrows exist — present, decorative, and cheerfully ignored. The country is spotless, the air somehow clearer than cities that run entire marketing campaigns screaming “sustainability!” And yet it’s bursting with Challengers and Chargers. America insists this is why we can’t have nice things. The UAE shrugs, inhales some shisha, and says, “Great, we’ll have them instead.”
It makes you re-think the demonization of muscle cars. We were told they were barbaric, dirty, irresponsible — rolling catastrophes portrayed as personal hand grenades lobbed at the atmosphere. Meanwhile, Dubai keeps its streets cleaner than half of California while simultaneously hosting enough horsepower to make a U.N. peacekeeper reach for the radio. The contradiction is almost poetic. The place accused of excess manages to be pristine, while the places preaching virtue can’t manage basic cleanliness without a committee and a grant.
Selling sand to a camel
A quick disclaimer for anyone feeling inspired to follow my lead. Dubai might be paradise for muscle cars, but it’s also the Wild West of used-car dealing. A shocking number of “mint condition” imports arrive after being wrapped around a tree somewhere in North America, are given a light cosmetic baptism, and are relaunched onto the market as if they had spent their lives humming gently down suburban streets.
Half the salesmen — greasy, fast-talking veterans from Lebanon, Palestine, and everywhere in between — could sell sand to a camel. You need your eyes open. Fortunately, I knew the sites where you can run a chassis number and see the car’s real history, dents, disasters, and all. It saved me from driving home in a beautifully repainted coffin.
Even with this dark underbelly, Dubai’s affection for American muscle is entirely authentic. You see it on weekend nights at the gas stations, which double as unofficial car shows. Dozens gather, engines idling like caged animals, while men compare exhaust notes with the seriousness of diplomats negotiating borders. Teenagers film everything, because why wouldn’t you document a species this endangered? The entire scene feels like a sanctuary, a place where mechanical masculinity hasn’t been entirely euthanized.
Muscle migration
Some of the funniest moments came from watching Emirati drivers — men dressed in immaculate white garments — exit their cars with Hollywood swagger, as if the Challenger were simply an extension of their personality. And in many ways, it was. It was part “Need for Speed,” part Moses at the Marina. And somehow, without irony, they pulled it off.
Living there made me realize that muscle cars aren’t dying everywhere. Rather, they’re migrating. Fleeing the jurisdictions that shame them and settling in regions that still celebrate joy. The Middle East has become the last refuge for these beasts. Not because it rejects the future, but because it refuses to surrender the past for a machine that feels clinically dead on delivery.
And that’s the real tragedy. America built the muscle car, mythologized it, exported it, then surrendered it to paper-pushers in Priuses, armed with clipboards and calculators. The UAE bought the export and kept the myth alive. My Challenger is gone now, sold to a man who claimed he needed it for “family errands.” But the fond memories of tearing around the city have never faded. America may have abandoned its automotive adolescence, but Dubai, thankfully, hasn’t.
Someone has to keep the engines roaring. And right now, it’s the men in sandals.
Why Jayden can’t use capital letters
What’s the deal with people typing in all lowercase? You’ve seen that, right?
everything they type looks like this. it doesn’t matter if it’s a text. it doesn’t matter if it’s a post on x. it doesn’t matter if it’s a comment on someone’s photo. everything they type is lowercase.
‘If I see “LOL,” that’s a Boomer/Gen X. If I see “Lol,” that’s a Millennial. If I see “lol,” I know that’s one of my own.’
This style of typing is largely a Zoomer phenomenon, though some older people trying to act young do it too.
I am not a Zoomer, though I am interested in the Zoomers. I have written about them before, am writing about them now, and will write about them again. They are, whether we like it or not, the future, or at least the near future, so they should be of interest to us.
So why exactly do the Zoomers type in lowercase?
No cap
I asked a trusted Zoomer resource of mine, Caleb Wallace Holm, to provide his usual insight. He told me, “Zoomers have been doing it since we got our phones. It’s a way to demonstrate nonchalance and also a means of distinction from previous generations.”
All this makes sense. Younger generations almost always try to demonstrate nonchalance or uncaring. To be formal is to be old and stodgy, and you don’t want to be old. To be overly concerned is to be your dad, and you don’t want to be your dad.
So the young seek out ways to show they are relaxed and ways they can possibly differentiate themselves from the old. When you are young, you want to be new and different, so there is nothing particularly new about the logic of Zoomer lowercase typing.
Laugh lines
What is new is the acting out of this mini-rebellion of distinction in the digital domain, as the digital world didn’t exist for prior generations in the same way it does for the Zoomers.
And it is this new element — life in the digital space — that differentiates Zoomers most profoundly from the rest of us in a multitude of ways. As I have written before, Zoomers are the first disembodied generation, and this has profound impacts on how they exist in the world.
Holm told me he can discern how old someone is just by the way they “laugh” online. He remarked, “If I see ‘LOL,’ that’s a Boomer/Gen X. If I see ‘Lol,’ that’s a Millennial. If I see ‘lol,’ I know that’s one of my own.”
While I never would have thought of this on my own, it made complete sense once I heard it. Of course an astute member of the generation that was raised on the internet would be adept at discerning someone’s age simply by the way they “laugh” online.
The lowered life
Though the attempt to differentiate oneself from prior generations by way of typing in all lowercase makes sense and follows a fairly expected trajectory, there is something off about it. You might call the Zoomers many things, but earnest, excitable, mentally well, and aspirational are probably not among the descriptors you would choose to use.
They barely drink alcohol out, but they smoke tons of weed in. SSRI use is rampant, and a general malaise or an overly-ironic stance is fairly standard operating procedure among their cohort. The Zoomers are the most medicated generation in history and don’t appear to respond to any traditional incentive structure. Not great.
Nonchalance is one thing. Not caring about anything at all is another thing. I do wonder if the lowercase typing of the Zoomers is less about studied nonchalance than it is a lack of any vital spirit. I wonder if this lowercase typing represents something even more toxic than laziness. If the Zoomers were, in general, very well-adjusted, very social, and very mentally well and characterized by earnest effort, I may not wonder if the lowercase typing signaled something negative. But they are not those things, so I have to wonder what it represents, whether done intentionally or not.
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Photo by Brett Carlsen/Getty Images
Type casting
And yet, not all Zoomers are listless or on SSRIs, and not all Zoomers type in lowercase. Holm, my Zoomer resource, doesn’t. He types like I do — with capitalization — though he is also fluent in the language of his people (the Zoomers). And he is also full of life and spirit. And though I often joke with him that he is the most powerful Zoomer living, he is not at all alone. There are other vital Zoomers out there who type with proper capitalization.
It sounds strange, but maybe proper capitalization and vitality, or just normal emotional responses, go hand in hand. And maybe typing in lowercase and perpetual irony go hand in hand.
Maybe performative nonchalance in text form becomes giving up or some other kind of deadness IRL quicker than people realize.
Maybe the way we type to one another matters more than we think. Maybe exclamation marks, capitalization, and real non-ironic enthusiasm reflects a healthy attitude toward the world and one’s place in it.
Maybe there is more to lowercase typing than meets the eye.
The medium is the message, after all.
Brown University Faces Questions About Security Policies After Sending Delayed Emergency Alert and Failing To Sound Sirens During Shooting
Brown University is facing questions over its security policies after its emergency sirens never sounded in response to Saturday’s shooting, while taking nearly 20 minutes to send an alert out to students. The scrutiny comes after campus cops passed no-confidence votes against their police chief and questioned the school’s emergency response capabilities.
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Australian PM Anthony Albanese Omits Jews in Statement on Hanukkah Massacre
Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese released a statement after Sunday’s terror attack on a Hanukkah celebration in Sydney in which he made no mention of Jews or anti-Semitism.
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Cuckin’ in the Free World
The sun rises also. God’s taunt: the relentlessness of repetition; the unyielding promise of possibility. So gentle, yet so violent. A brown box lingers on the front steps, aching for evisceration’s gift. Begging to unburden itself. A soul ensconced within—laid bare in literary flesh, fixed in ink, and marketed for mass consumption. A cry for help. The sound of an American flag being raped.
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Dem House Candidate Offers Condolences to Australia’s Jewish Community—Only To Delete the Statement and Replace It With a Message That Omits Jews
A House of Representatives candidate in Pennsylvania posted a heartfelt message on X about the shooting at Brown University and attack at a Hanukkah festival in Sydney, Australia, before deleting the post and replacing it with one that only mentioned Brown.
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