By Taylor Lewis 

It’s a grand ol’ do for the Grand Old Party.

Republicans are experiencing something the cranky con-coalition, in its storied 170 years, has never seen, heard, or felt: popularity. The much-derided pachyderm is no longer the butt of every late-night-TV zinger, the sphincter-tight antagonist in every teencomedy movie, the bumbling, drunkard padre in every 5 PM cable sitcom.

He—and, yes, it’s a he, Georgia’s thunderous Marjorie Taylor Greene notwithstanding—is no longer a surly mossback. Mr. Republican is a sharp-shaven blade with a cooing fandom, the Pedro Pascal of politics.

Ha! Only yanking your chain, unfooled reader! Crotchety, Dockers-donned dads will continue to be pin cushions for our cultural taste-makers. The archetypal red-voter, with a belching Ford pickup, a stout, aquamarine-eyeshadowed wife, and an outdated sense of propriety, will remain at the bottom of the mockable hierarchy, somewhere above pedophiles but a hair under crypto-queer Nazis.

But plot twist! Speed-bag status no longer hinders the Republican Party. Nor does it repel normie voters, who live benign existences filled with soul-sweeping monotony like grocery shopping at Walmart and getting the Toyota’s oil changed at Jiffy Lube.

The New York Times (you know it’s serious) reports that Democrats are tormented by a “voter registration crisis.” Despite its firm grasp on the mediating value-shapers of American life—academia, entertainment, media, Wall Street, Silicon Valley—the burro band is tripping over its uncloven hooves trying to catch up to its counterparts in registration.

The Times on the Dems’ travails: “Of the 30 states that track voter registration by political party, Democrats lost ground to Republicans in every single one between the 2020 and 2024 elections—and often by a lot.” The “a lot” has to be an exaggeration. After all, the left has such hooky civic gimmicks like “Kamala is brat,” Dark Brandon, shitposter Gavin, and the silver-tongued uranist who spent $7 billion on a couple of dozen EV charging stations and has zero black support. The great American mass must be queuing to join the party like it was a McDonald’s giving out adult Happy Meals with Ozempic shots as the toy.

The Times isn’t lib-massaging its message for once. Democrats really are facing a membership deficit—an ironic twist for a party prefixed with commoners. The number-crunch: “Democrats lost about 2.1 million registered voters between the 2020 and 2024 elections… Republicans gained 2.4 million.” Somewhere along a dusty, pockmarked backroad deep in Lancaster County, Pa., Scott Pressler does a happy jig.

That about sews it up then, it follows. A four-million-card-carrying lead? May as well just screenprint the “J.D. Vance – 48th president” t-shirts now. Apologies to all African children—no “Newsom 2028” sweater for Christmas. Those Harris/Walz crewnecks will have to last a few more years!

Not since Saddam Hussein was ferreted out of his soil bolt hole have Republicans stood at such a high meridian. Much Moët is fizzing at the Capitol Hill Club, bourbon tumblers are clinking at Butterworth’s, Steve Bannon is sitting shirtless in his townhouse happily guzzling mineral water. Yet they’d all be in error to sit snug on their laurels, chuckling at Trump’s Truth Social posts between quaffs of top-shelf spirits.

Being a registered party puller isn’t determinative of a single vote. Americans are finicky choosers. The Bolshevik from Burlington, senator Bernie Sanders, captured our consumption ethic when he decried our 23 choices of pit deodorant. Some days we feel like sticking our sweat glands with Old Spice’s Citron, other days Axe’s Phoenix gets the glide, and on rare days, only Dove’s Garden Tea Party with aromatic notes of honeysuckle and gardenia can cleanse our heaving hidrosis. And that goes for men. American women have aisle after aisle after aisle of bottled shampoo that, despite varying labels, all smell like putrescent strawberries.

An embarrassment of riches is a foreign concept to us Yankee capitalists. To be spoiled for choice is our birthright. And while our Pong-like party system hasn’t kept pace with all the Oreo flavors on offer, most voters still appreciate the option for punching the chad of discontent. In practice, giving form to dissent means pulling a party swap, which is a more common practice than pundits believe. Donald Trump’s winning over minorities, including half of Hispanic men, evidenced that no voter is set in stone. Minds change, whims vary, preferences lurch to and fro on gripes as trivial and particular as Hillary Clinton existing.

Democrats molting membership doesn’t doom the party to decades in the wilderness. The White House shifted partisan control three times in eight years; Congress just as many, if not more accounting for both chambers.

The Russophile literary critic Gary Saul Morson wrote that “[t]here can never be such a science, of war or anything else concerned with human beings. Contingency and surprise can never be eliminated.”

The cri de cœur of every third-party spoiler has more than a mite of truth to it: votes are earned, never deserved.

Free the People publishes opinion-based articles from contributing writers. The opinions and ideas expressed do not always reflect the opinions and ideas that Free the People endorses. We believe in free speech, and in providing a platform for open dialogue. Feel free to leave a comment.

By Mike Maharrey 

We know that people have valued gold and silver for thousands of years, but new evidence reveals that people were using the metals in a much more sophisticated way earlier than originally thought.

French researchers have found the oldest known indirect evidence of gold refining.

Archaeologists originally thought gold refining began with the Lydians, a people group who lived in what is now Turkey. In the 1960s, researchers discovered a gold refinery dating back to around 600 B.C.E. According to Science.org, Lydian refiners combined gold ore mined from the nearby Pactolus River with salt, chalk, and animal urine.

“After heating the mixture to more than 800°C and letting it cook for several days, the process separates out impurities—including traces of silver naturally present in the ore—and leaves behind pure gold.”

Archaeologists have discovered gold artifacts that date far earlier than the development of refining—as early as 4,500-4,000 B.C.E. These objects were shaped from natural gold without refining using heating and hammering techniques.

With the advent of refining, people could extract gold from ore and separate it from other metals, creating higher-purity gold objects.

To better understand gold refining, a team of researchers led by Francis Albarède from École Normale Supérieure of Lyon (ENS Lyon) analyzed Egyptian and Persian silver artifacts.

They used silver artifacts because the metal is a common byproduct of gold refining. Natural gold ore typically contains between 10 and 40 percent silver by mass.

Albarède said four artifacts contained silver consistent with metal produced as a byproduct of gold refining. These objects are dated earlier than 1,600 B.C.E.

“It looks like what you’d expect from a gold ore deposit,” Albarède said.

This indicated people were refining gold some one thousand years earlier than originally thought.

Silver as Money

In a separate finding, a multidisciplinary study conducted by researchers at the University of Haifa discovered silver was being used as money in Israel 3,600 years ago, long before the invention of coins.

Researchers analyzed dozens of silver stashes dating back to the Bronze and Iron Ages.

According to Dr. Tzilla Eshel, “The evidence shows that despite the absence of coins, silver was regularly used as a payment method, stored for future transactions by both institutions and individuals.”

Archaeologists originally thought these silver hoards were jeweler surpluses, raw metal stockpiles, or religious offerings. But evidence indicates the silver served as weight-based currency.

Eshel said this reveals that sophisticated money-based economies evolved earlier than previously thought.

“The first coins appeared in the 7th century BCE, but monetary system principles—uniformity, value control and even forgery—operated here centuries earlier. The continuous use of silver points to a sophisticated economy that evolved organically within society.”

This supports Carl Menger’s theory on money. In his 1871 essay, On the Origins of Money, the Austrian economist presented a theory that money emerged spontaneously over time. It was not created by government decree or fiat.

Early cultures bartered goods directly but quickly learned that this was an inefficient process due to the double coincidence of wants. For a barter trade to occur, both parties must want what the other has at the same time. This led to indirect exchange. People realized they could trade for things they didn’t necessarily want, but that they could trade for things they did want later. For instance, a farmer might trade corn for salt, even if he doesn’t need salt, because he knows others value it and he can later trade it for tools or cattle.

Over time, certain commodities (specifically gold and silver) became more widely accepted and evolved into money because they satisfied the requirements for good money—scarcity, divisibility, durability, and recognizability.

Governments later monopolized coinage, but money emerged naturally long before.

The recent discovery in Israel supports Menger’s theory.

The bottom line is that gold and silver have been valued throughout most of human history, and of course, it is still valued today. People all over the world will accept gold and silver, even if they don’t want dollars, euros, or yuan.

This article was originally published on MoneyMetals.com.

Free the People publishes opinion-based articles from contributing writers. The opinions and ideas expressed do not always reflect the opinions and ideas that Free the People endorses. We believe in free speech, and in providing a platform for open dialogue. Feel free to leave a comment.

By Taylor Lewis 

To My Fellow Resister,

I pray my missive reaches you without interception. The once-reliable Postal Service cannot be trusted, what with Dr. Evil Elon’s henchmen gutting it from the inside. Neither can an encrypted email be transmitted in full confidence. I’ve long suspected the bloated dictator in the Orange House sicced his minions upon our once honor-bright NSA. Nor are carrier pigeons reliable, ever since DOGE cuts stemmed their steady suet supply from the Department of Parks and Recreation.

I’m afraid I must rely on an open publication, with sheer hope that no Trumpy Joestumbles upon it during daily wrongthink sweeps. Good thing MAGA Cro-Magnons read at a first-grade level! My M.A. in multiethnic literature studies with an emphasis on 16th-century Paupin glossolalia from Middlebury College should properly shield this distress signal from autocracy’s prying eye. Consider this communique part samizdat, part survival journal, scribbled in the depths of this Donaldized Dystopia.

As you may know, unless Fox News has hijacked all broadcasting frequencies in the rest of the country, the President, seeking to wrestle ever more authority from “the people,” has illegally declared a state of emergency in Washington, D.C., federalizing law enforcement, press-ganging National Guardsmen to harass, detain, and menace we capital denizens. I say “illegally” because such a move clearly cuts across the Constitution, a document I ordinarily detest out of solidarity with my black brothers and sisters, not to mention the violently displaced aboriginal Americans. But exceptions can be made during states of exception. And if the lickspittle, jackboot-kissing Republicans want to throw that piece of parchment written by a bunch of slave-owners around to deny us universal health care, then I can thumbtack that racist rulebook to their knitted pale brows to show that their martial occupation is unjustified!

The pall of despotic darkness has descended upon our formerly uplit District. Roving bands of stormtroopers march through our streets, snatching the innocent from once anodyne establishments, such as The Hamilton and Kramers Bookstore. I can’t even DoorDash truffle fries from Le Diplomate without enflaming my IBS, so anxious am I that my courier will be whisked away to that El Salvador dungeon I saw featured on Rachel Maddow. I have to pop an extra Lexapro, down another glass of dry Pinot, just to calm my index finger to input the requisite 15% tip.

Everywhere and everyone and everything is in the crosshairs of Trump’s marauding outriders. Our very capital is under siege! It’s like a dreadful diurnal January 6th without an abeyance in sight. All the metaphors apply: lunatics running the asylum, barbarians breaching the gates, Voldemort headmaster at Hogwarts!

I don’t dare venture outside. Many of my colleagues, Bluesky mutuals, and fellow patients at The Sterling Group agree: moving beyond our doors risks brutal internment, especially for the open-minded who embrace diversity and inclusion. I post #liberateDC once an hour on Instagram, accompanying reposts of whatever atrocities descend across my feed. Just a half-hour ago, I shared a frightening Reel someone surreptitiously filmed of a fatigued guardsman pacing aimlessly around Dupont Circle. The clip made my blood run cold! I thought any moment a poor, defenseless gay would be wantonly swept away to some cold, chain-hang gaol. Nobody is impervious, especially the marginalized who make our city such a vibrant tapestry of kaleidoscopic color!

My psychic state was in full collapse, and I was seriously considering putting in for mental-health leave with my Raytheon remote-consultant job, when an extraordinary event rekindled hope within. It started with a martyr, as all rebellions must.

Sean Charles Dunn will be engraved in the immortal annals of history when this siege of our once gentle, cosmopolitan city is through. His courageous stand athwart authoritarianism deserves active adulation. The August Landmesser of our time, he is!

Dunn courageously cast the first stone of dissention in our moral struggle for liberation. A fellow mutineer informs me the subversive fissile was served up on whole-grain—a fitting symbol for our revolt against the gluttinous fascists who act as a virus on our democratic body politic! We are so many Davids fighting a big orange Goliath, though I loathe making that metaphor because anything biblical is inherently bigoted.

The Wasghinton Post, which I normally don’t trust given Jeff Bezos’s sell-out sop to the regime, likens Dunn to a famous molotov-sketch by a street artist I once saw on Etsy. I’m anguished to agree, but I must. The resistance starts now. The streets of Washington are our streets. We must agitate endlessly against this tangelo Gestapo!

The truth of the matter is, this is a coup from within, an overthrow of this town’s idyll modus vivdendi. Right-wing talk-radio keeps insisting the capital is not safe, that our murder rate is higher than New York City. These are abject lies. Propaganda fed to backwards bumpkins who would upchuck concentrated cholesterol at the site of a pedicab piloted by an immigrant. Sure, I’ve been carjacked and muggeda handful of times in my long tenure (six years) in Washington. But what’s life without a bit of hairy risk; and what’s a $7 carnitas street taco without having to hand it over after one bite because an unhoused person threatens you at knifepoint?

The Trump takeover of our peaceful metro is an exact historic parallel to the Nazis’ violent goosestep to power. Thuggish authorities rounding up Jews for death camps, clueless feds wandering listlessly on the National Mall—there is no fundamental difference! It’s all white supremacy totalitarianism led by a grossly venal strongman who has no business being president, even if he did allegedly win the popular plebscite. Wooing a majority of voters is not democracy! I don’t care what Meriam-Webster’s says! Plus, Webster’s sounds eerily similar to Wehrmacht, no?

The MAGA Reich is being constructed in the heart of the nation, for all eyes to witness, including yours. If there was a time to protest, to pound the paved byways and fling our fists toward our depleting ozone layer, this is it. Send help: money, supplies, “Impeach Trump Now” pennants. Anything you can spare to make it plain that doofus Donny’s radical, reactionary, retrogressive commandeering of our city will not stand. Where should assistance be directed, exactly? Well, I don’t actually live in the District proper. My apartment is technically in Clarendon. But I’ll shoot some DMs to my prog comrades leading the insurgency from behind enemy lines. No doubt there is a GoFundMe you can contribute toward to free our White House from the unduly elected President!

Free the People publishes opinion-based articles from contributing writers. The opinions and ideas expressed do not always reflect the opinions and ideas that Free the People endorses. We believe in free speech, and in providing a platform for open dialogue. Feel free to leave a comment.