Bohemian Grove seems to be a kind of frat house affair. Bilderberg [philosophy] may be marginally more serious. The CFR is transparent. You can read their publications. In the 18th century it perhaps made some sense to conjure up the Illuminati and Masons. Not since.

The threat of China is not military. The threat of China is they can't be intimidated. Europe you can intimidate. When the US tries to get people to stop investing in Iran, European companies pull out, China disregards it. You look at history and understand why - they've been around for 4,000 years, they have contempt for the barbarians, they just don't give a damn.

Intellectuals (in the standard sense of the term, not [ Edward] Said's prescriptive sense) are the people who write history.

The racism in Europe takes the form of anti-immigrant extremism - which is bad enough here - I think it's hard to measure, but my guess is that it's probably worse there.

In fact, when drugs are legalized, use sometimes goes down, it's been claimed. Part of the reason is that teenage kids use illicit drugs because they are illicit. They are thumbing their noses at society. If they were legal, they might not.

I just don't care about popular culture. It looks to me pointless and superficial. If I had free time I'd rather read a 19th century novel.

Everything depends very much on who you are, what your values are, what your commitments are, what circumstances you live in and what options you're willing to undertake, and that determines what you ought to be doing.