Finding the Truth

Mark Noonan5 Comments

It is surprising what you can find in second hand stores if you’re just poking around. I mean, take me with my deep interest in history and especially military history. There I was, wandering around the store and I spot this book: The War Lords. Looks interesting. Edited by Field Marshal Sir Michael Carver. Never heard of him. Picture on the back though looks like a thoroughly English officer of the mid-20th century. Open it: printed in 1976. Cool: way before anything like Woke became fashionable. Flip through it: ah, it is a series of sketches covering the main military leaders of the 20th century – varied from Kemal to Bradley. I buy it, take it home and start to read it – and am immediately enthralled. Why? Not because it is all new – though it does provide some info I hadn’t heard before – but because it isn’t written to make a point…just tell us what the men were like as war leaders. Strengths and weaknesses, all of it given out without any political axe to grind.

That is so very important here in our Age of Lies: just telling it as it is. One of my favorite books about World War One is The Great War written by Cyril Falls. Not that Falls was perfect – no, he was a loyal British officer and he would not stick a knife into the back of his chief – Field Marshal Douglas Haig – just to sell a book. But his book is good because, as he put it, it was written in the sense of a grandchild asking, “tell us about the war, and what they fought each other for”. He just told the story. He didn’t varnish it – but he wasn’t trying to make a point; just tell the tale, and that is what makes it so good. If you want a brief and well written history of the war – by a man who served in it – Falls’ book is the go-to. And I’m thinking that The War Lords will be added to my selection of first rate books and one which I will end up reading multiple times.

We must keep in mind that history is whatever the historian decided to say – and if the historian wants to make a point, then what you’re getting is a point of view. It might be a very well written point of view. It might be a logically sound and well sourced point of view, but it is a point of view. William Manchester was an excellent historian and biographer but no matter how you slice it, he was a mid-20th century liberal (and he would have been the first to admit that is what he was) and his books are written through that lense. He might admit to his bias, but that bias did not prevent him from excluding things which worked against his Narrative. For instance, as a mid-20th century liberal, he was of the view that war is a stupid, tragic waste. It is how he saw his own service as a Marine in World War Two (and there are doubts about the accuracy of some of the war stories he relates…so, even when recounting his memoirs, his Narrative was paramount) – and it is how he views the men who lead the wars. Even the best were, in a sense, bad. Maybe less bad than some, but bad all the same. This is why his contribution to war literature must be taken with a grain of salt. He never got over his fury about how many of his friends died on Okinawa…and this prevented him from telling us, except as an aside, how incredibly brave his friends were. War is not mere glory. But it isn’t merely sordid, either. It is a human activity…and it is therefor a mixed bag and if we’re really being honest, we tell the whole story…even the parts that don’t support our argument.

It is so very important to find the truth. The whole truth. Nothing but the truth. It is also pretty rare…but it is what we must always seek. It is amazing how just a little bit of truth will upend perhaps even decades of settled thought in the mind. And how once you reach a critical mass of truth in your mind, you simply can’t be fooled. You also stop being fearful. Or worried. Once your quest for truth passes a certain point, a certain calmness becomes your main sensation. You can tell the liar a mile away, and you stay away from him – except, perhaps, to point out to others he’s a liar. You can tell instantly when someone is just making stuff up to sell a garbage idea. Even if you’re not an expert on a particular subject, you can tell when someone is lying about it. This, I think, is what was meant by “the truth shall set you free”. Not free in your body – someone might throw chains around you at any moment. But if you have the truth, you are free…you already know what is going to happen and you rest content knowing that no matter how triumphant a liar appears at any given moment, total disaster awaits him because lies are always destructive.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan35 Comments

Let us modify the 14th:

All persons born to two American citizens, native born or two persons naturalized in the United States according to law are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. Persons born to one American citizen are citizens of the United States if they have been continuously resident within the United States for at least ten years prior to their eighteenth birthday and take an oath affirming their loyalty and renouncing all foreign ties. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, nor shall any State provide any aid whatsoever to non-citizens. Violation of a oath made in any capacity shall result in permanent disenfranchisement and is not subject to the pardon power.

Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective number of adult citizens. No legislative district shall be valid if it is drawn for the purposes of securing a partisan political victory nor shall any district be based upon race, ethnic, gender or religious grounds. If any district is challenged on grounds of validity, seven adult citizens of that district shall be randomly chosen via lottery to gather and rule on the validity of the district. A majority is required for ruling on the district validity. The House of Representatives shall be required to expel members from invalid legislative districts; any Representative or Senator who disagrees with said expulsion shall also be expelled. Any person expelled from Congress is by that act permanently disenfranchised and may never hold any office of profit or trust in the United States or the several States.

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in actions which violated that oath.

The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred due to fraudulent activity; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

Make your own additions or subtractions as you like: but it is clear that if we are to be a serious nation with a future, we’re going to have to start spelling things out. We can’t rely on honesty and good will – too many of our fellow citizens are idiots and crooks. We can’t leave things open to interpretation because the liars will simply interpret them to support lies.

I saw a picture of that Islamist massacre of Christians in Nigeria over Palm Sunday and it is going to stick with me forever – quite horrific. Don’t search for such pictures. This poor kid had his face sliced in half.

But we do need to think about it – these savages hacked the Christians to pieces. Think about the physical effort and time that takes. The perpetrators would have been covered in gore after they were done. Yes, they are still humans and thus endowed with the rights of same – but they are also unreasonable, inhuman savages. We can’t negotiate with such people – they don’t have grievances which we can ameliorate…they have a vision of themselves as eternal brute masters over slaves. There is no half way point between what they want and what any decent person deserves.

In Iran, this is what we’re fighting – the same sort of people. Yes, they are in error. Yes, they are capable of repentance. Yes, if they do repent then they can be welcomed with open arms into the community of people. But first they must be stopped – and that will require violence. You can’t disabuse people of such deep seated evil by careful reasoning…if they were open to careful reasoning, they never would have got to the point where they chop people up. I hope that Trump arms the Christians and provides them support via our Navy and Air Force.

Apparently for Season 3 of Rings of Power, one of the heroes is an orc. It is like they are deliberately going out of their way to be insulting.

Orcs were creatures of Morgoth in Tolkien’s universe. It is never made clear whether they were something made out of whole cloth by Morgoth or captive elves which he ruined. Suffice it to say, the orcs were made in mockery of elves. Entirely evil and entirely enslaved to Morgoth and, later, to Morgoth’s emissary, Sauron. Clever enough to make weapons and do other basic things, they were usually lazy, greedy and cowardly. Unless they had a Dark Lord to impose his will, they wandered in small bands, killing and stealing what they could. Orcs aren’t born – they are spawned. This does imply some sort of female of the species, but orcs are incapable of love or devotion. So, no, an orc can’t be friends with an elf, even as some sort of temporary alliance. That the writers of Rings of Power are doing this means they want to change the entire meaning of Tolkien’s work – and IMO, this was started with the first series for the Lord of the Rings. There were two major parts totally excluded from the movies: Bombadil and the Scouring of the Shire. Part of this was time constraints but I believe that most of it was because the people who made the movie failed to understand why Bombadil was in it and why the Shire had to be scoured. Most important, though, was the excising of the Scouring.

Tolkien, himself, said it was an integral part of the story and envisioned from the start. That is, the hobbits after their arduous adventures, would have to return home and set the Shire to rights. Clean out the bad elements – a sort of low-key version of what Aragorn was doing in Gondor. That is, in any people, bad elements slip in and start to erode the good things and if they aren’t called out and expelled from time to time, it just gets worse. The hobbits had grown lazy and overly tolerant…they just wanted to be left alone and thought it was their right to be left alone. But all the while, enemies were gathering…enemies which could have been easily kept out by a bit of vigilance, but laziness allowed them in, causing death and destruction. By not having it in the movies, we are left with the sense that nothing was ever wrong with the hobbits. Nothing needed to be cured, nobody needed to stand guard. It left a hole in the tale…and that hole is now being driven through by people who not only don’t understand Tolkien’s world, but hate it.

It is my hope that eventually the slop they’re doing now will eventually be forgotten and in later years, truer adaptations will be made.


Open Thread

Mark Noonan19 Comments

The Iran war has been a major revelation showing us how the entire Global Ruling class has a vested interest in keeping the Mullah regime going. Now, just why is that? Well:

  1. A lot of them are bribed. The Mullahs pay them off. Never forget that the Ruling Class is corrupt and greedy – throw a couple bucks at them and they’ll dance to your tune.
  2. Peace in the Middle East would be a catastrophe. Reminder: the continued chaos there justifies the continuation of migration to Europe…gotta get those poor people outta there, right? If there’s peace, there’s no justification for replacing French and British voters.
  3. They really hate Israel. Of all the geopolitical events since 1945, Israel is the one they’ve come to hate the most. It is rich. It is powerful. It has the only growing Christian population in the Middle East. It is the only Middle East nation where Muslims are able to vote in genuinely free elections. It is a standing indictment of not just the Muslim world, but of the entire Third World…showing that starting from war and poverty you can lift yourselves up and very rapidly. You can have a free and law abiding society.
  4. Combined with this, the Ruling Class has been importing Muslims by the million and in order to keep them voting for that Ruling Class, hating Israel is a requirement. Even if one of them would prefer to support Israel, the potential loss of votes – and the turning over of their nations to patriots – is something not worth the risk.

Combine all that and you can see why they are so invested in the Mullah regime. Make no mistake about it, the Mullahs have not closed the Straight of Hormuz. They can’t. They lack the physical means to do so. But the Mullahs said it is closed and the Global Ruling Class went along with it and ordered the ships to stop sailing…because they hoped it would spike oil prices and force Trump to back down. What they didn’t understand was that Drill Baby Drill had already made the USA independent of the global oil market…we have had price spikes, but those really are just people being greedy. Charging the higher price because they can, not because they need to…in the USA, there is no shortage of oil or natural gas. To be sure, lots of countries are running out (I hear that Thailand is already rationing gasoline), but we aren’t. Trump is right when he proclaims we don’t need the Straight – it is Europe and Asia’s problem if it is closed. We can go on like this for a while – and the longer it goes on, the more the USA will be decoupled from the global oil and gas market…that is, our prices will start to drop, rapidly, even if the rest of the world is paying $20 a gallon for rationed gasoline.

Now, how will Trump wrap this up? I have no idea. It won’t go on much longer, though. Don’t pay much attention to alleged statements from the Mullah regime – in reality, there is no regime. No real government. Just various factions – mostly led by third and fourth tier people – vying for survival. Any idiot can put on a dress uniform and appear in front of a camera with a flag in the background to make a statement. What appears to be happening is the continued rapid degradation of every Iranian military asset – including tanks, vehicles and ammunition supplies – while Trump people talk to various Iranian people, trying to find the guy who will cut a deal…that is, bury the Mullah regime and become the transitional government. The continued bombing is important because day by day the various factions have less to bring to the table…and now it appears we’re hitting the ability to censor the internet and television. That is, the Iranian people are now getting access to non-regime news. The longer the factions hold out, the less their leverage…the coup de grace would be US occupation of strategic Iranian territory. Everyone is focused on Kharg Island, but I’m thinking Bandar Abbas and environs. But, that is all up to Trump and his people. We’ll see how he brings this to an end.

A Spanish girl in government care was raped by migrants. Not getting proper help afterwards, she attempted suicide which left her paralyzed. Then the government pressured her in to “assisted suicide” and her organs were harvested. You really need to think about that one – and not get angry at the migrants. To be sure, they all need to be flogged and then hung…but they aren’t the problem. The problem is the host of people – doctors, nurses, lawyers, bureaucrats, politicians, orderlies, etc – who made it all happen. The evil of the Nazi regime – or the Stalinist regime – wasn’t Hitler (or Stalin) it was the army of faceless operatives who made it all happen. The clerks who fill out the forms. The officials who sign the forms. The end-use operatives who carry out whatever is written on the forms. There was someone who filled out the form for the girl’s suicide…typing away at a computer screen, making sure there were no typos and all the relevant information was accurate…and what that clerk was doing was having a poor, suffering victim killed…to be harvested for organs and then forgotten about. After all, looking up at the clock, have to get this one done before lunch today!

The evils of the modern world are only possible because people go along with them. With a shrug. And it is just those people who must be severely punished. The insanely evil can’t do it unless (allegedly) decent, hard working people agree to help. We have to figure out some way to make such faceless actors indictable – and then convict them and subject them to something really horrific. It is the only way to drive home the absolute moral requirement that nobody cooperate with evil. Ever. Even for a minute.

UPDATE: All yesterday a growing love between Americans and Japanese flowed through social media. Appropriately it started with a shared love of barbecue. But it looks pretty awesome…some samples:

Japanese version of Country Roads. Very much worth a watch!

Japanese apparently like country music:


Japanese thanks Trump for the Pearl Harbor joke because, in his view, it finally completely buries the WWII hatchet. We can josh with each other, even about the bad things, because we’re friends.

Awesome:

Also awesome:

And more awesomeness:

Anti-Semitism: it is Part of the Modern Barbarism

Mark Noonan19 Comments

A Priest-mutual I have on X posted the following:

One doesn’t have to support Israel. I don’t support Israel. I simply refuse to hate Jews.

Which is, of course, simply true. Now, on my part, I do support Israel – explicitly as a Jewish State. One thing the past century has taught us is that even in the most advanced and tolerant societies, Jew-hatred is both easy to stir up and quickly becomes deadly. But the bottom line is that reasonable people can take exception to Israel – both in its actions and in its reason for being. That is, you can think it was a mistake to create Israel…but this doesn’t entail hating Jews.

We’ve talked here before of the genesis of modern Anti-Semitism, which is different from that of the Middle Ages where it was simply thought that Jews were foolishly wrong for not accepting Christ as savior – and this, indeed, could and did often lead to violence against Jews. But in the modern world, anti-Semitism changed…from a dismay to a hatred. And it became tinged with race – that is, Jews are not a religious but a racial group…and no matter how secular a Jew is, or even if a Jew converts, they don’t stop being Jews. This was the baleful ideology which was created by Gobineau, refined by Chamberlain and Schonerer and then wound up given full expression by Hitler. The crucial aspect of all this is that it was plain and simple stupid. Not supported by anything scientific nor the result of any logical chain of thought. It was just idiocy produced by losers to explain why they weren’t on top – later taken up by Hitler and his Nazis and carried out to the detriment of Germany’s own future. You’d think that Nazi defeat in 1945 would have killed it off completely, but it never did.

To be sure, it took decades to get it back on track – surviving Nazis worked long and hard at it, starting mostly in the Muslim world but always with footholds in the West. Everything carefully pitched to catch the ignorant and get them to believe. It is rising to a malignant cancer in the West these days because while the Nazis were lying, the West was destroying the West…that is the educational, religious and moral convictions which were always the strongest bulwark against vicious modern anti-Semitism.

And that brings me to the main point: the full purpose of the modern Left is to get people to be degraded. To be ignorant. Envious. Lazy. Greedy. To pretty much embrace all the cardinal sins and consider themselves superior for doing so. What this has done is make people, well, insane. We see it in a video I saw earlier – some woman was attending an 8th grade graduation and because her child wasn’t called up early on, she threw a temper tantrum. The lady probably knows nothing. I’d bet money that she’s only barely literate. To consider if she’d ever read a book of any sort is to be asking far too much. But she’s fat. Monetarily in good shape. And supremely confident that if things don’t work as she wants, she has a right to mess everything up for everyone else – she is also certain that if there is something wrong, it is the result of a shadowy conspiracy to prevent her from being on top. It is of such clay that our modern anti-Semites, BLM activists and Code Pink crazies are made of.

The problem we have isn’t just one particular type of evil. While it would be great if we could wave a magic wand and make all anti-Semitism instantly disappear, it wouldn’t help us long term – it wouldn’t save our civilization. If the people are still ignorant, lazy, greedy and nuts, then if one particular aspect of insanity is removed it doesn’t help. What we – the civilized – must decide is how long we’ll allow the barbarians to afflict us, and what means we’ll choose to convert them to our ways.

Because make no mistake about it, the barbarians – with rare exceptions – will not voluntarily give up their ways. Why should they? They can take and destroy and nobody stops them. The people starting a brawl in a fast food joint because they didn’t get enough nuggets in their order are never punished in any real way. Until they are, they will not change. We’re going to have to disenfranchise them and then let them know they are the social inferiors who must learn the ways of their betters. Or else. Don’t even for a moment think this is race-based. That is just another bit of drivel – in fact, the modern American racism owed a huge amount to Gobineau’s idiotic twaddle…it was seized upon by pro-slavery people in the USA and used as a justification to continue stealing the labor of black Americans. It isn’t about race – it is about being civilized or being barbarian. There are plenty of white Americans just as barbaric as any morons out there – and they, too, must be instructed in right conduct.

Such things as not being a drunkard. Staying employed. Keeping your house clean. Your yard maintained. Never even thinking for a moment that shoplifting is ok. Being respectful of others. Not picking fights with cops. Getting married. Staying married. Learning to read. All of that – and, as I said, they won’t voluntarily go to the wellsprings of decent behavior. They will have to be compelled. And if we do this, then all of the ills of our society will shrink to very manageable proportions…

Honorable Service

Mark Noonan7 Comments

Vladimir Sukhomlinov (1848-1926) was a Russian army officer. He entered service 1867 and remained until 1915. As a young officer he served bravely and was decorated multiple times. But he left the service in 1915 because he was War Minister and Russia had suffered some catastrophic military defeats. These defeats could be traced to the Russian army not being well equipped with modern weapons and being badly organized logistically for war (ie, men going into battle without proper weapons and clothing, food being insufficient, so forth). And here’s the thing: he was a senior member of Russia’s armed forces from 1886 onwards. That is, for nearly thirty years he was high up, eventually rising to the highest rank, Minister of War who was de-facto Commander in Chief of the Russian army. During all this time at the top he was repeatedly praised, promoted and decorated…but when the test came, it was found that the army he commanded wasn’t in any way ready for war. In other words, he failed…and had failed for decades.

How was he able to rise so high? I mean, after a while someone should have figured out that whatever qualities Sukhomlinov had, he wasn’t fit to be in charge. Well, he was protected and advanced by the Russian system…which was corrupt to the core. All errors and rumors of corruption were covered up. He was protected. Heck, he was protected even after he fell from power – he should probably have been shot but he ended up spending only a few months in jail before his powerful friends in the Imperial government got him released. To be fair, he ended up dying in extreme poverty as an exile in Germany after the Russian Revolution…but this doesn’t change the fact that for decades a man in no way fit to hold power exercised such power…and untold numbers of Russians ended up dead because of it.

I bring this up because of Robert Mueller, who passed away the other day. We are told that his Bronze Star and combat performance in Vietnam is the defining thing about him and thus any condemnations are not just wrong, but wicked. This all in response to Trump posting that he was glad Mueller was dead. But as we can see in the case of Sukhomlinov, bravery in combat as a young man doesn’t mean that everything which comes after is good. At some point in his career, Sukhomlinov observed how the system really worked – it wasn’t bravery and ability which got you ahead in the Imperial Russian army, it was connections and connivance. Make the right friends and then do whatever is necessary to help those friends, and you’ve got it made…though you are mentally incapable of exercising command, they’ll put a general’s insignia on your shoulder and have you command soldiers in battle! Nobody cares about how many of them die, or if the country wins or loses the war…its all about place. Position. Prestige.

Mueller saw the same thing in our government. The path to advancement in federal law enforcement wasn’t paved with dedication to the rule of law…but in getting in and getting on. Finding out who had the power and then stroking that person or group until they let you in…and, of course, once in you have to keep things up for everyone else who is in. Cover up crimes and failure for the in crowd, ruthlessly hound – even if it means breaking the law – anyone the in crowd identifies as an enemy. Given the overall arc of Mueller’s career, this decision point came to Mueller fairly early on…perhaps not even more than a few years after he hung up his uniform. Whatever beliefs he had a boy, young man and combat officer were set aside in favor of career advancement. Mueller reached the decision point and decided he would do what it took to advance – in the end, his final public act was to lend his name to the Trump-Russia con…a transparently false attempt to frame Trump and force him out of office. Complete degradation…all honor entirely lost. It is sad, when you think about it. We can pray for the repose of his soul and hope he repented before he died, but the bottom line is that his entire career in government was a malevolent blight upon the Republic. We’d have been better off if he had never lived.

And it is right and proper to be pleased that he has gone to his final judgement. That he cannot in any way, shape or form harm our Republic again. A bad man has died. His fate is now up to God – but his memory must be damned by all decent people. None of this pretending he was an honorable man or public servant…he was a corrupt apparatchik for a disgusting, inhuman Ruling Class. We must condemn his memory because we want the rising generation to know that being a Mueller is a disgrace and even if it doesn’t land you in jail, it will lead you to a dishonorable grave.

One thing our nation must recover is a sense of decency. Not the “decency” of the Ruling Class – their idea of decency is that they are treated with kindness and respect no matter how nauseating they are. No: we want real decency. Men and women who do the right thing, all the time, no matter the consequences. People who aren’t looking for career advancement, but to do what is best. Pissing on Mueller’s gave is where this starts, crude as that may seem – but, then again, real decency is a bit brutal. All true things are like that – sort of in your face, insulting you a bit by their existence, because one thing all decent people know instinctively is how far short of excellent they fall. Contrast with our Ruling Class which is convinced of its moral and intellectual superiority while they wallow in ignorance, lying to themselves and to us while the steal and kill. Mueller probably never had a doubt. Hillary. Obama. Comey: all like that. Stupid. Liars. Corrupt. Cruel. But convinced they are better than everyone else and that any criticism of them is perverse. They get to do this because our system continues to protect them…but under Trump, we might be getting back to a system where garbage people do get what’s coming to them…and honorable people get to be in charge.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan43 Comments

Trump may be playing a much deeper game than even his supporters suspect – that the Iran conflict is just one piece of a global puzzle designed to make NATO useful, or no more while at the same time imposing American dominance not just in the Naval sphere, but in the whole of global maritime commerce. Think about what he’s concentrating on – Panama, Greenland, Hormuz…some of the major choke points for global seaborne trade being taken under American power with a US President who wants a massive revival in American shipbuilding (once again, all true strategists concentrate on logistics…the movement of people and goods…Trump wants us in control of it). The NATO aspect is, crudely, poop or get off the pot…is NATO of any worth at all? Can NATO do something as simple as control a maritime trade corridor? If it can’t or won’t do that, what is the point of it?

And what, then, the point of the UN?

Things are moving on a deep level here…and I’m interested to see how Trump wraps it all up. The war with Iran will probably finish up to at least the main elements in the next seven to ten days. But the long term ramifications of it might be quite surprising and take some months to shake out.

There’s a non-zero chance that in the California jungle primary it is two GOPers who face off in November for governor. Naturally, Democrats will do all they can to ensure against this – but the seven Democrats in the race are all morons and egotistical…they might not be able to get enough of them to back out.

Latest propaganda line out of Tehran is that the more Mullahs we kill the stronger Iran gets. This is like me winning a fight by letting the other guy bash my face in. Its a bold strategy, we’ll see if it pays off.

The late Cesar Chavez – of United Farm Workers fame – appears to have been a guy who liked to abuse young girls. It isn’t all confirmed but it does look pretty bad for his reputation…and if it is true, then we have to keep in mind that everyone – and I mean everyone – around him must have known it was going on and kept their mouths shut because, at the time, Chavez was doing the Ruling Class’ bidding. Why tear him down now, years after his death? Because he was opposed to illegal immigration…and so the Left is unpersoning him posthumously.

Biden’s CIA identified “motherhood” and “homemaking” as indicators or racist extremism.

But it wasn’t just a brand new thing – essentially, since 1945, the things of the West have been considered by our Ruling Class as the markers for evil. They’ve been at war with them since the end of World War Two…it is just out in the open now.

America Comes Back

Mark Noonan24 Comments

We knew, of course. We’ve watched since 1969 how the Democrat party – and the overall American Left – have wanted America defeated. As soon as Vietnam became “Nixon’s war”, American defeat was the Democrat goal. But for the longest while they managed to hide it, at least a bit. They’d make statements about love for the troops or the desire for peace or some such…but what they’ve wanted is our defeat. The Democrat Party wants America to lose.

Some of this stems from the infiltration of the Democrat party by out and out communist traitors: that is, people ideologically committed to our destruction. But most of it stems from a sick calculus on the part of the Democrats – if America loses, Democrats can justify ever more spending, ever more control and, starting with the “boat people” ever more mass migration (though, of course, they picked wrong on the “boat people”…they are ardently anti-Communist to this day, as are the Cubans…and this is why you never hear of Democrat groups trying to bring more Vietnamese and Cubans in). There is more grift to be made, that is. In other words, the Democrats can steal more from a dying, defeated America than they can from a vibrant, victorious USA.

But now the mask is fully off – since the first moment of our righteous war against the wicked regime in Tehran, Democrats have been issuing flat out Mullah propaganda. Whatever absurd lies are issued, Democrats pick up on them. It is abundantly clear that Democrats are hoping for a high US (and Israeli) casualty rate as precursor to ignominious American defeat with a revived and triumphant Mullah regime. Keep in mind that they’re doing this when by every metric the American-Israeli alliance is winning an astonishing victory. That even as the Mullah regime is pushed to the edge, Democrats are still trying to pull their fat out of the fire.

Why?

Because the Global Establishment is a house of cards – with the central support for it being a weak, blind and blundering USA. That is, the whole system is based upon the requirement that the United States not be the United States.

We won World War Two. Not the Russians. Not the British. Not the United Nations. We did. Without American participation, there was no victory coming over the Axis. Without American support, there was no means whereby the UK and the USSR could remain in the war. We not only equipped twelve million of our own, but millions more around the world. This isn’t to denigrate what the UK, Russia and others did – within their very limited means, they did what they could. We did everything. All at once. With no detriment to any aspect of our national power. The Global Establishment (which, of course, including many Americans) looked at this on September 2nd, 1945 and shuddered in fear…what if these American hicks fully understand how powerful they are? What’s to stop them?

To which the hicks would have answered – if they had ever been asked – nothing, but we aren’t going to do anything like that because we’re Americans. The good guys. As long as everyone lives and works in peace, we don’t otherwise care what they’re up to.But the Establishment couldn’t see that…all they could see was Americans from obscure places like Kansas and Alabama ruling over the ruins of their world. They became determined to tie down this leviathan…to drug it. Put it to sleep. Make it doubt itself. Weaken it in every manner possible. Such an America provided two things for the Establishment – cannon fodder to keep the Establishment in power and a ready source of money to steal. And they were determined to keep on going to the end of time…just keep America down.

And my goodness they almost succeeded! At least forty percent of Americans are in favor of American defeat right now (though I’ll be bound that of Americans descended from those alive in 1945, the number is down around twenty percent – the newcomers and their immediate progeny weren’t imported just for the heck of it, after all). We are drugged – literally and figuratively. We are – or at least, were – very much asleep.

But all through this time – right from the start in the late 1940s – there was a restive element in the United States. The people again and again showed they didn’t like what the Establishment was doing. They didn’t want us in the UN. Didn’t really want is in NATO, either. Didn’t want a gigantic military-industrial complex (we hadn’t one in 1941 and it proved entirely unnecessary that we should). Didn’t want mass immigration. Didn’t want welfare bums (differentiated from helping people out through a temporary rough patch). We wanted criminals smacked down. Didn’t want endless wars with no victory. But no matter how we registered our displeasure at the polls – no matter how many times we revolved the doors between Democrats and Republicans – nothing changed…except for the worse as the Establishment just gave us ever more of what we never wanted.

Until Trump.

Is he a genius? We can’t judge: too close to the event. Is he some sort of force of nature? Also can’t know as its too soon. But he’s clearly seen something…he has a vision. He might put it in almost slapstick terms, but underlying it all is the America which launched dozens of fleet carriers over a four year period. That is, an America which only had to envision the goal and then set to work. Roosevelt called for 50,000 planes and everyone in the Establishment scoffed at him…but over the following four years the USA built more airframes than the rest of the world, combined. Something like nearly 500,000 of them. Americans did it. Because they could. Because Americans can do anything. Moonshot in eight years from the word “go”. If they are allowed to be Americans. If they aren’t…well, then, maybe we’ll get there in ten or twelve years…but it’ll be a diverse crew! Trump wants that America back…the America that even in the depths of the Great Depression was still outproducing everyone, was richer than everyone and was still building such impressive monuments as Hoover Dam, the Golden Gate Bridge and the Empire State Building. All of which, I’ll bet, cost less than even one Learing Center.

This is why the Establishments wants him dead. Vance, too. Why it has fever dreams of sending MAGA to reeducation camps: if Trump wins – if America wins – then it is all over for them. All Americans will want to do is win some more…and keep on winning and winning and winning. Getting richer and more powerful and more advanced and just enjoying the heck out of being free and happy. While the rest of the world stews in mediocrity…maybe pointing to an ancient monument…which I’ll bet if we can work out the genetics were built by people who’s descendants emigrated to America as soon as they could.

And, hey, don’t get me wrong – as people, person for person, we’re no better than anyone else. But as Americans, we simply are better than everyone. It stems from our attitude towards life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is wound around with our Declaration of Independence…it is sustained by our Constitution, the only one in the world which actually seeks to secure the rights of individuals (even great nations like Israel and Argentina still have those aspects in their laws which allow the government to suspend any and all rights if the government thinks it should – only our laws have the phrase “Congress shall make no law”). Until the rest of the world becomes like us, they can’t compete – and if they become like us then, well, they’re like us and so no problem. Can’t help it if it was our Founders who found the magic talisman or were specially blessed by God with wisdom…I can only see things as they are and realize that my Americans went from subsistence farming to global dominance in well under a century. That’s kinda amazing. That’s proof of our supremacy. And that supremacy is now coming back.

Yeah, Lies Are Still the Problem

Mark Noonan49 Comments

I’ve talked endlessly about lies but I want to talk about it again – because now more and more people are picking up on it. But not all. I still see all too many on the Right still saying things like “why would you say that?” or “do you not realize what you’re saying?” when they confront a Leftist or Never Trumper over a lie. That is, they aren’t just calling them what they are: liars.

You might remember the World Famous Expert, Tom Nichols: he was allegedly on the Right until the advent of Trump in 2015 and he’s now gone full Leftist Never Trump kook – he had a post on X saying, and I quote, “the people cheering the submarine attack on the IRIS Dena seem to forget that the US Navy has surface vessels that could have captured the ship, and held the crew (or allowed them to defect). But apparently, it was important to prove that the Navy can still torpedo a frigate”. Nichols’ claim to fame – his claim to be an Expert, that is – stems from his tenure at the Naval War College. In other words, he knows. He’s not some person with limited knowledge of naval affairs. You don’t seek to capture an enemy on the high seas. The capture of enemy vessels went out when ships went from sail to steam – you sight an enemy and you sink her, that is what modern naval warfare is about. When the Brits put down the Bismarck – and we put down the Yamato – the attack was merciless. The British fired 2,800 rounds at Bismarck scoring at least 400 hits…when her guns were silent, her decks awash and the crew trying to abandon ship, they fired one last torpedo at the hulk. For Yamato, we sent wave after wave of planes in to bomb, torpedo and strafe her…the only reason it was three waves is because by the time the fourth wave got there she had rolled over and exploded…more than 3,000 of her 3,300 man crew dying with her.

Keep in mind that both ships were pretty much helpless from the start – the Bismarck’s steering gear was jammed and so she could only steam in a slow circle: a complete sitting duck. Yamato had no air cover and our strafing massacred her AA gunners in their unarmored positions, allowing later waves to just come in, line her up in the sights and blow her all to hell and gone. That is modern naval warfare. The men on both sides didn’t ask for quarter and didn’t complain if they came in second. Guarantee you not one German or Japanese sailor who survived those actions had any rancor towards the British and American seamen. War at sea is a hard calling.

Nichols knows this. So, why did he say what he said? Because he’s a liar. Nothing more. And a paid liar, into the bargain. Perhaps even being paid – directly or roundabout – by foreign enemies to lie. And he is, of course, just one of thousands. People like him just pumping out lie after lie after lie. All designed to sap American unity and American will. To sow doubts. To get Americans fighting among themselves. To do anything but support America – and especially American victory. In Iran we have scored the most astonishing, lopsided victory America has had since Manila Bay in 1898. For very minimal losses, we have completely destroyed the enemy’s ability to impact the course of the war. How did we Americans view that? Like this:

Heroic. Resolute. Right into the fight without hesitation. You know: like Americans. Right now, we have the like of these men in battle…soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines. Of course, some women, too. But they are our heroes…we should be getting stories of their deeds…thrilling tales of how they took the fight to the heart of the enemy. What we get is lies…lies about bombed schools. Lies about closed straights. Lies about how wrong it is to torpedo an enemy.

And, my friends, it really has to stop. We’re robbing ourselves of our future by being nice to liars. The kids growing up today deserve to know their nation is great and is the home of heroes…and that we are the good guys, fighting for decency in a world gone mad.

I still do not know exactly how we do it…but until we find a way to make a liar pay – and I mean with the literal skin off his back – then I don’t know how we will survive.

Glory to Those Who Do

Mark Noonan18 Comments

That is a picture of a man who is pretty much universally denigrated in the history books: Joseph Joffre, Marshall of France. He was in command of the French army for the first two years of World War One and the massive slaughter of those two years is laid at his feet and condemns him before the bar of history as a man who pointlessly sacrificed French youth for nothing. And, indeed, he made his mistakes. On the other hand, who hasn’t? Even when we consider the greatest commanders, we still have Napoleon blowing it at Waterloo and MacArthur being caught with his pants down hours after receiving word of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

You can’t get past the number of French soldiers who died and that will always remain a horror but in judging the actions of people, one must always first place yourself in their shoes. Joffre was an experienced officer with a background in engineering and logistics. In other words, on paper exactly what you want. He was also a man who was impossible to panic – no matter how bad things were going, he was going to remain calm and rapidly issue decisive orders. Anyone who knows history – especially military history – knows that calmness plus the willingness to act are crucial in war. History is filled with generals who either lost their nerve or simply became paralyzed with indecision. Better a bad decision gets made than no decision at all. In sum, Joffre was not an idiot, nor in inhuman monster. He was presented with a puzzle and did his best to solve it.

His first puzzle was trying to figure out the best way to deploy his armies at the start. Can’t use hindsight! He only knew for certain that the Germans were coming and would likely make a significant effort in Belgium. But in those days of armies moving no faster than marching feet, he knew he’d have time to watch any such move develop. He could have deployed his main armies along the borders with Belgium. But what if the Germans then decided to advance south of Belgium? It is like that in war: trying to guess through a fog what is best. Taking one thing with another, Joffre’s decision was to launch the French attack in what amounted to the center of the German line – the idea being to split that line and flank the Germans marching into Belgium. This is, actually, a pretty good plan. There was only one major flaw: the power of defense.

The French hadn’t fought any major military action since 1870 – when machine guns were unknown, field artillery was much less lethal and the primary firearms were single shot rifles. The French had, of course, kept abreast of military developments but reading a report isn’t fighting…and they just had no conception of the power of a dug in enemy. The Russians knew it as they had fought the Japanese in 1905. The Brits knew it as they had fought the Boers in 1901. The French had no idea. Of course, neither did the Germans, who also hadn’t fought a major engagement since 1870. They were, together, military babes in the woods…and they both launched their armies right at each other and both got a massive and bloody wake up call. But the Germans were able to keep advancing because, as it turns out, they had placed almost their whole army into Belgium and simply had overwhelming weight of numbers. Given this, the French and their British allies were compelled to retreat…but only until they got themselves reorganized to stop the Germans. Which they did, at the Marne.

Whole libraries have been written about that battle which marked the highwater mark of German advance in 1914 and their forced retirement after the French counterattack. Who did what, which orders were given by whom are matters of deep study; mostly trying to show that someone other than the commander, Joffre, had been decisive. What was it, really? After the war, Joffre was asked who had won the Battle of the Marne and he answered, “I cannot say for certain, but I know who would have lost it, if it had been lost.”

After that, Joffre’s puzzle was how to expel the Germans from France – which is of course what you want to do if you’re a French officer and German’s occupy about ten percent of your country. Joffre tried this method and that – each time modifying the program a bit based on lessons learned. But, in the end, under Joffre’s tenure, the magic talisman to break a line defended by barbed wire, trenches, magazine rifles, machine guns and artillery was not discovered. Various important steps were taken – including the development of aerial bombing while the first French tanks were created in 1915 – but the total mechanism for crossing a bit of ground swept by enemy fire and breaking through an entrenched enemy force was not found by the time Joffre was kicked upstairs in the aftermath of the Battle of Verdun in 1916. Naturally, the efforts Joffre made were costly in lives and this, as noted, is laid at his feet and used to condemn him…make him out to be some sort of insensate monster fruitlessly sacrificing French lives.

But what else was he supposed to do? Just leave the Germans alone to build their strength until they could attack? Surrender? The enemy had to be expelled…Joffre and every other officer involved had no idea how to do it. You can only think it over, come up with ideas and then try them out. And, in the end, the ideas tried out by Joffre (massive heavy artillery – which Joffre had wanted pre-war but was denied the funds to procure – tanks and planes) were put together by his ultimate successor, Foch, and the deed was done – the Germans were defeated and expelled from France.

I bring all this up because I think we have a problem in our society in that we tear down those who do – and honor the guys in the peanut gallery who never do anything. Especially in light of the response to our campaign against Iran we’re seeing this. For forty seven years everyone sort of sat there and left the mullah regime alone – there are probably lots of reasons for this (all bad) but the bottom line is that today we have those who let this cancer fester upset at the man who proposes to excise it from the global political situation. The past forty seven years show what you get when you aren’t willing to at least try. If the fact that getting the Germans out of France was to be a bloody business prevented French action, then the Germans would still be there…the war might have gone on much, much longer with an ultimately higher cost in lives. Something had to be done both back in 1914 and here in 2026. And all honor to those who are willing to do something, even if they make mistakes doing it. Better to have a mistake than to have a drift.

Things must be done. Someone has to come up with the moral courage to act…and often act on very incomplete information and with no certainty they’ve come up with the right response. As Wellington put it, the whole art of war is getting at what’s on the other side of the hill – you don’t know what’s there, but you must do it. We’ve been half a century so fearful of that other side of the hill that we’ve essentially done nothing – and worse than nothing because we have killed a lot of people (had a lot of ours killed, too) and expended huge amounts of money while essentially cowering over on our side of the hill.

Trump is doing what should have been done on November 4th, 1979…and every day since. We’ve got a regime in Tehran which is mere social pestilence upon the global body politic. It had to go and must go. Trump just has the courage everyone else lacked (when they weren’t bought by Iranian or other foreign money – there is that, as well). The glory is his – he looked at the situation, realized it had to be solved and has decided to solve it. His opponents are in the wrong – not just on technical aspects, but in the larger moral requirements of being human.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan22 Comments

Our enemies – foreign and domestic – are upset that an American sub sank an Iranian warship. It was sneaky!

Like, do you guys even know what a submarine is for?

For the record: it doesn’t matter if the ship was armed. Doesn’t matter if it was close or far from home. It was a warship – it was a target. It was sunk and that’s all there is to it…if you’re upset about it then I direct you to complain to the nearest Mullah hiding in an Iranian tunnel…they sent that ship to see in whatever condition it was. It should have been fully ready for war – warships are always supposed to be fully ready for war. If they’re not, then the commanders of those ships are the criminals, not the people who destroyed them.

Some people are saying that the Geneva Convention requires us to rescue the survivors of a torpedoing and to that I answer…what the heck are you talking about? The Conventions don’t mention submarine warfare and, indeed, it is the one area of warfare which has practically no treaty or legal coverage. Deliberately so: no nation which employs submarines would ever limit them…they are there to suddenly destroy, without warning and then sail away to find the next target. Warning the target or bringing succor to the survivors merely makes submarine warfare useless. This was disposed of as an argument by the Nuremburg tribunals where we tried to nail Doenitz for unrestricted submarine warfare – no less than Fleet Admiral Nimitz scotched that by pointing out to the tribunal that he had issued the exact same orders right after Pearl Harbor. Maybe subs should never have happened – but they did and in war time, their targets are anything on the seas. Anything. At any time.

We are being treated to a heavy dose of defeatist propaganda. Well, we are if we listen…as for me, I’ve muted most accounts on X which start off with “breaking” because I’ve found that what comes after is 99% nonsense. Merest clickbait unsupported by facts or even by common sense.

How is the war going? We’re sending B-52s. We don’t send B-52s into an environment where the enemy in any way contests control of the air. They are great planes. We’ll probably be flying them into the 2040s…but they are no match for anything like a modern air defense system, let alone a modern fighter. They go in when the skies are clear and we have a large target we want heavily degraded. That’s how the war is going. That is how we know we’re winning.

We’re re-establishing full diplomatic relations with Venezuela if you want a clue about how this thing in Iran will come out. Turns out that being America actually gets results. We haven’t tried to be America since Truman fired MacArthur.

Noem got the boot…and a new job with Rubio’s State Department. So, she clearly upset Trump a bit, but not all the way. She has a clear shot to get herself back into good graces. We’ll see how she does in the new role. Meanwhile, Senator Mullin is named as replacement and he figures that the babies of illegals need to be deported, too. So, Democrats may have semi-collected a scalp here, but they’re not going to like it long term.