Author: Mark Noonan

A Warm, Collective Open Thread

Mark NoonanLeave a comment

Mamdani in his inaugural address talked of ending “rugged individualism” and replacing it with “the warmth of collectivism”. I found examples of this – bit of a before and after:

That, of course, is Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn; first as a young artillery officer in the Red Army, secondly about ten years later after drawing an eight year stint in Gulag for writing a letter mildly critical of collectivist warmth. Keep in mind that he was plucked out of the Red Army while he was at the front and the day after he had saved an artillery battery from a local Nazi counterattack. He was arrested by SMERSH – an organization founded by Stalin (it stood for “death to spies”) – to foster collectivist warmth at the front during WWII…the warmth being fostered was mostly to keep SMERSH personnel out of the front lines.

Because, you see, in a life and death struggle against the Fascist Beast, the Communists were determined to be firmly in the “life” camp. Cowards to a man and woman, the apparatchiks that Stalin had infested Russia with since the Revolution were living a nice life and certainly didn’t want to see it end over something as trivial as a Nazi invasion…but when the Motherland was calling for complete self-sacrifice by everyone, kinda hard to justify keeping yourself out of the combat units…unless you can find something useful to do elsewhere. And where better than ferreting out spies for a paranoid Stalin who couldn’t imagine a Soviet agency not being filled with people who despised him? But this means you had to keep finding them, right? I mean, if there ever came a point where you had defeated the Fascist spies, then it was time to pick up a rifle and charge into a Nazi trench. So, they just kept finding spies…and it didn’t matter how absurd the case was…there just had to be a case. Solzhenitsyn’s letter to a friend was all that was necessary…and the combat officer was degraded in front of his own troops and sent into the sausage grinder of Gulag.

But Mamdani says it will be different! How? Well, he says that if private landowners aren’t proper stewards of their property, then the City will step in and take over. And who decides what proper stewardship is? Well, the City. And never in human history has there been a government swayed by money and connections, right?

I mean, you know what is going to happen – some tenants will pitch a fit about a particular landlord and get the City to take over…and then if its not a desirable property the City will just let it rot (the tenants not paying rent, of course – or only nominal rent)…if it is a desirable property, then the tenants will be booted out in favor of those with City connections (they’ll do this by letting the tenants slide on the rent and then surprising them with eviction for unpaid rent…and these people will suddenly find that the byzantine system of eviction in NYC doesn’t apply to them). The bottom line is that the connected will wind up in all the nice areas – carefully guarded by the police who will never be so defunded that they can’t protect the Ruling Class – and everything else just falls apart…because no landlord is going to invest a cent in property which can be seized at the whim of Mamdani’s college roommate’s brother in law who’s now got a job in City government.

There are two ways to become Communist – and there have always only been these two ways: be stupid, or be evil. You can be a combination of both, but you simply must be stupid or evil. We tend to think of people like Marx as wrong. That is not the way to view it. He clearly wasn’t stupid – whatever you want to say about his philosophy, he certainly did create something that has moved millions. So, not stupid: thus, evil.

You think about it – he was the son of a lawyer who owned land. He had a good education paid for by his father. He dodged the draft (he being then a subject of the Kingdom of Prussia). He started writing for various Leftwing rags supported by rich people and ultimately Engels became his benefactor – Engels being the son of a very rich man. Point blank: Marx never worked a day in his life: he hadn’t the foggiest notion of the economic and spiritual needs of workers. But Marx did find he didn’t like Christian Europe – though technically Protestant (his father – a non-observant Jew – had officially converted to avoid official Prussian anti-Semitism when the Rhineland came under Prussian Rule in 1815), his Jewish background was a social hindrance…but rather than trying to understand why and seek amelioration (as many Jews did through the 19th century, being notably successful in the UK and USA on this front) he just decided he hated it…and cooked up a philosophy who’s main point was the destruction of everything he hated – Christianity, nobility, family and country. His work is very much a work-backwards thing…that is, he knew what he hated and he crafted his philosophy just so the destruction of the hated thing was justified.

I mean, think about “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”. What absolute drivel. What is anyone’s ability? How do you know they are fully employing their ability? What is a need? How do you ensure that everyone’s needs are met all at once? How do you assign priority between needs? It is just stupid – the whole thing is unworkable. But if you want to convince a Christian to murder every priest and destroy every family, nothing better…because if you don’t think about it, it seems like a good idea. I mean, everyone has needs, right? Why can’t they all be met?

Oh, that’s right – what you might call a “need” the next guy might call a luxury…and this is before we get into a debate about having three pairs of size ten loafers but five people need them.

And it lead to 100 million murders…so far. The philosophy is still murdering people in China, North Korea, Cuba, Vietnam and other places…and stirring up hatred, lies and theft everywhere…and even some murder even in places like the USA. Essentially, once you get to Marxism then you can simply justify any monstrous act and dress it up as altruism. Lenin was the first to figure this out…but he was eagerly followed by Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot…and now Mamdani.

He’s not a murderer! How dare you!

Because he’s a communist – the only reason he hasn’t had someone shot is because he doesn’t have the power. If he ever gets the power, he’ll kill people. He’ll steal untold sums. He’ll do everything rotten any human being has ever thought of and he’ll announce it as Serving Humanity. He’s either evil or stupid – though he seems more a combination of the two. A trust fund baby who’s never worked a day in his life is going to make sure the landlords behave…as if he has the slightest clue about maintaining a building or what its like to deal with tenants who treat the property like garbage because they feel immune to eviction. He’s already showing in his appointments that he wants an anti-Semitic, Islamist and Communist regime to punish New York City for daring to be American.

Now, how much damage he’ll actually do remains to be seen – Democrats are in a bit of a bind in that he’s a hero to the far left, but huge amounts of Democrat money are at stake in NYC and if he starts driving that money down to Florida and Texas, that’s going to be a major problem for the Democrats…they’ll start running out of money to steal, themselves. So, we might find that while Mamdani is allowed to make his grandiose communist statements, his wings are clipped in actual policy. But that doesn’t change what he is – remember that. Unless he repents and admits he was wrong, he’s someone to be warily watched.

And watched while we, under Trump, defund the Left. That still remains the key to avoiding a future of Collectivist Warmth…because the real fraud of the Left is that they’ve been subsidized by us. Without taxpayer funds, they will fall apart. That is the best way to torpedo Mamdani right now – just don’t send federal dollars. Say that given his unconstitutional actions, funds are being withheld until policy changes. He’ll want very much to take over NYC rental properties…but you still have to pay the owners if you are taking their property. NYC’s budget is already stretched past the breaking point…he won’t find billions to dispossess the landlords. In my view, the Mamdani experiment can be terribly useful for us – a real dose of Communism to hold up to American eyes, convincing them to never, ever go that route.

Happy New Year!

Mark Noonan16 Comments

Gotta say, enjoyed 2025. Got to do our usual beach vacation but we also tacked on a week up at Lake Tahoe, always an impressive place to be. Job is ok. Writing is fun. And, of course, Trump is President – he’s gone way past what I voted for and is starting in on things I wish to heck I had voted for. In my view, it is all starting to come together.

Altogether, something more than 2 million illegals out of the country – and we didn’t take in millions more. Next year promises a massive increase on that deportation number as the provisions of the OBBB come into play…including a large increase in staffing to get the illegals out. Plus, the Lawfare is running on empty…sure, you can hamstring things up, but only for a while…Trump has mostly won his cases and, in the end, there isn’t a Trump Exception to Article II. He is President. He has all Executive power vested in himself. The laws are all very clear – that nobody has enforced them is neither here nor there: they are being enforced now…and you can only sue so many times before the appellate courts just tell you to go jump in a lake over it…they’ve already ruled repeatedly that Trump can do what the law allows.

The drug trade is being massively impacted by our strategy of hitting it on the logistic side – something I’ve been urging for years. Drug lords come and go. Addicts are addicts. But the low level people who move the drugs and the money have operated with near-impunity…now they have to bet their lives that they can get drugs into the USA and money back down to the Cartels. After a while – and it won’t be a long while – they’ll stop finding people willing to bet their lives even under severe duress. What we can expect now is that the Cartel-owned governments will try to get into the smuggling business…using diplomatic cover to move money and drugs. This will work to a certain extent, but not nearly sufficient to keep the Cartels as powerful as they have been.

We’ve also turned off the spigot of American money which keeps the global Left in power. It can’t be underestimated how much of the sinews of Leftist politics have come from the US taxpayer under the guise of fostering democracy around the world. What we’ve really done is empower those the American Left favors…including using good, old fashioned voter fraud to get it done. That money is now gone…the NGOs are cast adrift…and we see the Right on the rise all around the world in consequence. We’re going to gain allies more and more as the miasma of Leftist power evaporates.

We’re going after corruption here at home – Minnesota is just the tip of a very large iceberg. All up and down the line money has been stolen. You might recall me asserting some years back that I estimated one in three federal dollars is stolen…I’m now thinking one in two…perhaps even two in three. It has been a bonanza of theft and it has all been used to keep the Left in power so they can both steal more and dictate ever more aspects of our lives. It has been going on for decades and nobody has done anything about it…a few small players on the edges might from time to time get taken down (likely because they didn’t share out properly) but nobody went after the system of corruption which has been built up in our country…the very concept that every year more and more must be spent no matter what result we’re getting. That awards are given essentially for having the largest staff and spending the most money. Trump is hitting at that – and this is the core of Leftist power in the USA. If they can’t steal money from us, they can’t survive politically…because nobody would vote for a Leftist unless paid to do so.

The GOP is flush with cash and continues to make large voter registration gains. Vance is the prohibitive favorite for the 2028 nomination and everyone is already quietly starting to line up behind him. Meanwhile, over in Democrat-land, they’re broke and hoping that Newsom can stop the nomination of a Harris/AOC ticket. We still can’t make certain predictions about how 2026 will go but we know that if the MSM is saying it, its a lie. So, the stories of alleged Democrat resurgence are just nonsense…the means to get Democrats to donate…but, once again, the cutoff of money to NGOs is a body blow…whatever else they were doing – no matter how much was stolen – the crucial thing was to launder it back into the DNC. You don’t get a ten million dollar grant to study two-spirit poetry in Sumatra without kicking a lot of that back to the benefactor. Rumor is that ActBlue is being investigated. Do recall that Matt and I essentially exposed this in 2007 with Caucus of Corruption…even back then we found huge numbers of donations for Democrats coming in like $26.59. Nobody donates $26.59. A foreigner donates in foreign currency and that gets converted into US dollars. This money squeeze will increasingly impact all Democrat efforts…from paying people to fill out fake ballots to purchasing rent-a-mobs to emphasize Democrat talking points.

To sum up, I enjoyed 2025 and I’m looking forward with eager anticipation to 2026.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan32 Comments

A passage from the upcoming Book X of the Mirrors series:

“An atomic bomb,” Tom said, nodding his head. “Where it splits an atom causing an explosion?”

“Well, so I’m informed; I never made it to any advanced mathematics,” Jerome replied. “But not just one atom; quite a lot of them packed very close together and then blown up causing the split and explosion. We dropped two of them on Japan and they threw up the sponge.”

“It sounds very horrible,” Aleste said. 

“It is very horrible, but it did end the war.”

“It did, but I perceive it was like the way my grandmother ended the war; it just made more wars.”

“That was magic.”

“So is your terrible bomb; you and your people have just forgotten what magic is. People always want short cuts.” Aleste shrugged. “And who am I to talk?”

“Couldn’t you stop using magic?,” Tom asked.

“I’d like to but I can’t; it is too late. Mother is wrong; it can’t be fixed. We’re just stuck with it now. Like your people and that bomb.”

Tom nodded.

“We all learn a bit, but never early enough.”

“Well, I sure didn’t. But if I had to guess, Tom, you learned soon enough.”

He shook his head.

“Not nearly soon enough.” He touched the globe and anchor emblem on his blouse. “Dad was a Marine in World War One. Fought in the Argonne. Told me about it. But he left out some details.”

“That’s as old as time.”

“Sure is. But I didn’t help myself. I was Romantic about it on purpose, I guess. What was my meat and potatoes?”

Tom stood up and started to recite with dramatic gestures:

The first that the general saw were the groups

Of stragglers, and then the retreating troops;

What was done? what to do? a glance told him both,

Then, striking his spurs, with a terrible oath,

He dashed down the line ‘mid a storm of huzzas,

And the wave of retreat checked its course there, because

The sight of the master compelled it to pause.

With foam and with dust the black charger was gray;

By the flash of his eye, and the red nostril’s play,

He seemed to the whole great army to say,

“I have brought you Sheridan all the way

From Winchester, down to save the day!”

“Gorgeous bit of poetry by Thomas Read. Dad loved it so much he named me after him.”

“It is a good bit of poetry,” Aleste said. “Stirring.”

“It is that, but I’d have been better off reading Sassoon.”

“What did he write?”

“Oh, a little more bitter than that.” 

“Please, tell me. I have to know. To learn.”

“All right.”

“You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye

Who cheer when soldier lads march by,

Sneak home and pray you’ll never know

The hell where youth and laughter go.”

“That is bitter and I’m sorry for him. But it is something to know.”

“It is that.”

I really like that bit – the attitude is deeply woven into the whole tale: we must be brave. But let’s not kid ourselves, either. I think it is something that we have definitely lost in our storytelling. You think of even the very good war movies of the past 30 years or so and throughout them is a thread of its just suffering and you must get through it – but there is also heroism, which cleanses the effort. As long as we are this side of the hereafter, things won’t be all neat and tidy.

The latest example of this is some people getting upset that we’re killing drug smugglers. For goodness sake, they’re de-facto pirates. We can hang them after a drumhead court martial…its actually a mercy to whack them with a missile. It is over quickly. And we should be celebrating our sailors and airmen doing the deeds – they’re defending the least of us from a horrible scourge. And, sure, we can also spare a thought to those we kill – some of them are very much compelled to do it. But, then again, a man who truly knows the value of life would never hold his life more valuable than someone else’s…and everyone who gets into those boats has done just that, and so is getting what’s coming to them…getting, that is, what they were going to deal out. And more mercilessly…over a period of years, and the destruction of not merely individuals …but of families and whole communities.

I think we need to spin better tales, guys. I wish I were a better writer – that I could write something that would shake the world! I hope that some of ours eventually do…because we need stories that enlighten and encourage us. That show us that the good guys do win…but that even the most glorious victory comes with a high price.

Anyways, just a bit of thought I’m having as I polish up the book and get it ready for publication!

Merry Christmas!

Mark Noonan26 Comments

Let’s not forget the reason for the season!

In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus
that the whole world should be enrolled.
This was the first enrollment, 
when Quirinius was governor of Syria.
So all went to be enrolled, each to his own town.
And Joseph too went up from Galilee from the town of Nazareth 
to Judea, to the city of David that is called Bethlehem, 
because he was of the house and family of David, 
to be enrolled with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child.
While they were there,
the time came for her to have her child, 
and she gave birth to her firstborn son.
She wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, 
because there was no room for them in the inn.

Now there were shepherds in that region living in the fields 
and keeping the night watch over their flock.
The angel of the Lord appeared to them 
and the glory of the Lord shone around them, 
and they were struck with great fear.
The angel said to them,
“Do not be afraid;
for behold, I proclaim to you good news of great joy 
that will be for all the people.
For today in the city of David 
a savior has been born for you who is Christ and Lord.
And this will be a sign for you: 
you will find an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes 
and lying in a manger.”
And suddenly there was a multitude of the heavenly host with the angel,
praising God and saying:
    “Glory to God in the highest
        and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”

For those of us believe this happened, it wasn’t just an event – it was the most important thing that ever happened. God came down from heaven and became one of us – fully man while remaining fully God. Come down out of a deep concern not for a mass of people, but each one of us, individually.

Many people disdain this notion on grounds of the size of the Universe – “come on, you think God would bother with the people on this bit of dust lost in the wastes of Space?”. Well, yeah. And, indeed, the fact that we’re not finding any life remotely near to us indicates that this mote of dust might be pretty important…perhaps even unique. One thing certain, if there is other life out there, it is so far away we’ll probably never encounter it (we would have heard some sort of intelligible radio transmission if there was anyone within, say, a hundred light years of us). Part of the problem is that people continue to think in human terms – the vastness of Space might contain many billions of planets, none of which have life…which, to us, seems strange. But perhaps God just likes making planets and they are each interesting to Him, even if not to us?

But the main thing, for us, is that event: God made flesh. If you don’t believe it happened, then the whole story is meaningless. If you believe it did, then you’ve opened up your mind to a startling concept: you’re worth something. In fact, worth quite a lot. You’re not a mere cipher. You matter. That, I think, is what really bothers people about the whole story – we don’t want to matter. Well, strictly speaking, we don’t want anyone else to matter. We don’t, that is, want to feel obligated to others (this, “we”, of course applying to the general run of humanity – not those who actually believe). We want a world where we don’t have to give a darn about others…where a “sorry to hear that” is sufficient before we move on to fussing about our own concerns.

The difference is the railroad engineer who drove Jews to the gas chambers and those who tried to stop Hitler…even if it meant not just their own deaths, but the deaths of everyone they knew. You see, a Stauffenberg knew that his life and the life of his wife and children were not more important than everyone else’s. That there was nothing to live for if one stood aside while others suffered. And, of course, Stauffenberg was a devout Christian. He went along with the Nazis as long as he could figuring that the fever would break and an honorable Germany would emerge…but it eventually became clear that the fever wasn’t going to break and action had to be taken…even if totally forlorn action. And so it was, and the world was given a hero for all ages to admire.

It is belief in that event in Bethlehem that makes the difference. Which makes real self-sacrifice even possible. Not the bravery that stands up to an enemy army, but the bravery that stands up to evil, itself, even when there is absolutely no hope you can beat it. Which says, aloud, “I don’t care what you do to me and mine, I am your enemy and will fight you”.

And, also, it lets us know – we can’t lose. To give a minor spoiler about Book X, I put into Fred’s mouth this very idea: that evil, in the end, is nothing. Just stand up to it. It is ok to feel pain. To die. Just don’t give into it. The Life of the World to Come will make all of this as if it has never been. Every tear will be wiped away. That is the most important thing, I think, for us to grasp today – we can’t lose. They will lose. They can’t do otherwise…they believe in nothing. A plague and a nuisance they very much are…but not at all important…unless, by God’s grace, they come to understand that it is Mary, laying her child in a manger, who was central to the most important event that ever happened.

Condemn the Disgraceful

Mark Noonan12 Comments

A major reassessment is needed. We really do need to free our minds from conventional wisdom. All of us have been underneath a massive weight of propaganda our whole lives and much of what we think is true is false – even those of us who have done the most to break free are still largely working on the assumptions that there was some logic and decency behind the actions controlling our society this past century or more.

Trump sparked massive Establishment outrage when he placed his name on the Kennedy Center. They acted like someone had urinated on the Washington Monument. The fact that the Kennedy Center had decayed and was a mere slush fund for the Left didn’t matter…Trump was the person violating all decency by putting his name on it! But even in the debate back and forth on it – I think it is enormously funny – everyone was missing the part about whether or not there should be a Kennedy Center.

JFK was very much a Greatest Generation/Boomer phenomena. That is, it was all an act – the appearance of excellence masking a sordid and rather incompetent reality. But now the Greatest Generation is almost all gone and the Boomers are aging out. I was born in late 1964 so I’m the very tail end of the Boomers…and I’m sixty one. The Boomers who really set the tone were born fifteen and twenty years before I was…and they are pushing or over eighty. That is, there aren’t a lot of people left who care to defend that time period. Once upon a time, “where were you when you heard Kennedy was shot?” was a meaningful social benchmark…I wasn’t even a gleam in Dad’s eye at the time. You’d have to be at least 72 to have an even partially connected memory of it. To have it be really meaningful, you’d have to be eighty or more. And now we can look back and wonder just why so much angst was invested in the event?

Sure, it was a shock and, yes, significant questions persist to this day about just how it happened and why. But as for the man, himself, there isn’t much to say. A mediocre junior officer in the Navy during WWII massaged into a very media-driven political career where the showmanship far outstripped the statesmanship. My Dad was a Democrat in 1960 but he voted Nixon that year on grounds that JFK was a lightweight (though Dad had reservations about Nixon as well). That towards the end we have indicators that JFK was waking up to the fact that he was a mere facade is neither here nor there – before he could do anything to buck that reality, he was dead (and might be why he died)…and the actual legacy is not too great. Impelling us on to the Moon shot was significant but almost all the work was done after he died. Other than that, we have the Bay of Pigs fiasco, the totally blown Cuban Missile Crisis, backing down on the Berlin Wall and our increasing involvement in Vietnam as what Kennedy left us. However you slice it, this isn’t the stuff of Eternal Flames. Or Kennedy Centers.

I’ve long thought about writing a booked called Unserious Men – it would be about all the leaders of the West since prior to WWI who have simply run us up on the rocks over and over again…and who are for the most part highly honored to this day. But just taking it from the American perspective, I rate our successful Presidents since the Civil War as these:

Grant, Cleveland, McKinley, Coolidge, Reagan and Trump.

That’s it. The rest ran from incompetent to malevolent (and often both). A series of people who worked the system to climb the greased pole and wind up in the office of the most powerful man in the world. Not people who thought seriously about what was best or what theory should govern action…just work it. Fake it till you make it. Get the brass ring no matter what. They weren’t alone, of course: for each one who made it there are a dozen who twisted and turned mightily trying to climb that pole but failed in the end. On the other hand, the men I rate as successes did have a theory and wanted to see it implemented…and their political efforts weren’t directed towards getting themselves into office, but their ideas into reality. Huge difference.

One might say that we owe some respect to those who managed to get into office. I say, no. The office is a place of respect…but if a disreputable man enters it, then it is besmirched and it can only be cleaned by casting out the dirt. That is, saying what the occupant was. Defining our terms. Not letting our sense of politeness or nostalgia allow things to slide. When Trump put up those insulting placards on Biden and Obama’s pictures, that was a necessary purgative. Sure, it was also Trump’s sense of humor…but Biden and Obama are not the good guys. In office they were cruel, greedy, spiteful and incompetent. They poisoned American politics…perhaps beyond cure (though we still hope for a cure). And for no other reason than narcissism…they both of them thought they were the greatest men alive. But to be bi-partisan here, I also have great disdain for W these days…the man took the loyalty of the GOP base and simply turned his back on it. We stood up and fought for the guy for eight years. Trusted him. Invested in him. Thought he was at least trying to do the right thing. And since he left office he’s had plenty of nice things to say about the Clintons and Obamas, but when the Clintons and Obamas call us racist Nazi traitors…dead silence. That also poisons American politics…it is a grave act of omission. It is consent to having Obama poison us. And once you’re part of the conspiracy in any form, you’re totally in the conspiracy…even if you didn’t mean to be.

And it is all over the place. You take a look at the massive corruption Walz has presided over in Minnesota and you know that it wasn’t just him – it was everyone who worked with him. They all knew. And then you realize that this type of corruption has been going on for decades…so that means when the GOP had total control of the government in, say, 2005, it was going on and nobody did anything about it. Which means the GOP knew and was in on it as well. I recall that when one of Peter the Great’s ministers was caught stealing he sentence the man to be knouted (beaten with a thick leather truncheon) and it was common soldiers who did the beating…after a time, Peter ordered it to stop but the soldiers, drenched in sweat and breathing hard from their effort (they had gone at it with a will), said, “just a bit more, Little Father: he stole the bread out of our mouths!”. That is the sort of attitude we have to start taking towards these people…that money wasn’t just a figure on a balance sheet…it was your grandmother’s in home care that was denied, it’s that decaying bridge at risk of collapse, its your brown-out for lack of up-to-date power lines, it is the wounded veteran waiting ten years to get benefits, it is the peeling paint in your local school…it is your sustenance that was stolen, kicked back and remitted to Somalia and Mexico.

The condition our country is in isn’t an accident. It was deliberate. It was brought here by people who think they’re better than everyone else and this gives them a license to steal and to not care about how many people who die in the process. They need to be beaten within an inch of their lives…not given a statue. And until we start treating them as they deserve, we really can’t break the chains they’ve bound us with.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan27 Comments

Animal Farm was Orwell’s stinging parody of Stalin’s rule in Russia. The lies. The corruption. The secret police. The hypocrisy. Naturally, it is now being remade in a big budget film where the villain is – wait for it! – the Capitalist!

Yes, that’s it! The nice, wonderful Commies are doing a great job and it is all ruined by a Capitalist who subverts it.

It is a…well…rather Orwellian perversion of the story. And oh, so very 1984 in that it is a falsification of history. The kids ain’t reading, guys. And they won’t want to watch the old 1954 animated version (too stale in looks!) so going into the future if someone wants to find out about Orwell they’re going to find out he was a Communist who exposed how Capitalists ruin everything.

This is why the Right simply had to get into pop culture. We have to start writing books (doing my best!), songs, movies, TV shows…painting, sculpture. And we can’t just copy what was done before the Left ruined everything. It does have to be fresh and new – something that will appeal to people who are only barely literate in the traditional sense (they might be able to read words, but if you try to lay on them something as complex as, say, 1984, they won’t be able to fully understand it). This is where people like Musk have to step forth…we need money. Lots of it. We need to reward those who are right now in the infancy of an alternative pop culture.

Trump is going to address the nation – as of now, I don’t know for certain about what, but we’ve got quite a fleet off South America and Trump showing he’s rather upset with the corrupt, communist narco-terrorists down there. The Right is on the march down south – Chile being the latest nation to toss the Left out. But in Venezuela and Columbia as well as other places, the Left is too deeply entrenched (and is too willing to kill) to remove from power by normal means. I think Trump wants to give things a little shove. But, we’ll see! You never can tell what Trump has up his sleeve.

Trump caught a lot of flack over his post about Rob Reiner’s death. OTOH, Trump would catch a lot of flack if he posted, “I like apple pie”. TDS is widespread. But what was irritating was the number of people on the Right – not TDS-infected Never Trumpers – who took the opportunity to tut tut about it. As if they had just been waiting for their chance to show how morally superior they are. Like that is actually a morally correct thing to do…or that it is something that helps.

Look, I get that many have fond memories of Reiner as “Meathead” on All in the Family (a very conventionally Liberal , anti-American show in hindsight) as well as his movies Spinal Tap (mediocre with only one really funny scene) and The Princess Bride (cute enough, but it doesn’t hold up well – saw it for the first time in years a couple years back and it is definitely at the bottom of the re-watch list…its cuteness doesn’t sustain itself). Additionally, the manner in which he died was horrific – nobody should have to go like that. But none of this changes the fact that Reiner, for the last ten years of his life, voluntarily became a vicious liar for political purposes.

It wasn’t a mistake. He didn’t misinterpret the data. He set out to lie because, in his mind, Trump did the unforgivable thing of defeating Hillary. Reminder: all of these Hollywood types were good friends of Trump. Sought him out. Honored him. Couldn’t wait to be around him. Until Trump decided to challenge Hillary…whom the Hollywood types wanted as President because that is what the Script said. She had stood by Bill (as so many Hollywood types have stood by cheating spouses) and the payoff for that was supposed to be the White House (akin to a movie or book deal). Trump ruined all that. They had a whole host of TV shows and movies based upon the idea of a female President. Trump took it all away – and, so, when Hillary had her nervous breakdown about it, Hollywood took its cue and went to work. Knowingly. Voluntarily. Deciding that poisoning American politics was worth it if it could harm Trump.

Those lies are not funny. They have got people killed. They already sparked two attempts on Trump’s life (that we know of). They got Trump’s friends and allies ruined in Lawfare of the most foul, Stalinist sort. They have the USA today simmering on the edge with violence common and Civil War a possibility. Was Reiner the only person to do this? No. Was he even the most important? Again, no. But he was a willing participant in it and he never backed away. It was his own son who killed him – his now 32 year old son, who has a long history of drug addiction. Meaning that over the last ten years, when his son was 22 to 32 to years old and battling demons, Rob was taking the time out of his day to lie about Trump. This is just freaking bizarre – but it it was Rob chose to be.

So, no, we are not morally obligated to forget all that. In fact, it is far more morally important that we view things clearly than try to soften things up with pablum. Lives are at stake in our ability to fearlessly state the truth. And the truth is that whatever Reiner was in the past, for the last part of his life he decided to do very bad things. Trump called that out. And it should be called out. Yes, the evil that men do is interred with their bones – in that Reiner’s fate is really up to God now. But we have an obligation to not set up a system where a vicious liar is honored. Only a repentant liar may be honored.

The Left is trying to sweep the murders at Brown under the rug. Have to: if Jews and the few Conservatives at Brown were targeted, then all of higher education is going to feel the heat. The Left is hoping they can string things out and hope the news cycle changes (I think the fracas over the Reiner post was partially because of that – they wanted us to talk about anything else but Brown – especially after the pogrom in Australia). I’m hoping that Trump’s people are looking at it very closely…I want to find out just how deep the colleges are with antifa and Hamas.

Just Thinking a Bit

Mark Noonan20 Comments

Had a Man Cold this past week – toughed it out to Thursday end of shift by means of using up my “work from home” days but for Friday I had to do the worst possible thing you can do: take a sick day while sick! Total waste of a day! But, I needed it: slept most of the day. Didn’t go to Mass today because I’m still feeling it and I don’t want to get people sick just in time for Christmas (feel a bit guilty about that even though it isn’t a sin to miss a Mass because ill) – but what this really got me thinking is that I’m 61 and I felt the first symptoms last Monday while by tomorrow – a week in – it’ll be almost all done. Always been like that for me: I don’t get ill much and I get over it fast. Same thing with injury. I never bruise. I take falls that should break bones but they don’t. I heal fast – like when I have a root canal in the morning the pain is gone by afternoon and I’m eating normally that evening. The dentist is flabbergasted about how strong and deep the roots of my teeth are. I go and get a physical and everything is fantastic. I might be from what they call “the deep end of the gene pool”…that is, one of those people who’s genetics have determined a strong constitution. Generally people in my family (both sides) make it into their 80’s but I did have a grand-aunt who made it to 100. We’ll see how long this ride lasts!

As you might have guessed, I’ve been pondering my own mortality – not in a morose way! We all owe God a death, right? True, we all want a highly extended line of credit, but it stalks us all. It is more in thinking of how much time has passed, what I’ve seen – and when considering, say, my grand-niece born earlier this year, what she might see? I mean, if she lives the normal female lifespan for 2025 of 81 years, she’s going to 2106! And she’ll have met a man who as born in 1964. And will be one handshake away from a man (my grandfather) born in 1896.

Let’s roll that 81 years back – and its 1944. Call it 1945. Think of all that has changed since then. There was still a British King-Emperor of India. Israel was still in the future. To us oldsters, that world seems familiar but not for the young. Black and white photography? You had to dial a phone. And the number was Lakewood 2697. Long distance seemed a bit miraculous. The kids are now asking, “what the heck is long distance?”. Hardly anyone had flown in a plane as yet; if you could afford to travel you still got aboard a train…or a ship if crossing the sea. Television existed but was still years away from common; you listened to radio shows. And if you needed to reach someone fast you sent a telegram. This is an alien country to anyone, say, under 40. You know: born in 1985 or later. As for the rising generation (born after 2000, now, guys!), even a cell phone without video capability would seem stone age.

Things change very rapidly. In the Mirrors series I deliberately created a world where change wasn’t happening – the final explanation (and end) of that status is explained in Book X (honest, I’ll have it out soon – but its the last of the series and I love it so much I’m loath to finish it…I keep refining the refinements!). Change is good. Change is natural. But, also, change is deadly. Gotta be careful with it. In general, the Revolutionary is someone to be afraid of – most of the time, he really doesn’t understand anything and is entirely destructive. Only very rarely does a Revolutionary create something better than what was destroyed (our Founders, of course, being one of the rare examples of good Revolutionaries). In this bit more of a century since the end of World War One, we changed very much too rapidly. We let the Revolutionaries run wild. Sure, this got us the Moon and some very amazing medical advances…but it also got us nuclear weapons and assisted suicide. There’s some plusses and minuses here.

In the main, most people do just want to live their lives. To be sure, “living their lives” for some subsets of humanity is, well, bad. Afghan tribesmen living their lives see a bit of rapine as a fine way to make a few extra bucks. But, for the common run of humanity, just living as they see fit is the sum total of life’s goal. Tolkien noted this in his works when he had Aragorn point out that his job – his purpose in life – is to protect the simple people so they could remain simple. That is, not stupid: but untroubled. It is the duty of those who know to protect those who do not. Just as a parent sets guardrails for children so, too, must the true leader set guardrails for the people as a whole. Our Founders set them! But, just perhaps, not firmly enough? Trusted too much? Living as they did as free and equal people and being honest and upright patriots, they possibly assumed that the perverse could never gain sufficient purchase in the American mind to ruin their great work…we have found, now, that some things should have been much more firmly written. Ah, well: live and learn, right?

After Revolution, Reaction. And I think that is where we’re heading. These days, the word “reaction” has a bad connotation. Of course it does: we’re under the rule of Revolutionaries! But the last great Reaction was after the maelstrom of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. Everyone had had quite enough of Revolution! That is why the later attempts to revive Revolution – most notably, 1848 – failed miserably. There were gripes and, indeed, even things to fight over. But, in the end, nobody wanted to create another period like 1791 to 1815. People opted for incremental change. And, year by year, they largely got it – the 19th century was a century of political, economic and social improvement. It was only after the turn of the 20th century…when the Bad Old Days were getting on to a century before and out of living memory…that people started listening again to the siren song of revolt and Revolution.

Though, to be sure, I don’t think anywhere there was a majority in favor of overturning the entire system. Lenin annulled the Russian election of 1917 – his Bolsheviks only winning 23% of the vote and, by far, a center-left coalition of democrats having won. Hitler never got more than 37% of the vote in a truly free and fair election. Mao, Mussolini and Castro never even considered a remotely free election. As angry as a people might be with the system, a desirous as they may be of deep changes, hardly anyone wants a complete overturn. Sure, the peasants of Russia had abandoned the Czar, hated the nobles and wanted the land for themselves…but they didn’t want to replace all that with a Commissar telling them all their land belonged to the State. That they might have been confused or lacked understanding is neither here nor there – they didn’t get what they wanted. In fact, hardly anyone ever does from the Revolutionaries because, for the most part, Revolutionaries hate the people…and want them punished for not measuring up to what the Revolutionaries believe is right conduct. And I do believe this latest run of the Revolutionaries is coming to a close – their desperate efforts to import a new population to use in overturning things is failing. And this was the last trick they had up their sleeve.

All around the world – and not just in the West – we see people rejecting those who uphold the current status quo. Nobody wants to continue as we have. Everyone looks around and wonders just why there are suddenly tens of millions of migrants and we have to let them in…and give them full benefits, legal protections and the right to vote. And then we also look around and notice that it isn’t our people who need to be replaced. That is, the Christians – the real believers, and the people who are of those who made our nation and civilization – are still having sufficient kids to maintain their population. It is those who have abandoned God who need replacements…not us. But it is those who abandoned God who are importing the replacements…and why replace us with people who aren’t like us? Who in many cases actively hate us? We figure we can do without the replacements as much as we can do without those who are actually being replaced.

This is why Populist-Right parties are going from strength to strength all over the world – even in places like Japan. The system the Revolutionaries made has failed in its promise and we’re all figuring that our old ways are just fine. You know: that tired, old bit about being sober, hard working, loyal, honest. Sure, it is boring as all get out and you don’t get the sort of art our Ruling Class prefers, but it works. And it’ll work forever. It will never fail – and it will always improve things. And so we no longer care what they say about it. It doesn’t sting. Perhaps if they had actually got us wealthier and, say, pushed us to the stars we’d still let them stay in charge…but we’re a bit pinched on the finances and they can’t even build a bridge in less than ten years. So, thanks; but go away.

And if they don’t go away voluntarily? That is, if they don’t surrender the power they lost fair and square in elections we win? Well, that would be…bad. Like very, very bad. Mostly for them, of course. But also for us. You see, we’re kind and tolerant and do want to live and let live. But if pressed to it…well, let’s just say that the Left won’t like what happens.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan27 Comments

Looks like we found a large deposit of “rare Earth” minerals in Utah – showing that Bismarck’s phrase about there being a special providence for fools, drunkards and the United States of America remains true: just what we needed. China was definitely leveraging their control over the global supply against us. And this discovery is in a Red State, so no fuss about extraction (there are actually sizeable rare Earths in California but good luck trying to get them out of the ground).

The Doomsters – who I more and more consider merely bought by the DNC – continue to Doom but from my perspective, things are rapidly brightening. We’re looking at sold economic growth in 2026 combined with increased personal income – just the recipe for people getting in a good mood. Tariffs work. They’ve always worked. They always will work. They are the natural economic order for any trading nation. The two insanities are to allow no trade at all or no restrictions on trade. As in all human action, a balance must be struck. Trump is doing that.

Between deportations and self-deportations, about 2.5 million illegals have left the country since January. And do keep in mind that we’re still ramping up enforcement – the OBBB paid for hiring and new equipment, most of which won’t come on line until 2026. We’re just getting started. Any illegal with a lick of sense is going to self-deport ASAP. Because next year there will be plenty of people to catch them…and if you’re forcibly deported, you can’t come back while self-deportation means you still have a shot at it.

A Democrat in Congress called the shooting of two National Guardsman – one dead – an “unfortunate accident”. Internalize the fact that they hate you and want you dead. They might have smiles on their faces. Might talk in the most reasonable tones imaginable. But what every Leftist wants is your corpse at the base of a wall.

At War With the Wicked

Mark Noonan17 Comments

The theft of welfare funds in Minnesota has been a topic but now we’re also learning what we already knew: huge amounts of money sent to Ukraine were siphoned off…and, in the end, it will be to corrupt Ukrainians, Europeans and Americans (and I won’t be surprised if some Russians got in on it, as well).

To be fair, almost as long as there has been war there have been war contractors and thus corruption. Napoleon dealt with it by periodically shooting a contractor…not actually to stop the theft, but to keep it to a dull roar. When governments are spending vast sums of money – that is, spending someone else’s money – the temptation to rake off is high. But what we’re seeing out of Ukraine is a bit astonishing. Huge amounts of money which was supposed to go to support the Ukraine battle and home fronts stolen and probably winding up in bank accounts around world…and done with the active and widespread cooperation of Ukrainian government officials, including officials of the Executive branch which is tasked with, you know, sending men to die in battle for the future of Ukraine. Roll that around in your head: the Russians are knocking at the gates of your country, they could break through at any time…every ounce of effort has to be directed to the front…but here were whole networks of Ukrainians (and others) using its as an opportunity to get hookers and blow money.

John Lennon once famously sung about a possible future with no religion – well, Johnny, here ya go. You got what you wanted: a society which doesn’t remotely believe in God. The result? Men dying in a pointless war while those who sent them to die steal everything not nailed down. It is all of a piece, you see? The whole nauseating degradation of the modern world stems from that – people don’t believe in God.

We have people writing weepy-eyed articles right now about how cruel and unjust it is for us to whack drug mules on the high seas. This is a form of theft – part and parcel with those who were stealing the rations of Ukrainian soldiers. It only seems like separate issues but you have to raise your point of view – the person getting a kick back for a Ukrainian defense contract is the same species of crook as the person writing an article essentially saying we have to let the drugs flow. That is, let the poison flow. Have to let people continue to die. Not just the drug addicts, but also people over the whole chain…remember, lots of people get murdered in Latin and South America as the Cartels fight for supremacy or just kill those who irritate them. They are casualties, too…just as dead as the addict in an American gutter. And just as much a precious human being as anyone else. But, we gotta let him die, you see? There’s this theory we pretend to have which says it is better for 100,000 people to die than to have even a slight infringement upon a right we just made up yesterday (in this case, a right to not be killed while smuggling poison). And people writing such articles are stealing – they are being paid money extracted from the productive by force or fraud in order to propagandize in favor of the productive suffering ever more.

And as I noted, its all because of a lack of belief in God. If you believe in God, even if you’re otherwise a criminal, you won’t be the sort of beast who steals rations from soldiers, nor live a nice life writing articles defending the rights of drug smugglers. A thief is a thief…these people are demons. And we have to start lumping them all together…the Minnesota welfare cheat, the Venezuelan drug smuggler, the EU-crat getting a rake off…I don’t care how nice they’re dressed or how many people they pay off to write up excuses, we have to see them for the malevolent, dishonest, soul-destroying demons they are. And I think Trump does – and that’s why he wants to end the war and whack the druggies. It puts the demons out of business. Somewhere in there, Trump believes in God – he’s human. Normal. One of us. And for ten years he’s dealt with these people and knows who they are, on a deep and philosophic level. I just hope that Vance has also internalized just what sort of people are opposing us, because this is going to be the work of generations.

The Catastrophe…and Perhaps the Way Back

Mark Noonan26 Comments

December 7th doesn’t mean much to the younger generation. Remember: we’re nearly a quarter century after 9/11. If you’re under 30, even that date doesn’t mean much. Back to 1941? Eighty four years ago? It is almost out of living memory. Only a few very old people were even alive when it happened – even fewer have any memory of it. Everything eventually gets ravaged by the artillery of time. But it is still one of the pivotal days of modern times.

People still wax misty about 1914 and Sarajevo and, indeed, there is good reason for that – a whole generation of young people singing their way to massacre in the trenches. But for all the destruction of that war, it was the US entry into World Two which was The Event of the 20th century. The First World War was a quick in and out and though Americans largely supported the effort, they weren’t at all keen at staying involved. Good to keep in mind that it wasn’t the Lusitania sinking or the resumption of German unrestricted submarine warfare which got us enthusiastic about the war, it was the Zimmerman Telegram.

That diplomatic note, intercepted by the British and published by them with exquisite timing set America aflame. We didn’t particularly care about who won that war. We figured that if you sailed on the high seas into a war zone, you took your chances – but the prospect of a German-allied Mexico conquering parts of the American southwest enraged us. And so off to war we went. And when it was Over Over There, we came back home, voted in Harding by an astonishing landslide and pretty much acted like the whole thing never happened.

As late as December 6th, 1941 the solid majority of Americans were opposed to entering the war. Keep in mind that the Holocaust was still not generally known about – and wouldn’t really get rolling until 1942. We didn’t like the Nazis but we felt that it was still Europe’s war. Just like Japan’s war in China was Asia’s war. We were sympathetic to China and Britain, and to those laboring under the conqueror’s boot, but we couldn’t see how it mattered to us.

And with good reason – in a very cold and clear light, it didn’t matter to us. Moated as we were by two oceans, with harmless neighbors north and south, with the second largest fleet in the world after Britain (and easily turned into the largest, as we soon saw), with vast territory and wealth untold to be tapped…why go fight in Europe over the difference between the sides? FDR had been doing everything he could to build up a war fever in the USA – and, additionally, the spreading prosperity due to war contracts was whetting appetites – but it just wasn’t working. We remained stubbornly aloof. We could not be conquered. Not by the whole world in arm against us.

But then came the attack. Of course it outraged us. Of course the recruiting offices were jam packed the next day. Of course we swore we’d beat those Japanese SOBs. But while we did that, we also somehow started to unravel the European colonial Empires while lavishing aid on a Soviet Union hostile to every last American ideal. I mean, seriously: we deliberately set about weakening our allies while strengthening our obvious enemy. Sure, in the process wiping out Germany and Japan but, in the end, those two nations never stood a chance. What stood a chance was a global Left standing over the ruins of European Empires and slowly but surely infecting the United States. And here we are. Eighty four years later. Debating over what “woman” means.

This is why I consider Pearl Harbor to be the disaster – the turning point. The one event I’d really like to go back in time and change. It wasn’t that the war was the problem, it was that it allowed the Left to use American power to win the war, claim it as a Leftist victory and then set about over the past eight decades thoroughly degrading everything that the men and women of 1941 fought for.

We didn’t need an NSA. Didn’t need a CIA. Didn’t need a massive standing military. Didn’t need to allow foreigners to dump their second rate garbage in our markets. Didn’t need foreigners to come here and work. What we need was what we had – a nation of sturdy patriots led by people who knew what the heck to do. We needed, in short, a nation that produced Douglas MacArthur and George Patton…not a nation which wonders if a 5 foot tall woman should be in an infantry company.

This is why I’m so enthusiastic about Trump. The past can never be recovered – we won’t ever go back to 1941. But we can certainly try to recapture what we can. And so Hegseth at War. Rubio at State. And Trump, himself, clearly reading and re-reading McKinley and others who built the nation which won the Second World War. We’re becoming American, again. Unafraid. Hard working. With good will towards the world but no desire be immersed in its (often) very stupid problems. Set against us is the world and that section of the American population which has ceased to be actually American – you know the type without even a description. We’re just strong enough to beat them, and the longer we beat them the more people will come over to our side…until all these weirdos on the Left are nothing but a distant memory.