Author: Mark Noonan

Open Thread

Mark Noonan28 Comments

In general, these days – and long before Putin invaded Ukraine – I have been opposed to alliances and supra-national organizations (NATO and UN, eg). They tend to hamstring national policy and, especially as they’ve been construed after WWII, they are usually a one-way street: we take on an unlimited obligation to defend other nations without reciprocity. We can see what that has got us: weak “allies” in Europe and around the world. We are committed to the defense of nation after nation and they are not committed to rise to our defense. So, on the whole, I would end all alliances and withdraw from all international organizations.

But if we are to retain them, then they have to be iron-clad and reciprocal. If we’re going to rush to Poland to defend them from Russia, then I want the Poles to send an army to help us fight China. Any such alliance should really be spelled out: how much GDP is spent on defense, what sort of military force each party is to maintain as a bare minimum and plans already made for deployment anywhere around the world as circumstances warrant.

Furthermore, if we go to war with any nation, then I want us to impose the full financial cost of the war on them after they are defeated. No more free rides: no more forcing us to go to war and then after putting us through death and destruction, we rebuild them. No: they can rebuild themselves while also shelling out 10% of their annual GDP to us for 50 years after the war.

Aside: I’m tired of the American Empire.

As for Ukraine: the Russians seem to still be grinding ahead with some big gains in the south and nearly none in the north. I think the Russians took too big a bite of the apple: going after geographic locations rather than seeking to destroy Ukrainian military power. But I suspect there’s a reason for this: Putin wants the Ukraine physically intact as far as possible. A great deal of Ukraine’s military force is concentrated in point defense of major cities: to quickly destroy this military power would have taken massive, destructive bombardment of the cities. This is cruel, but clever tactics on the part of the Ukrainians – they are essentially using their civil population as a human shield, knowing that any civilian killed by Russia will be written down as a war crime, thus increasing sympathy for Ukraine internationally. But I suspect we are getting close to the end: the increasingly shrill calls for a NATO no-fly zone over Ukraine (which would amount to a de-facto declaration of war by NATO against Russia) indicates that the Russians do have air supremacy and the Ukrainians are simply being ground down by superior weight – unless the pressure can be removed, it is only a matter of time.

On the other hand, some are saying that Russia is running out of first-rate material. Not so sure about that: and in second-rate material, Russia is well supplied – but that second-rate stuff is old style artillery, the use of which would cause immense destruction and loss of life. Meanwhile, there is some growing domestic opposition in Russia. Putin better wrap this thing up pretty quick. I don’t think his power is at risk, but the longer the war drags on, the more difficult it will be for him.

What has astounded me is the number of voices on the Right who are taking Ukrainian propaganda at face value. All of a sudden, they’re quoting MSM sources as if they are reliable. I think this is psychological for some of them: being overtly pro-Ukrainian provides distance from the allegedly pro-Russia Trump and supporters (a ridiculous view, but it exists out there). In short, it allows these people to make friends with their Progressives pals again. There is one thing which can save the Democrat’s political bacon in November: the GOP signing on to a Biden war for Ukraine. I think some on the right are willing just that: they fear the sort of GOP which is likely to emerge after the mid-terms…far more Trumpist, far more America-First, far more conservative (they despise GOP moves to enact pro-life and ant-CRT laws at the State level). They hate people like Greene and Boebert; and they can see in the GOP candidates more and more like them. And they hate them because the more we get people like that, the more the GOP will be forced to enact laws the GOP base wants. A war with Russia may deflect or at least delay that.

The joke of the week is that Putin is going to get the Nobel Prize for medicine for having cured Covid. Its like it dropped off a cliff, isn’t it? People were asking where the ubiquitous Fauci had got to and one guy looked it up: basically reduced to appearances on public access cable. The (political) Science has spoken: Covid is political death for Democrats and so we won’t be hearing much about it. At least, not right now: if Ukraine folds in the next week to ten days, they might have to bring it back to distract us from rising prices. We’re up a bit more than 20 cents a gallon for gas in the past week while oil and food staples climb to near-record highs.

In the world of unintended consequences: people around the world are looking about for alternatives to financial securities which can be frozen or seized. You know: like the Russian assets have been. A lot of people thought it cool the way Apple Pay was shutdown for Russians with a flip of the switch at Apple…but a lot of us were like, “WTF – they can freeze me out of my money if they decide they don’t like me”. America is kept going financially by people buying our bonds…and they will keep doing that, at least for now. But if you’re a foreign government or rich guy, do you want your money tied up in an asset that the United States can destroy at a whim? If the world does stop buying our bonds, then we’re financially ruined. And I mean completely. It would make the Great Depression look like a minor correction: one of the strength of Rule of Law societies is the security of wealth under it…that no matter what happens, your property is safe unless you actually break the laws of your host nation (or the host nation of your assets). Now, its funny to watch them seize yachts of Russian oligarchs…but where was the law in that? Some decree of some official. No court. No charges. No conviction: just stroke of the pen, your property is gone.

And that brings me to a point I’ve made recently and for years: national wealth is not dollars. It is what you make, mine and grow. Russia doesn’t just provide us oil, but also fertilizers and other crucial materials. Of course, a huge amount of our manufactured goods come from overseas. Suppose these people decide not to take our dollars in payment? What do we have then? We don’t even seem to make basic things like screwdrivers and scissors any longer.

Gold standard, guys: we have to get back on the gold standard. If our money is backed by gold, everyone on God’s green Earth will accept it no matter how much they hate us. And we must go back to Protection. No more of this “free trade” chimera…massive tariffs to force a rebirth of American farming, manufacturing and mining.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan19 Comments

Why haven’t the Russians finished off the Ukrainians? Short answer: they’re Russians.

Anyone who knows a bit of history knows the Russians have never been first rate at offensive operations, especially early on. It took some real effort for the Russians to produce Tannenberg with the Russian 2nd Army being essentially wiped out in a few days, but it does give the flavor of how Russia goes to war. It is part of the Russian natural character, I guess: being slipshod.

A guy who claims to be an expert on logistic matters (and he seems like he knows what he’s talking about) took a look at all that Russian transport that got bogged down in the mud and noticed that it was the tires causing the problem – they had fallen apart. He then noted that when he was in charge of the American version of such vehicles, they had to be continually maintained to avoid just that: tires blowing out the minute you go off road or otherwise hit something rough. Now, you can bet on it that the commander of those Russian vehicles reported himself 100% ready to go…which means he gundecked his readiness reports and had his fingers crossed when they invaded. This, to be sure, isn’t a disease just of the Russian army – all peacetime military forces suffer from it. But sorta double it for the Russians (and I’ve also heard tell that their Defense Minister is a Court favorite…another common failing in Russia is putting the lives of soldiers in the hands of the guy who can best entertain the Tsar).

So, Ivan did his usual. He did this in 1940, too, and got whacked from pillar to post by the Finns. The Russians left about 150,000 dead on the field there. And I think what a lot of people up high were expecting was for the Ukrainians to do the same as the Finns. Rely on it: our military intel people know the capability of the Russian army: in between lectures on pronoun usage, they still actually gather and assess data. Because of this, we and our allies went rather whole hog for Ukraine. But the Finns didn’t show up. The Ukrainians did. And, hate to break it to everyone, they’re just Russians with a different accent. With juicy, road-bound targets all over the place, the Ukrainians made no real move against them. And now the Russians have sorted out their issues and are starting to roll ahead – latest map I saw from UK MoD indicates a rapidly unfolding offensive which seems to be set on taking over all territory east of the Dnieper. Whether the Russians will go further remains to be seen.

Pudding Brain gave his speech. I didn’t watch. From reactions, it didn’t go over well. You know that if the Morning Joe people are praising it to the skies, it was a dud. Here is Joe’s problem:

The Mrs went out to get gas today and it was more than $4 a gallon. When she got to Ross to shop, she saw a man waltz out of the store with an armload of stolen goods…right past the security guard who is under instructions not to interfere. So, our budget is getting stressed by high food and energy costs and I’ve got to worry that my wife will be rubbing elbows with criminals when she goes shopping.

That is the State of the Union. There is no other State of the Union. And no amount of Pudding Brain/MSM gaslighting will change this.

After my wife told me that, my blood went into slow boil. I admit to actually getting feelings of hatred for those responsible. This was un-Christian of me and I’m sorry for it. But it was there. And I at last realized that even someone as relaxed as me has a limit. Our opponents have ruined this nation…and it is just getting worse and worse. Can you imagine what things will be like after 3 more years of this? I can’t – and I wonder just when those vastly less patient and merciful than me will get to their limit?

Manchin sat with the GOP during Pudding Brain’s speech. My guess: he switches either right before or just after the mid-terms.

The Russo-Ukraine War

Mark Noonan32 Comments

As I sit down to write, there are reports that Kiev is surrounded and not surrounded and that Zelenesky has agreed to talk and not agreed to talk. In other words, nobody really knows what is going on. This is the most talked-about but least reported-on war I’ve ever seen. I think this is because we lack any real war correspondents – people who would actually go into the combat zones and see what they could see. Those old reporters would get things wrong from time to time, but not usually: the willingness of people to pay them to risk their lives for a story was dependent upon accurate reporting. These days, the reporters all stay where they can get an easy TV hookup and a drink after their daily 20 minutes of broadcasting the latest rumor they picked up over lunch.

The MSM is filled with stories of glorious Ukrainian victory. Social media has a plethora of accounts putting out alleged video of the fighting. But I’ve literally seen the exact same picture described as Russian and Ukrainian troops surrendering. Part of our problem here is that there’s no physical difference between Russians and Ukrainians and their military equipment is similar. Anything can be anything and none of us can really tell if a particular armored column driving through a non-descript Ukrainian town belongs to either side.

That said, the Russians clearly have advanced, and in some cases pretty deep into Ukrainian territory. The eyes of the world are fixed on Kiev but the real action is the Russian advance out of Crimea towards Mariupol in the east and Odessa in the west. Especially towards Mariupol because if the Russians get there, we might find a significant portion of the Ukrainian army is encircled. And that might be why Zelensky wants to talk (if those reports are correct): work a deal before the Ukrainian army in the east has to capitulate (in the face of Russian air power, a withdrawal is probably not feasible).

Part of the problem the world has in dealing with this is that we don’t know Putin’s intentions. He hasn’t really stated them. My thinking when it started is that he wanted the line of the Dnieper: essentially taking the part of Ukraine where ethnic Russians make up the bulk of the population. That still might be it – with the moves towards Kiev and Odessa merely to obtain bargaining chips to obtain Ukrainian agreement to surrender the Donbas. But there is a chance he wants the whole of the Ukraine. That, I think, would be foolish on Putin’s part as he’d be taking control of a hostile population and pretty much force Poland and Romania into massive military build up and close alliance.

Naturally, the Democrats are trying to pitch this in a manner which forces us to back them politically. We have to rally ’round the flag, right? If recent polling is correct, that isn’t happening: Pudding Brain is cratering to his lowest ratings yet. I know some people who have become emotionally invested in opposing Putin and this has made them turn the Ukrainians into pure heroes. I’m not having any of that. The Ukrainian government has been corrupt to the bone since it was set up after the fall of the USSR. They had 8 years to prepare for this and it doesn’t look like much was done – they should have had layered defensive positions and a plan to mobilize the entire population at need. But I guess giving no-show jobs to Hunter Biden was the best they could do. I am sympathetic to their plight, but only to an extent – the people of Ukraine are ultimately responsible for the sort of government they endure. If they truly loved their country, they would have made sure that no matter what else happened, national defense was carried forward with conviction. They didn’t and now Ivan is knocking at the gates.

On the other hand, I also know people who are making a hero out of Putin and so they cast aspersions on the Ukrainians. Putin’s propaganda is that he’s only going in to rid Ukraine of neo-Nazis. This is based upon the Azov Battalion of the Ukrainian militia and the actions of Ukrainians during WWII.

The Azov Battalion originated in the 2014 conflict – and it clearly has links to white nationalist groups and some of its symbols are obviously based on Waffen-SS symbols. But I doubt they hope to revive a Nazi empire. The symbols they use are more for anti-Russian than pro-Nazi reasons. This is because during WWII quite a lot of Ukrainians did work with the Germans against the Soviet government. They also fought the Germans quite a bit. In the end, the outside observer can only look with a bit of sympathy on people who were caught between Nazis and Bolsheviks. If you were Ukrainian in 1941 you had family members who had been starved to death, murdered or otherwise brutally oppressed by agents of Soviet power. It wasn’t just a portion of the population: all of them had reasons to hate the USSR with a white hot passion. In come the Nazis and the Bolsheviks are gone…the Nazis then proceed to murder, rape and loot to their hearts content. This did cause some Ukrainians to become pro-Soviet partisans…but quite a number let that Nazi brutality roll right off their backs and they became ant-Soviet partisans. If you ever wanted to know how bad Stalin’s rule was, there’s your answer: some people would rather help Nazis if that meant keeping Stalin out.

And they kept up the fight – for ten years after the end of WWII, Ukrainians continued a forlorn struggle against Soviet power. Without any outside support they were eventually crushed…but the memory of them endured and their symbols remained potent to Ukrainians who remember and dislike Russian rule. And, so, there you go: the Azov Battalion. So, I don’t put much stock in pro-Russian claims that Ukraine is a neo-Nazi hotbed.

I think that this is one of those events where we’re just going to have to see how it comes out. It is, though, a war I want no part of. I don’t even want to arm the Ukrainians at this point as I’m concerned that we’ll just end up supplying the Russians as we did the Taliban. The Europeans can provide all the aid Ukraine needs – let them do it. Keep our soldiers home – at most I’m ok with providing humanitarian relief.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan51 Comments

Why do we hate Russia? Because they attacked our Democracy! Keep that in mind: our panties are in a wad in 2022 because Team Hillary blamed Russia in 2016. It really is nothing more than that – this is just the op taking on a life of its own and driving a Narrative in ways that are amazing to see. I mean, we let Russia waltz into the Crimea. If we were going to fight a war to defend the sacred borders, that was the time to do it…not years later when Russia has Ukraine in an impossible strategic situation. But, we’re going with this…because part of the op for 2022 and especially 2024 is to keep Russia, Russia, Russia going. It is an excellent distraction from China, after all.

We’re very much in a Twilight Zone here – but we’re only here because we keep going along with it. Or, at least, most of us do. While McConnell and Graham are playing the tired, old Neo-Con record vis a vis Russia, plenty of us are all “just why do I care about Ukraine?”. We can’t get an answer to that: all we get is we must defend Democracy and International Norms. Well, if we’re going to defend Democracy, then lets invade Canada and depose Trudeau.

But we know that is all drivel. We’re not defending anything other than a corrupt and dying Ruling Class. I think our best Rule of Thumb going forward is to assume that anything we’re told to care about is the exact last thing we should care about.

One of the recalled San Francisco school board members is blaming white supremacy for her ouster. Because of course. Had nothing to do with having the kids wear masks while telling white kids they are born racist.

They’re putting up the fences and calling in the National Guard to DC for Pudding Brain’s SOTU. Are they really scared, or are they just trying to drive a Narrative? Probably a little of both. But this is not the action of a government which says it got 81 million votes.

I’m not sure what is more amusing here – Hunter Biden blowing his money on crack or the fact that it’s being spilled by a lady with the on-line handle of “Weed Slut 420.” But here’s the thing – if this was a Republican’s son, this would be 24/7 in the MSM. Because it is Hunter Biden, only a few news outlets are covering it. The bottom line is that Hunter is a massive national security risk and the Chinese probably have their hooks for far in him that Pudding Brain is powerless against them.

Ace has an insight:

The tactic employed by the Democrat Party seems to be 1, creating a “Person of Color” category, 2, assuming that all “Persons of Color” have the political priorities that black progressives do, and 3, use the most militant and extreme fringe of black progressivism to define black progressives.

Thus, the Democrat Party is selling a fringe ideology of decriminalizing crime and taking the education of out schools to Asians. And then saying, “You’re Persons of Color. You like this.”

But they don’t like this.

In fact, most blacks don’t like this. This isn’t the politics of blacks. It’s the politics of the Black Panther Party.

Which is then sold to Indian immigrants as somehow representing their interests.

More and more people, and more and more Democrat constituent groups, are waking up to the fact that Wokeness = Death. And that sacrificing your life, or your child’s life, for Twitter Virtue Points is a bad deal.

It really is that, isn’t it? Democrats have taken the most extreme views of people like Angela Davis and Bobby Seale and said that all non-white people are 100% that. Doesn’t make the least bit of sense, but that is what we have. And now it is starting to bite the Democrats. That SF school board recall was driven by Asian-Americans while Latinos are shifting to the GOP as they reject woke ideology in favor of law and prosperity.

A Democrat Congressman – who is both fascist and insane – wants the government to seize the trucks of protestors and pass them out to other people. Never mistake it: they are bad guys. They will tell you they’re the bad guys. Don’t act like they are reasonable people you can work with.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan33 Comments

Justin Trudeau announced today that the state of emergency would continue even though the trucker protest has been ended – people who start using jackbooted thugs and unconstitutional punishments usually don’t like to give up such things. Among his statements is an assertion that any MP who doesn’t vote to approve dictatorship is opposed to Democracy. All of this brought to mind a Tweet I did a while ago: Progressives are not nice people. They are mean, nasty, self-loathing psychopaths. They are mere appetite for power and money and they despise those of us who have normal lives.

Only the United States is free in 2022, and we’re barely hanging on to it. Only the tattered threads of our Constitution and our federal system keeps us from falling into the dark night of tyranny. And day by day the minions of Pudding Brain are working to undermine both things – they hate us. They hate the United States and they want us to be on our knees to them. They do it in a hundred different ways from things like refusing to enforce immigration law to pressing auto companies to go all electric in their products. Anything they can do to take choice away from us and give it to faceless, Progressive bureaucrats.

If we win in 2022 and 2024, we have to go war against the State. Even if you won’t go as far as I do in wanting to abolish the police, you simply must agree that police powers, especially at the federal level, need to be curbed. We need specific laws prohibiting federal agents from doing certain actions- things like no regulation takes affect until approved by both houses of Congress in a stand-alone, up or down vote; no collecting of identifying data on American citizens without a warrant; banning asset forfeiture prior to conviction and even then only for assets which are proven in court to come from illegal activities; banning banks from reporting financial transactions to the government without a warrant (no more of that “if they deposit 10 grand, let Uncle Sam know”, which they want to change to a $600.00 threshold). We must dismantle the ability of government to know our activities or do anything to us prior to the issue of a warrant and/or a conviction in court.

They’re still fussing about Ukraine. I guess I’m supposed to care that Putin is trying to detach the predominantly ethnic-Russian areas of Ukraine. I do see the issue – especially as Putin also considers Ukrainians to be Russian – but I still don’t see why I’m supposed to care more than the Europeans do. I’m willing to help – provide all kinds of a support for a Franco-German army fighting to keep the Russians out of the Donbas. But if there isn’t a NATO army to support there, don’t see any reason to send an American army…which will be called “allied” because while we send, say, an Army corps the French send a regiment and the Germans a battalion.

Global warming got snow in the Chinese city of Xiamen for the first time since 1893. Apparently, a really arctic blast is hitting east Asia and it might be heading our way. I did check and in a couple days we’ll be dropping from balmly 60’s and 70’s down into the 50’s for high temps in Vegas.

Israel preps for Pudding Brain’s surrender to Iran on the nuke issue. Why are they doing this? Because Trump didn’t surrender and kept the mullahs in a strategic cage – and Team Pudding Brain’s main thing is to do the exact opposite of whatever Trump did.

As mask mandates are lifted, people are noting that some people just will not let the fear go. A Twitter friend points out that we were subjected to a military-grade psy-op on Covid and it worked very well. Some people were made so terrified of this 98%+ survivable disease that they are psychologically scarred. Maybe for life. My view: it all depends of if you watch TV. Those who watch TV got the full dose of the psy-op and so are wrecked. I’ve lost friends over this: and those I’ve lost are all avid consumers of TV.

Our Matt is sort of on Trump’s Truth Social platform – he’s gotten farther than I have. I figure demand for it is overwhelming, so I’ll be patient. And I’ll see you there! No shirking this one, guys: get an account. When I have one, I’ll post my handle here. We’ve got to build this thing up as fast as possible for political reasons.

What Are We Not Teaching Our Children?

Mark Noonan11 Comments

This article is an absolutely fascinating look into the world of transgenderism and de-transition. To nutshell it: the young lady was a confused teen (as we all were to one extent or another) and happened upon a series of Tumblr communities which led her to the path of becoming transgender. After some years in that world, she turned from it, de-transitioned and is now trying to put her life back together.

What caught my attention the most if the very cult-like atmosphere of the transgender community: how it is vigorously affirmed and rewarded in the transgender community and how our whole society is institutionally supportive of it. It is very much not something that comes to a person after careful, rational thought and weighing of risks and rewards, but as a fashion which, if you accept it, you’ll suddenly be changed from an oppressor-nobody into a hero-victim. It is a very toxic but very seductive thing.

After I read it and pondered it for a while, I recalled a passage. Of course it is from G K Chesterton:

Of course, the main fact about education is that there is no such thing. It does not exist, as theology or soldiering exist. Theology is a word like geology, soldiering is a word like soldering; these sciences may be healthy or no as hobbies; but they deal with stone and kettles, with definite things. But education is not a word like geology or kettles. Education is a word like “transmission” or “inheritance”; it is not an object, but a method. It must mean the conveying of certain facts, views or qualities, to the last baby born. They might be the most trivial facts or the most preposterous views or the most offensive qualities; but if they are handed on from one generation to another they are education. Education is not a thing like theology, it is not an inferior or superior thing; it is not a thing in the same category of terms. Theology and education are to each other like a love-letter to the General Post Office. Mr. Fagin was quite as educational as Dr. Strong; in practice probably more educational. It is giving something—perhaps poison. Education is tradition, and tradition (as its name implies) can be treason.

This first truth is frankly banal; but it is so perpetually ignored in our political prosing that it must be made plain. A little boy in a little house, son of a little tradesman, is taught to eat his breakfast, to take his medicine, to love his country, to say his prayers, and to wear his Sunday clothes. Obviously Fagin, if he found such a boy, would teach him to drink gin, to lie, to betray his country, to blaspheme and to wear false whiskers. But so also Mr. Salt the vegetarian would abolish the boy’s breakfast; Mrs. Eddy would throw away his medicine; Count Tolstoi would rebuke him for loving his country; Mr. Blatchford would stop his prayers, and Mr. Edward Carpenter would theoretically denounce Sunday clothes, and perhaps all clothes. I do not defend any of these advanced views, not even Fagin’s. But I do ask what, between the lot of them, has become of the abstract entity called education. It is not (as commonly supposed) that the tradesman teaches education plus Christianity; Mr. Salt, education plus vegetarianism; Fagin, education plus crime. The truth is, that there is nothing in common at all between these teachers, except that they teach. In short, the only thing they share is the one thing they profess to dislike: the general idea of authority. It is quaint that people talk of separating dogma from education. Dogma is actually the only thing that cannot be separated from education. It is education. A teacher who is not dogmatic is simply a teacher who is not teaching.

Children come in to the world as blank slates. Human children have a few very simple physical instincts but beyond that, everything they get into their heads was placed there by someone else. And it starts at the moment of birth (and maybe before). The infant human mind, provided it is physically healthy, absorbs gigantic amounts of information very rapidly. And we don’t even remember that exceptionally important part of our lives. I can dimly recall impressions of some things which happened when I was about 4. Prior to that: all blank. And my first connected memories – the first memories I could tell you a cohesive story about – are when I was about 7. And think of that: by the time I was 7 I could walk and talk, I could read and write a bit and do some basic sums. I was already well on my way to being what I was going to be.

But it wasn’t drawn out of me. There was nothing passive about it. Someone taught me. I was instructed on how to put on my pants. How to brush my teeth. How to hold a fork. I was entirely instructed in everything I knew until I grew old enough and knowledgeable enough to seek out information which was not being deliberately provided to me. And even then, I was merely taking information that someone else thought it would be good for people to know. I was not in any sense of the word a free agent. I could reason, especially as I got into my teens, but I wasn’t forging any new paths. I was still building knowledge.

Now, imagine if you will, as I sat there at the age of 14, all depressed because I wasn’t “cool” and I didn’t have the nice things others had and my parents were a bit off-kilter that I had found a community of people who told me I was depressed and felt alienated because I was actually X and if I would just join the X community, all my ills would be cured? At that age, I wasn’t remotely equipped to make such a decision. I was still a child. I had knowledge. I could reason. But I lacked the wisdom which can only come with age.

But that is precisely what happens to kids these days, as the linked article points out. The author found the community, learned its rules and then yearned for acceptance into it. Once she declared herself one of them, she received nothing but positive reinforcement for it and while her mother was dismayed, all official Authority told her that it was great and she was doing the right thing. There is only a very small chance a child can resist that. And this is especially true because in our modern world – especially over the past 20 to 30 years – even parents have refused to impart to their children the knowledge they have. The kids of the 21st century are rather cut adrift out there: no one says “it is thus, and so you must believe”. To do that is to be a dogmatic bigot, right? But as Chesterton points out, all education is the transmission of dogma. And if the parents of America won’t tell their children what is proper to believe, then somebody else will.

And don’t think that this is kids coaching kids. Kids don’t have anything to provide: they are still in the learning process. No kid sat around one day and all on his own decided he was trans. It not only doesn’t happen that way, it can’t happen that way. Someone has to tell the kid about transgenderism. There is nothing in nature or in the normal run of human family life which so much as implies that a person can be other than their biological sex. Every kid out there – and we see so many of them these days – who says they are trans are saying something they were instructed to say. And, bet on it, it was an adult who told them. The author of the article notes that the community she entered was filled with kids just like her – in the sense of being depressed and alienated. But it is inconceivable that a kid, all on his or her own, got the ball rolling. No, that would have been an adult. Or whole groups of adults: setting up communities which lure in the kids, propagandize them and then wait for the results. In other words, groomers almost certainly set these things up: people who want a steady supply of kids who will become what the adults wish them to become. The old, Catholic, Baptist and Jewish families produced steady crops of Catholics, Baptists and Jews because that is what they wanted – as hardly anyone really imparts their own views to their children, what we now have is others stepping in to get what they want.

What we are getting in our society today is not what we want. Outside a few loons hungry for attention, nobody looks at their infant child and goes, “I hope he wants to be a she”. No: the normal parent wants a copy: someone just like them. They see their boy or girl and imagine them doing normal boy or girl things leading up to a successful life, love and marriage and the production of grandchildren. And there is nothing wrong with that. There is nothing wrong with producing people just like yourselves. There are exceptions to the rule, of course, but the overwhelming bulk of people being decent, hardworking, law abiding citizens, a carbon copy is a laudable thing. But a very large number of parents aren’t doing it. That is, they aren’t taking the effort to impart knowledge.

They contract it out to the schools, to the TV, to the internet, to popular culture. Not all parents, but very large numbers of them. The author of the article gives the impression of parents who were a bit disconnected: after all, she had hours every day to spend on Tumblr being relentlessly propagandized. I’m not saying her parents were bad: I’m saying they didn’t take a deep enough interest. I can see a contrast in my own granddaughter: her father does let her waste some time playing video games but then he will take her out – to the park, up to Mt Charleston…somewhere, anywhere that doesn’t have internet access and where she has to physically move and engage in human interaction. I can’t know how she’ll end up, but I have my strong doubts she’ll wind up a sucker for a scam over the internet (her father carefully imparts to her how many scams there are out there). This must change: the family must become the primary source of information and the schools must only teach what the parents approve.

I’ve talked about this before, but this part of being a citizen: taking personal responsibility for ourselves, our families and our local communities. No more contracting out: we, the people, must take charge. And, hey, if there’s a local community out there who wants their children to learn about being transgender, that’s their business. As long as it is their decision, who am I to complain? But my bet is that if parents were fully engaged and insisting upon control of what goes into their children, you’d not hear a peep about it. Who in heck wants their kids to learn about that? Can’t be more than 1 or 2 percent: overly woke urban upper class people (mostly white, it goes without saying).

Lives are being destroyed – not just by this, but by so many other things. And it all comes back to this failure on the part of the adults to take charge and insist. Until we, the people, decide what is to be taught and to whom, this is just going to get worse. It is time to take a stand and start teaching what we want taught.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan57 Comments

Of course they spied on Trump. We all knew that pretty much from the get-go, but it is nice to get some additional confirmation on it. The real problem isn’t the spying but that nobody will really pay the price for it. They’ll protect each other. In fact, I suspect that this particular release was allowed because some Democrats want to put a veto on Clinton’s revived interest in Presidential politics: there are plenty of signs and rumors that she’s at least thinking about a 2024 run. Most Democrats don’t really want that – certainly Team Pudding Brain and Team Harris don’t want it.

Our only way out of this is to dismantle the National Security State. As I’ve said before, it has to go. Really, having things like an FBI and CIA are incompatible with a Republic. We can, perhaps, endure a very small group of intelligence operators who focus entirely on external threats and ferret out spies in the US, but I mean small. Like not more than a couple hundred in total, with US Special Forces troops providing on the ground muscle at need. Certainly there must be strict prohibitions against collecting any data on American citizens without a warrant and periodic outside audits to make sure they’re staying on the straight and narrow.

Meanwhile, the word is that Durham’s investigation is accelerating.

Trafalgar, one of the best pollsters of the past few cycles, has it R+12 in the generic Congressional ballot. Nobody has ever seen anything like that. Everyone is (wisely) taking it with a grain of salt. This is wipe-out territory even if it is R+6. The real kicker in the poll: it was a D+3 sample. Under Pudding Brain, we may test the irreducible minimum of Democrat support.

Canada went under de-facto martial law today – never thought I’d see anything like that. It is very strange – all they have to do is end the absurd mandates and it all goes away. Its not like Trudeau was ever all that popular to begin with. He, in fact, got less votes than the Opposition last time out (though his party ended up gaining a few seats given the weirdness of Canadian politics). He’s pretty much already at the irreducible minimum for a Liberal Prime Minister and the next election is years away. But he’s calling out the big guns. Tactically, the truckers should retreat – just go home. And stay there. Let Canadians find out how dependent they are on truckers. Already there is increasing pressure within Canada to end the mandates, so what amounts to a strike by the truckers would be highly effective.

In the US, the mask mandates are dropping like rocks: our Democrat governor here in Nevada, who apparently can read the polls showing a Red Wave building here, decided that The Science called for an end to mask mandates. But here’s the weird thing: in some Democrat areas, the general mask mandates are being dropped but the mandates for masks in schools are being extended. That is just bizarre as kids are least at risk for catching and transmitting the disease. The teacher’s unions are naturally behind that, but I don’t see the upside for them on it. Could just be Progressive pigheadedness.

War

Mark Noonan34 Comments

With Ukraine in the news I’ve been pondering a lot about our general view of the world. One thing that has been striking a jarring note for me is the assumption that we bear some sort of responsibility for Ukraine. That Ukraine as an independent nation is something that we must secure.

Why?

To be sure, some say that in Ukraine’s deal to give up nuclear weapons, we pledged ourselves to Ukraine’s defense. But, we really didn’t: we pledged to rush right off to the UN if Ukraine was attacked – a UN which, of course, has a Russian veto and so the whole thing was quite toothless from the get-go. But even supposing we had an agreement to come to Ukraine’s defense, does this then relieve Ukraine from the obligation to defend herself?

Seems to me that if I were a Ukrainian patriot with a neighbor like Russia, I’d put a high priority on national defense. I realize that Ukraine is poor, but the Israelis were dirt poor in the 1950’s and their first priority was a military second to none because they had hostile neighbors who could attack at any moment. A Ukraine filled with people committed to the Ukrainian national ideal would have a very powerful army, thickly layered defenses and a reserve force made up of the entire adult population in arms. You know – be so well armed that even a successful foreign invasion would drown in blood. Do that, and the chances of that foreign attack diminish remarkably.

Ukraine’s active military is a little more than 200,000. Reserves about 250,000. To defend 230,000 square miles and 41 million people. That’s not a lot. That’s not nearly what you need. It isn’t nearly what you’d have if the Ukranian people really gave a damn. To give you a comparison, when Israel was attacked in 1973, out of an Israeli population of about 3 million, the Israelis mobilized about 400,000. That’s 13 percent. That can’t be sustained for long (your civil economy starts to collapse), but when your life is on the line, you do it. You’d think that 41 million Ukrainians could have 4 million ready to mobilize in a life-and-death emergency. And they would, if Ukrainians really cared – because Russia is right next door and the President of Russia believes that Ukraine is an integral part of Russia.

And if the Ukrainians won’t do it – won’t even show willing to do it – why in heck does anyone else have to care? Because wars of aggression are wrong? Well, yes they are – nobody ever has a moral case for starting a war, or setting things up so that the only way out is for someone to start shooting. But lots of things are wrong – the way some Arab countries treat women is wrong. What China is doing o the Uyghurs is wrong. The slave trade in Africa is wrong. The drug lords running rampant in Mexico and Central America are wrong. Lots of things are wrong which war, successfully prosecuted by good guys, could set right. But do you want to?

Who wants kids from Ohio and Alabama to head off to the Donbas to keep the Russians out of lands largely populated by ethnic Russians? Or send them off to Xinjiang to liberate the Uyghurs from China? Or even clear out the drug lords from Ciudad Juarez? If anything, I’d rather help the Mexicans dispose of the cartels – but before I hazard American blood on anything, I’d like to know for certain why we’re doing it and what we get out of it.

The first thing to keep in mind about the world is that it isn’t neat and tidy. There isn’t a completely right answer in purely human affairs. Often, there’s just a least-bad answer. The unification of Italy and Germany into nation-States was an utter disaster for the world and, most especially, Italy and Germany. The freeing of the peoples of the Austrian Empire was a disaster for the peoples of the Austrian Empire. I mean, I dig that Poles didn’t like officious Austrian overlords (who would?) but the officious Austrians kept a cavalry barracks at Oświęcim, not a death camp at Auschwitz. I guess what I’m saying here is think carefully about what you want before you act.

What I want, first and foremost, is a free and independent United States. If I’ve got that, then I am very satisfied with the world. Naturally, I understand that the United States cannot live in isolation from the world. People and trade flow around and ambitious people with wicked minds are here, there and everywhere. I do have to keep an eye on things. I will, at times, be forced to fight. But when I fight and how I fight must refer back to my first principle: a free and independent United States.

Now, as I consider Ukraine I note that it was firmly under Russian rule from 1776 until 1917 and then, again, from 1921 until 1991. At no time during those periods was Russian rule in Ukraine a threat to American freedom and independence. It just wasn’t. Sure, from a geopolitical standpoint it would have been advantageous to the US to have an independent Ukraine all through the Cold War…but it wasn’t a necessity as proved by the fact that all through the Cold War we didn’t have an independent Ukraine. If Russian rule is reimposed in Ukraine, what ill effect will this have on American freedom and independence? I can’t see any.

“But Russia might go on and attack more!”

They might. Baltic States, Poland. On and On. I note that Poland was under Russian rule from 1791 to 1918 with no ill effect on American freedom and independence. I’m very sympathetic to the Poles as they have put up with a lot. But does my sympathy for Poland extend to sending American kids to die there? Make your case, if you’ve got one. I can’t. I could not look an American kid in the eye and tell him that his death along the Bug River will keep America free and independent. I couldn’t say it because it wouldn’t be true.

Don’t get me wrong, there can be existential, global threats. Communism was such, as was Nazism. They both proposed the whole world as their jurisdiction. Fantastic as it sounds, the USSR considered the American Communist Party as the legitimate American government and Hitler had named Goebbles to be Gauleiter of America. Fighting such things anywhere is what you have to do because if they win anywhere, they are step closer to overthrowing American independence and freedom. But Putin is no Hitler or Stalin. He does not represent a global ideology at permanent war with all dissenters. He may be a bastard twenty different ways, but he’s not an existential threat.

I agree there are non-existential threats which still must be confronted. Radical Islam. Chinese imperialism. And even a bit of Russia’s aggression are causes of concern, sometimes grave concern, which could make fighting them necessary. While I don’t think Ukraine rises to such a level, I do hold that Russian meddling in the United States is a problem. But far more than Russian meddling I find the threat in Chinese and Islamist meddling to be a huge threat – especially given how much money Islamists and Chinese have to bribe Americans to betray their own.

In wanting to contend with such threats, I can agree to enter into mutual defense pacts with other nations. I can agree to military action and even full scale war. I do believe that if China attacked Taiwan, that is worth us going to war over – because of China’s meddling in the United States such a conflict, successfully concluded by China, would simply put us in a worse position vis a vis China and so allow them to interfere in our internal affairs even more.

It would, naturally, be to Taiwan’s advantage to accept our aid against China. If we win, they win. But even in such a clear cut case of fighting for American interests, I still want a clear goal and a clear payoff for our expenditure of treasure and blood. We can’t go out to bleed and die just to help – we have to be compensated for our efforts.

Suppose we had to go to war with China. Fine. It would be a years long and very expensive war in blood and treasure. I believe that even as ruined as we are right now, we would prevail in the war (China isn’t nearly as powerful as advertised). And that would be good. But we can’t do it like we did after WWII. That was a horrendous mistake: we helped our defeated enemies return to the world of competition with us. No. No, no, NO!. They had to pay. Heck, that war cost so much they should still be paying. We go to war with China and win, then for a century China should be paying us.

I’m deadly seriously here – after a war with China, I’d want every bit of gold and silver and art turned over to us and a 10% tax on China’s GDP for a century paid to us. Maybe even take some land from them: move the Chinese out and Americans in. The main thing is that they pay us for putting us through the trouble. We do not want to own the world. We do not want the world to do what we say. Yeah, maybe from mid-century on we’ve had some jerks who dreamed of such, but that wasn’t the American people. We just wanted to be left alone to hold our own. My view is that if you do things to us which force us to go fight you, then you’re going to pay. You’re not just going to lose the war, you’re going to be humiliated and then forced to work very hard to send money to us for a very long time.

It is time we got out of the dream world. All this UN, NATO, treaties and arms limitation garbage since WWII has been the answer provided by dimwits who never understood the world. The world is a real place. People do things in it. Good and bad. We can’t cure all bad and we don’t have the right to, anyway. Our primary duty is to look after ourselves – to make only temporary alliances at need, to make sure they are reciprocal (our blood to defend them, their blood to defend us) and when we defeat an enemy we don’t occupy and rebuild them…but we do make them pay. Through the nose. With usury. In blood and treasure.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan18 Comments

The provincial government of Alberta is dropping the Covid restrictions. Seems like pressure works. Though, have a care: the announcement was rather surly and you can bet that if they think they can reimpose the restrictions, they will. And this doesn’t do anything to stop federal mandates in Canada.

The Army is working on Climate Change. We’re doomed.

Ron DeSantis has this to say about Rogan – he shouldn’t have apologized. Looks like someone combed through old Rogan podcasts and found that he said The Bad Words. Rogan apologized and that had the normal result: renewed calls to cancel his show. Never give in to the mob.

There’s a restaurant in NYC which is Castro-Che themed. I know you’re not surprised about that. Here’s the surprising bit: the owners decided to expand to new territory. Specifically, they decided to open a place up in Miami.

New Yorkers just don’t get out much, do they?:

I have a semi-viral Tweet. As of this moment about 2,900 retweets and more than 12,000 likes. This is many orders of magnitude more reaction than I normally get. Seems that the Washington Post printed an article with the title – and I’m not kidding – ACLU Challenges Youngkin Order Mandating Choice on School Masks. Emphsis added. My only comment was that it belonged in a museum…some weird, Orwellian museum. I just couldn’t imagine that someone could write that. These people are tying themselves into pretzels trying to keep up the Narrative. Later I found an article claiming that we on the right are weaponizing freedom to destroy Democracy. Are they stupid, or do they think we are?

ACAB

Mark Noonan16 Comments

You’ve seen that. Especially in 2020 you saw it scrawled everywhere when a BLM/Antifa riot took place. If by some chance you still don’t know what it means:

All Cops Are Bastards.

This is not true and grossly unfair. But we do have a problem, folks.

Those of you of a certain age remember The World at War: A BBC series about WWII and they devoted one episode specifically to the Holocaust. I recall that one of the people interviewed was a former camp guard who described how horrified he was when he first witnessed the gassing of Jews. What the story doesn’t go on to do is tell you that the man fled his post and started an anti-Nazi resistance. That story isn’t told because it didn’t happen. As the man was told by a more experienced hand, eventually you just get used to it. Very likely, the horrified young man got used to it. Maybe later he came to regret it. Maybe he regretted it all along. But the most important thing for the Nazi regime is that he went ahead and did it.

Now, why that particular Fritz became a camp guard, we don’t know. I suspect a lot of them joined the SS-Totenkopfverbande because it kept them out of the Army or the Waffen SS (though the Nazis did cull a division of soldiers out of the camp guards). And, once in, there were various pressures on them – especially anyone who didn’t immediately get enthusiastic about the work (some did: being such a guard drawing out latent sadistic streaks). You could, of course, get in simple trouble is you disobeyed. You could lose your job. Lose your pension. Find it hard to obtain other employment. So, almost all of them just went along with it. There are only few tales of concentration camp guards being at all kindly (hardly any tales of Soviet camp guards, either, and for the exact same reasons). But the main thing to keep in mind is that they weren’t drawn from the pool of wicked Germans – they were drawn from Germans, as such. They were just regular folks. People you wouldn’t look twice at.

I bring this up because a little before I sat down, word came out that the Canadian police are starting to crack down on the truck protestors. We don’t know how it will come out – maybe the truckers will still prevail. I have my doubts: they have no guns. There is nothing, that is, to scare the Canadian government with. The officials of government won’t go short of anything – they can wait out the truckers who will eventually have to go back to work to feed their families. And if the truckers do break, you can rely on it that they’ll be slandered and hounded by government.

But the real problem is the police. If there is a crackdown, the cops have to do it…and early reports indicate that the police are obeying orders. I’m sure all of them took some oath somewhere along the line where they pledged to defend the rights of Canadians. But what is that compared to the possibility of getting in trouble? Of losing your job or pension? Sure, maybe you’re horrified at it all – and maybe you even hold back and don’t make any arrests yourself…but you don’t stop it. Just like the Germans of yore, they’ll just go along with it, which works out to de-facto approval and assistance to oppression.

I’ve long had my doubts about our own police – especially the blue city police. Ever since Eric Garner was killed by the cops for selling “loosies” my understanding of the police has altered. I used to be Back the Blue. But am I supposed to back a blue which allows itself to be turned into tax collectors for upper class NYC busybodies who don’t want the poors to smoke? “The law says”. Sure it does. But you’re not supposed to care what an unjust law says. In the Uniform Code of Military Justice is it spelled out: no member of the armed forces is obligated to obey an unlawful order. This was inserted into US military law after WWII precisely to remove “I was only obeying orders” as an excuse for crime. Any cop who can’t or won’t see that putting a choke hold on a guy for selling untaxed cigarettes is an unlawful order isn’t worthy of being in any police force. Seriously: at most they should have ticketed the guy and moved on. But even that is ridiculous – real police who take an oath to defend the people would have told their superiors to get stuffed. They simply would not have enforced a stupid tax law about cigarettes.

But then you might lose your promotion, your job, your pension. You might get into legal trouble yourself. See the problem?

Any official organization has this fundamental weakness: those employed by it are at the mercy of those running the government. And we know what sort of people gravitate to government: the power mad and the corrupt. This is not to say that everyone in elective office is a psychopath, but a huge number of them are and all of them sat down one day and said to themselves, “you know who would be best to lead? Me!!!”: that right there is proof of at least a partially unbalanced mind. No fully sane person would ever think themselves fit to lead. So, what you’ve got in government agencies – all of them – are people who’s livelihood is dependent upon pleasing people who have a high propensity to lunacy. This is not a good thing.

And, really, its been in front of us all along. Think about how many police scandals you’ve heard of in your life. Military scandals. Bureaucratic scandals. People taking and giving bribes. Committing and covering up crimes. Giving special deals to political cronies. On and on it goes: because the people who actually work the levers of power are beholden to people who are often insane and just as often corrupt to the bone. And, of course, to rise to the top of the bureaucratic structure, you proved ages before that you play ball – that you know who is to be allowed to skate, what corrupt deals you are to turn a blind eye to.

Our problem is that these sorts of people – weak willed subordinates with police power, corrupted senior officials and lunatic/thief elected officials – have at their disposal local law enforcement, State law enforcement, the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, Homeland Security…on and on and on like that. They have the power to snoop, harass, arrest. To not use these powers against regular folks who question them they’d have to be positively holy. How many Saints do you think work for our government at any given time? The temptation to abuse power is enormous, the fear of crossing it immense.

Think about what they are doing to the 1/6 detainees. Think about that poor SOB they arrested after Benghazi. Think about the number of innocent people who have been sentenced even to death by corrupt law enforcement officials. And then add to this an MSM which is a mere propaganda arm of this class of people – in other words, no matter how wicked they are, they can rely on the MSM to cover it up, at least as long as possible, and then downplay it if it happens to come out. You start thinking of yourself as brilliant and bulletproof in that situation.

And, so: ACAB.

An unfair accusation in the specific sense, but all too apt in the general. If we were confident that even 60 percent of the police wouldn’t obey an unlawful order, we’d be ok. But how many of us have that level of confidence? Remember we used to think the FBI was made up of stalwart patriots who were ruled over by corrupt political fools…but, if so, where are the FBI agents resigning over the corruption at the top? Coming forward to spill the beans not against the latest target of Ruling Class ire, but spilling it about those inside the FBI who are corrupt? It doesn’t happen. And, sure, I’ll bet when a fresh-faced FBI agent first comes across the garbage he’s horrified…but, you can get used to anything after a while. If you don’t join in the corruption then you ignore it, take on protective coloring, fade into the background and simply don’t look at the dirt.

Our Progressive friend’s battle cry was “Defund the Police”. What they really meant by that – most police being controlled by Progressives – was “move cop money to this or that grift I’ve got going”. Our cry must be “Abolish the Police.” We need to entirely rethink how laws get enforced and how public safety is maintained. One thing certain is that we know we can’t afford a large, professional, permanent law enforcement bureaucracy. It is incompatible with morality and liberty.

I’m not entirely sure how we do this, but my preliminary thought is to place primary law enforcement on elected Sheriffs and city Marshals. Elected, never appointed. Term limited. With only a small professional staff. Oregon is one of the least policed States with approximately 1.6 copes per thousand residents. I think we’re going to have to reduce that by a factor of about ten. So, instead of New York State having a total of 62,000 copes, make it 6,200 full time, paid professional police. The people who will be charged with investigating crimes more than preventing crime – the preventing, I think, is going to have to be something we, the people do. Some sort of volunteer or part-time citizens militia which patrols its own local communities (seriously: me and a few other guys from my development here in Las Vegas take it in turn to patrol nightly): it is the patrols which keeps crime at bay, anyways. The thought of a cop a phone call and five miles away doesn’t deter a burglar nearly as much as shotgun-armed Joe Blow passing by that house every few minutes while he patrols his neighborhood. And you’d still have a small, professional police force to provide backup…so if Joe Blow sees a guy breaking in and feels he can’t take them, he’d call for police backup.

Whatever we do, we can’t continue as we have. Our lives and liberties are at too high a risk under the current system. New times call for new thinking – and Back the Blue is fully obsolete.