Demons Abroad

Mark Noonan9 Comments

First, a bit from The Everlasting Man, to show what I’m talking about:

Whether it be because the Fall has really brought men nearer to less desirable neighbors in the spiritual world, or whether it is merely that the mood of men eager or greedy finds it easier to imagine evil, I believe that the black magic of witchcraft has been much more practical and much less poetical than the white magic of mythology. I fancy the garden of the witch has been kept much more carefully than the woodland of the nymph. I fancy the evil field has even been more fruitful than the good. To start with, some impulse, perhaps a sort of desperate impulse, drove men to the darker powers when dealing with practical problems. There was a sort of secret and perverse feeling that the darker powers would really do things; that they had no nonsense about them. And indeed that popular phrase exactly expresses the point. The gods of mere mythology had a great deal of nonsense about them. They had a great deal of good nonsense about them; in the happy and hilarious sense in which we talk of the nonsense of Jabberwocky or the Land where the Jumblies live. But the man consulting a demon felt as many a man has felt in consulting a detective, especially a private detective; that it was dirty work but the work would really be done.. A man did not exactly go into the wood to meet a nymph; he rather went with the hope of meeting a nymph. It was an adventure rather than an assignation. But the devil really kept his appointments and even in one sense kept his promises; even if a man sometimes wished afterwards, like Macbeth, that he had broken them.

In the accounts given us of many rude or savage races we gather that the cult of demons often came after the cult of deities, and even after the cult of one single and supreme deity. It may be suspected that in almost all such places the higher deity is felt to be too far off for appeal in certain petty matters, and men invoke the spirits because they are in a more literal sense familiar spirits. But with the idea of employing the demons who get things done, a new idea appears more worthy of the demons. It may indeed be truly described as the idea of being worthy of the demons; of making oneself fit for their fastidious and exacting society. Superstition of the lighter sort toys with the idea that some trifle, some small gesture such as throwing the salt, may touch the hidden spring that works the mysterious machinery of the world. And there is after all something in the idea of such an Open Sesame. But with the appeal to lower spirits comes the horrible notion that the gesture must not only be very small but very low; that it must be a monkey trick of an utterly ugly and unworthy sort. Sooner or later a man deliberately sets himself to do the most disgusting thing he can think of. It is felt that the extreme of evil will extort a sort of attention or answer from the evil powers under the surface of the world. This is the meaning of most of the cannibalism in the world.

For most cannibalism is not a primitive or even a bestial habit. It is artificial and even artistic; a sort of art for art’s sake. Men do not do it because they do not think it horrible; but, on the contrary, because they do think it horrible. They wish, in the most literal sense, to sup on horrors. That is why it is often found that rude races like the Australian natives are not cannibals, while much more refined and intelligent races, like the New Zealand Maories, occasionally are. They are refined and intelligent enough to indulge sometimes in a self-conscious diabolism. But if we could understand their minds, or even really understand their language, we should probably find that they were not acting as ignorant, that is as innocent cannibals. They are not doing it because they do not think it wrong, but precisely because they do think it wrong. They are acting like a Parisian decadent at a Black Mass. But the Black Mass has to hide underground from the presence of the real Mass. In other words, the demons have really been in hiding since the coming of Christ on earth. The cannibalism of the higher barbarians is in hiding from…civilization… But before Christendom, and especially outside Europe, this was not always so. In the ancient world the demons often wandered abroad like dragons. They could be positively and publicly enthroned as gods.

What specifically brought that passage to my mind was this story of horrors in the Congo, including what appears to be ritualistic cannibalism: cannibalism not caused by people starving and thus eating whatever comes to hand, but engaging in it for reasons of magic…to obtain some power or favor. What was forced into hiding by the coming of Christian civilization – even in very much non-Christian areas of the world – is now out and about; openly stalking the world.

Of course, we don’t believe in demons, do we? Well, no matter: they believe in you.

It isn’t just in the Congo. There is a cult rapidly growing in the Americas called Santa Muerte – Holy Death. It is a pagan religion which fuses pre-Columbian native religious ideals with elements of Catholic imagery. The cult is very popular among gangsters, especially gangsters in such organizations as MS-13. When you hear about the horrors perpetrated by MS-13, you’re not just hearing about gangsters being gangsters, but very likely finding out about horrific practices by people who have dropped Christian civilization in favor of the worst sort of demonic paganism (side note, I once came into direct contact with some people who were into this – I very nearly fled in terror; there was a very dark evil about them). This desire for the power of demons is getting to be everywhere – and people from all different backgrounds are joining in. After all, what are the Jihadists but another death cult like Santa Muerte or those cannibals in the Congo?

Another thing which got me on to this subject was reading a couple weeks ago a “historian’s” take on the massacres carried out by the Aztecs in their religious practices (do keep in mind that Santa Muerte derives as lot of its views from the Aztecs). This was a typical Progressive bit of drivel about how we Westerners – imprisoned by our racist, colonialist past – simply cannot understand the deep meaning and inner beauty of The Other. This is what really irritates me the most about the Left: their abandonment of basic, human decency in viewing the world. Its actually quite easy for any person to understand what the Aztecs were up to – it is the same thing an MS-13 gangster, Jihadist or a Congo cannibal is up to: perpetrating horrors in order to obtain or retain power. The Aztecs knew full well what they were doing was wrong. If they didn’t, then the Aztecs, themselves, would have volunteered to have their still-beating hearts ripped from their chests. But, they didn’t. They captured foreigners and used them for the sacrifices, thus easily demonstrating for anyone with room temperature IQ that the whole edifice of Aztec religion was a con. Brutal and deadly, but still a con.

All one has to do to penetrate a con like this is ask that question: are the people selling the con submitting themselves to the worst aspects of the con? Just as an example: the USSR: the con being sold was that even if things were bad, they were all equal and everyone was working to build a glorious, socialist future. Fine. Except those who were proclaiming this as true lived in high-end dachas and were allowed to shop at well-stocked stores the common people couldn’t enter. Con. The Jihadist leaders – proclaiming that God wants these things to happen and those who die in the cause will get a one-way ticket to heaven. Once again, fine. But if you really believed that, you’d volunteer to strap on the bomb vest, yourself. Con. And so it was with the Aztecs.

Another aspect overlooked – or, perhaps, ignored? – is how cool it is. You and I recoil in horror from such things and that is good; but not everyone does. Ever wonder why people slow down to look at a car wreck? What are they hoping to see? Some gore. A horror. Something to wake them up from their dream, even if what wakes them is a nightmare. We’re all susceptible to it. To go from rubbernecking at a car accident to ritualistically slaughtering people – and, perhaps, eating them as well – isn’t that far a step. It is a step, thank God, most of us don’t take…but it is the smallest step you could take. It’s merely a matter of stopping hoping to see something horrible to just making it happen. And if you’ve got the stomach for it, you can go far. Whole empires have been founded on it. People do like a spectacle, after all. And if you feed them that, they’ll put up with a lot from you. And those who don’t like it will often fall silent for fear of being ground up in it. As long as you aren’t having your heart ripped out, being forced to strap on the bomb vest, being forced to recant in a show trial…maybe just keep your trap shut and it’ll all blow over?

But our problem is that it isn’t blowing over – it is, in my view, getting worse all the time. Demons are like that – never quite satisfied. You, invoking them, might think that you’ll do it just this once and then be done with it, but the problem with doing wicked things – as in all forms of rapid descent – is that stopping is hard, and gets harder the further down you go. And we’ve gone quite a long ways down. Think how low we Americans – arguably the most Christian people remaining in the world – have fallen: 60 years ago, abortion was almost entirely illegal in the United States…now we have people who are seriously arguing that even a born child isn’t fully human and can justly be killed. We have people demanding we celebrate abortion as a good thing…we’re not very far off from going Carthaginian here…you know, getting dressed up in our Sunday best and heading out to watch a baby being roasted alive. But, Mark, you say: this isn’t demonic. It is wrong – maybe even stupidly wrong – but it isn’t demonic. It is based upon Enlightenment thinking, even if it is being taken the wrong way. We don’t worship demons here!

Well, yeah, we do. There’s a reason God says that He is a jealous God…not because He needs our worship, but because He knows that if we worship anything besides God, we’ll eventually make a demon out of it. It is an old risk in paganism – all paganism. Even the most clean and respectable sort of paganism has that risk. You might wish to worship the spirits of the field and that isn’t all too wrong…you need those fruitful fields. But, after a while, you’ll find that you’ve left off worshiping the spirit of creation and have started worshiping the demon of mere sexual appetite. The Romans probably had to the most sane paganism of any high civilization of the past, but even in Rome, were you to transport yourself back into that time, you’d find in well-appointed gardens of highly civilized men and women a status of Priapus. Not something you’d want on your lawn…well, not something you would want. But you know as well as I do that plenty of our neighbors would be delighted to have that vulgar thing out there.

Think about this: plenty of people are saying we need things like abortion and birth control to keep our population low, or even reduce it, because too many people means the Earth dies. Have you really rolled that idea around in your head? Once you do, you realize that such people are saying that the Earth has intrinsic value…that it is something which has worth outside that which is assigned by rational minds. If we weren’t here, the world would be worthless – nothing of any consequence would ever happen. The people who want to “save the Earth” have made the Earth their god…and are willing to sacrifice children on the altar of their god. It is paganism as senseless as any practiced in the pre-Christian past. But think of the tens of millions who really think we have to “save” the Earth…and who are willing to sacrifice human life to do so.

Death is the crucial thing here – the taking of human life. You see, once you’ve participated in that, it is very hard to not back to the hilt the idea which convinced you to go along with it. Of course, it is the last lie out of Hell that a person can’t change. Indeed, the price for any sin we have committed or might commit in the future – regardless of how horrible – has already been paid in full. Anyone, no matter how hardened a sinner, can change – and glory to God, some do. But let’s admit that it is difficult; and the more deeply a sinner has gone into sin, the harder to pull back. There gets to be a sense that there is no going back. And when the sinner has really hit rock bottom, he starts justifying the sin as a good thing. Like this: there are likely many men who are firm advocates for abortion because they once paid for someone’s abortion. Further: once you’ve done that, you might perhaps become a historian who suddenly finds human sacrifice to be not all that bad…or someone who figures that the jihadist might have a point.

There are many battles to be fought, and many worthy battles, at that. We can’t just concentrate on one thing. But I do ask that everyone give a thought to this battle I have noticed: the battle against the demons. God tested Abraham with human sacrifice but once – and stayed Abraham’s hand. God doesn’t want our deaths. To me, it stands to reason that anyone who wants a human death – who desires it as some good thing – is standing athwart God; against all that is good and decent. And it doesn’t matter if you desire to bring about the death via ritualistic cannibalism; a bomb vest, an abortion clinic or an assisted suicide…if your desire is death as a good thing, then you are in league with demons, and I’m against you.

And I think, ultimately, this will prove the most important battleground of our era. A fight between those who want to use death as a means to an end and those who wish to use life as a means to an end. Not for nothing were people moved to talk about a Culture of Life and a Culture of Death. I think they were moved to talk about it in those terms by a higher power. Because it is the crucial thing – do you want life, or death? I want life – and I want everyone to have life. I might be forced by circumstances to agree to killing, but I’ll never think of killing as good. This puts me against people who think that killing, as such, can be good, or can accomplish some good thing. Such people who believe in death have their piles of corpses, but I’ve yet to see any of the good things they said such corpses would provide. On the other hand I see those who want life…and I see them alive. To me, this is an unanswerable argument.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan18 Comments

Been getting a lot of Progressives Christiansplaining to me about how God’s command to welcome the stranger means I’m wrong about immigration. I’m not buying it – I will welcome the stranger to my front door…I’ll be less welcoming to a guy I find in my backyard uninvited. Any stranger who wishes to knock on my door in the daytime will find me all full of welcome…just as I believe that we, as a people, should graciously welcome any stranger who presents him or herself at a US Consulate, Embassy or Port of Entry. Meanwhile, strangers trying to sneak in should be greeted differently.

Schumer wants Trump to nominate Garland to heal the national divide – Instapundit noted that all such calls to unify involve the GOP giving the Democrats whatever it is they want. Outside the idiocy of Schumer’s suggestion, it illustrates just how whacked out the left is these days. You might not know it if you are wise enough to stay off Social Media, but the left is obsessive about Garland. Of course, 99 out of 100 of them probably couldn’t pick him out of a lineup – but that doesn’t stop them from feeling psychic pain over the fact that they didn’t get to replace Scalia with a liberal. They had been waiting for the happy situation to arise where one of the Court’s real Conservatives retired or died while a Democrat was President. McConnell took that away from them and they are incensed!

Meanwhile, in keeping with the Left’s sole purpose of getting everyone non-left to wear a MAGA hat by 2020, the left seems to want a fight over Barrett’s Catholicism. If Trump nominates her, he’ll have to report the Democrat reaction as an in-kind donation to his 2020 re-election effort. According to exit polls, 52% of Catholics went Trump in 2016: a fight like this would get Trump to 65% of the Catholic vote in 2020.

Pruitt is out at EPA – he was doing a bang up job reigning in that out of control agency, but his personal actions as Director ensured that as Progressives smelled blood in the water, there was no one around to defend him. It is unfair and yet inescapably true that a GOPer trying to reform anything in DC must not make stupid mistakes…Pruitt should be an object lesson for the future.

In Congress, July 4th, 1776

Mark Noonan9 Comments

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness…

…We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan5 Comments

Democrats have started a pre-emptive campaign against possible Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett. Their choice of tactic seems to be vicious, anti-Catholic bigotry. I don’t think this will work out for them as well as they think.

Their real worry is that on the matter of jurisprudence, Barrett seems unimpressed with the legal reasoning behind Roe and other such decisions. This is natural as the reasoning was specious, at best. Democrats are trying to fire up their base – and scare off a few hand-wringing GOP Senators – by raising the specter of a ban on abortion. Thing is, they are lying, as usual. Even if Roe is overturned entirely (doubtful: Justices like to keep precedent going), all it would do is return the issue to the States, or to the people (you know, where the 10th Amendment left it). My bet is that all but a few States would keep it legal, at least in the first trimester. I’d still be pleased by this because any move towards ending it is a good thing…but we’re a long, long way from any sort of political coalition which would outright ban abortion nationwide. More than likely, all any future Court will do, however, is allow States to impose various regulatory requirements on abortion – bans on late-term abortions; requirements for fully informed consent; that sort of thing.

The Experts are still uniformly predicting a good mid-term for the Democrats – from moderate Democrat gains to a gigantic, Democrat wave. They’ve got their polls and analysis of the off-year elections we’ve had coupled with historic trends. It is all very impressive…but, I just don’t see it. I’m fully prepared to be absolutely wrong, but I just don’t see it happening. All I can say is that primary turnout doesn’t indicate a massively large and enthusiastic Democrat base; it also doesn’t indicate a complacent or dispirited GOP base. The RNC is awash in money while the DNC is effectively broke. True, the Democrat House and Senate campaign committees are in good shape, but so are the GOP committees…on balance, the amount of money the RNC has to throw at races places the money advantage squarely with the GOP…and it makes me wonder: if the GOP is doomed and dispirited and Democrats are all fired up, why this money gap? I’ve read stories claiming big GOP donors are done with Trump’s GOP…and I believe them; but, still, the GOP has more money, overall. Where’s it coming from? Is it from people who didn’t used to be GOP donors, thus indicating that there’s a new infusion of supporters for the GOP? Is the DNC being broke an indicator that many long-term Democrats are moving away from the Democrats? Time will tell – personally, I think the GOP will win in November, perhaps win big. But, we can really only wait and see.

Mexico has elected an idiot President in a landslide. He’s like a caricature of the Third World socialist we’re all familiar with…everything is the fault of American Imperialism and if he’s just given full power, everyone will get rich. I get why Mexicans voted for him: if you think our Ruling Class is corrupt and out of touch, then let’s just say that compared to Mexico’s, our nitwits are verily reincarnations of Cincinnatus. For 100 years, Mexico has been ruled by corrupt politicians. Frustration led to the election of the one guy who seemed to be against it – except that some of his team are clearly involved in it. I predict utter disaster for Mexico…the good news it that Mexico’s Constitution says a person can only serve one term as President. The bad news is that leftists like this guy never pay much attention to what a Constitution says. Now is really the time to build the wall.

Don Surber has been keeping track of those who crossed Trump and then had their lives go south. It is a long list.

Robert Stacy McCain’s brother is having medical and insurance troubles – if you can spare a bit, maybe kick in a couple bucks?

Supreme Court, Etc Open Thread

Mark Noonan31 Comments

Never thought a Supreme Court vacancy could make so many people lose it – but if you were on Twitter yesterday, you watched the most epic leftwing meltdown, ever. Not excluding election night, 2016. However, as they say, there’s more! Or, at least, there may well be more…I saw a blurb on a recent poll showing that Millenial men have swung 23 points to the GOP since 2016…something like a 12 point Democrat advantage has now become an 11 point GOP advantage. If this holds true, then 2018 (and 2020) won’t be like anyone is expecting.

Another bit of polling supposedly shows a big jump in Latino support for Trump – which isn’t actually surprising. I think that Democrat Latino support is mostly concentrated among Latinos who are overtly Progressive plus immigrants/children of immigrants. By the time you get to the grandchildren of immigrants, you’re just dealing with everyday, average Americans for the most part. And such people have other concerns on their minds than what happens to illegal immigrants at the border.

Getting back to the vacancy: people who know seem to believe that any of the possible Justices on Trump’s list would be an excellent, strict Constitutionalist on the Court. You can’t know for certain, naturally: you never know when the itch for a legacy ruling will get hold of a judge. But, I think we can rely on it there’s a very good chance that whomever replaces Kennedy won’t have his talent for specious reasoning when it is time to ratify whatever the Progs are whining about in social issues (on things like the First and Second Amendments, on the other hand, Kennedy was pretty solid). The Democrats are all in a tizzy about losing Kennedy’s near-certain vote in favor of their social policy changes, but the real crisis will hit them when Ginsburg leaves the Court – which she is bound to do voluntarily or perforce before too many more years have passed. If she makes it to 2024, she’ll be 91.

But all that may become a moot point – remember, the Courts are only there (for our Progressives) as a last resort: what to do when they can’t get their policies through Congress. But if things go as they might, Democrats might be so bereft of power a couple years from now that the makeup of the Court won’t really matter too much…the real action will be in Congress. One of the rulings this week as the striking down of the requirement that government employees belong to – and pay for – government employee unions. This is what happened in Wisconsin now on a national scale. You can rely on it that a very large number of government employees will opt out of unionization. This will cause a gigantic loss of Democrat political funds – direct and indirect – and thus crimp their ability to influence politics. I note that Wisconsin went red in 2016 after Walker’s government employee reforms…it hadn’t gone red since 1984; and even then, only because it was the Reagan landslide.

We might be living in a very different political America as soon as January.

Small Thread Because I’ve Nothing Specific to Write About

Mark Noonan48 Comments

Lot of violent and/or eliminationist rhetoric these days – almost all from the Left. Which is “as usual”, of course; it has just become so ubiquitous that no one can ignore it. And, I think, the regular folks – those who don’t spend their days in flame wars on social media – are starting to notice; and not liking what they see. No one can actually predict the future, but I’m laying my money on the Democrats increasing political radicalism turning off casual voters who will either stay home or vote GOP come November…and come 2020, unless there is a sea-change in Democrat attitudes. And I don’t expect that change until after a crushing loss in 2020.

I’m a bit serious about that. I was running things through my head and using 270 to Win and I’m expecting Trump to win 37 States with 356 Electoral votes in ’20…and if the Democrats keep the insanity up to 11, it might end up being 42 States and 391 Electoral Votes. Time will tell, of course – lots of things to happen between now and then, but I don’t see a trajectory which has the Democrats backing off and coming up with policies that appeal to people outside the true-blue, Progressive believers.

But, also, there is success for the GOP – things are going pretty well in the country right now. People might be feeling so good by 2020 that they decide they want four more years of it, regardless.

Related: Democrat governor candidate Cynthia Nixon calls ICE a terrorist organization. To be sure, she’s going to be crushed in the NY primary as she’s running against a sitting Democrat governor, but make no mistake about it: at least 40% of the Democrat base agrees and they are the people who will be driving the train in 2020.

It has been HOT in Southern Nevada. Got up to 112 on Thursday. Our Progressive friends will say this is Global Warming…but as I’ve lived out here 25 years, it is just par for the course. Now, 112 is a bit toasty…but I think my blood has thinned or something because below 80, I feel cold. Anything up to 105 and I barely feel it. And, yes, it is a dry heat – current humidity is 4%…which is murderous on the vegetable garden.

Melania Trump has visited 100% more children detention centers than Michelle Obama ever did.

Do you ever check out Powerline’s “The Week in Pictures“? You should.

Open Thread to Talk About Other Stuff

Mark Noonan75 Comments

Wow! Talking about immigration sure hit a nerve. Keep at it, guys! But, if you’ve got other things on your mind, here ya go:

We’ve withdrawn from the UN’s “Human Rights Council”…and, about time. It is a disgusting organization which is a mere tool of anti-Israel and anti-American creeps. Now, let’s withdraw from the UN…or, if we must keep it, let’s move the headquarters to Goldfield, NV…with a ban on air conditioning to save the environment.

Leftist extremists went after DHS Secretary Neilsen when she went out to dinner. I don’t think they’ve really thought through how badly this could wind up.

The SPLC has become a hate-group, targeting anyone who disagrees with the left and then pressuring corporations and groups to cut ties with the targets. Turns out, this isn’t very wise: the SPLC just got hit with a $3 million judgement due to their actions…and now as many as 60 other groups are considering lawsuits. Here’s the thing: it isn’t actually a good idea to lie. We can get quite rough in the give-and-take of politics, but consistently lying about people is a poor business model.

Laws (Even Immigration Laws) are Laws

Mark Noonan75 Comments

The DNC ordered the MSM to make the detention of people at the border an issue, and now the MSM is full of stories of the heartless, cruel Trump separating families. First, for Amazona (our, “it’s the law, dammit” person…who is correct in all respects on this), we’ll bring this up:

Any alien who (1) enters or attempts to enter the United States at any time or place other than as designated by immigration officers, or (2) eludes examination or inspection by immigration officers, or (3) attempts to enter or obtains entry to the United States by a willfully false or misleading representation or the willful concealment of a material fact, shall, for the first commission of any such offense, be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than 6 months, or both, and, for a subsequent commission of any such offense, be fined under title 18, or imprisoned not more than 2 years, or both. – 8 USC 1325

So, you can see, entering our country illegally is, well, illegal. And there’s no carve out for people fleeing persecution. If you want in, you have to come in legally…and, of course, you can just present yourself at the border and claim refugee status and your case will be judged according to law (and we have a host of carefully crafted laws and regulations just for that). There is no carve-out for someone caught illegally here – or attempting to illegally enter – who says, upon arrest, that he or she is a refugee (though, even here, after detention such a person can still claim refugee status and that case will be judged on its merits, no prejudice attached for the illegal entry). And the bottom line is that neither Mexico nor Canada is a dystopian hellscape…once in either country, it is no problem to go to the closest US consulate and claim refugee status. But, that isn’t what is wanted here. What is wanted is easy entry – and then the chance to disappear into the illegal alien underground, where there are plenty of people willing to help you skirt US law in the matter of your residency.

The use of kids, I think, results from the fact that until just recently, we went very easy on people who showed up with kids. Which astonishes me – we should have been even more strict about that given the amount of trafficking going on across the border. Without a blood test, how in heck would we know if any particular kid presented at the border is the child of the adult with them? New orders from the government have us enforcing the law listed above – if you enter illegally, you’ve broken the law and are held over for trial. Just as if you had broken any other law. Naturally, we won’t imprison kids with adults awaiting trial (for obvious reasons), and thus comes the “ripping families apart” drivel.

There are plenty of countries in the world where, if a person from there showed up here claiming asylum, I’d pretty much automatically give it to them. North Korea; Syria; Somalia; Myanmar; Cuba; Afghanistan; Venezuela; South Sudan; Libya. There are others where I’d be inclined to give the benefit of the doubt. But south of the Rio Grande, there’s only one – Venezuela. How much you want to bet not one in a thousand of those crossing are from a place you have to flee from? What we’re getting is people who simply want to move, and who don’t want to wait in line. As for me, I see no good coming out of rewarding people for ruthlessly exploiting children to get a jump on the entry line. Such people seem to me to be the people we’d least like in our country. I mean, think about it: it’s a very long journey through an underground system controlled by some of the most vicious gangsters the world has ever seen. Who would put their child through that?

President Trump is doing the right thing – by enforcing the law, he’s discouraging this cruel practice of exploiting children. Those who are opposing him are de-facto encouraging criminality – in effect, they are lobbying for the criminal gangs who exploit these people trying to come here illegally. I’ve spent the last few days on Social Media with Progressives and Never Trump trying to shame me over this…and nothing has more convinced me of the moral collapse of the Progressives and Never Trump than their bizarre desire to have criminality rewarded in the name of having a talking point against Trump.

President Trump and a Sane Foreign Policy

Mark Noonan62 Comments

Compare and contrast: Donald Trump, called ignorant, stupid and crude by the Expert Class, manages to at least get the ball rolling on a settlement of the Korean War and the de-nuclearization of Korea. The Expert Class (Conservative and Progressive, makes no matter in this case) is the same sort of people who got us into the Korean War without a declaration of war, expended 33,000 American lives – along with many hundreds of thousands of Korean and Chinese lives (as well as blowing everything above a hut in North Korea to pieces) – and then said, “ah, heck with it: lets just settle for a stalemate.” A stalemate which has now gone on for 65 years, continues to cost lives and, until just yesterday, carried a real threat of renewed fighting at any time.

Who is actually dumb? Heck: who is actually insane?

Reading the comments from Expert Class people on social media after Trump concluded the summit, I kept getting angrier and angrier. These people clearly wished that Trump had failed – and are hoping against hope that it will still fail at some future point. I got the distinct impression (and I’m not the only one) that they’d prefer a bloody war to result in Korea, as long as we lost it and they could pin the blame on Trump. Look, I despise the North Korean regime as much as anyone – just as I despise all tyranny, and especially tyranny of the Communist variety, because it is so invariably anti-human. But I also don’t want the sons and daughters of America to die in war unless it is necessary – and I sure as heck don’t want them shoved into another war to bleed and die and then not be allowed to win. I tend to think this is a rather sane way to view things.

Trump is trying to get something better. Maybe the North Korean regime also wants something better? Sure, we can count on it that they will try to wring every advantage they can out of this and you can rely on it that they’re plans don’t include the creation of a pluralist democracy. What can we do here?

1. Nothing and hope that the North Korean regime merely dies, and doesn’t decide to take out South Korea in it’s death throes.

2. Go to war and expend a lot of lives destroying the North Korean regime, and then spend a couple decades rebuilding the place.

3. Try to work a deal where they become a non-immediate threat and are able to slowly build themselves up over time (which does carry a risk that a richer North Korea might eventually become more militarily powerful than a poor North Korea…but, ultimately, that is more South Korea’s problem than ours, and as long as South Korea maintains their first-rate military, such a problem is contained).

I think Option 3 is best. Others can have a different view; I understand and respect that…but what we’re getting from the Expert Class is a clear hope that everything goes to heck in a hand basket, just so they can blame Trump. So, heck with them. They’ve pushed a foreign policy for decades which has proven not just a failure, but an insane failure. Time to move on.

And that, I think, is what President Trump is doing: moving on from the framework of the past. The President is abandoning the post-WWII settlement in favor of a new idea that if we strenuously pursue American interests, good things will follow not just for us, but for the whole world. The Expert Class hates this idea, mostly because they hate the idea of the United States going forward and carrying the world in it’s train. But for those of us who believe we’re the good guys, then we see it is a logical that if we do things to sustain ourselves, that will help us and all the other good guys in the world.

Who benefits from a weak America? Not us. Not the forces of freedom and decency. Who benefits from a powerful America? Us, and the forces of freedom and decency. We’ve tended to go weak ever since WWII. Even under supposedly Conservative governments, we have bent the knee to such things as the UN and have deliberately refused to flex our full power on the world stage. This hasn’t been done for any rational reason – it as been done for the insane reason that our Expert Class doesn’t believe we should be too powerful (you should look into Expert Class commentary after the fall of the USSR…they were worried that without the USSR to keep us in check, we’d destroy the world, because we’re stupid redneck deplorables). As the Expert Class can’t actually make us non-powerful, they have set up a system of treaties, organizations and agreements which says we can’t do things unless the rest of the world agrees we should. We’ve been hobbled and made unable to stay completely out of foreign entanglements while also not being able to finish conflicts once they come up.

We’ve been forbidden to be either Isolationist or Empire. And what have we got for this? Well, the aforementioned Korean War. But, also, Vietnam War. The ongoing Global War on Terrorism (which will hit its seventeenth anniversary this September; keep going and a couple years from now young American men and women who weren’t even alive when the war started will get the privilege of being killed in it). Various other small wars for our own involvement but let’s not forget things like the Bosnian War; the Rwandan genocide; the mass migration of people; the various failed States around the world; the destruction of our own morality (done primarily to crush our spirit and make us docile)…it has all been wrong, and insanely wrong, at that. We’ve really done nothing right. And the people who have done it all wrong are now standing up and telling us we must not follow Trump on this. Nuts to that.

I’m fully aware that Trump might fail. Anyone who attempts anything risks failure – it is in the nature of things. But one thing I can’t see me agreeing to is to keep going on with the same, old insanity. We’ve tried it. We given the smart guys who are supposed Experts their chance…and we’ve got piles of corpses and a demoralized world now prey to the worst among us as a result. No, thanks. I can’t say what, exactly, will work to fix on this, but it will be something other than the insane Experts are prescribing. Maybe Trump has got it figured out? We’ll find out over the next couple years and I’m willing to give him time. And if he fails, I’ll agree to try something else…but not what we’ve been doing. That is over and done with and only Progressives and Never Trump haven’t figured that out.

Another Open Thread Because I’m Working on a Prequel to the Novel

Mark Noonan33 Comments

Everyone has to die. I think all of us go through periods where we wonder why we bother living, at all. Most of us get over it – some don’t, and we have seen the results today. We also saw in Charles Krauthammer the other side of the picture: if there’s anyone who was justified in wallowing in self pity and perhaps eventually deciding to end it all, it was him…but, he never did: and now that he’s facing a known end in just a few weeks, he’s carrying on with grace and courage. I also recall a lady I worked with – dead about ten years now – who was also wheelchair-bound and in really bad shape…but, she kept working, even though she didn’t have to, and was always bright and cheerful. I’ve never known anyone personally who committed suicide, so I don’t really know what that whole situation is like…but it just strikes me as so odd. I can see it, but I don’t really understand it…after all, even the worst day has air to breath, people to see, things to think about and read.

As were were very correctly doing tributes to the heroes of Normandy, it once again occurred to me what a bad general Eisenhower was. The bottom line was that the allied material superiority was so great by the start of 1944 that there was no practical chance of the Germans stopping us – at best, they could slow us down; but the end was inevitable. Choosing Normandy over Calais was a mistake – sure, Calais was better defended, but not that much better…and Normandy only lead to Paris, while Calais lead straight into the heart of Germany…a sort of reverse of what the Germans did in 1940. Add in things like getting caught with his pants down in the Battle of the Bulge, and I get a picture of man who lucked out in being supreme commander of an army which couldn’t lose, and so gained glory he never really earned.

Soros backed a bunch of District Attorney candidates in California and they didn’t fare too well. The larger picture I see is Democrats simply not getting the votes or the money they need to win big in November. Lots of time between now and then, but absent something horribly bad going wrong for Trump or the nation, I’m expecting November to be at worst a draw in the House and a win in the Senate for the GOP…with a slight chance of a mini-red wave showing up.

More to that: California Democrats are pushing a tax break for illegal immigrants. We know how liberal California is…but there has to be a breaking point. Some point where even Californians go, “this is nuts: I’ll vote Republican”. That point may be closer than we suspect.

Trump says he’s willing to back a law which will make the Feds obey state marijuana laws. I’ve long figured the War on Drugs was lost…don’t like it, but the ultimate source of the drug problem isn’t that drugs exist, but that people lack the moral strength to refuse the temptation. Even with that, though, I’d agree to keep them illegal if the attempts to catch drug dealers hadn’t created a surveillance State where we, the people, are watched in all our doings on the theory that one of us may one day decide to become a drug lord. End it – spend the money on treatment.

Iran appears to admit they facilitated the travel of some of the 9/11 conspirators.

There are more job-openings than job-seekers in America. TruCon Muh Principles solution: import more foreigners! Actual Conservative solution: hey, maybe pay the workers a little more.