We Live in a Progressive World: It Sucks

Mark Noonan55 Comments

You might have heard about Ryan Carson getting killed in New York – a Progressive activist, it appears he was killed by a random lunatic over nothing; the lunatic likely being high at the time. After reading the story my reaction was to post on X that I simply felt no sympathy. Trying to express it, I brought up that scene at the end of The Cowboys where the boys are standing around the bad guy pinned under his horse with a broken leg; my reaction is like that. Not hating. Not gloating. But not caring; the person on the ground chose this.

It ended up being one of the most engaged posts I’ve ever done on X. As of this moment, it has more than 155,000 views; 20 reposts and more than a thousand likes. And lots of comments. The basic Left comment is that I’m a horrific bastard; un-Christian (always amusing to get that comment from avowed Marxists!); evil; hate-filled. I shouldn’t cheer death. Which, of course, I didn’t. I merely pointed out that I had no sympathy. Most of the Left comments got no response from me (a huge numbers of comments were blocked). But I did engage some people who seemed to be trying to say something. Unfortunately, in the end, they had nothing to say and were just doing polite variations on “you bastard” that the less articulate went with.

I think the reaction all stems from the fact that the Left in general but also many people on the right don’t know what morality is. Basic right and wrong is very confused in their minds. You see – and this is especially true in a Republic – everyone bears responsibility. None of us ever get to stand aside. What we choose as individuals – both by action and omission – goes to make up the corporate decision of the whole body politic. We are not – at least in theory – ruled. If we were, then we could assign blame for many things to our rulers. Such is not the case; we are free (pro tempore). As such, we must ensure that as far as possible our choices tend towards furtherance of liberty, peace and prosperity. You woke up this morning and you decided not to get drunk. Because of this decision, you went to work instead of passing out on the floor. Because you went to work, your job got done which allowed other people to get their job done and so on. Just that one, small decision rattles on and on through our society for good or ill.

So, too, the bad decision. Had you decided to get drunk, your job doesn’t get done and so on. And there’s no excuse. Unless you are a minor incapable of reason or verily insane, you know very well what you are supposed to do and you also can understand, if you but put some effort into it (said effort you are morally bound to make), the likely results of your decisions. The drunk knows full well – or, if he doesn’t, he ought to know; he has an inescapable obligation to know – what bad things are likely to result from the choice to drink rather than go to work. This is why when the drunk loses his job and house and the Mrs leaves him we’re not terribly sympathetic, if at all, to his plight. What on Earth did he think was going to happen?

Well, it goes like that for every decision. One of Carson’s pet projects – one of the things he advocated for – was “safe” places for drug addicts to get high. From what I can determine, he asserted this as a merciful and kind service to drug addicts. Here’s where a lot of people will reject what I say: Carson was lying when he made that assertion. He knew full well that the only proper course of action to take with someone who gets high is to get them to stop. To be sure, none of us may be able to stop any particular person from getting high, but if we can’t actively stop it, we must certainly not abet it. Because we all know what happens when people get high; they ruin their lives and wreck destruction on the lives of everyone who comes into contact with them to a greater or lesser degree. There is no upside to drug addiction. It is all downside. Every person who gets high makes life for everyone else in society worse. If Carson were to be able to assert to my face this very day that he thought it was good to give a “safe” place to get high I would not take the coward’s way out and go, “well, your heart is in the right place”. His heart was not in the right place. It was in an evil, wicked place. I would call him a liar because as a mentally competent adult he knows you can’t properly help someone get high.

So, too, with a host of other Leftist nostrums: de-fund the police; ending cash bail; de-criminalizing looting; false accusations of racism. These are not the actions of people who have their heart in the right place. These are the actions of evil people who know full well they are doing evil. Their only way out of being wicked is to proclaim themselves simpletons and surrender their franchise. If they aren’t idiots, then they know you can’t do things like de-criminalize looting and expect anything other than more looting to occur. Looting is bad. There is never any justification for it. Society cannot function if the products of labor can be taken without compensation. Carson, from what I can tell, backed all of these Leftist programs. Given he is of the Left – and the way the Left enforces ideological conformity – we can with great certainty assume that every aspect of Leftist ideology was supported by Carson. And what this means – as small time as he was in the grand scheme of things – he was a willing, knowing participant in policies which are obviously evil. Policies which make life miserable – and especially for poor people who are not insulated from the results of Leftist policy.

So, when Carson was killed by a crazed person likely high, all I saw was a bit of poetic justice. Just like the bad guy in the movie now suffering…the bottom line is he was suffering because of what he tried to do. People like Carson – upper class, white, urban Progressives – have mostly been insulated from the effects of their policies. But that insulation crumbles as civilization at last crumbles under the Leftist assault. We’re now several generations in; the inculcating of barbarian ideals into the minds of people has taken its toll. Its why we see those videos of people getting into brawls over nothing or packs of feral children mercilessly beating a weaker person. This is what Leftists wanted. Heck, they told us it would be great – if we just got past our old, Christian hang-ups and embraced a society of free flowing drugs and sex everything would be wonderful. This world we live in is a Progressive world. It is what they wanted. We never approved of it. We warned repeatedly what would happen. We were ignored on the best days and viciously slandered on most. And, so, when a cog in that Progressive machine runs afoul of his own actions…sure, I’m going to watch impassively. I’m not going to shed a tear. Why should I? Should I shed a tear for the drunk who is killed driving his car into a telephone pole?

Sure it is bad that he’s dead. I’d rather he hadn’t died. I am going to do my best to build a world where such things don’t happen. But, guess what? In fighting for that world, I’ll have to battle through a host of people like Carson who will fight tooth and nail to keep the system which killed him. It is still what they want. They are still lying; still saying that if we just get more Progressive, it will at last get better. They know it won’t. They don’t care; no person with the least bit of humane feeling can be a Leftist. It is how they become Leftists; they kill genuine sympathy; they kill off anything resembling love. They come to view all people are entirely utilitarian…and that is why they can say, “hey, lets help junkies get high”. They don’t see a suffering soul who will spread suffering…they see a block of wood with appetite, just as they see themselves. And as their only measure is to feed their own appetites, so their only reaction to another person is to figure out how to feed their appetites. You want drugs? Here are some drugs. You want sex? Here is some sex. Never for a moment is there the thought of repenting because, indeed, the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.

So, thanks very much, I’ll save my sympathy for the real victims – the usually poor or middle class people who have been suckered by the Left and who are diligently ruining their lives because of it. They still have agency, of course; but at least they aren’t actively destroying society. So when one of them runs afoul of our dying Progressive society, I will shed a tear – I will express sympathy. But for one of the Leftist architects of destruction? Not a chance. They got what they wanted – that what they want sucks isn’t my problem.

As a side note; after more than a day of Leftists calling me an insensitive bastard for not expressing sympathy for Carson’s demise it came out that in his own X account he was free with advocating violence against his opponents and had gloated over the death of Rush Limbaugh. I did not know this at the time I wrote my post. It does not surprise me in the least. As I’ve said: the Left is wicked. They are not nice people with misguided programs to get to peace, freedom and prosperity. They are wicked people doing evil things to destroy society…and they do it because they are wicked. You really don’t have to explain it beyond that.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan109 Comments

I was at an impasse in Book VIII – mostly how to deal with a character who, it turns out, does have to die in order to build a really good story line for another character – the other day and so I sat myself in front of the idiot box to drop thinking for a bit (it does help; a clear mind can suddenly solve a riddle that has bothered you all day) and just absorb passively. As I clicked through the available product – mostly dreck, it goes without saying – I came across an interesting documentary. Produced by the BBC in 2015, it is called 1945: The Savage Peace.

The story it tells is what happened to the Germans of eastern Europe after WWII. Spoiler: it was bad. Like really, really bad. For a lot of people it will come as a revelation because it is something not covered in depth in Western histories of WWII and its aftermath. To nutshell it, after WWII the German territories of East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia were transferred to other nations – most to Poland with a slice of East Prussia going to the Soviet Union (and still part of Russia today – you can see it on the map as a small exclave between Lithuania and Poland). The German population of these territories was forced out – ethnically cleansed as we would put it today. Additionally, the German population of the Sudetenland in today’s Czech Republic as well as long-established German communities in Hungary and Romania were also sent off to Germany. It was many millions of people. Nobody knows exactly how many because in the chaos of the time nobody bothered to count how many were left in these Soviet-occupied areas of post-WWII Europe (quite a large number of them had, of course, fled ahead of the Soviet advance at the end of the war).

And it wasn’t done gently; the people who exiled the Germans were Poles, Czechs and others who had just spent years under very brutal Nazi German occupation and once they got on top of the Germans they very cruelly extracted their pound of flesh. Not only did these Germans lose their land, they lost pretty much everything but the clothes on their backs and while in transit to Germany they were subjected to beatings, rapes and murders. The documentary interviews several Germans who endured it – all very old by 2015 and between 10 and 15 years old or so when it happened. So, it is designed to evoke sympathy for the Germans and while the documentary does make passing reference to the immediately prior Nazi brutality, the whole thing is pitched to make out that the Germans were mere victims. And, to be sure, the people they interviewed – all kids at the time – were specifically innocent. They couldn’t interview their parents because by 2015 all those who were adults in 1945 were dead. But by doing this, it really wrecked the context. While little Helga was innocent her mom and dad were probably participants – or approved of – the equally brutal relocation of Poles in 1939-40. And like all German adults, they knew about the Holocaust and did nothing about it. And like the Russians who threw themselves upon the German population at the end of the war, the Poles and Czech almost to a man and woman had someone close murdered or otherwise brutalized by the Germans during the war. Two wrongs do not make a right…but you can’t lord it over people and treat them like despised slaves for 5 years and not expect some payback. That Helga had to watch in terror as her family was brutally exiled is sad…but Helga’s family should have considered that possibility while they were going Sieg Heil for all those years (East Prussia, for instance, voted overwhelmingly Nazi in the last free election).

I bring this up because this documentary works out to a re-write of history and coming off very badly in it are the Poles. Jews and Czechs also not looking all too kind. It is a white-wash of Nazi history and an attempt to slander people who are clearly out of favor in the European Establishment; the Poles, especially, not knuckling under to EU dictates about Woke policies and immigration. Germans, of course, are the pillar of the EU Establishment…so I guess they’ve decided to kinda gloss over that 1939-45 unpleasantness. I do perceive that we’re getting a lot more of this sort of thing…not just the “black people did everything wonderful” drivel, but attempts to reassign within European/Western history who are the good guys and who are the bad guys. The bad guys are, of course, you; this started actually back in the 1980’s when people accused Ike of being a war criminal because some number of German POWs died in American captivity post-WWII. Some did; but people are always dying. An in-depth study showed that the German POW death rate was in line with everyone else in the area…all higher than normal but it was the immediate aftermath of WWII with Germany an entire wreck. But that didn’t stop the “bad Ike” stories…and in spite of being debunked, the myth persists to this day. The past is being edited just as in 1984 in order to control the present and future.

In a ridiculous attempt to cover up the side effects of the Covid vaccine they are now claiming that the common cold, all along, causes heart problems. They are really desperate to hide the truth.

The former CEO of Abercrombie and Fitch is accused of sexual abuse. I do admit to being entirely creeped out by the picture of the guy. Our world is run by degenerates.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan52 Comments

I was thinking about that Ukrainian SS guy honored by Canada’s parliament. First off, my bet is that hardly anyone in the parliament had the foggiest notion of who fought who in Eastern Europe in WWII. For most of them – as for most in the West – there is just a vague sense that the Nazis were bad and that anyone defined as bad must be a Nazi. Probably not one in a thousand adults in the West today could even identify a particular Nazi program – and I include the anti-Semitism because do keep in mind that anti-Semitism is rapidly rising on the Left and in the schools the Holocaust is discounted in favor of various Woke programs (bet money that the kids in school have heard vastly more about George Floyd of Fentanyl than they have about the Holocaust over the past couple years). So, no surprise that a member of the Waffen-SS was honored – all they heard is that he was Ukrainian and had fought Russians. But then I thought further: even if you explained Nazi ideology to them, could the determine what makes it bad?

Because what, really, did the Nazis do that a modern Leftist would object to? The only thing I can think of is: jail homosexuals. And even that wasn’t a specifically Nazi thing: German law had long held harsh penalties for those convicted of homosexual acts (as did most nations in the world back then). Hitler, indeed, was very tolerant of it. And that goes to another thing the Left would have a problem processing: Hitler was an anti-Christian Bohemian. He didn’t believe in working for a living. Kept odd hours and odd habits. Was a crank in his personal habits (no smoking, no drinking, vegetarian). Shave off that mustache and give him a Che t-shirt and Hitler would fit in at Antifa meetings. The bottom line is that nothing the Nazis did is actually objectionable to the modern Left.

Heck, I’ve even seen a recent Leftist presentation which presents white people as insects sucking the blood out of non-whites. You know: we’re vermin. Just as Nazis described Jews. It really doesn’t surprise once you do think about it: people who have cut themselves off from God and who have started to worship themselves are the very definition of Supermen (that word confuses Americans with our Superman comics – but what is meant by the word is a person who holds themself unbound to any system of morality and who follow their own star without any thought to how it might affect others).

This is a real problem: we’re dealing with the amoral. If we were dealing with merely greedy or cruel people it would be a lot easier for us…but what we’re dealing with is people who are convinced they are morally excellent when they have no morality at all. This makes them very dangerous – and deadly to us if they win.

Elon Musk went to the border and it went viral – mostly because he’s a famous billionaire who owns the premier social media platform in the world. But the shrieks of hatred from the Left were amazing. Do keep in mind that most independents and all Democrats have no real idea what has been going on at the border. The news doesn’t cover it, so they just don’t know. Musk going brought it for the first time before huge numbers of people…and the video coming out of Border Patrol agents cutting the border wire and fist-bumping the illegals as they crossed is absolutely devastating for the Democrats. If Musk really keeps X as a free speech platform (and he recently fired X’s “election integrity team” when he discovered it was essentially working for the DNC) then what happens next year might be very surprising. The Democrats are bad people doing bad things and making life miserable. Forget Democrat rumors that they’re going to scratch Biden…if the truth really gets out, it doesn’t matter who the GOP and Democrat candidates are…the GOP will walk away with it no matter how much the Democrats try to cheat. Do keep in mind: the MSM hasn’t really reported the truth in general since 1980…and by telling the truth – even as they hated doing it – all they got was a landslide Democrat loss. Since then and increasingly since 2000 the MSM has relentlessly lied for the Democrats. Break that down, and 1980 can happen again.

It was recently reported that Hunter Biden rented new digs (he’s mostly been living at the White House and the Biden estate in Delaware of late): a $15,800 per month house in Malibu, CA. If true – and it probably is – just where in heck is he coming up with that amount of money?

Government might shut down. None of us care.

Lies are Poison

Mark Noonan42 Comments

From time to time I check out Mark Felton Productions on You Tube – he does history with a heavy emphasis on WWII. Very interesting stuff, some of which I was unaware of which does surprise me given my overall knowledge of the time period. But, hey, there is always more to learn. One of his recent bits was a close look into the Soviet investigation into Hitler’s death and I have to say that after watching all Felton came up with, it looks pretty clear to me that the bodies presented by the Soviets as those of Hitler and Eva were nothing of the sort…plants designed to blind the unwary as to what really became of the corpses (it is very clear that Hitler and Eva did die in the bunker on April 30th, 1945). Best guess is that Hitler’s super-loyal valet Heinz Linge buried the bodies elsewhere, perhaps on his own, and simply carried the secret to his grave…and it is therefore possible that the remains are currently under a Berlin parking lot. Not a very important thing in the grand scheme of things, but still very useful in seeing how people can fool themselves or let themselves be fooled for political purposes.

I bring that up because another Felton production is this video about the Katyn Massacre.

Give it a watch as it is once again good history presentation. But beyond that think about this: for decades after the war the US and British governments essentially went along with the Soviet lie about Katyn – blaming it on the Germans even though at the time we had direct, first-hand evidence proving it was a Soviet crime. Officially we went along with the lie because we needed to keep the USSR on side during WWII. But even that shred of reason disappeared after the end of the war…but it was the 1980’s before it became common knowledge in the West that the Soviet Union had murdered 12,000 Polish POWs as well as many other Poles whom the Soviets merely thought might at some future point become troublesome.

Why keep up the lie? Why, after the war and when we were officially competing with the USSR for global position, pretend we didn’t know? I think it was because we felt we had to maintain a fiction that the USSR wasn’t as bad as Nazi Germany. That our alliance with them in WWII was still somehow basically honorable and that the USSR was a legitimate player in the post-WWII world. Having the Soviets guilty of a Babi Yar-type massacre – and knowing it was only one of at least scores – rather blew that conception out of the water. Katyn wasn’t the only thing proving the USSR evil, but it was the best documented (mostly because the Nazis – for their own cynical reasons – made sure it was documented, including the participation of American and British POW military doctors). It was proof that there was no redeeming quality in the USSR – that it was simply evil. There was not the least justification for killing those Polish POWs…to say nothing of the teachers, doctors, priests and such killed along with them. They were just killing people who were educated and might not knuckle under to Soviet domination…which, of course, was just what the Nazis were doing in their part of occupied Poland.

You see where I’m going with this? By keeping up the lie we didn’t just let the Soviets off the hook…we poisoned ourselves. We became liars. At the official level. We told our own officers who had participated in the on-site investigation to keep their mouths shut about it. We went through a whole rigamarole about working with the USSR – co-existing with them – rather than seeking their destruction because we had become liars. Truth tellers would have gone to war with the USSR…liars would negotiate arms control treaties with them.

Guess what happens when you become a liar? Well, you keep lying about lots of things. I’ve tried to identify just when the USA went off the rails and wound up in our current condition and I have long figured that our WWII alliance was a big part of it…but now I think I’ll pinpoint it: when we participated in this lie, that is when we began to die.

We can still fix this but our first step is to not lie. And not let anyone lie. Harsh punishment for lying. To survive and restore our nation the most important thing we can do is not allow liars to have a say ever again. Lies are poison.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan65 Comments

I watched an Estonian moving called 1944; highly recommend. It is in Estonian and so has subtitles but it is just a good movie. It involves Estonians who have been forced by circumstances to fight in both the German and Soviet armies in WWII, naturally ending up fighting each other. Aside from some good acting and direction, it is worthwhile to watch because it does get into that moral dilemma of just what is the right thing to do? You feel for the soldiers on both sides; caught in a web, a small nation between overwhelming neighbors. The Estonians in the Waffen SS mostly despising Hitler but hating the Soviets for deporting their families in 1940…the Estonians in the Red Army mostly despising Stalin and his regime but wanting the Germans out of their nation. Give it a watch.

Pudding Brain and his people are all-in on open borders. Actually saying it out loud and on the cameras, though absurdly claiming that Trump is responsible for a broken immigration system that they’re fixing. They’re also all-in on medical mutilation of minors. Keeping prices high. I think what we’ve really got is a senile Executive and all the little Commies lower down have nobody to stop them…and so they’re pushing Left on the long-help Leftist theory that the reason the American people haven’t embraced Communism is lack of Leftist policy. This may not work out as they hoped.

On the other hand, the GOP is also all-in on helping out Pudding Brain in Ukraine. I just don’t understand it. I mean, outside of bribery. There is zero political downside for the GOP standing aside here – don’t even have to actively oppose the Ukraine war…but for goodness sake don’t be out there being a booster for it. It is bound to end in failure…and all they’re doing is ensuring that the blame for the loss sits on the GOP. The Base doesn’t want this war.

Polls says this and that – and some special elections have gone against us. How will 2024 come out? Beats the heck out of me. But some Leftists are sounding the alarm just as they did in 2016: on the ground, there does appear to be a shift to the GOP. Pennsylvania voter registration continues to favor the GOP. Looks like there won’t be unlimited drop boxes in Wisconsin for 2024. I do think the GOP can win – if it can unite.

That unity will be hard to gain because the Democrats will pay for “GOPers” to sow division. They’re already doing it. There are two equally stupid positions to hold: Never Trump and Only Trump. I don’t care how much a RINO the person is: better than any Democrat. I don’t care how Trumpy a candidate is: still better than any Democrat. Time for everyone to grow up and just do the right thing.

Menedez gets indicted again. Don’t for a minute think this is because the Ruling Class is opposed to corruption. If the charges are true – and remember DOJ does just make things up – then his problem was either stealing above his station or not sharing out properly. Also, could be a back door to force Pudding Brain out: apparently, there is at least some connection between what Menendez is accused of doing and Hunter’s dealings. And keep in mind what they’re charging Menedez with: profiting off of his wife’s actions. Sound familiar?

Couple of minority kids deliberately ran over a retired cop here in Vegas. They were booked as “white”. Not the first time I’ve seen this; and it is clearly deliberate. They are fudging crime stats right in front of us. Trying to lower the amount of POC crime and make out white men to be far more dangerous than they are. All part of a program designed to eventually arrest every troublesome MAGA person as a terrorist.

A Coming Dark Age

Mark Noonan39 Comments

Over on X yesterday a mutual noted that he was watching Band of Brothers for the umpteenth time and he was wondering – even though he was a combat vet, himself – if he could have done what those soldiers did. I think everyone does wonder when they watch that. And it gets you also thinking of the men who took Tarawa, who sailed the USS Johnston into certain death. Of all those who have done incredible feats of arms in our past.

It is good to point out here that courage is the strongest desire to live combined with a complete willingness to die. It is a paradox; you’re only way to safety is through death. A soldier pinned down in a murderous crossfire has the choice: try to hide and hope he gets missed (unlikely as time goes on) or charge at the enemy and stop him from shooting. Of course, you do present a much better target when you’re charging. But if it works, the danger is over. He who would lose his life shall save it. You remember suddenly the men of the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment who crossed the Waal river in canvas boats under murderous fire…and when they got ashore the Germans pretty much ran away, terrified at these demons who seemingly couldn’t be stopped. Do we have that any longer?

Well, another thing which crossed the time line was a report from 2014 that 41% of the newly commissioned Marine officers did not meet the minimum requirements – mental and physical – for being commissioned in World War Two. I can only assume it has gotten worse since then as Woke demands have further infested the military requiring an ever lowering of standards so that various demographic boxes can be checked off. Given this, it is almost a certainty that we do not have an officer like Julian Cook who led those men in the canvas boats…we don’t have officers who can take regular people and turn them into killers that battle-hardened Waffen-SS troops would run away from.

But it gets worse than just the fact that we’ve got substandard officers. There is such a thing as esprit de corps. This is the collective memory and ability of an organization. It isn’t dependent upon any single person but it is dependent upon the overall organism remaining true to itself. If you watched Band of Brothers you know that Captain Herbert Sobel comes off pretty poorly overall as an officer – and in truth he was roundly disliked by his men and appeared to lack combat leadership ability. On the other hand, he made Easy Company into what it became. The intensive training and stern discipline – which Sobel himself learned in officer training – turned civilians into tough as nails warriors who simply would not quit. After the war even some of the men who hated him as a CO acknowledged his part in making them into warriors. Sobel learned his trade from a man who learned his trade who in turn learned his trade and on and on back…and the men Sobel trained passed that corporate knowledge on down and they, in their turn, also passed it on and so the American military organism – in spite of individual failures – retained its ability to engage in combat effectively. But that chain has been cut; at some point fairly recently, the mental and physical requirements of being an infantry officer were dispensed with in favor of other criteria. It is gone; or, at best, almost gone. It is highly likely that our average company commander these days hasn’t the foggiest notion of what being a warrior is, nor how to impart that capability to subordinates. They might know the books; that is, they might know the mechanics of having a company assault a fixed position…but that technical knowledge is worthless if the officer can’t, with a scratch force, improvise an attack and be certain that the soldiers will carry it out.

And it is not just the military. Every area of expertise has suffered a dumbing down. A lowering of requirements in order to make certain demographic boxes are checked off. Have you noticed it? When I went to a doctor with my bum knee the doctor pretty much had no idea what might be the problem even though I described clearly what had happened and offered my informed amateur opinion that it was likely soft tissue damage. Nope. She just went to her checklist – and I was sent to get an x ray even though it was obvious no bones were broken. And after that I get sent for physical therapy. Huge sigh. I mean, I’ll have to do it because that is the way it works these days but what isn’t happening here is an actual physician thinking about my problem and coming up with a likely solution (and there may be no solution; I might just have a bum knee). I’ve heard of people watching their doctors Google their stated symptoms to see what might come up.

We’re breaking the chain. That is, we’re severing ourselves from our collective knowledge because mastering that knowledge is a difficult task which not everyone is suited to perform. But the deal the modern Left offers is that you can be whatever you want. And once the chain is broken it can’t be restored. You have to forge an entirely new chain. That is what the Dark Ages were – it wasn’t that people got stupid; but the late Roman world simply stopped transmitting corporate knowledge to successor generations. Everyone got more concerned with the latest avant garde art, their position at court, the acquisition of money. This is why the Romans pretty much stopped building their famed aqueducts and bridges by the Third Century and when Constantine built his triumphal arch in Rome during the Fourth Century he had to steal parts from monuments built in the Second Century. The Romans had forgotten how to do things. Side note; they also forgot how to build and maintain an army and pretty much as soon as the barbarians worked up the courage they overthrew the form of Roman power which had long since vanished in actuality.

And then they had to start all over again. The barbarians admired the Roman world and were astonished at what they saw around them. But they didn’t know how to maintain it. Neither did the Romans. It all had to be learned again and it took a thousand years to do it. We’re heading right to that. We haven’t entirely lost the ability but those who really know how to do things are rapidly aging out. Before too long there will be no resource to turn to…and people won’t even look for the resource because they won’t know that they don’t know. It could get very bad very fast; and worse than last time because the population has not only lost their skills, but they’ve also been taught that lying and laziness are ok. At least the barbarians who took over Rome knew that you had to put some work in and at least try to tell the truth.

I do think we can arrest this development. I’ve mentioned how in the past – keeping in mind that to love means to will the best for the beloved, the primary way for us to love our neighbors right now is to start punishing – sometimes with exceptional violence – the lazy and the dishonest. They have to be forced to do the right thing. To work. To keep their word. To be brave. Of course they don’t want to. Right now in America you can be the definition of a lazy, cowardly liar and you’ll still get enough food to get fat…and still have your ample leisure time filled with the products of pop culture. But we can’t allow it to go on. It doesn’t work unless nearly everyone works. Nearly everyone is brave. Nearly everyone always tells the truth. The decent can survive deviancy, but a society of deviants will kill the decent.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan59 Comments

Texas AG Ken Paxton was acquitted in his impeachment trial. There will be many GOPe tears shed. After all was said and done, it doesn’t look like Paxton even remotely broke a law. The whole thing was absurd.

There’s a video out of Lauren Boebert (R-CO) apparently being felt up by her date at a theater. Who I guess is a long-standing Democrat. The usual suspects on the Right called for the smelling salts. But I have some questions:

  1. Why was there a security camera in a darkened theater?
  2. Why was it pointed pretty much right at Boebert’s boobs?
  3. Why do we have this video but not the Epstein video?
  4. Why are GOPers so entirely stupid all the time as they join Democrats in condemning Boebert?
  5. I mean, for goodness sake, the Democrats have a candidate in Virginia who makes actual pornography for a living and, you know?, Democrats are also in favor of Mengele-like medical mutilation of children. You’d think GOPers would figure that in a target-rich environment we don’t need to spend any time condemning our own.

To be sure, Boebert should have gotten a room. She and her date are not 16. Also: she should have been smart enough not to date a Democrat. There is zero chance he actually supports any aspect of GOP policy and no matter what attachment he might feel to Boebert, loyalty to the Party will trump it…which could even lead the guy into setting her up to be targeted by “security cameras” in a theater.

We’ve also got stories about Noem (R-SD) and Greene (R-GA) having some problems in the area of sexual morality. The Noem thing seems to be entirely gossip at this point but that isn’t important. The entire Establishment has clearly decided that high profile MAGA women are to be exposed ruthlessly. Unfortunately, all three of these women at least in some way voluntarily put themselves at risk. It is crucial to the Left that the rising number of MAGA women doesn’t eventually make it into the suburbs. They are counting on these salacious stories to get upper class urban and suburban women to view MAGA women with contempt.

What can we do about it? Nothing – at least as far as stopping the Establishment. What we can do is refuse to engage. If any of these women – or any woman – is doing something in this area as she shouldn’t, none of our business. Let them work it out for themselves. Do not be deflected into engaging the Democrats on their terms. Another aspect of this is to deflect from the fact that Democrats are in favor of adult perverts twerking in front of children. That whole issue is turning into poison for Democrats and they’d much rather talk about a case of hypocrisy regarding a Christian “family values” woman having an affair.

The Ukraine War continues to be the least-reported war in modern history. Do recall that things being blown up makes for must-watch TV and that’s why starting with Vietnam film crews have been all over war to get great shots of explosions and such. But for some reason, the actual fighting in Ukraine hasn’t produced a lot of video. On both sides, it all seems to be carefully edited video for propaganda purposes…and usually taken at a distance where you can’t see what actually happened. Both sides seem to be keen to prevent battlefield video from getting out. Why?

I suspect because it ain’t pretty. The talk of a grand Ukrainian counter-offensive and chest-thumping predictions of imminent Ukrainian victory are hiding the fact that the front line has barely moved this year. The Russo-Ukrainian war has become positional with armies in close proximity to each other. Don’t know if the Ukrainians are keeping to their old Soviet instruction on military tactics but the Russians clearly are – in a situation like this, the Russians build belt after belt of defensive positions and simply allow their enemies to grind themselves to powder on them. Their first use of this was Kursk-Orel in 1943 and it worked splendidly. The Krauts lost 165,000 dead in six weeks. It has been so far impossible to find any reliable numbers on Ukrainian or Russian casualties. If you go to pro-Ukraine sites its buckets of Russian blood, pro-Russian and its buckets of Ukrainian blood. But a positional struggle against Russian defense in depth tactics is going to be costly. Very costly. Any film of a battlefield is going to have a lot of corpses…and as the battle goes on in the summer heat you can’t actually go out there in no man’s land to collect the bodies and bury them: they rot where they fall. This is why I think we don’t see a lot of close-up video…it would horrify everyone, and that would threaten the flow of money into Ukraine and right back into Western pockets.

My larger worry here is that we’re just slipping into war. We as a people have no real conception of what that it like any longer. We get upset when a dozen or a score of ours are killed in an engagement. Imagine if we got into a situation like the Battle of Tarawa where we lost more than a thousand dead in just three days? I don’t think we can psychologically handle that. But if you’ve got a brigade of Russkies dug in on a ridge and you have to dislodge them for your advance to succeed…you’re going to lose a thousand soldiers doing it. And once you’ve secured that ridge…you’ll just find another brigade holding the next ridge back. How long do you think this American people could sustain that? How long do you think our volunteer military will be able to remain combat effective with that sort of attrition rate? And that’s if we’re winning! Suppose our first and second assaults fail? A couple thousand dead and the Russians are still holding out?

We are not in any way prepared for war…and our leadership may very well bumble us into one.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan69 Comments

So the House will finally start thinking about impeaching Biden. Good.

Now, of course we can’t convict; there is zero chance that 67 Senators will vote to convict Biden no matter what the evidence shows. This, in itself, demonstrates how utterly corrupt our system is…and we can rely on it that at least some GOPers (Mitt Romney, eg) will also vote to acquit come what may (after all, his own son was also involved in Ukraine corruption). But this isn’t about getting a conviction. And, no, it isn’t revenge for Trump. If it is anything, it is to set the marker – to produce a body of work which will be the base-line for rooting out corruption in 2025 and later if we win.

This is why I hope that one of the charges made is failure to see to it that the laws are faithfully enforced. Article II, Section 3: he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed. The President is specifically enjoined by the Constitution to enforce the laws. All the laws all the time. Point blank: he doesn’t even have prosecutorial discretion (and, so, neither do his subordinates from Attorney General on down). There’s nothing in there saying “he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed, unless he finds a reason not to”. It is just, “he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed”. The end. Doesn’t matter if its bad law or stupid law or law that no longer serves its purpose – if it is enacted by Congress and hasn’t been repealed or ruled unconstitutional, it is the law and the President shall take care that it is faithfully enforced until such time as it is repealed or ruled unconstitutional.

Why is this important? Because the President has allowed people to skate – all Presidents have to one extent or another, but under Biden it is on steroids. This is why Hunter is skating…but, more importantly, so are large numbers of people who should be facing massive jail time. Once again, not asserting the laws they would fall under are good or that we shouldn’t repeal/modify them, but they are the laws. The most egregious cases are the permitting of illegals to cross our border with impunity and allowing Antifa/BLM rioters to skate. Pudding Brain’s job is to enforce the laws and he has refused to do it in direct violation of the oath he took. All the rest of it is important, but nothing is more crucial than this: the law must be enforced. Tied in with this is the selective and cruel prosecutions of the J6 people and Team Trump…things that other people are allowed to walk on are being used to send J6 people to jail for long sentences…and they are proposing long sentences for Trump and his people on ridiculous charges no Democrat would ever face.

To get back to rule of law we must first punish those charged with enforcing the law who failed their duty. We can’t actually punish Biden, but if we can make the case and use it as a basis for prosecutions down the road, we’ll be on the path back to law.

The MSM – on orders – is calling the impeachment inquiry “without evidence”. This lie isn’t meant for you. It is meant for Democrats who still consume MSM product and so haven’t heard of the evidence. This is designed to make sure they don’t get curious about it.

Inflation rate is rising again.

The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence are anti-Catholic bigots. But they are also pervs. Really, really pervy.

9/11 Twenty Two Years On

Mark Noonan66 Comments

What went wrong? Why did that horrific event cause so many other horrific events, resulting in a lost war and a panicked flight from Kabul?

Did you know the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs on that fateful day retired to various sinecures in the education and corporate world? He also endorsed Hillary Clinton in 2008; in an astonishing bit of absurdity calling her someone who understood what being in the military is like.

The Director of the CIA? Was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom when he retired in 2004. He also retired to various sinecures in the education and corporate worlds. Got a book deal, too. Oh, and later on offered biting criticism of W. Bush who awarded him that medal.

The FBI Director? That was Bob Mueller. You guessed it: after he retired he was the beneficiary of multiple education and corporate sinecures. And of course dredged up to lend a patina of credibility to the ridiculous Trump-Russia fraud.

So, to review: the people in charge of our military, foreign intelligence and domestic federal law enforcement on 9/11 – the people on who’s watch 3,000 Americans were massacred – all retired to cushy positions of power and influence. That is what went wrong. These three men should have been shot; and if we were feeling merciful after THREE THOUSAND of us were murdered due to their negligence, sent to jail for life. But, they not only didn’t suffer, they were rewarded for their abject failure.

You get what you pay for; we pay (through the nose) for incompetence and corruption…and so we’re awash in incompetence and corruption.

Bet you haven’t heard of Frank Wuterich all that much. You see, when he was a 25 year old Marine in 2005 his unit was hit by an IED in Anbar province and then a lot of shooting happened – as one might expect when an armed unit suddenly has a bomb explode among them – which resulted in civilian deaths. The initial report indicated that the dead civilians were caught in a crossfire but then people started claiming that the Marines – our Marines; soldiers of our United States Marine Corps; not Nazi Einsatzgruppen, but our Marines – deliberately targeted civilians. You know; because fresh-faced American kids who volunteer to fight for America are just the same as bloodthirsty Nazi savages. Given the nature of the beast at that time, the military opened an investigation and brought war crimes charges against 8 Marines. After a lot of years most of the charges against the defendants were dropped with Wuterich getting convicted of dereliction of duty. Because, you know, our Marines don’t go around massacring civilians. Because they’re American Marines. The good guys.

So, think about it: while those responsible for the criminal failure to stop 9/11 were awash in money and fame, the poor bastards we sent out to clean up their mess were being charged with war crimes…not because crimes happened, but because the political Left in the USA and around the world said war crimes were happening and our government went along with this. Who was the Marine’s CO in Iraq at the time? James Mattis; you know, the guy we thought was a rough, tough non-nonsense Marine when Trump appointed him Secretary of Defense. We should have checked a bit – but even in 2017 we were still rather starry eyed about our military officers. But the fact that Mattis agreed to court martial troops who – at worst – fired perhaps in a bit of panic when under fire should have told us just what sort of man he really was long before he resigned in protest against Trump’s effort to end our involvement in the Syrian Civil War. After his resignation, you guessed it, he landed a corporate sinecure. Mattis put his own Marines through hell because some Commie somewhere shouted “war crime!” even though Mattis must have known his Marines were not criminals. And then, apparently lacking any conscience at all, went off to a well paid retirement.

So, what went wrong? What happened to an event which united us all in righteousness? It was taken over by the corrupt, the cruel and incompetent. And when we at last had enough and voted in a man to change the system, that system broke the law to get him out of office. That is what went wrong.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan12 Comments

New Mexico’s Democrat governor Grisham yesterday announced that the Second Amendment was null and void in Albuquerque for 30 days. The alleged justification for the action are the recent murders of some children, including an 11 year old. As far as that goes, this was just par for the course from Democrats – cynically exploiting the death of a child to advance their Leftist agenda; in this case, disarming the population. It was ridiculous in practical terms (the only possible people who would obey the order are those who would never murder anyone) but also an outrage against the Constitution. You really can’t just willy-nilly set aside its provisions.

What surprised everyone a bit was the number of prominent Democrats who came out to oppose the move. Not immediately – there was about a day between order and condemnation. This means someone quickly did some polling on the issue and found it catastrophically bad for Democrats. You know for certain their concern wasn’t the Constitution. Grisham is guilty of not only saying the quiet part out loud, but saying it before the Democrat party as a whole was prepared to defend it. But even with that, it is a huge problem.

The governor can be impeached. But the Legislature is controlled by Democrats. The State and local police could refuse to comply with an illegal order. But the cops most concerned – in Albuquerque – already announced they would enforce the rule. The Federal government can arrest the governor – as well as any staffers or police who cooperate with the order – on conspiracy to deny the civil rights of the people of New Mexico (this is actually a violation of US law; we really have enacted laws making it illegal to deny a person their civil rights…it has just never been enforced against a Democrat), but Pudding Brain’s DOJ won’t do that. So, we’re kinda stuck, aren’t we?

Sure, anyone arrested under the order can fight it in court and almost certainly they will prevail. Eventually. Could take a couple years, maybe longer. And what will they get after the fight? A court order nullifying the order, years after it went into effect (with maybe a judge ordering an injunction against its enforcement while the case winds its way through the courts). No penalty to the governor or for anyone who enforced the order. Lots of expense for those arrested on the basis of an illegal order. Nothing has more clearly shown that when the rubber meets the road, the Constitution is a mere scrap of paper…only in force as long as those with power agree to enforce it.

What we lack – and it is now a glaring lack, given that Democrats have dispensed with the Rule of Law – is any mechanism for enforcing the law – for securing our rights – when the government is actively working to oppress the people. A temporary fix is to get a GOP President in office willing to prosecute the governor. That would go a long way. But not all the way. In fact, might even make a Leftist hero out of her. And a GOPer won’t be President forever. Eventually, a Democrat gets back in and we’re back at square one.

It is a problem we’re going to have to deal with; the construction of mechanisms which allow the people to stop the government. Not quite sure how to go about this (some sort of Tribune like in ancient Rome?), but when all of the power is in the hands of people who don’t respect the law, we need something outside the law to stand between us and the government.

Democrats are increasingly angry over GOP governors shipping illegals to Blue cities. This means it is working; and we should not only keep it up, but increase the numbers. It is turning out to be a PR catastrophe for the Democrats…it is causing huge stress in Democrat cities (and among various Dem voting blocs) but the Democrats can’t seal the border to stop it because that would upset the far Left. They are in a pickle and it is gloriosu.

Senator Kennedy ripped into the Deputy Secretary of Energy over the price tag for getting us to “net zero” by 2050 and how nobody can say how much this will change the climate if we do it. It is in a lot of ways a grand effort by Kennedy but in the end, he lost the argument: because he conceded, repeatedly, that being “carbon neutral” is good; a goal we should achieve. We can’t do that – that is, we can’t even for a moment concede a point to the Democrats. All they believe are lies and we can’t go along with them.

There is no “climate crisis”.

Just as there is no “gun violence”. People are violent; guns are inanimate objects.

Abortion is not healthcare.

On and on like that.