Up, Up and Away Open Thread

Mark Noonan11 Comments

Did not have “Chinese balloon rings death knell for the USA” on my bingo card.

Jesse Kelly points out that this is all our own fault – we have paid for the rise of China from worthless Commie backwater to evil Commie superpower. And when you really think back on it all, just what was the point of normalizing relations with China? It is held up as Nixon’s signal foreign policy triumph but what, really, was the benefit of it? And I mean to the USA, to China and to the world?

It sure in heck didn’t help us in Vietnam. Nixon went to China in 1972 and that didn’t stop North Vietnamese tanks from rolling into Saigon in 1975.

It didn’t help bring down the USSR. “Play the China card” was supposed to be some super-trump in global foreign relations…but as far as getting rid of the USSR, China might as well not even been there.

China’s ruthless exploitation of poor and naive third world nations isn’t doing anyone any good.

China’s ruthless dumping of third rate goods and fentanyl into the USA is kinda a bad thing, right?

China’s corruption of the global Ruling Class is probably not working out as a net plus.

And then there is China, as such. Sure: Marco Polo bringing back the concept of pasta did wonders for dinner. Paper money? Maybe not such a good thing. Chinese music, art and architecture can’t hold a candle to the West. Philosophy? Confucius wrote down copy-book maxims designed to perpetuate his class in power…China has nothing to compare to Aristotle or Aquinas…not even anything as good as Ashoka or Averroes. Just what are we supposed to get out of China? Where’s the benefit? They’ve grafted onto the stump of Maoism the industrial Midwest…goody for them. What’s in it for us?

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: there is no point in the United States having relations with nations like China. It is poison. Perhaps a free China would be worthwhile, but while China is under tyranny, we should be completely separate from them.

Pudding Brain’s people are claiming 517k new jobs in January.

This did not happen.

I’m telling ya: they’re just making the numbers up. We had report after report of major corporations downsizing all month and they pop up with 517k. Yeah, right. Keep in mind that even under the honest, the jobs number is a guess based on particular assumptions…for the dishonest, its any number they want…and in this case they wanted a number for China Joe to puff for his SOTU next week.

The MSM is already getting into “DeSantis is worse than Trump”. We all knew this was coming – the only question is how ready RDS is for it? Especially if it looks like he’ll be the nominee, they will pour garbage all over him…and he will be the subject of multiple federal and State criminal investigations. It doesn’t matter what about – they made it all up about Trump, they’ll make it all up about RDS. It will take real guts to overcome it – and we’ll see if RDS has that.

It is Black History Month and I guess Disney is running a bit for the kiddies asserting that America was built by slaves and other 1619 Project drivel. If you are not in favor of eliminating Woke corporations then you haven’t been paying attention.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan20 Comments

The very phrases “gender affirming care” and “assigned at birth” have to be banned and those in official positions who use them should be jailed.

So, Mark, why bring that up?

Because I saw yet another of those RINO statements we see about, “we’re better than that” and “you know, if we use government to coerce, it’ll be used against us!”.

As if it wasn’t already – and, no, we can’t be “better than that.”

The fundamental problem we have – and I’m not the only one seeing it – is that our side doesn’t realize that it is a fight to the finish. Either our dogmas will prevail or theirs will. And the losing side loses everything. There is no mid-point between “there are two genders” and “there are three (or more) genders”. There is no possible compromise between those who think that children should attend drag shows and those who think they shouldn’t. There is no way to reconcile “all men are created equal and are endowed with certain unalienable rights” and “abortion to birth, and maybe even for a few hours after”. We either become all that they demand, or they become all what we demand.

Now, because we aren’t Leftists – and thus not rat bastards – we’re never going to massacre those who hate us. But we must remove them from all positions of power and influence. They must be forced out of office. Terminated from their positions in the bureaucracy, corporations and educational institutions. Their tax free NGO’s shuttered and the funds confiscated.

There is no other way – a house divided against itself cannot stand. It must become all one thing, or all the other.

And Ron DeSantis is doing it. Trump issued a statement as well on this subject. There are more and more people coming to the understanding – shocking as it may be – that those who call us Nazis and who think the USA is inherently racist don’t wish us well.

They did a show called Velma – a spin off of the Scooby Doo franchise – and it has bombed. I guess they made Velma a woke lesbian and made the show a bunch of woke preaching. The insidious part of this is the attempt to rewrite everything to fit the modern Left’s vision of the world – there is no room for non-Left; everything must be converted to the new religion. The pathetic part of this is that the show isn’t pitched at 6 year olds – you know, the target audience of Scooby Doo. I loved the show – when I was a little kid. I wouldn’t bother with it today (or, indeed, any time after, say, my 10th birthday) because it is a silly and childish show not suited for even teenage intellects, let alone adult. What sort of adult cares about Scooby Doo? Only pyschos, in my view. That any adult looked at the Scooby Doo material and said, “hey, we need a lesbian Velma spinoff for adults” is someone fit only for the loony bin. What’s next, Yosemite Sam comes out as gay and opens up a flower shop?

Nothing is more funny than the Woke putting up illegal immigrants at high end hotels and then, when its time to leave, finding that those illegals don’t want to leave their swell digs.

Hey, guys: masks don’t work. And I mean, at all. Here’s the report proving it…but the fact that we needed a report shows how far gone we are. Anyone with a cursory knowledge of biology knew that masks don’t stop viruses. They can’t stop viruses. Viruses are too small. It was with mask mandates that I realized we were being conned – and that medical professionals (who know better) eagerly pushed masks demonstrated just how degraded our supposedly neutral professionals are.

The Trump vs DeSantis battle heats up. I’ll support the nominee no matter, but there is great rancor growing between supporters of the two…and I suspect grifters paid by the DNC are fanning the flames. I am unsure if the GOP can united in 2024.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan49 Comments

Thinking about it, the best outcome of the Ukraine war is a swift Russian victory. Ukrainian victory would only mean yet another open-ended American commitment to defend an European nation against an increasingly hostile Russia driven closer to alliance with a China which poses the only strategic threat the United States faces.

It must be emphasized that Russia is in no way, shape or form similar to the threat posed by Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Hitler’s ideology required war to expand German territory into non-German territories to enslave/exterminate the local population so that Germans could move in. Putin holds to no such ideology and it is obvious that all he is attempting to gain is formerly Russian-ruled territories in order to revive Russia’s Great Power status. This is a fool’s errand on Putin’s part, but it does not amount to a threat to American interests.

More and more prison systems are transferring female-identifying male prisoners to the female prisons. This is having the obvious result. It is almost a certainty that every male prisoner who identifies as female is doing it just to get into the female prison either for the opportunity for sex or because the regime is likely lighter than in the male prisons. We’re allowing woman to be raped and abused in order to conform to insane, ideological demands. And, yes, we do bear the moral responsibility here – when we imprison a person we take over the job of keeping them safe from harm as far as practical. To put men in with women – and some of these men were convicted of sex crimes against women – is objectively evil.

People are hanging on to their gasoline cars. My Saturn was built in 2004. I will not let it go. EV’s are not just inefficient, but they are too connected to the internet of things.

You Still Only Care About What They Tell You to Care About

Mark Noonan34 Comments

Everyone is upset about Tyre Nichols – and it does, from the video we’ve seen, look pretty bad. But, once again, that is the video we have seen. As we’ve learned in the past, what is shown to us isn’t always – or even often – anything remotely what happened. I also note that the event happened on January 7th and nobody was talking about it until yesterday. Additionally, the outrage machine ginned up prior to everyone finding out it was five black officers who did the deed…two of whom were hired after the police department lowered standards to encourage “diversity”.

But we are upset not because of the horror of the crime, but simply because we are told to be upset about it. Someone decided that it was time for us to get hopped up over police brutality again and this is what they found – been better for them if the cops were white, or if even one of the five were white. But you take what you can get, right?

Now, some reading that last bit might be upset with me. Have I no feelings? Do I not care about the death of the man? What kind of a rat bastard am I?

Well, mostly what I am is someone who sees through the scam. The propaganda. Lots of bad things happen. In a nation of 330 million, you will have people doing absolutely horrific things – what I hear about, though, is determined by the MSM (by and large). I hear what others choose for me to hear – and as we know that the MSM is a mere arm of the DNC, what I hear is what dovetails best into whatever message the DNC wants at the moment. With the GOP Congress gearing up to do some investigations of Team Pudding Brain, you can rely on it that the word will go out that something else has to dominate the news cycle.

How can I be so sure of this?

Well, back on January 16th, six members of a family were gunned down in cold blood in California. Included among the dead were a 17 year old girl and her 10 month old son. And it appears that the kid was deliberately murdered, not just caught in some crossfire.

Don’t know about you, but that seems kinda newsy, doesn’t it? And, hey, even for our guys on the Left, doesn’t the massacre of 6 people via gunfire feed into the gun control Narrative? So why don’t we hear about it? I mean, I realize that the cops beating a man to death is big news – I agree that it is. But I just have this sensation that the murder of 6, including a 10 month old, is a little bigger story. But it isn’t what we’re told to be outraged about. Why?

Because it looks like it was a Cartel hit related to the drug trade. And you know damned well that a national conversation about the Cartels, the drug trade and the violence those two things involve is the last thing the DNC wants right now. I mean, we should be talking about it – what it represents is the importation of the Cartel violence we’ve seen in Mexico over the past 20 years into the United States. This massacre happened in Goshen, CA – a town of about 3,000 people in California’s Central Valley (which would be another reason it should be a big story – it happened in a peaceful small town, not a big city). It has all the hallmark’s of the Cartels – with the kid being deliberately killed to send a message. The Cartels are like that – they commit exceptional horrors to keep people in line. Whatever someone among the six – or someone related to the six – did, the Cartels were determined to let everyone know that they better not do it again.

But they don’t even have to Memory Hole this – sure, it was reported, but it wasn’t given the sort of reporting that moves it into the national mind. A wire service story which may be picked up by a few outlets. The local news will give is some coverage…maybe even a few national outfits will give it passing mention. But it won’t be on the loop – we won’t have people pontificating about it. It won’t be noticed. Because we weren’t told to notice it.

Do you want to know how I found out about it? Simple: as I saw the Nichols story unfold, I could easily see that it was another op – an effort to get us looking at something other than what is really happening. I could have searched for a score of different things – real problems – that we’re not being told to notice. I just happened to search “california murder charges” because I knew with absolute certainty – given the Cartels and the drug trade and California’s de-facto legalization of criminality (something we aren’t allowed to notice because Newsom might be the Democrat standard bearer in 2024) – that I’d find some inhuman barbarism within the past 30 days.

It can’t be emphasized enough how important it is to ignore what the MSM is saying – especially on TV. Whatever it is they are saying, if it isn’t an outright fabrication then it is something curated to support the DNC Narrative. We must stop caring about what they want us to care about – and start caring only about the things which matter. I’m sorry Nichols is dead. I hope that those who killed him get what’s coming to them…but police brutality isn’t even top 100 of our problems right now. We have much bigger fish to fry – and far more lives to save – than what the MSM tells us to care about.

The Need to Punish

Mark Noonan9 Comments

Just a little while ago I finished watching the movie Narvik. Highly recommend. Five stars. It is a dramatization of the German attack on the Norwegian town of Narvik in 1940 – the Germans invading Norway primary to gain control of Narvik because, during winter, that was the port where a huge portion of Germany’s iron ore came from. Lose that port, lose the war: that was the point for the Germans. It is a Norwegian movie so it is in subtitles for the most part, but it is well done so that you hardly notice that you’re reading the dialogue.

While a war movie, it isn’t centered on war, as such. Certainly there are battle scenes but the story is really about what do you do? Who is right? Who is wrong? What is moral? What is immoral? Collaboration or resistance? Fight on when its hopeless or just quit? The Germans, naturally, are the bad guys – mostly because they really were. But the British are not portrayed very favorably either. Neither are the neutral Swedes. The French (who really did come to fight for Narvik) are given a dose of glory. As I said, definitely recommend. But aside from offering you a couple hours of interesting and moving entertainment, there was something that struck me in the movie.

There is this scene where Gunnar – a young, Norwegian soldier; he, his young wife and child are central elements of the story – finally gets really into the fight and is able to pay out the Germans in their own coin. He shoots two Germans manning a machine gun nest. As he’s turns to leave, he notices that one of them has started moving. He quickly goes over to the man and turns him over: he’s just a kid (like Gunnar) but he’s also no threat: he’s dying and the lad’s dying eyes plead with Gunnar, “help me!”. But all Gunnar does is shove him a bit and, as the kid dies, ask “why are you here?”. No answer is provided: and for Gunnar and his dead enemy, no answer is ever going to really be provided.

The scene bore in on me the crime that is war. Don’t get me wrong: if you’re fighting to defend yourself, you commit no crime – but to start a war is a crime. There is never a justification to start shooting, or set up a situation where the other side feels it must start shooting or die. That player in the movie dying at his post represents millions – and even though, in this case, it was a young German, we do feel the sadness; the loss. The pointless waste of a life. But as we really consider it, we must never forget that it was a crime – and the attacker from the youngest little soldier in the ranks to the top military and political leaders are guilty.

Therefore, you are without excuse, every one of you who passes judgment. For by the standard by which you judge another you condemn yourself, since you, the judge, do the very same things. – Romans 2:1

Any 18 year old Fritz in the German army, if asked, would say that it would be wrong if a foreign army suddenly descended on his home town and started confiscating, ordering about, oppressing and such. And so, the Germans who landed at Narvik knew they weren’t supposed to do that. No citizen of Narvik or Norway had in any way offended any German in the least. You have no excuse. You may obtain forgiveness, but you have no excuse.

And that thought, in turn, brought me to think about our larger crisis, domestic and foreign. The way the world is really in bad shape. And it occurred to me this is because, after more than a century of incredible evil done by nations and ideologies, nobody was ever sufficiently punished for their transgressions. Justice must always be tempered by mercy, but it still must be justice. Because we must apply mercy, after WWII we wouldn’t line the Germans up and shove them into gas chambers…but hanging a few Nazi leaders hardly atoned for the crime. And this leaves aside the fact that nothing was done about the Soviets, who were only marginally less bad than the Germans.

It is said – and generally accepted – that after WWI the punishment of the Germans was too harsh. The reality is that it was too light. Remember: they attacked France, Belgium and Luxembourg without the slightest provocation. And this led to four years of miserable, slogging warfare where untold numbers of young men died when, with just an ounce of decency on the part of the Germans, they would have lived. All the Germans had to do to save the lives of millions was…not attack people who offered no offense in any way. Quite honestly, for a century after that, the Germans should have been de-jure shackled to plows to pay back those they attacked. And WWII was even worse…and all we did was hang a few Nazis and then let the Germans get rich building cars and then we sat there, slack jawed, as they complained about what we did during the war. And, remember: no excuse. Any German asked in 1939 would have answered “no” to the question “should Nation X attack Germany unprovoked?”. They knew what they were doing was wrong. And they gloried in it…and only rejected it when it was all over. Germans want to complain about Dresden? They should feel lucky that every city and town in Germany wasn’t razed to the ground.

And I do think that this unwillingness to punish on the larger scale has led to our unwillingness on the lower scale. We’re forever finding excuses. Letting the guilty off. Figuring out how we can turn a blind eye to it. Easier that way, don’t you know? To punish is to take responsibility…and to assert a standard that you, too, must he held to. It is almost as if by letting Nazis and Communists off we then gave ourselves permission to bomb mud huts in Vietnam and drone wedding parties in Yemen. That if we let the mugger and armed robber off in our streets, we can then excuse the politician taking bribes. That if we all smear a bit of sh** all over ourselves, none of us will notice we stink.

It is high time that we got ourselves cleaned up. That we start to punish the guilty. Yes, yes, yes: always tempered with mercy. But mercy is to reduce the punishment either in scope or duration…but there must be punishment. The guilty must feel at least some of the pain they inflicted. And nobody has an excuse – the dictator plotting war and the punk plotting robbery already know they shouldn’t – and they know they shouldn’t because they know they wouldn’t want themselves to be the victim of an unprovoked attack or a robbery. When we think of all those who have been victimized by war and crime over the past century because our failure to punish encouraged the next war or crime, then really no amount of harshness meted out to the guilty is excessive. If the Germans in 1939 had been shackled and working merely to feed themselves and pay back those they attacked, then there would have been no WWII. In Europe, 60 million people would not have died. Try to sell me that brutally humiliating the Germans for, say, 50 years after WWI would have been worse than WWII. And how many in our cities have been robbed, raped and murdered by people who had previously robbed, raped or murdered? You tell me that punishment doesn’t deter crime? Maybe – but I know what a guy breaking rocks in the hot sun for 10 years won’t do for 10 years: rob. That’s at least some people not robbed; and that makes the punishment of the robber just and merciful. And as merciful to the robber as to any potential future victims – by punishing, we are at least for a time preventing the miscreant from sinning, and that’s a good thing.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan23 Comments

China Joe announced that we’ll be sending 31 Abrams tanks to Ukraine – this, apparently, is what the Kraut’s demanded before they would agree to send Leopard tanks. Ukraine is getting a hodge-podge of military equipment which they have no training or maintenance facilities for. This will get interesting.

Russia, meanwhile, continues to push forward in certain areas, likely to prep for an offensive after the Spring rains. We’ll see how this comes out – but I suspect, long term, that Russia will have some Abrams tanks to sell on the international arms market. The bottom line, absent a collapse of Russian will to win, is that Russia has vastly superior numbers over Ukraine and the outcome is only a matter of time.

New York City erected a Medusa-looking statue on their courthouse – in honor of RBG and abortion, so at least kinda appropriate. Very ugly, though. But that is the point of modern art: to be ugly. To be something you hate but can’t get rid of.

Also in New York City – for ages they had de-facto segregation in their schools. This was to allow New York’s rich progressives to have high quality public schools while proclaiming their allegiance to diversity without, you know, the diversity. There merely skimmed the cream of the crop of minority students to put into class with the kids of rich, white Progressives. Former Mayor DeBlasio, true to his Leninism, put an end to that – rather than have test scores determine who got into the swanky, Manhattan public schools, they created a supposedly scientific algorithm which would decide…naturally, it really just managed to shove into these schools kids who were in no way prepared for high education achievement. There is a bit of poetic justice here in that rich, white liberals lost their little education plantation…but the bad news is that now all of New York’s public schools suck. This is considered fine by the upper end of the Ruling Class because they send their kids to private schools and, hey, who wants to take the time and effort to improve all schools? Better to just score some DEI brownie points by wrecking the few remaining good schools.

Surrounded by armed guards, California Governor Newsom proclaimed in the streets that “weapons of war” have no place there. Make no mistake about it: Newsom will be hard for the GOP to beat. He’s good looking, sounds good on TV and, of course, the MSM will cover up his crimes and puff him up as the Second Coming. But he can be beat – his State is a complete disaster outside a few, rich coastal enclaves. The way to handle him in debate is to simply get truthful about him: “Governor, you hate the people of California. You want them to suffer. You talk about ‘weapons of war’ but what you really are trying to do is make honest citizens into criminals while you deliberately and maliciously allow real criminals to run amok.” Words like that – 100% true – will put that arrogant ass into a defensive mode and he won’t know how to deal with it as he’s never had a hostile question asked of him.

What do to about rising egg prices and people suddenly dying? Claim that the eggs are causing sudden death. I’m serious: it is what they are trying to assert. This after they tried to assert that all the sudden deaths are due to climate change.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan66 Comments

So they found yet another trove of classified documents illegally in China Joe’s possession.

It really is a matter of anyone who goes up against Trump wrecks themselves, don’t they? Sure, Biden managed to cheat his way into Trump’s job…but we’re already well past the point that Joe’s reputation has been utterly destroyed because he went up against Trump. Having mountains of classified documents going back at least 15 years when his hack AG went after Trump on a bogus claim of mishandling documents is just the perfect manifestation of karma…and the millionth time the Democrats have proved that whatever they accuse us of, they are guilty of doing.

Personally, I don’t see a nefarious reason on the part of Pudding Brain for having them – whatever those around him might have done with the documents (Hunter would have had to be a saint not to sell them to the highest bidder…and “saintly” isn’t a word I’d use to describe a man suing in court to prevent his illegitimate daughter from using his surname), I think that Joe, himself, kept them because they made him feel important. Biden’s whole career has been a mere series of lies he’s told himself to make out that he’s the hero of the show – the smartest, bravest, most important man. He probably thought it was cool that he could see secret information and just wanted to hang on to it as a talisman of his greatness.

But the real issue is that he really did break the law – just as Hillary did – and we already know that no legal sanction will be applied. It was apparently only in this last couple days that DOJ officials started searching for docs. Until then, they allowed Biden’s personal attorneys to do the searching. This after they raided Melania’s panty drawer searching for secret documents. That is the problem with our society – the double standard. Laws are applied differently depending on how juiced in you are with the Ruling Class. Such a thing is unsustainable.

I wonder how many, besides me, got a feeling of joy in the heart contemplating arresting everyone at WEF and, after confiscating their money, set them to hard labor? It did flash through the mind as I thought about how wicked and corrupt they all are (they literally had to import hookers to keep up with demand in Davos…and we all know that among the “goods” imported were minors)…and just for a moment a flash of justice came to mind. I think that more and more are getting to that…getting, that is, to understand just why the Jacobins did what they did.

Hulu is running a series based upon the entirely bogus 1619 Project materials. They really are determined to get Americans to hate their own nation. And our response must be the ruthless defunding of all Leftist ideology – DeSantis is leading the way on this in Florida. Who controls the schools, controls the future. I’d rather we just abolished the education system…but if we can’t, then we’d better control it and ensure that our beliefs are transmitted to the next generation.

The cops in Atlanta killed a white Antifa criminal and, so, other white Antifa criminals then rioted in black neighborhoods. And, yes, CNN stuck with the “mostly peaceful protest” reporting. Governor Kemp has ordered a crackdown and it seems that even the city government is willing to hit back…but the fracas stared in one of those Antifa “autonomous zones” which emerged in 2020…what in heck is such a thing doing in Georgia in 2023? A state which re-elected its Republican governor by 7.5 percentage points? Why did Kemp allow that thing to continue? Really: in our Red States, we must start insisting that the GOP hammer the Left…we can’t stop Antifa from ruining Portland, but we can sure save Atlanta.

Perhaps We’ve Just Been Living Wrong?

Mark Noonan18 Comments

Scott Presler opines that for the GOP to have long term success, it is going to have to become the natalist party – that is, the party in favor of family formation. This is true. Attentive readers of the Mirrors series have probably figured out that Queen Caelestine is pro-natalist; always trying to get people married and wanting everyone making babies at a rapid clip. This is, of course, a bit of my philosophy being inserted in a small way to the narrative. But I don’t think we’ve really thought much about how this would come about.

It seems to me that our problem here stems from our too-long adolescence and too-long education.

Remember that back in the day, a girl and a boy getting married at 16 or 17 wasn’t at all unusual…with the young couple then either working on the family farm/business or striking out on their own. It is a bit of a shock to the modern mind to think of that – in fact, we probably think of it as tragic. But the bottom line is that we become physically capable of bearing children at a pretty young age: and if one wishes to argue against biology, that is fine – but the reality is that our physical being is ready for childbearing a lot younger than we find acceptable in the modern world.

Right after I read Presler’s Tweet the Rush song Subdivisions came on the playlist and the refrain just leaped out at me:

Subdivisions
In the high school halls
In the shopping malls
Conform or be cast out

Subdivisions
In the basement bars
In the backs of cars
Be cool or be cast out

All of us, I think, can remember back to our middle and high school years and remember how out of sorts and out of place we felt. That sensation is what Neil Peart was writing about in the song. But what, really, was the problem? That we were 16 or 17 years old and felt we had no proper place in the world. That we didn’t know what our lives were for or what we would do. By that time we had already been in school ten or eleven years, had at least a year or two left to go…and then the prospect, pushed massively by society, that we would do at least four more years of school after that and then start our career…and don’t get married! You’re “too young”. You’ve got plenty of time for that! Get your education. Get your job! And, hey, the old morals are gone so just find someone to have sex with…its ok. Nobody will judge you.

Except yourself, of course. The mind rebels against what is wrong even if that mind can’t articulate it.

I conclude – and this literally just flashed in my head earlier today – that the increasing alienation of youth since, say, World War Two is based upon this lifestyle of 12-16 years of education followed by career and then marriage and children if convenient. The final result of this is kids who are saying they are non-binary or what have you: we’re so long down this path of essentially denying biology – denying our own humanity – that the latest generation is rejecting the very idea of biology and what it means to be a human being – what it means to be male or female. We’re getting here – and it is likely to get much worse – because we have tried to craft a lifestyle which is not adjusted to humanity. We’re trying to be cool so we aren’t cast out…but what we’re not trying to be is human. And even the adults who get through this to become functional members of society are still awash in divorce, anti-depressants and pathetically going to fertility clinics at 35 in a desperate bid to push out a kid before the clock expires.

We forgot that the Sabbath was made for Man, not Man for the Sabbath. We’ve been going about it backwards – trying to rework humanity to fit a certain sort of society when sanity lies in making society conform to human needs.

Laying aside the animal need for food, water, shelter and clothing, the primary thing a human needs is community. We are a social species. We literally cannot survive as a species without others of our kind around…and even individual survival is gravely threatened when we are on our own (break your leg on a hike with friends and you’ll probably make it – break your leg hiking alone and there’s a good chance you’re going to die). Biology commands – and we Believers hold that God also commands – that we engage in sexual relations. Anyone who remembers being 15 knows this – the urge was persistent and insistent. It was so strong that all of us did wonder for a bit just why there was a moral code against rampant sexual activity. But especially as we aged, we understood the wisdom of confining sex to a committed relationship. But I think we get it wrong – backwards – when we say, “hold off on that urge until you’re 25! Gotta get that education and career, first!”. We’re also kinda stupid – the sex urge will not be repressed for that long. I do believe that if we really want to fix what is wrong, we’re going to have to really think about what we want.

I do think we spend too much time on education. Don’t know about you, but high school was mostly pointless for me. They weren’t teaching me anything new – and in the things I was actually interested, I was rapidly far in advance of what the school was teaching. It might very well be that adding high school to the education mix for 90 percent of us is a waste of time. And if high school is pointless for most of us, college even more so.

Plus when we take a kid of 14 and say, “hey, just 8 more years and you’re done with school”, we’re telling someone who wants to get rolling on life right now that they’ll have to wait. That they have to stay in leading strings for years longer and then, if the behave, they’ll be allowed to start doing the Adult things.

I’m not saying there isn’t a need for higher education – but what I am saying is that almost nobody needs it and, in truth, it has long become counter-productive. First off, on account of it being dumbed down. In order to keep up the fiction of Education – Career – Marriage we’ve routinely lowered the standards for higher education to the point that a mediocre 12 year old from a century ago knew more than doctoral students at Ivy League universities today. You can only keep the fiction going, after all, if it is for everyone. But, of course, everyone isn’t suited to higher education – and nor should they be. A healthy society has a certain number of artists and thinkers…but usually less than 1 percent. And they are only able to create art and thought because almost everyone else is busy making things happen.

And after community, the next thing a human needs is to be needed. We are built to contribute – to do something useful for ourselves and our community. It is, as I’ve noted, the only way we can survive. Except for short periods and baring physically debilitating accidents, we can’t even feed ourselves without the assistance of others.

How useful does a 20 year old in college feel? And there’s your answer to why the purple hair, nose ring and a sudden assertion that they are a different gender. They are doing nothing. They aren’t really learning anything – save for spoon-fed Marxist drivel. Small wonder they get a little kooky…like a junior league Nero or Caligula…the real difference being that Rome in ancient days could only carry the freight on a few of them at a time…while our overly wealthy society affords millions nominating their horse to the Senate. And here’s the real kicker – almost all 20 year olds in college are incapable of higher education. It is supposed to be for the 1 percent – maybe the top 5 percent if you’re being really generous in giving out passing grades. These poor kids are uselessly doing something they are entirely unsuited for. Lunacy does result. BLM/Antifa riots, as well – not for nothing did fascists, Communists and Nazis find their most ardent spirits among 20th century college students…a collection of increasingly mis-educated kids unsuited for higher thought but who were also being quit useless…and here comes The Cause to give their existence a point.

As Chesterton pointed out, we have to begin all over again at the start. If a house is built so that it knocks a man’s head off as he comes through the door, it is built wrong. You can’t reform it – you have to tear it down and build it again. Properly.

There was a little joke meme I saw the other day which went along the lines of “me who had my kids at 18 and 20 watching from the beach as my 40 year old career-first friend deals with her 4 year old”. Lot of truth in that. It really comes down to how we will spend the best years of lives.

Do you remember being 20? My goodness, the energy. As I was in the Navy at the time this manifested itself in my ability to spend weeks at sea in a four hours on, four hours off rotation, hit the beach in a liberty port, party with the shipmates for 24 hours straight and then immediately go back to sea. We all had it. We were inexhaustible and indestructible. We could eat and drink all we wanted and it just fueled our ability to do more and more and more.

Do you remember being 35? You had stayed out until just a shade after midnight the night before and had that third drink and now, bleary eyed and exhausted, you faced the grim task of going to work and, dang it, why does my back hurt?

Question: which you was better suited to chasing around after a rambunctious 2 year old? Which of you could better deal with screaming kids, household chores and putting in a 50 hour week at work without complete mental and physical collapse?

Life is for youth, boys and girls. And we’ve been doing it all wrong. What we should have been doing is giving our kids 8 years of basic education, siphoning off the cream of the crop for higher education and sending the rest to trade school while positively encouraging early marriage and children. This is much more in line with human needs than our current model – and given our advances in production and medicine, it doesn’t preclude anything. Suppose at 45 you decide to move off from the construction job that paid for your house and raised your kids, now moved out, and take a stab at a college degree? You can do it. Nothing to stop you. And zero chance of regrets – you’ve already done the most important part of living. You took a man or woman’s place in the world. You already proved who and what you are.

I am open to dispute here – I don’t know if I’m completely right. I only know for certain that we’ve been doing it wrong. And if we want a healthy society, we are going to have to change how we’re doing it.

We Lost: Victory Beckons

Mark Noonan16 Comments

Nothing fails like success, you know? To take a couple examples from history:

Chancellorsville is rated as Lee’s greatest success as a general. Historians tend to use it as the justification for calling Lee a commander of genius and stand in awe of his decision to split his smaller army in the face of a larger enemy and slip around the Union flank to roll up a stunning victory. There’s only one problem with it: it was stupid.

It was only Hooker’s indecision which allowed Lee to pull it off. If the Union commander had pretty much just ordered his army forward any time during Lee’s movement to the flank, Lee would have been utterly crushed and his army totally destroyed. No really great commander gambles; great commanders rig the game so they can’t lose no matter what the enemy does. And if they can’t rig it at the moment, they don’t move. Lee’s move was daring – but reckless and no officer training school would ever teach a cadet to do that.

And it was also Lee’s eventual undoing: just two months later at Gettysburg, Lee, memory of Chancellorsville still fresh, sent his army into an attack which his primary subordinate told him was impossible. But his great victory gave him an entirely overinflated idea of what he and his army could do, and too high a level of contempt for what the Union army and its commanders were capable of. The doom of the Confederacy was sealed with Lee’s defeat: any chance of fighting the Union to a negotiated peace was lost when Lee’s foolhardy charge kicked the guts out of some of his best fighting units.

Next example: the German invasion of France in 1940. Once again, it is rated as a genius move by the Germans to send their main force through the Ardennes in a move to cut off the Anglo-French armies in Belgium. Manstein, the architect of it, is credited as a genius – and the fact that it worked tends to obscure the plain fact that it shouldn’t have worked. And I mean not at all. And while Manstein was the man who drew up the plan, he wasn’t the only general who noticed the Ardennes. In fact, nearly everyone did: German, French and English. And everyone discounted it: and not just because of the rough terrain. It also entailed sending a massive, mechanized force on a pencil thin drive supported by secondary roads. Any significant French of English drive against the flanks of such a force would quickly destroy it.

But, the Krauts got lucky. Very lucky. Half a dozen times. The French had plenty of opportunities, and forces in hand, to wreck the German plan. They unfortunately had generals who thought in terms of days rather than hours for response time. The German gamble worked only because a failure of French leadership. Especially in the first 48 hours of the breakthrough, just about any energetic French general at the Corps or Army level could have won the most stupendous French victory since Austerlitz had they just moved.

But it was also the German undoing. The success of their Ardennes gamble gave all of them, from Hitler down to the last Fritz, a massively overinflated idea of what they could accomplish. When Hitler turned his sights on Russia the following year, even the German generals who hated him figured six to eight weeks would be enough to finish off Russia. And it would have been – had the Russian leadership crumpled under pressure like the French leadership had. Stalin and his henchmen were rat bastards…but when the Germans were pounding at the gates, they stayed in Moscow and put up a fight rather than run away. And thus the Germans discovered that Luck isn’t on the side of the Master Race, but (as always) on the side with the biggest battalions.

So, why the history lesson?

Because our success was 1980 and 1984 and I think we sort of expect it to just happen again. That we have the right ideas and so we’ll just win if we get our ideas out there. We’re forever looking for the next Reagan to carry us to victory. We think that politics is just matter of finding the right message alchemy – instead of the hard work of getting voters to vote for us. Our too easy success against feckless opponents never prepared us for Clinton and Obama opponents…nor for the political machine they built and which elevated a senile degenerate to the White House in 2020.

To be sure, some get it: Scott Pressler is the most shining example of the youth of the GOP getting out there and doing the work. You should know: back around September when all of us were expecting a big win in 2022, he pointed out that while he was having some success in certain areas (most notably Florida), in lots of places there was little enthusiasm for the GOP…he was expecting what, in the end, we got: a small and incomplete GOP victory. We need more like Scott and we might just get them. People who are willing to do the hard work of registering voters and talking to them, to find out what might be on their minds.

We need to jettison Reagan. And it might be time to jettison Trump. Without for a moment elevating DeSantis or anyone else to demi-god status. Might RDS be our guy? He might. We’ll see. But if he turns out to not be the best tool to break down the Democrat door, then he gets discarded, quite ruthlessly, in favor of someone else. On and on like that – all the while working at the local level to shore up the real strength of the GOP. In each success is the seed of failure – but in each defeat there is the seed of victory. Our problem is that since 1984, we’ve only haltingly looked for the lessons our defeats are teaching us, and so we’ve lost all along…even during the times we officially came out on top of the vote. It is no good to simply get the office: we have to get all the offices, all at once, and with a firm commitment to certain actions. We can’t coast on Reagan, nor rely on a Trump to win our battle for us. It is time for us, all of us, to fight anew.

The Failure of the Dream

Mark Noonan35 Comments

Race: its a little bit of a contentious issue, huh?

This is mostly because of all the lying. Lying is really bad, by the way. Makes it very hard to get anything done. On the other hand, if you’re trying to steal money and power in a democratic system, lies are the way to go. They work very well. What happened with race in America after 1965 is that once the victory was won – and the Civil Rights Act won it decisively – the people who had invested in fighting against racism were faced with the stark and very frightening necessity of getting a job.

Unless, that is, they could find a way to milk it.

Which they did – and starting in 1966, what we got were people asserting stoutly that the nation which had fought a bloody civil war to end slavery and which had just enacted sweeping legal assurances of equality under law was still this evil nation which was so damned racist that they’d…dammit, I know they just passed a law assuring equality for blacks but that’s not important. What’s important is some yahoo in Alabama still flying the rebel flag! See!!!! Still racist! And the Civil Rights Act wasn’t a magic wand making everything perfect all at once! Racism!!!!

What the Civil Rights leaders found is that you could still play the game – and obtain a great deal of power and money – if you pretended that it was forever the day after Bull Connor took the firehose to the marchers. And the example was taken up by others – anyone non-white, non-male, non-Christian, non-straight could hop on that bandwagon. And, so, they did. Just a huge churn of unfounded accusations against the most tolerant and equitable society in human history…and all to grab a bit of unearned money and power. And all latched onto by Marxists to tear down what they hated most: America.

King’s dream was of a place where people would be judged by the content of their character. A noble dream. A very American statement, too. Not for us to place people by birth into their position. Not for us to bow down to money or raw power. Who did the right thing? Who did the hard work? That is who Americans wish to honor. But now, thanks to those who came after King, that dream has become a nightmare of everyone being judged by their skin color, their sexual orientation, their gender…with the privileged elite asserting a right to rule based on the credentials they awarded themselves. This is a very long way from the content of our character.

It is, for lack of a better word, disgusting. It fills me with loathing to see on Martin Luther King day the sort of people who wear his skin-suit and pretend to be his successors while rejecting everything he stood for. I want them punished – for, after all, stealing a dream must be the worst crime. To take what was beautiful and use it to cover a nauseating gang of race-baiters, hustlers and con artists is about the most vile thing a person can do. I do still have King’s dream in my heart. I pray that we will one day live it. But I know we can’t while we allow those who betrayed the dream to have power and position in our society.