Open Thread

Mark Noonan7 Comments

Trump nuked a drug boat – and this is fully in line with what I’ve been saying about fighting the drug trade. It is primarily a logistic issue – and all true strategists concentrate on logistics. In the trafficking of human beings and drugs, we’re talking very large amounts of physical things which must be moved from place to place (and the money, also physical in the form of cash, must also be moved). Our enemy in the War on Drugs has a very long and entirely naked supply line…that is what we hit. We hit it by sealing our borders and by taking out identified drug transport in international waters and air space. Rely on it, we keep doing it, the people who transport the contraband will get the message…it won’t, of itself, stop the trade…but it’ll shift it from moving easily identified and targeted tons down to small quantities carefully concealed. Reminder: the widespread use of drugs like cocaine switched from a vice of the rich to a general vice because the suppliers worked out the means of producing and transporting large amounts of it – driving down the retail price to where everyone could avail themselves of it. Trump’s strategy will make the contraband vastly expensive…once again the province of decadent rich people.

I’d add to this a wrinkle to hit the money – while there are still some major global banks willing to facilitate criminal money, most don’t and all of it eventually gets detected. This is why to this day, to move the money to the cartels it has to be physically carried there. I’d offer letters of marque to anyone who wants to take the risk – outside US territory – to seize this money. Get it back to the USA, and you get to keep half the proceeds. Full title, tax free. Not just money – anything of value; go after everything they’ve got. Make them expend vast resources just to protect their money.

Covid cases are allegedly rising – and some California officials are recommending masking…which doesn’t work. They are getting desperate on the Left…trying every expedient they can. We won’t fall for it again.

Tim Kaine – who is allegedly a US Senator – says our rights are from government, not from God. And that any system that says rights are from God is a tyranny.

“We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal and are endowed by the Creator…”

I think I read that somewhere once.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan11 Comments

Mike Fragoso gets it:

That is all “muh precious norms!” is about – simply trying to hamstring the GOP with rules the Democrats will ignore if they get into the majority. And the Never Trump guys are all on board with this – because they are now paid by the Democrats and their audience is almost exclusively Democrats. This particular bit is in relation to calls for the GOP Senate to ease rules so that Trump’s nominees can get confirmed – we are in September here and the Executive Branch still isn’t fully staffed with Trump’s people…meaning Deep State holdovers are still in charge of various things and are diligently working to undermine Trump. And that is why the Democrats and RINOs want to slow-walk the process…

Someone started calling them “paperwork Americans” and I think that is spot on – that is, people who do have all the documents for being Americans, but ain’t all that American. You know what I’m talking about: foreign born or born to foreigners people who are up there on the public stage calling America an evil nation. Sorry, not seeing a lot of connection here. Not a lot of love, that is.

No sane nation would allow inside it those who hate it. It is just literal lunacy. Heck, even the barbarians the Romans imported towards the end at least wanted to partake in the Roman world – we’ve got people who want to torch the whole project. They aren’t just dissenting. Not just pointing out this or that flaw or injustice we need to fix – they hate the whole thing and want it gone, replaced with something else. They are quite open about it – some saying that their purpose in the USA is to defend their foreign homeland. We do need to start working on a complete reform of citizenship in the USA, including Constitutional Amendments. My basics are:

  1. Only natural born citizens can hold office in the USA – elective or appointed: from dog catcher to President.
  2. Only those born to an American citizen in US territory or connected to a diplomatic or military foreign posting are natural born citizens.
  3. No more than 100,000 immigrants may arrive in any calendar year. They must be 18 to 30 years old, physically fit, unmarried, no children, fluent in English, not related to any foreign government official and have at least $10,000 on them when they arrive.
  4. A review of everyone naturalized over the past 25 years with careful attention paid to all documents, the slightest flaw in which results in denaturalization and deportation.
  5. Concentrations of foreign born are to be broken up – that is, if a city has within it 10% or more of people originating in one foreign nation, half of them must move elsewhere or back to their country of origin. No more take-overs of American cities by foreigners.

Pete Hegseth is working to have the Confederate Memorial returned to Arlington – there was a short moment when I was thinking it was ok to move Confederate memorials but it so quickly became a first step in removing all American memorials that I switched sides on the issue. And now the thought really kicks in: sure post-Civil War a lot of ex-Confederates erected the shameful Jim Crow system…but a memorial to Confederate soldiers isn’t a memorial to Jim Crow, even if some of them were erected by proponents of Jim Crow. The bottom line is that the major Confederate memorials – like that at Arlington – were erected with the cooperation and blessing of Grand Army of the Republic veterans. The war was over, enemies had forgiven each other…as they aged out and erected their last memorials to each other, their memories of the war were fond…remembering how young and brave they all were, not how much they hated each other at the time. They left us their memorials – North and South – as expressions of love…and we should leave them alone. We weren’t involved. They aren’t ours to judge…merely to learn from.

A Dying World

Mark Noonan2 Comments

I’d really like to think that the “raise the colors” protests in Britain – which do seem to be spreading to other Western nations – are meaningful. I really do want the West to survive…that the people of these nations will secure their nations for their children. But that is the problem: they aren’t having children.

I saw a video out of Denmark where a migrant was dismissing the complaints of a Dane by pointing out the migrants were having five children and the Danes one or two – with only five million Danes, it won’t take long to change the demographics…or, as the migrant put it, exterminate the Danes. The future always belongs to whoever shows up. And the Europeans are not having kids.

Right now, the global total fertility rate is 2.3 – which is slightly above replacement level. The highest fertility is in Niger which has just about 6.5 children per woman (depending on who you ask – others say it is Chad at 5.94 per woman)…but this represents a decline from the peak at 7.93 in 1985. All around the world, fertility rates are dropping…birth control and abortion are the tools but the real mechanism is anti-natal propaganda. You go to the most backwards Third World country and, rely on it, there is the Western propaganda telling women that their best hope is to not have children. The official word is that human population will continue to grow until 2100 but I believe this is wishcasting…someone basically inflating the growth to justify continued population control measures. Personally, I agree with those who figure we’ll peak in 2050 and then start to decline…and it will be rapid. By 2050 we Boomers (I’m very late Boomer) will all be dead or just about out the door…and the succeeding generations are all smaller and having progressively fewer. Life extending medicine will be there but will only make sure there are more geezers to take care of.

What of the West? A takeover by the migrants…and then they die off as well; because even the migrants are having ever fewer children…and the source of migrants is also drying up: the major migrant nations are also suffering rapidly collapsing birth rates. The human race reached a peak of development and then decided to die. Everyone wants their time on Earth to be as hassle-free as possible…and therein lies the real reason for the collapse: the destruction of religious belief.

It is ubiquitous. Every people of all backgrounds have all collectively lost the beliefs which made their civilization. You think Islam is on the march? The fertility rate in Iran is 1.67. Turkey 1.62. Indonesia – with the world’s largest Muslim population – barely clings to 2.1…and that’ll flop to below replacement rate next year if not this. People who stop believing in God do not have children – why should they? What is the future? A cold grave! So, might as well make sure you enjoy your time here as much as possible…and three kids will definitely cramp your style. Bottom line here, if the Brits raise the colors and actually kicked every migrant out of Britain…then in 100 years we’ll have a nearly empty Britain. Just the ruins of cities and monuments to people who stopped believing. What are the Brits saving it for? Everyone has eight great-grandparents but the eight great-grandparents only had six children. Who had four. Japan’s population declined by more than 900,000 in 2024.

I’ve pointed out before that some people are having children – some very orthodox Jews and Christians who genuinely believe (my guess is only about a quarter of Christians actually believe it – that is, to the point where the message of Christ plays a role in their lives). These descendants of these people will be there in the future…but the trouble with population decline is that once is kicks into high gear, it is fundamentally not reversible in the short term. If the Japanese suddenly decided to have two children per woman (this means every child-bearing woman in Japan actually gives birth to two children) the decline in Japan’s population would still continue for decades…and the Japanese, in spite of government efforts to encourage fertility, are not at this moment even working towards two per woman.

As I said, I’d like the West to survive…and, in a sense, it will: those devout Christians who continue to have children are carrying into the future the fundamental basics of Western Civilization, which are Christian. But the national structures that we are used to – including some of the peoples – are going to disappear. The people who live in and sustain them are dying out. Fortunately, almost all of this takes place after I’m dead or so old I don’t care. But a massive crisis is coming and even those addressing it – like Elon Musk – aren’t seeing that the solution is to start going back to Church and really believing it. It is the only way…only those who believe in something beyond themselves will invest the effort into children.

Blue State Failure: a Federal Response

Mark Noonan16 Comments

The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence. – Article IV, section 4, US Constitution

I’ve been pondering this since Trump sent the Guard into DC and is suggesting that he’s willing to do it in Chicago and other Blue cities plagued by crime. The federal nature of the United States is crucial to the very existence of our nation as we know it – that is, the States are sovereign and the federal government only exercises delegated powers…that which the States, or the people, surrender to it via the Constitution. So, on the immediate face of it, the federal government should not be interfering in the normal course of law enforcement in the States or the cities, save directly in response to violations of Constitutionally valid federal laws. A federal system is a major plank in the defense of our liberties.

And we have lessons from history on the dangers of centralized control: part of the reason the Roman Empire crumbled was the decay of provincial and municipal government – that is, the constituent parts of the Roman Empire became horribly mismanaged and the Emperors felt compelled to progressively take direct control of local affairs…just to ensure basic law enforcement and services were maintained. Roman rule was pretty light early on, but by the third century started to be suffocating…and by the fourth so onerous that people welcomed barbarian and, later, Islamic conquest just to get the Roman bureaucrats off their backs. What I’m pointing out here is that centralized control, while it can provide a temporary fix to local government failure, tends to breed even worse mismanagement as time goes on as the bureaucracy becomes enormous, expensive and self-serving.

But I think there is more for us to consider here.

The United States shall guarantee to every State…a Republican form of government. That is a very important thing. The Founders did not propose to allow any of the States to erect a monarchy or other un-Republican form of government. The States are sovereign and govern themselves according to whatever laws they like…but they can’t create any tyrannical form of government…and if they do, the United States the Constitution implies the federal government may directly intervene and oust any tyrannical regime, substituting for it a government responsible to the people.

The question before us now is this: are the States all governed by a Republican form of government?

It is a very serious question. We know that voter fraud is rife in the Blue States. That, in fact, the governments of the Blue States have set up voting systems which guarantee that massive fraud will occur. Mail in ballots. Allowing ballots to arrive long after the election is over. Lack of controls on ballot handling. Counting ballots in secret. Forbidding challenges to election results. Registering non-citizens to vote. Refusing to purge the dead and departed from voter rolls. All of this and more puts a gigantic question mark on the stated results of all Blue State elections. We can concede that the deeply Liberal parts of America are voting in large numbers for the Democrats – but we still see elections coming in close on election day with a GOPer ahead and then over days and weeks ballots dribble in until the Democrat wins. And only in the very rarest instances has there ever been a GOPer behind narrowly on election day emerge victorious.

The pragmatic facts of life are that we can’t say with any level of certainty just how the actual citizen bodies of places like California, Oregon and Illinois voted. Sure, good chance they did vote Democrat…but by how much, really? Maine (at large), Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico and New Hampshire were all close enough that merely moderate amounts of ballot box stuffing could have produced the Democrat wins. And the GOP actually increased its California House vote but ended up losing House seats in the State (Harris did five percentage points worse than Biden had in 2020).

And then we look at what the Blue States do – last November Californians passed Proposition 36 with 68 percent of the vote. This law imposed a lot of stiff penalties on crime – crime that the California and local governments have allowed to run rampant. Gavin Newsom has refused to provide any funding to enforce it. Think about that – more than 2/3rds of the people supported it. This means very large numbers of Democrats voted in favor. It is massively popular and only a politically suicidal government would ignore the will of the people here.

Unless that government was certain that it’s power wasn’t dependent upon the consent of the governed.

Sure, the California Democrats couldn’t stop Proposition 36…but they also don’t care about it. It means nothing to them. Sabotaging it carries with it no political risk. Because power is not apportioned in California via votes…it is apportioned via other means. In this case, whatever amount of ballot box stuffing is required to ensure super majority control by Democrats. My contention here is that California does not have a Republican form of government.

And this is where we can get legitimate, Constitutional actions to essentially annul the de-facto powers of the Blue States and cities. They aren’t responsive to the will of the people and they are inflicting upon their people violence and other crime. It is now Trump’s responsibility to stop this. I’m not entirely sure he sees it this way, but it is the actual situation…and I do believe he is moving that way. The fact that crime in DC is nearly gone almost instantly after mere law enforcement shows how easy the fix is…and how the rampant Blue crime is a policy choice…and a policy choice by people who feel confident that no matter what they do, they’ll never be voted out…because, in reality, they were never voted in.

And it is in the lawful Trump that we have our best opportunity to do this but not set a destructive precedent. We really don’t want federal power butting into State affairs…but we have a moral and legal responsibility to ensure that our fellow citizens are governed according to their consent. Trump is the man – and maybe one of the very few men – who would be able to exercise the power to ensure a Republican form of government but not abuse it, and not set up some permanent system of federal interference in State affairs. And that makes me think that perhaps he is on the same page as I am and is just step-by-stepping it? Could be. I hope so. And if we can reform Blue State government then we’ll take away the last prop of Liberal power…their dictatorial control over the Blue States.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan16 Comments

Flag burning and a 14 year old Scottish girl fighting off a migrant with an axe. Kinda says it all, in my opinion.

Now, do keep in mind that Trump didn’t ban flag burning – the hair on fire comments about his Executive Order were made by people who hadn’t read it. In line with the absurd Supreme Court ruling that flag burning is speech, Trump doesn’t propose to arrest anyone for burning a flag. But if that burning is an incitement to riot, then you’re going to be in trouble. Trump is, as usual, the most law-abiding of Presidents. Probably the most law-abiding since Coolidge. Certainly far better at it than the utterly lawless Biden and Obama Administrations.

So, why do I tie it in with the Scottish girl? Because she’s not free – that’s her problem. She had to take an axe to defend herself because the UK is a lawless nation. Oh, sure: the authorities will arrest you and charge you and put you in jail…but only very selectively (for instance, the girl is being charged with assault…not the man who was trying to assault the girl’s 12 year old sister). Selective application of law is no law at all. It is merest whim of whomever has the power to do a thing.

Here’s now the Ruling Class works – and they’ve done this since the USSR and Nazi Germany – create lawlessness and then impose rules allegedly designed to suppress the lawlessness but which actually work out to tying the people hand and foot. Lenin ordered the Russians to “loot the looters” and they did…and then Lenin’s successor imposed a criminal code to ostensibly to get a handle on this but what you found in practice is that it allowed the looting to continue unabated (except, of course, against those who were specially protected) while the slightest deviation from Stalinist ideology got you ten years in Gulag. The British Ruling Class imported a huge class of aliens with no connection to or love for Britain, allowed them to run rampant with crime, and has now enacted laws allegedly to control crime but which actually control the British people…various speech codes for social media, and such. The migrants are still out there committing crime with impunity…their victim is facing criminal charges for not allowing herself to be attacked…oh, and that censorship is still in place…from what I understand, hardly anyone in the UK has even heard of the incident…it is completely suppressed on social media while the MSM won’t talk about it. And if they do, rely on it the girl will be called a racist in all reporting.

What Trump is trying to do with the EO on flag burning and by sending the Guard into DC is to end the lawlessness. It has to be done. If it isn’t done, then the next time the Democrats get back in, they’ll enact laws allegedly to stop the the chaos they created but which will have the practical effect of making MAGA illegal. Now, I personally believe that burning the American flag is not speech and I’d be perfectly happy sending a flag burner to jail for a few years, and then disenfranchising and deporting him. But, Trump won’t do that – but he’s doing the next best thing: making the Left think twice…and if they don’t think twice and decide to go on a rampage of flag burnings, that just goes into the 2026 campaign ads.

Trump fired Fed Governor Cook – she’s being charged with signing for two different mortgages that listed each separate property as her primary residence. This, by the way, is illegal. Under US law, you only have one primary residence – it is why it is called “primary”. Now, you might ask: why would she do something as stupid as sign loan documents like that when its all easily accessible records which nobody can possibly misunderstand? Because she thought she’d never be caught – none of them do. The entire Ruling Class thinks it is invincible…because until January 20th of this year, it was. The only people who got caught were those the Ruling Class wanted to dispose of for whatever reason. The sooner everyone starts thinking of the Ruling Class like a Mafia, the better – because that is what it is: and as the movie Goodfellas pointed out, the primary purpose was to provide protection. The Mafia, as such, didn’t commit the crimes…they just took a percentage of the proceeds in order to provide cover (that was the genius idea of Lansky and Luciano). So, too, with our Ruling Class…with the percentage being extracted in various ways – some times it is just straight up money, but it is also things like lowering interest rates to help Biden and then keeping them high to harm Trump. That’s Cook’s job – and she was sure something as trivial as a mortgage document would never come back to haunt her.

Our Ruling Class is shot through with such corruption – it is part of the reason we really gotta work for GOP victory in 2026 and 2028 because we’re going to need years to really get after these people. They’re all giving and taking bribes, falsifying documents, producing bogus reports and studies…anything and everything they need to make sure that everything works out to them staying in power and on the gravy train.

The Coming Dark Age

Mark Noonan10 Comments

A few years back I mentioned that the Germans had recently finished a new destroyer for their Navy but when they launched it – put it in the water for the first time – they found it has a permanent list. That is, for you land lubbers, she was tilted to one side…I can’t recall exactly but it was significant: like eight degrees or some such. This was the Germans. The people who are superb engineers and workers. Except, maybe they’re not any longer?

That incident crystalized out for me that we do have a serious problem in the world – people just aren’t as good at things as they used to be. It isn’t just the Krauts! Remember, we tried to send up a new space ship to the space station and we couldn’t bring the crew back down because of a design flaw in the capsule. We were essentially doing no more on that mission than we did with Gemini in the 1960’s and it was a total fail. That bridge in Baltimore hasn’t even started the rebuild after it was crashed into by a merchant ship…which apparently didn’t have enough seamanship aboard to avoid a big ol’ bridge right in front of them. See where I’m going here?

A few days ago I was among a large group of mostly young people (I was the oldest there by far) and they were engaged in a serious talk about zodiac signs and how important they are. A few days after that, same thing with people at the grocery store…just happily chatting away about utter drivel as if it is important.

And then this morning at Mass I saw a woman wearing a mask.

My friends, we are in a very bad place right now.

Education is becoming non-existent. Superstition is becoming rampant. Basic skills are declining. This has happened before! Constantine won supremacy in the Roman Empire at the Battle of the Milvan Bridge in 312 and the Roman Senate commission the Arch of Constantine in Rome to celebrate this fact. It wasn’t at all the first triumphal arch erected…others had been built for Trajan, Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius but here’s the thing: the decorative art on Constantine’s arch was taken from the Trajan, Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius’ arches. In other words, by 312, the Romans had already lost the artistic skills they had a bit more than a century earlier. I mean, take a look:

Here’s a contemporary statue of Caesar:

And here is one of Constantine:

Big difference in artistic ability here, guys. And it wasn’t restored for a long time. The Byzantines kept a lot of ancient Greek statues on display in Constantinople as a sort of freak show…they just didn’t know how the ancients had been able to create such realistic depictions of the human body. What I’m saying here is that we’re on the precipice of a new Dark Age. That we are very rapidly losing the ability to make things and right behind that loss is the destruction of the capacity to maintain. The Aqua Alexandrina was built early in the third century for Rome and ceased operations in the eighth century…not because Rome no longer needed water but because nobody in Rome knew how to repair it.

It can’t be emphasized enough how fragile civilization is. If it isn’t passed down it simply disappears and then had to be relearned all over again. If enough of it remains to provide instructions to later generations! The future might be guys consulting the stars as they head out to the well to get water because nobody knows how to fix a water pipe.

This can still be fixed! The Romans weren’t able to fix it because their enormous military and stifling bureaucracy preempted so much funding that there was nothing left for the transmission of basic knowledge. We’re not in that bad shape – but we’re going to have to get quite stern. We must start insisting that people learn…and insisting that they work. Some people simply need to know how to build a bridge, forge steel, run electric wiring…and in the end, nothing is more important than this. No great dreams you have will happen if you can’t use the roads, don’t have fresh water and can’t turn on the lights. In the end, if people won’t volunteer to do these things, they’ll have to be compelled. We’d be fools to let the modern world die because we felt it would be mean to make people work.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan11 Comments

Saw another clip of a Tucker Carlson interview where the interviewee is suggesting that a case can be made for a US alliance with Hitler against Stalin. Naturally he does point out the horrific nature of the Stalinist regime and also notes that FDR was a relentlessly dishonest man (MacArthur, on hearing of his death, was alleged to have remarked words to the effect of, “he was a man who never let the truth get in the way of a good lie”). Of course, this does leave out the crucial fact that Hitler was horrifically evil – sure, Stalin was, too, but Stalin wasn’t combining homicide with global conquest (Hitler did have a genuine dream of conquering the USA). Our problem here is twofold:

  1. We don’t teach history any longer.
  2. The overall global Establishment has lied so much that it is easy to make anything that disputes the Establishment seem plausible.

I’m not quite sure how we get out of this – the only way out might be by limiting the franchise to people who can pass some basic literacy and history tests. The liars lie because lies work (as I’ve said!). But we can’t have people saying lies like that and allow them to have a say in how we’re governed.

British police recently arrested a man for shouting “we love bacon”. I can’t imagine on what actual charge – and how do you prosecute someone like that without laughing? The Brits are in a bad way – I do admire their “show the colors” campaign where regular folks are hanging out the Union Jack and St George’s banner…but it all comes down to the fact that the Brits gave up their guns but forgot to make sure the government gave up theirs.

The 9th Circuit has cleared the way for Trump to deport 60,000 people who had been under temporary protected status. Temporary. You know: for a little while. Of course, some of these people have been here for decades. It really is a matter nobody enforcing our immigration laws – not for decades. Perhaps not since the 1960’s. Some people might get deported here and there but the basic fact has been to let them all come in and only kick them out when something egregious happens…and under Biden even the egregious were allowed to stay. I keep thinking about how the American Establishment in the late 1800’s decided to import millions…because American labor costs have always been higher than the rest of the world’s and I guess Big Corporation decided to stop that. So, too, the wave since the 1960’s…mostly just a way to place downward pressure on American wages. Its morphed into other things since then, but that was and remains the prime motivator.

I’ve never been to a Cracker Barrel which wasn’t packed with people – and I have eaten there and it has been good, solid food…but now they’ve got some new Corporate Clone boss who took a look at success and decided to kill it. Step by step, going woke. Why? Because these sorts of people hate those who go to Cracker Barrel. You think the CEO wants to go to the Hamptons and tell her friends about how happy MAGAts are with her product? Nope. She wants to go and show them social media posts about how mad the MAGA people are.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan5 Comments

Still much to do and many rocks and shoals to navigate around, but it does look at this time like Trump will be able to arrange some peace between Russia and Ukraine. The sticking points will be how much territory Ukraine has to give up and how much of a security guarantee for Ukraine Russia is willing to tolerate. Make no mistake about it, Putin likely isn’t giving up the dream – token US or NATO forces in western Ukraine won’t bother him…a brigade or two near the new eastern border would. Meanwhile, Zelenskyy has the fear that peace will bring an election he’s likely to lose – and then face the music for how the war was conducted – while plenty of Ukrainian power players will be willing to stoke anti-Russian fires for domestic political purposes. It is a tricky situation!

But the pragmatic facts of life are that neither side can afford to continue – last I heard the Ukrainians were drafting kids and old men while Russia seems to increasingly rely upon mercenaries to fill the ranks. Keep in mind that Total Fertility Rate for Ukraine is 1 and for Russia 1.47 (and a lot of that is probably non-Russian ethnic minorities): these countries aren’t producing a lot of fit, young men year by year. Nobody knows how many people have died in the war – both sides lie egregiously about casualties – but its probably some hundreds of thousands dead: and whatever the number of dead the best way to estimate wounded is times two of the dead figure. It is probably in the neighborhood of a million dead and wounded between the sides…this is being bled white. And ultimately for nothing. Putin and Zelenskyy must get out.

This was the image of the day – and maybe an image for the ages:

They’re all waiting on Trump – each and every last one of them totally irrelevant to how this will come out. Trump will decide – and he’ll ultimately decide for Putin and Zelenskyy. The may buck and they may kick and scream and perhaps even derail this particular effort…but eventually they all will have to knuckle under. There is no power like the USA elsewhere in the world. It has been thus since 1945…and the only foreign policy problem we’ve had since then is our refusal to act like we are the most powerful. We’ve been playing this weird game where we let second and third rate powers talk to us like they matter…that we have to get them to agree with us, rather than ultimately just issuing them orders on how to behave. Trump instinctively understands that even in our currently weakened State, we still hold all the cards.

It isn’t as odd as you think – from 1815 to 1914, the world waited on decisions from Whitehall in London. The British government essentially had veto power over everyone else – their sea power gave them this and nobody could really argue with them. And the British didn’t fuss with the concerns of second raters – they were just told what to do and if they tried to fight it they’d swiftly find a British fleet off their coast. The power vacuum we allowed to exist since 1945 is now being filled. By Trump.

Mars or Bust?

Mark Noonan3 Comments

Pro Tip: if you throw any shade on the idea of colonizing Mars, a lot of people will jump on your social media TL to shout at you. It appears that the idea has become an article of faith in some areas.

My comment originated as a comment to a post Elon Musk had reposted about water ice on Mars. There is quite a lot of it. We’ve detected about 5 million cubic kilometers of it on or near the Martian surface. This ice isn’t probably suitable for your whiskey and soda – it may be massively toxic. But it might be fresh – that is, just good, old H20. Heck, there are some indications there might be liquid water a mile or so down in Mars…though this might be really no more than a salty, muddy slurry. But, still, pure or not, it is crucially important to any human activity on Mars…water to drink, oxygen to breath, hydrogen for fuel! But I decided to be a Debbie Downer and point out that, ice or no, Mars has nearly no atmosphere, the soil is poisonous, the gravity is much lower than Earth and it’s continuously bombarded by deadly solar radiation. It’s not actually a good spot for colonization. Big mistake!

The air pressure on the Martian surface is equal to 0.6% of Earth. Without a pressure suit, you die (quite horribly – the liquids in your body would almost instantly start to boil if you were exposed to the Martian atmosphere). Mars soil is filled with perchlorates, which are toxic to all known forms of life on Earth. The gravity is 38% that of Earth’s and while this would give some advantages (we could carry more around and build much larger structures of lighter materials) it is also less than the human body is used to – we know that after six months in zero g the human body suffers various problems. They are to an extent controllable but not entirely (for instance, normally about 70% of your blood is below your heart – gravity! But in zero g it just flows equally through your body…and that causes problems in your legs and feet). What would happen to the human body after, say, a year on Mars? We have no idea. And then there’s the problem of solar radiation – we’re in a happy, safe and warm bubble here on Earth – our magnetosphere keeps out harmful solar and cosmic radiation. Mars lost her magnetic field very early in her life and so is continually bombarded by radiation totally lethal to human and other life (Mars lost her atmosphere because of this – solar wind just ripped it away bit by bit until it was almost all gone…its still ripping away the Martian atmosphere).

So, anyways, I was just pointing out that this wasn’t going to be easy – and I got ripped to shreds in the comments. People have invested their mind and soul into this – and it seems to revolve around two ideas:

  1. We must make humanity multi-planetary to avoid extinction.
  2. We must become a sort of trans-human species.

The idea of saving us from extinction has some merit – and I’ve even got an outline for a novel about it: Survival. The premise is that the Earth is going to be destroyed and it is determined that in the time available sufficient craft can be created to bring 1,000 human beings, plus supplies, to Mars. Who gets to go? Who gets to decide? What would you do to be one of the thousand? How much effort would you put into saving others when you’re doomed? It’ll be cool – if I decide to write it. But story telling aside, there is some sense to it – but not much. The chances that Earth will get hit by something truly planet-killing are very small. Jupiter is out there still playing cosmic hoover for us and making sure anything large enough to do us in doesn’t get close. Its been a long while since even a really large impact – 65 million years! And life survived that – and human life would, too, with even minimal prep time.

As for the trans-human stuff: just weird. One comment had us building this gigantic platform in space to sustain millions of people and it just flies around the galaxy forever. I mean, sure – maybe we could build it. Why, though? Once again, makes for cool sci-fi but if we’re talking about having new lands for millions then lets just work out the ways and means of really fast and cheap water desalinzation and settle the Sahara along the banks of artificial rivers which have their water piped in from the Atlantic.

I do want us to go! And, in fact, we should already have gone. Except for very stupid budget decisions in the 70’s we probably would have had a permanent presence on the Moon in the 1980’s. And that, I think, is still where we have to go – after all, there may be ice on the Moon, as well. Main thing, its a heck of a lot closer – but also outside our magnetosphere thus allowing us to study that on humans and figure out the best methods to shield ourselves from it. Perhaps Musk can get his space ship to Mars…but I think we should stick to our neighborhood until we’re really mastered the art of long distance space travel.

The Looming Peace

Mark Noonan12 Comments

As of this moment the trajectory in the Russo-Ukraine War is towards peace – mostly because both nations have failed in their desires. Ukraine wanted to get the Russians all the way out, the Russians wanted to get all the way in – as it turns out, neither are capable of achieving these goals and so a peace of exhaustion is on the horizon. Will Trump be able to broker it? I hope so. We’ll see how sticky both sides get on this…but at the back of the mind for both Putin and Zelenskyy is the fear of sudden and total collapse. That is, their respective armies just fall apart and thus allow the other side to impose it’s will – this is a greater fear for Ukraine than for Russia but it is a distinct possibility for both. Getting out now allows both men to have at least some reserve military power to retain control.

We did learn, once again, the power of a well-knit defense. There is a mental attitude out there that the tank and airplane of WWII cancelled the cannon and trench of WWI – nope, never happened. Blitzkrieg only works when it enters a void – against a tight defense it becomes just a Somme with tanks. First Battle El Alamein, Kursk, Caen and Seelow Heights proved again and again that even a vastly outnumbered defense if well situated and competently commanded can hold off the enemy for a long while and only retreat, if necessary, after extracting a usurious blood price. The use of drones has just added to defensive depth and flexibility – and I do hope our military is paying attention and trying to figure out the best way forward given what we’ve learned.

We also learned, again, that Russia is a quantité négligeable on the world stage. Twice now Russia has appeared to loom up all-powerful: 1815 and 1945. But in both instances Russia only triumphed (over Napoleon and Hitler) because others drained the enemy who also made a whole series of stupid mistakes. Someone on X noted that Russia is a mud-pie with a crown and there is a great deal of truth to this. The Winter Palace is magnificent…but the Russian army invaded Ukraine without properly maintained vehicles and so bogged down within days of the start. Think about that: you’re a Russian officer in command of Motor Rifle Brigade and you know that next week you and your men are heading into Ukraine…and you didn’t even make sure your vehicle tires were in good shape! Think of the level of lazy incompetence this required! And then you remember Russia’s Second Army in World War One…just blindly sent into East Prussia and wiped out by a smaller German force with nobody on the Russian side even knowing that a battle was going on until it was all over. A century on. Multiple total changes in Russian government…and the tip of the spear still gets broken because the Russian organism can’t plan or prepare.

I don’t know what makes the Russians what they are but they are brutally incompetent. Unfortunately, they are also just strong enough to prevent a Ukrainian victory so we’ll have to cut a deal with them…and then try to woo them away from China because grand strategy requires at least a neutral Russia if we ever tangle with China. Foreign policy: its just a lousy thing.

Trump wants to be the Peace President – part of this is simply humanity but the other part of it is that he knows America needs a period of peace and prosperity. We need to rebuild our manufacturing, rebuild our shipbuilding capacity, rebuild our agriculture, rebuild our labor force…we need to grow out of debt and finally start paying it off. We need to revive a general sense of American exceptionalism and patriotism. Of course, we also need God – but Trump knows he can’t make us go to God…but he also knows that the most successful people in a revived America will be those who believe in God. It is time to wind all this Endless War up…this Endless War which started in August of 1914 must finally be brought to a conclusion. End Ukraine. Gaza. Yemen. Sudan…these and a score of other simmering conflicts have to end. Even if doing so requires us to knock some heads together (Trump having a B-2 Bomber fly over Putin was the clearest message possible that intransigence isn’t a good idea: basically, our attack on Iran just showed the world that you only have your most valuable strategic assets as long as we allow you to).

What will the Ruling Class do with peace? Don’t give the least damn. Christopher Steele was out on X – with locked replies, of course – condemning Trump’s meeting with Putin…and it just disgusted me that he’s living well instead of in a van down by the river. The world is out of kilter – made so by people like Steele who never would have risen above dustman level in any sane society. Stupid liars have run things into the ground for too long…and that is also why Trump wants peace: it’ll make the stupid liars unemployed…or at least finally get a real job.