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.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan20 Comments

Democrats are trying to tell us that there isn’t a crime problem in DC. Or that if there is a crime problem, its normal. You know: it ain’t that bad! But the homicide rate in DC is about 23 per 100,000 people. So, we can expect in 2025 about 160 murders. Meanwhile, over in Austin, TX it is about 3 per 100,000 people. If DC dropped to Austin’s level, 21 murders. Still bad, but its 139 people alive on December 31st who otherwise would be dead.

And, of course, the murder rate is just the jagged edge of crime – in order to have a city where there are 3 or so murders per week, you have to have a lot of other crime going on. You know, like 5,200 violent crimes per year in DC. A hundred per week. Fourteen a day. A level of crime that is starting to overwhelm the city. And keep in mind that DC was just caught faking its violent crime stats – that is, massively under reporting the true number to make it look like crime is getting under control. No matter how you slice it, this isn’t normal.

To be sure, the Democrats have crafted a Narrative which makes out that this is normal – that living in a big city simply means you must put up with crime. But it isn’t so: murder should be in the neighborhood of 2 to 3 per 100,000. Other violent crime in proportion. Our streets should be quiet, clean and safe – sure, there are always going to be rougher neighborhoods, but even the roughest shouldn’t be havens of murder and other violent crime. Human beings are Fallen – we know this: but controlling crime is not some impossible task. It just takes treating crime the right way – that it is wrong. That you don’t have an excuse. That you must pay the appropriate price for it. We did that for a very long time and, once upon a time, America’s cities were quiet, clean and safe. They can be that way again.

Trump is also trying to tackle homelessness – not by subsidizing it, but by stopping it. Good to remember that homelessness became a “crisis” in the 1980’s – when the Democrats started to blame Reagan for it. Of course, it was actually caused by Democrats. When they demanded that lunatics be left to wander the streets and they made the conscious decision to not deter street crime. But, they blamed Reagan…and because of the way the GOP used to be, we went along with it and the spigot was turned on. Untold billions (probably trillions by now) have been poured into it…with absolutely no effect because the last thing the homeless “advocates” want is an end to homelessness…they’d be out of a job if we did that. And, of course, stopping it doesn’t require zillions of dollars…it just requires enforcing the standard laws against vagrancy, petty street crime and public intoxication. We have a huge population of homeless people…camped out on the sidewalks and making cities unlivable…but only in those cities where they tolerate it. Pay for it. Make it happen. Trump’s plan is to stop the cities from allowing it – they’ll have to round up the insane, the addicted and the shiftless and place them into some facility where they can get help…and jail, ultimately, if they don’t respond.

How is Trump doing? His approval rating right now is higher than both Obama and Bush’s during their second terms. Oh, and this is with the averages cluttered with obviously fake polls designed to keep Trump’s overall approval rating down. My guess is that a solid majority is still behind Trump…with an even money chance it is growing as people get a look at what he’s actually doing. First President since Reagan to actually try to carry out the campaign promises…and doing that even better than Reagan did. Meanwhile, Democrats can’t raise money – officially this is because the big money donors are holding back to see how the Democrats craft their 2026 message. Actually its because Trump cut off the NGO money…Liberals are never actually generous. Even Soros tends to use government money laundered through his NGO’s to fund Leftwing causes. The GOP – and Trump – already have buckets of money saved up for 2026.

The Democrats in California are saying they are going to redistrict the GOP out of existence in CA – which they technically can do but they’ll have to violate the California constitution to do it. Of course, the law never deters a Democrat. But even if they whack all 9 GOP House seats in CA, it still won’t make up for what the GOP is going to do in the Red States. And even though Democrats ignore any law that gets in their way, the people of California aren’t too enthusiastic about this. Democrats have a massive voter registration edge but the combination of GOPers and Independents is a larger bloc than the Democrats. This move might backfire – especially as to get those 9 GOP seats to be D+ seats, they’ll have to dilute Democrat voters in other districts…and this at a time when Latinos and other minorities are starting to shift to the GOP. Oh, and voter registration trends continue to favor the GOP – even in California.

Schiff is in deep trouble – and his Biden “pardon” only covers his J6 Committee work…not the stuff he did with Russia Russia Russia. Of all the malevolent toads that went after Trump, him going down would be the most satisfying.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan7 Comments

Invoking the Home Rule Act, Trump has decided to take over law enforcement in Washington, DC. This will cause shrieks from the Democrats and probably a raft of lawsuits…but Trump is totally within his power to do this. Good to keep in mind that in DC, like in all major Blue cities, the reason crime is rampant stems from two things:

  1. The Leninist conviction that all crime is a result of social injustice (ie, the real criminals are those who sustain the system – that is, you and me).
  2. If you’re a Blue city mayor, DA or what have you, the last thing you want to do is arrest a lot of POC. They are who are doing most of the crime in the Blue cities, but there is no electoral upside here – and not just with POC voters, but with the upper class whites who tend to be the decisive vote in electing governments in Blue cities. Basically, you have to pretend the problem is anything but POC – and so you’ll come up with “alternatives to policing” and a host of other eyewash programs to pretend you’re doing something about it when you aren’t because you can’t.

But people don’t like that – they might not be able to totally articulate it, but nobody likes a lot of street crime. And not just out of concern for personal property and safety…nobody likes to see streets filled with litter and zombie-like drug addicts with criminals prowling around looking for the next victim. The people like to see clean, safe streets. Trump is going to try to give it to the people of DC.

Can’t emphasize enough how important it is that this work – because all of our crime-ridden cities are crime-ridden by choice. The leadership of the cities, like that in DC, made the political choice to allow crime to be rampant. If Trump can clean up DC then it’ll show that every city can be cleaned up…you just have to arrest the people committing crimes. It is like border security – Trump has shown that every President could have just done it. Closed it of. Stopped the flow. It just had be ordered done. It wasn’t – and for the same reason the government of DC doesn’t order the crime stopped…the political and social desires of those in charge are best served by business as usual.

The WNBA is going to install “anti foreign object netting” around the basketball court…if you don’t know why, then just Google … heck, don’t know how to write that on a family website! Anyways, just look around social media for the latest WNBA memes and you’ll quickly see which foreign object the WNBA is trying to stop. This is becoming ground zero in the culture war. The WNBA was created as a payoff, in my view: feminist groups were given this league by the NBA in order to take the heat of NBA players who were…not always total gentlemen with the ladies. Basically it is the #MeToo fine the NBA is paying. A whole infrastructure was built up to make it seem like it was an organic sport…something that people wanted. But it was mostly just ignored…and then Caitlin Clark became a thing and the WNBA had their first organic star…whom the other players proceeded to treat like garbage. It has all been so clearly mere jealousy…people who simply aren’t as good as Clark fouling her for being good. People saw this and now the previously-ignored WNBA is the currently-despised WNBA.

The league loses on average $10 million a year – chump change for an NBA with $10 billion in annual revenue. The pragmatic facts of life are that even someone as good as Clark probably isn’t good enough to sit on an NBA bench. As playing spreads among young girls there will grow an ever stronger group of female players and we will probably see some ladies being just good enough to in theory play for the NBA. But the play will never be NBA level – it can’t be because of those inherent physical differences between men and women (you know, that we’re supposed to pretend don’t exist). How much are people going to pay for something that doesn’t even work out to a AAA for the NBA? Not much. Sure, if you just love basketball as a thing and like to see a game, you’ll go watch WNBA…if nothing else is available. And in this it is sort of like AAA ball…which does get some people in the stands but, let’s face it, not that much…and certainly not a MLB prices.

I don’t care about the league at all – not a basketball fan. But the attempt to force it into a major league has been silly from the start. And now that people are really looking at it for the first time, they don’t see what they like. So, anti-foreign object netting…

Trump has apparently given the order to have our military go after the Cartels. The Mexican government objects. On the other hand, there really is no Mexican government. Sure, the go through the motions but the bottom line is that the Cartels totally control Mexico. You’d probably be better off thinking that the government is another Cartel…and probably the junior partner. Mexico has always been hopelessly corrupt…the only difference is how much corruption is going on at any given time. Keep in mind that there wasn’t a popular uprising to bring an end to Spanish rule in Mexico…it was upper class people who just wanted their own country to play with and they took advantage of a Spain gravely weakened by the Napoleonic Wars. Since that time, it has been one sort of oppression after another to keep the contraption together (lost in the records is the fact that as Zachary Taylor’s army moved deeper into Mexico during the Mexican-American War province after province asked him to get them into the American Union). The PRI for decades held it together via a mix of bribery and mild political repression…and the sort of political leader they developed was a coward merely looking for the next payoff. These people had no chance against the Cartels. The Mexican people might want to fight the Cartels but the Mexican government won’t arm the people…because they know that as soon as the Cartels are knocked off, those guns would be turned against the government.

This is still going to be a very tricky business. Make no mistake about it! Mexican’s do have a very prickly pride especially when we gringos are involved. But it has to be done – we can’t have Cartels dominating our southern neighbor. They have to go.

Who is Innocent?

Mark Noonan11 Comments

As we just passed the anniversaries of the atomic bombings we got yet another round of statements about it…and I do note they are getting ever more stridently anti-American and more vigorous in asserting it was a crime…that we did something akin to what the Nazis did. This ultimately stems from two sources, neither of which are good:

  1. Soviet Cold War propaganda.
  2. Post-WWII Nazi apologists.

It is a bit of a shame that this worked so well – even the Church has tended to fall into it. Now, to be sure, I don’t dispute that intentionally destroying a city is wrong. If that is your intent. Never, ever intend to destroy a city. Heck, never intend to destroy a mail box. Destroying things is wrong. Killing people is wrong. Don’t do it! But this doesn’t really apply, in my opinion, to the atomic bombings.

What was our intent in August of 1945?

To kill? No.

To destroy property? No.

To take land for ourselves? No.

To steal the wealth of nations? No.

Our intent in August of 1945 was to end the war – with a bias towards the fewest additional American deaths. That’s it. All we were trying to accomplish. And as August 1st, 1945 came in, American policy makers were faced with these options:

  1. Invade.
  2. Continued blockade.
  3. Continued conventional aerial attack.
  4. Just call it quits and tell the Japanese we wouldn’t invade.
  5. Atomic bomb.

The first three options involved massive additional deaths. Just the naval blockade of Japan had already pushed the nation to the brink of starvation and a couple more months of it and millions would die (MacArthur’s first demand upon taking control of the occupation of Japan was for food; telling DC that it was either send him food or send him bullets; the Japanese were on their last meal by the time we got in). Invading would not only cost millions of Japanese lives but probably a hundred thousand Americans as well. Continued conventional bombing deaths would have probably run upwards to a million.

Now, we could have just called it quits: assessed all our options and decided we wouldn’t compel a Japanese surrender…too costly in lives. There is a case to be made for this. Japan was a ruin and at the time absolutely no threat to anyone. But, on the other hand, they still had millions of soldiers under arms and controlled vast amounts of territory in Asia and the Pacific. The only way to get Japan to give up all of this was to compel their surrender, so it was back to one of the other options. But suppose we decided to leave Japan in control of what she had…just too costly to finish. Ok. That would merely have confirmed the Japanese strategy post Midway: fight so hard that the Americans give up trying to conquer Japan.

And then rebuild and try again with a better plan. In other words, it meant another war. Millions more dead, just a decade or two down the road.

What you have here, guys, is a quandary: a very uncertain situation which has no easy way out. But we had to get out. The war had to end, one way or the other. The dying had to stop. Truman opted for the bomb. Can we second guess this? Of course we can. Would you want to be forced to make that decision? I sure in heck wouldn’t. I wouldn’t want to be the man who has to decide how to end a hideous, bloody war. Truman, turns out, was the man – and by his lights, he did what he thought was best. Maybe it wasn’t best. Maybe one of the other options would have worked better. We’ll never really know – we can only go with what happened: seven days after the second bomb, the Japanese surrendered. The people who had not quit for a second…the people who jumped off cliffs on Saipan rather than fall into our hands…quit. It was over. The dying was finished. Judged by results, we have to say that Truman might have been on the right track.

But Mark (you ask), what of all those innocent people killed in the bombings? Men, women and children regardless of condition all killed in an instant with a city totally destroyed. How horrible! Sure, it was. Absolutely hideous. Wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy. Would prefer it had never happened. But it happened because the Japanese made it happen.

To be sure, Japanese minors were innocent..and perhaps there were some Japanese who fought against the course of Japanese policy. But the overwhelming mass of Japanese adults participated. Eagerly. They went into the Japanese military and fought to the death. They worked in Japanese factories. They cheered their victories and grimly fought on after defeat. They saw allied POWs used as slave labor inside Japan. They knew that their soldiers were behaving like beasts in human skin in Japanese occupied territory. Here’s the reality: they weren’t innocent. It wasn’t Martians who flew down and forced the Japanese to do what they did – they did it all on their own. They were happy to do it. Gloried in it! They just thought it wouldn’t happen to them.

And, in the end, it didn’t happen to them…American soldiers didn’t rape every Japanese girl they could get their hands on. Didn’t use Japanese men for bayonet practice. Didn’t dash out the brains of Japanese children. Their conquerors were gentler than the Japanese had ever been…showing mercy and forbearance and bringing food and medical aid to a stricken nation. What happened to the Japanese was quite horrific…and it was done to them because they asked for it to be done. And then when it was all over, their victims rebuilt the Japanese nation and, letting bygones be bygones, swiftly returned them to the family of nations.

The criminals in the Pacific War were the Japanese. Not we Americans. Even if we can make an absolute determination that the atomic bombings were morally wrong – and should have been seen to be morally wrong in 1945 – they still don’t constitute a crime. Nanking is not balanced by Hiroshima. Nothing can balance Nanking. Because Nanking was a crime as such; a deliberate attempt to use rape, looting and murder to advance national policy…at worst, the atomic bombings were a moral error committed by people under extreme stress.

Who is innocent? Those who are. Minor children, of course. Those who lack the mental capacity to make a choice. But everyone who can make a choice? Well, then you’re going to choose innocence, or not. A person who chooses not to participate in crimes is not merely by that choice innocent – you must also oppose crime, actively. So, for the regular Joe or Jane it isn’t enough that they don’t rob banks…they also have to turn in the man they witness robbing banks. Demand that the police arrest bank robbers. Demand that government do all in its power to deter bank robbery. After all, what would any of us think of the person who witnessed a crime yet did nothing? Not very much. To be fair, some times people can be intimidated by criminals…but this doesn’t make you innocent; it just mitigates your guilt. The only way to be innocent is to do the right thing. And that means come what may.

You know: like Sophie Scholl. She was innocent – of all that Germany did in WWII, she played no part in it and emerged from it with a clear conscience.

It just required her head: she was beheaded by the Nazis in 1943.

It doesn’t always require your life, but being innocent does come with a price. We pray God it never comes with a high price but we equally pray that if things go bad, we’ll remain innocent no matter what cost to ourselves and those we love. Other people in both Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan saw what was happening and elected to play no role in it – some were killed, some were jailed, all of them suffered to a greater or lesser degree. But all of them remained innocent. If any of them were killed in Allied bombings then that was when our bombs truly killed an innocent person. But the railroad worker who calmly eats his lunch as a train of Jews goes by? Not all that innocent.

So, are you and I morally responsible for everything? Yes and no. Obviously I’m not directly morally responsible for an agent of my government committing a crime. But it slides on scale…from me being totally ignorant of it to my active participation. You can easily be totally ignorant of one action. Even a dozen actions. Once we start getting into hundreds of actions it becomes harder and harder to pretend you don’t know about it. As human beings we do have a general responsibility to foster a just society. Our personal and political actions must go towards these ends as best we can determine. Once again, not enough for us to just want it to be, we must actively make it happen. To be sure, one of us is just one of us – small and so small effect, but the effect of all of us trying to do right is remarkable…so, too, the effect of all of us either doing wrong, or turning a blind eye to it.

We must get out of this mindset that people lack agency. Today it is the people of Gaza we’re pretending are little children who bear no responsibility. Outside of actual minor children (and that means, morally, under the age of twelve; the age of reason, as it were), everyone in Gaza bears responsibility. Even if you’re a Gazan in terror of Hamas and so you go along…you’re still going along. You aren’t innocent. You’re guilt is mitigated…but not eliminated. I fully get it and I’m sympathetic to anyone under the boot of an oppressor. I hope that if it happens to me I’ll shine as bright as Sophie Scholl…but maybe I’ll be a coward and try to go along to get along? Who knows? I’ve never been placed in that situation. But if I did play the coward and went along…then I’m guilty. What the heck is my life worth? I’m going to die one day no matter what…is a few extra years worth going along with people acting like inhuman savages? I hope not – that is, I hope if I’m ever faced with that I welcome my death with courage and spit in the eye of my executioner.

We are all of us responsible. We all have choices to make and these determine what sort of people we’ll be – and if all of us refused to go along with evil and demanded it stop, it would stop. Even something as evil as a Nazi regime, a Communist regime or an Islamist regime. Not saying it would be easy. Not saying it would be without cost (the first few in are almost certain to die)…but it would work. Evil can only happen if people allow it to happen…and the larger the evil the more it requires cooperation from the population at large. Solzhenitsyn noted this in his writings…what of the little ladies in the office who, day in and day out, typed up the sentences handed out by the NKVD? If they had all just stopped typing…how would the system continue? Sure, for quite a few early on it would mean a bullet in the back of the head…but if everyone who could type in the USSR simply refused to type out the bureaucratic orders for tyranny…it would have all stopped.

I do not demand that everyone agree with me on the atomic bombings of Japan, but I do insist that we have only one rule of behavior and that every human being with reason follow it. If you want to have a rule where only some people are responsible, then say it…and please explain to me why some people are excused? And why it is the people you favor and not me? You see what I’m saying? It is all one thing or all the other – either all of us are free human beings able to choose, or none of us are. If none of us are, then there is no crime…if we all are, then the criminal is not just the person who pulls the trigger, turns on the gas valve or sets the bomb…it is everyone who didn’t stop it from happening. The truly innocent are those who not only didn’t do it, but tried to stop it, even if in the tiniest manner.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan13 Comments

Trump has ordered a new census…keeping in mind that the Constitution requires a decennial census but it doesn’t prohibit a census at other times. Only hurdle here, legally, is to get the funding for it…which might be within Presidential budget authority on already-appropriated money (the census bureau isn’t only funded every ten years – it works all the time). Trump’s demand is an accurate account (everyone agrees that the 2020 census was deliberately miscounted in order to keep House seats and Electoral Votes in Blue States) and that it not include illegals…which is going to get the lawsuit as the Constitution does say all persons.

But is a person illegally in country a person per the Constitution? That is, can you illegally enter our country and then have an effect on the governance of our nation? Providing representation based upon illegal immigrants does dilute the power of citizens and legal residents, after all…there are seats which should be representing the peoples of Texas and Florida which are now representing California due to the counting of illegals in the 2020 census. If there are 3 million illegals in California (this is probably a low ball guess) then that’s 4 House seats which belong elsewhere. And, of course, the census also helps determine the flow of federal aid funds…welfare, medicare/medicaid, education…the number of persons determines how much money a State gets…and illegals aren’t supposed to be getting these funds.

Anyways, this will be lots of fun! And continue to make Trump’s point while also locking the Democrats into the 20 in another 80/20 issue…because if you point blank ask the question, “should illegal immigrants have representation in Congress?”, its going to be an overwhelming “no”.

Anita Dunn is saying Biden remained sharp as a tack – so, she’s lying. Now, that was just in a press release…under oath might be different. Biden’s people are lashed to the mast on this – if one of them goes down, they all go down in a conspiracy indictment. Key to getting to the bottom of this is to catch one of them in a lie (not hard) and then leverage that to get them to turn State’s evidence.

Jennifer Newsom runs a “non-profit” which seems to have funneled money to her “for-profit”. From what I’ve read, the Newsom family may have profited to the tune of millions. It might all be perfectly legal – this is the way NGO’s work and why the Establishment was so massively opposed to cutting off USAID. It is very much a club – and you very much ain’t in it. But if you are connected – and do as you’re told – untold millions will be handed to you by various means. And what does Newsom do to “earn” this money? Runs a “gender equity” organization…aside from agitating for overall Leftwing causes, there is no metric to judge the organization by. In other words, we can’t say they aren’t doing their job – there is no product, other than a new car for the Newsom’s and increased Leftwing agitation. I’ve been saying it for years: defund the Left = the end of the Left. They aren’t popular. They never have been. They’ve just been heavily subsidized since the New Deal. Time to end that subsidy.

Looks like Bibi might have ordered the IDF into Gaza to finish off Hamas. I believe that Israel’s campaign had been strategically unsound from the start – they should have laid a regular siege and starved them into submission. But I’m not in charge of the IDF and the Israelis want to fight the war this way. Hope it works.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan5 Comments

DOJ has opened a Grand Jury for the Russiagate affair. We’ll see how far we can take this – but at the very least the process is the punishment.

But in my view, everyone involved – including Hillary and Obama – are in deep legal jeopardy. And if we start to get indictments rolling in then if I were Trump I’d call both of them and say they can get pardons in return for full, public confessions of what they did.

It looked like Rep. Ramirez (D-IL) said in Mexico City that she’s a proud Guatemalan before American. I guarantee you that if a foreigner moved to Guatemala and somehow managed to get elected to office – almost impossible as most nations simply won’t elect foreign-born people to office – then if that person said they were prouder to be foreign than Guatemalan, they’d be forced out of office in minutes…and probably arrested into the bargain.

The United States is not a mere Free Trade Zone. We are a nation. We are a people. We are welcoming, but if you come here, become American or get out. It is ok to be proud of where you’re from – or where your family is from. But if you want to live in America, then America must come first. It is not a big ask: it is mere basic decency.

Side note: I want us to enact into law a new definition of Native: in my view, if three of your four grandparents were born in the USA, then you are a Native American. No more of this “settler” stuff – I am not a settler. The most recent part of my bloodline got here in the late 19th century, the oldest part in the early 17th. I have no loyalty to any foreign nation – I don’t care about them. My only nation is the United States. I know no other as home. I am Native.

Texas Democrats fled the State to avoid a quorum that would vote on redistricting. This is the merest political stunt and it won’t work – the new districts will become law…and very likely other Red States are now more willing to redistrict, and do it very hard. The Democrats tell the MSM that the Resistance is working and so Democrats keep doing Resistance stuff because the MSM says its working. But it ain’t. People don’t like political stunts.