Donald Trump

Open Thread

Mark Noonan22 Comments

The primary beneficiaries of divorce, birth control, abortion, women’s liberation and the sexual revolution have been lousy men. Still amazes me when I look back on it all and realize it was all set afoot by lousy men and at least half of women went along with it.

With the aftermath of Afghanistan still echoing around the world, consumer prices skyrocketing (I paid $4.06 for gas today), New Orleans and other places suffering floods and power outages…Pudding Brain left DC Friday afternoon to enjoy a long weekend in Delaware.

Someone on Twitter did ask the question: why is Biden spending so much time in Delaware, where there aren’t log books for visitors, instead of DC, where there is?

I’m sure you’ve seen some of the polling of late – it is devastatingly bad for Biden and the Democrats. And it likely understates how bad because all polling is biased in favor of Democrats. Still a very long way until November, 2022, but if things don’t turn around for the Democrats, they could be heading for a wipe out.

And that’s why they’re keeping up with the Covid drivel: it allows them to keep in place where they have total control the voter fraud measures they implemented to steal the 2020 election. Rely on it: if you live under a Democrat governor, you aren’t getting out of mask mandates and the rest of it before 2023…and maybe 2025, and then only if a GOPer wins.

I see a lot of talk among the sane Never Trumpers (there are such!) and they are all fingers crossed that the GOP base is moving away from Trump, thus opening up an easy path for DeSantis to get the 2024 nod. There is something to this: I’m not a sure-vote for Trump in a 2024 primary. If he runs, I’ll listen to what he has to say and make the call at the right time. The biggest issue Trump voters have, I think, is just what would be different? We know Trump will fight. We know he won’t back down. We know he’ll push for good policies…but the bottom line was that not much got done in his four years because he lacked people who would take his orders and carry them out. Trump’s picks for office (often pushed on him by GOPers) were simply terrible. A collection of cowards and traitors. A few good ones, of course: Carson being the most notable. But the general run turned out to be people who when they weren’t actively trying to sabotage Trump, they were slow walking anything that could benefit him. We will need to have assurances that Trump will start on Day One with nothing but loyalists who are willing to risk everything to advance the cause. For the moment, Trump looks like he’s lost weight and is in a fine, combative mood: various people at the fringe of Team Trump are assuring us of a 2024 run. But, we know better: the only person who knows what Trump will do is Trump. And Trump won’t make an announcement until after the 2022 midterms.

The End of the Age of Lies

Mark Noonan71 Comments

Loose Lips Sink Ships. I’ve talked about this before. The famous WWII injunction to keep quiet about all matters military is, I think, Lie One. The first in a string of lies which led us to where we are today.

They are called – by the liars, naturally – Noble Lies. Lies which are for the cause. But, no: lies are just lies. They never are anything but self serving. Loose Lips Sink Ships wasn’t about protecting Allied shipping – it was about keeping everyone quiet about the massacre of shipping right off the American coast in 1942.

It was absolutely horrible: starting with a mere 5 U Boats, and never involving more than a dozen at any given time, the Germans were able to pick off merchant ships pretty much at will. One fourth of all allied merchant ship losses in the Atlantic came between January and August 1942. So weak and unprepared were we for this that Americans along the coast routinely saw, day and night, ships burning and sinking right off the coast. And it wasn’t just a matter of not having enough escorts for the merchant ships…it was that the Navy didn’t take the steps which could have immediately lowered the risk of attack. It was months before the United States got its act together.

And the guy in charge of this debacle – Admiral King – was given a 5th star as a Fleet Admiral.

In our Civil War, there were lies told: but not many and those that were got exposed pretty quick. The reason for this was the American news media – and the American people – were unafraid to speak out. The various errors which repeatedly nearly sank the Union effort were rapidly exposed and the Lincoln Administration responded quickly to correct failings. Generally, after mid 1863, the Union made no grave errors in prosecuting the war. And those who had failed the test were cast aside in favor of those who could meet the challenge. That’s what must always happen if you are to have long term success.

In WWII, instead of addressing the failure, the government cooked up Loose Lips Sink Ships and the MSM went along with it. Why? I don’t know why. Love for FDR, I guess. The editor of the New York Times, after all, could see the massacre of shipping from his house practically. And, yes, reports were written but clearly not in a manner which exposed the complete incompetence of US Naval leadership. The only person who got the axe in the Navy was Admiral Kimmel in Hawaii. And, sure, he was caught with his pants down and the Navy is always supposed to be instantly ready for action…but in his defense, he was fed a line of double talk from DC about Japanese intentions. Nobody paid for that, either.

The worst part of it was that it got the American government into the habit of lying to the American people. Lies which were told because, allegedly, the American people couldn’t handle the truth. Expose King’s incapacity and people will lose faith! So the theory appears to have gone. So, cook up a lie so people can retain faith…in a guy who failed. Not sure I see the long term benefit of that.

After the war, the next series of lies were to cover up Communist penetration of the American government and obscure responsibility for losing China to the Communists. Prior to McCarthy it was known to the President and senior aids that the Soviets had installed spies all through the United States government starting in the 1930s. It wasn’t a mystery. The various people at the head of affairs, starting with FDR, had lazily turned a blind eye to Leftwing Democrats hiring their Communist buddies. It was these various hires who played a huge role in convincing the Truman Administration to give up on Chiang, thus ensuring Mao’s victory. Now, Truman and his people could have just leveled with the American people (the fault was mostly FDR’s at that point, anyway), cleared out the Commies and moved on. But to do that would require admission of error. Can’t do that! People will lose faith in their government if they knew the full story.

Terrified the heck out of them, make no mistake about it, when McCarthy picked up the gauntlet and started demanding answers. And the American people, by and large loved McCarthy. He was their champion: the fighter against entrenched interests. Even after McCarthy was destroyed in a sordid political hit involving the government and MSM, the people still supported him and especially his goal of removing disloyal people from the government. Well, McCarthy was forced out…and a couple overt Commies were ejected. But the real housecleaning never happened. Would have disturbed the American people, after all, if everyone compromised was forced out.

On and on it went. One lie piled on top of another and nobody daring to question the underlying assumptions and, after a while, everyone deeply invested in keeping the lies going. Vietnam was a welter of lying, of course, with the obvious way to win the war – take the port of Haiphong – rejected out of hand because the lie we used to get out of Korea was that our move into North Korea triggered Chinese intervention and it would happen again if we moved into North Vietnam. The real reason for Chinese intervention in Korea, of course, was because we essentially promised China that we wouldn’t allow Chiang to attack mainland China from Taiwan. Once our fleet was in the Taiwan straights, Mao moved his army to North Korea. Now, might Mao have intervened had we taken Haiphong in 1965? Anything is possible – but it wasn’t a for sure thing; in other words, the fear that if we physically invaded North Vietnam we’d get another war with China was just a guess and not based upon any known intention by China or desire by North Vietnam. We precluded ourselves from the one thing which would have won the Vietnam War because we had to sustain a lie that unless we held back, we’d immediately get WWIII and nuclear war.

I think that over the decades lying has become a habit. It isn’t even really thought about any longer. Whatever lie is needed to sustain whatever policy the government wants is just cooked up to order and then fed into the MSM by the intelligence agencies. Trump’s problem is that his policy wasn’t to lie and it wasn’t to go along with the established order. It terrified the liars…and so they worked over time to lie Trump out of office. Trouble was, they had so little actual dirt on Trump (honestly, we don’t even have any evidence that he was some great womanizing playboy, even when young: we have rumors and suppositions which may, in the event, have been planted by Trump, himself, to burnish his showman image). The trouble they had here is that when your bad guy isn’t evil, the lies you have to say against him are ridiculous. This didn’t deter them, of course, but they went so far in their lies that the whole edifice of lies started to expose itself.

To be sure, they had skirted the absurd before: the 9/11 Commission managing to exonerate Bill and the Benghazi hearings giving Hillary a pass were an amazing example of dishonesty. We all watched those and stood there, amazed, as one expert after another told us to ignore the evidence of our lying eyes and trust them. But it didn’t reach breaking point. There was still a fig leaf of plausibility to their story line. Until Trump – once we got to the Democrats saying Trump was a Russian agent installed by Putin via vote-switching in Michigan, the game was rather up. You either wised up to the lies, or became a functional idiot still believing what was obviously untrue.

And it is amazing the number of people who will idiotically believe obvious falsehoods. I know a man who will assert stoutly that he heard Trump, live on TV, say that all Mexicans are rapists. If you point him to the video and transcripts which show nothing of the sort, he will reject this. He knows what he heard. Of course, what he heard was a carefully served up bit in the MSM which made it seem like that…and then the accusation was merely repeated enough until, in his own mind, what he remembers is what he was told rather than what he saw. There are millions of people like this – and I think it is because the confront the truth is too terrible for them. They have believed the lies so long – and personally invested their own honor in them – that to reject them is a step too far. They just can’t do it.

But lies cannot be sustained. The USSR tried mightily to do so and for many decades it seemed to work. Not only did they lie about everything, but they made living impossible unless you subscribed to the lies. It seemed a perfect machine: Lie, and then instruct everyone to repeat the lie on pain of losing home, job, liberty and (if really necessary) life. And the people for the most part did go along, braying like assess whatever was spoon fed into them. But not all and not all the time. After all, it was hard to believe Soviet reports of bumper crops while you stood in line for two hours just to get a loaf of bread. Lies eventually commit suicide because they cannot forever sustain themselves: they always need a new lie to back up the previous lie and eventually the web of lies becomes so large and unruly that its contradictions tear it apart.

That is what is happening now in the United States, I think. And the enormously funny thing is that it looks like the web of lies might finally unravel because of Joe Biden: a senile old crook installed via a fantastic web of lies culminating in voter fraud so obvious that only Blue Check Experts could straight faced say it was legit. The withdrawal from Afghanistan might have pulled out the last support for the lies. It is simply stunning that Team Pudding Brain is seriously trying to blame Trump (they even floated on social media the idea that Trump set a trap for Biden in Afghanistan). Sure, the very stupid and the very venal can go along with the idea that the guy who last gave an order seven months ago is responsible for something ordered today, but most people see right through it. And also see that the whole pack of Ruling Class Experts is simply wrong, wrong, wrong. They don’t know what they’re doing. Sure, Trump might have gone off half cocked and certainly wasn’t deeply versed in the intricacies of government…but, on the other hand, people didn’t fall off planes in a panic when Trump was President.

We’ll see what happens. And it could still get very much worse before it gets better. But right now we are the functional equivalent of a Soviet waiting in the bread line in 1989 as the MSM tells him that all is well and the Leaders are doing just swell. We no longer believe them. And we’re just waiting to figure out how we get rid of them and their Age of Lies.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan29 Comments

“All is lost, save honor” – so goes the Francis I quote, given in a letter after he was beaten by Charles V. Less known is the next part: “and my skin, which is safe”. We’ve modified that to “all is lost, except our skin.” This is the most dishonorable, demoralizing defeat in American History. The militia which ran away at Bladensburg has been redeemed.

People are saying that Biden is on his way out – nobody has any actual evidence of this and I think it is wishful thinking: this is so bad that people are just hoping that Biden is collapsing and will quit, taking this shame with him. I don’t know: he’s clearly failing mentally and physically, but his people will want to hold on to executive power as long as possible. Unless he dies or starts drooling on camera, his people won’t let him quit. And the bad news is that our national humiliation won’t depart with Biden, whenever he goes. He did it, but it is all ours: the world now holds the United States of America in contempt. Some are thinking that Biden is a coward and so he’s hiding out in Maryland. Not so sure: if he’s senile, he doesn’t know…if he’s lucid for the moment, he doesn’t care. No matter what happens in Biden’s life, it is someone else’s fault and he’s the hero of the play. Rely on it, if he’s not falling asleep over his pudding tonight, he’s crafting a mental story of how he has won the day.

Maybe – and I pray it may be so – we needed this cold slap in the face? Maybe this will at long last wake us up from our stupor? I don’t really care how the world views us except in so far as it makes them willing to challenge us. Right now, everyone in the world who was ever held back from action for fear of us is getting ready to move. This could very much go from very bad to terribly worse in mere weeks. Pray that we manage to dodge a bullet here.

Looks like we’re all going to get the booster shot. I will when it comes out. But I’m not a jerk so if you don’t want to, that’s your business.

We’re already getting horror stories out of Afghanistan on the treatment of women. We must presume they are true given what we know of the Taliban…but still take them with a grain of salt. Lots of interests very much want us to go back in and the best way to do that is tear at American heartstrings. I admit to a lack of sympathy: the Afghan men ran away. We’re supposed to go back in and rescue the women they abandoned? I’d only agree to it as a Crusade to convert the heathen. No sense in rescuing them again when their men will simply take off once the bad guys come back.

Trump got interviewed on Fox and it isn’t getting much play. And don’t you wanna know why? Because he was right about everything. The MSM would love to spin a series of lies about it and attack Trump all the live long day…but to cover it, at all, means that some of what he says has to be presented to the American people. The MSM – probably under DNC orders – can’t risk that.

Socialist magazine founder fires his staff when they try to organize a union. Such it always is and the proof that Socialism can’t work. What’s really sad about it: if the Socialists would just convert to Catholicism and become Monks and Nuns, they’d live in the socialist society they want and also put in a useful day’s work.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan42 Comments

I detect a slight note of panic among Never Trump – and both parts of it: that which rejected the GOP and joined the Democrats and that which merely rejected Trump. They are in a fright because Trump isn’t going away. Things are not working out the way they hoped…their hope having been that once he was defeated, the Trumpsters would, one way or another, agree to allow Never Trump to resume power in the GOP. That isn’t happening.

This is because they fundamentally misunderstand Trump and his supporters – with the crucial thing being that it is Trump supporters who are driving the cart. These Trump supporters may, indeed, swing behind DeSantis or someone else in 2024, but only in so far as DeSantis or whomever prove themselves Trumpist. What Never Trump still doesn’t get – though some come very close to understanding – that we’d really rather lose on MAGA than win on anything else, because to win on anything else is to lose, anyway. We’re all in. Do or die.

Florida bans Critical Race Theory in public schools – this is a growing trend on the right and it is the first sign of real health in our body politic in decades. As I’ve said before: CRT is evil and it must go. The Republic is incompatible with people believing CRT. This is, to be sure, causing some breach among black Conservatives – because there are some who hold that CRT, though flawed, has some real truth to impart. I reject this notion. And it must be rejected because the ultimate basis of CRT is Marxism, which is inherently wrong and an intrinsic evil. Nothing which uses Marx in any way can be good or true.

AG Garland is going to investigate the audit of the 2020 election in Arizona. This is proof that fraud decided the 2020 contest. They are terrified of the truth coming out.

Democrats are in a fury against Manchin (D-WV). I really did expect him to cave long before this – if he runs for re-election in 2024, it is better than even money he loses. He can’t ever get the Democrat nomination for President or VP, so his only political future if a cabinet post, and he only gets that if he plays ball with the national Democrats. But, he’s still not playing ball. Maybe, at the end of the day, he just doesn’t want any political future? After all, he’s got the Senate pension sowed and he’s going to make bank as a lobbyist (if he wants). It might be that he’s simply uninterested in wrecking the Republic just to please people in New York and Los Angeles who despise him.

Inflation is rising, fast. The only good news here is that a repeat of Carter might give us a repeat of 1980.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan36 Comments

The Democrats are trying to keep the focus on Liz Cheney, and thus Trump, in order to distract from the massive disaster which is Biden. Prices are going through the roof, the border is back in chaos and our foreign enemies are being kowtowed to. Can’t really talk about that – so, let’s get another interview with Liz who will tell us how horrible January 6th was.

The good news is that most GOPers aren’t playing the game. We know that talking about the “insurrection” is just a dodge…and an attempt to split the GOP. Won’t happen. We’re woke to that.

Texas move to ban “urban camping”. Better known as bums defecating in the streets. Make no mistake about it – the Democrats, and especially the hard Left, wants quality of life to collapse and for chaos to increase – they feel, likely correctly, that people harassed to distraction won’t pay attention to what the Democrats are actually doing.

America is still not having kids. It is a problem all around the world – even the high birth rate countries are dropping like a rock. Just for the record: we don’t have a future if people don’t have kids.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan24 Comments

May Day – the day the Commies get together on Social Media and get #SocialismIn5Words trending…only to have it hijacked by we on the right, making merciless fun of them. I hope they enjoy!

The Democrats are terrified of Ron DeSantis – and with good reason: he’s staying friendly with Trump without falling under Trump’s shadow, he’s pushing base-pleasing policies, he’s showing how it’s done in handling the ‘Rona…and he knows precisely how to tell the MSM to stick it where the sun don’t shine.

For now, 2024 is Trump’s for the asking – but, will he ask? He’s not going to tell us until after the 2022 mid-terms. If he doesn’t run, then right now Ron DeSantis is the man surging to the front because he’s the guy doing it right. So, expect the MSM/DNC to simply go ever more ballistic against him over the next couple years. They don’t want Kamala facing off against him in 2024.

How did Senator Scott’s response to Biden’s speech go? Well, to nutshell it – the Democrats have let their inner racist out in attacking him.

I and many others have noted that the people who are saying to follow the science are also using the phrase “pregnant people.” Sorry, girls: in order to complete the liberation of women, you’re being erased.

Republicans are starting to turn on the corporations – and it is way past time. They are woke and they are our political enemies.

Does Biden Guarantee the Triumph of Trumpism?

Mark Noonan4 Comments

Won’t be watching Biden’s speech tonight because there is simply no point – what happens under him is whatever his aides decide because he’s clearly incapable of any sustained effort.

Over the course of today I’ve seen a lot of social media comments from Never Trump people complaining about the various hideous actions taken by those Biden aides. They are saying it is all Biden’s fault that China is on the rise, inflation is in the wings, there’s a crisis at the border, we may be facing gasoline shortages in Summer…but, no; none of this is Biden’s fault. The man is barely aware of who he is. The fault here is borne by any and all American citizens over the age of 18 on November 3rd, 2020, who did not cast a vote for Donald Trump.

To put it exactly: every person in the United States with an IQ above room temperature knew precisely what was going to happen if Biden was installed into office. Without forgetting the massive fraud which pushed Biden over the top, the bottom line is that tens of millions of people voted for a man who they knew was going to destroy American energy; encourage a flood of illegals and kowtow to China. This wasn’t in the slightest doubt: the information which would inform a person that all of this was an obvious consequence of Biden was easily obtainable. And, so, their fault. Had they done the right thing, then no amount of fraud could have got Biden into the White House. Outside the committed leftists – who want to destroy the USA because they believe it to be inherently evil – every person should have voted for Donald Trump. It should have been along the lines of an 80/20 victory for Trump.

So, all those people who have lost their jobs; all those people who are suffering psychological problems from the continued lockdowns; all those who are brutalized by the Cartels as they cross the border – the moral responsibility for it all lays entirely upon those who didn’t vote for Trump. It was a clear as a bell moral duty to re-elect Donald Trump.

In the end, these moral cowards who failed in their duty may have ended up doing us all a favor. It can work out that way some times: that the traitor betrays himself and does good he didn’t intend. Things are on a path to get so horrendously bad, especially in areas under firm Democrat control, that by 2022 and 2024, the backlash may overwhelm even the most massive efforts at fraud. Add in that in various GOP controlled areas additional protections against fraud are being implemented, and we might end up with a couple fully free and fair elections. And they’ll be elections which provide if not Trump, then a President who successfully captured the Trump mantle and who will be backed up by an ever larger number of GOP Congresspeople who are Trumpists. I’m actually willing for the Democrats to bust the filibuster because if they do, it could mean that in 2025, President Trump or DeSantis signs laws ending abortion after the first trimester, ensuring concealed carry nationwide, defunding PP and NPR…and a host of other laws which we haven’t been able to move forward on because there haven’t been 60 solid GOP Senators.

Be that as it may, an America First polity might be on the horizon – we merely need to endure the senile dimwit and his absurd VP for a little while, and then it call comes to us.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan22 Comments

Usually after a jury trial we all tend to rest content with the verdict even if we think it might not have covered all issues involved – but in the Chauvin trial, I think everyone is pretty certain that the Jury felt massive pressure to convict. Did it play a role? It will be impossible to ever know. But we all suspect it, and that’s bad – because the ultimate foundation of our liberty is trial by jury. That if we’re ever accused of a crime that we can go in front of 12 of our fellow citizens and tell our side. Now, we’re all not so sure – if someone for political reasons wants us convicted, will political pressure be brought to bear? This is very much end of the Republic stuff and at the deepest level. If we can’t repair this damage, we will break up into our tribes and count on brute force for protection.

The hard core Marxists on the other side understand precisely what they’re doing – trying to overthrow the entire system so that a Marxist system can replace it. But I suspect that most on the Left don’t fully understand where they’re heading. That if they win, then shortly after we’re all destroyed, they’ll be destroyed. History, after all, is White Supremacist and so it isn’t taught.

Related: official Segregation at Michigan State.

A Norfolk, VA cop was doxxed and then fired after it was found that he had donated $25 to Kyle Rittenhouse’s defense fund. As I’ve been saying, this is the most crucial part of Leftist power: the power to control our jobs. That this cop actually got fired was just a bonus for the Left…what they really wanted everyone to know is that they can find out what you do in your private life and expose it. Every cop in America now will think twice before making any political donations. Some of them will start donating to the Left to take on protective coloring. We must cure this – long ago I said that a law must be passed prohibiting the firing of a person for actions taken outside the workplace but now I go even further: there must be severe penalties assessed to anyone who posts personal information on line without the subject’s permission.

Texas opened up and nothing bad happened. The more we see Texas and Florida in contrast to New York and California the more convinced I am that the masks and lockdowns made things worse. That there is something in this virus which makes it easy to catch when you’re inside most of the time. Furthermore, we know that the panic around the China flu was generated initially by Chinese bots on social media…I’m starting to suspect that this virus was never all that bad except in very narrow circumstances (such as we saw in Wuhan, itself, and in northern Italy) and that we were suckered into the lockdown by a Chinese op.

Trump is firing up the fundraising. Prepping for 2024? Or just building for 2022? Time will tell.

Only 12 States remain as “duty to retreat” States. The rest are “stand your ground“. This is very important because the Left has decreed that you must surrender your property to the robber. This is based on Marxist theory that the only reason there is crime is the unjust distribution of wealth caused by Capitalism – if you have more than someone else, it is stolen goods. So, Lenin’s dictate of “loot the looters”. The more “stand your ground” laws we get, the better.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan13 Comments

The GOP is slow rolling some of Biden’s nominees. Managed to collect the scalp of one of them. Biden is being forced back on minimum wage, amnesty for illegals and election reform. In other words: going as you’d expect when the President is a senile, 78 year old and the Democrats only have 50 Senators and a razor-thin majority in the House.

I did check out Trump’s CPAC speech – still not sure if he’ll try again in 2024, but the bottom line is that at least for the moment, if he runs, he’s got it. Lots can change between now and, say, June of 2023, but it is Trump’s for the asking. We’ll see if he asks. If he doesn’t get in, I’m warming to Ron DeSantis as a lot of people are, though I’m still completely open on whom I’ll actually back.

Lockdowns are being ended in Texas and that’s good – hopefully this will spread, but I’m still thinking the Democrat governors want to keep them going. In fact, I think the overall Democrat desire is to keep them going right through 2024. They seem to have calculated it out that the fear-mongering about Covid benefits them. And, maybe it does? It may well have added a couple million real votes to their total in 2020. There is a big split and a huge number of Americans are simply scared to death of the virus – I can only assume these are the people who still both consume and believe the MSM. Keep in mind that as the States reopen, there will be an economic boost and that will at least temporarily boost Biden.

I hope to goodness we don’t get into a major war these next four years: the military is going entirely SJW. I’ve heard they are even screening social media posts of recruits to see if there is any wrongthink out there. How the heck they plan on staffing the armed forces when they are excluding patriots, I have no idea. I highly recommend against any young people joining the military – and that is a sad thing for a veteran to say. But I don’t think they’ll allow you to be a soldier, sailor, airman or Marine these days. You have to check off the Intersectionality boxes, instead. Not worth the trouble – or the risk that you’ll be sent into battle and your CO got his or her job based on a SJW quota rather than battle worthiness.

Cancel Culture has come for Doctor Seuss and I find it enormously funny. Thy guy was a Commie’s Commie – but he wasn’t woke enough for modern times. Anyone want to tell the SJWs that Che killed homosexuals?

I’m still writing! A lot. Second draft of Shadow Army is now complete and I plan on dropping it in June, with the sequel to that, Kings and Queen, coming maybe in November or December. And I just finished the first draft of Book 6, which had a title but the Mrs hates the title so I’ve probably got to think up a new one.

America’s Future is Trump or Bolshevism

Mark Noonan9 Comments

The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected. Even when the revolutionist might himself repent of his revolution, the traditionalist is already defending it as part of his tradition. Thus we have two great types — the advanced person who rushes us into ruin, and the retrospective person who admires the ruins. He admires them especially by moonlight, not to say moonshine. Each new blunder of the progressive or prig becomes instantly a legend of immemorial antiquity for the snob. This is called the balance, or mutual check, in our Constitution. – G K Chesterton

I saw earlier today a bit of a Blue Check Never Trump True Conservative discussion, the gist of which was a division between those True Cons who say they want to keep fighting in the realm of practical politics and those who are throwing up their hands and will just observe from the outside, as it were. To be clear, this is different from those True Conservatives who have now become mere Democrats (Bill Kristol, Jennifer Rubin, etc). These people still argue in favor of at least some conservative ideals (though I’ve noticed in all of them a softening on issues such as gun rights and abortion) but they simply hate Donald Trump and they despise his legions of supporters. Some, like Jonah Goldberg, have now given up – they’ve written us off, you see? We’re not just Deplorable, but Irredeemable. Others, like Dan MClaughlin haven’t quite given up on us, but they still hate Trump and figure their job – their duty! – is to ween us away from Trump so that a pure, clean Conservatism can revive and… and…

Do what? I mean, what really?

The quote above tells you what: this clean, pure Conservatism will merely ratify what the Progressives did a few years ago. It is all Conservatism has ever done ever since it first arose in response to the enormities of the French Revolution. What the Goldbergs and McLaughlins are aiming at, if anything, is their idealized version of Conservatism circa 1977. If you recall (and some of us are just old enough to remember) it was going to dismantle the New Deal and restore the old American ideal of rugged self reliance. It was going to restore order in the streets, discipline in the classroom and the rule of law in the country. It was led by some very high intellects and, of course, in Ronald Reagan it had a leader who could articulate the ideology in a way that regular folks responded to. And, of course, for all the things that had happened from, say, 1967 to 1977, we were still living in the America our grandfathers would recognize. The seeds of social disintegration were firmly planted and being vigorously cultivated in popular culture, but it hadn’t fully taken hold. Most people were still living in families and there hadn’t been a divorce. Most wives still stayed at home. Most jobs included a nice pension to retire on. We still were a manufacturing powerhouse.

This old Conservatism swept very famously into power in 1980 and here was the big chance – we had the White House, the Senate and a shell-shocked Democrat House majority which still contained a fairly large number of center-right Democrats. We had our matchless Ronald Reagan to lead the charge. And what did we get? Tax cuts and a defense build up.

That’s it. We didn’t even get rid of the Department of Education which had only been created the year before Reagan came in. We couldn’t even dispense with that boondoggle for the teacher’s unions. There was no push back against the social disintegration and no effort was made, even on the smallest level, to stop the hard left’s march through our institutions. But this is still what the Never Trump True Conservatives want us to go back to – to something that ultimately failed.

I’m sorry, guys, but you had your chance. The True Conservatives of 40 years ago messed up. They lost. They conserved nothing. Now its 2021 and there are no rules or norms or even an agreement on basic things such as what is right and wrong. We’ve got a Democrat party enthralled to whomever is the most woke at the moment on the Left. They are pushing programs which will disenfranchise us and force us underground. They are striving to set up an electoral system where no matter what, we lose. Led by whomever is most lunatic at the moment, the Democrat party is leading us, step by step, into a Bolshevik future. It doesn’t matter if Pelosi or Biden don’t mean to lead us there – it is where we’re shoved because inside the Democrat party are hard-left, anti-American, hate-filled lunatics who ultimately set the agenda. At best, the most insane proposals get pushed to the back of the line for a while – but they never get rejected and a few years down the road, they are brought back up to be implemented as if it were common knowledge that they had to be implemented.

We won’t ever go back to the Old America. It is done. Finished. Kaput. A nice memory of days gone by, never to return. What sort of America we will have is what the argument is about – and we are here deciding if it will be a Bolshevik America, or a non-Bolshevik America. It doesn’t matter that you don’t like Trump. It doesn’t matter that you don’t like his most ardent supporters. It is either Trump and his people, or some purple-haired radical activist getting you fired because you didn’t say the correct words fast enough. I mean, seriously: take your pick. Whatever Trump and his Trumpsters are up to, they aren’t going to force you to say things you know are untrue. The left will. They’ll make it a condition for you to be able to hold a job, carry out financial transactions, own a home. You can try to fool yourself – but I don’t believe you can, really – that they won’t go for the most radical of the current proposals, but you’re stupid if you do. You know they will. What was insane on the left a mere five years ago is dogmatic Party Line today.

Anyone who wants to be free has to get in line here. I don’t like a lot of things. But there is only one side which wants to force me to say things I know aren’t true in order to live. I already can’t say a hundred things I know are true – as in indisputable, scientific facts – because if I say them I risk social destruction. The next step is to force me to say lies. I don’t want to go there. I just want to live my life free of coercion. I’m not asking for much. But I can only get that – I can only possibly get that – by signing on to Donald Trump and his supporters. Only they have the chance of stopping the imposition of totalitarian dictatorship in the United States. It isn’t what I would have preferred. I can think of lots of better possibilities. But the only thing I got his him and them so, I’m in. Because I’m not stupid.