The theft of welfare funds in Minnesota has been a topic but now we’re also learning what we already knew: huge amounts of money sent to Ukraine were siphoned off…and, in the end, it will be to corrupt Ukrainians, Europeans and Americans (and I won’t be surprised if some Russians got in on it, as well).

To be fair, almost as long as there has been war there have been war contractors and thus corruption. Napoleon dealt with it by periodically shooting a contractor…not actually to stop the theft, but to keep it to a dull roar. When governments are spending vast sums of money – that is, spending someone else’s money – the temptation to rake off is high. But what we’re seeing out of Ukraine is a bit astonishing. Huge amounts of money which was supposed to go to support the Ukraine battle and home fronts stolen and probably winding up in bank accounts around world…and done with the active and widespread cooperation of Ukrainian government officials, including officials of the Executive branch which is tasked with, you know, sending men to die in battle for the future of Ukraine. Roll that around in your head: the Russians are knocking at the gates of your country, they could break through at any time…every ounce of effort has to be directed to the front…but here were whole networks of Ukrainians (and others) using its as an opportunity to get hookers and blow money.

John Lennon once famously sung about a possible future with no religion – well, Johnny, here ya go. You got what you wanted: a society which doesn’t remotely believe in God. The result? Men dying in a pointless war while those who sent them to die steal everything not nailed down. It is all of a piece, you see? The whole nauseating degradation of the modern world stems from that – people don’t believe in God.

We have people writing weepy-eyed articles right now about how cruel and unjust it is for us to whack drug mules on the high seas. This is a form of theft – part and parcel with those who were stealing the rations of Ukrainian soldiers. It only seems like separate issues but you have to raise your point of view – the person getting a kick back for a Ukrainian defense contract is the same species of crook as the person writing an article essentially saying we have to let the drugs flow. That is, let the poison flow. Have to let people continue to die. Not just the drug addicts, but also people over the whole chain…remember, lots of people get murdered in Latin and South America as the Cartels fight for supremacy or just kill those who irritate them. They are casualties, too…just as dead as the addict in an American gutter. And just as much a precious human being as anyone else. But, we gotta let him die, you see? There’s this theory we pretend to have which says it is better for 100,000 people to die than to have even a slight infringement upon a right we just made up yesterday (in this case, a right to not be killed while smuggling poison). And people writing such articles are stealing – they are being paid money extracted from the productive by force or fraud in order to propagandize in favor of the productive suffering ever more.

And as I noted, its all because of a lack of belief in God. If you believe in God, even if you’re otherwise a criminal, you won’t be the sort of beast who steals rations from soldiers, nor live a nice life writing articles defending the rights of drug smugglers. A thief is a thief…these people are demons. And we have to start lumping them all together…the Minnesota welfare cheat, the Venezuelan drug smuggler, the EU-crat getting a rake off…I don’t care how nice they’re dressed or how many people they pay off to write up excuses, we have to see them for the malevolent, dishonest, soul-destroying demons they are. And I think Trump does – and that’s why he wants to end the war and whack the druggies. It puts the demons out of business. Somewhere in there, Trump believes in God – he’s human. Normal. One of us. And for ten years he’s dealt with these people and knows who they are, on a deep and philosophic level. I just hope that Vance has also internalized just what sort of people are opposing us, because this is going to be the work of generations.

December 7th doesn’t mean much to the younger generation. Remember: we’re nearly a quarter century after 9/11. If you’re under 30, even that date doesn’t mean much. Back to 1941? Eighty four years ago? It is almost out of living memory. Only a few very old people were even alive when it happened – even fewer have any memory of it. Everything eventually gets ravaged by the artillery of time. But it is still one of the pivotal days of modern times.

People still wax misty about 1914 and Sarajevo and, indeed, there is good reason for that – a whole generation of young people singing their way to massacre in the trenches. But for all the destruction of that war, it was the US entry into World Two which was The Event of the 20th century. The First World War was a quick in and out and though Americans largely supported the effort, they weren’t at all keen at staying involved. Good to keep in mind that it wasn’t the Lusitania sinking or the resumption of German unrestricted submarine warfare which got us enthusiastic about the war, it was the Zimmerman Telegram.

That diplomatic note, intercepted by the British and published by them with exquisite timing set America aflame. We didn’t particularly care about who won that war. We figured that if you sailed on the high seas into a war zone, you took your chances – but the prospect of a German-allied Mexico conquering parts of the American southwest enraged us. And so off to war we went. And when it was Over Over There, we came back home, voted in Harding by an astonishing landslide and pretty much acted like the whole thing never happened.

As late as December 6th, 1941 the solid majority of Americans were opposed to entering the war. Keep in mind that the Holocaust was still not generally known about – and wouldn’t really get rolling until 1942. We didn’t like the Nazis but we felt that it was still Europe’s war. Just like Japan’s war in China was Asia’s war. We were sympathetic to China and Britain, and to those laboring under the conqueror’s boot, but we couldn’t see how it mattered to us.

And with good reason – in a very cold and clear light, it didn’t matter to us. Moated as we were by two oceans, with harmless neighbors north and south, with the second largest fleet in the world after Britain (and easily turned into the largest, as we soon saw), with vast territory and wealth untold to be tapped…why go fight in Europe over the difference between the sides? FDR had been doing everything he could to build up a war fever in the USA – and, additionally, the spreading prosperity due to war contracts was whetting appetites – but it just wasn’t working. We remained stubbornly aloof. We could not be conquered. Not by the whole world in arm against us.

But then came the attack. Of course it outraged us. Of course the recruiting offices were jam packed the next day. Of course we swore we’d beat those Japanese SOBs. But while we did that, we also somehow started to unravel the European colonial Empires while lavishing aid on a Soviet Union hostile to every last American ideal. I mean, seriously: we deliberately set about weakening our allies while strengthening our obvious enemy. Sure, in the process wiping out Germany and Japan but, in the end, those two nations never stood a chance. What stood a chance was a global Left standing over the ruins of European Empires and slowly but surely infecting the United States. And here we are. Eighty four years later. Debating over what “woman” means.

This is why I consider Pearl Harbor to be the disaster – the turning point. The one event I’d really like to go back in time and change. It wasn’t that the war was the problem, it was that it allowed the Left to use American power to win the war, claim it as a Leftist victory and then set about over the past eight decades thoroughly degrading everything that the men and women of 1941 fought for.

We didn’t need an NSA. Didn’t need a CIA. Didn’t need a massive standing military. Didn’t need to allow foreigners to dump their second rate garbage in our markets. Didn’t need foreigners to come here and work. What we need was what we had – a nation of sturdy patriots led by people who knew what the heck to do. We needed, in short, a nation that produced Douglas MacArthur and George Patton…not a nation which wonders if a 5 foot tall woman should be in an infantry company.

This is why I’m so enthusiastic about Trump. The past can never be recovered – we won’t ever go back to 1941. But we can certainly try to recapture what we can. And so Hegseth at War. Rubio at State. And Trump, himself, clearly reading and re-reading McKinley and others who built the nation which won the Second World War. We’re becoming American, again. Unafraid. Hard working. With good will towards the world but no desire be immersed in its (often) very stupid problems. Set against us is the world and that section of the American population which has ceased to be actually American – you know the type without even a description. We’re just strong enough to beat them, and the longer we beat them the more people will come over to our side…until all these weirdos on the Left are nothing but a distant memory.

So Trump and Mamdani had their meet and everyone is a little bit confused by it all. Trump was nice and Mamdani was respectful. On the Left there are already those calling Mamdani a sellout and on the Right there are those calling Trump a sellout. But there was one outraged comment from the Left that – unintentionally – said it all:

“Look at that, he kissed Trump’s a** and now Trump is being nice to him.”

He didn’t, of course, kiss anything – but he was nice and so Trump was nice in return. That’s the whole problem with the American Left: they’ve simply refused to be nice. Because Hillary was really mad she lost and so tried a post-facto coup against Trump, the Left has internalized total hatred of Trump. That is, Hillary’s op is the core principle of the Left these days. But if the Left had just ignored that old hag and dismissed her fury at not being given her turn, then we’d be in a whole different situation.

Trump is, very famously, a deal maker. Had the Left come to Trump, hat in hand, back in 2017 and said, “ok, Don: we want this, what do you want from us in return?”, then Trump would have sat down with them, talked it out over a period of time, and then – a country united – we would have enacted a series of reforms which would have given all sides half a loaf. You know, like its supposed to be in America. They would have, for instance, got something like Medicare for All but in return for that they might have had to surrender completely their opposition to nuclear power…so, here in 2025 we’d have a very expensive and clunky socialized medicine system (bad, but what the Left wants) but we’d be generating so much nuke energy with resultant economic growth that paying for the Left’s socialized medicine would be bearable. On and on like that on issue after issue. Get. Give. Give. Get.

Abolition of property taxes on primary residences in return for an excise tax on luxury homes.

Deportation of every illegal in return for increasing the number of legal immigrants allowed per year.

Annulment of student debt in return for affirmative action (as it were) for center and right voices in college.

Increased funding for public schools in return for universal school choice.

On and on and on like that. Nobody totally satisfied but everyone getting a slice of the pie. The Left totally rejected that. And now comes Mamdani – a foreign born communist. The absolute enemy of all we hold dear. But, OTOH, he was just elected mayor of our largest city and instantly becomes one of the most influential people in the USA. Just keep hating on him? Or bring him in for a chat? Always the first option is to be “chat”. Maybe the man is totally thick and can’t be reached. Fine. Then we’re no worse off than before. But maybe he’ll listen? The man said he loved New York City. It is the first time I’ve ever heard him say anything positive about any aspect of the United States. All it took to draw that out was a chat with Trump.

It is always important to remember that God forbids us to hate other people. We can hate what they do, but we can’t hate them. To do that is a sin. I absolutely loath Mamdani’s program…but I keep away from hating him. And, indeed, I sort of pity him. He’s the product of the modern American Establishment. He got a degree, but no education. He’s never worked in his life. He’s always been surrounded by the most privileged elite in American society where everyone just agrees and it is always a ratchet moving relentlessly further Left. Point blank: the man simply does not know. But as a man, he is capable of learning. Of growth. Of thinking it over. Maybe for the first time in his life. We know the problem with our Left: they never think. They just receive a propaganda point and run with it forever. So far, all Mamdani has ever done is run with the propaganda. He might go his whole life doing that. If he does, then he’ll remain a pest and a threat to the USA. But if he even for a moment starts to think, then he might become a valuable member of our society. Trump was placing a bet he could get that young man to think a bit. Maybe it’ll work. Mamdani – suddenly thinking – would not be the first person of the Left who shifted sides over time.

And if this effort by Trump falls flat on its face? Fine. We gave Mamdani his chance. What will happen after that is already in the script…he’ll staff up with far Left freaks who are also corrupt as the day is long and Trump – followed by Vance – will simply launch one federal investigation after another that will easily find the graft and the whole Mamdani experiment will collapse in a series of lawsuits and federal indictments. But if Mamdani thinks a bit, we might be able to get some useful things done in New York City which starts to break down the upper class Left’s hold on the city. Let’s see what happens.