Trump

Open Thread

Mark Noonan37 Comments

Polling, as we know, is mostly useless – probably more useless now than its ever been. In the Trump vs DeSantis fight, they show Trump up big nationally, but DeSantis running neck and neck in State polling, especially Iowa. My thoughts: we’re being fed polls designed to please Trumpsters and DeSantis-stans so that internal bickering will increase and get people to stake out “Only Trump” or “Never Trump” positions which would help Pudding Brain next year.

Remember: it is always an op. What is put out for public consumption is designed to get you to believe what isn’t true and act against your own best interests. They are never telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Nothing is for free – and if the product is free, then you are actually the product. Someone paying for a poll and handing it to you “free” means they want you to believe a certain way…nobody puts up money just for the heck of it.

RFK, Jr got into the race. He’s got no chance. Not even if Pudding Brain kicks the bucket. He is far Left loon on a lot of a positions, but not on all of them and as the rich and corporations have gone ever more Woke, they are now key elements of the Democrat coalition – RFK does take stabs at them and they’ll never forgive him for doing that. He’s also in bad repute because he is a traditional Left anti-war Democrat, taking up the mantle of his father…while the Democrats are all pro-war over Ukraine and speak nary a word against the Military-Industrial Complex these days. His anti-vax ideology is also mostly absurd – but it worked out to be spot-on with the Covid vaccine so that will garner him some support among the more Libertarian parts of the Left. Not nearly enough to make a difference in the Democrat primaries.

OTOH hand, Newsom is making all sorts of moves which are clearly preparing for a White House run. Mostly low key but doing things like ripping on RDS and donating money to the Tennessee Democrat party are things you only do if you want support from Democrats in Florida and Tennessee…States Pudding Brain is catastrophically unpopular in and which a solid challenger might do some damage in a Democrat primary. Remember: LBJ was all set to run again in 1968 until he merely did worse than expected in New Hampshire. It wouldn’t take much to get the Democrat power people (who are all largely owned by either the Clinton or Obama machines) to dump China Joe. On the other, other hand Newsom might just be keeping an iron in the fire in case Joe goes so gaga or dies that the Democrats have to run others…and worse comes to worst, Newsom is positioning himself for 2028. He will definitely run for President – do not doubt that. He’s confident he can win (and he’s got a lot of reason to be confident – the MSM will puff him up like the Second Coming).

The most recent spate of shootings are clearly the result of Democrats pumping up apocalyptic rhetoric and just waiting for one of their deranged followers to explode. They’ll keep doing this. Oh, you think they wouldn’t do that? Rely on it, guys: people who favor abortion to birth don’t care about human life. They don’t have to order anyone to do it…they know, they’ve got a huge and growing crop of followers who are insane and who are driven to depression by unrelenting “the world is dying” and “GOP is Nazi” rhetoric.

What the J6 Videos Tell Us

Mark Noonan53 Comments

To get the easy part out first: they tell us the DNC/MSM Narrative about J6 is false. But, we already knew that.

If you wish to put the worst possible spin on it, what you come away with is a riot. Certainly not something you want to happen and certainly something worth pursuing judicial action against the worst offenders. But it was not an insurrection. They were not trying to overthrow the government nor prevent the normal functions of government. They were just there to express their anger over a vote they felt was tainted and demand that Congress examine the vote before certifying the Presidential winner. Perhaps a forlorn hope. Perhaps even a silly hope. But it is what they wanted – not to end the American system of government, but to ensure that the American system of government functioned as designed.

That is what is really causing the fracture: the sense on the Right – and especially among normal, everyday people – that the system isn’t functioning as it is supposed to. Our Senators are supposed to represent our States. Our Congresspeople are supposed to represent us. The Executive Branch is supposed to see to it that the laws are faithfully enforced. The Judiciary is supposed to smack down with finality any attempt by government to act outside the Constitution. That’s all the protestors wanted – and maybe they did get far more rowdy than they should have, but the demand was for justice and transparency.

What they got was arrested and called domestic terrorists. People who are the very backbone of our nation – the people who do the actual work. Who serve in the military. Who pay their bills, pay their taxes, never steal…they were called domestic terrorists.

Not, it must be said, the people who looted the stores of small businesses. Not the people who burned down buildings. Not the people who set up “autonomous zones” where crime ran rampant. Not the people who attacked the White House. They aren’t the domestic terrorists. The people who live off the workers, who are mostly rich and privileged or welfare bums…they can commit horrific acts of violence and they are barely even arrested…but regular folks go to their government to demand redress of grievances…domestic terrorists.

So, even if you want to puff up J6 as a riot, there is still the massive disparity in treatment – one side gets the book thrown at them, the other side gets barely a slap on the wrist. The shaman guy was apparently escorted at least part of the way in by the police. Plenty of officers had opportunities to quietly arrest the loon, or at least escort him off the premises. They didn’t. And now this harmless kook gets four years…for nothing.

And that brings us to the more difficult aspect of this. Ever since the videos were released last night a growing chorus of voices on the Right have called for them to be ignored, to be denigrated. They demand we accept the Official Narrative (McConnell specifically urged this today) rather than what we can see with our own eyes. They are slandering Tucker Carlson every chance they get (you know I have no love for Carlson: to me, he’s just another MSMer…maybe better than most, but still not my ally). They are still insisting it was an insurrection and that the book needed to be thrown at the J6 protestors. I have never been more angry and disgusted in all my life. Rely on it, a part of me wants the Left to win now, just so I can see these cretins hauled before a tribunal they can’t defend themselves against.

And the GOP politicians and Conservative pundits did this on their own. It wasn’t Democrats or MSMers making their rote demands that the GOP condemn whatever the DNC has targeted for opprobrium…these people did it on their own. They volunteered to be water carriers for the Ruling Class. They are absolutely committed to the DNC Narrative.

And, so, the last fig leaf is off. We know. We can’t ignore it any longer: these people are not on our side. They weren’t fooled. They weren’t uncertain. They weren’t just misinterpreting the data: all along they were maliciously lying, just as the Democrats were. Oh, to be sure, they dressed it up a bit…making this or that complaint about the process and maybe making a barbed remark or two about this or that Democrat involved…but from the start they signed on for the cruise. The story agreed upon by the DNC after January 6th was that Trump incited an attempted coup: and plenty of our own GOPers and fellow Conservatives bought it and committed themselves to it. And they are sticking with it: and that can only mean they’re being paid to do it. No way anyone with a shred of decency sticks to the Narrative after the videos were released. Even if Carlson edited them to be as unfair as possible to the Narrative, the bottom line is that you can see, with your own eyes, that the cops didn’t act to stop people from coming in and, indeed, showed them around.

As of right now, I’m re-committed to Trump in 2024. I can’t vote for anyone else: he’s the only person who has demonstrated by word and deed that he’s on my side. Maybe DeSantis can still do it. We’ll see. But absent DeSantis or some other candidate conclusively proving that they are on my side, I have to stick with Trump. One thing is certain, we can’t go on like this – we must get a political party which is on our side. If we can’t force the GOP to do that, then we’ll have to start from scratch. We must bring an end to this corrupt, lying, murderous Ruling Class.

We Lost: Victory Beckons

Mark Noonan16 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So, why the history lesson?

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

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

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

Open Thread

Mark Noonan139 Comments

Liz Cheney wasn’t defeated last night, she was humiliated. If it hadn’t been for Democrats crossing over to vote for her, I bet she wouldn’t have cracked 15%. As it was, with their votes, she inched up to 28%. This is a rejection not just of the Old Guard, but of the sort of Republican who will spend time attacking fellow GOPers based on the Democrat Narrative. That is important – there are reasons for intra-party battles. You can, under certain circumstances, speak ill of your fellow GOPer. But it has to be on our terms, not Democrat terms. The J6 Narrative that Cheney signed on for is based, ultimately, on the Steele Dossier…in other words, they’re still going with the underlying assumption that Trump is a Russian agent set upon the American people to turn us into a fascist dictatorship (how this helps Russia is left unexplained). The raid on Trump’s home was in furtherance of this (though I did read someone thinking that the raid was to recover Hillary documents that Trump had declassified: this rings a bit true). Brian Kemp in Georgia firmly rejected Trump’s contention that fraud caused the loss – I believe Kemp is wrong in this (and his actions in strengthening voter security indicate that even Kemp thinks he was a little wrong on this), but Kemp managed to do this while keeping the GOP base largely on his side. You can thread this needle – you can, that is, go against Trump (or any other competing GOPer) and still come out roses on the other end. But no longer can you do this if you betray the GOP Base.

And that is just the thing: we GOP voters were tired of being betrayed. We put up with Bushes and McCains and Romneys on the promise that while they’d trim their sails to the Left from time to time to retain electoral viability, when push came to shove they’d get done what we most cared about – and all these people ever did was betray us on what we think most crucial. So, we’re done with them – and, yes, we have now made Trump a litmus test. Some are very upset about this, but is has to be. We need a quick shorthand for whether or not someone will betray us – and joining Democrats to attack Trump is the bright red, flashing light that you’re a RINO Establishment creep.

There are tens of millions of people in the USA who don’t work – and I mean, like ever: they are permanently or semi-permanently on welfare. We also have a host of people who have office jobs which produce no value…HR people, diversity coordinators, extra layers of Administrative staff. Combined, I’ll bet these total about 50 million of our population. We can’t sustain this: these people will have to get real jobs. Any system we craft to replace the fiat money/debt/welfare/billionaire system we have now will have to address the economically useless – and make them useful. When we build a new economy (and we’ll have to as our old economy is completely wiped out: in many ways, we’ll be starting all over again from scratch), we must ensure that everyone physically capable of work does something useful. Nobody is allowed to skate – whether that skating be via welfare or working out a powerpoint on DEI. To bluntly speak it: we’ll have to compel them (at first) to work…and that might mean work projects like CCC from the Depression…at least get these people on to a job site and have them put some hours in. It is the best means of breaking the twin cycles of welfare dependency and bureaucratic empire building. I chipped paint in the Navy, guys. Did I like it? No. But I did it. Also washed dishes and cleaned bathrooms (bathrooms used by 30 men to get ready for the day, ya know?). It wasn’t humiliating: it was work. I did it and I did it well (those fricking sinks glowed when I was done with them). It taught me how to do physical work and to take pride in a job well done – any job well done. Everyone needs this as the basis of their work life no matter what else they do later.

They’re going after kids as young as two to start transition. This is frightening. The only two year old who is trans is the two y ear old with insane parents. I do believe that this push to transition kids, especially prepubescent kids, will one day be viewed with the same horror we view the Tuskegee Experiments and Eugenics.

Britain is still north of 80% white – and the RAF is pausing the hiring of white men in order to increase diversity. And think about this – allegedly, a Conservative party is in power in the UK right now. This is what is wrong with the world: it has gone full Marxist/Globalist/Moneybags and they all, regardless of stated beliefs, go one way on policy. This is why Trump is hated – it is also why Orban in Hungary is hated. Unpopular observation: it is why Putin is hated (they don’t hate Xi, even though for China he’s as much a patriot as any of these…but Xi provides a lot of money to the global elite, so he’s off limits). Don’t get me wrong: Putin is a bastard in his own right…but he’s also for Russia. As Orban is for Hungary and Trump is for the USA. We should never fear someone who is looking after their own people and trying to get them the most advantage…we just need leaders who will do that for us.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan28 Comments

Euthanasia is the 6th leading cause of death in Canada – and, as you and I knew would happen, people are being pressured to off themselves when they get seriously ill and/or old. As I’ve said for ages, the fundamental problem with nationalized health care is that there is no incentive to care for sick people. All that does is cost money and take time. For someone working in a nationalize health system, the whole incentive is to provide as little care as possible because you don’t get more money for providing more care…all you get for providing more care is more work. And the success of the “death with dignity” ghouls has played right into this…why spend the time and money taking care of the 80 year old with a chronic illness when you can guilt trip them into killing themselves?

Been watching the Netflix series Narcos: Mexico and it is quite good – minimal woke drivel (though there is some, of course) and a gripping story of how the Mexican drug cartels rose. Being familiar with a lot of the events I can easily tell when the story is adhering to fact and when it is altering it for dramatic and time purposes. As I’ve watched and went down memory lane on the War on Drugs, I find that I’m viewing it all through a bit of a different prism these days. The show, itself, does a very clever job of showing the flaws of the DEA and law enforcement in general while also highlighting just how cruel and wicked the drug lords are while still not making them entire monsters – leaving them just a shred of their humanity to make their (usually violent) ends pathetic. But it also got me thinking. One of the things presented in the first episode is a claim that half a million people have died in the drug war in Mexico. A shocking figure which at first glance is simply unbelievable.

But, then you think about it and check – between 2015 and 2021 211,000 people were murdered in Mexico. Officially. The real number is probably higher given the very large number of people who simply disappear. Nobody really knows how many of these people died as a result of the drug trade (who is going to really investigate that?): estimates range from just under half to more than two thirds. I think it the latter number – and in reality probably ninety percent are direct or indirect from the drug trade. Gun ownership is pretty much illegal in Mexico and that means only the police and the cartels have guns, after all. So, anyways, 211,000 in a seven year span is 30,000 per year. Call it half are drug and you get 15,000 (and probably a lot higher) and then you take that back to DEA Agent Camarena‘s murder (which is when we got serious about it) in 1985…and, yeah, low end you get half a million Mexicans dead in the drug war. Probably half of US murders are directly or indirectly related to the drug war, as well. Then you’ve got to add in Central and South America…and we’re probably into a couple million dead. Over cocaine. Just amazing. And its not like we’ve made a dent in it.

Nobody knows how big the global trade in drugs is, but its hundreds of billions of impossible to trace, tax-free, cash transactions (when you get away with it, of course!). And we’ve been told it can’t be stopped. I’m not buying that. I don’t think anyone wants it stopped. I mean, we know that the Mexican government via bribery and threats is pretty much owned by the cartels…but how much of ours is? How many Americans are on the payroll? Is this the real reason for resistance to border security? And its not like the US is a mere destination for cocaine – the price of cocaine doubles from New York City to Antwerp…and whoever is moving it from the Big Apple to Europe is taking their cut. And then you think of crack which is a way to make pricey cocaine available to people who are, lets face it, largely on welfare both in the USA and Europe; as if someone figured out how to get the taxpayers to subsidize drug addiction. As for laundering the money…you think China would refuse to launder drug lord money which provides a product which weakens their western adversaries? I believe it is time to rethink our views here – and understand that what is happening isn’t just something that happens. Some very powerful people are making sure it happens.

Interesting thing on education:

As a teacher in Oakland, Calif., Kareem Weaver helped struggling fourth- and fifth-grade kids learn to read by using a very structured, phonics-based reading curriculum called Open Court. It worked for the students, but not so much for the teachers. “For seven years in a row, Oakland was the fastest-gaining urban district in California for reading,” recalls Weaver. “And we hated it.”

The teachers felt like curriculum robots—and pushed back. “This seems dehumanizing, this is colonizing, this is the man telling us what to do,” says Weaver, describing their response to the approach. “So we fought tooth and nail as a teacher group to throw that out.” It was replaced in 2015 by a curriculum that emphasized rich literary experiences. “Those who wanted to fight for social justice, they figured that this new progressive way of teaching reading was the way,” he says.

Now Weaver is heading up a campaign to get his old school district to reinstate many of the methods that teachers resisted so strongly: specifically, systematic and consistent instruction in phonemic awareness and phonics. “In Oakland, when you have 19% of Black kids reading—that can’t be maintained in the society,” says Weaver…

Good for Weaver to see the light and I wish all success – but think about Weaver’s initial reaction to it: hated it. And now he has to fight to get it back in. And who will he be fighting? The teachers. Guarantee you the parents are probably on board. But this is how our Ruling Class views things: through Marxist ideology on race and class. That is how far it has penetrated into our society – that people will fight to defend a system which leaves 80 percent of black kids illiterate on the theory that at least they aren’t literate under Capitalism and White Supremacy.

Spot on about Trump and his opponents:

Trump isn’t just a MacGuffin, but he is a symbol, and more. Sarah Palin was a similar symbol before him, but because she never was elected VP that sort of faded. Trump would have faded from their ire, too, if he had lost the 2016 election. His winning was the outrage. They could not believe it, and he MUST BE STOPPED from ever winning again. Not just him, though; any Republican who isn’t part of the genteel NeverTrumper club. Any Republican who might really be serious about stopping them and especially about draining the so-called swamp. It is a deadly serious game and they are determined to win.

Trump himself said it, and he was correct: “They’re not after me, they’re after you – I’m just in the way.”

We’re living in a world where those who have the juice are living ever better while for everyone else it just gets worse. This is not sustainable but the Ruling Class is determined to sustain it anyway. Trump placed their game at risk.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan32 Comments

Sorry I haven’t been around, but the Chinese Bat Flu finally got me – felt my first symptoms on Saturday evening and tested positive on Monday morning. Basically, I’m ok – but it is a miserable cold. I seem to be pretty much past the fatigue/fever/ache part of it and am now in the cough/nasal congestion area – which is what I always hate the most about any cold. Anyways, not much inclination to write.

The leak of the supposed overturn of Roe is, in my mind, a desperate, last ditch attempt by Democrats to keep urban woman on board…as prices and shortages continue, there becomes less and less incentive for any Democrat constituency to show up in November and I guess they felt that it was slipping away so badly they needed to move on this now rather than wait for the decision to come in June.

And I think this leak is worse than a crime, it is an error. Democrats have been able to sustain a significant level of support for abortion by making sure nobody knows that Roe legalized it to the moment of birth. Poll after poll shows that solid majorities favor restrictions or bans on abortion after the first trimester. And, so, you never hear that talked about in the MSM…because the Democrats can’t afford to have people know that their abortion position is radical. Heck, the Alabama law in question only bans after 15 weeks…which makes it roughly line with France…hardly a hotbed of Christian fundamentalism (and in France you have to have two medical consults before the abortion is performed – which, to me, is still wrong, but it is at least reasonable).

Trump endorsed candidates swept the boards in Ohio…which shows the continuing power of Trump within the GOP. The sensible part of Never Trump (there really is such a thing) has been so desperately hoping that Trump was at last fading…but I’ve been pointing out to them that for a lot of people, the worse Team Pudding Brain gets, the more Trump will shine in hindsight. I really got under their skin a week or so ago by suggesting this will even most people to believe 2020 was stolen as nobody will want to admit they were suckered by the anti-Trump media op.

A Pushback Against Barbarism

Mark Noonan17 Comments

On Christmas Eve, I watched on TV a bit of the Mass at St. Peter’s in Rome – and there is nothing quite as impressive as St. Peter’s Basilica. Say what you will about the Catholic Church, St. Peter’s is clearly the product of a highly advanced and refined civilization.

As I watched, a little distracted by the English translation (I wish they hadn’t bothered…certainly no Catholic needed to know what was going on; we know, no matter what language) it occurred to me that St. Peter’s was probably heavily locked down by security and all sorts of screening and barriers were around and within the Church…all to prevent a savage from carrying out a horrific act. And then it really hit me:

In the very heart of our civilization, we are not safe.

Think about what we have around us, every day, grating against normality. A prominent lady on Twitter, the daughter of immigrants, related the other day her tale of woe in getting the new driver’s license. All the extra documentation she needed to obtain and provide so that she, an American, could prove to her own government that she was, indeed, a citizen of the Republic and so should be allowed to enter federal buildings. And even if she got that ID, she’d still need to take off her belt and shoes and run them and her purse through a scanner while she, herself, was quickly x-rayed on the way in. And let’s pause for a moment and think about those round, concrete bollards which have sprouted like mushrooms in front of all sorts of buildings and places…barriers against a barbarian driving a car or truck into us.

We are imprisoning ourselves – caging our own people, while barbarians roam free.

This is wrong. This is terrible. This is not how civilized people are supposed to live. It is the barbarians who should be running and hiding from us…not we erecting anti-terrorism barriers in front of our buildings, parks and places of worship. And it is becoming so ubiquitous that even us older folks aren’t noticing it – but worse than that, the youngsters are growing up thinking that it is normal to have such things. That to live you have barriers and machine guns and tanks and, with all that, the barbarians will get through from time to time and carry out a massacre.

No. No. No. That is not what should be.

Qassim Soleimani was a very dapper man – in uniform or mufti, he was always carefully groomed and well turned out. But make no mistake about it, he was a barbarian. Doubly so because he deliberately became one, rejecting the 4,000 year old civilization he was born into. He was not, be sure of it, the only person in the world organizing and funding barbarism…but he was one of the main ones. When Trump ordered him killed, a peculiar bit of satisfaction came over me…the purveyor of blood finally paid in blood for what he did. I’ve been saying for years that Islamism is a con. As much of a con as Nazism or Communism is or ever was. It is a grift; a justification for a mafia-like entity to batten itself upon a nation and suck its blood. Not for the leaders of Islamism is strapping on a bomb and blowing up a marketplace – nope; they convince others (or force via threats to families, if needed) to do that. Because it really is just a con: what they say and do merely justifies their barbarism…and allows them what they, and all barbarians, really want: to live fat on the carcass of civilization…making nothing and doing nothing of merit, but having the luxuries of life in gross.

Trump struck a hard blow against barbarism – and promises more of the same if the Iranian leadership doesn’t cool it. But to me, that isn’t quite enough. We need to forcefully let everyone know that civilization wins. That we will punish those who seek to kill and destroy as a means of garnering unearned wealth and power. For decades we’ve allowed the barbarians to push us back to the point where we’re bunkered into our churches and government offices…now is the time to start the counter-attack.

And I can’t think of a better way than painting a target on the backs of the barbarian leaders. Let them know that if they orchestrate savagery, we’re coming after them – that they will die; that they will no longer live well while others die. Do it often enough, and they will change their tune because all those who seek to live well off others primarily want to live. They are brutes, to be sure, but also cowards of the lowest sort. Mere amoral appetite…and the thing that terrifies them the most is losing wealth and life.

Thinking About the Ruling Class vs Everyone

Mark Noonan33 Comments

Over in Britain, the Brexit vote in Parliament has been delayed – because it probably would have gone down to crushing defeat and forced PM May’s ouster. I have no sympathy – she negotiated a deal which essentially kept the EU in power over Britain…except that, now, Britain wouldn’t even have a say in the EU. This, to me, was a feature, not a bug: the idea being, I’m guessing, that eventually the British people could be convinced that they must rejoin the EU. The plain fact of the matter is that no “deal” needs to be negotiated. All the British government has to do is say, “we’re out” and they’d be done. But that would only have happened if anyone in the British Ruling Class gave a damn about the will of the British people.

Meanwhile, over in France, les Deplorables have been conducting some pretty impressive riots. Seems that the French people have also had it with their Ruling Class selling them down the river. We’ll see how this comes out – personally, I’m hoping it develops into a genuine revolution.

Naturally, the Ruling Class is saying that the Russians are behind the French protests.

Still seeing lots of people speaking in favor of Experts. Ross Douthat has an interesting thing to say on that:

…meritocrats are often educated to be bad leaders, and bad people, in a very specific way — a way of arrogant intelligence unmoored from historical experience, ambition untempered by self-sacrifice. The way of the “best and the brightest” at the dawn of the technocratic era and the “smartest guys in the room” decades later, the way of the arsonists of late-2000s Wall Street and the “move fast and break things” culture of Silicon Valley…

Do read the whole thing. Mostly because you won’t agree with all of it. The bottom line is a fundamental irresponsibility. That they really lack merit and are often wrong isn’t the biggest problem: the biggest problem is that they never have to pay a price. Sowell often points this out in his books: those who propose to do all sorts of odd things are never the people who have to suffer the consequences. I came across a sorta-Conservative guy on Twitter (I’m guess he’s at least modestly famous, but I had never heard of him before) and he was arguing that America must take charge of the world! Be strong! Get out there and fight…and then I looked at his picture and saw a fairly fit, young man but his bio didn’t seem to include anything about military service. I suggested “you, first” to him: that if he wants America to flex her muscles in the world, that he go out and be that muscle…and get back to us once he was deployed.

Mixed right in with that was a small debate with a much beloved (and extremely liberal) friend where he was sort of on the side of Experts. I rejoined that the more stupid a person is, the more vital it is that they be consulted on the major issues. Experts build atomic bombs: morons drink beer and eat chips. On the whole, the more beer-drinking and chip-eating we do, the better off we are.

Chesterton once opined that it was disturbing how few politicians are hanged. And there is more in that than the mere healthy desire to kill those in charge from time to time. The larger issue is that a price must be paid for our follies…and every now and again, it would be salubrious to have those who promoted the follies be first up the scaffold. FDR, George C. Marshall and Ernest King are honored in the United States these days…you can find out all sorts of details about them and stand in rapt admiration over their deeds…but, you’ll find out less about the guys who were buried after dying of dysentery in a squalid, Japanese POW camp, even though the people ultimately responsible for those deaths were, precisely, FDR, George C. Marshall and Ernest King. You know: they made horrible, stupid mistakes…and then got other people, less famous, to pay the blood price to repair their errors. It would be simple justice if, every now and again, the FDR’s, Marshall’s and King’s swung from lamp posts.

But getting that done is very difficult. The problem is that you need people who can have a say but who don’t want to say much. Once upon a time, the Catholic Church tried it – at the peak, they managed to have King Henry II of England flogged for murdering St. Thomas Becket. To tell you how that came out, long term, one only needs say that Henry VIII had St Thomas’ bones scattered. The trouble is that people who care deeply about politics are those who tend to rise in politics…and they’re never terribly interested in fixing things; nor can they be relied upon to hang themselves are regular intervals.

So, Revolution is the only way out of this mess. We here in the United States are fortunate in that we have built in mechanisms which allows us alter or to abolish our government without the necessity of engaging in bloody revolution. Unless, of course, we get a situation where the Ruling Class tries an end run around the Constitution by, say, removing a popularly elected President on bogus charges. We’ll see how that plays out.

But make no mistake about it – we are entering, globally, a revolutionary time. It is a complex battle which pits those who make and do against those who consider themselves smarter than those who make and do. It is your local plumber against the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, if you want it in a nutshell. The victory for our side comes when we successfully demonstrate that the Ruling Class is both corrupt and illegitimate – that is when they’ll be turned out of power.