Alternative History

A near-miss is still a miss

Posted on April 2, 2023April 2, 2023 by Mike

Hinderaker gets close, but just misses.

No doubt Trump will get a political bump in the short term, but what if the case is still going on when the primary season begins? Will Republican primary voters really want to nominate a candidate who is in the midst of a criminal proceeding that theoretically could send him to jail? I don’t know.

But I do know that today is an evil day in America’s history. The Democrats are behaving like a party from a pre-Enlightenment, pre-constitutional era. Seeing themselves in the driver’s seat, they are making a naked grab for totalitarian power across a broad range of issues and institutions. Indicting a former president on frivolous grounds is shocking, but it is of a piece with the strategies Democrats are following in Washington and across the country.

Emphasis mine. Actually, they’re behaving like an immune-from-consequences Ruling Class Uniparty operating in a post-Constitutional era in which Enlightenment ideals such as individual self-determination, moral rectitude, equality under the law, and the consent of the governed have been—like the Constitution itself—not merely dismissed and forgotten as irrelevant historical artifacts of no substantive interest, but actively flung down and danced upon. Which, in Amerika v2.0, they’re one hundred percent true and correct about. Wolf Howling gets a bit closer still, but in the end also misses the salient point.

Our Constitution and the laws of this nation are nothing more than words on a page. They were written for a people who operated in good faith. There is no more good-faith to be had in progressive America. There are now two classes of Americans. You are either a progressive ideologue operating above the law, or you are a person below the protections of the law and the Constitution.

District Attorney Alvin Bragg has led a grand jury to indict Donald Trump on 30 felony counts, seemingly all without any reasonable basis in the law. Bragg has, with his wholly political persecution of Donald Trump, led our nation across the Rubicon. The last time this literally happened, Rome fell into Civil War and the Roman Republic came to an end. The last time something of this magnitude metaphorically happened in colonial America, the Brits were marching to Concord with orders to arrest Samuel Adams and John Hancock for treason. How did that work out?

Quite well for the liberty-minded, of course. The problem we have is that today, there is nary an Adams (either John or Samuel), Hancock, Jefferson, or Washington in sight. Whether there still exists a stout Three Percent of “rough men” standing ready to “do violence on our behalf” remains to be seen.

The rest of Wolf’s post is well worth a look, including among other items a brace of highly amusing memes from the prophets at the Babylon Bee.

(Via Reynolds and Hoyt)

Would that it were so

Posted on March 30, 2023March 30, 2023 by Mike

Incredible as it seems now, there was a day long ago when David Letterman was actually funny.

What would happen if Evel Knievel was president? David Letterman’s top ten answers from 1991 😂#funny #evelknievel #topten #davidletterman #bikelife #legendary #merica 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/kEIL1HuiNV

— Evel Knievel (@evelknievel)

March 30, 2023

I like numbers 7, 8, and 9 best, personally. We coulda done a lot worse than a President Knievel. And, y’know, have.

Weapons of “war”

Posted on March 30, 2023March 30, 2023 by Mike

The hoplophobic, fascist shitlibs don’t have the vaguest clue what they’re prattling about. Not that that’s ever stopped them.

Sen. Kennedy Stumps Mayorkas (Again) Regarding the Definition of ‘Assault Weapons’ He Wants to Ban

Well, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is not having a good week. Earlier this week, he got raked over the coals by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) over the border crisis.

Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) also got a turn with Mayorkas and, as he’s been known to do, asked the secretary a few simple questions that someone in his position ought to be able to answer.

“Mr. Secretary yesterday you testified in judiciary that you support an assault weapon ban and we didn’t have much time to talk about that. Tell me your definition—once more—of an assault weapon,” the senator asked.

Easy, right? When someone says he wanst to ban assault weapons, it stands to reason that he should know what an assault weapon is. Mayorkas would prove in his responses that he has absolutely no idea.

“I am not an expert, right respect to the definition but of the assault bands. And so I defer to—”

“You are the Secretary of Homeland Security,” Kennedy reminded him, clearly suggesting that he ought to know the answer.

“—as as a I was about to say, I defer to the experts, I defer to, for example, the definition of an assault weapon that was codified in the prior iteration of the legislation that was passed and that was in operation when I served as an assistant United States attorney and the United States Attorney in the Central District.”

“So you would support the prior definition…”

“Senator I must defer to the experts with respect to the definition,” Mayorkas said again, before really stepping in it. “But I will tell you, for example, military—military-style weapons are of tremendous concern. ”

“You personally think we should ban assault weapons, and I know you tobe an intelligent man and a thinking person, so I know you’ve thought about it,” Kennedy responded. “What do you mean by military-style weapon?”

Spoiler alert: Mayorkas didn’t know the definition of “military-style weapon” either.

Naturally, Mayorkas is hardly unique in his stem-to-stern ignorance.

Jamaal Bowman Throws Unhinged Fit Against GOP in Hallway, Thomas Massie Drops a Little Reality on Him

For Democrats, whenever there is a mass shooting, it’s the fault of the gun. If the shooter is someone folks view as someone “one of theirs,” it’s the fault of the gun and the evil intolerant society that somehow must have affected the poor shooter, as we saw in the case of the Nashville shooting.

The answer, of course, is that in every case, whoever the shooter is, it’s the fault of the shooter. A gun is just a tool, that can be used for bad or for good, like a knife, a fork, or virtually anything else. The gun isn’t invested with evil powers to shoot people just because it’s an AR-15 or an AK-47. It just looks scarier to folks on the left who know nothing about guns. We heard crazy things on Tuesday from Democrats like Joe Biden claiming that an “AR-15 bullet” will “blow up inside the body.” Yet, he’s in a position of immense power to affect laws and is issuing executive orders from on high when it comes to guns.

But I think the award for the unhinged take of Wednesday has to go to Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), a radical Squad member, who just started screaming in the public hallway, falsely blaming Republicans for school shootings. To him, “doing something” means more gun control. Yet he never seems to explain how if virtually every school is “gun-free” why there are mass shootings in schools. So instead of talking about real solutions with Republicans, he throws a fit in the hallway for the cameras and calls the GOP “cowards.” No, sir, cowards are those who shout down anyone who thinks differently than you and who are afraid to deal with the real issues. But Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) stops, tries to calm him down, and gets him to talk. He does manage to lay a little reality on him.

Massie told him that schools don’t allow teachers to carry. That caused Bowman to lose his mind, screaming, “More guns equals more death.” Notice how Bowman was shouting and not listening to what Massie was saying.

Yep, just your typical, Mk 1-Mod 0 shitlib arrogance in ignorance. As for civilian vs military arms, here’s another little tidbit of information the Leftards will blithely go to their graves in total blank ignorance of (via Herschel—thanks!).

Original ATF AR-15 Classification Refutes Claim that Rifle ‘Not Meant’ for Civilians

U.S.A. – -(Ammoland.com)- “This responds to your Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request…concerning the following: 1. All classification letters (or if classification letters were named in some other way, those records) regarding Model R6000 Colt AR-15 SP1 Sporter Rifle, Serial No. GX4968 which was approved in approximately 1963; and 2. All classification letters…for AR-15 platform rifles predating the submission to the ATF for the Colt AR15 SP1 Sporter Rifle,” Adam C. Siple, Chief Information and Privacy Governance Division, notified attorney Stephen Stamboulieh in a Nov. 22 response (see below). “In response to your request, we have processed a total of 2 pages of responsive material.”

That referenced FOIA request was sent in May on behalf of firearms designer Len Savage and resulted in the production of a Dec. 10, 1963, letter from what was then called Alcohol and Tobacco Tax Division to Colt’s Patent Fire Arms Manufacturing Company, Inc. This is the first such classification for the AR-15 and has not been published before.

The FOIA request itself was prompted from a Nov. 2017 article in The Atlantic in which the magazine, unsurprisingly to anyone familiar with its anti-gun bent, attempted to bolster a claim that “these rifles were meant for the military, not civilians.”

“Colt sent a pilot model rifle (serial no. GX4968) to the BATF for civilian sale approval on Oct. 23, 1963. It was approved on Dec. 10, 1963, and sales of the ‘Model R6000 Colt AR-15 SP1 Sporter Rifle’ began on Jan 2, 1964,” one critic of the article contended. “The M16 wasn’t issued to infantry units until 1965 (as the XM16E1), wasn’t standardized as the M16A1 until 1967, and didn’t officially replace the M14 until 1969.”

So, they were being sold to civilians first?

Apparently so, yes. But don’t let’s anybody be holding their breath waiting for the lying liars of the Lyin’ Left to abandon their screeching about “MILITARY-STYLE FULLY-SEMI-AUTOMATIC ASSAULTWEAPONGUNS OF WAAAAAR!!!” They won’t even tone it down a notch out of a half-decent sense of shame, count on it.

Never, ever forget: on any given topic or issue, it’s never really about what they say it’s about. They care not a fig for addressing a problem, resolving an issue, saving a life, or their perennial fave “TEH CHILDREN!” No, it is all about the same thing it always and forever is: power, and control. Period fucking dot.

To call them “pond scum” would be a gratuitous insult to the relatively innocuous slick of slimy green goo that floats atop a pond.

Update! Via WRSA, an excellent Stefan Molyneux quote.

If you are for gun control, then you are not against guns, because the guns will be needed to disarm people. So it’s not that you are anti-gun. You’ll need the police’s guns to take away other people’s guns. So you’re very Pro-Gun, you just believe that only the Government (which is, of course, so reliable, honest, moral and virtuous…) should be allowed to have guns. There is no such thing as gun control. There is only centralizing gun ownership in the hands of a small, political elite and their minions.

Says it all, don’t it?

The words of a prophet

Posted on March 29, 2023 by Mike

Alexis de Tocqueville, that would be.

The French political philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) describes what form of tyranny or despotism would come to America: it would be relatively mild, retain some of the “external forms of liberty”, but the people would behave like timid “animals” and the government would act like their shepherd:

After having thus taken each individual one by one into its powerful hands, and having molded him as it pleases, the sovereign power extends its arms over the entire society; it covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated, minute, and uniform rules, which the most original minds and the most vigorous souls cannot break through to go beyond the crowd; it does not break wills, but it softens them, bends them and directs them; it rarely forces action, but it constantly opposes your acting; it does not destroy, it prevents birth; it does not tyrannize, it hinders, it represses, it enervates, it extinguishes, it stupifies, and finally it reduces each nation to being nothing more than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

I have always believed that this sort of servitude, regulated, mild and peaceful, of which I have just done the portrait, could be combined better than we imagine with some of the external forms of liberty, and that it would not be impossible for it to be established in the very shadow of the sovereignty of the people.

In a number of quotations we have looked at writers who have likened the people to sheep who are protected by the shepherd or “state” in order to better shear them of their fleece or slaughter them for meat. John Milton was quite clear on this analogy and stressed the importance for the state of creating “sheep-like minds” in the heads of the people. Alexis de Tocqueville can be added to this list. In the longer version of the quotation he talks about the importance of “agitation” and “crisis” in creating the precondition for the expansion of state power; that in democratic America the state will create a new form of tyranny, being part despotism, part “tutorship”, and part “paternalism” of the people; that various external forms of liberty will remain but the sheer number of “uniform rules” will reduce the people to a timid and sheep-like status with the state acting like the national shepherd.

Sounds chillingly familiar, don’t it?

The “free trade” falsehood

Posted on March 27, 2023 by Mike

The implicit question: how much does it cost if it’s free?

An American System for America Prosperity
The ideology of global free trade is not American—nor is it the free market system. America had the highest tariff rates in history at the same time we saw the greatest economic expansion in history.

Our founders understood that America could not be independent and strong if we relied on other nations for our manufactured goods. They understood the United States had the natural resources, the technology, the labor force, and ample customers at home to support domestic industry and be largely self-sufficient.

As an example to his countrymen to “Buy American,” George Washington wore a suit of American-made cloth at his inauguration in 1789. “I hope it will not be a great while before it will be unfashionable for a gentleman to appear in any other dress. Indeed, we have already been too long subject to British prejudices,” he wrote. Washington believed the United States could manufacture as well as farm, and he instructed Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton to come up with a plan to develop industry on these shores.

Hamilton’s plan, detailed in his 1791 Report on the Subject of Manufactures, called for tariffs that would raise revenues and protect infant American industries against predatory competition, and government procurement contracts to encourage American manufacturers.

The American System, also called the American School of economics, guided U.S. national economic development from the earliest days of the republic, through the Civil War, and into the better part of the 20th century. It built the United States from an agrarian frontier society into the world’s largest economy and greatest industrial power.

The American System had three basic tenets to promote domestic industry. The government would:

use tariffs to discourage imports, and leverage the purchasing power of government to give preference to domestic producers;

invest in roads, ports, dams, canals, and turnpikes—then called “internal improvements,” now called infrastructure—to facilitate commerce; and

regulate credit to spur economic development and deter speculation.

Congress passed the Tariff Act of 1789 as its second piece of legislation. The opening section reads, “It is necessary for the support of the government, the discharge of the debts of the United States, and for the encouragement and protection of manufactures that a duty be laid on goods and merchandise imported.”

The tax on imports raised revenue to fund the government and prevented foreign goods from smothering our own infant industries. Tariffs were the nation’s primary source of revenue for its first 150 years. Consider: we taxed foreign industries, not our own.

In 1791, Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton delivered his Report on the Subject of Manufactures to President Washington. It laid out the plan for the federal government to nurture the growth of domestic manufacturing industries in the United States rather than allow the new nation to depend on manufactured goods from abroad.

Hamilton declared: “Not only the wealth; the independence and security of a Country, appear to be materially connected with the prosperity of manufactures. Every nation…ought to endeavor to possess within itself all the essentials of national supply. These comprise the means to Subsistence habitation clothing and defence.”

A diversified economy of agriculture, merchants, and manufacturing would provide opportunities for Americans of all skills, “furnishing greater scope for the diversity of talents and dispositions which discriminate men from each other,” Hamilton wrote.

Hamilton’s report stood in contrast to “free traders” who believed America should confine itself to farming, export raw materials, and buy manufactured goods from Great Britain.

NOTE: I am not an economist, nor have I ever played one on TeeWee. That said, I hadn’t realized before just how recent the Neocon obssession with “free trade” really was until I read this fascinating piece, nor had I known just how adamantly most if not all of the Founders were opposed to any such notion, ditto for several of our later Presidents such as Lincoln and McKinley. Buck Throckmorton, via whom etc, has this to say about it:

Principled Free Traders™ have often been the target of my writing, not because of my having a deep ideological hostility to free trade, but because they have used the term “free trade” as a false-flag for their globalist hostility to US sovereignty, and for their open contempt for working-class Americans.

Unlike 1990s-era free trade, which was promoted as being about reciprocal, barrier-free trade, America’s 21st Century Principled Free Traders™ have advocated for unilateral surrender to foreign mercantilism. (Mercantilism is the economic theory that a country’s wealth increases by having a surplus balance of trade, using protectionism as necessary to ensure the favorable trade imbalance.) Principled Free Traders™ favor unrestricted access to the US market for products made in hostile, authoritarian countries, while gladly accepting that those countries maintain tariffs and prohibitions on importing products from the US.

After doing a learn-to-code grave dance on those working class Americans who lost their middle-class lifestyle, Principled Free Traders™ argued that it was all cool, because products made by cheap foreign labor (and slaves) gave Americans more spending power.

As for me, the reality is that I’ve historically been more of a reciprocal free trader – what many of us called “fair trade” – than a protectionist, thus my contempt for the globalists who actively sought to harm America in the name of free trade.

Our founders and our greatest Presidents agreed that that the US must never be dependent on foreign countries for food, provisions, or the ability to secure our national defense. And even the Father of Capitalism stood for economic nationalism.

I’m proud to be an economic nationalist if the alternative is “free trade” that is designed to harm Americans.

Amen to all that, my friend. Funny, innit, how very much of the Vichy GOPe/Uniparty/Neocon agenda does indeed seem designed to damage AINO rather than to help, their indignant protestations to the contrary notwithstanding.

Reality is cold, harsh, and tends to be uncooperative

Posted on March 25, 2023March 25, 2023 by Mike

First blood? Don’t anybody look now, but the Left already done drawed it.

Skull-Stomping Sacred Cows: Reality Isn’t Nice. It’s a 2×4 to the Teeth.
Sam Culper posted a comment on FB recently, in light of the protests-turned-riots in Berkeley, and elsewhere, asking, “What happens when the black bloc (“anarchists”) get AR’s?” A legit question, all things considered, and one deserving of serious consideration, which we’ll get to in a moment. The problem that arose, which I, in turn, confronted in a FB post on the MG FB page, was that the responses to Sam’s questions were retarded. Seriously. The comments read like the locker room bragging of a bunch of 13 year olds, after PE class, about the hot dates they’d had last Friday night.

Seriously….these ranged from “Open season on liberals!” type macho posturing, to “they’re just a bunch of cowards who can’t do shit in a stand-up fight!”

Here’s the reality. I am going to share my response to the commentary, from Facebook, then I’m going to discuss some harsh truths that are the 900-pound guerrilla in the room (see what I did there?).

“So, I saw this come across my FB feed today, from Sam. I’m going to address it, because there’s a whole bunch of fucking stupid in the comments. Since I’m reasonably certain some of those commenters are also subscribers here, it will probably be wasted effort, but I’m willing to give it a shot….

Comment on Sam’s page: ‘Battlefield pickup: Plan for it. Make sure your people know how to clear them, get them into duffle bags, and into your supply channels to be re-issued as necessary. You may keep ammo as needed to replace expenditures, but the rest goes to the S4 for caching and resupply.‘

My response: While technically about the closest thing to a legitimate response I saw, this is ridiculously optimistic. In all of the classes I’ve taught, over the last half-decade plus of teaching through the MG blog,including the auxiliary and support classes, nobody—NOBODY—has even come close to having anything near an organizational footprint that this answer would matter too…except the Left.

Comment on Sam’s page: ‘This is what I have been chatting with some friends about for a few months. Particularly the myopic ones who don’t understand that the hapless morons will eventually be armed and given some level of training to escalate their own surge. Arming these ppl is not the next move, but it’s not far off.‘

My response: Dunning-Kruger much? “Hapless morons?” These “hapless morons” are off their fucking couches, engaging in the physical violence that the Right yammered about for the last eight years, without doing fuck all. I’m not condoning it, and certainly not supporting it, but intellectual dishonesty about skill at organization, and willingness to engage in violent direct-action is going to get a whole fuckton of “prepared militias” killed dead…and there ain’t no fucking restart to this game.

Comment on Sam’s page: ‘They maybe (sic) psychologically conditioning the left for kinetic operations, but it takes years to build capability and capacity. They maybe (sic) ten years out if they started today.‘

My response: Bullshit. They could go hardcore tomorrow, and be effective, at least for some time. They’ve got organizational infrastructure in place. They’ve got leadership cadre and numbers. They’ve got the will to get violent, right now. What they don’t have is their puppet masters handing them guns and ammo…yet. Sam’s right. It’s an ugly potential that is probably not far off. Ten years? You’re fucking dreaming.

As I’ve argued before here many times—as history has demonstrated over and over again—no one does himself any favors when he underestimates his enemy. Being former military and a tactical-training instructor, MG knows this inflexible truism as well as anybody, probably better than most.

It’s easy to sit in your lounger, with your laptop across your knees, and pontificate on the false motivations of the Leftist activists. “Oh, they’re just attention whores!” “Oh, they just want their safe spaces!” “Oh, they’re just useful idiots being played.” “Oh, they’ll quit as soon as the money stops.” There’s a very real problem with that though, and it’s called underestimating your enemy. If you don’t believe that a dude who is out, in wintertime, in a protest/riot, and eating some riot cops baton, as he receives a solid washing with “hickory shampoo,” is not a dedicated True Believer, you’re deluding yourself.

If you think that some twenty-something kid, who just saw his buddy take a bean bag round from a PD riot gun, in the dick, and then ignored his friend’s screams, to continue advancing, is not dedicated, and a True Believer, you’re fucking stupid.

If you think POTUS is going to magically save you? You’re dumb. Large urban areas and entire states are telling the federal government to go fuck itself on the immigration issue (and granted, the states are wrong on this one, but that doesn’t change the fact that this—as I mentioned, in detail, in Forging the Hero—is symptomatic of the collapse of the American Empire.) Things are not normal, and if you’re still stuck in your normalcy bias about “Make America Great Again,” you’re WAY behind the learning the curve.

I’ve talked with a number of friends in recent days; police officers and public services personnel, in large urban areas, across the country. None of them are taking this shit lightly. A fireman friend, from a major urban enclave on the east coast, that has been the scene of a number of ethnic conflicts in the last year or two, posted the following on FB recently,

“They are organized, they are violent. The cops aren’t shooting back because when some Tumblr shit biscuit doxxes them, their kids will be targets. Molon Labia and snowflake bluster isn’t cutting it anymore.

I’m a fucking fireman and have had body armor issued. That should say something very loudly and clearly.”

A cop friend told me, in private conversation, “Yeah, man. It’s serious. We know it can kick off at any moment. Sitting in your cruiser, at a stoplight; writing a citation, sitting at lunch. We just have to be ready to rock, all the time.”

Another cop friend, “Man, I’ve upped my off-duty EDC to three twenty-round mags for the Glock, and I keep eight loaded mags for the AR in the plate carrier behind my seat. It’s getting weird out there.”

So, if THEY get it, why don’t you, Mr. Expert Prepper/Survivalist?

This is not about being a tough guy. This is not about the questionable PSYOP value of talking shit with social media memes about the opposition. This is about knowing, and understanding, the realities of the battlespace.

Another thing I’ve harped on repeatedly of late: we CAN NOT know what shape the coming conflagration will take, until the thing is upon is, literally all around us. Until such time, most everything other than actual planning and preparation is just speculation and idle blather—sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Via Bitter Centurion, who adds:

It’s like I said in my last post: the abject lesson here is that none of us are the people we thought we were. For better or worse. It’s easy to talk about what you’d do if ‘X’ happened, perhaps because you envisioned ‘X’ being a certain scenario with a high probability of taking place. It’s easy to picture that in your mind, and maybe even do your necessary prep work if you were so inclined. But it’s entirely another thing to be in the moment when ‘X’ happens. When you get called up to the plate, figuratively speaking, and have your convictions, skills, principles, and mettle tested and the results are final in the sense that you only get ONE chance at bat and there aren’t any do-overs.

Many years ago, I was told by a combatives instructor that “in a crisis, we do not rise to our expectations, but fall to our level of training”. It’s true, but I’d maybe take that a step further and say that your level of training ought not to just include simply raw skill and rote knowledge, but also your preparedness and will to act.

I have to wonder how many of the ‘red pilled’ people out there envisioned a critical strike from the OPFOR, in this case the scam-demic, as being how that would have played out? How many people expected this sort of ‘crucible’, for lack of a better term, to be manifested in what took place over the last three years? I’ll be honest, I didn’t.

I have to point out that, in my last post, it was absolutely not my intention to come off as an asshole to anyone – especially people who caved and got the poke ‘n smoke for their reasons. I don’t doubt I ruffled some feathers and pissed a few people off, and if that’s the case, well, that sucks but I won’t apologize for it. The reason I won’t apologize for it is because it is LONG past time we in the ‘redpilled’ community start being fucking honest with ourselves and with each other. There is FAR too much bullshit and bravado out there that we, both veteran and green horn alike, tend to muckle on to because it maybe stokes our morale or our egos. I believe the term the cool kids are using today is ‘Hopium’. Not only that, but I am a huge believer in not writing cheques with our mouths that our asses can’t cash – something that people on the conservatard ‘right’ are VERY notorious for.

How does that quote go? You can deny reality, but you can’t deny the consequences of denying reality. Likewise, you can lie to your friends, family, and even yourself, but you can’t deny the consequences of lying to your friends, family and yourself.

I wish I had the answers to all this, but I’m not gonna bullshit you – I don’t. What’s more, I don’t think anybody else does either, if they’re being honest. But…maybe we need to be honest with ourselves. If we know what the threats out there are, if we know what’s at stake, then what are we (meaning you as an individual) going to do about it? How far are we willing to go? That’s not something I can answer for anyone else but myself, as is the same for anyone else.

All the same, I’m not going to sit here and wax ‘tacticool’ about ‘resistance this’ and ‘from my cold dead fingers’ that. It’s all bullshit anyway. What really matters, all that really matters, is what you plan to do when you hit the red line—YOUR red line—and you’re faced with the moment of truth.

That’s about the size of it, yeah.

Precogging the Empire Of Lies

Posted on March 17, 2023March 18, 2023 by Mike

Mark Judge descried which way the ill wind was blowing many moons ago.

How My 1997 Conversation with Tucker Carlson Predicted the Future
In March 1997, I had a conversation with Tucker Carlson that would predict the future. Specifically it predicted liberalism’s current empire of lies.

Carlson has recently expressed amazement at how bad the public lies have gotten. Last week on The Glenn Beck Show, Carlson revealed footage from the Capitol January 6 that undercut our Principalities and Powers’ official narrative. Especially its claims about Jacob Chansley (the wacky guy in the Viking helmet) who was visibly nonviolent, but nonetheless got four years in prison.

Carlson sounded amazed and a bit dejected. His father had worked in government. Carlson grew up in Washington. He was used to political battles, but not such outright lying. “I know deception when I see it,” he says, “it’s demonstrable and its proven. They’re all lying.” It turns out, Tucker concluded. “Liz Cheney is affirmatively a liar.”

I thought back to a conversation I had with Carlson in 1997 that foresaw this moment. That year I attended CPAC, the annual conservative conference held at the Sheraton in Washington, D.C. I was writing a story for the New York Press.

Ahh, the New York Press—a fine old NYC weekly I used to peruse each and every week, founded by Russ Smith as a conservative competitor for the Village Voice, which had by then lapsed into complete batshit lunacy. Good times, good times. I don’t really remember him, but it figures Judge woulda worked there. Onwards.

After the conference I called Tucker Carlson, who was then a writer for the Weekly Standard. I was friendly with Carlson, wanted to get his take on conservatism, and where it was moving in the Clinton years.

Our conversation had barely started when he steered it to CPAC. ”Hey, were you at CPAC?” he asked me. I said I had been. “Did you see any drugs or heavy drinking and sexual assaults?”

I had no idea what he was talking about. I hadn’t seen anything but conservatives giving speeches and hawking their books. Tucker pointed me to an article in The New Republic. In it, a journalist described how a group of four young male conservatives conspired to sexually assault a woman. It deserves quoting at length, as twenty years later, similar lies would be resurrected to try and destroy me. It also foreshadows the contagion of lies that has infected our elites, from government to media.

“Infected”—now THAT’S putting it mildly, in my estimation. Read on for deets of the infuriating and manifestly, laughably false TNR smear job, indeed a grim harbinger of the shape of things to come, which triggered Tucker’s and Judge’s foray into the mystic realm of pure precognition. Unsurprisingly, it was penned by one Stephen Glass, who would go on to humiliating, career-destroying ignominy as a chronic fabulist—which, again, is putting it mildly, and is far more kind than the miserable cur deserves.

Fittingly, Glass is no longer employed as a Jurassic-Media “journalist—he’s a goddamned half-a-lawyer now. Which is not to say that his extended career as a shameless liar didn’t have any impact at all, mind.

Stephen Glass’s tactics are now mainstream. They were, and are, the official playbook of our elites, from the Democrats to NeverTrump zealots. People in power will tell such lies until they get caught, and even after that. One media orc who in 2018 said that he saw me buying and selling cocaine in the 1980s — a lie — just got his head handed to him by Russell Brand, and then by good guy and conservative Tom Elliot. Faced with a cavalcade of his own lies by Elliot, this dunderhead will shake it off and be back to warn us all about the evil Ron DeSantis.

This is why it is so absolutely crucial that regular people simply not engage with this new American Stasi. Imagine the worst, most unscrupulous and malicious liar you’ve ever known in your life. That person is the reporter who just showed up at your door. The assumption that leftist politicians and the media are reflections of Satan himself, the father of lies, is not an exaggeration.

Nope, nor is it hyperbole, nor any kind of coincidence. What it is, is entirely factual, the plain and simple truth.

Socialist gets schooled

Posted on March 16, 2023March 16, 2023 by Mike

You keep using that word, sharing. I do not think it means what you think that it means.

What you’re describing is free enterprise, not socialism. Jack and Jean are voluntarily bartering. Good for them.

“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest.” Adam Smith https://t.co/5uJ4AeS2y5

— Gail Heriot (@GailHeriot)

March 15, 2023

“Sharing,” mind, at the muzzle of a government gun—with the nomenklatura skimming all the cream right off the top for themselves and their fellows in the privileged “elite” class, and none of the downtrodden, oppressed serf class will get anything but the very dregs, far less what they truly need. Where all is rationed, regulated, and forcibly redistributed into needless artificial scarcity, and there is never enough of anything to go around. Where creativity and the innate human drive to excel and to better oneself is outlawed by soulless bureaucrats whose greed is only matched by their love of cruelty to those they consider their inferiors.

Bottom line: after a century and a half of failure, moribund economies, and over a hundred million deaths (that we know of), anybody who still clings to socialism is nothing but a goddamned idiot.

A big fuckin’ deal

Posted on March 8, 2023March 8, 2023 by Mike

Tucker must be directly over the target, what with all the flack Establishment fucksticks like Shcrewmer and Mitch the Bitch are sending up trying to take him down.

(House Speaker Kevin) McCarthy seems to have a quaint notion that he should follow an agenda other than the one set by leftist media and other activists. He recently provided journalist Tucker Carlson access to Jan. 6 footage. When it was announced, CNN and other leftist groups got upset. But nothing compares to the angry reaction when Carlson showed some of the footage on his top-ranked Fox News program on Monday night. The program showed footage indicating that the Jan. 6 Committee had falsely conveyed the circumstances of Sen. Josh Hawley’s evacuation from the Capitol, had falsely added audio to clips, had not pursued evidence that mysterious protester Ray Epps had lied about his whereabouts, and had concealed evidence that Jan. 6 protesters who had entered the Capitol were not treated as threats.

The media and other partisans shrieked in horror that this footage was being shown to the American people. It burst through the media-enforced narratives about the day.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., took to the Senate floor to call for the censorship of Fox News, where this author is a contributor, and prevention of more footage being made available to Americans. He said Carlson exercising his freedom of the press was a threat to democracy.

As one former White House reporter put it, “It’s frightening to see Senate leaders demand a media company ‘stop’ reporting on the government, police, issues of law and justice.

Frightening indeed. Funny, innit, how this Shcrewmer boll weevil isn’t in the least embarrassed about standing barefaced in the well of the Upper Chamber, pounding the lectern in righteous fury, and demanding that, in order to preserve “democracy”—which, in this country, we AREN’T supposed to have—then SOMETHING MUST BE DONE!!!™ about denying Tucker Carlson’s God-given right to freedom of speech—which we ARE?

As no lesser a light than Thomas Jefferson reputedly forewarned, when the government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. Doesn’t take a professionally-trained meteorologist to figure out which way the wind is blowing here, now does it?

Surely this would be an opportunity for the otherwise weak and feckless Senate Republicans to show some backbone, right? Wrong.

Romney said that showing Americans footage from Jan. 6 meant Carlson had gone “off the rails,” and compared him to Alex Jones. He also went after McCarthy for being transparent with the American people. Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., took a break from working on an amnesty bill to tell Raju that Carlson showing new footage of the protest that countered the left’s narrative was “bullsh-t.” South Dakota Sens. Mike Rounds and John Thune, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, and North Dakota Sen. Kevin Cramer also fell for the media campaign against Carlson.

Leading the group was Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. Raju invited him to bash McCarthy. It’s not saying much, but McConnell was at least smart enough to decline that opportunity. But he did take the opportunity to attack a media outlet for daring to say something different than what a police leader said. Really. He said, “It was a mistake, in my view, for Fox News to depict this in a way that is completely at variance with what our chief law enforcement official here at the Capitol thinks.”

Republicans, you have a serious problem.

In the middle of the midterm elections, McConnell went out of his way to sabotage candidates and their voters, once again pushing Democrat narratives about “candidate quality.” McConnell, the country’s least popular politician, did nothing to stop Romney from running a shadow campaign against a sitting GOP senator, fellow Utah Sen. Mike Lee. After he led the Republicans in the Senate to a loss, he responded by helping Democrats pass their $1.7 trillion omnibus bill, cheerleading for Biden’s Ukraine war, and campaigning with Joe Biden.

Instead of punishing Romney for his act of sabotage against fellow Republicans, he punished the victim by removing him from a powerful committee. Other Republican senators have also been punished by the famously vindictive and petty McConnell for not supporting his re-election as Republican leader.

Elon Musk, of all people, said it best when he tweeted of McConnell, “I keep forgetting which party he belongs to.”

Easy-peasy, Elon: the Deep State Uniparty, that’s which one. As for the purblind Pollyannas who still cling to the preposterous belief that anything at all is actually as it’s purported to be by TPTB anymore, they’re unlikely to ever figure it out. They’d like you to know, though, that they’re very interested in that beachfront property in Arizona that’s up for sale. The pig in the poke, too. Also, These Magic Beans.

As for the rest of the Shadow State malefactors, they’re quaking in manufactured outrage to mask the fear. Because, thanks to Tucker, everyone knows…ahem.

Caveat update! My post title above asserts that Tucker’s huge scoop is, to quote the finest senile corruptocrat we’ve ever had as “pResident,” a “big fuckin’ deal.” And that, it most certainly is. It has unleashed a political earthquake; Swamp rats can feel the very ground shifting under their feet from it, and they ain’t liking the sensation even a little bit.

While I do see it as a bona-fide game changer in the long run, though, nobody should be expecting these revelations to be the long-awaited Final Straw, the offense that will at last spark outright revolt and resistance against FederalGovCo. It gets us a big step farther along that road, yes, and it will serve to erase any lingering misplaced faith in the good intentions of their central Leviathan-state among Normals—particularly after they’ve been so blatantly, continously lied to over the last several years.

But it isn’t going to move anyone to start putting heads on pikes, taking up the trusty ol’ blunderbuss for a march on Mordor On The Potomac, or lighting up the torches, I don’t think. Yes, it’s a big fuckin’ deal for sure, but let’s not anyone get their hopes up too high quite yet. It’s a long, dark road we’re walking here, too dark and uncertain to be able see the end of it as of right now.

A real headscratcher

Posted on March 6, 2023 by Mike

Another of what I’ve become fond of calling “A Question For The Ages™.”

How on earth did they build this without power tools or modern machinery? pic.twitter.com/PuRW1NUbCG

— Culture Critic (@Culture_Crit) March 6, 2023

And without the aid of a single Neegrow from Wakanda, either. Who, as they incessantly inform us, built absolutely everything worth building. Or, y’know, inventing, writing, composing, even imagining.

Deception, intrigue, and coverup: the games they play

Posted on March 4, 2023March 4, 2023 by Mike

It didn’t begin with Decomposin’ Jaux, it’s a longstanding Presidential tradition.

Deception and Failure
From Wilson to Roosevelt to Biden, and beyond.

White House physician Kevin O’Connor recently proclaimed that Joe Biden “remains a healthy, vigorous 80-year-old male who is fit to successfully execute the duties of the presidency.” The Delaware Democrat quickly raised doubts by stumbling up the stairs of an aircraft, a feat he once performed three times on a single ascent.

Dr. O’Connor failed to reveal how Biden’s mental competence test had turned out, or even if he had taken one. As on the fitness side, the evidence is already out there.

Joe Biden is sometimes unaware of his own location and mounts a public search for people who recently died, such as Rep. Jackie Walorski. Biden is also famous for spouting gibberish beyond any comprehension, such as here, here, and here, to cite only a few.

For all but the willfully blind, Joe Biden is not mentally and physically fit to exercise the duties of the presidency. To be fair, the Delaware Democrat is not the only White House occupant ever to be in such a condition. Consider, for example, Woodrow Wilson.

From there, the tale of the malignancy Wilson’s rapid-fire sequence of three (3) debilitating strokes and his wife Edith’s all-but-official assumption of the throne in his stead is recounted, along with the polio-stricken FDR’s now-well-known infirmity and the meticulous concealment of same by shadowy, skulking minions in the government he eventually was too incapacitated to “lead.” This specific incident of that long, sordid history is one I hadn’t heard about before:

During the 1944 campaign in New York City, Roosevelt rode in an open car for more than four hours and was “seen by millions, looked cheerful, animated, conversing, waving, throwing his head back with that famous contagious laugh…It seemed evident to all that day in New York that he was as strong, as resilient as ever.” The press and the public had no clue what was happening behind the scenes.

“At points along the parade route the Secret Service had commandeered garage space,” Gallagher recalled. “As the presidential cavalcade passed the garage, the president’s car was turned out of the parade into the warmth of the heated building. Secret Service agents quickly lifted the president from the car and stretched him out full length on blankets laid on the floor. They removed his clothes down to the skin. He was toweled dry and given a rubdown. He was redressed in dry clothes, brandy was poured down his throat, and he was lifted back into the car. The pit stop was quickly done and the president was soon back in the cavalcade.”

WOW. Okay, that is some SERIOUS skullduggery right there. Now, back to our contemporary contretemps.

Call it the Pangloss presidency, an ongoing disaster proclaimed to be the best of all possible worlds. And for all but the willfully blind, a Pétain presidency is also going on in the United States of America.

In Conrad Black’s phrase, Joe Biden is a waxworks effigy of a president, physically and mentally unfit for duty. This deception is not splendid and the failure already evident. The aftermath will likely be much worse than anything that took place in the wake of Woodrow Wilson or FDR.

Well, in Wilson’s case anyway, the nation was fortunate enough to have one of the very best American Presidents, Calvin Coolidge, to come along behind him and undo nearly all the damage Wilson had wrought. Alas, with national “elections” now reduced to patent farce—locked down tighter than Dick’s hatband via D卐M☭CRAT chicanery compounded by Vichy GOPe co-connivance and Praetorian Media’s unflagging efforts in support—this generation’s Coolidge would never get within shouting distance of the Oval Office.

Doesn’t much matter anyway, I’m afraid; at this late date, we’re way past all that sort of thing now. Far too much has gone on, far too much let slip for far too long. No, the die has long since been cast. If this mess ever is to be cleaned up, it can only be accomplished using means and methods a good bit more drastic, direct, and stringent than mere politics.

Democracy, yes?

Posted on March 1, 2023 by Mike

“Democracy,” NO.

The Façade of Democracy
Democracy today means nothing more than fulfillment of the Left’s agenda and their consolidation of power. Neither Ukraine nor America are democracies.
It appears that the definition of “democracy” is rather fluid. In fact, it doesn’t really mean democracy at all. Rather, it is an authoritarian and undemocratic term used by self-interested politicians to defend and promote their own desired outcomes. Last time I checked, violent coup d’état wasn’t emblematic of “democracy.”

The Democratic Party and even many RINOs assign the same undemocratic meaning to their use of the term “democracy” in the United States.

The United States supported the 2014 coup d’état in Ukraine, which has been called a “Revolution of Dignity.” But American protesters on January 6, 2021, who were overwhelmingly peaceful—the only murder was committed by a Capitol police officer, who shot an unarmed female protestor named Ashli Babbitt—were called “insurrectionists.”

In contrast, cries of voter fraud in the Ukrainian elections of 2004 were met with serious concern by the U.S government. The mass protests were encouraged and supported and the overturning of the Ukrainian election results heralded as a win for “democracy.”

Cries of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election were summarily denounced and dismissed. The United States rushed to declare the 2004 election results in Ukraine illegitimate. The United States rushed to declare the U.S. presidential election in 2020 the most free and fair in our history.

Is America even a democracy?

Of course not; it was never supposed to be, as everyone here will know full well. The Founders, hallowed be their names, hated and feared democracy as nothing more than “mob rule,” and as time has proven beyond all debate, they were perfectly correct to shun it as they did. It amounts to yet another confirmation of their unimpeachable wisdom, which we have ignored to our own profound detriment.

Just as Democrats had no regard for our own election results in 2016, they had no regard for the election results in Ukraine, when they successfully ousted Yanukovych.

The lifeblood of a democracy is free speech and the general diffusion of knowledge, which ensures the voter is informed. Yet the Democratic Party and the FBI colluded with social media companies to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop scandal during the 2020 election and falsely dismissed it as “Russian disinformation.” Was this democratic?

The Democrats continue to pursue their witch hunt against former President Trump in hopes of ultimately preventing him from running for re-election. This effort too is justified with claims of “defending” or “protecting” democracy.

Democracy is a façade in America and when the term is thrown around by Democrats its new meaning is tyranny.

Democracy today means nothing more than fulfillment of the Left’s agenda and their consolidation of power. Neither Ukraine nor America are democracies. Democracy is tantamount to destruction and both Ukraine and America are being destroyed. Democracy is under attack; in the name of protecting democracy, of course.

If Democrats succeed in protecting democracy in America, we won’t have any democracy at all.

Well, DUH. For tyrants such as they, that’s a feature, not a bug. For us as well, really, just not in quite the same way or for the same reasons.

RINOs not RINOs

Posted on February 25, 2023February 25, 2023 by Mike

“Our sacred democracy” is…neither.

Keep in mind who essentially founded the Republican Party and was its first president. That would be Abraham Lincoln. He loved war, especially when waged to put an end to “democracy.”

Unless, of course, you are a typical Republican – who believes the South had no right to depart from the “union.” No right to form a government of its people, by its people and for its people.

Spare us, please, the cant about “slavery.” Lincoln and his Republicans enslaved us all. What do you own, exactly? Is it your home? The one you must pay the government forever in order to be allowed to continue living in it? Your car? Which you must also pay the government in order to be allowed to use? On roads you must also obtain the government’s permission to use? Can you open a business – or do business – without the permission of your massa?

Lincoln waged war upon democracy without mercy, against civilians explicitly, sending the mid-19th century equivalents of SS-Obergruppenfuhrers marching into the South to literally scorch the earth, so as to teach the recalcitrant Southerners all about “democracy.” The same kind of “democracy” that the same blue-suited Obergruppenfuhrers – Sherman and Sheridan and Custer – brought to the Indians of the American plains, after they were done with the South. The same “democracy” that Biden – and Graham – seek to further in eastern Europe.

In everywhere.

For there is nowhere on this Earth that is to be left free to decide its own course. The only course is that of modern American “democracy,” which is a philosophy both the Left and the Republican “right” agree upon. It is a philosophy that says Our Way is the only way and if you do not like it, tough. And if you resist, we will destroy you.

Even if it means destroying the world, for their world is one of unassailable power that, if lost, costs them everything. And that is why they are willing to make sure no cost is spared to preserve it – and that all of us pay it.

The take-home point here is that Republicans such as Lindsey Graham are not Republicans in Name Only (RINOs). They are the most authentic and faithful Republicans. The truest expositors of the philosophy imposed at bayonet-point upon the United States (North as well as South) that “democracy shall not perish from this Earth.”

That’s why some of us refer to it as the Uniparty—and why we really could use a true second party alternative to it.

Who owns what

Posted on February 24, 2023February 24, 2023 by Mike

Ace steps in it, big-time.

Mike Lindell says he will sue Kevin McCarthy for sharing the January 6th video only with Tucker Carlson. He wants a peek too.

My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell says he plans to sue Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) for providing Fox News host Tucker Carlson with exclusive access to footage from the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.Lindell told Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast on Thursday that his streaming platform Lindell-TV plans to sue McCarthy, claiming the Speaker violated the First Amendment’s freedom of the press provision and the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.

The Trump ally said Lindell-TV is “injured by not having access” to the tapes and that the Speaker’s decision represented discrimination.

You know, there is some slight danger that the video could reveal something like camera placements which could, possibly, “compromise security.” It’s laughable to think that a professional journalist like Tucker Carlson wouldn’t be sensitive to that and redact frames that would expose that. Which makes the leftwing scaremongering about it — the claims that Tucker Carlson is going to, and they did claim this, actively assist “terrorists” to breach the Capitol “again” — completely risible.

But the possibility does exist. So you I can understand McCarthy wanting to restrict the release to someone who he can count on to avoid releasing anything that might be a security problem, and not just to anyone and everyone.

I can also understand McCarthy doing what every politician does: Delivering a friendly news outlet an exclusive scoop.

So what is Mike Lindell doing?

Doesn’t matter much what he might think he’s doing; “security,” my baggy white ass. “Camera placement,” forsooth? You MUST be joking. They’re on every damned street corner, hung from buildings, traffic signals, billboards, lampposts, and over dead-end alleyways not just throughout Mordor On The Potomac but in every half-assed urban hellscape across the blighted plain by now.

Bottom-line fact: those cameras were bought, installed, and maintained at whose expense again, now? Oh, that’s right: the taxpayers, that’s whose. Therefore, those cameras and anything captured by them of right ought to be the rightful property of said taxpayers, and Swamp Critter Kevin owes them a full and unrestricted public release of ALL the footage they paid for—full stop, end of fucking story.

Don’t anyone be holding their breath waiting for any such thing, of course; it ain’t gonna happen. There’s much too much ugly J6 evidence incriminating the Deep State there, and we all damned well know it.

Wargaming Civil War v2.0

Posted on February 22, 2023February 22, 2023 by Mike

A little theorizing on how it all might go down, and what it might look like if/when it does.

The 1860s US Civil War was primarily an economic paradigm war. The Southern agrarian plutocrats backed the Black manned slave labor system. The Northern industrialist plutocrats favored debt-wage slavery powered by European mass immigration.

Given that the first US civil war was an oligarchic conflict, what would today’s US-based oligarchs fight over in a 2.0 civil war? Slices of cherry pie. Control of population centers. What would the hoi polloi fight over? Trans bathrooms. Abortion. Race issues. School prayer. Whatever else oligarchs don’t care about.

Any civil war discussion needs to factor in the Pentagon. They control the soldiers and weapon systems. If the MIC split into two factions, I imagine we’d see something like “woke” Pentagon vs “family values” Pentagon, with Raytheon owning both sides.

I don’t see any intentional Battle of Antietam mega-army fighting mega-army scenes. Unlike Springfield rifles and Gatling guns—F35 fighter jets, stealth bombers, and ICBMs cause serious damage to infrastructure and oligarch holdings. Mushroom clouds spouting up across America is bad for business. The rules of engagement would need to be carefully controlled. An internecine US nuclear war is scarier than Black Jesus.

Like ancient Rome, the US is a multicultural empire. To keep Rome’s diverse groups from splintering, Emperor Constantine made Christianity the official state religion. In America, Whites, Latinos, and Blacks make up the bulk of the population. All are predominantly Christian- at least by birth. America’s remaining unifiers are football, smartphones, Google, and the threat of state violence. Mushroom Cloud Jesus might be the empire’s last bottle of Elmer’s Glue. I prefer Hippie Jesus over Mushroom Cloud Jesus.

Restoring school prayer, filling up prosperity gospel mega-churches, and outlawing “gayness” won’t restore America’s manufacturing base, rebuild its decayed infrastructure, or clean up the poisoned rivers. Nor will it prevent the upward transfer of wealth that comes from corporate governance, endless MIC war, and a Fed owned by 8 banking families.

Christian (Zionist) Nationalism might keep the dying empire on life support for a little while longer, but collapse is inevitable. All empires crash—pathologically corrupt ones sooner than later. If Christian Nationalism failed to keep the food rations above starvation level, WW3 seems like the next logical play. If the international bankers remained on top and human civilization stayed intact after WW3, I suppose the next phase would be One World Government dystopian dictatorship.

If oligarch-managed civil war could prolong the empire’s lifespan, it also holds the potential to shorten it. As demonstrated by Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Ukraine, neocon/neoliberal ventures turn into massive clusterf*cks. What if a civil war went sideways and started whipping around like a live electric cable in a windstorm? A case of controlled chaos turning into uncontrolled chaos.

Where a civil war gone sideways winds up is hard to say. I suppose it could turn out really good or really bad. Anything from a new and improved American republic to Mad Max.

The above-excerpted analysis is certainly, well, different, to say the least. That said, it seems to me that the latter option might be a safer bet. But I’ve never been the betting type, so what the hell do I know. The history of human warfare shows that the one safe assumption we can make, in all times and all places, is that we can’t possibly know beforehand what will happen, nor how the thing will all shake out, until it actually, y’know, does shake out.

Throughout the duration of the actual conflict itself, we can reliably count on widespread horror, misery, and deprivation as the stuff of everyday life, carrying on far longer after the war’s outcome has been decided than is generally expected. As Gen Wellesley lamented after the Battle of Waterloo: Nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won.

War can be conclusive or inconclusive; destructive or productive; justified or not; those things, and many more besides. It is a cruel, ravening beast with many faces, all of them terrible to those caught up in its toils. War is also a permanent fixture of the human landscape, as unpredictable as it is inevitable. Wracking and painful as it surely is, human nature itself mandates nonetheless that the awful scourge of war will be with us always.

Oddly enough, though, war can sometimes be a good thing, even a desirable thing when the sole alternative is submission, slavery, and degradation at the hands of a ruthless despot. It has been described as a crucible in which irrelevancy is burned away, leaving only personal honor intact. It should never be rushed recklessly into; likewise, it should not be rejected out of hand when it has become obviously necessary. Just as war can be the plaything of greedy, over-ambitious potentates, it can also be the last desperate resort of men too long preyed upon by them.

In the somber, cautionary words of a wise and noble warrior who certainly knew whereof he spoke: it is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it.

(Via Wes Renegade)

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