Life in a once-great nation

Comedy of errors

Posted on October 5, 2022October 5, 2022 by Mike

What a ludicrous clusterfuck.

Biden’s Secret Promise To OPEC Backfires
In 2020, Democrats blocked Trump’s proposal to buy American oil at $24 a barrel. Yesterday, a Biden official disclosed a secret offer to buy OPEC+ oil at $80 a barrel.

In early September, United States Secretary of Energy, Jennifer Granholm, told Reuters that President Joe Biden was considering extending the release of oil from America’s emergency stockpiles, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), through October, and thus beyond the date when the program had been set to end. But then, a few hours later, an official with the Department of Energy called Reuters and contradicted Granholm, saying that the White House was not, in fact, considering more SPR releases. Five days later, the White House said it was considering refilling the SPR, thereby proposing to do the exact opposite of what Granholm had proposed.

The confusion around the Biden administration’s petroleum policy was cleared up yesterday after a senior official revealed that the White House had made a secret offer to buy up to 200 million barrels of OPEC+ oil to replenish the SPR in exchange for OPEC+ not cutting oil production. The official said the White House wanted to reassure OPEC+ that the US “won’t leave them hanging dry.” The fact that this offer was made through the White House, not the Department of Energy, may explain why a representative of the Department called Reuters to take back the remarks of Granholm, who has shown herself to be out-of-the-loop, and at a loss for words, relating to key administration decisions relating to oil and gas production.

The revelation poses political risks for Democrats who, in the spring of 2020, killed a proposal by President Donald Trump to replenish the SPR with oil from American producers, not OPEC+ ones, and at a price of $24 a barrel, not the $80 a barrel that the Biden White House promised to OPEC+. At the time, Trump was seeking to stabilize the American oil industry after the Covid-19 pandemic massively reduced oil demand. Trump and Congressional Republicans proposed spending $3 billion to fill the SPR. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer successfully defeated the proposal, and later bragged that his party had blocked a “bailout for big oil.”

Even normally strong boosters of the Biden White House viewed the Democrats’ opposition to refilling the SPR as a major blunder. “That decision,” noted Bloomberg, “effectively cost the US billions in potential profits and meant Biden had tens of millions of fewer barrels at his disposal with which to counter price surges.” Moreover, observed Bloomberg, it will take significantly more oil today to fill the SPR than it would have two years ago. In spring 2020, the SPR contained 634 million barrels out of a capacity of 727 million. Now, the reserve is below 442 million barrels, its lowest level in 38 years.

The decision looks even worse in light of the decision by OPEC+ today to cut production, which will increase oil prices. The Biden administration in recent days has been pulling out the stops trying to persuade Saudi Arabia and other OPEC+ members, a group that includes Russia, to maintain today’s levels of oil production.

Pathetic doesn’t even begin to cover it.

A “Red Wave”?

Posted on October 4, 2022 by Mike

Yeah, no.

Joe Biden’s approval rating is holding steady at 45.5 percent in the latest poll conducted by Insider Advantage for the Center for American Greatness. The national survey of 750 likely voters showed that 54.5 percent of respondents disapproved of Biden’s job performance, and 0.7 percent had no opinion or were undecided. Specifically, only 28.9 percent said they wholly “approved” of the job Biden is doing, while another 16.6 percent said they “somewhat approve.”

Among white likely voters, 42.2 percent approved of Biden’s job performance. Approval for Biden has surged among black likely voters, with 76 percent indicating they like the job Biden is doing. Only 36.3 percent of all other races approved of the job Biden is doing.

This is mind-boggling to me. As I often said of Bathhouse Barry Ogabe, in a sane country the Biden marionette’s rating would consistently hover around 15-20 percent, no more. Sadly, this is NOT that country. Bad as that no doubt is, here’s the really damning bit as regards the likelihood of any chimerical “Red Wave.”

On the question of which party they wanted in control of Congress if the election were held today, likely voters preferred Republicans over Democrats 46.5 percent to 44.4 percent, with 9.1 percent having no opinion, or undecided.

Well within the margin of error, then, which is 3.58 percent. Alas, that isn’t anywhere even close to being enough to overcome Rush Limbaugh’s famed “margin of fraud,” I’m afraid. At this dismal rate, the Vichy GOPe will do well not to LOSE Congressional seats this November.

Who’s in charge?

Posted on October 3, 2022October 3, 2022 by Mike

At this point, the only thing we know for certain is that it damned sure ain’t Pedo Joe.

Perhaps we should be thankful. Considering inflation, energy shortages and a world teetering on the brink, maybe the less Biden is involved, the better.

All of which were brought on by the Biden marionette’s handlers. Which means that statement applies equally to them, too.

To understand what’s happening, it’s best not to think of this as a Biden Presidency, but a Biden Regency.

The term was regularly used in the age of kings and empires. If an 8-year-old princess was placed on the throne or an incapable king couldn’t perform his duties, one or several regents would handle the day-to-day operations.

In like manner, Biden is surrounded with longtime D.C. power players, such as Ron Klain, Susan Rice, Anita Dunn, John Podesta, Gene Sperling – a veritable “who’s who” of Beltway knife fights and insider skullduggery. Throughout their long careers, they’ve never sought credit or voter approval. Just power.

And the less Joe is around, the more their regency can accomplish.

Which ain’t a good thing, for anybody.

These competing power centers explain the contradictory policies coming out of the Oval Office these days. Aggressively pushing a new Iran Nuclear Deal while Russia buys Iranian drones to fight Ukrainians. When there’s no one to say “the buck stops here,” the bucks turn up in pretty strange places.

It reminds me of the confusing end of Woodrow Wilson’s presidency. For his last 18 months in office, he was incapacitated with a stroke. First lady Edith Wilson and a handful of confidantes covered it up and ran the country themselves.

As with Wilson, historians will one day explain the Biden Regency more fully. But someone is running the country, and not very well.

How sure can we be of even that much, really? The Leviathan-state has become so massive, so ubiquitous, so many-fingered and multi-tentacled, that it begins to look more and more as if the infernal machine is essentially running on autopilot, an overcrowded clown car with a brick on the accelerator pedal coasting down into the ditch under its own power with nobody at the wheel. That could also account for those contradictory, nonsensical, and self-defeating policies easily enough, about as well as anything else does. But no, it definitely ain’t Grampy Gropey steering this thing; for one thing, he’s too old, senile, and decrepit to drive. Compare, contrast.

Biden cant bring a fricken bicycle to a stop and Trump is out there catching sharpies out of mid air. https://t.co/BYeyLccoGy

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) October 2, 2022

Heh. Nice snag, Mr President.

“9/11, Islam, and the US: What Have We Learned”

Posted on September 12, 2022September 12, 2022 by Mike

Apparently, nothing worth knowing.

Twenty-one years after 9/11 in this supposedly “Islamophobic” country, U.S. Muslims have gained unprecedented political and cultural influence. The Muslim population in the U.S. increased to 3.85 million in 2020. Mosques have more than doubled from 1,209 in 2000 to 2,769 in 2020. These are not grounds for any grudge, as the U.S. is magnet for people seeking prosperity and religious freedom.

But it is troubling that for a country based on the rule of law, Islam and Muslims have acquired an immunity and exemption from any critical scrutiny, no matter how justified. This “Islamic exceptionalism” operates blatantly at the political and cultural levels and is a recurring pattern going back to almost immediately after 9/11, when George Bush declared that “Islam is peace.”

Ilhan Omar, a Muslim supremacist, who has made herself invincible by donning the woke cloak of “fighting for justice, for equality, for the right for us [Muslims] to equally exist in this country” and notably ungrateful to the U.S., given her life history, vaporized the human suffering of 9/11 when she said, “CAIR was founded after 9/11 because they recognized that some people did something and that all of us were starting to lose access to our civil liberties.”

Her breezy dismissal of the 9/11 carnage came in the same speech that she opened by lamenting “a tragic, tragic nightmare that has happened to Muslims in New Zealand,” referencing the Christchurch attacks. For comparison’s sake, the New Zealand attacks left 49 dead against the 2,997 on 9/11. She has suffered no political consequences and is invariably elected by her “Islamophobic” voters.

“Islamophobic”? Hardly. Her so-called “constituents” having gradually invaded, occupied, and gained overwhelming-majority status in her Minnesota district, they’re Muslims.

The determination to exonerate Islam is deeply embedded in mainstream media. On September 11, 2018, the New York Times tweeted (and later deleted) that “airplanes took aim” at Twin Towers on 9/11. For the Times, the malignant agency of Osama bin Laden and the international team that planned the carnage counted for nothing.

During the Pulse Nightclub attack in Orlando in 2016, the killer Omar Mateen placed a “chilling, calm, and deliberate” call to 911, calling himself an “Islamic soldier.” Obama admitted that Mateen had pledged allegiance to “ISIL” and said that “countering this extremist ideology is increasingly going to be as important as making sure that we are disrupting plots from the outside.”

Yet, if an attack that is clearly terrorist in nature (it is immaterial if it was mixed up with troubled sexuality, as claimed) is somehow transmogrified and elevated seamlessly into a national memorial for gay rights and excludes any reference to the Islamic motivation of this act, then we as a nation have traveled long and hard down the road of self-delusion and surrender to Islam.

Major Nidal Hasan’s terrorist attack in Fort Hood in 2009, which killed 13 people and wounded dozens, was classified, incredibly, as “workplace violence.” In 2021, he exulted and congratulated the Taliban in a triumphant victory message from death row after they had seized control of Afghanistan. On death row, Nidal’s sentence is likely meaningless, as he will probably live his full life.

Although Muslims make up a bit more than one per cent of the U.S. population, they constitute about nine percent of the state prison population. Muslim immigration has dramatically increased the risk of female genital mutilation (FGM) which is understood in many Islamic countries as a religious obligation. In North America, Muslims commit most of the honor killings.

We have reached here because of the unbreakable alliance of the left and Islam. Leftists’ frequent accusations of “Islamophobia” are grossly exaggerated and more powerful than any weapon. This does not imply that Muslims cannot be targeted. But the left’s partnership with Islam has succeeded in achieving a unique moral inversion. Leftists have conferred upon a specific religion and its followers blanket immunity from hostile examination, and simultaneously labeled those as making any enquiry, no matter how justified by facts, as intolerant, and excluded them from the streams of authorized debate.

September 11 was the day that the towers fell, and the U.S. began its submission to Islam. Unless checked, it will surely hasten our downfall as a nation.

It has, it is, and it assuredly will. Bad as all the above is, though, there’s worse still.

When news that military prosecutors are negotiating a plea deal with 9/11 architect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed hit my desk, I had to check the source to see if it wasn’t satire. Of all days for this news to hit, why drop it now?

According to Fox News:

U.S. military prosecutors are reportedly negotiating potential plea deals with 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other conspirators imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay. The plea deals may allow the five dependents to escape a potential death penalty, according to CBS. Mohammed is widely credited with being the architect of the 9/11 terror attacks. The other four defendants are Ramzi Binalshibh, Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, Walid bin Attash and Ammar al-Baluchi.

Attorneys for the defendants reportedly say they would be willing to enter a guilty plea in exchange for taking the death penalty off the table, as well as for getting treatment for alleged torture they experienced while in CIA custody.

Retired actor and active patriot James Woods noticed what many of us did, that the timing of the news is an outrage:

To see this headline on September 11 is appalling. Why is justice such an elusive concept in America today? Will the heinous among us never be held accountable? This is an outrage, and to read about it on this sacred day is an insult to the fallen.

The timing of this news is not a coincidence any more than the timing of the Benghazi attack was a coincidence. They’re insulting us. They’re laughing at us. This regime truly and absolutely hates America and they’re proud of that fact.

Incredible, and thoroughly sick-making. How bitter a pill, that rather than avenging our 9/11 dead, we choose instead to profane their memory so disgracefully.

Update! And just like that, a DemonRat ProPol plummets from merely disgusting before auguring in to truly, deeply appalling.

Senate Intelligence chair says it’s ‘stunning’ that over 20 years after Sept. 11, attacks on the symbol of democracy are ‘not coming from terrorists’ but from ‘insurgents’ at the Capitol on Jan. 6

It’d be nice to think so, but I doublechecked, and no, this is NOT the Bee, alas.

Senate Intelligence chair Mark Warner said it’s “stunning” that 21 years after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, “the attack on the symbol of our democracy” hadn’t come from foreign threats but from within the US.

“I remember, as most Americans do, where they were on 9/11. I was in the middle of a political campaign and suddenly, the differences with my opponent seem very small in comparison and our country came together.”

Yeah, yeah…for all of three whole days, when the first shitlib claims that America had brought 9/11 on itself and therefore “had it coming” appeared, shattering the phony, short-lived sense of “unity.” I expected precisely that to happen, even posted about it here at the time, as I recollect. In fact, it’s a big part of the reason I named the blog what I did.

“The stunning thing to me is here we are 20 years later, and the attack on the symbol of our democracy was not coming from terrorists, but it came from literally insurgents attacking the Capitol on January 6th,” he added.

Warner said that he felt the country is “stronger,” and the “intelligence community has performed remarkably,” compared to 21 years ago.

“I think the threat of terror has diminished,” he said.

However, he added that he’s concerned about internal threats.

“But I do worry about some of the activity in this country where the election deniers, the insurgency that took place on January 6th, that is something I hope we could see that same kind of unity of spirit,” he said.

“Unity”? With self-serving shitlib poseurs like yourself? I’d rather gargle diarrhea, thanks.

Just in time for Christmas!

Posted on September 10, 2022 by Mike

Kuenstler has the latest on the new Fauxvid vaccine, rigorously tested on eight (8) lab mice, every one of whom…ummm, got Fauxvid. Surprise! But the part I want to address involves another matter altogether, one that Our Side has been all abuzz about of late.

Following his Mouth-of-Hell speech last week, declaring war on half the country, “Joe Biden’s” prospects are dimming along with sclerotic circuits in his brainpan. The Party of Chaos is desperate to survive the midterm election. Therefore, look for them to grudge up an excuse to make them not happen. They need a “national emergency” and they’ll manufacture one if necessary. Wait for it.

Sorry, can’t see it. Not that The Enemy would refrain from cancelling the impending “election” out of moral or ethical concerns, mind. No, they won’t do it for a purely pragmatic reason. To wit: they don’t need to. That being the case, why should they, then? They pulled off the 2020 hijacking without a hitch; who even knows how many other times it’s been done over the years, but there can be no doubt that “Democrats” and “election fraud” go together like beans and cornbread. So far, it’s been a winning hand for ’em; why fold now?

Moreover, they’re cunning enough to know that perpetuating the battered and bruised charade of “elections” will far better serve their purposes than pulling back the curtain on exactly what they’re talking about when they sanctimoniously fulminate on “our sacred democracy,” an irreversible act that will affect the national state of play in all sorts of unpredictable ways, none of them happy-making, a risk-fraught throwing of a switch that can’t be switched back off again. Ever.

They know they need to keep the wool pulled over as many Real American eyes as possible, to make sure overly optimistic Milquetoast conservatives remain blindly invested in the idea of more-or-less “free and fair elections” for as long as they can. The transparent, brazen fraudulence of 2020’s farce was a blatant thumb in Election Integrity’s eye if ever there was one; the docile, supine non-response reassured them that a successful repeat performance was eminently possible.

Nope, I can conjure no reason whatsoever for them to cancel any elections, and every reason in the world NOT to. At least until they’re taught that it will assuredly cost them to do so, and I mean dearly.

To “boldly” go where no man has gone before we’ve already been a dozen or so times

Posted on September 7, 2022September 7, 2022 by Mike

Forgive me and all, but I’m finding it mighty hard to get excited about this.

Half a century ago, the future felt different. Take 1969, quite a year in the aerospace biz: In one twelve month period, we saw the test flight of the Boeing 747, the maiden voyage of the Concorde, the RAF’s deployment of the Harrier “jump jet” …and Neil Armstrong’s “giant step for mankind”. Buzz Aldrin packed a portable tape player with him on Apollo 11, and so Sinatra’s ring-a-ding-ding recording of “Fly Me To The Moon” became the first (human) music to be flown to the moon and played there. Had any other nation beaten Nasa to it, they’d have marked the occasion with the “Ode To Joy” or Also Sprach Zarathustra, something grand and formal. But there’s something marvelously American about the first human being to place his feet on the surface of a heavenly sphere standing there with a cassette machine blasting out Frank and the Count Basie band in a swingin’ Quincy Jones arrangement – the insouciant swagger of the American century breaking the bounds of the planet.

In 1961, before the eyes of the world, President Kennedy had set American ingenuity a very specific challenge – and put a clock on it:

This nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.

That’s it. No wiggle room. A monkey on the moon wouldn’t count, nor an unmanned drone, nor a dune buggy that can’t take off again but transmits grainy footage back to Houston as it rusts up in the crater it came to rest in. The only way to win the bet is with a real-live actual American standing on the surface of the moon planting the Stars and Stripes. Even as it happened, the White House was so cautious that William Safire wrote President Nixon a speech to be delivered in the event of disaster:

Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace…

Yet America did it. “Fly Me To The Moon/Let me sing forever more.” What comes after American yearning and achievement? Democratization: “Everybody Gets To Go The Moon”. That all but forgotten Jimmy Webb song from 1969 catches the spirit of the age:

Isn’t it a miracle
That we’re the generation
That will touch that shiny bauble with our own two hands?

Whatever happened to that?

Four decades later, Bruce Charlton, Professor of Theoretical Medicine at the University of Buckingham in England, wrote that “that landing of men on the moon and bringing them back alive was the supreme achievement of human capability, the most difficult problem ever solved by humans.” That’s a good way to look at it: The political class presented the boffins with a highly difficult and specific problem and they solved it – in eight years. Charlton continued:

Forty years ago, we could do it – repeatedly – but since then we have not been to the moon, and I suggest the real reason we have not been to the moon since 1972 is that we cannot any longer do it. Humans have lost the capability.

Of course, the standard line is that humans stopped going to the moon only because we no longer wanted to go to the moon, or could not afford to, or something… But I am suggesting that all this is BS… I suspect that human capability reached its peak or plateau around 1965-75 – at the time of the Apollo moon landings – and has been declining ever since.

Can that be true? Charlton is a controversialist gadfly in British academe, but, comparing 1950 to the early twenty-first century, our time traveler from 1890 might well agree with him. And, if you think about it, isn’t it kind of hard even to imagine America pulling off a moon mission now? The countdown, the takeoff, a camera transmitting real-time footage of a young American standing in a dusty crater beyond our planet blasting out from his iPod Lady Gaga and the Black-Eyed Peas or whatever the 21st century version of Sinatra and the Basie band is… It half-lingers in collective consciousness as a memory of faded grandeur, the way a nineteenth century date farmer in Nasiriyah might be dimly aware that the Great Ziggurat of Ur used to be around here someplace.

So what happened? According to Professor Charlton, in the 1970s “the human spirit began to be overwhelmed by bureaucracy”. The old can-do spirit? Oh, you can try to do it, but they’ll toss every obstacle in your path. Go on, give it a go: Invent a new medical device; start a company; go to the airport to fly to DC and file a patent. Everything’s longer, slower, more soul-crushing. And the decline in “human capability” will only worsen in the years ahead, thanks not just to excess bureaucracy but insufficient cash.

“Yes, we can!” droned the dopey Obamatrons of 2008. No, we can’t, says Charlton, not if you mean “land on the moon, swiftly win wars against weak opposition and then control the defeated nation, secure national borders, discover breakthrough medical treatments, prevent crime, design and build to a tight deadline, educate people so they are ready to work before the age of 22…”

Houston, we have a much bigger problem.

As Steyn notes with a wince and a groan, how depressingly far we’d fallen by the time Bathhouse Barry decreed that NASA would make “Muslim outreach” its top priority, so as to make sure the Muzzrats would feel better about their grotesquely exaggerated “achievements” in mathematics and science 800 and some-odd years ago. The sad, sorry denouement:

It’s easy to laugh at the likes of Abu Hamza, although not as easy as it should be, not in Europe and Canada, where the state is eager to haul you into court for “Islamophobia”. But the laugh’s on us. Nasa is the government agency whose acronym was known around the planet, to every child who looked up at the stars and wondered what technological marvels the space age would have produced by the time he was out of short pants. Now the starry-eyed moppets are graying boomers, and the agency that symbolized man’s reach for the skies has transformed itself into a self-esteem boosterism operation. Is there an accompanying book – Muslims Are from Mars, Infidels Are from Venus?

There’s your American decline right there: From out-of-this-world to out-of-our-minds, an increasingly unmanned flight from real, historic technological accomplishment to unreal, ahistorical therapeutic touchy-feely multiculti.

So we can’t go to the moon. And, by the time you factor in getting to the airport to do the shoeless shuffle and the enhanced patdown, flying to London takes longer than it did in 1960. If they were trying to build the transcontinental railroad now, they’d be spending the first three decades on the environmental-impact study and hammering in the Golden Spike to celebrate the point at which the Feasibility Commission’s expansion up from the fifth floor met the Zoning Board’s expansion down from the twelfth floor.

And there you have it: the Überstate’s metastasization into the strangling, all-powerful Gorgon it has now become was well under way back in Kennedy’s day, but America still had stones enough to make it to the moon and back repeatedly even so. Now, under the aegis of senile old Pedo Jaux and encumbered by a federal bureaucracy so stupendously vast it can’t even figure out how many people “work” for it? Sorry, but we lost that mojo long, long ago. Unless Elon Musk is involved, I’ll believe it when I see it.

Buyer’s Market

Posted on September 5, 2022 by SteveF

“Women control access to sex. Men control access to marriage.”

The first part of that modern homily is mostly true, at least in Western, non-shithole countries. Almost any straight woman who wants to get sex can get it by walking into almost any bar and announcing her intention to get laid. A man wishing to do the same faces anything from laughter to arrest.

The homily’s second part is also mostly true. Maybe not as true as the first part but still mostly true when it comes to forming a marriage or other strong commitment. Men are mostly content with hookups, maybe exclusive, maybe not. It’s usually the women who want the bended kneew, the ring, the ceremony, and legal status, and the security.

Riddle me this: When a couple moves to marriage, why does the man have to make the move? Why is the man expected to buy a diamond ring?

The woman benefits more from the marriage. This is certainly true in the US. It appears to be true in the rest of the Anglosphere and northwestern Europe but in this essay I’ll be focusing on the US.

Marriage is a contract, a promise which can be enforced by the government. Each side needs to give something and each side needs to get something. The husband traditionally provided security, both financial and physical, and chores which were easier for a man’s muscles or skills. The wife traditionally made a home and provided him with sex and children.

Traditionally.

Nowadays, the husband almost always works and the wife probably does. Most of the financial security comes from the husband, as before, between greater income and the probability of women spending more than they bring in. In most families the wife has more say over spending than the husband does: more “me” money from the joint bank account, stuff for the house which she wants and the husband doesn’t care about, probably a newer car than the husband drives, and even getting the family to move to a more expensive house or apartment because the wife isn’t satisfied with the old one.

Most married couples have children, though that’s on the decline, with almost a majority of young adults not wanting children. If a couple has small children and the wife works, there’s a good chance that the wife’s entire paycheck goes to childcare and expenses related to her working.

(This does not address the issue of the couple having married only because the woman was pregnant, either because someone was careless or because she baby-trapped him.)

Financially, men continue to perform their traditional role.

Making a home? What does that mean anymore? It used to mean making meals, keeping the house clean, taking care of the children, and providing peace and comfort when the husband came home from work. Now, the husband is expected to do half of the cleaning (and all of the mowing and snow shoveling). Get up in the middle of the night for the baby or “I heard something downstairs” even when he has to go to work the next morning and she’s on maternity leave. The wife providing “peace and comfort”? That’s a joke, right? “Happy wife, happy life” means that most wives feel no obligation to provide a peaceful home environment for their husbands and many take offense at the suggestion that they should. Worse, if a woman is unhappy or stressed, she’ll generally take it out on her husband because he’s a safe, acceptable target.

As for sex, it’s more than just a joke that sex declines within months of the wedding and drops like a rock after the children are born. It appears that 20% of marriages in the US are sexless. (Though “sexless” can mean anything from “less than once a month” to no sex at all for a year or more.) It doesn’t matter whether it’s her choice because she’s too busy or is punishing him or just isn’t interested, or it’s his choice because she gained a hundred pounds or because of her personality. Sex is one of the major lures to get men into a committed relationship and almost no men get as much as they want and some get none at all.

OK, sure, looking at it from the wife’s side, some husbands don’t provide income or don’t do anything around the house or bully their wives. Wives are justified in leaving an abusive husband and may be justified in leaving a non-contributing husband.

Here’s the thing, though: A wife who leaves an abusive husband will have full societal approval and full legal support. The same for a wife who leaves her husband because he doesn’t provide her with money or because he doesn’t help around the house. And the same even for a wife who leaves her husband because she’s not happy or thinks she can do better.

Switch it around: If a wife spends so much on herself that the power bill can’t be paid, how much support would the husband get if he stopped the shared credit card she’d been using and cut her off from the bank account? None, and he could be accused of financial abuse. If a stay-at-home wife does nothing around the house and tells her husband that if he wants supper he can make it himself, what would neighbors, friends, and coworkers say if he told his wife that she had to start doing something or he’d leave her?

Financial and legal aspects of divorce go in the same direction as the societal approval and can’t be as easily ignored. I sure that I don’t need to go into detail on the numbers: In a divorce or other breakup, expect the woman to get the kids and the child support and at least half of the cash (that which she didn’t pull out just before filing for divorce) and half of the retirement and most likely the house though not the mortgage.

It doesn’t much matter who filed for divorce, nor the reason. The wife having committed adultery — wives in the US commit adultery more often than husbands do, now — and gotten pregnant by the affair partner — an estimated 10% of fathers named on the birth certificate in the US did not father the child — has very little effect on child custody, child support, or division of marital assets.

One should never enter into a contract with someone who will be rewarded for breaking it.

It should come as no surprise that in the United States, women initiate around 80% of divorces. Even without social pressure or postulated innate female nature to always try to get something better, women have a lot of incentive to divorce and very little incentive not to.

Given all of this, let’s return to the riddle posed above: Why is it the man who is expected to save thousands or tens of thousands of dollars to buy an engagement ring? A few centuries ago the valuable ring was something of a surety that he wasn’t wasting her time and wouldn’t walk away, before or after the marriage. Women had something to lose, some of their innate value of youth and virginity, and insulating them from the potential loss made sense.

These days, men have much more to lose from a failed relationship. Men deserve some form of surety against spousal betrayal or abandonment.

Women want commitment and marriage at least as much as men do, especially when the woman gets around thirty years old.

It’s time for women to step up and pay for what they want. Most men won’t want something basically useless like an expensive ring, but instead something durable and practical. A garage full of tools would be good.

Do the math, gentlemen, and know your worth. Don’t settle for a woman who doesn’t value you.

Preview of coming attractions

Posted on July 6, 2022July 6, 2022 by Mike

They got away scot-free with it in 2020, so they’d NEVER try it again. Right?

Wrong.

The signs of impending election manipulation on a national scale are all around us, if you have eyes to see and ears to hear them. It’s already manifesting itself in a minor way, and that’ll gear up to a hurricane by November.

Consider these recent headlines:

Something Stinks in Colorado – How did an unknown candidate like Mike O’Donnell manage to garner as many votes as a national political figure like Tina Peters? This question, ladies and gentlemen, is what leads you down the rabbit hole of America’s bogus election system.

How Did A Zuckerberg Charity Stooge Win A GOP Primary In Colorado? – Isn’t it strange that the director of Mark Zuckerberg’s private election charity for Democrats (on temporary leave!) just won the most important election integrity race in Colorado — and a GOP primary no less — as a write-in candidate with a 35 point polling swing with no money and no visible support from Republicans? One more thing: Colorado uses Dominion Voting Machines.

Several NYC Election Sites Had ‘No Republican Ballots’ During Last Week’s Primary.

The Fix Is In – Democrats Start to Prep America for Their Mid-Term Steal.

Letter from a Reader on the Democrats’ Plans to Steal the 2022 Election.

EXCLUSIVE: FOIAs Reveal Progressive Money Fueling FBI, DOJ, Leftist Activist and Election Official Coordination – Freedom of information requests have uncovered oddball and opaque relationships between some state election officials, federal officials, corporations, progressive activists, and those trying to influence the conduct of those same election officials…this fluid consortium has built structures that match powerful funding—with fringe ideological activists, with government offices—in an effort to…reorient the administration of elections in ways that benefit progressives, such as wide use of automatic mail voting.

I still have contacts in the Department of Justice, dating back to my days as a prison chaplain. Some of those with whom I had contact in those days, in more than one federal agency, have now reached relatively senior rank. I spoke with a few of them last week, and every one confirmed that there seems to be an air of blithe confidence in the upper reaches of federal government bureaucracy that the Biden administration will be able to continue with its programs, no matter what happens in November. It’s being blatantly referred to as “business as usual, before and after November”. Strange, that, when you read headlines like “Joe Biden and Democrats Stare Into the Abyss After Latest Poll Drops”. It doesn’t sound like the progressive left is staring into any abyss that worries them, does it? – particularly when you read the articles linked above.

Supporting links throughout, which as usual I didn’t transcribe. Bayou Pete has tons more, nearly all of it as disheartening as it is deeply, deeply disturbing. In sum:

Folks, we saw massive electoral manipulation in November 2020. Call it what you like, legal or illegal, valid or invalid, it’s my personal opinion that it amounted to nothing more or less than electoral fraud – a deliberate distortion of the overall popular vote by manipulating certain targeted areas and their voters. I think what we saw then is a pale shadow of what we’re going to see in November 2022. The powers that be are bound and determined that they’re not going to lose control of the House and/or Senate, no matter how unpopular their party may have become; and they have (or believe they have) the tools to make sure that happens, no matter what the will of the electorate may be. They’re going to use every one of those tools, and then some, to win. They are already using them, as the articles linked above demonstrate.

As individuals, we can’t affect what may happen on a national scale; but we can affect what happens on a local scale. If you care about our constitutional republic, and the democratic expression of the will of the people, please get involved. Volunteer as a poll watcher, or a vote counter, or whatever posts may be available in your area. Support those who are trying to run the election honestly, and watch like a hawk those who are doing otherwise. Speak out. Make sure the election administrators in your area know they’re under scrutiny. Get their names, addresses and other information that may help in future when it comes to dealing with the consequences of any shenanigans.

We know the electoral manipulation tsunami is coming. Let’s start preparing now, so that in its aftermath we can deal with the damage and minimize its long-term effects. Also, no matter how optimistic the forecasts, don’t assume that any side or party has the November 2022 elections “in the bag”. Anything can (and may well) happen between now and then. I expect the dirty tricks to fly thick and fast before we get to the voting booth.

At this stage of the game, Praetorian Media’s continuing, nonchalant dismissal of “Trump’s baseless, unsupported charges” of election chicanery are enough to make any Real American want to puke…or, perhaps, do something a little more, shall we say, kinetically proactive in response.

You guys already know my feelings about all this, so I’ll spare you any further belaboring of that particular point for the nonce. As I’ve said before, it really makes one wonder just how long such shenanigans have been part and parcel of our national “elections,” do it not?

Will Russia take on the job Americans just won’t do?

Posted on July 6, 2022July 6, 2022 by Mike

That would be the job of taking down a tyrannical, frankly illegitimate US goobermint. The real question, though, is: why on earth would they bother?

WHY RUSSIA WILL DEFEAT THE UNITED STATES
Like many boys in the 1980s, I dreamed of being a “Wolverine.” If you hail from Generation X or you are a late-stage Millennial, you know that is not a reference to a Marvel superhero with retractable metal claws. It is a reference to the teenaged freedom fighters in the movie Red Dawn. Raised on a steady diet of American patriotic zeal and a hatred for communism, boys my age fantasized of killing Russian invaders. Those days are long gone. The United States is no longer the “good guy,” and Russia is no longer the “bad guy.” We are the Marxists, now.

If we go to war with Russia, which I suspect will likely happen, Russia will win. The reason is simple: ideologies never defeat national identity. This has been true throughout time. Whenever an ideological army attempted to conquer a defined people, the defined people have always won. Even within the ideological proxy wars of the 20th Century, fighting was defined as contests between peoples. Communist North Vietnam framed its war with South Vietnam as one in which Vietnamese patriots fought European-American imperialism and manipulation. The Soviet Union was trounced in the early years of World War II for a multitude of reasons, but one of those reasons was that early propaganda tried to frame the struggle as one between fascism and communism. Soviet peasants could care less about the global proletariat. When the political messaging was re-framed within the context of a “Great Patriotic War,” Russians galvanized and hardened their resolve. Many such examples exist.

Today, there is no American people. The United States has been intentionally redefined. American identity is rooted in post-nationalism. It is ideologically globalist, combining the totality of the economic coin – Marxist on one side, free market capitalist on the other. In so doing, American political and cultural leaders have created an ideology that supplants God with Cultural Marxist societal elements – from homosexuality and transgenderism to subjectivity versus objectivity in all facets of decision making (e.g., “Common Core” math). Simultaneously, free market capitalism has been weaponized as a democratization process, creating a world of consumers addicted to cheap trinkets and material comforts that transcends sacrifice for one’s national best interests. This is evident from outsourcing manufacturing to the importation of cheap labor en masse. The United States that you once knew is dead. The guardians of this new American dystopia – the DOJ, FBI, IRS, and DOD – will target those who question the paradigm shift. Consequently, J6 protestors are hunted with impunity while the antifa – i.e., those who fight most violently for this new ideological state – are protected from prosecution.

Russia, generally speaking, has none of these problems. Russians know they are Russian. Russians are not seeking a globalist new world order. Russians prefer a world order led by Russians, but in the absence of that power, they would be happy to have a regional hegemony that protects Russian interests. In other words, unlike the globalist ideologues that lead Americans and their Western allies, Russians are nationalists. In a war, you need nationalism to win. If you think I am wrong, consider the U.S. military’s current struggles to recruit. It dovetails with a drop in patriotism. It turns out that the U.S. DOD never realized that transgender black dancers with a victim mentality do not volunteer to fight for a country they perceive to have oppressed them; misguided patriotic Southern White boys do – and less of them now want to be part of it. Putin’s military leadership enjoys no such confusion.

The US military having been reduced to a mincing, dress-clad paper tiger of indeterminate gender thanks to Woke leadership, I have little to no doubt the Rooskies could defeat it handily, all else being equal and assuming the Ukrainiain thorn had been removed from the Bear’s paw. But the US domestic political situation being what it now is, the bond between Heritage Americans and the US military is nothing like as strong as it once was, always a seriously bad omen for any nation’s defensive prospects.

On the other hand, the occupation phase is liable to be a stone bitch, I imagine, a fact I’m confident the Russian leadership is every bit as cognizant of as I am myself. On the other other hand, the Left has trashed this place so comprehensively, over so long a period, one has to wonder what Russia would really gain from such a chancy move. In sum, they probably COULD do it, sure. Which doesn’t mean they SHOULD.

I have to say, I can’t wait to see what Aesop’s take on this speculative proposal might be.

(Via WRSA)

OUR day

Posted on July 4, 2022July 4, 2022 by Mike

NOT Theirs.

Independence Day has been a far more somber holiday for me and many others for many years, more akin to sitting around drinking after the funeral of a friend who used to be hearty and hale but in his later years became weak and frightened. We try to remember him as he once was in his health, not how he was in his dying days.

Gone are the recollections of the history of heritage Americans and the declaring of their independence from England. We don’t even call it Independence Day anymore, just “The Fourth Of July” as if the date is just randomly chosen to get a day off so we can grill burgers.

The thing about Independence Day and what it celebrates is that it is an entirely White male achievement. The famous painting of the presenting of the draft of the Declaration to the Congress by John Trumbull is noteworthy for what it doesn’t include: there are no women, no “people of color”, no transvestites or Jews or Muslims. Just a bunch of White men.

As America slides rapidly into minority-majority status, Independence Day will mean less and less to each successive generation of increasingly non-White citizens. Why shouldn’t it? The story of America isn’t their story, they contributed basically nothing to our founding and the development of America as the greatest country on Earth. Independence Day has no real historical significance for blacks or Chinese, mestizos or Jews. Hell there was only a single Catholic signer of the Declaration, most were Episcopalian/Anglican, Congregationalist or Presbyterian. It is interesting that the current Supreme Court has six Catholics, only two Protestants, and one Jew.

It only makes sense that a first generation Mexican immigrant or a Somali refugee would have no clue what Independence Day was really all about or have any sort of positive feelings about it. It isn’t their day and never will be.

Just as the day is losing any meaning, the principles that inspired the Declaration of Independence mean less to each successive generation of America. Try asking a young person today what these words mean:

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness….

Good luck. You might get a reasonable answer from a smart kid from a good school but Da’quan or Mohammad from some inner-city slaughterhouse of a high school? Forget about it.

It is nice to get a day off, and shoot off some fireworks, but this day has otherwise lost all meaning, all solemnity and all significance. It is just a relic of a nation that no longer exists, an annual funeral service where we drink toasts and offer amusing anecdotes about a dearly departed friend.

Perhaps the remnants of the American people will one day have cause to celebrate anew their independence from Tyrants, Despots and Usurpers. Let us hope so in order that the light of liberty may never be lost from this world.

I’ve said for years now that the Fourth of right ought to be less a day of celebration and indulgence, and more one of national mourning for what has been lost, stolen, and/or casually squandered. With this blunt reminder of our heritage and history, Arthur rubs Real American noses in one of the uglier aspects of life in whatever you want to call the tottering, faltering nation we inhabit: in “the land of the free,” there are many truths which are not to be spoken aloud, lest the wrath of our Masters be incurred thereby. The above would be one of those.

Regrettably, the cognitive dissonance doesn’t end there. Here in NC, dominated politically by shitlibs for my entire life, fireworks are illegal and can’t be found for love nor money…except for the week or ten days leading up to July Fourth, when you’re allowed to have ’em so’s you can celebrate your notional “freedom.” Only a liberal asswipe could possibly be blind enough that he’d fail to spot the gruesome irony in that one.

Update! As grim as things sometimes seem, there are still flourishes of uniquely-American greatness to be found in this land.

Joey Chestnut Captures Crasher While Downing 63 Hot Dogs
Joey Chestnut won the hot dog eating contest again after he downed 63 hot dogs. The closest anyone came ate 40-something dogs. While downing and winning, he also got a crasher into a headlock.

The crasher was wearing a Darth Vader mask and carried a sign reading, “Expose Mitchfield or Smithfield or something Death Star.” Uh, what?

Joey’s our hero.

Joey’s a NATIONAL hero, actually. Video at the link to prove it.

Democracy? NO

Posted on June 11, 2022June 11, 2022 by Mike

The senile fool Biden, in another of his characteristic rambling, incoherent speeches this week, repeatedly lauded “our democracy” as if that’s actually what this country is, the original system of government the Founders set up for their posterity. T’ain’t so, McGee; any poor sod with even the most niggardly dollop of historical literacy in his gift knows better than that. Eric Peters last year posted a collection of quotes condemning democracy in the most virulent terms from our blessed ancestors, which one of his handlers/wardens/keepers should consider reading to the stumblebum ***”president”*** sometime so as to enlighten his stupid ass. After the quotes, Eric provides some commentary of his own, interspersed with more historical context.

In light of the Founders’ view on the subject of republics and democracies, it is not surprising that the Constitution does not contain the word “democracy,” but does mandate: “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a republican form of government.”

These principles were once widely understood. In the 19th century, many of the great leaders, both in America and abroad, stood in agreement with the Founding Fathers. John Marshall, chief justice of the Supreme Court from 1801 to 1835 echoed the sentiments of Fisher Ames. “Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos,” he wrote. American poet James Russell Lowell warned that “democracy gives every man the right to be his own oppressor.” Lowell was joined in his disdain for democracy by Ralph Waldo Emerson, who remarked that “democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors.” Across the Atlantic, British statesman Thomas Babington Macauly agreed with the Americans. “I have long been convinced,” he said, “that institutions purely democratic must, sooner or later, destroy liberty or civilization, or both.” Britons Benjamin Disraeli and Herbert Spencer would certainly agree with their countryman, Lord Acton, who wrote: “The one prevailing evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority, or rather that party, not always the majority, that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elections.”

By the 20th century, however, the falsehoods that democracy was the epitome of good government and that the Founding Fathers had established just such a government for the United States became increasingly widespread. This misinformation was fueled by President Woodrow Wilson’s famous 1916 appeal that our nation enter World War I “to make the world safe for democracy” — and by President Franklin Roosevelt’s 1940 exhortation that America “must be the great arsenal of democracy” by rushing to England’s aid during WWII.

Very few of us have probably thought it all the way through, but as it happens, this sudden drive to promote democracy over the true American ideal of government had a specific and most sinister purpose behind it.

On September 17 (Constitution Day), 1961, John Birch Society founder Robert Welch delivered an important speech, entitled “Republics and Democracies,” in which he proclaimed: “This is a Republic, not a Democracy. Let’s keep it that way!” The speech, which was later published and widely distributed in pamphlet form, amounted to a jolting wake-up call for many Americans. In his remarks, Welch not only presented the evidence to show that the Founding Fathers had established a republic and had condemned democracy, but he warned that the definitions had been distorted, and that powerful forces were at work to convert the American republic into a democracy, in order to bring about dictatorship.

Welch understood that democracy is not an end in itself but a means to an end. Eighteenth century historian Alexander Fraser Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee, it is thought, argued that, “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.” And as British writer G.K. Chesterton put it in the 20th century: “You can never have a revolution in order to establish a democracy. You must have a democracy in order to have a revolution.”

The push for democracy has only been possible because the Constitution is being ignored, violated, and circumvented. The Constitution defines and limits the powers of the federal government. Those powers, all of which are enumerated, do not include agricultural subsidy programs, housing programs, education assistance programs, food stamps, etc. Under the Constitution, Congress is not authorized to pass any law it chooses; it is only authorized to pass laws that are constitutional. Anybody who doubts the intent of the Founders to restrict federal powers, and thereby protect the rights of the individual, should review the language in the Bill of Rights, including the opening phrase of the First Amendment (“Congress shall make no law…”).

As Welch explained in his 1961 speech:

…man has certain unalienable rights which do not derive from government at all…And those…rights cannot be abrogated by the vote of a majority any more than they can by the decree of a conqueror. The idea that the vote of a people, no matter how nearly unanimous, makes or creates or determines what is right or just becomes as absurd and unacceptable as the idea that right and justice are simply whatever a king says they are. Just as the early Greeks learned to try to have their rulers and themselves abide by the laws they had themselves established, so man has now been painfully learning that there are more permanent and lasting laws which cannot be changed by either sovereign kings or sovereign people, but which must be observed by both. And that government is merely a convenience, superimposed on Divine Commandments and on the natural laws that flow only from the Creator of man and man’s universe.

Such is the noble purpose of the constitutional republic we inherited from our Founding Fathers.

Amen. Can anyone be surprised that, as we have wandered ever deeper into the muck and mire of an artificially generated and wholly misguided infatuation with democracy, our national plight has steadily worsened in equal proportion? As I always say: The fault, dear Horatio, lies not in the principles of our Founders, but in ourselves. The farther we stray from the ideals and prescriptions of those great men, the more wretched the misery we create for ourselves becomes.

And…?

Posted on June 1, 2022June 1, 2022 by Mike

Glenn posts a friend’s piteous cri de coeur suggesting the need for a lot more pointless screaming, racing around in circles, and frantically waving our arms over our heads out there.

A FRIEND COMMENTS: “There is no elected official running the White House, or the United States, right now. It’s deeply troubling that more people aren’t freaking out about this. We all know it’s true.”

So what? Sorry to have to bust your cozy little bubble for ya, buddy, but some of us have known that for a good many years now. It’s simply the way things are, and has been the way things are for most of my life on this planet—quite possibly all of my life. And I’m sixty-two years old.

What, you don’t mean to seriously suggest that any amount of mass freaking out is gonna change one damn thing, do you? Or that the unelected, unaccountable, and untouchable Shadowmen actually in charge of the White House, the US military, FederalGovCo and all its innumerable subdivisions, agencies, departments, offices, foundations, bureaucracies, and miscellaneous kakistocracies, shitrapies, fiefdoms, personal playgrounds, money laundries, and rackets give three whoops in Hell about what you might think of them?

You’ll freeze to death in the dark and like it

Posted on May 31, 2022May 31, 2022 by Mike

Never for one moment kid yourself that they aren’t one hundred percent serious about forcing us all back into pre-Medieval serfdom.

Imagine one of your kids freezing to death in your home. Eleven-year-old Cristian Pineda’s mother found her son dead during the Texas blackout in February 2021. Or you have a power outage for three days, losing a couple of hundred dollars worth of food because your refrigerator didn’t work, as Michelle Jones did last summer. The food she had just bought to feed herself, her daughter, and her granddaughter spoiled without electricity.

This is likely to become all too common in the future.

Why?

Because shitlibs, that’s why. No other reason than just that, no need to hunt around for one. Let’s just get right down to the nuts and bolts of the thing, shall we?

Progressives favor energy policies that will make grid failures more frequent, widespread, and prolonged. They want to close coal plants without enough full-time power ready to take their place. They seem unconcerned about reliability. They want coal plants torn down even if we have to keep paying them—like selling your car to get a newer one while you still owe lots on the first.

The people of the upper Midwest will pay the price this summer. Their multi-state grid operator, MISO, has warned that it will be 5 GWs short of electricity this summer. California also could be up to5 GWs short, enough to power 1.3 million homes. Texas warned that there might not be enough electricity for last week’s unexpected 90° weather, or for hotter days coming this summer.

What do they all have in common? Increasing their reliance on solar and wind and closing coal plants. A dirty green secret is that coal is full-time power and wind and solar are not. Electric grids must have full-time, on-demand power all the time—plus some—or blackouts are guaranteed.

Another dirty secret: wind and solar produce little or no energy 70% of the time. This means that to replace 1,000 MW of coal, it will take 3,500 MW of wind turbines’ “nameplate capacity,” or 5,000 MW of solar’s. That’s about 1,200 3 MW wind turbines or 13 million solar panels, in either case occupying nearly 40 square miles.

About 240 coal plants in the United States deliver about 22% of our electricity. About 71,000 wind towers produce about 9% of our electricity on a part-time, when-the-wind-blows, basis. We are adding about 3,000 wind turbines a year, in the whole country. If wind didn’t have the part-time problem, those 3,000 could replace 2.5 coal plants a year. At that rate, it would take 96 years to replace them all.

Progressives have been demanding that we close coal plants faster than 2.5 a year. If we want our electric grid to serve us full time, we need to reject this policy. We also need to stop everything they do to make coal and natural gas more expensive because that will raise our electric rates even faster.

We need to stop everything they do, period, and without any shilly-shallying around, before it’s too late to undo the damage they’ve already done and our laxness has irrevocably sealed our fate. Hey, as I’m fond of telling all and sundry: it’s never too early to start stacking Commie corpses.

Yes, it would be wonderful if sane, functional adults could cede the Left a remote island of their very own someplace where they could all be free to indulge their bong-fueled Utopian fantasies to the fullest and not bother those of us who actually kind of enjoy air conditioning; electric refrigerators, ranges, and lighting; clean, drinkable water on tap; indoor toilets and our modern sewer system; the unparalleled freedom and mobility afforded by privately-owned and -operated automobiles; and a lifespan longer than, say, 45 to 50 years or thereabouts.

You can’t be a shitlib and be for all those fine things; you just can’t. Liberalism and the blessings of life in a modern post-industrial society are mutually exclusive, and that’s flat. The irresolvable contradiction between the two is what makes the spectacle of gaggles of stinking, hairy-pitted Earth Mother repops stumbling into each other whilst putting some mileage on the ol’ Birkenstocks abling over to the city park for the annual Earth Day shindig—all of the vacant bints frenetically thumbtyping on their decidedly nonorganic, non-renewable iPhones, naturally (ahem)—so amusing. The nump-brained tree sloths are so impenetrably clueless they still wouldn’t get it if you mimeographed a microscopically-detailed crib sheet explaining the problem in simple, introductory-level terms for them to pore over.

Just remember, they’re smarterer than you, by lots and lots. If you don’t believe it, just ask ’em.

The Trap

Posted on May 24, 2022May 24, 2022 by Mike

Change is not on the menu here.

Long before Trump, Republican politicians and their apologists in the establishment conservative media labored indefatigably to convince their constituents that, come what may, the GOP would “save the country” from the ravages of the excessive Left. The “Reagan Revolution,” the “Contract with America,” the “Moral Majority,” “Compassionate Conservatism,” the “Tea Party,” and, now, MAGA—these are the media concoctions, the theatrical props, the bright and shiny things that traditional Republican voters have been manipulated into believing for decades. It’s ultimately the same concept repackaged for a new generation under a different label.

The idea that there is a rock-ribbed, true-blue conservative or patriotic contingent, separate from and opposed to “the establishment,” promising to pull America back from the precipice of destruction on which she stands has been the GOP’s bread and butter for decades. Every election is “the most important election of our lifetime.”

Republican voters should pause and ask themselves a question that never seem to get thoroughly explored: To paraphrase Reagan’s query from 1980:

Is the Left more or less powerful in 2022 than they’ve been in the past?

The Left-Right paradigm within which American politics plays out is itself a function of the collective delusion from which Republican and Democratic voters alike suffer. Still, for present purposes, we’ll speak the conventional language and say that it’s difficult to conceive of a single front on which “the Left” hasn’t made considerable advances.

In some cases, particularly over the last couple of years, during the COVID era, the Left made shockingly, historically unprecedented advances.

So, why exactly is it that those who have always voted Republican should continue doing so?

How, exactly, does voting Republican amount to “fighting the Left?”

Trump tried his best, but had too many powerful forces with which to contend and that ultimately thwarted his plans.

Republicans gain the House, but then tell their supporters that they can’t do the things that they say they were going to do because they don’t have the Senate and the presidency. They gain the Senate, but then tell their supporters that they can’t do what they promised, because they don’t yet have the presidency. They gain the presidency, but then tell their supporters that they can’t really do what they promised because of the recalcitrance of traitorous Republicans, the cynicism and opportunism of Democrats, the partisanship of the media, and/or the subversionary machinations of a massive bureaucracy (the “deep state”).

Republicans—whether Trump or anyone else—will never, can never, “defeat the Left” and “save the country” as they promise. And all GOP politicians must, at some level, know this. At the very least, they must know that they can never affect the kinds of substantive, enduring changes that voters expect from them as long as all of the obstacles to which they invariably appeal in accounting for their failures persist!

In other words, if “RINOs,” Democrats, a hostile media, and deep state apparatchiks have always prevented Republicans in the past from enacting the platform and the agenda on which they campaign, why should voters expect that Republicans will be able to surmount those obstacles now?!

What do Republicans, elected today, plan on doing to ensure that all of the hostile forces that have undermined them since forever will finally be neutralized?

If insanity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result, then voting Republican is insane.

Sometimes our biggest, most insuperable dilemmas are expressed quite handily in bumper-sticker slogans:

No matter who you vote for, a politician always gets in
There is no political solution to the problems caused by politics
There is no voting our way out of this
If voting could actually change anything, it would be illegal
If the Founders were around today, they’d already be shooting

And the most telling one of all, more apposite to our present circumstances than any other:

You may vote your way into socialism, but you must shoot your way out.

And so we have. And so we must, or else relinquish our sacred birthright of freedom forever.

In 1964, Ronald Reagan delivered the greatest of his many great speeches at the Republican National Convention, a truly deathless oration whose words will stir the souls and fire the blood of the liberty-minded until the end of days. The speech has come to be known variously as either the “A Time For Choosing” speech, which if I remember right was its official title, or more simply as the “Freedom Speech.” Its best-known and most beloved passage couldn’t be a more perfect closer for this post, I believe.

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.

Alas, as grim as that final prognostication certainly is, the way things have worked out is far, far worse: we’re spending our sunset years telling ourselves that we are in fact still free, having exchanged our proud heritage for the chains we willingly accepted because it was so much easier, prodding our children and children’s children to likewise take them up themselves. What life was once like in a still-free America has long since been shorn from memory, both collective and personal.

A damned good thing it has been, too; such a proud and noble past piles a burden of shame onto us lesser men who proved to be inadequate to rise to its challenge, to redeem its promise for ourselves and our posterity. Shame so profound can but be a source of genuine anguish deep down inside, amounting as it does to a blistering rebuke which no apology can ever set aright.

Origins of Empire

Posted on May 19, 2022May 19, 2022 by Mike

It’s a Progressivist thing.

It may prove in this momentous decade that the American Empire falls. But take heart, because the fall of the empire — aren’t all empires finally a bundle of conceits destined to collapse? — may lead to the revival of the American Republic.

The visions of empire and republic are as starkly different as George Washington and the founders were from Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. Much of what constitutes the “American Empire” is a product of progressive doctrine. It was about domestic imperialism perhaps far more than American global dominance. Restoring the republic should be welcomed by citizens dedicated to our nation’s founding principles.

We’re reaching a culmination. The left’s decades-long march through America’s institutions succeeded. They control government, corporations, health care, sciences, media, arts and entertainment, education, nonprofits, sports…right down to the Boy and Girl Scouts. They seek to consolidate their control in a handful of larger institutions (government and corporations, principally). An American “reset” is a precursor to a global reset, per the lunatic vision of Klaus Schwab and his acolytes.

(As an aside, pray tell, what is it with Germany that it periodically spawns apocalyptic and/or messianic figures like Marx, Nietzsche, Hitler, and now this dangerous utopian, Klaus Schwab?)

If you’re feeling surrounded, don’t. There are many more of us than them. The unbelievable major serial failures of the Biden administration (who bats zero?) are waking up a broader slice of the public — waking them up through mounting costs (inflation and energy), uncertainties (crime and the border), and flagrant attempts in schools to sexually debauch our kids (Biden’s handlers support this effort), among other wanton offenses.

The progressive worldview, as translated through governance and cultural dictates, is collapsing. Progressivism is daily revealing itself as, yes, power-hungry, incompetent, ineffective, but also dark. The end of empire isn’t likely to finish with a whimper. It’ll be calamitous, confrontational, and just plain nasty. The elites won’t go gentle into that good night. They’ve far too much riding on outcomes.

No one should expect any different from them, either. All animals are most dangerous when they’re wounded.

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