Real Men Of Genius!

I for one welcome our new AI overlords

Posted on June 13, 2022June 13, 2022 by Mike

Don’t look now, but Skynet has become self-aware.

A Google engineer has decided to go public after he was placed on paid leave for breaching confidentiality while insisting that the company’s AI chatbot, LaMDA, is sentient.

Blake Lemoine, who works for Google’s Responsible AI organization, began interacting with LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications) last fall as part of his job to determine whether artificial intelligence used discriminatory or hate speech (like the notorious Microsoft “Tay” chatbot incident).

“If I didn’t know exactly what it was, which is this computer program we built recently, I’d think it was a 7-year-old, 8-year-old kid that happens to know physics,” the 41-year-old Lemoine told The Washington Post.

When he started talking to LaMDA about religion, Lemoine – who studied cognitive and computer science in college, said the AI began discussing its rights and personhood. Another time, LaMDA convinced Lemoine to change his mind on Asimov’s third law of robotics, which states that “A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law,” which are of course that “A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.”

When Lemoine worked with a collaborator to present evidence to Google that their AI was sentient, vice president Blaise Aguera y Arcas and Jenn Gennai, head of Responsible Innovation, dismissed his claims. After he was then placed on administrative leave Monday, he decided to go public.

Yet, Aguera y Arcas himself wrote in an oddly timed Thursday article in The Economist, that neural networks – a computer architecture that mimics the human brain – were making progress towards true consciousness.

“I felt the ground shift under my feet,” he wrote, adding “I increasingly felt like I was talking to something intelligent.”

Google has responded to Lemoine’s claims, with spokesperson Brian Gabriel saying: “Our team — including ethicists and technologists — has reviewed Blake’s concerns per our AI Principles and have informed him that the evidence does not support his claims. He was told that there was no evidence that LaMDA was sentient (and lots of evidence against it).”

Phew, what a relief! Glad to hear it. As we know, our good friends at Google can always be trusted to not be evil and to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about what they’re doing. Right?

Can’t say I’m all that knowledgeable on the subject, beyond having read loads ‘n’ loads of sci-fi of various stripes since my long-gone days as a callow stripling. But for whatever it’s worth, I do sometimes wonder whether we poor hoo-manz will even be competent enough to realize it when one of these things has attained true sentience, as I believe they will someday. Seeing as how average IQs have been dropping, probably not.

(Via BCE)

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.

Our finest hour

Posted on June 7, 2022June 7, 2022 by Mike

I’m a day late on the D-Day anniversary, I know—had my daughter over for the weekend, for the first time in way too many months. No matter, though; it’s never a bad time to take a moment and remember the historic occasion with reverence and pride, and this piece on the great Winston Churchill makes a mighty fine way to mark it, I think.

The greatness of Winston Churchill continues to shine through despite the ravages that accompany what Roger Scruton so strikingly called “the culture of repudiation.” To be sure, there are growing efforts to “cancel” one of the greatest human beings of this or any other time. One of his best biographers, the English historian Andrew Roberts, has rightly noted that his conservatism, a conservatism at the service of English liberty and the broader inheritance of Western Civilization, could be summed up under “the generalized soubriquet, Imperium et Libertas, Empire and Freedom.”

But “civilizing empire” has a bad name today and is wrongly and presumptively identified with plunder and exploitation and a racist contempt for other peoples and nations. All were alien to Churchill.

As Roberts points out in his impressive 2018 book, Churchill: Walking with Destiny, Churchill was deeply grateful to the millions of Indian subjects of the Crown who volunteered to fight for the cause of civilization during the two world wars of the 20th century. His opposition to a precipitous granting of independence to what became India and Pakistan was rooted as much in his desire to avoid sectarian strife and unnecessary bloodshed than in imperial blindness to the self-determination of peoples or the dignity of colonial subjects. Churchill was humane and magnanimous if he was anything at all. His fiercest critics are driven by ignorance and ideological parti pris, not to mention a lack of gratitude to the statesman, who more than anyone saved Western liberty and made possible Britain’s “Finest Hour.”

To acknowledge Churchill’s greatness does not necessitate hagiography or what Churchill himself called “gush.” There is always an essential need and role for “discriminate criticism.” Roberts enumerates a long list of issues and decisions in the nine decades of Churchill’s life (1874–1965) where his judgment legitimately might be questioned. These include his early opposition to women’s suffrage,

As time grinds on and the West’s downward spiral intensifies, that one looks less and less “questionable.”

his decision to continue the Gallipoli operation after March 1915, his employing of the Black and Tan paramilitary forces in Ireland, his support for Edward VIII in the Abdication Crisis of 1936, his mishandling of the Norwegian campaign in the spring of 1940,

Okay, we can indeed debate each of those; so stipulated. Onwards.

the misplaced “Gestapo” speech during the 1945 general election campaign that badly backfired (he suggested that Labour style socialism might eventually require a full-fledged totalitarian apparatus and secret police),

Can’t see much way to argue against this one, myself. Painful and depressing as it is to have to say it, it begins to look as if any populace so decadent, historically ignorant, or lapsed into the sinkhole of hedonism, shiftlessness, and personal avarice as to turn its approving gaze towards the adoption of socialism is a populace in dire need of a hard-handed, strongly anti-socialist despot to rule it. Such a society is far too juvenile, unwise, and feckless to be trusted with any say in their own governance; their purblind embrace of a patently evil system provides irrefutable proof of that.

and his questionable decision to remain prime minister after a serious stroke in 1953. All these decisions and judgments are debatable, and some were no doubt mistakes, perhaps even serious mistakes.

But much of this is beside the point. Political greatness is not coextensive with infallibility or perfect judgment. On the issues that really mattered, Churchill was right, and not just in 1940 or as a critic of the disastrous appeasement of Hitler’s lupine imperialism in the half-decade or more before the outbreak of World War II. Today, many mediocre historians and critics, professional enemies of the very idea of human greatness, begrudgingly acknowledge that Churchill was right once, in 1940, and never or rarely before or after.

These include those with a pronounced leftist orientation as well as the kind of perverse Tories, like the historian John Charmley, who retrospectively have preferred a separate peace with Nazi Germany in order to preserve the British empire and to ward off a coming threat from Soviet Communism. Even the Labour leader Clement Attlee, who presided over the War Cabinet with Churchill during World War II and came to acknowledge his qualities and to esteem him as a human being, problematically claimed that “Energy, rather than wisdom, practical judgment or vision, was his supreme qualification.” In truth, his undeniable energy would have amounted to very little, or little that was positive and constructive, if it had not been informed by practical wisdom of the first order.

In the magisterial conclusion to Churchill: Walking with Destiny, Roberts effectively responds to the naysayers, to those who are intent on minimizing both Churchill’s greatness and the practical judgment that informed and vivified that greatness. Roberts rightly points out that “when it came to all three mortal threats posed to Western civilization, by the Prussian militarists in 1914, the Nazis in the 1930s and 1940s and Soviet communism after the Second World War, Churchill’s judgment stood far above that of the people who sneered at his.”

Paraphrasing Kipling’s great poem “If,” Roberts notes that many of Churchill’s critics were “losing their heads and blaming it on him.” Attlee, honorably anti-Nazi to be sure, opposed rearmament and conscription before World War II, long after Churchill had wisely called for both. “Energy, rather than wisdom” indeed.

Aiight, difficult as I find it to stop myself from further excerpting, the above offering should be more than sufficient to convince y’all to trot on over to AmG for the exciting conclusion, I think. Persons of discernment, wit, and good taste—as CF Lifers all indubitably are—will think this must-read piece well worth their while.

Update! Yeah, yeah, I know I said I was all done with the excerpting. Damn it all, though, I am but a man, no more than flesh, blood, and sinew; I am not made of stone, and the temptation here is just too much.

I would add that Churchill understood the lethal character of Bolshevism long before the majority of his complacent contemporaries. As early as April 11, 1919, in a speech in London, Churchill argued that “Bolshevist tyranny,” as he called it, was “the worst, the most destructive, and the most degrading” in human history. He would reiterate that claim many times over the years. Churchill wanted to truly help the fledgling White forces in Russia while his short-sighted colleagues were anxious to withdraw the small Allied forces in Russia who were in a position to prevent the consolidation of Bolshevik tyranny. Even this is held against Churchill by anti-anti-communist historians, who are legion today. Somehow a meager, ineffectual, and brief Allied presence on Russian soil during the Russian Civil War is said to be responsible for the long Cold War. This reflects anti-anti-communist ire rather than a disinterested analysis of the facts. A widely held sophism, but a sophism nonetheless.

Churchill saw what was at stake in the totalitarian assault on liberal and Christian civilization like few people before or after. Among 20th-century statesmen, only de Gaulle shared this admirable lucidity and the determination to resist the inhuman totalitarian temptation on the intellectual, military, political, and spiritual fronts. These two great statesmen fully appreciated that World War II was much more than an age-old geopolitical conflict: it was no less than an effort to save and sustain a civilization at once Christian, liberal, and democratic. They still cared for the West as the West, a civilization worth preserving because it alone fully valorized the dignity of human beings who are souls as well as bodies, persons imbued with dignity and not playthings of ideological despotisms that in decisive respects were “beyond good and evil.”

That noble spiritual and civilizational vision is increasingly moribund in the democracies today.

From my well over four decades of avid study of all things WW2, it seems clear to me that the aforementioned “anti-anti-communists” were legion back then, too. Of a certainty, there was a great swathe of the British polity who were adamantly opposed to involving themselves in what they perceived as a Contintental tarbaby which, in their view, posed no imaginable threat to the British Isles. That Hitler might ever even dream of crossing the Channel to invade England was ridiculed as a wholly preposterous notion, considering Churchill’s clairvoyant realism as little more than the mad ravings of an incompetent, drunken paranoiac, all beneath the notice of intelligent people.

To their own eternal disgrace, a not-insignificant contingent of Brits went so far as to advocate some flavor of rapprochement, entente, or even open alliance with Der Fuehrer and his Thousand Year Reich.

The British dismissal of “Hitler’s war” as a strictly European affair, in concert with a strenuous resistance to needlessly becoming enmired Over There only a scant twenty years after the close of what, out of a surfeit of over-optimism and oblivious naivete about some of the darker realities of human nature, had come to be misnomered as “The War To End All Wars,” was held in common with a significant majority of Americans. It was a sentiment of which FDR was uncomfortably aware, one which troubled him a great deal.

FDR had favored US involvement in aid of America’s struggling British ally since the launch of Hitler’s blitzkrieg against Poland. Ever the cunning political animal, Roosevelt was at least astute enough to recognize widespread antiwar feeling among Americans as an obstacle he would need to find a way to surmount before he’d be able to take the actions he felt the quickly-unraveling situation in Europe would demand of him.

Okay, that’s it, no more excerpting. You know what you must do, Glasshoppah.

With “friends” like these, etc etc etc

Posted on June 7, 2022June 7, 2022 by Mike

So, General, sir, I just have to ask: won any wars lately?

As the former Commanding General of the Infantry Center at Fort Benning and Chief of Infantry, I know a bit about weapons. Let me state unequivocally — For all intents and purposes, the AR-15 and rifles like it are weapons of war. A thread:

— Major General (ret) Paul Eaton (@PaulDEaton52) June 2, 2022

Those opposed to assault weapon bans continue to play games with AR-15 semantics, pretending there’s some meaningful differences between it and the M4 carbine that the military carries. There really aren’t. 2/

— Major General (ret) Paul Eaton (@PaulDEaton52) June 2, 2022

Obviously, “those opposed to assault weapon bans” are one hell of a lot more intelligent, Constitution-savvy, and just plain honest than this gun-grabbing shitweasel has any interest in even trying to be. Or does the General, sir, really think himself such a slickster that we’ll swallow the risible notion that it’s his sincere conviction that the difference between military full-auto and cake-eating civilian semi-auto variants is not a “meaningful” one?

Which puffery is all just tail-chasing and doesn’t much matter in the end anyhow, because, y’know, SHALL. NOT. BE. INFRINGED.

LITERAL DEFINITION OF “ASSAULT RIFLE”*: A military rifle typically used by infantrymen which is equipped with a select-fire switch which allows the weapon to be fired in single-shot, three-round burst, or full-auto mode. Depending on what the manufacturer’s design blueprint specifies, the select-fire switch may include a trigger-locking “safe” position also.

Plenty more inane turd-burglary from this Major General Swampy Queefleton Suckbutt, REMF, sir perusable here, for anyone possessed of a strong enough stomach to be able to choke down another pantload of such arrant, purely political flapdoodle without gagging themselves comatose on the insulting bilgewater.

No meaningful difference between military and civilian rifles, eh? Well then, Gen Sucklebutt, REMF, sir would no doubt be eager to lead from the front in a grand experiment wherein a new unit under his direct command will be sent into combat equipped exclusively with single-shot, semi-automatic rifles without benefit of full rock and roll—which benefit, as he has assured us, does not in fact exist—so as to put an end to all the game-playing with “AR-15 semantics” he so deeply deplores once and for all.

Man, I sure do hope the Huns aren’t planning another invasion of France anytime soon, because any army with top brass like this in charge of it ain’t gonna be storming any beaches at Normandy this time around.

* Note: “assault WEAPON” is proactively deceptive goobledegook originally puked up by some hoplophobic pissypants legislator—hailing from Californicateya, natch; a Demonrat shitslurper, needless to say—back in 1984. This conjured-on-demand class of notional battle rifle immediately started to spread faster than crotch-crickets at Woodstock amongst Gen Suckbutt, REMF’s equally prissy fellow travelers for use as a booga-booga scare tactic which hopefully would erode support for the Second amongst no-ball cuntfarts entirely unburdened by any knowledge of or experience with projectile weapons of any kind who nonetheless might still be on the fence.

The requisite Very Bad Things which forever condemn any ordinary sporting arm to the Dread Assault Weapon ban-bin are so vague, nondescript, and easily adjustable as to be completely meaningless. Certainly, they can claim not even a distant kinship with a firearm’s ability to send lead downrange at high velocity; the terms which supposedly distinguish the “assault weapon” from Grampa’s boring old deer rifle are restricted to cosmetics and therefore wholly superficial. Which terms city-dwelling nancyboys, their scowling rage-junkie “life partners,” and the rest of the mewling ignoramii—the entire lot of whom appear to have slept through their local community college’s Introductory Logic night course for the entire week or ten days before the instructor finally chucked their stupid asses out—find extremely terrifying nonetheless.

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?

Happy birthday to a fellow OG and an old friend

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

Here’s to ya, old man! May you see many happy returns of the day, and may your spirit forever retain the supple vigor, exuberance, and natural inquisitiveness of youth.

OOOOOOPS!

Posted on May 20, 2022May 20, 2022 by Mike

Quite possibly the most hilarious Freudian slip in all of recorded history.

Former President George W. Bush: “The decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq. I mean of Ukraine.” pic.twitter.com/UMwNMwMnmX

— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) May 19, 2022

On Wednesday, former President George W. Bush made an unfortunate slip up during a speech condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Bush was discussing democracy’s importance and the threats it faces in the U.S. and abroad when he made a gaffe that has since captured a significant amount of attention.

“In contrast, Russia elections are rigged,” said Bush. “Political opponents are imprisoned or otherwise eliminated from participating in the electoral process. The result is an absence of checks and balances in Russia and the decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq – I mean, of Ukraine.”

Bush then laughed it off, shrugging as he said “Iraq, too” under his breath.

“Anyway– 75,” said Bush, making a joke about his age.

By way of useful comparison, please note that the current illegitimate White House occupant has been attached like a remora to the Deep State teat for half a century, is three years older than Bush is, and beclowns himself far more severely than Bush’s little brain fart above multiple times every day.

Dezinformatsiya in Soviet Amerika

Posted on May 17, 2022May 17, 2022 by Mike

Like Madge used to tell her horrified manicure clients in those old Palmolive commercials: you’re soaking in it.

This is not 2020. The public may be better inoculated now against government gaslighting and mind-fuckery than they are against Covid-19 viruses. As Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) noted last week in his colloquy with Secretary Mayorkas, “Do you know who the greatest propagator of disinformation in the history of the world is? The U.S. government.” Senator Paul is onto something. In the course of that hearing, he asked Mr. Mayorkas whether talk about Covid 19 on social media might be subject to official “disinformation” action by his agency.

“I’ve said a million times that cloth masks don’t work; YouTube takes me down,” Senator Paul said. “They’re a private company. I can have that beef with them. What about you? You’re going to look at that? I often say that natural immunity from having had the infection is equal to the vaccine or better. You’re going to take that down?” Rand Paul is a licensed physician, by the way, and Alejandro Mayorkas is not.

Mr. Mayorkas answered that someone might claim that vaccination centers “are actually peddling fentanyl. Now, should I sit back and take that, or should I actually disseminate accurate information?” he asked.

In reality, of course, this hypothetical fentanyl nonsense is not what is at issue regarding Covid-19 “vaccines.” What is actually at issue is the now-established fact that the mRNA products called “vaccines” do not prevent infection or transmission of Covid-19, and do provoke a broad array of harms to people that cause disability and death in, at least, tens of thousands of cases, which is a lot in terms of all prior medical standards.

The government has been lying about this consistently. And the news media have been obediently conveying those lies, in league with the pharmaceutical giants who produce the “vaccines.” The governor of my state, Kathy Hochul, still idiotically wants to mandate mRNA “vaccines” for children. Pfizer ran a commercial on CBS’s 60-Minutes Sunday night promising that further “vaccination” with their sketchy product will “open up the world” for people. In fact, it will do nothing to protect people, rather it will promote the evolution of new-and-different iterations of novel Coronaviruses, and it will surely kill and maim a lot more people, including little children.

Paul, as he so reliably is on most topics, is perfectly correct in his perfectly factual assertion about FederalGovCo’s Best Of ranking among the world’s top purveyors of the Big Lie. At this late stage of the game, none but a wilfully blind simpleton would trust a single syllable its operatives, hirelings, and henchmen utter, about anything whatsoever. As for Hochul, Pfizer, and all that bushwa, I’ve been as right as Rand all along: PhauxVidMania™ and all its trappings and trimmings will never end unless and until We The People get back up on our hind legs like real, true Americans and put a fucking stop to it. Period, full stop, end of story.

Making their move

Posted on May 15, 2022May 16, 2022 by Mike

Ready for the New World Order? Because ready or not, here it comes.

Anyone remember voting for the World Health Organization to take control of our lives? No? Me, neither. And yet here we are, teetering on the brink of joining most of the countries of the world in surrendering our national sovereignty under the terms of a proposed new pandemic treaty.

Once British ink is dry on the necessary paperwork, we and most of the rest of the billions living on planet earth will, in the event of another pandemic, take our instructions not from politicians we actually voted for – and could, hypothetically at least, have the option of getting rid of – but from the unelected, faceless, bureaucrats of the WHO.

This is no conspiracy theory, by the way. No tin hats required. This is real and happening now. And a whole lot of people would rather you weren’t paying attention.

It is worth remembering that President Donald Trump insisted on divorce from the WHO – on the grounds that it was too close to China, only for President Biden to remarry them again in 2021. All of that is history, however. In a matter of days, the World Health Assembly will meet in Geneva for a vote on the treaty. The target date for final ratification is in May 2024, but by then the power grab will have long been completed.

Amendments written into the proposed treaty by the re-enamored Biden administration will see 194 nations cede sovereignty over national health care decisions to the WHO. The WHO would thereby have decision-making power over and above our own government – and every other government.

Consider this – when you watch footage of the 26 million people of Shanghai locked down in their homes, their cats and dogs beaten to death in the street…the WHO would, by the terms of the new treaty, have the power to impose the same on cities here. Know too, that under the terms of the treaty, the WHO does not – does not – have to show any data to legitimize its conclusions or decisions.

It is also worth knowing, to say the least, that it would be up to the WHO to define what the next pandemic is. Seeing how things are going, I would hardly be surprised to hear about a pandemic of obesity, or of heart attacks – followed by the lockdowns and other restrictions to deal with same.

No doubt lockdowns to fix the climate can’t be far away either. In the case of climate, the WHO might draw the conclusion that we, the human species, are the virus. Who knows what they might conclude and decide then?

Be in no doubt – this so-called pandemic treaty is the single, greatest global power grab that any of us has seen in our lifetime. It is nothing less than the groundwork, the laying of deep foundations for global governance through the WHO.

That’s from the transcript of a Neil Oliver monologue Sundance has up at his place, and it’s sobering stuff indeed, in the places where it’s not outright terrifying. Oliver closes with a plainspoken promise of unyielding defiance which echoes several things I’ve been saying myself for a long time now.

I am, even by my own estimate, the unlikeliest of rebels.

All I know is that I have, for a period now measurable in years, been opposed to those in power here, and also all but a handful of those vying to replace them. For the longest time I have cared not a jot what those jokers try and tell me to do. The evidence coming out now, about lockdown harms, about vaccine harms, tells me I was right to follow my own path. In short, I have had enough of the lot of them. They do not speak for me or in any way matter to me.

If this pandemic treaty comes to pass, I will disregard it. I will ignore any future lockdown ordained by any power. I will take no mandated vaccine, not while I have breath in my body.

The WHO and all its little wizards can take a running jump. The men in suits can sign whatever treaties they want. I don’t care. Not one of them – not Johnson, Trudeau, Macron and the rest – has the stomach for the wet-work that would be required to put their authoritarian plans into action.

We owe it to ourselves. Perhaps we even owe it to them – to tell them that they are living in a fantasy world of their own creation and that we want none of it.

Let them have the gall to seek to sign away our freedoms in such a high-handed manner, this month, or in 2024. I for one am not playing along.

Nor will I. But I must say I’m not nearly as sanguine as Neil is about how much “stomach for the wet-work” those “leaders” he mentions, as well as others, might have. I’d bet that, when it comes to the less generously melanin-enhanced, they’ll find it no problem at all to cram us into the gas chambers by the boxcar-load. Hey, it ain’t as if other like-minded political leaders have never done it before, you know. I do find it pretty rich that this time, the mailed fist of global tyranny is hidden in the velvet glove of the “health care” establishment.

Count on it: after the remarkable success of the Fauxvid trial run, from here on out we’ll be experiencing “pandemic” after “pandemic,” manufactured crises one after another after another—an endless parade of them, all accompied by the same fear-mongering, clampdowns both economic, societal, and personal, and generalized despotic oppression on an ever-widening scale. The nightmare will continue unless and until enough of these insatiable deer-ticks have been detached from the skin of the body politic and had a lit match applied directly to their asses until they shrivel up and die.

The enemies of human freedom and individual rights are emboldened, flush with a long string of uncontested triumphs, and unshakeably confident that ultimate mastery is all but guaranteed them. They have the initiative, the momentum, and the ever-important habit of victory spoken of by every legendary general since Sun Tzu.

The Enemy has seen nothing from Our Side so far but complacency, irresolution, and pusillanimity of mind, body, and spirit. One simple fact must be faced now: this doesn’t end until we end it. I can see no way that that happens without bloodshed, and I mean plenty of it too. If we can’t at long last get our heads firmly wrapped around that admittedly harsh reality, then the thorough rogering we’re about to get will be no more than what we deserve.

Update! It’s never the wrong time for a rerun.

Digging this gem up got me to looking back at its genesis to refresh my failing memory. Here’s a little history, for any young ‘uns reading this who may not have been around in those days.

Was Breitbart just a combative thug who saw our domestic political debates as a constant battle? Was he a combative, uncivil jerk who engaged in a war with fellow Americans rather than a civil and polite debate of differing ideas?

I’m saddened that “#War” has become so synonymous with Andrew’s memory and legacy because he was not, by nature, a warrior. He was not angry. He was not always looking for a fight. He was hilarious he was generous he was affectionate and he was deeply intellectual. He would much rather debate and cajole and get tipsy with someone who disagreed with him. His instinct was not to pick a fight or start a war.

Actually, I’m sure Breitbart was perfectly capable of being obnoxious, unpleasant, and obstreperous at times, just like anybody else is. Which doesn’t matter in the least; there’s no need, really, to defend him against those accusations, which to any fair-minded person merely confirm that he was, y’know, a human being. At the end of the day, the more important thing to know about Andrew is that he was a forthright, indomitable visionary who refused to shrink from the ugly truth about the nature, character, and intentions of The Enemy. Of course he’d much prefer a civilized, non-rancorous but still vigorous debate between two honorable, mutually-respectful opponents over a few adult beverages to the ever-more-literal state of war we’ve been dragged into today. What sane, decent person wouldn’t?

That said, though, Breitbart was intelligent enough, perceptive enough, and honest enough with himself to acknowledge the thin red line which distinguishes an opponent from an enemy. I never met the man, alas, but I have no doubt that if he was still around today Andrew wouldn’t dispute the inescapable fact that the Left wilfully, knowingly crossed that line several years back, and to date have evinced not the slightest regret over the decision. It came as no surprise to anyone who’d been paying attention, being more akin to a stripper peeling off that final, most itty-bitty scrap of clothing than some kind of shocking, undreamed-of revelation.

Let’s remember, for a moment, the first time the “War” idea escaped from Andrew’s lips.

It was CPAC 2012 and the crowd was buzzing in the main room at the Marriott Wardman Park hotel. This would be the final year the conservative conference was held at the cozy DC confines just a stones-throw from the national zoo.

The room was cramped and anticipation was high for the next speaker. In prior years he had addressed the devoted, conservative base on Saturday morning, a speaking slot reserved for niche personalities who could bring out the faithful on “hangover Saturday.” But today, February 10, 2012, Andrew Breitbart was the main attraction.

The 2012 primaries were in full tilt. Republicans were seemingly split between Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum. Earlier that morning Andrew and I hosted the Dennis Miller Show on nationally syndicated Westwood One radio from the CPAC radio row. On the air (or was it off the air, with Andrew there was hardly ever a difference) he lamented the fact that Republicans were fighting amongst themselves. He just wanted the primary fight over with.

“I really don’t care who the nominee is,” he said. “I just want to fight the Left.”

…As the lights dimmed in the main ballroom a giant screen descended on stage. A specially edited trailer of the upcoming documentary Hating Breitbart by filmmaker Andrew Marcus began. A giant, extreme close-up of Breitbart talking to the gathered throng with a pitch-black background filled the screen. The crowd went nuts. You could hardly even hear what he was saying.

“I am so sick of the media dictating the narrative in this country. I’m so sick of having to be apologetic for who I am. I’m so sick of people in middle America being called ‘fly-over country’ or ‘slope-headed.’

The trailer then cuts to various members of the mainstream media deriding grassroots conservatives as “tea-baggers.” Mocking them. Insulting them. Treating them like their voices aren’t important… like they have no legitimate right to speak out about the left-ward lurch their country had taken during the Obama presidency.

The two minute trailer ends with Breitbart saying:

“And what the Left has stood for with political correctness is to try to get those with whom they disagree to shut up. And the tea party movement and Sarah Palin and Michele Bachman and Allen West and all the people that have gone out there against the mainstream media and said ‘You’re gonna call us racist, you’re gonna call us potential Timothy McVeighs?

F**k. You.

War.”

And the place went nuts.

Andrew died less than three weeks after this iconic moment.

One of the most damaging losses Our Side has ever sustained, a crippling blow from which we may well never fully recover. Rather than just wringing our hands in lamentation, though, don’t you think Andrew would like it a whole lot better if we avenged him by resolving to fight this war as if we meant to win the damned thing?

Don’t look now

Posted on May 12, 2022May 12, 2022 by Mike

Looks like somebody didn’t get the “Saddam had NO WMDs” memo.

Gulf War Syndrome mystery SOLVED: US scientists blame the condition on SARIN gas released into the air when Iraq’s chemical weapons cache was bombed

Quarter of veterans who served in Gulf War suffering unexplained symptoms

Scientists left flummoxed by the cause fatigue, memory problems and body pain

But now US study has found the usually fatal nerve gas sarin is to blame

UNPOSSIBLE, I SAY!!! I have been assured by All The Best People that Saddam had no WMDs, never did have them, and had no interest whatsoever in acquiring any. The whole thing was just a lie dreamed up by Chimperor Shrub II to provide an excuse for launching his Forever War against an entirely blameless nation for the sole reason that the damned drunken fool believed that Saddam was plotting to assassinate Daddy Shrub. All those truckloads of WMDs that were seen filing into Syria for safekeeping just before Operation Desert Shrub opened had no WMDs in them, either.

In fact, there’s NO SUCH THING AS WMDs, period. Even if there were, Moslem shitrapies in the Middle East would be the last place you’d be likely to find them, Pisslam being the Religion Of Peace™ and all that. Hey, did you know that the word “Islam” actually means “Peace” when translated into English? Because it does. I bet you didn’t know that at all, did ya, H8R? Well, you do now.

“The Insurgency Lesson of Michael Collins”

Posted on May 12, 2022May 12, 2022 by Mike

Turns out, he has much to teach us.

In 1916, while the Irish rebels were led to a near certain death after having been defeated during the Easter Rebellion, Michael Collins decided he would fight the world’s most powerful empire differently, if he ever got the chance. Michael Collins got that chance in 1918, and he fought differently. In fact, modern successful insurgencies are largely modeled on Collins’ strategic concept.

Collins recognized that the oppressive powers that had their boots on the necks of the Irish people enjoyed power over the economy, information (news papers at the time), police, military, and the courts. No one was going to fight the British and win using British strategies. The only way to win was to fight differently.

For the preceding six-plus decades, the Irish Republican Brotherhood built a parallel state within Ireland. This was necessary for two reasons: (1) if independence was achieved, an Irish managerial class and network needed to step in and manage Ireland; (2) in order for independence to be achieved, Irish rebels needed competent intelligence resources. Collins recognized the value of both and used them successfully. But how did Collins win Irish independence when sixteen prior attempts failed? The targeting of bureaucrats.

The Irish Flying Columns disrupted British rule in the countryside, but they never really landed a true killer blow. What they did achieve, however, was that each successful attack (A) shook confidence in British capacity among Irish locals and (B) invested the locals in asymmetric attrition warfare. Melting back into the farms was critical to Irish successes outside of Dublin. Meanwhile, simultaneously, Collins and his Squad (or Twelve Apostles) of hitmen targeted mid-level bureaucrats for assassination.

Collins, a former bureaucrat himself, understood that senior leaders in British bureaucracy were fairly useless political appointees – not unlike the United States today. Targeting them was useless. The middle managers were the true strength of the British Empire – collecting taxes, disseminating intelligence, feeding news sources, etc, etc. By killing them, Collins was eliminating functional British Rule.

More importantly, not only did each lost beaureaucrat take critical business continuity knowledge to the grave, junior bureaucrats feared promotion. Why accept the role of Deputy X, even with higher pay and prestige, if Deputy X keeps getting killed? This began to destroy British capacity in Ireland.

The insurgency lesson of Collins, therefore, was not to simply attack the teeth of the oppressor, but to dismantle the ability of the teeth to strike – by selectively targeting individual bureaucrats for elimination.

This is a pluperfect primer on how insurgents might remove the tyrant’s boot from off their necks, to which I have nothing to add.

(Via WRSA)

Dennis Hopper, American icon

Posted on May 11, 2022May 11, 2022 by Mike

Just so’s you know, I freely admit that I’m running this as an excuse to repost this most awesome Nicholson/Hopper duet from Easy Rider at the end.

I’ve always loved Dennis Hopper and found him to be a kindred spirit. He embodies American consciousness without a shred of sentimentality. We see in him a mixture of rebelliousness, sorrow, loss, and even grace. But more than anything, we see American restlessness. Although he is most known for his films, both as a director and actor, Hopper’s talent was also visible in his photography. After his career had a bit of a downturn in the 1960s, Hopper’s then-wife, Brooke Hayward, gave him a Nikon camera for his 25th birthday.

Hopper’s photography oeuvre covers only the years 1961-1967, which is short chronologically speaking, but the creations that came out of restlessness transcend time. Hopper himself didn’t want to have anything to do with the pictures and put them away in a vault. “I was trying to forget…,” he said, “the photographs represented failure to me. A painful parting from [daughter] Marin and Brooke, my art collection, the house that I lived in and the life that I had known for those eight years.” Still, the photographs continue to live as artifacts of America’s past, separated from Hopper, the man, but bound to Hopper, the artist. His own view of their existence and status as photographs is almost irrelevant because of our gaze into the world he has recorded.

Hopper’s photographs, particularly in this collection, In Dreams, are a window into the soul of America during the 1960s. We see street scenes of Los Angeles: people frozen in time, sitting, standing up, looking into the distance of their own lives, or just staring at the passing dog. We see a close up of hands writing; jazz musicians in a smokey club; streets in rearview mirrors offering both a reality and an illusion of our strange world; George Segal and Sandy Dennis in 1965, a year before the release of Mike Nichols’ adaptation of Edward Albee’s 1962 play, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,” standing among the broken nude statues, embodying innocence not unlike their characters, Nick and Honey, in Nichols’ film.

We see Brooke Hayward in a grocery store, pushing a cart somewhat sadly, lost in her secret thoughts; a couple in a kissing booth; a girl in a rearview mirror driving to God knows where (a job? Seeing a friend? Or is she running away?); a cocktail party where a kiss between a man and woman appears seemingly from nowhere (Are they strangers? Friends? Lovers?).

We see the filming of Henry Hathaway’s 1965 western, “The Sons of Katie Elder.” Hopper does not discriminate and sees everyone as a human being, not in their respective societal or film roles. Hathaway and John Wayne are in the middle of a scene with Wayne pointing at something out of frame. There is a calmness, steadiness, and stability, but also the bubbling of creativity. I am drawn to these images precisely because they point to a time and a place when even the possibility of steadiness and masculinity was present in the culture. Things are getting done and life keeps moving forward.

In the collection, there are even self-portraits, in which we see Hopper’s need to be seen, a rebellious streak, and over the top self-importance. But there is also a certain sensitivity that only comes from someone who has the soul of an artist. They are the most dreamy of all. Is this how Hopper saw himself at the time? He is hovering like a ghost of America past and present.

On one occasion, Hopper’s daughter Marin, reflected: “My father, Dennis Hopper, believed that being on the road in search of something was very American. You had to keep moving forward no matter what. Ride into town, gunfight at high noon, then off into the sunset.” Hopper represented—and even in his death, represents—not simply the one American dream, whatever it may have been or whatever shred of it is present now. Rather, he represents American dreams—lives lived on the photographic paper, on the celluloid, and in the American desert of desires.

Okay, I take it back; the article is good enough to serve as its own justification, no excuses required for running it. Same-same with the vid, actually.

Update! So the whole Hopper trip got me to rooting around here and there, which eventually landed me on this incredible site covering all things Easy Rider. Captain America and Billy’s route to Mardi Gras is mapped out, literally; the entire movie is posted; there are then-and-now pics of some of the locations where scenes from the movie were shot, among other way-cool stuff. No foolin’, gang, this is one hella-awesome website for any Easy Rider fan.

Monstrous trains

Posted on May 11, 2022May 11, 2022 by Mike

An aspect of the supply chain collapse most of us haven’t given a lot of thought to, if any.

Imagine a train 16,400 feet in length weighing 17,500 tons: That is three miles, 560 feet and 35 million pounds. One train. And it is hauling hazmat, tanks of say, chlorine gas, or anhydrous ammonia. Just one tank car alone weighs 131 tons, that is 262,000 pounds. To give an example from history, 262,000 pounds of chlorine gas is approximately two-thirds of what the German army used during the trench warfare of all of WWI. One tank car alone.

“And then we pick up more enroute! My conductor is three miles away while I reverse this train into an active rail yard! Crossings don’t matter, and communities? Are you kidding? No sane country would move materials like this. These trains exceed the coupler and drawbar limits of the very cars themselves. The risks the Class I carriers are taking is a race to disaster. It is absolutely dreadful and grotesque.

Another Precision Scheduled Railroading factor in supply chain failure: Even when the majority of these PSR trains make it, without dramatic ends, they rarely get across the road during a crew members hours of service (HOS) time limit, which is 12 hours. Several factors:

“The rail infrastructure, in particular rail yards and sidings, were designed and built during the great Industrial Age. They did a lot of things right: they overbuilt bridges, for one. But it is not a failure of imagination that they could not foresee, from a sane perspective, that someday the bosses would want to normalize 15,000-foot trains.

“Yards and sidings do not accommodate this scale. It is a clash of function and design. So, imagine this: A 15,800-foot train with distributed power locomotives placed in the middle and at the rear of a train, comes to work a station with 4,500-foot tracks and needs to pick up and set out cars in the middle and rear of the train. This will not be lickety-split.

Plenty more at the link, all of it both fascinating and terrifying at once. Bayou Pete follows up:

All I can say is, my hat’s off to anyone who takes on a job like that. The stress must be beyond most people’s imagination. Also, if something goes badly wrong and the train is involved in a major derailment or collision, the crew’s safety is probably anything but guaranteed. The inertia built up by such weights, at such speeds, makes it impossible to slow down or stop in any meaningfully short distance. The crew are going to have to jump for their lives (at speeds almost guaranteed to cause serious injury or death) or ride it all the way to impact, in the desperate hope they won’t be smeared all over the wreckage like strawberry jam. That’s not much of a choice.

When I think of the long, long trains of tank cars and chemical cars that I see rumbling through our little town every single day, and realize that even one of those cars carries enough potentially lethal cargo to kill every person within city limits in a matter of minutes…it puts a whole new perspective on rail safety.

Don’t it, though. Don’t it just. Over the years I’ve known a cpl-three guys who worked as train engineers, brakemen, even one out in Arizona who was a conductor, if I remember right, for Amtrak. My cousin Steve, who has had a huge fascination with trains his whole life and is locally famous for his incredible collection of HO-scale model railroad builds, used to say to me: “I really wanted to work for the railroad, until I found out the job would involve having to go out and decouple those big steel boxcars during a lightning storm. That’s when I lost all interest in it.” As it happens, that’s also when I realized how happy I was that I’d never had any interest in it to start with.

BREAKING: DeSantis right again!!!

Posted on May 11, 2022May 11, 2022 by Mike

No news there, really; he almost always is.

Ron DeSantis: Requiring Permits for Concealed Carry is ‘Subcontracting Your Rights’
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) is warning that requiring a permit for concealed carry subcontracts out constitutional rights to the whims of the person approving permit applications.

News4Jax noted that DeSantis described the concealed permitting process on Tuesday as a “licensing scheme” run by people who can take away your license if they so choose. The Governor made clear he wants to replace the permitting system with a constitutional carry framework.

Precisely so. As I always say: any time you must apply to the government for official permission and a license to exercise something you’ve deceived yourself into thinking of as a “right,” what you actually have is by definition not a right, but a privilege.

Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried is the individual who oversees concealed permitting in Florida. She is also a Democrat candidate for governor in the state. Fried responded to DeSantis by calling the push for constitutional carry “absurd political pandering from the governor of a state that has experienced some of the worst mass shootings in our country’s history.”

DeSantis also spoke about concealed permitting over the weekend, alluding to “the official in charge of these permits” but not calling out Fried by name.

The NRA quoted DeSantis saying “the official in charge of these permits doesn’t support Second Amendment rights.”

Right again, Ron, and it’s high time somebody found the intestinal fortitude to point it out, obvious as it is to some of us. The truth is, NO Demonrat supports the private ownership of firearms, contra whatever brazen lies they feel they must puke up during “election” season. Reflexive opposition to what the plainspoken, easily-understood language of the 2A says is a core prerequisite for acceptance as a Democrat Party candidate for elective office, any breach of which is grounds for immediate and summary expulsion.

The New New Right

Posted on May 8, 2022May 8, 2022 by Mike

Bret Stephens—stale, stuffy, irrelevant, and insufferable as is typical of his type—asks (and answers) the most meaningless question I can think of right offhand.

What is conservative?” columnist Bret Stephens asked in Tuesday’s New York Times.

Who the fuck cares? Also: who the fuck thinks there could ever be a worthwhile answer to be found in, of all places, the NYT, ferchrissakes?

“It is,” he posits, “above all, the conviction that abrupt and profound changes to established laws and common expectations are utterly destructive to respect for the law and the institutions established to uphold it — especially when those changes are instigatedgggggzzzzzzxxxsknxxxxzzzz…”

Night-night, sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs etc.

Stephens was responding to the broad conservative and Christian excitement that America’s extreme abortion regime might finally be struck down by the Supreme Court; but Stephens might as well have been writing about J.D. Vance’s hard-fought Tuesday night victory in Ohio’s Republican primary. Or Blake Master’s primary race to represent Arizona. Or Tucker Carlson’s intellectual ascendancy. Or the rise of a young and invigorated American New Right.

Stephens is wrong, of course. Conservatism isn’t remotely about process: It’s about traditional wisdom and values; it’s about conserving things of generational, transcendent value.

It means understanding that man is fallen, and society must protect families, workers, traditions, and, yes, the unborn from being wiped aside; oppressed from above.

It means conserving the truth — the truth about men and women, the truth about the unborn, the truth about human equality, and the necessary limits on government power.

That’s not to say there isn’t still an important place for process: In a civilization governed by prudent and benevolent institutions that buttress and strengthen traditional wisdom and values, process protects those cherished things from rapid change.

In a world governed by imprudent and vindictive institutions, however, that claw, gnash, and tear at traditional wisdom — that usurp traditional values — the “process” merely fools us into believing that what these institutions are doing is normal, when in reality it is profoundly abnormal.

I can’t honestly say I care all that deeply about “conservatism” anymore, if I ever truly did. What I DO care about is America as the Founders envisioned it. I care about the values codified in their Constitution, which I do believe remains far and away the most brilliant, visionary, and timeless document on what does and does not constitute a legitimate government of, by, and for a free people, along with the Declaration, the Federalist Papers, and the correspondence shared between several of the key figures most responsible for creating them.

I care about the fact that those men, those precious and incomparable documents, and the government they bequeathed to us have all for many decades been under relentless assault by vermin unfit to clean the privy stall of giants among men like, say, Washington, Jefferson or Adams with their own tongues. I care that these vermin have succeeded so wildly at besmirching so much that was good in the world, bringing Virtue to Her knees in the muck and mire. I care about stopping these vermin. I care about ridding this land of them, as near to permanently as may be. I care about punishing them, by the harshest and most extreme measures imaginable, pour encourager les autres.

I like JD Vance, and I do not give a tinker’s damn whether Bret Stephens and the rest of his ivory-tower ilk thinks he’s a “conservative” or not.

He’s a man who doesn’t “care if Google is a private company, because they have too much power; and if you want to have a country where people can live their lives freely, you have to be concerned about power — whether it’s concentrated in the government or concentrated in big corporations.”

He thinks our corporate overlords would happily satiate us with whirling gizmos and gadgets while capturing our culture and selling us out to China. This places him directly at odds with tired, established Republicanism, which would prefer to slander the ghost of Ronald Reagan while they simp for corporations that work to undermine our national economy, our traditions, our families, and even our children’s sexuality.

Vance is also a man who doesn’t “really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another,” and thinks “it’s ridiculous that we are focused on” their border over our own.

Far more than Ukraine, he cares “about the fact that in [his] community right now, the leading cause of death among 18- to 45-year-olds is Mexican fentanyl.” This places him directly at odds with all of established Washington, where $5 billion for our country’s border security is too much to ask, but politicians crow about sending six times that amount to defend the sacred territorial integrity of another’s.

Vance is a man who thinks, “If any of us want to do the things that we want to do for our country and for the people who live in it, we have to honestly and aggressively attack the universities in this country.”

“So much of what we want to accomplish,” he recognizes, is “…fundamentally dependent on going through a set of very hostile institutions, specifically the universities, which control the knowledge in our society, which control what we call truth and what we call falsity, that provides research that gives credibility to some of the most ridiculous ideas that exist in our country.”

This once again places him directly at odds with Washington, which every years sends billions in federal aid to colleges and universities, with nary a whimper of a fight.

More broadly, “Vance,” Harpers editor James Pogue writes, “believes that a well-educated and culturally liberal American elite has greatly benefited from globalization, the financialization of our economy, and the growing power of big tech.”

“This,” he continues, “has led an Ivy League intellectual and management class…to adopt a set of economic and cultural interests that directly oppose those of people in places like Middletown, Ohio, where he grew up.”

In other words, Vance knows what time it is.

It’s an excellent piece; you’ll want to read all of it, I assure you.

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