Open Thread

Mark Noonan31 Comments

A passage from the upcoming Book X of the Mirrors series:

“An atomic bomb,” Tom said, nodding his head. “Where it splits an atom causing an explosion?”

“Well, so I’m informed; I never made it to any advanced mathematics,” Jerome replied. “But not just one atom; quite a lot of them packed very close together and then blown up causing the split and explosion. We dropped two of them on Japan and they threw up the sponge.”

“It sounds very horrible,” Aleste said. 

“It is very horrible, but it did end the war.”

“It did, but I perceive it was like the way my grandmother ended the war; it just made more wars.”

“That was magic.”

“So is your terrible bomb; you and your people have just forgotten what magic is. People always want short cuts.” Aleste shrugged. “And who am I to talk?”

“Couldn’t you stop using magic?,” Tom asked.

“I’d like to but I can’t; it is too late. Mother is wrong; it can’t be fixed. We’re just stuck with it now. Like your people and that bomb.”

Tom nodded.

“We all learn a bit, but never early enough.”

“Well, I sure didn’t. But if I had to guess, Tom, you learned soon enough.”

He shook his head.

“Not nearly soon enough.” He touched the globe and anchor emblem on his blouse. “Dad was a Marine in World War One. Fought in the Argonne. Told me about it. But he left out some details.”

“That’s as old as time.”

“Sure is. But I didn’t help myself. I was Romantic about it on purpose, I guess. What was my meat and potatoes?”

Tom stood up and started to recite with dramatic gestures:

The first that the general saw were the groups

Of stragglers, and then the retreating troops;

What was done? what to do? a glance told him both,

Then, striking his spurs, with a terrible oath,

He dashed down the line ‘mid a storm of huzzas,

And the wave of retreat checked its course there, because

The sight of the master compelled it to pause.

With foam and with dust the black charger was gray;

By the flash of his eye, and the red nostril’s play,

He seemed to the whole great army to say,

“I have brought you Sheridan all the way

From Winchester, down to save the day!”

“Gorgeous bit of poetry by Thomas Read. Dad loved it so much he named me after him.”

“It is a good bit of poetry,” Aleste said. “Stirring.”

“It is that, but I’d have been better off reading Sassoon.”

“What did he write?”

“Oh, a little more bitter than that.” 

“Please, tell me. I have to know. To learn.”

“All right.”

“You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye

Who cheer when soldier lads march by,

Sneak home and pray you’ll never know

The hell where youth and laughter go.”

“That is bitter and I’m sorry for him. But it is something to know.”

“It is that.”

I really like that bit – the attitude is deeply woven into the whole tale: we must be brave. But let’s not kid ourselves, either. I think it is something that we have definitely lost in our storytelling. You think of even the very good war movies of the past 30 years or so and throughout them is a thread of its just suffering and you must get through it – but there is also heroism, which cleanses the effort. As long as we are this side of the hereafter, things won’t be all neat and tidy.

The latest example of this is some people getting upset that we’re killing drug smugglers. For goodness sake, they’re de-facto pirates. We can hang them after a drumhead court martial…its actually a mercy to whack them with a missile. It is over quickly. And we should be celebrating our sailors and airmen doing the deeds – they’re defending the least of us from a horrible scourge. And, sure, we can also spare a thought to those we kill – some of them are very much compelled to do it. But, then again, a man who truly knows the value of life would never hold his life more valuable than someone else’s…and everyone who gets into those boats has done just that, and so is getting what’s coming to them…getting, that is, what they were going to deal out. And more mercilessly…over a period of years, and the destruction of not merely individuals …but of families and whole communities.

I think we need to spin better tales, guys. I wish I were a better writer – that I could write something that would shake the world! I hope that some of ours eventually do…because we need stories that enlighten and encourage us. That show us that the good guys do win…but that even the most glorious victory comes with a high price.

Anyways, just a bit of thought I’m having as I polish up the book and get it ready for publication!

Merry Christmas!

Mark Noonan26 Comments

Let’s not forget the reason for the season!

In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus
that the whole world should be enrolled.
This was the first enrollment, 
when Quirinius was governor of Syria.
So all went to be enrolled, each to his own town.
And Joseph too went up from Galilee from the town of Nazareth 
to Judea, to the city of David that is called Bethlehem, 
because he was of the house and family of David, 
to be enrolled with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child.
While they were there,
the time came for her to have her child, 
and she gave birth to her firstborn son.
She wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, 
because there was no room for them in the inn.

Now there were shepherds in that region living in the fields 
and keeping the night watch over their flock.
The angel of the Lord appeared to them 
and the glory of the Lord shone around them, 
and they were struck with great fear.
The angel said to them,
“Do not be afraid;
for behold, I proclaim to you good news of great joy 
that will be for all the people.
For today in the city of David 
a savior has been born for you who is Christ and Lord.
And this will be a sign for you: 
you will find an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes 
and lying in a manger.”
And suddenly there was a multitude of the heavenly host with the angel,
praising God and saying:
    “Glory to God in the highest
        and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”

For those of us believe this happened, it wasn’t just an event – it was the most important thing that ever happened. God came down from heaven and became one of us – fully man while remaining fully God. Come down out of a deep concern not for a mass of people, but each one of us, individually.

Many people disdain this notion on grounds of the size of the Universe – “come on, you think God would bother with the people on this bit of dust lost in the wastes of Space?”. Well, yeah. And, indeed, the fact that we’re not finding any life remotely near to us indicates that this mote of dust might be pretty important…perhaps even unique. One thing certain, if there is other life out there, it is so far away we’ll probably never encounter it (we would have heard some sort of intelligible radio transmission if there was anyone within, say, a hundred light years of us). Part of the problem is that people continue to think in human terms – the vastness of Space might contain many billions of planets, none of which have life…which, to us, seems strange. But perhaps God just likes making planets and they are each interesting to Him, even if not to us?

But the main thing, for us, is that event: God made flesh. If you don’t believe it happened, then the whole story is meaningless. If you believe it did, then you’ve opened up your mind to a startling concept: you’re worth something. In fact, worth quite a lot. You’re not a mere cipher. You matter. That, I think, is what really bothers people about the whole story – we don’t want to matter. Well, strictly speaking, we don’t want anyone else to matter. We don’t, that is, want to feel obligated to others (this, “we”, of course applying to the general run of humanity – not those who actually believe). We want a world where we don’t have to give a darn about others…where a “sorry to hear that” is sufficient before we move on to fussing about our own concerns.

The difference is the railroad engineer who drove Jews to the gas chambers and those who tried to stop Hitler…even if it meant not just their own deaths, but the deaths of everyone they knew. You see, a Stauffenberg knew that his life and the life of his wife and children were not more important than everyone else’s. That there was nothing to live for if one stood aside while others suffered. And, of course, Stauffenberg was a devout Christian. He went along with the Nazis as long as he could figuring that the fever would break and an honorable Germany would emerge…but it eventually became clear that the fever wasn’t going to break and action had to be taken…even if totally forlorn action. And so it was, and the world was given a hero for all ages to admire.

It is belief in that event in Bethlehem that makes the difference. Which makes real self-sacrifice even possible. Not the bravery that stands up to an enemy army, but the bravery that stands up to evil, itself, even when there is absolutely no hope you can beat it. Which says, aloud, “I don’t care what you do to me and mine, I am your enemy and will fight you”.

And, also, it lets us know – we can’t lose. To give a minor spoiler about Book X, I put into Fred’s mouth this very idea: that evil, in the end, is nothing. Just stand up to it. It is ok to feel pain. To die. Just don’t give into it. The Life of the World to Come will make all of this as if it has never been. Every tear will be wiped away. That is the most important thing, I think, for us to grasp today – we can’t lose. They will lose. They can’t do otherwise…they believe in nothing. A plague and a nuisance they very much are…but not at all important…unless, by God’s grace, they come to understand that it is Mary, laying her child in a manger, who was central to the most important event that ever happened.

Condemn the Disgraceful

Mark Noonan12 Comments

A major reassessment is needed. We really do need to free our minds from conventional wisdom. All of us have been underneath a massive weight of propaganda our whole lives and much of what we think is true is false – even those of us who have done the most to break free are still largely working on the assumptions that there was some logic and decency behind the actions controlling our society this past century or more.

Trump sparked massive Establishment outrage when he placed his name on the Kennedy Center. They acted like someone had urinated on the Washington Monument. The fact that the Kennedy Center had decayed and was a mere slush fund for the Left didn’t matter…Trump was the person violating all decency by putting his name on it! But even in the debate back and forth on it – I think it is enormously funny – everyone was missing the part about whether or not there should be a Kennedy Center.

JFK was very much a Greatest Generation/Boomer phenomena. That is, it was all an act – the appearance of excellence masking a sordid and rather incompetent reality. But now the Greatest Generation is almost all gone and the Boomers are aging out. I was born in late 1964 so I’m the very tail end of the Boomers…and I’m sixty one. The Boomers who really set the tone were born fifteen and twenty years before I was…and they are pushing or over eighty. That is, there aren’t a lot of people left who care to defend that time period. Once upon a time, “where were you when you heard Kennedy was shot?” was a meaningful social benchmark…I wasn’t even a gleam in Dad’s eye at the time. You’d have to be at least 72 to have an even partially connected memory of it. To have it be really meaningful, you’d have to be eighty or more. And now we can look back and wonder just why so much angst was invested in the event?

Sure, it was a shock and, yes, significant questions persist to this day about just how it happened and why. But as for the man, himself, there isn’t much to say. A mediocre junior officer in the Navy during WWII massaged into a very media-driven political career where the showmanship far outstripped the statesmanship. My Dad was a Democrat in 1960 but he voted Nixon that year on grounds that JFK was a lightweight (though Dad had reservations about Nixon as well). That towards the end we have indicators that JFK was waking up to the fact that he was a mere facade is neither here nor there – before he could do anything to buck that reality, he was dead (and might be why he died)…and the actual legacy is not too great. Impelling us on to the Moon shot was significant but almost all the work was done after he died. Other than that, we have the Bay of Pigs fiasco, the totally blown Cuban Missile Crisis, backing down on the Berlin Wall and our increasing involvement in Vietnam as what Kennedy left us. However you slice it, this isn’t the stuff of Eternal Flames. Or Kennedy Centers.

I’ve long thought about writing a booked called Unserious Men – it would be about all the leaders of the West since prior to WWI who have simply run us up on the rocks over and over again…and who are for the most part highly honored to this day. But just taking it from the American perspective, I rate our successful Presidents since the Civil War as these:

Grant, Cleveland, McKinley, Coolidge, Reagan and Trump.

That’s it. The rest ran from incompetent to malevolent (and often both). A series of people who worked the system to climb the greased pole and wind up in the office of the most powerful man in the world. Not people who thought seriously about what was best or what theory should govern action…just work it. Fake it till you make it. Get the brass ring no matter what. They weren’t alone, of course: for each one who made it there are a dozen who twisted and turned mightily trying to climb that pole but failed in the end. On the other hand, the men I rate as successes did have a theory and wanted to see it implemented…and their political efforts weren’t directed towards getting themselves into office, but their ideas into reality. Huge difference.

One might say that we owe some respect to those who managed to get into office. I say, no. The office is a place of respect…but if a disreputable man enters it, then it is besmirched and it can only be cleaned by casting out the dirt. That is, saying what the occupant was. Defining our terms. Not letting our sense of politeness or nostalgia allow things to slide. When Trump put up those insulting placards on Biden and Obama’s pictures, that was a necessary purgative. Sure, it was also Trump’s sense of humor…but Biden and Obama are not the good guys. In office they were cruel, greedy, spiteful and incompetent. They poisoned American politics…perhaps beyond cure (though we still hope for a cure). And for no other reason than narcissism…they both of them thought they were the greatest men alive. But to be bi-partisan here, I also have great disdain for W these days…the man took the loyalty of the GOP base and simply turned his back on it. We stood up and fought for the guy for eight years. Trusted him. Invested in him. Thought he was at least trying to do the right thing. And since he left office he’s had plenty of nice things to say about the Clintons and Obamas, but when the Clintons and Obamas call us racist Nazi traitors…dead silence. That also poisons American politics…it is a grave act of omission. It is consent to having Obama poison us. And once you’re part of the conspiracy in any form, you’re totally in the conspiracy…even if you didn’t mean to be.

And it is all over the place. You take a look at the massive corruption Walz has presided over in Minnesota and you know that it wasn’t just him – it was everyone who worked with him. They all knew. And then you realize that this type of corruption has been going on for decades…so that means when the GOP had total control of the government in, say, 2005, it was going on and nobody did anything about it. Which means the GOP knew and was in on it as well. I recall that when one of Peter the Great’s ministers was caught stealing he sentence the man to be knouted (beaten with a thick leather truncheon) and it was common soldiers who did the beating…after a time, Peter ordered it to stop but the soldiers, drenched in sweat and breathing hard from their effort (they had gone at it with a will), said, “just a bit more, Little Father: he stole the bread out of our mouths!”. That is the sort of attitude we have to start taking towards these people…that money wasn’t just a figure on a balance sheet…it was your grandmother’s in home care that was denied, it’s that decaying bridge at risk of collapse, its your brown-out for lack of up-to-date power lines, it is the wounded veteran waiting ten years to get benefits, it is the peeling paint in your local school…it is your sustenance that was stolen, kicked back and remitted to Somalia and Mexico.

The condition our country is in isn’t an accident. It was deliberate. It was brought here by people who think they’re better than everyone else and this gives them a license to steal and to not care about how many people who die in the process. They need to be beaten within an inch of their lives…not given a statue. And until we start treating them as they deserve, we really can’t break the chains they’ve bound us with.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan27 Comments

Animal Farm was Orwell’s stinging parody of Stalin’s rule in Russia. The lies. The corruption. The secret police. The hypocrisy. Naturally, it is now being remade in a big budget film where the villain is – wait for it! – the Capitalist!

Yes, that’s it! The nice, wonderful Commies are doing a great job and it is all ruined by a Capitalist who subverts it.

It is a…well…rather Orwellian perversion of the story. And oh, so very 1984 in that it is a falsification of history. The kids ain’t reading, guys. And they won’t want to watch the old 1954 animated version (too stale in looks!) so going into the future if someone wants to find out about Orwell they’re going to find out he was a Communist who exposed how Capitalists ruin everything.

This is why the Right simply had to get into pop culture. We have to start writing books (doing my best!), songs, movies, TV shows…painting, sculpture. And we can’t just copy what was done before the Left ruined everything. It does have to be fresh and new – something that will appeal to people who are only barely literate in the traditional sense (they might be able to read words, but if you try to lay on them something as complex as, say, 1984, they won’t be able to fully understand it). This is where people like Musk have to step forth…we need money. Lots of it. We need to reward those who are right now in the infancy of an alternative pop culture.

Trump is going to address the nation – as of now, I don’t know for certain about what, but we’ve got quite a fleet off South America and Trump showing he’s rather upset with the corrupt, communist narco-terrorists down there. The Right is on the march down south – Chile being the latest nation to toss the Left out. But in Venezuela and Columbia as well as other places, the Left is too deeply entrenched (and is too willing to kill) to remove from power by normal means. I think Trump wants to give things a little shove. But, we’ll see! You never can tell what Trump has up his sleeve.

Trump caught a lot of flack over his post about Rob Reiner’s death. OTOH, Trump would catch a lot of flack if he posted, “I like apple pie”. TDS is widespread. But what was irritating was the number of people on the Right – not TDS-infected Never Trumpers – who took the opportunity to tut tut about it. As if they had just been waiting for their chance to show how morally superior they are. Like that is actually a morally correct thing to do…or that it is something that helps.

Look, I get that many have fond memories of Reiner as “Meathead” on All in the Family (a very conventionally Liberal , anti-American show in hindsight) as well as his movies Spinal Tap (mediocre with only one really funny scene) and The Princess Bride (cute enough, but it doesn’t hold up well – saw it for the first time in years a couple years back and it is definitely at the bottom of the re-watch list…its cuteness doesn’t sustain itself). Additionally, the manner in which he died was horrific – nobody should have to go like that. But none of this changes the fact that Reiner, for the last ten years of his life, voluntarily became a vicious liar for political purposes.

It wasn’t a mistake. He didn’t misinterpret the data. He set out to lie because, in his mind, Trump did the unforgivable thing of defeating Hillary. Reminder: all of these Hollywood types were good friends of Trump. Sought him out. Honored him. Couldn’t wait to be around him. Until Trump decided to challenge Hillary…whom the Hollywood types wanted as President because that is what the Script said. She had stood by Bill (as so many Hollywood types have stood by cheating spouses) and the payoff for that was supposed to be the White House (akin to a movie or book deal). Trump ruined all that. They had a whole host of TV shows and movies based upon the idea of a female President. Trump took it all away – and, so, when Hillary had her nervous breakdown about it, Hollywood took its cue and went to work. Knowingly. Voluntarily. Deciding that poisoning American politics was worth it if it could harm Trump.

Those lies are not funny. They have got people killed. They already sparked two attempts on Trump’s life (that we know of). They got Trump’s friends and allies ruined in Lawfare of the most foul, Stalinist sort. They have the USA today simmering on the edge with violence common and Civil War a possibility. Was Reiner the only person to do this? No. Was he even the most important? Again, no. But he was a willing participant in it and he never backed away. It was his own son who killed him – his now 32 year old son, who has a long history of drug addiction. Meaning that over the last ten years, when his son was 22 to 32 to years old and battling demons, Rob was taking the time out of his day to lie about Trump. This is just freaking bizarre – but it it was Rob chose to be.

So, no, we are not morally obligated to forget all that. In fact, it is far more morally important that we view things clearly than try to soften things up with pablum. Lives are at stake in our ability to fearlessly state the truth. And the truth is that whatever Reiner was in the past, for the last part of his life he decided to do very bad things. Trump called that out. And it should be called out. Yes, the evil that men do is interred with their bones – in that Reiner’s fate is really up to God now. But we have an obligation to not set up a system where a vicious liar is honored. Only a repentant liar may be honored.

The Left is trying to sweep the murders at Brown under the rug. Have to: if Jews and the few Conservatives at Brown were targeted, then all of higher education is going to feel the heat. The Left is hoping they can string things out and hope the news cycle changes (I think the fracas over the Reiner post was partially because of that – they wanted us to talk about anything else but Brown – especially after the pogrom in Australia). I’m hoping that Trump’s people are looking at it very closely…I want to find out just how deep the colleges are with antifa and Hamas.

Just Thinking a Bit

Mark Noonan20 Comments

Had a Man Cold this past week – toughed it out to Thursday end of shift by means of using up my “work from home” days but for Friday I had to do the worst possible thing you can do: take a sick day while sick! Total waste of a day! But, I needed it: slept most of the day. Didn’t go to Mass today because I’m still feeling it and I don’t want to get people sick just in time for Christmas (feel a bit guilty about that even though it isn’t a sin to miss a Mass because ill) – but what this really got me thinking is that I’m 61 and I felt the first symptoms last Monday while by tomorrow – a week in – it’ll be almost all done. Always been like that for me: I don’t get ill much and I get over it fast. Same thing with injury. I never bruise. I take falls that should break bones but they don’t. I heal fast – like when I have a root canal in the morning the pain is gone by afternoon and I’m eating normally that evening. The dentist is flabbergasted about how strong and deep the roots of my teeth are. I go and get a physical and everything is fantastic. I might be from what they call “the deep end of the gene pool”…that is, one of those people who’s genetics have determined a strong constitution. Generally people in my family (both sides) make it into their 80’s but I did have a grand-aunt who made it to 100. We’ll see how long this ride lasts!

As you might have guessed, I’ve been pondering my own mortality – not in a morose way! We all owe God a death, right? True, we all want a highly extended line of credit, but it stalks us all. It is more in thinking of how much time has passed, what I’ve seen – and when considering, say, my grand-niece born earlier this year, what she might see? I mean, if she lives the normal female lifespan for 2025 of 81 years, she’s going to 2106! And she’ll have met a man who as born in 1964. And will be one handshake away from a man (my grandfather) born in 1896.

Let’s roll that 81 years back – and its 1944. Call it 1945. Think of all that has changed since then. There was still a British King-Emperor of India. Israel was still in the future. To us oldsters, that world seems familiar but not for the young. Black and white photography? You had to dial a phone. And the number was Lakewood 2697. Long distance seemed a bit miraculous. The kids are now asking, “what the heck is long distance?”. Hardly anyone had flown in a plane as yet; if you could afford to travel you still got aboard a train…or a ship if crossing the sea. Television existed but was still years away from common; you listened to radio shows. And if you needed to reach someone fast you sent a telegram. This is an alien country to anyone, say, under 40. You know: born in 1985 or later. As for the rising generation (born after 2000, now, guys!), even a cell phone without video capability would seem stone age.

Things change very rapidly. In the Mirrors series I deliberately created a world where change wasn’t happening – the final explanation (and end) of that status is explained in Book X (honest, I’ll have it out soon – but its the last of the series and I love it so much I’m loath to finish it…I keep refining the refinements!). Change is good. Change is natural. But, also, change is deadly. Gotta be careful with it. In general, the Revolutionary is someone to be afraid of – most of the time, he really doesn’t understand anything and is entirely destructive. Only very rarely does a Revolutionary create something better than what was destroyed (our Founders, of course, being one of the rare examples of good Revolutionaries). In this bit more of a century since the end of World War One, we changed very much too rapidly. We let the Revolutionaries run wild. Sure, this got us the Moon and some very amazing medical advances…but it also got us nuclear weapons and assisted suicide. There’s some plusses and minuses here.

In the main, most people do just want to live their lives. To be sure, “living their lives” for some subsets of humanity is, well, bad. Afghan tribesmen living their lives see a bit of rapine as a fine way to make a few extra bucks. But, for the common run of humanity, just living as they see fit is the sum total of life’s goal. Tolkien noted this in his works when he had Aragorn point out that his job – his purpose in life – is to protect the simple people so they could remain simple. That is, not stupid: but untroubled. It is the duty of those who know to protect those who do not. Just as a parent sets guardrails for children so, too, must the true leader set guardrails for the people as a whole. Our Founders set them! But, just perhaps, not firmly enough? Trusted too much? Living as they did as free and equal people and being honest and upright patriots, they possibly assumed that the perverse could never gain sufficient purchase in the American mind to ruin their great work…we have found, now, that some things should have been much more firmly written. Ah, well: live and learn, right?

After Revolution, Reaction. And I think that is where we’re heading. These days, the word “reaction” has a bad connotation. Of course it does: we’re under the rule of Revolutionaries! But the last great Reaction was after the maelstrom of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. Everyone had had quite enough of Revolution! That is why the later attempts to revive Revolution – most notably, 1848 – failed miserably. There were gripes and, indeed, even things to fight over. But, in the end, nobody wanted to create another period like 1791 to 1815. People opted for incremental change. And, year by year, they largely got it – the 19th century was a century of political, economic and social improvement. It was only after the turn of the 20th century…when the Bad Old Days were getting on to a century before and out of living memory…that people started listening again to the siren song of revolt and Revolution.

Though, to be sure, I don’t think anywhere there was a majority in favor of overturning the entire system. Lenin annulled the Russian election of 1917 – his Bolsheviks only winning 23% of the vote and, by far, a center-left coalition of democrats having won. Hitler never got more than 37% of the vote in a truly free and fair election. Mao, Mussolini and Castro never even considered a remotely free election. As angry as a people might be with the system, a desirous as they may be of deep changes, hardly anyone wants a complete overturn. Sure, the peasants of Russia had abandoned the Czar, hated the nobles and wanted the land for themselves…but they didn’t want to replace all that with a Commissar telling them all their land belonged to the State. That they might have been confused or lacked understanding is neither here nor there – they didn’t get what they wanted. In fact, hardly anyone ever does from the Revolutionaries because, for the most part, Revolutionaries hate the people…and want them punished for not measuring up to what the Revolutionaries believe is right conduct. And I do believe this latest run of the Revolutionaries is coming to a close – their desperate efforts to import a new population to use in overturning things is failing. And this was the last trick they had up their sleeve.

All around the world – and not just in the West – we see people rejecting those who uphold the current status quo. Nobody wants to continue as we have. Everyone looks around and wonders just why there are suddenly tens of millions of migrants and we have to let them in…and give them full benefits, legal protections and the right to vote. And then we also look around and notice that it isn’t our people who need to be replaced. That is, the Christians – the real believers, and the people who are of those who made our nation and civilization – are still having sufficient kids to maintain their population. It is those who have abandoned God who need replacements…not us. But it is those who abandoned God who are importing the replacements…and why replace us with people who aren’t like us? Who in many cases actively hate us? We figure we can do without the replacements as much as we can do without those who are actually being replaced.

This is why Populist-Right parties are going from strength to strength all over the world – even in places like Japan. The system the Revolutionaries made has failed in its promise and we’re all figuring that our old ways are just fine. You know: that tired, old bit about being sober, hard working, loyal, honest. Sure, it is boring as all get out and you don’t get the sort of art our Ruling Class prefers, but it works. And it’ll work forever. It will never fail – and it will always improve things. And so we no longer care what they say about it. It doesn’t sting. Perhaps if they had actually got us wealthier and, say, pushed us to the stars we’d still let them stay in charge…but we’re a bit pinched on the finances and they can’t even build a bridge in less than ten years. So, thanks; but go away.

And if they don’t go away voluntarily? That is, if they don’t surrender the power they lost fair and square in elections we win? Well, that would be…bad. Like very, very bad. Mostly for them, of course. But also for us. You see, we’re kind and tolerant and do want to live and let live. But if pressed to it…well, let’s just say that the Left won’t like what happens.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan27 Comments

Looks like we found a large deposit of “rare Earth” minerals in Utah – showing that Bismarck’s phrase about there being a special providence for fools, drunkards and the United States of America remains true: just what we needed. China was definitely leveraging their control over the global supply against us. And this discovery is in a Red State, so no fuss about extraction (there are actually sizeable rare Earths in California but good luck trying to get them out of the ground).

The Doomsters – who I more and more consider merely bought by the DNC – continue to Doom but from my perspective, things are rapidly brightening. We’re looking at sold economic growth in 2026 combined with increased personal income – just the recipe for people getting in a good mood. Tariffs work. They’ve always worked. They always will work. They are the natural economic order for any trading nation. The two insanities are to allow no trade at all or no restrictions on trade. As in all human action, a balance must be struck. Trump is doing that.

Between deportations and self-deportations, about 2.5 million illegals have left the country since January. And do keep in mind that we’re still ramping up enforcement – the OBBB paid for hiring and new equipment, most of which won’t come on line until 2026. We’re just getting started. Any illegal with a lick of sense is going to self-deport ASAP. Because next year there will be plenty of people to catch them…and if you’re forcibly deported, you can’t come back while self-deportation means you still have a shot at it.

A Democrat in Congress called the shooting of two National Guardsman – one dead – an “unfortunate accident”. Internalize the fact that they hate you and want you dead. They might have smiles on their faces. Might talk in the most reasonable tones imaginable. But what every Leftist wants is your corpse at the base of a wall.

At War With the Wicked

Mark Noonan17 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

The Catastrophe…and Perhaps the Way Back

Mark Noonan26 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Open Thread

Mark Noonan19 Comments

Never heard of Franklin the turtle until Hegseth posted a meme using the character – apparently a well-beloved children’s book character and the Canadian author is very, very upset that Franklin was used for some based memes. So, be sure to check them out so you can know what is inappropriate:

And, apparently, Franklin has been hanging out with Amazona of late:

So, whatever you do, don’t make any inappropriate Franklin memes. And don’t laugh at them because the Liberals say That’s Not Funny.

So, the Somali community of Minnesota is neck deep in fraud – and, guys, I am confident it is the tip of the iceberg. In fact, my bet is that immigration (legal and otherwise) over the past 20 years is heavily driven by criminal Cartels sending people here, getting them on benefits and then raking off a substantial amount. This is why Blue States are trying to refuse Trump demands to hand over the list of people on welfare…because that would expose the fraud. It can’t be emphasized enough how much theft is driving the opposition to MAGA. Sure, you get your true believers on the Left, but most people involved – especially in leadership – are bought, corrupted and corrupting. Trump is a threat to their gravy train.

I doubt very much we’ll actually go to war in South America. This is all a pressure campaign – ultimately not on any government down there, but on the Cartels who actually run things. El Salvador and Argentina are showing there are patriots in Latin America who can change things by ruthless action. But we can also see how hard it is for one to get in, and how much local and global opposition arises. And outside those few bright spots, it is a morass of cowards and criminals running things simply to keep themselves on the gravy train.

Securing our border and lighting up the mules at sea is rapidly generating an acute crisis. To maintain their position, the Cartels have to bribe the politicians and pay for thugs to go after those who can’t be bribed. What Trump is doing – in my view – with the military build up is putting pressure on people who are starting to feel less and less pressure from the cash-strapped Cartels. They can ease that pressure by either turning over power to patriots, or turning on the Cartels, themselves. It is a high stakes gambit, and we’ll see if Trump can carry it off.

Americans Don’t Commit War Crimes

Mark Noonan23 Comments

Murder, rape, torture, assault and robbery are crimes. They are crimes all of the time, everywhere and regardless of circumstances. No person can pretend that any authority has granted them the power to do any of these things. They are wrong, as such – and anyone who does these things should be seriously punished, up to and including death in certain circumstances.

Why point this out? Because there is no justification for crime. But we have a bit of a debate going on right now – an accusation that Secretary of Defense committed a war crime. The accusation, of itself, appears to me to be false: that is, he didn’t do what he’s accused of doing. That is, order a second hit on a drug boat with the intent of killing survivors of the first hit. What has got me going here, however, is the assertion that if he gave such order, it amounts to a crime. It doesn’t. Not a crime, as such and, so, not a war crime.

In war, you fire until the enemy is destroyed. That’s it. Failure to do this means that the enemy may be able to fire on you, destroying you. Sure, in bizarre circumstances you’ll be able to take an enemy alive but in combat it goes on until one side runs up the white flag – that is, the leadership of the defeated side surrenders not himself, but the whole force under his command. The drug runners are invading the United States to sell poison to our people. They are enemies. They are armed. They are upon the high seas. We don’t have to give a warning. We don’t have to give a break. Indeed, the more ruthlessly we apply force the more likely it is that the enemy runs out of the means to invade.

And, of course, this whole thing will end the moment the druggies surrender. That is, stop trying to smuggle poison into the USA. This is not a big ask. We’re not asking them to give up anything on their side. They can remain free, alive and able to pursue whatever honest trade appeals to them. All we’re saying is that if you’re trying to invade us with poison, you’re going to die whenever we can get you.

The real problem here is that many of us – including many on the Right – have internalized a Leftwing lie about the United States: that is, we commit war crimes. That we are even capable of committing war crimes. That American soldiers would lend themselves to such a monstrosity. It all started to brew early in the Cold War, specifically during the Korean War when the Communist world started to accuse our soldiers of all manner of war crimes. To this day, Leftwing voices around the world assert these crimes happened even though they didn’t. It was, of course, just a means to an end – to make the American military odious and so cover up the crimes of the Communists. “Look at that American bastard!” was the shout…by a Soviet Red Army which massacred Poles at Katyn and pretty much raped every German woman they could get their hands on in 1945. “See the American crimes!” shouted the Chinese Communists who were at the start of 70 million political murders.

The real gift to the Left here was My Lai – the quite horrible massacre by US troops of hundreds of Vietnamese. Of course, a bit of context is good here: this was in the immediate aftermath of Tet and our Army had suffered a lot of losses including from supposed civilians who revealed themselves as enemies only by the act of killing Americans. Also should be pointed out that it took place just a couple weeks after the Battle of Hue where the Communists had murdered more than ten times the number killed at My Lai…without anyone winning a Pulitizer Prize for covering it. Because it was hardly covered at all in the Western press. Didn’t fit the Narrative. My Lai did – savage Americans!

The reality of My Lai is that a unit of the American army, under gigantic stress from severe combat, went off its head and murdered hundreds. But this wasn’t US policy. A company commander gave harsh yet vague orders to his troops which some of them – not all – interpreted as a license to do evil. The policy of the US government was to go soft on Vietnamese civilians in an effort to win them over to our side. That the carrying out of this policy was, at times, downright stupid is neither here nor there – the crucial aspect is that our Army wasn’t in Vietnam to conquer, murder, rape, loot and torture. The desired goal was an independent and free Vietnam. In this is the crucial difference and what makes My Lai – a horrid crime – not a war crime.

Meanwhile, as noted, over in Hue – just 75 miles away from My Lai (you could drive it in a couple hours) – the Communists murdered as many as 6,000 people (the most commonly stated death toll is just around 4,000 but strong evidence indicates it goes to 6,000). The victims were anyone perceived as being favorable to the South Vietnamese government and/or the USA. They were rounded up, bound, tortured and murdered. Some were beaten to death. Some were buried alive. This was not done by a small section of the Communist force in defiance of policy – it was done as a carefully crafted policy. The Communists had developed lists of people to murder prior to taking over Hue. Had they remained in control of Hue for a longer time, more would have been murdered. What happened at Hue was a war crime. There’s no other way to interpret it.

But it is we Americans are the bad guys! Our whole Army was evil because of one company commander….but the NVA was just peachy even though they murdered vastly more. Keep in mind that what happened in Hue was just Communist policy writ large…all throughout the war the Communists were murdering noncombatants (as well as looting and raping women) as a matter of policy. And after the war they just put that practice on steroids. The Boat People didn’t happen for no reason. A million people fled Vietnam for their lives. 200,000 of them died trying. You don’t get into a leaky, wooden boat and set out into the high seas over mild policy disagreements…you do that because you’ll be dead if you don’t.

In my view – and I defy anyone to refute me on this – a war crime can only be the systematic application of criminal means for national policy ends. That is, it has to be policy. Now, this policy can be overt (written orders and such) or implied – but it has to be a policy. A pattern of behavior. A clear desire for a certain outcome. A soldier who murders a man is a murderer. A unit that massacres one village and then proceeds on to the next for a massacre is a war crime. This is not a difficult distinction to make but it seems impossible for many. I can only say this is because they don’t think it through and, also, they’re afraid that if they don’t mindlessly repeat the Narrative then people will get mad at them (lies always require a massive amount of cowardice to succeed).

The reason it must be my definition is because if you say that any crime committed by any military personnel during war is a war crime then you are indicting the entire military organization. To say My Lai was a war crime is to accuse the United States Army of being no different than the Waffen-SS. It is simply unjust to do that unless you have proof that the military organism is a criminal organization…as we found regarding the Waffen-SS. Our people doing evil isn’t inherent to our military system. And keep in mind that My Lai came to public notice because American soldiers made sure it did. And while the punishments meted out for My Lai do not fit the scale of the crimes, there was punishment and acknowledgement that it happened and it was wrong…and orders were issued to work against any possibility of a repeat. The NVA commander at Hue was given a medal.

The main point for us to make here is that we have to stop following the Leftist Narrative here – it isn’t designed to stop crime, but to hamstring the USA. The reason we have JAG lawyers second-guessing our combat troops is because we listened to Leftists when they accused our boys of being war criminals. Really gotta stop that.

War is cruelty and you can’t refine it. The purpose is to kill. To do this, you have to take men – and these days, women – who are not by nature violent and turn them into killers. Not murderers, but killers. People who will fire on a panicked and routed enemy, gunning them down as they flee in terror until the order to ceasefire is given or the enemy commander runs up the white flag. It has to be this way because that is how you win battles.

War is also a thing of massive stress. Those who encounter combat are forever changed. And it is no surprise that especially after long and arduous combat duty, some people break. And that breakdown can be permanent or temporary and it could cause suicide, or murder. The real lesson here is to avoid war – but if it is considered a necessity and we send our people out to kill, then we have a duty to care for them, to be merciful to them, to try and bind up their wounds physical and mental. You don’t go calling them war criminals because they went off their heads. You might have to punish them. You might even have to punish them quite severely. But you still try to understand what they went through – because you told them to go through it. You, too, bear moral responsibility…you weren’t down in the mud and blood and you didn’t pull the trigger of that soldier who murdered that civilian, but you still played your part in making it happen. You aren’t innocent. So, have a little care here before you cast judgement. Don’t award yourself a Morality Medal because you condemned a poor slob who went wrong under the stress of war.

Like any people, Americans can do wrong things. It is part of human nature. But it has never been the policy of any American government to be criminal. That is, to use criminal means to obtain national policy ends – and especially criminal national policy ends. This is why I say Americans don’t commit war crimes. It isn’t in us. We’re not like that. We might be wrong – and even at times quite fabulously wrong – but we do wish for the good of everyone. Peace for all. Prosperity for all. Freedom for all. We raise armies to defend these things and we at times send those armies to war. And, at times, some of our soldiers fall short of the standards we set for them. That is tragic – but it isn’t a war crime.