Category: Current Affairs

The State of Things When the ‘Leader’ of the ‘Free World’ is a Puppet

I asked Dr. Vito Caiati, historian, whether Donald Trump's being in office would have made any difference to the present geopolitical mess, and this is what he wrote:

As for the present miserable state of the world, I think that had Trump remained in office neither the war in the Ukraine nor the war in the Middle East would have occurred, or if the former occurred, it would have been resolved on the basis of a territorial compromise concerning the Crimea and robust autonomy for the eastern, Russian majority oblasts.  Leaving aside the origins of the conflict (US interference in the internal politics of the Ukraine and the expansion of NATO eastward), Trump would have put Zelensky and company on tight rein. As for Israel, can we doubt that the appeasement of the Obama-Biden regime towards Iran encouraged the reemergence of terrorism? Now, the plan is to provide public support to Israel, while privately restraining her once again to conduct the war in a way that would deny the complete victory that she requires. With Trump, the war would have not occurred, and if it did, he would not have tied Israel’s hands.

As for the danger of WWIII, it appears to me that the Ukraine mess is a potential trigger for it.  There is no way that the Ukraine can defeat Russia, and I fear that a protracted conflict could lead to further American involvement and the real chance of a great power clash.

With regard to demons and such, I call your attention to what appeared on the Vatican Synod website this week (page 29): “What is a merciful heart? It is a heart on fire for the whole of creation, for humanity, for the birds, for the animals, for demons, for all that exists.” Thus, the diabolical evil that first showed its face with the Pachamama desecration of St. Peter’s advances further in the Bergoglian Church.    

I agree in the main, but Caiati's final sentence prompts me to ask: Is Bergoglio proposing mercy for demons in which he believes? Or is the truly Bergoglian termiticism and diabolism due to his tacit denial of the reality of demons?

No doubt demons are creatures, but does Bergoglio and his fellow clerical termites believe in their existence? I don't know but I suspect he doesn't and they don't. How many Catholic priests today believe in the  preternatural? I suspect it is a minority.  The preternatural is the sphere within which demonic agents operate. It lies between the natural  and the supernatural.  See Ralph Weimann, Sacramentals: Their Meaning and Use, p. 196: "In the period after the Second Vatican Council, and under the influence of rationalism, it was increasingly considered 'unscientific' to speak about angels and even more unscientific to speak about demons."

At a time when the RCC should be standing as a bulwark against the anti-civilizational forces of Chinese Communism, Islamism, and  Leftism, it is transforming itself under the termitic influence of Bergoglio & Co. into just another pile of secular leftist junk. 

But how could anyone in this enlightened age believe in such medieval superstitions as the existence of demons?  Hasn't humanity finally put paid to this old nonsense?  Maybe not. Maybe there is no naturalistic explanation of the depth and depravity of human behavior. Perhaps an adequate explanation must posit the preternatural. See my Substack article, The Holocaust Argument for God's Existence wherein I write:

As a sort of inference to the best explanation we can say that moral evil in its extreme manifestations has a supernatural source. It cannot be explained adequately in naturalistic terms.  There is an Evil Principle (and Principal) the positing of which is reasonable. The undeniable reality of evil has  a metaphysical ground.  Call it Satan or whatever you like.

In that passage I am using 'supernatural' to cover both the supernatural proper and the preternatural. 'Preternatural' would have been the better, because more specific, word choice. But then I would have had to explain 'preternatural' which would have lengthened the piece. Brevity is the soul of Stack and not just of blog.

Now I would like you to take a gander at this Daily Mail article and rub your noses in recent Hamas-Islamist barbarity. Could the source of this evil be merely natural?

“He be Good for the Hood”

I have some mind-numbingly substantive posts in the works, but for now here are three items from the (non-fake) news you may want to opine about.

1) The mug shot heard or rather seen 'round the world and its appeal to blacks. "He be good for the hood." "The more they indict, the more we unite."

2) Gold Star dad to Biden: "It's two-fucking-thirty, asshole." (1:30 ff.) Civility is a good old conservative virtue. But anyone who calls for civility in the present political situation is simply not perceiving said situation. We need to condemn morally our political enemies, in blunt and brutal ways. Yes or no? Argue the pros and cons.

3) My man Victor Davis Hanson was on Sean Hannity's show tonight. I have been linking to him for years. But I got annoyed with him tonight when he kept repeating, in reference to Biden's disastrous border policy, "It makes no sense!"

But it makes perfect sense if you are a globalist like Traitor Joe out to destroy the USA as she was founded to be. Does my man  lack the cojones (testicular fortitude) to come right out and say what I suspect he believes, namely, that the whole point of the open border policy is destroy the republic? Could he really be confused or puzzled about what's going on? Is he tempering his remarks to keep from getting shit-canned like Tucker?  'Defenestrate' is a polite word, and I could have used it instead of 'shit- can,' but again what good is politeness? You will get nowhere being polite or civil with mendacious thugs. Around thugs you have to be able to  project danger credibly and elicit fear. Jordan Peterson is pretty good on this. 

A good man is not a weak man. A good man is a dangerous man who is in control of the animal in him. 

Democracy with State-Sponsored Election Interference?

I should think they are incompatible. Might a bit of Orwellian re-definition help?

Maybe it is like this. Just as the border is secure as DHS-head Alejandro Mayorkas defines 'secure,' state-sponsored election interference is compatible with democracy as the regime and its media shills define 'democracy.'

Our political enemies from the Big Guy on down are not just brazen and repeated liars, they are something worse: subverters of language.

I hand off to Alan Dershowitz, the best legal mind in the country, and  a Democrat.

Naomi Wolf on Tucker Carlson’s J6 Revelations

A rich Substack article that ends thusly:

The gatekeepers who lie to the public about the most consequential events of our time — and who thus damage our nation, distort our history, and deprive half of our citizenry of their right to speak, champion and choose, without being tarred as would-be violent traitors – deserve our disgust.

I am sorry the nation was damaged by so much untruth issued by those with whom I identified at the time.

I am sorry my former “tribe” is angry at a journalist for engaging in — journalism.

I am sorry I believed so much nonsense.

Though it is no doubt too little, too late —

Conservatives, Republicans, MAGA:

I am so sorry.

How to Leave a Call Back Number on the Eve of WWIII

Don't make me re-play the message a dozen times. Pronounce the string slowly, clearly, and distinctly, numeral by numeral. You are not in a competition to see how fast you can spout it. And then repeat the string.  Don't say 'o' if you mean 'zero' (0). 'o' is a letter, '0' is a numeral. Confusing the two is a mark of a linguistically slovenly 'liberal.' 

And now you see the fix the Democrats have landed us in, on this, the Eve of Destruction.  (The accompanying video is the best I have seen attached to this song.) Joey B in his infinite incompetence, mendacity, and stupidity-cum-dementia has brought people together alright, but the wrong people, the Chi-Coms and the Russkis.  Way to go, Joe.  And all you useful idiots who voted for him, what were you thinking? You weren't, you were emoting, like good 'liberals.'  And now:

Russian leader Vladimir Putin announced in a nearly two-hour speech on Tuesday the unilateral suspension of the longstanding New START agreement that limits American and Russian nuclear development, describing Western support for Ukraine amid an ongoing Russian invasion as an existential threat to Russia.

An exciting, and possibly an exiting development.

Elsewhere in his remarks, Putin bemoaned the “spiritual catastrophe” of the West.

“They distort historical facts and constantly attack our culture, the Russian Orthodox Church, and other traditional religions of our country,” Putin claimed. “Look at what they do with their own peoples: the destruction of the family, cultural and national identity, perversion, and the abuse of children are declared the norm. And priests are forced to bless same-sex marriages.”

This is how Putin sees us, and with some justice. We are in grave danger. We would not be had Trump been re-elected. 

Tulsi Gabbard talks sense on this issue.

UPDATE (2/23):  Russia deploys nuclear-armed ships for first-time in 30 years.  Let's go Brandon!

UPDATE (2/23): A U-2 eye's view of the ChiCom spy balloon's massive payload. Let's go Brandon!

Why Tulsi Gabbard is Leaving the Democrat Party and Why You Should Too

Here at Substack. HT: Anthony Flood. Full text follows. Please propagate. Do your bit to restore some sanity to this country and to the world. 

Why I'm leaving the Democratic Party

Tulsi Gabbard
 

I love our country. Our God-given rights of freedom, life, and liberty enshrined in our Constitution and Bill of Rights are my inspiration. I answered the call to duty and took an oath, dedicating my life to supporting and defending those freedoms, both in uniform and in public office.

Growing up in Hawaii gave me a special appreciation of our home, water, and precious natural resources.  So when I was 21 years old I decided to run for Hawaii State House so that I could be in a position to protect our environment.  I wasn’t politically affiliated before that, but as I was about to file my election papers, I had to choose which party to affiliate with. 

As I did my research, I was inspired by Democrats who stood up against the war in Vietnam, and those who fought for Hawaii’s plantation workers who were being abused and exploited by wealthy landowners. I was inspired by leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy and drawn to the ideals of a big-tent Democratic Party that stood up for working men and women — the little guy.  In contrast, the Republican Party seemed like one that stood for the interests of big business and warmongering elites.  So I became a Democrat and remained one for over 20 years — an independent Democrat to be sure, but a Democrat nonetheless. 

I can no longer remain in today’s Democratic Party that is now under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness, who divide us by racializing every issue and stoke anti-white racism, actively work to undermine our God-given freedoms enshrined in our Constitution, are hostile to people of faith and spirituality, demonize the police and protect criminals at the expense of law-abiding Americans, believe in open borders, weaponize the national security state to go after political opponents, and above all, are dragging us ever closer to nuclear war.

Here are some of the main reasons I’m leaving the Democratic Party, in brief. I’ll be tackling each of these in more depth in the coming weeks.

Continue reading “Why Tulsi Gabbard is Leaving the Democrat Party and Why You Should Too”

Rod Dreher: Floating Above the Fray as Usual

Here:

We are somewhat insulated from this in America because we don't face the hideous energy crunch that Europeans do. Do you really think, though, that the US is going to be fine when one of our largest trading partners goes belly up? We are going to crash too, and crash hard. A word to my fellow conservatives: if you think the return of the buffoonish Donald Trump is going to be sufficient to deal with what is here, and what is coming, you are almost as deluded as the libs. You are as much a prisoner to emotionally satisfying Narrative as they are. We are in bad, bad trouble, and it's going to get far worse before it gets better. (Emphasis added)

What is your solution, Rod? I have just read your three most recent articles and all I get is more analysis, lamentation, and hand-wringing. What is to be done, my man? And which side are you on? Do you disagree with the policies Trump implemented? Calling the man a buffoon won't cut it; I want to hear a reasoned, fact-based case against Trump.

For some reason, Dreher, blinded by Trump Derangement Syndrome, and perhaps in the grip of the womanish side of his personality, cannot look past Trump's somewhat repellent style of self-presentation, his lack of gravitas, his alpha-male strut and stride, to see Trump's virtues.   (Please follow the hyperlink to Tom Klingenstein's sober and superb presentation.)  In consequence, Dreher cannot grasp that Trump is our only hope for turning things around.  This is a well-founded hope because of Trump's accomplishments while in office. He has proven himself as Dick Morris amply explains. De Santis has not proven himself to the same extent, and his being a career politician makes him more likely to cave under pressure. And yet Dreher does command a very clear view of the nasty predicament we are in:

Our leaders are liars and ideologues who are destroying the West. The ruling class — the State, the media, the financial sector, woke capitalism, the universities, every institution — is actively betraying the people they are meant to serve. This is not just crackpot Internet speculation. It is actually happening, right now — and as far as I can tell, the American people are being kept in the dark, figuratively. It's about to become literal in Europe. Watch this clip from Tucker Carlson, one of the few major journalists who tell the truth. He's pointing out that Americans aren't being told that Europeans are teetering on the edge of catastrophe.

Very good, Rod. I couldn't agree more with your description of the present state of affairs. But it is just more talk. What do you propose we do?  

The other side of the argument, of course, is that Trump is so repellent to so many that the net effect of supporting him will hurt the conservative cause. And of course it is the cause that matters, not the man Trump.  But unless it can be shown that there is someone more likely to succeed in implementing the cause, we should support Trump.

A political cause that is not implemented is practically nothing. Politics, though informed by theory, is practical, not theoretical. Is that not blindingly evident?

 

Democracy and Abortion Law

There is no need for me to make the point when Malcolm Pollack has made it so well:

As a detached observer, I have to ask: If the two most important things in the moral universe are Democracy and abortion law, why is it a catastrophe when the Court decides that abortion law should be determined democratically? All that the Court has said in the leaked opinion is, in effect, this:

“You folks seem to care a very great deal about the sovereignty of the people. Very well, then — if you really are fit to rule yourselves, here is a vexatiously difficult question upon which the Constitution is silent, and which, therefore, must be decided by the sovereign power of the nation. (That’s you, the People, in case you haven’t been following along, you knuckleheads!) We were wrong to take this sovereign power away from you back in ’73, and so now we’re giving it back to you.

Happy Democracy! Mind how you go.”

The response to all this, however, from the ironically named Democrats, has been to explode with anger that such an important issue might actually have to be worked out in a democratic fashion, by things like debating and voting. And perhaps that’s reasonable, because we don’t do any of that very well at all anymore; it seems that we are actually rather farther along in the great cycle of Polybius than the people running things would care to admit.

So, here we are, America: you’ve been doing a lot of yelling about “MUH DEMOCRACY” lately, and now it looks like you’re about to be served up a heaping helping of it. If you don’t really want it after all, that’s, fine — but in that case I think we’d be glad if you would please shut the hell up about it.

Addendum (5/13)

Malcolm above implies that the abortion question is "vexatiously difficult." In one sense it is and in another sense it isn't.  Clarity will be served if we distinguish these two senses. I will begin with the second.

1) I take the central abortion question to be the question whether the aborting (and thus the intentional killing) of human fetuses is morally permissible at every stage of fetal development for any reason the mother may have. (I don't doubt that there are some good prima facie reasons for permitting abortion at any stage of pregnancy in such special cases as rape, etc.)   Now if this is the question, then it has a fairly easy answer: no, abortion is not morally permissible.  For we all accept — I hope — that there is a general moral prohibition against the intentional killing of innocent human beings.  Now human fetuses are human and they are innocent. It follows that the general prohibition against the intentional killing of innocent human beings extends to pre-natal human beings at every state of gestation. More needs to be said to counter various misunderstandings and objections, but that was fairly easy, don't you think?

2) The question becomes difficult and vexing when we descend from the general level to that of a particular woman in particular circumstances who becomes pregnant, but didn't intend to become pregnant, and doesn't want to be pregnant for whatever reason (she can't afford another child; giving birth will interfere with her career plans; she wants to go to Europe, etc.) It is not very difficult to know what ONE ought to do; what is difficult is to do it. For then it is not ONE who is doing it, but YOU. 

To put it in Kantian terms, duty and inclination come into conflict at the level of the individual agent.  I know what I ought to do, but I am very strongly inclined not to do it, and if I live in a permissive society the mores and laws of which allow me to do what is morally wrong, I will probably "go the way of all flesh," follow the path of least resistance and then put my intellect to work rationalizing my decision to take the easy way out, and then make use of the decadent West's multiple opportunities for 24-7 distraction to induce amnesia  about what I did.

The Bootless Max Boot on Elon Musk

The bootless Max Boot has torpedoed his own boat. (Boot in German means boat.) I used to read him and had a good opinion of him, but that was before he lost his mind as so many did when Donald J. Trump was elected.

Boot tweetAn excellent tweet if you replace 'democracy' with 'institution-wide hard-left hegemony.' 

Musk understands how to battle the Left. You cannot reason with leftists and you cannot appeal to their nonexistent or ill-formed consciences.  You have to outspend them and defund them. The 'lean green' is the currency of political warfare. And don't imagine it is not a war.

The Musk takeover of Twitter is the best thing thing that could happen to Twitter and the noble cause of free speech and open inquiry.

Biden as Fitting Symbol of our Nation’s Decline

Some of Joe Biden's personal attributes have national analogues in our general moral malaise, our infrastructural breakdown, our lunatic embrace of race-delusional 'critical' race theories and their noxious, anti-civilizational outgrowths such as 'ethno-mathematics,' our economic dependence on geopolitical adversaries for essentials . . . .

Biden is corrupt morally, a brazen liar, a serial plagiarist, a grifter, and a political opportunist rooted in no discernible principle except that of self-promotion. Physically decrepit, he is also quite obviously  non compos mentis, not of sound mind. Even his supporters now admit his cognitive decline. Manipulated by others, he is a puppet on a string, many strings, pulled by unseen deep state operatives. Told what to say, he is more one dictated to than a dictator. But from time to time the puppet comes alive, goes off script, and blurts out something both stupid and dangerous, as when he recently spoke what is left of his mind: "Putin cannot remain in power!"

This senile outburst has exacerbated the grave danger we and the whole world are now in. I shake my head as did Sean Hannity and Dan Bongino last night when Geraldo Rivera came to the fool's defense.

Asking Questions about Ukraine Makes You Pro-Putin? Why Do They Lie?

Here:

If you say out loud that you think there is something strange about a campaign involving Democrats and Republicans, the media, Big Tech, corporate giants, and US intelligence services to promote one side in a foreign war that doesn’t obviously touch on the daily concerns of most Americans, you’re pro-Putin.

That accusation has haunted the American public sphere going on six years. For this is where the long campaign started, with Russiagate, the most destructive information operation ever waged against the nation. And unlike, say, the notorious Protocols of the Elders of Zion, its authors aren’t adversarial spy services, but fellow Americans, our own ruling class. Now the same journalists, foreign-policy experts, and retired US officials who lied in 2016 about Trump’s ties to Russia are front and center shaping public opinion about the war waged by Putin—the world leader our overclass put in the middle of an elite conspiracy theory designed to guarantee Hillary Clinton the presidency.

It would be useful to have insight into Putin’s thinking, especially now with a massive land war in the middle of Europe giving rise to a powerful anti-American bloc led by Russia and China. But don’t count on America’s national-security establishment to provide that insight. For they squandered their credibility with Russiagate. From former officials like ex-Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul and retired spy chiefs like James Clapper and John Brennan to Biden deputies like National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and the Pentagon’s top strategist, Colin Kahl, and the entire Democratic Party and its media apparatus, the lies of America’s political class left the republic vulnerable to destructive forces.

Why did they lie? Policymakers, spy chiefs, and military officials rightly deceive foreign powers to protect and advance the US national interest. But these men and women lied to the American people about the president they elected. Then they lied about everything. Public US institutions and private industries have spent the last six years mustering their formidable powers to break the US working and middle classes. Why? Because lying is part of the logic of war, and America’s oligarchy is at war with the American people.

Do you have a better explanation?