Category: MAGA Matters!

Why Do We Support Trump?

Charlie Kirk, six months in to the second Trump term, sets forth what sets Trump 2.0 apart.  His astonishing accomplishments include, in Kirk's words:

1) Completely and instantly securing the U.S.-Mexico border after the four-year Biden invasion. 

2) The stock market hit record highs this very week and blue-collar wages are rising faster than they have in 60 years.

3) Striking a crippling blow to Iran’s nuclear program while suffering zero casualties and even bringing a ceasefire between Iran and Israel as part of the bargain.

4) Doing things that past Republicans could and should have done, yet inexplicably never did. For instance, restoring merit-based hiring;  toppling the race and sex-based discrimination that had taken root all over America in flagrant defiance of both our Constitution and historic American values;  purging DEI commissars from federal agencies, imposing uniform standards on the military, and sending out warnings to the private sector as well; the destruction in detail of a rotten, anti-American ideology.

5) Doing the work necessary to protect American children from the transgender mania, one of the great evils of our time.

6) Ending health care providers'  involvement in child mutilation and similar treatments.

7) Cutting USAID down to size and keeping more of America’s money in America. The same goes for defunding NPR, PBS, and Planned Parenthood.

8) TSA’s policy requiring passengers to remove their shoes before boarding a flight was a pointless bit of security theater, yet Presidents Bush, Obama, and Biden all kept the policy around anyway. This administration finally got rid of it.

9) While the Biden administration treated the cryptocurrency industry as a borderline criminal enterprise, Trump signed the GENIUS Act, which positions America to be at the lead of this innovative industry.

Decisive action, not empty talk. Promises made, promises kept. But now let me add one of my own:

10) Destroying the Dems by driving them leftward — and crazy. He does it by co-opting their themes and concerns. He actually does what they only talked about doing.  Traditionally, they were supposed to be for the workers, and in some measure they were long ago. Trump is now and in actuality for the workers, American workers, not "the workers of the world."  He has transformed the Republican Party into the party of peace, the people, and prosperity.  The Dems respond by moving farther and farther left and embracing more and more extreme candidates, the Islamo-Commie Mamdani being their latest savior.  (Remember when Obama was their 'savior'?)

Hunter Biden, recently in full melt-down F-bomber mode, may be their next pick for 2028. Let's hope so!

Trump has Made News Great Again

Politics in hyperdrive. Who can keep up? And to what extent should one keep up? Here are a couple of articles that caught my eye:

The Islamic Republic's New Lease on Life. Mercifully brief, and very interesting.  In Foreign Affairs, by one Mohammad Ayatollahi Tabaar.  I'd be interested in Caiati's and Soriano's comments. 

Elon Musk is America's Dumbest Smart Person.  Roger Kimball is right, and he is a very good writer to boot,  unlike so many journo-punks now churning out bad prose. How do I know Kimball is a good writer? It takes one to know one.

It's a funny world. My opinion of the 'pre-historic' Fetterman has gone up during the same period that my opinion of the engineering genius Musk has gone down.  

I would put it like this. Donald Trump has injected the 'art of the deal' into politics. He has brought the transactional skills of a consummate businessman to bear with impressive results. He was politically naive but the seemingly providential interregnum provided him with a 'sabbatical' during which to 'bone up' with the help of brilliant advisors. That, and the stark contrast with the mentally inept, morally corrupt 'Traitor Joe' Biden have brought the Orange Man to power. Maybe God had a hand in it, or we just got lucky. I prefer not to bluster about the unknowable.

Musk, on the other hand, remains politically naive. You can't engineer politics.  

As for how much time should be spent following the events of the day, see my Is it Rational to be Politically Ignorant?

Musk's third party doesn't have a chance, and in any case, Third Parties are nothing but discussion societies in political drag, as I argue over at the Stack.

Is ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ a Concentration Camp?

It is according to the author of a TNR article.  I don't disagree.  After all, the bad hombres are being held against their will in one place prior to their deportation. The conclusion to draw, of course, is that some concentration camps are morally justified. This one is also legally justified. President Trump is merely upholding the rule of law, unlike the Dems who love to mouth that phrase, but don't mean what they say. "No one is above the law," Nancy Pelosi and her followers intoned again and again. Did she and they mean that? No. They meant: no one is above the law except our guys and gals.

POTUS is legally justified in building a concentration camp in the middle of the Everglades for the housing of illegal aliens prior to their lawful deportation.  What was legally unjustified was the Biden-Mayorkas invitation of an invasion of illegal aliens into our country. Those 'gentlemen' were in dereliction of duty and should both have been impeached and removed from office, at the very least.

Some say, quite reasonably, that they should both now be in prison. 

If you think my use of 'invasion' two paragraphs supra is an exaggeration, consider that in December 2024, during the Biden-Harris (mal)administration, there were 301, 981 Southwest Land Border Encounters according to  official U. S. statistics.  For the same year there were over two million total such encounters.  Under Trump, border encounters have dropped dramatically.  In June of this year there were zero. Again, these are official stats.

If you are against detention centers, then you must also be against prisons.  Is your name Zohran Mamdani?

Is Trump Still the TACO Man? Or is he now THE HAMMER?

VDH, Ten Iranian Questions:

Trump had warned the Iranians on numerous occasions. They never got the message. They were apparently listening to the American Left’s smears of Trump as a “TACO” (“Trump Always Chickens Out”)—a silly slur phrase that just died Saturday night.

And die it did. To hell with the American Left with its Tampon Timmies, its Joyless Behars, its cortically-challenged Cortezes, and its Kamalian clowns.   (It should be clear that I am no longer quoting my man Hanson.)

Some fear that Midnight  Hammer will lead to a wider war. It might. The world, led by  the USA, will then have the opportunity to rid itself once and for all of the current Iranian Islamist theocracy. That would be a good thing, and easy to accomplish: destroy the oil refineries first, and see if that gets them to back off, and "build back better," to coin a phrase.  If they remain recalcitrant, destroy their power grid.  No more pussy-footing around with these evil-doers. It's not 1979 any more, or the Carter administration.

Their  particular brand of Islamist insanity would then be finished forever. Do you doubt that? It would be finished in its concrete exemplification just as Nazi ideology was finished in its concrete exemplification in 1945. By 'concrete exemplification of an ideology' I mean its existence in an actual State.  Once the current Iranian Islamist theocracy is concretely at an end,  it is not likely to come back.  I will fire off two more points and you guys can have at me in the combox.

First. A great power such as the USA cannot be wholly non-interventionist, although it ought to be as non-interventionist as it can be consistent with self-preservation and the defense of its allies.  No nation-building! Non-interventionism is good, but it has limits. One limit is reached when anti-civilizational savages pose an existential threat to we us  the (more or less) civilized.  I call our enemies 'anti-civilizational,' but you ought not call them  'medieval' as some pundits do unless you want to advertise your historical ignorance and slam an entire epoch.

An existential threat is a threat not merely to one's physical existence or biological life, but to one's way of life.  The radical Islamist trilemma: conversion, dhimmitude, or death is radically unacceptable — which is why I call it a trilemma: three prongs, each of which is unacceptable.  If one has been nuked out of physical existence, then one has been 'nuked' out of cultural existence as well.   

This is why Khamenei and the boys cannot be allowed to develop nuclear weapons. We do not yet know the extent or efficacy of Trump's bunker-busting despite Trump's typical boasts and exaggerations. (Trump is a builder, a promoter, and a bit of a carnival barker, but still vastly superior to any of the electable Democrats.) The Iranian nuclear program has, however, surely suffered a major set-back.  If they get it going again the IDF and the USAF will kick the mullahs' collective ass one more time.

Second. The Iranian people have a right to any system of government they choose so long as it poses no existential threat to any other State.  Who the hell are we to tell them how to live when our Western societies, dripping with decadence, are hanging by a thread?  (Leastways, until Trump came along.) If the Iranians want a theocracy, that is their business.  Is it objectively certain that our classically liberal system is better than a theocratic system?  No, or so say I, even though I firmly believe that our system is better than any theocracy. What if they want an Islamic theocracy? No problem with that either, so long as the Islam in question is moderate and wields no such trident as the one lately described.  I wish Zuhdi Jasser the best of luck in his quixotic quest to reform Islam.

Ann Coulter a while back said that we should invade the Muslim lands and convert them to Christianity.

We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren’t punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That’s war. And this is war.

Convert Muslims? Sheer madness. Coulter is a very intelligent woman, but sometimes intelligent people say stupid things.  Of the Abrahamic religions, Islam is the worst. Schopenhauer describes it as "the saddest and poorest form of theism."  It is the religion of terror at the present time. An inferior religion, it gives rise to an inferior culture, downstream of which is a benighted politics.  But Islam is their religion and it is better than no religion. Try barging into people's lives to convince them to renounce their parents, their hometown, their region, their religion, their folkways.  Try that down in Hillbilly Holler or anywhere.

Convert the benighted Muslims for the sake of their immortal souls because Jesus claimed to be via, veritas, vita? "Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me." (John 14:6, KJV. I was brought up on Douay-Rheims, but I love that old English.)   Why not make it more specific: extra ecclesiam salus non est, where the ecclesia in question is the Roman Catholic Church? That won't sit well with our Protestant or Eastern Orthodox pals, and it shouldn't. I go a step further: paths to salvation are many. I won't argue it out, leastways not now; I'll just refer you to the work of Frithjof Schuon. See, for example, The Transcendent Unity of Religions.

How about converting the Jews? Another form of folly. Here is an instructive short piece by Rabbi Yehiel Poupko.

Trump, Nukes, and Nation-Building

It is blindingly evident that Ayatollah Khamenei and the rest of the  radical Islamists in control of Iran must not be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons. Donald Trump has been clear and consistent about this during the ten years he has been in the political spotlight.  He may speak of diplomacy and agreements but he understands that a piece of of paper will not deter such savages. 

Unlike the feckless and demented Joe Biden, Trump has excellent threat-assessment skills. He understands that the greatest threat to humanity is not 'white supremacy' or 'climate change,' but nuclear war. And unlike his impotent predecessors Obama and Biden, he knows better than to make idle threats. He gave Khamenei 60 days. On the 61st all hell broke loose.

So what DJT has to do is supply the Israelis with the bunker buster bombs and delivery systems (B-2s) to annihilate  the infrastructure needed to develop the nukes. [Corrigendum 6/19: I am assuming, probably falsely, that the USA can simply supply the Israelis with the bunker-busting GBU-57s and the B-2s so that the IDF can do the job.]

But there is dissension in the MAGA ranks. I wonder if Tucker Carlson is aware of the distinction between preventing the present Iranian regime from acquiring nukes and forcing the Iranians to adopt a Western form of government. I am for the first, against the second. The Iranians have the right to any government of their choosing, including an Islamic theocracy as long as it does not support such  terrorist surrogates and proxies as  Hamas and Hezbollah, and as along as it does not develop nuclear weapons.

As my respect for Carlson goes down, my assessment of Fetterman goes up. Funny world. 

The Neo-Con mistake was to think that we can teach the peoples of the Middle East how to live by invasion, occupation, and nation-building. Utter folly.  But that is not what Trump is about.  Preventing Khamenei and his gang from acquiring nukes is entirely consistent with Trump's non-interventionist  foreign policy.  [On second thought, a great power such as the USA cannot be purely non-interventionist if it is to succeed in protecting its own interests. Here non-interventionism meets its limit. In the present emergency, an exception must be made: the USA must intervene to prevent the rogue state from acquiring nukes. The preceding sentence smacks of Schmitt: I am currently immersed, critically of course, in his works.] 

"The Romans, foreseeing troubles, dealt with them at once, and, even to avoid a war, would not let them come to a head, for they knew that war is not to be avoided, but is only put off to the advantage of others." (— Nicolo Machiavelli, in "The Prince.")

Applying Machiavelli's point to the present: War to the death cannot be avoided with Khamenei's Iran. So let's get it it over with. Khamenei is stalling; he thinks he can survive the current Israeli onslaught, develop his nukes, and fight later.  (This is essentially General Jack Keane's analysis. Sounds right to me!) So what DJT has to do is supply the Israelis with the bunker buster bombs and delivery systems (B-2s) to annihilate  the infrastructure needed to develop the nukes. [Not right. See my first corrigendum supra.] This may  ignite a popular uprising against the clerical thugs, which could only be good. Trump and Netanyahu have made it clear that the Iranian people are not the enemy.

Addendum 6/19. What I wrote above leaves something to be desired: political theory is not my wheelhouse. It takes a bloody long time to "study everything" as my masthead motto recommends. See the comment thread and in particular the linked articles for a nuanced overview of the entire geopolitical shit-scape.  

Dems and Deportation

Democrats upset over deportations ought to look in the mirror. Prior to Biden-Harris they did little to secure the nation's borders, and by supporting Biden-Harris they embraced the  destructive open-border policy of that administration. That nations need enforceable and enforced borders not merely to flourish, but to continue to exist, is well-nigh self-evident.  Those in a nation who blind themselves to this self-evidence are reasonably viewed as wanting the destruction of the nation they are in.

Promotion of illegal immigration being the Democrats' greatest crime, Donald J. Trump's securing of the border is his greatest achievement so far, as is recognized by most of the populace.  But the Biden-Harris mess will be with us for a long time to come.  Deportation of illegal aliens must proceed if the rule of law is to be upheld.  There will inevitably be mistakes and injustices. The law must be enforced, but the enforcers are finite and fallible, and a small minority of them are as bad as the criminals they are charged with protecting us against. This obvious point I am making will be resisted by those with an authoritarian personality structure, but leftists, who tend toward the opposite extreme, that of the rebellious protester who reflexively takes the side of criminals and underdogs, regardless of their criminality, ought readily to accept it.

There are bad cops. We all know this. You do not have to be a member of a minority to have experienced bad behavior from law enforcement agents. Give a man a gun, a badge, and a uniform and it may go to his head. It's not that power corrupts; the problem is that we are all more or less morally corrupt inherently so that any power we acquire is subject to misuse.  

So I say to Democrats, you have brought about this situation by your support of perverse and deleterious policies. Blame yourself first for any excesses. 

Trump’s Magnificent MAHA Team

MAHA goes back a long way. Some of us are old enough to remember John F. Kennedy's stirring call to national fitness. It made a difference in our lives. If only Uncle Jack could see his nephew Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. teamed up with four distinguished medical doctors, Jay Bhattacharya, Marty Makary, Vinay Prasad, and Mehmet Oz.  

True (conservative) diversity and true (conservative) inclusion!  And no 'equity' in sight. Merit, excellence, achievement.  

Three of the doctors mentioned, health heretics in the dismal, dark, and demented days of Joey B's admin, are now health czars.

You may enjoy watching the forcible removal of some leftist reprobates who attempted to disrupt an RFK, Jr. hearing. A little schadenfreude never hurt anybody.

Ronald Radosh on David Horowitz: A Critical Appreciation

On very rare occasions, something surfaces at The Bulwark worth reading.

Radosh, who is well worth reading, gives his take on Horowitz's flipping of his ideological script, and takes him to task for his late extremism. But how is this judgment by Radosh not itself extreme:

What David is being celebrated for is the opposite of the introspective and empathetic writer, a thoughtful and moderate conservative, evident in his personal books. And his supporters give him credit for helping to create the most repulsive and nasty of the Trump entourage, Stephen Miller, who of course, added his own tribute to David. Another right-wing extremist protégé, Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, wrote to single out David’s responsibility for Miller’s career in these words . . . .

What hatreds politics sires! I am reminded of something I wrote in From Democrat to Dissident:

We were friends for a time, but friendship is fragile among those for whom ideas matter. Unlike the ordinary nonintellectual person, the intellectual lives for and sometimes from ideas. They are his oxygen and sometimes his bread and butter. He takes them very seriously indeed and with them differences in ideas. So the tendency is for one intellectual to view another whose ideas differ as not merely holding incorrect views but as being morally defective in so doing. Why? Because ideas matter to the intellectual. They matter in the way doctrines and dogmas mattered to old-time religionists. If one’s eternal happiness is at stake, it matters infinitely whether one “gets it right” doctrinally. If there is no salvation outside the church, you had better belong to the right church. It matters so much that one may feel entirely justified in forcing the heterodox to recant “for their own good.”

Addendum (5/9)

Here is Stephen Miller in action. Trenchant, but wholly on target, and the reprobates who are the recipients of the trenchancy richly deserve it. Miller is neither repulsive nor nasty by any sane measure.  Perhaps someone should ask Radosh which side he is on these days.

Would that the extremity of the political polarization of the present could be avoided, including the polarization over polarization itself, its nature, causes, effects, and who is responsible for it. I say they are responsible for it.   Our positions are moderate; theirs are extreme. 

For example, James Carville, the "ragin' Cajun," is poles apart from the sane and reasonable Victor Davis Hanson.  Bang on the links and see for yourself.  But 'see' is not the right word inasmuch as leftists are blind and can't see 'jack.' How explain such blindness, such intransigence, such praeter-natural feculence of brain, perversity of will, foulness of heart?

I find it endlessly fascinating. Polarization, I mean. Why this depth of disagreement? But it's all grist for the mill, blog-fodder for the Bill.

For another example, compare Newt Gingrich's sanity to its lack in one  who is "terrified" at Trump's judicial picks.

Addendum (5/10): polarization update 

TDS at TNR:

Living under a far-right authoritarian regime that is gutting every American institution that keeps people safe, alive, and connected to a thriving civilization, we have to keep asking ourselves how we got here—and how we can get out. And the most important factor in Donald Trump’s win was that Kamala Harris lost.

Trump has run for president three times and Harris is the only person to have lost the popular vote to him. In 2024, he had no special magic; if anything, he was marred as a felon and a failed coup leader. A major part of the problem was Harris, who embodies the change-nothing politics of Hillary Clinton without the latter’s political savvy; and the cautiousness of Joe Biden without his populist instincts.

How Trump Won the Canadian Election

Philip Cunliffe:

In electing a consummate globalist to defend Canadian sovereignty, Canadian voters exhibited a voluble national pride more commonly seen south of the border. In that sense, even if Trump may not get his 51st state of the Union, he has nonetheless imposed the value of sovereignty and national independence on the archetypal post-national state. Far from signalling a global liberal rally against Trump, the fact that the liberals were only able to beat Trump by embracing the language of national independence, national interest, and sovereignty make clear that Carney’s electoral victory happened on Trumpian terrain. 

Nile Gardiner on Trump, Eurosceptic

Key Takeaways

Trump is treating the European Union as a competitor and even an adversary, as a force that is actively undermining the U.S. economy and the American people.

Trump shares with Europe’s rising national conservative parties the view that far too much power is in the hands of Brussels.

Americans increasingly hold that the European Union does not advance their interests, and stands against the principles of liberty and sovereignty.

Here.

MACGA: Make the Continent Great Again!

Europe has lost its collective mind. The UK is especially troubling:

The University of Oxford, one of the most revered and historic institutions of higher learning in the world, has requested that Oxford city council officials add the names of five soldiers who fought against Great Britain in the First World War to a memorial honoring Britain’s war dead. You cannot make this up.

The five individuals – Oxford alumni all – include three individuals born on German territory, one born on Hungarian soil, and another born in Poland. They all fought against the Allied armies in World War I, but will nonetheless be "honored" alongside Britain’s war dead. Talk about losing the plot.

My maternal grandfather, of Hungarian birth, fought in the Austro-Hungarian army as a forward artillery observer in the First World War. He survived the war, but had he not, I would never expect his name to be added to a monument honoring the casualties of Britain in the Great War.

This bizarre news comes on the heels of real "progressive" depredations on European "values" – those old-fashioned things like freedom of speech, democratically elected officials and so on. In a case of political persecution via the judiciary, remarkably similar to what Donald Trump suffered at the hands of numerous U.S. courts, a French court sentenced the most popular French politician and likely future French President, Marine Le Pen, to four years in prison for alleged improper use of European Union funds. The case revolved around the conservative populist Le Pen and other members of her National Rally party using funds from the EU to allegedly improperly reimburse aides for political work. Le Pen and her colleagues denied all along that they did anything improper. Le Pen was sentenced to four years, with two years likely to be suspended and the other two years requiring an ankle bracelet and no incarceration.

Nancy Pelosi in 1996: A Pre-Trumper on Tariffs

You have probably seen this by now, but in case you haven't, here is Nancy Pelosi in 1996 talking sense! I didn't think she had it in her, given the inanities she has been spouting for the last quarter century. I don't see much if any difference between what she said then about  tariffs, trade imbalances, and trade reciprocity and what Trump is saying now.

Part of what enrages contemporary Dems about Trump is that he has (a) stolen their thunder, and (b) is actually doing things they only talked about doing, e. g,  curtailing waste, fraud, and abuse at the federal level, controlling the borders, and shrinking the size of the federal government.

Blinded by their mindless rage, they cannot assess policy proposals on their own merits, but only on whether or not they are supported by Trump. If Trump is for it, they are against it, no matter what it is, and vice versa.

Anti-Trump Dems cannot stand the man because he has transformed the fat-cat GOP into a people's party.  The Never-Trump Republicans cannot stand him because he gate-crashed their rich guy club and exposed the bow-tied Beltway/Bulwark boys and girls for the effete and epicene bunch they are.  Interestingly, Trump has won the sympathy, though not the full support, of the socialist outlet, The Militant. See here for a recent article in support of my assertion.

But he wins because he is loaded too, and more importantly, loves his country, its people, and has the biggest cojones of the toughest hombre on the world stage at present.  

Lawlessness at the Top and the Bottom of Society

Lawfare and overregulation at the top; toleration and promotion of crimininality among the lower orders. A depredatory theme of the previous administration.

Overregulation is well documented by Neil Gorsuch in his Over Ruled: The Human Toll of Too Much Law, HarperCollins 2024.

You should rejoice that the destructive Dems have met their nemesis. Nemesis is the Greek goddess of retribution. 'Retribution' has two senses, a fact one cannot expect dumb Dems to understand. The one sense is that of 'revenge'; the other is that of 'retributive justice.' The national course correction being engineered by President Donald J. Trump and his team has much more the latter in it than the former.