Politics – Maverick Philosopher

Hitler or Caesar? William Shakespeare on Donald J. Trump

Julius Caesar, Act I, Scene II (emphases added)

1564 – 1616

Cassius speaks to Brutus

Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus, and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs and peep about
To find ourselves dishonorable graves.
Men at some time are masters of their fates.
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.
“Brutus” and “Caesar”—what should be in that “Caesar”?
Why should that name be sounded more than yours?
Write them together, yours is as fair a name;
Sound them, it doth become the mouth as well;
Weigh them, it is as heavy; conjure with ’em,
“Brutus” will start a spirit as soon as “Caesar.”
Now, in the names of all the gods at once,
Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed
That he is grown so great? Age, thou art shamed!
Rome, thou hast lost the breed of noble bloods!
When could they say, till now, that talked of Rome,
That her wide walks encompassed but one man?
Now is it Rome indeed, and room enough
When there is in it but only one man.
O, you and I have heard our fathers say
There was a Brutus once that would have brooked
Th’ eternal devil to keep his state in Rome
As easily as a king.

But: “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.” Proverbs, 16:18. May the Lord spare him Caesar’s fate. “Yon Cassius hath a lean and hungry look.”

His enemies are coming around, albeit partially and grudgingly. Are we mortals too much impressed by success and power? But so far, so good. Can you imagine any Democrat, let alone the foolish Kamala Harris standing up to alpha males such as Xi and Putin? Politics is not performative but practical: not a matter of perfect versus imperfect, but of better versus worse. He who lets the best become the enemy of the good will get neither.

Age, thou art shamed! Old age or this historical period? Both?

That silly goose Nancy Pelosi foolishly opined that Joey Biden is Mt. Rushmore material. No Nancy, but Trump is. Third in line behind Washington and Lincoln as historian Newt Gingrich has plausibly opined. But time will tell.

Five Years Ago on Facebook: On David Brooks on Trump

TRUST DAVID BROOKS?

David Brooks is right to emphasize the importance of social trust for human flourishing. But how trustworthy in his judgments is someone who spews stuff like this:

Donald Trump is in the process of shredding every norm of decent behavior and wrecking every institution he touches. Unable to behave responsibly, unable to protect himself from COVID-19, unable to even tell the country the truth about his own medical condition, he undermines the basic credibility of the government and arouses the suspicion that every word and act that surrounds him is a lie and a fraud. Finally, he threatens to undermine the legitimacy of our democracy in November and incite a vicious national conflagration that would leave us a charred and shattered nation.

I then commented:

I cannot take Brooks and his political projection seriously. He seems to have degenerated badly. But he always was a pseudo-conservative, a member of the yap-and-scribble bow-tie brigade, along with Bill Kristol, George Will, Mona Charen, Max Boot, and the rest. These types love to write and talk, but when it comes time to act and support a man who has already done so much in the face of vicious opposition to implement conservative policies, they clutch their pearls, straighten their ties, and chicken out. I get the distinct impression that their main political goal is to remain among the respectable so as to preserve their privileges, perquisites, and invitations to the high-toned soirees of the bien-pensant. They seem to fear nothing more than becoming persona non grata in the manner of Alan Dershowitz. Accepting something like political dhimmitude, Brooks and the cruise-ship conservative cohort are content to play the lap-dog role assigned to them by the Left, talk quietly about taxes and such, and allow the Left’s culturally Marxist juggernaut to roll on.

Brooks goes on about norms. But he will give either his direct or indirect support to a party that is hell-bent on destroying the norms and institutions of the Republic. The Left has become brazen about what they stand for: packing the Supreme Court, ending the filibuster, eliminating the Electoral College, removing the Second Amendment to the Constitution, tolerating and expanding ‘sanctuary’ jurisdictions, eliding the distinction between citizen and non-citizen — and I am just warming up.

Like Rod Dreher, Brooks apparently believes that civility and good manners trump every other consideration: better that race-delusional Marxist thugs destroy our cities than that an alpha male punch back against the chaos and defend the American Way. Trump is boorish, but there is nothing radical about him unlike the Orwellian ‘moderate’ Joe Biden who is a driverless vehicle or rudderless vessel soon to be piloted by Kamala Harris and the squadristi to hard-Left destinations.

Addendum. If Brooks is concerned about norms, he ought to consider the nullification of federal law in places like Portland, Oregon. See Victor Davis Hanson, Reactionary, Neo-Confederate Portland.

Face it, Kamala: You’re Finished

Here she is in all her cluelessness:

In her new campaign memoir, Kamala Harris wrote that Pete Buttigieg, the former transportation secretary and mayor of South Bend, Indiana, “would have been an ideal [running mate] — if I were a straight white man”. But, Harris wrote, “We were already asking a lot of America: to accept a woman, a Black woman, a Black woman married to a Jewish man. Part of me wanted to say, Screw it, let’s just do it. But knowing what was at stake, it was too big of a risk.”

I hate to be so harsh, Kamala dear, but the problem with you is that you are a silly goose, a hopeless clown, a know-nothing, an airhead, and a slanderer with no understanding of your political opponents. That is why you were sent packing. When you were asked why, in your capacity as “Border Czar,” you never visited the southern border, you replied that you had never been to Europe either. Your refusal to answer a serious question with a serious answer shows you are a contemptible joke, unfit to be anywhere near the levers of power.

You either know nothing about conservatives or you are unwilling to speak the truth about us. We have no objection to a female president of any race. What we object to are the destructive policies of leftists like you.

Sartorial Incongruity and TDS

There’s President Trump in his expensive bespoke suit with a ridiculous red cap on his head, a “prole cap” — one size fits all! — emblazoned with “Trump was right about everything.” Gaucherie, braggadocio, exaggeration. Lefties and never-Trumping righties are ‘triggered,’ albeit in different ways, by these low-class characteristics and hate him in consequence. Their mindless hatred blinds them to the great things Mr. Trump has done for the USA and the world. Wittingly or unwittingly he drives our political enemies crazy while we of the Coalition of the Sane and the Reasonable enjoy the show. You won’t find TDS in the DSM, but it is undeniably real. How else do you explain the puerile histrionics of “Tampon Tim” Walz and the rest of his clownish colleagues?

Let me mention just two great things Trump has accomplished. He sealed the U. S. border and he set back the Iranian nuclear program for years to come. Both of these accomplishments, neither of which any Democrat could pull off, have benefited both us and the world. How does the securing of our borders benefit the world? It should be obvious: the survival of Western civilization, resting as it does on two main pillars, one Judeo-Christian, the other Graeco-Roman, depends on the USA. If we fall, it falls. No other Anglospheric nation is up to the job. The mother country, in particular, is fast becoming a woke joke.

Naomi Wolf on Zohran Mamdani

Naomi Wolf feels

. . . guilty because my reaction to Mamdani is so personally aversive.

It is aversive because of the lie-and-deception factor.

Mamdani, as I will reveal, is a nepo son dressed as a communist — but a communist takeover of NYC is not what really motivates this man, not what is really behind this campaign.

Apart from the full-spectrum communist agenda which Mamdani superficially offers, one reason for my sense of personal queasiness when I consider this candidate in various settings is because I know guys like this. Though I am of another generation, some things do not change.

I went to school with guys like this. They are Jaspers.

Read it all.

Filed under: Hustlers, Frauds, Mountebanks

The Sam Tanenhaus Biography of William F. Buckley

I came across it at the local library but the sheer weight of the thing dissuaded me from checking it out. I borrowed Jake Tapper's light-weight (in both senses) Original Sin instead. I cannot recommend it. William Voegli's review of Tanenhaus, William F. Buckley and the Conservative Future, I can recommend. It raises the question: Is Donald Trump the political heir of National Review's founder?

Here are its final paragraphs. The bolded portions earn the coveted MavPhil plenary endorsement.

The relationship between Buckley and Trump is also contested among conservatives. For critics like Brookhiser and Will, Trump’s coarse manner is inseparable from the coarseness of his politics. Conservatism, they argue, must be reclaimed by men of character and intellect, like Buckley and Reagan. In his review of Buckley, Brookhiser calls Trump a “malignant clown,” whose prominence within conservatism is “our problem,” not Buckley’s fault.

There appears to be no clear solution to this problem, as restoring conservatism to its status quo ante-Trump grows increasingly implausible. And the awkward fact is that Trump, over one full term and the beginnings of another, has delivered on goals that conservatives had spent generations trying to achieve.

Consider affirmative action. Since Lyndon Johnson’s 1965 executive order made it integral to federal operations, six Republican presidents—Trump (as 45) among them—held the Oval Office for a combined 32 years without rescinding it, despite a steady drumbeat of conservative criticism. In 2025, Trump (as 47) finally signed an executive order nullifying Johnson’s. His action built on the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision declaring affirmative action unconstitutional in college admissions—a decision made possible by the three justices Trump appointed in his first term.

Those same three were part of the six-justice majority that year to overturn Roe v. Wade, which conservatives had denounced for nearly half a century with little effect. And while the game is not over, it exactly wrong in The Death of Conservatism. The good conservatives are the troublemakers: those who do not accept that it is indecent to disparage and impossible to reverse liberalism’s advances. The bad conservatives are the acquiescent ones, Goldberg’s Sherpas or Michael Anton’s Washington Generals, whose role in our politics is “to show up and lose.”

Trump 47 has already done more to defund public broadcasting and the Department of Education than any of his Republican predecessors—not to mention the conservative commentators who spent decades demanding just that.

The growing number of conservatives who are pro-Trump, or at least Trump-tolerant, think that Tanenhaus got it exactly wrong in The Death of Conservatism. The good conservatives are the troublemakers: those who do not accept that it is indecent to disparage and impossible to reverse liberalism’s advances. The bad conservatives are the acquiescent ones, Goldberg’s Sherpas or Michael Anton’s Washington Generals, whose role in our politics is “to show up and lose.”

In 1955, William F. Buckley launched National Review—and the conservative movement—with the famous declaration that the magazine “stands athwart history, yelling Stop.” Within conservatism, there has long been debate over whether the yelling is the point, decrying the demise of civic and social virtues too good to endure in this benighted world, or whether the real goal is to effect some stopping. Due to changes that Donald Trump both causes and reflects, the stoppers are now ascendant over the yellers. While Sam Tanenhaus disapproves of this shift, his imperfect but valuable biography does little to dispel the suspicion that William Buckley would have welcomed it.

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.

The Dems, True to Form, are Lying

About so much. About gutting the 'safety net' for example. WSJ rebukes the mendacious shites. (Ought we be polite to such brazen liars?)

As for multi-'colored' Kamala, she is like unto Traitor Joe not just in her moral obtuseness, but also in respect of her intellectual vacuity, as explained here.

Here and here for two more examples of leftist lunacy.

More proof this Monday morning (7/7/25) of the praeternatural mendacity and wrongheadedness of the intracranially feculent Democrats. GOP mega-bill structurally racist! Camp Mystic is whites-only!

And now, for a dose of sanity, I present Victor Davis Hanson who exposes Madmani Mandami for the destructive fraud he is.

Recently, Trump said he would "watch over" Mandami, and this morning he said the Feds would work "close" with Texas authorities. We of the Coalition of the Sane and the Reasonable do not support him because he is articulate in his word-slinging, although he does manage to get his meaning across. We support him because he is a great leader who knows what has to be done and more importantly does it.

You say the man has no class? I agree. That's what Jack Kennedy said about Dick Nixon in 1960. But how important is class in a world such as this one? Far more important is the ability and willingness to 'kick ass.' That he has done, and not just to the benefit of the USA, but the benefit of the whole world.

Besides, Trump does not need class; the First Lady has more than enough for both of them.

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?

The Upside of Zohran Mamdani

What I like about the winner of the New York City mayoral Democrat primary is that he is not a 'stealth ideologue' a phrase I have been using for years to characterize the likes of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris. Mamdani, unlike the mendacious foursome just mentioned, comes clean about what he and the Dems intend:

Mamdani is now the mainstream of the once great Democratic Party.

The only difference is that Mamdani isn’t afraid to say what other Democratic politicians try to hide.

Think about what Mamdani has proposed or supported:

A yearlong freeze on rent

A $30 minimum wage

Free bus service

City-owned grocery stores

Defunding the police

Calling Israel’s war in Gaza a genocide.

“Mainstream Democrats” support every one of these positions in one way or another.

With the advent of Mamdani it will be more difficult now to remain a Useful Idiot as so many of the supporters of the Dems are. You know these people. We have them in our families and in our neighborhoods and workplaces. A lot of them are the "college-educated white women" of a certain age. They rescue cats and dogs and support what they sincerely believe are good causes. But they are lazy and inattentive and too wrapped up in their private lives to pay proper attention to current events. Their loving and nurturing feminine nature impairs their political judgment and makes them easy marks for the fraudulent come-ons of professional pols like Phony Joe Biden who has 40 years of experience of looking into the camera, smiling, and making an emotional appeal. The women think, "He's a nice man!" They cannot see past the polished style to the lack of substance. Conversely they cannot see past Trump's off-putting style to his genuine and salutary substance. In the case of pretty boy Gavin Newsom, they are so taken by his style that the question of substance doesn't even arise. I had to agree with Sean Hannity one night when he remarked that Joy Behar of The View has a "crush" on him. Joy Behar, that well-fed paragon of wisdom and insight!

But old men, too, are part of the Useful Idiot contingent. Lazy, inattentive, superannuated and superficial, pissing their lives away hitting little white balls into holes and — worst of all — living in the past. Mamdani, as a sort of Fidel redivivus, may help these Rip van Winkles wake up.

One more thing. It is good that the battle lines are clearly laid out. Let the battle begin, the battle for the soul of America. Mamdani is a Great Clarifier as is our boy Trump. John Catsimatidis, billionaire, said on Stuart Varney's show this morning that Trump has God on his side. How would he know? Does the billionaire have a hot line to the divine? What is within the range of our knowledge, however, is that Trump's the man to save the Republic, and make the whole world a safer place, as he already has.

Related: Should Mamdani be Deported?

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.