The Little Red Blog

Today in STFU

{It is a banner day in our nation when a Cretin-American like Kash Patel succeeds on the basis of nothing but merit, hard work, and a basket of deplorable beliefs.}

Come on down, newly confirmed FBI Director Kash Patel, the winner of today’s STFU tribute!

A proud Cretin-American who is both refreshingly honest and undaunted by critics, Kash speaks his mind, such as it is. Here are some choice passages from his book Government Gangsters:

Government gangsters are the group of individuals, career bureaucrats who have been installed by what we call the deep state into every agency and department in the United States government. In the most extreme circumstances, corrupt bureaucrats imagine a crime and then manufacture the evidence to pin on their opponents. They are thugs in suits, nothing more than government gangsters who act like they are righteous.

The problems we face are not just the result of our leaders’ incompetence but more so their malice; how the media is not just one-sided but liars. What became known as the Deep State isn’t some crazy conspiracy but a real force—and the most dangerous threat to our democracy.

The Trump era was, more than anything else, an apocalypse in the truest sense of the word. It was an unveiling. It was a time when suddenly we came to see that unaccountable elites in Washington armed with the powers of the state believe that anything is justified—absolutely anything—to preserve their power. We know what we’re up against: a coordinated, ideologically rigid force independent from the people that manipulates the levers of politics and justice for its own gain and self-preservation. This group is the Deep State.

The Deep State is the politicization of core American institutions and the federal governmental apparatus by a significant number of high-level cultural leaders and officials who, acting through networks of networks, disregard objectivity, weaponize the law, spread disinformation, spurn fairness, or even violate their oaths of office for political and personal gain, all at the expense of equal justice and American national security. Within the government, they operate at the highest levels of almost every agency, from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to the intelligence community to the Department of Defense (DoD). In many ways, this bureaucratic wing of the Deep State is the most dangerous.

[Kash Patel, Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth, and the Battle for Our Democracy (Post Hill Press)]

Don’t fail to borrow Government Gangsters from your local public library and then deposit it unread in your local landfill!

Kash has explained to Steve Bannon what a second Trump administration will do:

We will go out and find the conspirators — not just in government, but in the media. We're going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections. We're going to come after you. Whether it's criminally or civilly, we'll figure that out. But yeah, we're putting you all on notice, and this is why they hate us. This is why we're ‘tyrannical’. This is why we're ‘dictators,’ because we're actually going to use the Constitution to prosecute them for crimes they said we have always been guilty of but never have.

In 2023, Kash announced to the world the fraudulent nature of American elections:

"[Trump] has every right to tell the world that the 2020, 2016 and every other election in between was rigged by our government because they were."

Accused of embracing conspiracy theories, Kash responded by sharing his views on critical thinking:

“What I’m telling you is there is truth in a lot of things that many people say, and what I’m putting out there is the truth. And how about we have some fun along the way? Let’s have fun with the truth.” ¹

Finally, consider this impassioned sermon from Government Gangsters:

The price of rule by the Deep State is high—nothing less than the end of self-government in America. That is not hyperbole. Our battle with the Deep State isn’t just another theater in the fight between Democrats and Republicans. At the root, this isn’t partisan at all. It’s about the nature of our government. The Deep State is a cabal of unelected tyrants who think they should determine who the American people can and cannot elect as president, who think they get to decide what the president can and cannot do, and who believe they have the right to choose what the American people can and cannot know. This is a battle between the people and the corrupt ruling class. It’s a choice between whether America decides its policies and direction by vote, or whether we are ruled by the whims, egos, greed, and power struggles of a small body of incestuous, power-hungry, unelected oligarchs in Washington who hate us and play by their own made-up rules. If they win, we don’t have a democracy, a republic, or a sovereign people anymore. We have a tyranny that has arrogated for itself the right to wield absolute control over the American people.

All Americans should be very afraid. There are no depths to which the Deep State will not descend, crimes they will not commit, or lives they will not destroy to get their way.

With all due disrespect, allow me to say: STFU, Kash Patel. Every time you open your mouth you increase the amount of stupidity in the air. ²  

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¹ “Having Fun with the Truth” is a great slogan for the entire MAGA movement!

² Listen, if we can measure the humidity in the air, why can't we also measure the stupidity? There are days when the stupid in America is thick enough to choke a horse; we should issue "High Stupidity" warnings and create highway signs that say WARNING: STUPIDITY ZONE AHEAD! 

Ask for it by name!

Wednesday with Pascal: The Good War

{Pascal the existential Russian blue cat is not yet done with “The End of the American Era,” Andrew Hacker’s 1970 declinist classic. In particular, Pascal is fascinated by Hacker’s assessment of World War II; for America, wrote Hacker, “The war was a good thing,” an assertion which, even allowing for its context, seems indefensible.}

One could argue that Americans’ sense of entitlement (“American exceptionalism”) could be traced back to when Europeans first set foot on the continent; Hacker, however, chose to focus on the twenty-five years following World War II, a war he characterized as a “catalyst, an event marking the end of the Depression, of unemployment, and of the attitudes of pessimism and despair.”

For Americans, at least, the conflict was apparently a godsend: “The war gave new lives and expectations to the American people, who began to create heightened conceptions of themselves and of their rights and role in the nation. The war,” Hacker concluded, “was a good thing. Its enduring by-product was a population with a sense of individual dignity and pride.” And the war’s benefits came at what Hacker considered a reasonable price, a bargain by any reckoning; “Fewer than 400,000 Americans were killed. The counterbalancing gains, by any reckoning, were immense.”

Those gains included the fact that “America’s industrial plant was put back to work at full capacity, rebuilt and modernized,” with “executives and engineers given free rein to utilize their organizational and technological imagination. Our productive capacities were expanded and improved, primed to serve the postwar society.” Oh, what a lovely war! For the survivors, of course.  

In Hacker’s view, the primary beneficiaries of America’s military efforts in the 1940s were the 15,000,000 men who either volunteered or were conscripted for the armed services. “The great majority found there a better life than they had known as civilians. They ate better, were better clothed, and enjoyed more amenities. ¹ If anything,” he asserted, “our military establishment was too abundantly provided for; the food, equipment, and accommodations furnished went far beyond what was necessary to keep soldiers alive and moving. Other nations fielded armies supported by a fraction of our wherewithal, and those men fought as well as ours or better.”

War, like money, changes everything. On the home front, “There were jobs for all who wanted them, and the fact that people were eagerly sought by a previously hostile job market instilled in them the idea that they were no longer superfluous human beings.” In particular, noted Hacker, “The ‘Black Revolution’ of our time can trace its origins back to 1942 when black Americans discovered that ‘Help Wanted’ advertisements were also addressed to them.” Other cultural shifts would follow: “The revolution in the family had its beginnings when women went off to work and discovered that life could be varied, interesting, and independent.” And others: “People poured forth from small towns and the countryside to take the jobs being proffered in the metropolitan areas. The movement westward accelerated. Once started, the momentum of these beginnings could never be undone.”

Spoiled in war, spoiled in peace: America’s wartime experience (1941-45) set the stage for two decades of unprecedented economic flourishing, accompanied by increasingly disruptive cultural changes.  It also (Hacker claimed) marked the beginning of America’s decline, by inflating the self-image of American citizens: “If the circumstances of war convince a person that he is no longer the manner of being he has previously been, and if events combine to persuade him that he can become the person he has always wanted to be, then he will not willingly revert to his former self once peace has been declared.” ²

Enter Don Draper and the miracle that was America in the Fifties, during which decade the whole edifice of American Exceptionalism was found to be riddled with termites and rotting from within. America: it was great while it lasted, but nothing lasts forever.

According to Andrew Hacker, postwar America became more and more middle-class and overwhelmingly dominated by white-collar managerial functionaries. Contrary to anti-work propaganda like Dilbert and The Office, Hacker noted that white-collar employment includes “social and psychological pleasures. For more and more individuals, the significant creature comforts of life are enjoyed as much at the workplace as at home. The modern office, with its spacious amenities, provides as pleasing a setting as any suburban home or town apartment. Business meals are usually superior to home-cooked fare, business travel is relaxing if not adventurous, and conferences at work are far more stimulating than their domestic counterparts. Moreover, the social climate on the job is convivial, leisurely, and plainly provides the best part of the breadwinner’s day.”

Keep in mind that, as idyllic as all this sounds, Andrew Hacker was describing symptoms of America’s decline; in other words, the “creature comforts” he described were bad for us. As he saw it, Americans, by and large, were spoiled, soft, unused to hard work or to difficulties in general, and ungrateful for the privileges they had inherited. “Americans expect—indeed, feel entitled to—the best that life has to offer.” Moreover, “Ascension to middle-class incomes and occupations is always accompanied by a conviction of a superior status.” Even in 1970, America was a nation of Karens: “Members of the new middle-class demand to be protected from crime and violence. They are upset when taxis are unavailable, when planes fall behind schedule, and when roads and recreational facilities are overcrowded. They complain about the quality of service they receive from others and the lack of people willing to wait on them in return for a reasonable payment.”

As more and more postwar Americans qualified as (or considered themselves to be) “middle class,” the meaning of that status changed, and not for the better. That, at least, was Andrew Hacker’s analysis:

“Postwar America’s new middle class stands in a continual condition of dependency. Its members are employees, and their livelihoods are always contingent on the approval and goodwill of the individuals and organizations who employ them. Such a class will inevitably be cautious, uncontroversial, and attuned to the sensibilities of those around them. Looming over such a person is a perpetual atmosphere of insecurity: not so much the fear of losing his job by the end of the week as the understanding that throughout his life he will be in this dependent position. Whatever status and prosperity today’s middle-class American may have is due to someone else’s decision to hire him and to utilize his services.”

In a sentence that could have summed up the resentments of a generation, Hacker added, “Americans know that there is virtually no chance of escape from a system compelling them to meet standards set by others.” Raised on fairy tales of Davy Crockett, the Alamo, and the western frontier, postwar Americans looked in the mirror and saw not Daniel Boone or Horatio Alger but Holden Caufield, Jim Stark, and Willy Loman. Burned-out veterans of the war muttered, “I coulda been a contender,” while beatniks howled while they drove off to look for America.

By 1970, said Andrew Hacker, America was sick of itself.  

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¹ Joan Baez, in “Saigon Bride”: “It takes them off the street, you know / to places they would never go alone / it gives them useful trade / the lucky boys are even paid.”

² Americans’ postwar self-image was also burnished by the sobriquet “The Greatest Generation,” which persists in usage today. When you’re constantly credited with having saved the world, it’s easy to believe that you’re special.

Sunday Sermon: "i sing of Olaf, glad and big"

XXX (by E.E. Cummings)

i sing of Olaf glad and big
whose warmest heart recoiled at war:
a conscientious object-or

his well-belovéd colonel (trig
westpointer most succinctly bred)
took erring Olaf soon in hand;
but--though an host of overjoyed
noncoms (first knocking on the head
him) do through icy waters roll
that helplessness which others stroke
with brushes recently employed
anent this muddy toilet bowl,
while kindred intellects evoke
allegiance per blunt instruments--
Olaf (being to all intents
a corpse and wanting any rag
upon what God unto him gave)
responds, without getting annoyed
"I will not kiss your fucking flag"

straightway the silver bird looked grave
(departing hurriedly to shave)

but--though all kinds of officers
(a yearning nation's blue-eyed pride)
their passive prey did kick and curse
until for wear their clarion
voices and boots were much the worse,
and egged the first-class privates on
his rectum wickedly to tease
by means of skillfully applied
bayonets roasted hot with heat--
Olaf (upon what were once knees)
does almost ceaselessly repeat
"there is some shit I will not eat"

our president, being of which
assertions duly notified
threw the yellow sonofabitch
into a dungeon, where he died

Christ (of His mercy infinite)
i pray to see; and Olaf, too

preponderatingly because
unless statistics lie he was
more brave than me: more blond than you.

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Copyright 1931, © 1959, 1991 by the Trustees for E. E. Cummings Trust. Copyright © 1979 by George J. Firmage, from The Complete Poems: 1904-1962 by E. E. Cummings. Reprinted by permission of Liveright Publishing Corporation. All rights reserved.

E. Cummings - Wikipedia

e.e. cummings "i sing of Olaf glad and big" (read by MC Mistabil Weldon)

Bread & Roses version: - Bread and Roses.. I sing of Olaf glad and big

Saturday Lecture: Bursting the Liberal Bubble

{Patrick Deneen is one of America’s leading illiberal thinkers. His remarks from last November, after Donald Trump’s election, sound surprisingly similar to remarks (posted here yesterday) by Russia’s Aleksandr Dugin. Like Dugin, Deneen welcomes the end of modern liberalism and the implementation of the MAGA agenda. Notably, Mr. Deneen, while teaching at Princeton University, had the privilege of serving as senior thesis advisor to the young Pete Hegseth.} 

Patrick Deneen:

The progressive left has created a highly insulated ideological bubble, one that has made itself largely impervious to views or information that contradicts its preferred narrative of historical inevitability. This bubble is made up of institutions that dominate the mainstream of American life: media, universities, entertainment, the managerial class, bureaucrats, etc. They had grown to believe that their narrative shaped reality, when in fact, this view was increasingly detached from a reality that they largely ignored. By dismissing any challenges or contradictory evidence to their preferred views, they had convinced themselves that their narrative could admit of no alternative.

Beginning in the late 1960s, the Democratic party began a shift from its roots as the “Jeffersonian” working class party to a party of a highly-educated professional class which sought to represent and promote oppressed minority groups. Initially, this was primarily African-Americans (beginning with the Kennedy-Johnson presidencies), but eventually grew to include feminists, homosexuals, a growing number of ethnic and religious minorities (e.g., Hispanics and Muslims), and, more recently, those with transgender and “non-binary” sexual identities. One need only look at the most recent multifariously colored “rainbow flag” to begin to get an idea of all the identities that were included as constituencies of that coalition.

Liberalism seeks to eradicate “arbitrariness” from the human (and natural) dimension. It seeks to eliminate the “unchosen” from the world, making all of our arrangements the subject of our supposedly liberated will and completely unfettered choice. In nearly every dimension of life we have seen this deeply radical ambition advanced into areas that given rise to consequences that are both catastrophic and ultimately unpopular.  Liberals have sought the elimination of arbitrary national borders -- while ordinary citizens value the nation, their communities, their towns. Liberals have sought to displace the family as the basic unit of society, with catastrophic social consequences on the lives of ordinary people. Liberals have sought to eliminate marriage and birth as basic norms, leaving people increasingly lonely and insecure. Liberals have sought to reject the idea that male and female are sown into the fabric of our natural reality, increasingly leading to deeply illiberal outcomes (such as allowing biological men to compete in sports against biological women, or forcing people to use “preferred pronouns” at the risk of jobs and reputations).

In nearly every domain where these liberal commitments became the enforced norm, they proved increasingly unpopular to broad swaths of the population. Moreover, the effort to impose fealty to these beliefs was increasingly based in enforced orthodoxy to falsehood.  While liberals believed for a time that their project was on the verge of triumph, in fact, in its most advanced form, its totalitarian dimension led to its own widespread illegitimacy. While many people were afraid to say so out loud, they nevertheless flocked to a champion who promised to defend basic norms that comport with reality.

I strongly suspect that the second term of Donald Trump will be one that is more disciplined and effective, but generally will be focused on efforts to dismantle a number of the power structures that are now wholly controlled by the progressive left. This will take the form of reshaping the American bureaucracy; undoing extensive bureaucratic influence by dismantling a number of regulatory regimes (something promised by Elon Musk, among others); reducing and even reforming major progressive institutions such as schools, universities, media, and activist corporations; and, of course, staunching the flow of illegal immigration into the United States.

Revitalizing the American Republic - by Patrick J. Deneen (11/25/24)

Trump 2.0: The Dugin Perspective

For an objective outsider’s assessment of Donald Trump’s first month back in office, let us turn to the Russian political analyst and esoteric traditionalist Aleksandr Gelyevich Dugin.

Dugin likes what he sees so far of the Trump 2.0 Revolution; in fact, he is all but ecstatic over what has been accomplished so far and over what may be to come. In particular, Dugin applauds the dismantling of America’s primary vehicle of “soft power”: “The liquidation of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID),” Dugin exults, “is an event whose significance can hardly be overstated. Essentially, it is a missile strike on the headquarters of globalism. And Trump and Musk made it happen.”

In Dugin’s view, USAID was the velvet glove concealing America’s iron hand of imperialism, militarism, and covert (CIA) subversion: “USAID was the main operational structure for the implementation of globalist projects. Essentially, it was the primary transmission belt for globalism as an ideology aimed at the worldwide imposition of liberal democracy, market economics, and human rights, while dismantling sovereign states and overthrowing regimes capable of resisting this on a global scale.”

Dugin is astonished by Trump’s achievement: “This news is so significant that it is hard to comprehend. Until recently, we believed that globalists were a permanent fixture, that USAID was an almost eternal structure, and that the U.S. would always be the vanguard of globalization. We thought nothing could be done, and no one could change this. But it turns out that it can be changed — and it already has been.”

Now that American globalism has been toppled, what further miracles might lie in store? Can America’s Woke regime, for instance, be undone? Dugin envisions a time when people will be judged not on their preferred pronouns but on the content of their character and on the sex assigned them at birth: “Trumpists champion an anti-woke agenda that counters progressive values, such as gender politics.” Abolishing gender politics means “recognizing only two genders, male and female (something Trump explicitly made clear in his inauguration address), and rejecting the idea that homosexuality, bi-sexuality, and transgenderism should be normalized.” Naturally, this requires “men taking the lead in society. Trumpists also reject feminism and want to tear down negative perceptions of masculinity. In their view, no one should apologize for being a man anymore. This is why Trumpism is sometimes called the ‘bro revolution’ or the ‘revolution of men’.”

Dugin offers this particularly astute analysis of what might be called the MAGA “uncritical race theory”:

In stark contrast to what critical racial theory espouses, Trumpism champions the rehabilitation of white civilization. While there are some white racist proponents of Trumpism, they don't reflect the entire movement but rather are on the extreme fringes. Most white Trumpists are tolerant of other races as long as they don't demand repentance or apologies from whites.

Who among us is not tired of constantly having to apologize for the color of our skin and/or the crimes of our ancestors? Not to mention having our homes and workplaces invaded and our national bloodstream poisoned by the dregs of the earth:

Trumpism advocates for major restrictions on regular immigration and a total ban on illegal immigrants, calling for the deportation of people who are in the country illegally. And any immigrants who do come to Western societies should accept the values of their new host country. Trumpists do not like multiculturalism as championed by left-wing liberals. Trumpism is particularly opposed to illegal immigration and the flow of migrants from Latin America into the United States for fear that they will swing the ethnic balance in the country to become the majority. The Latino factor is the most important element of Trumpism in terms of US domestic politics.

It is an established fact that adding too much Latino to the melting pot that is America results in a much spicier dish than real Americans can swallow—more of a chili, that is, than a stew.

In the understatement of the year, Dugin acknowledges that, “For the most part, Trumpists are not sophisticated intellectuals.” There are, of course, exceptions, including Ivy League-educated types like J.D. Vance, Josh Hawley, and Pete Hegseth, but they have managed successfully to conceal anything they might have learned in academia. Overall, Trumpists “dislike what they view as a postmodernist dictatorship, which seeks to redefine norms without seeking wider consensus. They see liberal elites as a pretentious minority that looks down on them and views them as simple-minded—turning what is supposed to be majority rule into minority rule.”

Liberals’ hypocrisy, says Dugin, is being exposed at last:

In the liberal world, anything that clashes with their agenda is dismissed as "fake news", "Putin propaganda", "conspiracy theories", or dangerous, extremist views that should be ostracized. The window of ideas that liberals deem as "socially acceptable" continues to shrink, and anyone who doesn't conform to the ultra-left liberal agenda risks being shamed or cancelled altogether. This has exposed the farce of liberal "inclusiveness", which really is only meant to include like-minded individuals. Trumpism rejects all this and demands that free speech—which liberals have gradually eroded over the past few decades—be fully upheld. Trumpists don't necessarily want their ideology to reign over others but demand that the full spectrum of ideologies—from the extreme right to the extreme left—be treated equally.

Dugin concludes by hinting that the best is yet to come:

Some Trumpist ideologues have more ambitious goals. They want more than a simple return to traditional norms; they want to construct an alternative norm known as "right-wing postmodernism". This would mean using the same tactics that liberals use against traditionalists and conservatives—in essence, turning the tables of scrutiny and persecution on them. One prominent right-wing postmodernist is actually serving at a senior level in Trump's administration: Elon Musk. In many ways, he is actually his right-hand man, seen by many as a key contributor to his election victory. Musk combines traditional values and right-wing politics with a futuristic emphasis on technology.

It may seem odd that a Russian nationalist like Alexander Dugin should be so enthusiastic about the prospect of making America great again, but that shouldn’t lead anyone to mistrust the MAGA agenda—should it?

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USAID Destroyed: Trump and Musk’s Conservative Revolution Continues | Katehon. Information and analytical publication

Trumpism could shake up the world | Katehon. Information and analytical publication

Wednesday with Pascal: Another Great American Obituary

{Pascal the existential Russian blue cat does not want to be the bearer of bad news, but what other news is there these days? As American democracy implodes, it may be some consolation to recall that, over the years, we have been told repeatedly that it would.}

"A time to build up, a time to break down..." (Pete Seeger / Ecclesiastes)

‘The End of the American Era’ was written over fifty years ago by sociologist Andrew Hacker. The book exemplified the ingenuity with which pundits can declare their nation a terminal case, intone its last rites, and start digging its grave. After five decades, Hacker’s 1970 national obituary is worth a closer look.

America’s postwar (1945—1970) prosperity, according to Hacker, gave Americans an insufferable sense of privilege and entitlement. “Equality is primarily an attitude of mind,” Hacker wrote, “an outlook encouraged by widespread prosperity. The average American feels fully entitled to glance at his fellow citizens and to proclaim to any or all of them, ‘You are no better than I am.’”

Hacker noted the material basis for such claims; “The vast majority of the American people,” he acknowledged, “have risen far above economic and psychological privation. They have experienced advances in physical comfort and palpable changes in their social condition.” Rather than such gains being credited to larger social and economic forces, “This accomplishment is felt by each to be a personal achievement, a due reward for persevering effort. The postwar American looks upon himself first, then casts his eye to those around him. The judgment he makes of himself is favorable; he sees no reason for diffidence or shame.” The rising economic tide, in Hacker’s view, had lifted all boats; the problem was that Americans individually attributed their new-found buoyancy to their own nautical expertise.

Embracing the enduring myth of “American exceptionalism,” postwar Americans basked in a sense of superiority:

The fact is that the egos of 200 million Americans have expanded to dimensions never before considered appropriate for ordinary citizens. ¹ More aggravating than the crowding that comes with the sheer growth of population is the exacerbated sense of congestion arising when the individuals who rub against each other have heightened evaluations of their own merit and keener sensitivity to such abrasions. Most Americans now feel they should be guaranteed physical safety, a sufficiency of elbow room, and protection from psychic jostling. Most of the feelings of exasperation of contemporary American life come from the fact that many more people now feel deserving of protections and privileges once accorded to only a few.

Hacker claimed that postwar Americans, by and large, were spoiled, soft, unused to hard work or to difficulties in general, and ungrateful for the privileges they had inherited. “Americans expect—indeed, feel entitled to—the best that life has to offer.” Moreover, “Ascension to middle-class incomes and occupations is always accompanied by a conviction of a superior status.” Even in 1970, America was a nation of Karens: “Members of the new middle-class demand to be protected from crime and violence. They are upset when taxis are unavailable, when planes fall behind schedule, and when roads and recreational facilities are overcrowded. They complain about the quality of service they receive from others and the lack of people willing to wait on them in return for a reasonable payment.”

Unrivaled postwar prosperity, according to Hacker, had merely delayed, and to some extent disguised, the inevitable: as of 1970, rising tide or not, America was on the rocks. “The time of reckoning has come,” Hacker intoned. “American life has reached the juncture where social dislocations are so great that only the most ambitious of government efforts could produce even token ameliorations. The nation’s ailments are neither new nor unique. Poverty and racial discrimination have existed for generations, as have crowding and illness and dirt. Rioting, looting, and urban violence have occurred, albeit episodically, for over a century. But now people insist that such conditions be remedied. Social dissatisfaction always rises when accelerating expectations illuminate the gap between aspiration and reality. Discontents run deeper, with a widening sense of social injustice.” 

It wasn’t that American life was getting worse; it was that Americans were less willing to put up with social imperfections and inequities. Hacker saw no way out of the corner into which we had painted ourselves:

A majority of us would have to admit that our nation is in a stage of moral enervation; that we have no more lessons to impart to others; that the way of life we have created has ceased to be a model for people beyond our borders. Most difficult of all, we would have to concede that we lack the will to carry out a worldwide mission of redemption and reform. We have arrived at a plateau in our history: the years of middle age and incipient decline. We are now at that point ancient philosophers called ‘stasis,’ a juncture at which it becomes pointless to call for rehabilitation or renewal. Such efforts would take a discipline we do not have, a spirit of sacrifice which has ceased to exist.

More in sorrow than in anger, Hacker concluded:

America’s history as a nation has reached its end. The American people will of course survive, and the majority will continue to exist quite comfortably, at least in the confines of their private lives. But the ties that make them a society will grow more tenuous with each passing year.

I wish I could say that events have proven Hacker wrong; his predictions, though, were not so much about events as about a national mood, and on that it is hard to refute his pessimism. ² Since the Clinton/Gingrich 1990s, American politics has become increasingly uncivil: angry, resentful, tribal, truculent, and demagogic. What are the odds that will change anytime soon?      

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Andrew Hacker - Wikipedia

¹ Could "ego inflation" be at the heart of our national decline? What if Americans, individually and collectively, have simply gotten too big for our britches? Maybe we need to see a shrink? 

² Has Hacker, now in his nineties, become more cautious in his pronouncements? Apparently not: his 2020 book, "Downfall: The Demise of a President and His Party," began by stating, "There is not even a long-odds chance that Donald Trump will gain a second term." With his decades of political savvy and sociological expertise, Hacker had discovered "that Trump’s so-called base is shrinking and that a strong majority of voting Americans want Trump out of office." Hacker evidently failed to take into account the price of eggs.

1970: Fighting in the Streets!

Today's Fresh Hell: The Gaza Conundrum

{Conservatives these days pride themselves on thinking outside the box. Some boxes, however, are there for good reasons: e.g., the box that contains the Geneva Conventions and other international laws which prohibit removing entire populations from their homeland and relocating them to a remote, currently non-existent island.}

"Some men see things as they are and ask, why? Others see things that never were and ask, what's in it for me?" (Anonymous)

James Pinkerton, writing at The American Conservative, is all-in on President Trump’s recently announced “humanitarian” plan to end the suffering of people in Gaza, a plan which Pinkerton, like Trump, fondly hopes will result in “condos and casinos on the ‘Gaza Riviera’.” The plan will not, however, result in Palestinians living there, but Pinkerton presciently suggested, back in 2023, a two-part (final?) solution.

Part One would entail bribing the residents of Gaza to leave:

“In a book I had published along with my co-author, Dr. Joyce Starr, Create Gaza 2, Protect Israel, Build Peace, we argued that the only hope Gazans had for a decent life was to live somewhere else. To sweeten the deal, we suggested paying them $100,000 each to leave. If the population of Gaza is 2 million, that would mean an outlay of $200 billion. For sure, that’s a lot of money, but it’s not so much compared to the cost of the carnage and the hit on the Israeli economy in the past two years.” ¹

Neither Pinkerton nor Dr. Starr have indicated how much of the $200 billion they have thus far managed to raise; I suggest they begin by soliciting Elon Musk.

As to Part Two of the (final?) solution:

Where would the Gazans go? For his part, Trump has spoken vaguely about relocating them to other Arab countries. Yet embarrassingly for the Pan-Arab cause, Arab states don’t want the Gazans, or any Palestinians, as they tend to carry with them turmoil. Starr—a veteran Middle East expert—and I suggested building them a new island, far from Arab crowds that the Gazans could madden. Thinking greenly, we further suggested making the island out of captured and solidified carbon—so the Gazans, too, could be part of the fight against climate change. ²

In case there is the least bit of uncertainty: Pinkerton and Starr were serious. However, when they went on to suggest that the new island could be a global source of delicious, nutritious “Soylent green,” and when they suggested putting a certain "Dr. Moreau" in charge of the project, they may have been kidding.

Or not.

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Trump’s Humane Plan for Making Gaza Great Again  - The American Conservative

James Pinkerton - Wikipedia  Wikipedia helpfully notes that Pinkerton is "six feet, nine inches tall."

Dr. Joyce Starr – The Home of Starr Publishing As well as being a “veteran Middle East expert,” Starr appears to be an expert on condo ownership and housing associations; she also offers publishing advice to would-be authors.

¹ As much as I love living in Missoula, Montana, if someone offered me $100,000 to leave, I would be out of here in the blink of an eye. I don’t know how far I’d get—maybe only as far as Wallace, Idaho—but I’m telling you, I would take the money and run.

² Not to imply, of course, that “climate change” exists or, if it does, that we need to do anything about it. However, see this: Solid Carbon

Sunday Sermon: Something Happened

{In which President Trump reflects on divine providence, a brush with death, and his all-time favorite chart.}

“It didn't affect my hair." (President Donald J. Trump)   

President Donald Trump, speaking at the 2025 National Prayer Breakfast (2/06/25):

A few short months ago when there was an incident that wasn’t — it was not fun.  It was not a good thing.  But God was watching me.  The chances of me being here — my sons are shooters.  They’re really good shooters, Don and Eric.  And they said the chances of missing from that range with that gun are — but Don equated it to a one-foot putt.  That’s pretty bad.  Two feet I can see missing.  (Laughter.)  But one foot you can’t miss.  It was the equivalent of a one-foot putt, is what he told me. 

He said — in fact, he gained some religion.  He gained — he went up 25 percent.  (Laughter.)  And if you know him, that’s a lot.  (Laughter.)  But he said, “There had to be somebody that saved you, and I think I know who it is.”  And he looked up.  And I said, “Whoa, Don, that’s come — you’ve come a long way.”  (Laughter.)  He’s a good guy.

But they, my two sons, just really couldn’t believe it.  Had I not turned that right turn just at that time — and the audience — 55,000 people standing this way.  There were just a few people in the back on the bleachers.  There was nobody over there, except for my all-time favorite chart in history, a chart on immigration.  Immigration saved my life.  See?  So, we’re going to be good for immigration, okay? But had I not made that turn — boom — and quickly.  It was almost as though a deer bolted.  You know, they say the only way you miss when you’re a good shot is if it bolts?  I bolted.  I turned to the right to look at the chart, and I said, “Wow, what was that?  What was that?” 

So, you never know, but God did that.  I mean, it had to be.  The chances of turning, because there’s no reason to turn to the right.  You know, the chart is rarely brought down.  I brought it down maybe 20 percent and — 20 percent of the time.  And it’s never on my right.  It’s always on my left.  And it’s always at the end of the speech, never the beginning of the speech. And if I was a little more than that 90-degree angle, it would be no good.  And if I was a little less, it would be no good.  It had to be perfect.  The thing went “shhh” right along the edge.  It didn’t affect my hair.  Can you believe that? (Laughter.)  It might’ve touched it.  Might have touched it, but not where it counts, not — (laughter) — not the skin part. ¹

But it changed something in me, I feel.  I feel even stronger.  I believed in God, but I feel much more strongly about it.  Something happened.  And so — (applause) — thank you.  Thank you. ²

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Remarks by President Trump at the National Prayer Breakfast – The White House

¹ President Trump has previously elaborated on the miraculous moment:

“When I rose surrounded by Secret Service, the crowd was confused because they thought I was dead. And there was great, great sorrow. I could see that on their faces as I looked out. They didn't know I was looking out, they thought it was over. But I could see it, I wanted to do something to let 'em know I was ok. I raised my right arm, looked at the thousands and thousands of people that were breathlessly waiting and started shouting, Fight! Fight! Fight!”

² Sadly, the trauma of the incident has resulted in President Trump’s amnesia regarding the other victims, one of whom was killed while God was shielding Trump:

“Corey Comperatore of Sarver, Pennsylvania, was killed by gunfire. Comperatore, aged 50, died while shielding his wife and two daughters from gunfire. In addition to Trump, a number of other people were injured. Two other male audience members, aged 57 and 74, were shot and critically injured. The 57-year-old victim was discharged from the hospital on July 24; the 74-year-old was discharged on July 26.  Four Pittsburgh Police officers, who were feet away from Trump, suffered minor injuries from flying debris when bullets struck objects nearby.” Attempted assassination of Donald Trump in Pennsylvania - Wikipedia

The would-be assassin, Thomas Matthew Crook, also died. 

Saturday Lecture: Nightmares of Future Past

{A hundred years or so ago, having just finished carving up the Middle East, and having some time on his hands, Winston Churchill mused in writing about the future of the modern world. Among other things, Churchill predicted that cities would be rendered obsolete by wireless communication technologies; he also worried about the development of Communist robots.}

Winston Churchill, from “Fifty Years Hence” (circa 1925-1932):

Wireless telephones and television, following naturally upon their present path of development, will enable their owner to connect with any room similarly installed, and hear and take part in the conversation as well as if he put his head in through the window. The congregation of men in cities will become superfluous. It will rarely be necessary to call in person on any but the most intimate friends, but if so, excessively rapid means of communication will be at hand. There will be no more point in living in the same city with one’s neighbor than there is today in living with him in the same house. The cities and the countryside will become indistinguishable. Every home will have its garden and its glade.

Up till recent times the production of food has been the prime struggle of man. That war is won. There is no doubt that the civilized races can produce or procure all the food they require. Until now, food is obtained almost entirely from the energy of the sunlight. As gigantic new sources of power become available, food will be produced without recourse to sunlight. Vast cellars in which artificial radiation is generated may replace the cornfields or potato-patches of the world. Parks and gardens will cover our pastures and ploughed fields.

Equally startling developments lie already just beyond our fingertips in the breeding of human beings and the shaping of human nature. A few years ago, London was surprised by a play called Rossum’s Universal Robots. The production of such beings may well be possible within fifty years. They will not be made but grown under glass. There seems little doubt that it will be possible to carry out in artificial surroundings the entire cycle which now leads to the birth of a child. Interference with the mental development of such beings, expert suggestion and treatment in the earlier years, would produce beings specialized to thought or toil. The production of creatures, for instance, which have admirable physical development with their mental endowment stunted in particular directions, is almost within the range of human power. A being might be produced capable of tending a machine, but without other ambitions. Our minds recoil from such fearful eventualities, and the laws of a Christian civilization will prevent them. But Robots could be made to fit the grisly theories of Communism. There is nothing in the philosophy of Communists to prevent their creation.

In a future which our children may live to see, powers will be in the hands of men altogether different from any by which human nature has been molded. Explosive forces, energy, materials, machinery will be available upon a scale which can annihilate whole nations. Despotisms and tyrannies will be able to prescribe the lives and even the wishes of their subjects in a manner never known since time began. If to these tremendous and awful powers is added the pitiless subhuman wickedness which we now see embodied in one of the most powerful reigning governments, who shall say that the world itself will not be wrecked, or indeed that it ought not to be wrecked?

There are nightmares of the future from which a fortunate collision with some wandering star, reducing the earth to incandescent gas, might be a merciful deliverance. While men are gathering knowledge and power with ever-increasing and measureless speed, their virtues and their wisdom have not shown any notable improvement as the centuries have rolled. The brain of a modern man does not differ in essentials from that of the human beings who fought and loved here millions of years ago. The nature of man has remained hitherto practically unchanged. Under sufficient stress—starvation, terror, warlike passion, or even cold intellectual frenzy—the modern man will do the most terrible deeds, and his modern woman will back him up.

The powers and weapons of man are far outstripping the march of his intelligence; the march of his intelligence is proceeding far more rapidly than the development of his nobility. We may well find ourselves in the presence of the strength of civilization without its mercy. It is important that the moral philosophy and spiritual conceptions of men and nations should hold their own amid these formidable scientific evolutions. It would be much better to call a halt in material progress and discovery rather than to be mastered by our own apparatus and the forces which it directs. Material progress, in itself so splendid, does not meet any of the real needs of the human race.  

There are secrets too mysterious for man in his present state to know; secrets which once penetrated may be fatal to human happiness and glory. But the busy hands of the scientists are already fumbling with the keys of all the chambers hitherto forbidden to mankind. Without an equal growth of Mercy, Pity, Peace and Love, Science herself may destroy all that makes human life majestic and tolerable. There never was a time when the inherent virtue of human beings required more strong and confident expression in daily life; there never was a time when the hope of immortality and the disdain of earthly power and achievement were more necessary for the safety of the children of men.

What will we know in the future more than we know now about the simple questions which man has asked since the earliest dawn of reason: ‘Why are we here? What is the purpose of life? Whither are we going?’ No material progress, even though it takes shapes we cannot now conceive, or however it may expand the faculties of man, can bring comfort to his soul. Projects undreamed of by past generations will absorb our immediate descendants; forces terrific and devastating will be in their hands; comforts, activities, amenities, pleasures will crowd upon them, but their hearts will ache, their lives will be barren, if they have not a vision above material things. And with comforts and pleasures will come dangers out of all proportion to the growth of man’s intellect, to the strength of his character, or to the efficacy of his institutions.

Once more the choice is offered between Blessing and Curse. Never was the answer that will be given harder to foretell.

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“Fifty Years Hence” appeared in Churchill’s 1932 collection, Thoughts and Adventures.

Which Hill Should We Die On?

Today in "Unhelpful Punditry":

According to Rachel Bade (writing at Politico), Democrats upset about the Trump administration’s targeting of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), are picking the wrong hill to die on; most Americans, Ms. Bade decrees, don’t care about foreign aid. As she explains, “Billionaire Elon Musk’s campaign to dismantle the federal bureaucracy piece by piece at Trump’s behest, starting with the U.S. Agency for International Development, lit a fire under many Democratic lawmakers — several of whom rallied Monday outside USAID headquarters. But relaunching the resistance to defend one of the least popular corners of the federal budget could be a monster miscalculation…”

Strategically, say the prominent political strategists consulted by Ms. Bade, USAID is a pawn that Democrats can afford to sacrifice:

Some prominent Democrats told me they have serious strategic reservations about how their party is fighting back. When I asked veteran strategist David Axelrod whether Democrats were “walking into a trap” on defending foreign aid, he literally finished my sentence. “My heart is with the people out on the street outside USAID, but my head tells me: ‘Man, Trump will be well satisfied to have this fight,’” he said. “When you talk about cuts, the first thing people say is: Cut foreign aid.”

Educating people about the value of foreign aid, or about the actual portion of the federal budget allotted for that purpose, or about the specific programs being financed and the rationale for financing them, would be far too much trouble. Better, say the strategists, to throw USAID under the bus and to wait for an easier, more obviously winnable case:

Rahm Emanuel — the former House leader, Chicago mayor and diplomat — told me much the same: “You don’t fight every fight. You don’t swing at every pitch. And my view is — while I care about the USAID as a former ambassador — that’s not the hill I’m going to die on,” he said.

The strategists have spoken. Ms. Bade (whose publisher, Politico, is now itself the subject of MAGA outrage) acknowledges that “The political considerations in vocally defending foreign aid are of course entirely separate from the humanitarian and national security concerns at play,” but she brushes that aside. “Democrats aren’t reading the room,” she writes. “They’ve raised alarms about Trump and Musk firing inspectors general, purging FBI officials who probed Trump. and offering to buy out thousands more federal workers. Only a fraction of Americans have a personal connection to any of it.”

Ms. Bade does not entertain the thought that her strategists’ strategy might be short-sighted at best. The dismantling of the administrative state will be done (is being done) piece by piece, agency by agency, department by department, line item by line item, no one of which, in isolation, will constitute a hill worth dying on. Public broadcasting? The National Weather Service? The Bureau of Land Management? The constituency for most government programs is never more than “a fraction of Americans;" if we're waiting for unanimous consent before we stand up, we'll be waiting a long time.  

In other words: first they came for USAID, and we shrugged it off. Then they came for Inspectors General, and no one cared. Next, they purged FBI workers and weeded out unreliable federal employees, but who noticed? When they came for Politico, Rachel Bade put in a call for help, but David Axelrod was out to dinner with Rahm Emmanuel and couldn’t be reached; the two of them were reportedly discussing over dessert which hill they would be willing to die on.

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Democrats Are Falling For Trump and Musk's Foreign Aid Trap - POLITICO