Latest musings, analyses, and general madness
We spend a lot of time (which is itself an illusion) hemming and hawing with mock-profundity about what we are going to do, as though we were making decisions, rather than merely waiting to do what we must do. We must either flow with the wave in which we inevitably find ourselves, or struggle to remain standing and resistant against its force. But...
One of the U.S. Democratic Party’s leading propaganda outlets, MSNBC, is blithely reporting today, in this new year of our Election Lord 2024, that: a Politico report indicates that the Biden administration is quietly shifting away from backing Ukraine’s bid for total victory. Instead, the White House is now thinking about how to best position Ukraine for negotiations that are likely to lead to territorial...
Lost in the Cloud.— We are all, today, in all our endeavors, at the mercy of everything we ever did, everything we ever said, and everyone with whom we ever interacted in any way, at any time, under any circumstances. In practice, this means that standing apart from others, or disagreeing in any way with current moral or political orthodoxies, no longer merely...
It is typical these days, among those still sufficiently sentient and resistant to ideological indoctrination to have wayward thoughts, to wish others a Merry Christmas with a disclaimer to the effect that Christmases, at this historical moment, do not seem to offer much to be merry about. While I certainly sympathize with that mixed tone of well-wishing lamentation, I always try to remind...
In 2012, Barack Obama directly told Dmitry Medvedev to beg the latter’s leash-holder, “Vladimir,” to be patient until after Obama’s upcoming “last election,” at which time he, Obama, “would have more flexibility” with regard to accommodating Putin’s wishes on (Russian) defense matters. In 2014, Putin occupied Crimea, a direct and overt violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty, in response to which Obama did exactly nothing....
Having now seen part of one of the trailers for Ridley Scott’s “epic” “historical” “biopic” Napoleon, and having been urged by no one to divulge my own impressions of this important cinematic event (i.e., box office smash), I feel that it is time at last to add my two cents — more than I would waste on watching a modern Hollywood movie —...
The entire world is being taught today, from kindergarten through graduate school and throughout the popular media and the mainstream commentariat, that racism is specifically, endemically, and inescapably a white tendency; that is, a mental trait essentially characteristic of those who are born white….
One of the benefits of the Trump cult era in the Republican Party is that it has certainly exposed a lot of underlying and unappetizing truth about a goodly proportion of the grassroots of the GOP, which used to be properly mitigated or moderated behind the old Tea Party’s constitutionalist mantra. Thanks to the rise of flagrant demagoguery, populist vulgarity, and a certain...
As has been the case for years, the progressive authoritarians are loving every minute of this deterioration of any plausible resistance to their schemes. Trump, as I and others predicted publicly at the beginning of this charade, has effectively sullied the cause of liberty for a generation with his demagogic fakery and personality cult appeal, just as the progressive establishment of both parties...
Perhaps the Ukrainian government should have surrendered outright at the beginning of Vladimir Putin’s (not “Russia’s,” but Vladimir Putin’s) all-out invasion in 2022. For everyone knew that even the most rhetorically forceful Western alliance would have neither the resources nor the willpower to offer Ukraine enough assistance to truly defeat Putin in a war of attrition — the one kind of war a...