Enjoying the view from Limbo
Elon Musk, the richest man ever to owe most of his fortune to government handouts and regulatory favors awarded to him to perform services utterly unjustified by the principles of limited government he now pretends to espouse, is trying to justify his random none-of-this-will-ever-affect-anyone-I-know torching of the federal bureaucracy in exactly the Trumpian way one would expect from an unprincipled businessman without a...
The problem with Donald Trump’s political rise, as I have said many times, is not so much Trump himself, but rather the tens of millions of Americans who are sanguine — nay, enthusiastic — about this buffoonish Putin agent and anti-American demagogue running roughshod over their country’s traditions, decimating its alliances, disrespecting its constitution and its institutions, befouling its public discourse, turning her...
Cause and effect. — Prod people into desperation by denying and disemboweling everything they ever held dear. When they actually become desperate and begin to act as desperate men do, accuse them of being extremists and assert the need for stern measures to tamp down their irrational outbursts. Voter’s dialectic. — “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” Fool me...
I have seen headlines over the past few days railing against the incredible racist fascism on display at Donald Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally. Dismissing this as just the usual mainstream media hyperbole and something-out-of-nothing-ism, I refused even to allow myself to scan any of the articles to find out what the supposed controversy was all about. Today, however, I admit to having...
In less than two weeks’ time, The United States of America will vote for one of the two alternative methods of losing World War III. A vote for the Democratic Party as it now exists is a vote for engaging in the fight but then, when the priorities of economic totalitarianism at home and global progressive activism abroad rise to the forefront of...
An expert is a person who knows more than you do about one thing, and very likely less than you about almost everything else — including, potentially, about the presuppositions underlying his own area of expertise, which he sees not as presuppositions but as facts. That false perception of his presuppositions is part of what identifies him as an expert. Political life is...
Ideas and Reflections / What is The Establishment?
by Daren Jonescu · Published August 26, 2024 · Last modified August 27, 2024
Alexander Vindman, a small man who played a significant role in an isolated moment, but who has been trying to parlay that momentary significance into a more general relevance ever since, has taken to the social media monster called X — where the clowns gather — to “warn” Elon Musk, who runs X, that the recent French arrest of Musk’s counterpart at Telegram...
It is always comforting to remind yourself, as you watch them seeking to tear down your world, that your world, at least as they understand it, is also their world, whatever they may believe. Hence, everything they take from you is a theft from themselves, everything of yours that they destroy is one more thing they can never have, and every sign of...
I just tuned in for a few minutes of the presidential debate between Joe Biden’s ghost and Donald Trump’s tape loop, already in progress. By chance, a CNN hairdo/moderator was just embarking upon a line of questioning related to foreign policy issues, beginning with Ukraine. Here are my impressions: Biden is reciting talking points that are presumably being fed into his ear by...
Donald Trump is the Republican Party establishment. This is true not merely in the sense that there must always, of necessity, be an established leading force within any nation or faction. It is true in the very sense most despised by the self-described establishment-haters who comprise the Trump cult, namely that Trump, their god, is absolutely embedded within, and inseparable from, the old...
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