Enjoying the view from Limbo
Can someone tell me why a Hollywood biopic (an “epic,” as they say) about Napoleon would be relevant to a culture in which ninety-seven percent of the population would not know what country Napoleon was from, when he lived, what he is famous for, and what significance his life and actions had for future generations of thinkers and statesmen? Or why a man...
2024 U.S. Election / What is The Establishment?
by Daren Jonescu · Published October 29, 2023 · Last modified October 30, 2023
Mike Pence, vice president to Donald Trump, has suspended his 2024 Republican presidential campaign months before the first votes will be cast, in the face of abysmal poll numbers and empty coffers. No man’s fate more clearly exemplifies the truth and trajectory of the entire Republican Party since it allowed itself to be hijacked by a reality TV grifter and his moron cult...
When the print media was dominated by men with high school educations or less, armed with real-world experience and an enthusiasm for clarity of language and for “getting to the bottom of things,” the news was commonly reported with literacy and punchy verve, in vocabulary and grammar suitable to a population of self-governing adults. Today, as the print media — paper or virtual...
Kevin McCarthy has been “ousted” as Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. In order to become speaker, and to remain so for this long, McCarthy had to play to Donald Trump and his cult, tell lies for them, and promise to defend them and their moronic causes at the highest levels of the national discussion, rather than consigning them to their natural...
Liberty's Labors Lost / What is The Establishment? / World Politics
by Daren Jonescu · Published September 19, 2023
The American government’s old guard establishment in both parties wants Ukraine to lose the war, but slowly. The establishment’s upstart wing, comprised mainly of populists of the right, including the farcically-named House Freedom Caucus, wants Russia to win, and quickly. Neither side is quite willing to state its genuine position directly, at least so far, although the loonier puppets of the populist faction,...
America Descending / Pandemic that Ate a Planet / What is The Establishment?
by Daren Jonescu · Published September 15, 2023
Covid-19, as a health crisis: At most, a moderately severe global pandemic, which barely even qualifies as moderate when compared with the 1918 flu outbreak (which the world withstood and transcended quite well, in the end). Covid-19, as a political crisis: At least, the most severe case of globally coordinated authoritarian government expansion and Orwellian speech-crushing propaganda in our lifetime (from which the...
Global Climate Hysteria / What is The Establishment?
by Daren Jonescu · Published July 31, 2023 · Last modified August 1, 2023
A few days ago, I returned to the issue of climate alarmism, using as my kick-off point the predictable public and media response to the recent unusually severe rainy season in Korea, where I live. As I noted then, it was all but impossible here, for a few wet weeks, to mention the rain in any context without being met immediately by a...
Everyone who is even vaguely attentive to American politics, and even half-honest about the evidence of his own senses, knows that Joe Biden is no more serving as the active president of the United States — the “here” at which, as Harry Truman said, the buck stops — than I am. That is to say, everyone can see as clear as day that...
America Descending / What is The Establishment?
by Daren Jonescu · Published July 26, 2023 · Last modified July 27, 2023
In keeping with his annual tradition, Barack Obama has posted his 2023 summer playlist, which is to say the collection of songs he claims to have on his portable listening device at the moment. Amusingly, one musician, someone called Lucy Dacus, objected to being included, using the opportunity to accuse Obama of being a war criminal. Good for her, I say! After all,...
Tucker Carlson, cut loose from the, ahem, moderating tether of Fox News, has taken his Putin fantasy world propaganda to yet another level, with the help of British comedian cum better-red-than-dead peacenik fool Russell Brand, and with the amplifying support of the populist right’s new god of free speech, Elon Musk. Carlson does this because he is a craven, power-loving attention-seeker who has...
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