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All of Mark Steyn’s articles and podcasts are full of incisive analysis and blazing wit. But his Clubland Q&A installment from June 4th is particularly brilliant, as he covers “a range of topics from the dawn of Pride Season to the death of nations.” Worth a listen (audio only).
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Something that has irked me of late, while reading or listening to certain elements within the “conservative” (non-Leftist) alternative media, is the assertion that it is somehow courageous to come out of hiding, as it were, and dare to criticize Israel. The Left engages in this exercise all the time, but in recent years the phenomenon has spread to unlikely precincts.
To grasp the full depth of this charade, let us take a step back in time. I spent most of the 1980s and 90s working in the realm of international relations, much of it focused on Middle East affairs. During that era, I began my day by perusing the New York Times, glancing at the headlines, reading full articles as needed. (And yes, I became an expert in the “subway fold.”) This is what everyone did, because the Times really was the newspaper of record. Many collegial conversations began with “did you see the article in the Times….?” What struck me most about that esteemed publication was the constant badgering of Israel, in every way, shape, and form imaginable. Every single day, one could see an article, usually on the front page, decrying some grave transgression committed by the evil Israelis. Because of my work and travels, I knew that the allegations ranged from manipulated half-truth to outright fabrication. This treatment also was the rule for almost the entirety of the American and European media. From John Chancellor and NBC’s scandalous coverage of the 1982 Lebanon war, to the whitewashing of Yasir Arafat’s jihadist rhetoric just after signing the Oslo “peace” accords, to the Muhammed al-Dura affair (2000), and beyond, mainstream media outlets in the West have functioned as the propaganda arm of the Arab world. Then there is the United Nations. With their Israel obsession, one would think that there are no other conflicts anywhere, and no region of any interest other than the Middle East. Israel-bashing developed into a cottage industry, involving many of the infamous NGOs that sponsor mischief and mayhem worldwide. UNRWA is only one of a multitude of corrupt and nefarious actors. Then there is academia. I noticed, back in the day, a pattern emerging in the organization of university panel discussions on the Arab-Israel conflict. Typically, there would be a four-person panel: Someone to take the Israeli side; another for the Arab side; a representative of the clergy or some touchy-feely NGO; and a policy wonk, usually from a think tank, sometimes from the media or State Department. Inevitably, the pro-Israel representative would be alone in arguing his case, as the Arab and the two “non-partisan” speakers united in their condemnations of Israel. It never failed. The universities became incubators for every flavor of anti-Israel agitation, egged on by the neo-Marxist professoriate. Small wonder that recently, “elite” college students took a break from jeremiads about climate change and the Trumphitler to become mouthpieces for the most bloodthirsty organization on the face of the earth. Much of this can be explained by the dominance of the Left. They took their cue from the USSR, which beginning in the 1960s lent its prestige and resources to the Arab campaign. Israel is considered by the Left to be the oppressor par excellence because the state was founded as a European-style parliamentary democracy, with the leadership looking rather “white,” facing off against “people of color” who are particularly degenerate and violent. It would be strange indeed if the latter did not become the darlings of the Left; a poster-child of “oppression.” Despite this massive international campaign lasting decades, we now hear assertions that it is taboo to criticize Israel. It is easy to recognize the classic Leftist playbook. The Palestinian Arabs, in their portrayal as the eternal victim, are analogous to the George Floyd story. They all behave as depraved criminals; when the authorities finally put their foot down, well, it is racism, fascism, Nazis, and all the rest. Parroting the “poor oppressed Palestinians” narrative is tantamount to endorsing the core principles of the Left. In fact, when I hear “our” people doing this, I begin to question their conservative bona fides. Sometimes, you scratch a little, and find a Leftist trapped in a conservative body. The Arab-Israel conflict offers the perfect opportunity to satisfy one’s inner Leftist, to weep for the supposed downtrodden, at little or no cost to one’s overall political image. Even in Israel, it is daunting to be pro-Israel. People in the U.S. are not aware of how influential and nasty the Leftist Establishment is over there. I laugh when I hear that Prime Minister Netanyahu exercises control over various aspects of U.S. foreign policy—he doesn’t even control Israeli foreign policy! The veto power of the American Deep State over the actions of President Trump, acquired through the judiciary and other mechanisms, is child’s play compared to the equivalent game in Israel. Sometimes we hear that “Tel Aviv” (or the “Israel lobby”) controls U.S. foreign policy, or at least Mideast policy. According to this line of thinking, all U.S. wars in the region are fought for the benefit of Israel. Any serious student of U.S. Mideast policy knows that the heavy hitters in this arena are (in no particular order): American defense contractors; the Pentagon; the State Department; Saudi Arabia; the oil industry; and the ideologues of the far Left, embedded everywhere. What Israel or its supporters in the U.S. want or need is an afterthought. It should be mentioned that the pro-Israel movement, especially within the American Jewish community, is famously inept at getting its message across, in part because of the time and money spent fighting off the influence of the woke zeitgeist by which it is surrounded. While the anti-Israel side goes for the jugular with no compunction, the supporters of Israel hem and haw, producing “talking points” that will not “alienate the moderates.” My objection is not to criticism of Israel. Have at it, I say; make your case and present your facts. Love the country, hate it, or be indifferent to its fate. The sticking point is the nauseating spectacle of moral preening, wearing the mantle of “courage” in breaching the alleged wall of censorship. The preening includes bouts of hand-wringing and exaggerated sighs, together with insistence that they have nothing against Jews or Israelis, but “we can no longer be silent.” Well, if the past fifty years have been silent, what does noise look like? If these brave souls were to parade through London, the campus of Harvard University, or Boulder, Colorado, would they feel safer flying the Israeli flag or the Hamas flag? Which takes more guts? And if you worked for the Associated Press, or the BBC, or at the Quai d’Orsay, how long would your employment last if you defended an Israeli military action in Gaza or Lebanon? When it comes to “conservatives,” perhaps all the hand-wringing is the result of their conscience rebelling at the adoption of a stance fundamentally at odds with the core principles of conservatism, and indeed of common sense. Or maybe there is some residual embarrassment over aligning themselves with the most villainous ideological forces of the modern era. About a week ago, the presidential “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) Commission released its final report, which focused on the crisis of childhood illness, analyzing the problem and recommending a number of countermeasures. There is much to be praised in the Commission’s work, but there is a huge, glaring omission; an elephant in the room, that everyone is endeavoring to ignore.
The MAHA Report identified four causes of the childhood health crisis: —Poor diet —Chemicals in the environment —Lack of physical activity; chronic stress —Overmedicalization I agree that all of these contribute to the problem. But there was no mention of that big, beautiful elephant—the biggest single threat to the health of all Americans, the worst episode of corruption in the history of the medical profession, the direct cause of death and disability for millions of people, the ticking time bomb in the bodies of everyone else—yes, I’m talking about that most taboo of taboo subjects: the mRNA poison injections, known in popular jargon as the “Covid vaccine.” This toxic brew is still being handed out like candy, and this great and awesome presidential commission can’t bring itself to even consider the issue. There is only one mention of Covid in the entire document, and that was to protest government pressure on social media to “suppress content questioning pediatric vaccine-risk profiles or school-closure policies.” It wasn’t until page 54 that they threw us this pathetic bone. No mention whatsoever of the lethal mRNA genetic alteration technology. In fact, the report indirectly endorses a looming threat in this arena, when it notes that “the Great American Comeback of energy dominance [will] power AI technology” to “develop new tools and push the frontiers of science to help us better understand how to measure and reverse chronic disease.” This is a shout-out to the insidious “Stargate” AI initiative, which includes development of a new round of mRNA concoctions. (See my post of 3/10/2025, “All Quiet on the Scamdemic Front.”) After glancing at the MAHA report’s table of contents, I thought that perhaps the “overmedicalization” heading included the death jabs. No such luck. The closest it comes is on page 64, in the context of the childhood vaccine schedule: “Our understanding of vaccine safety and any links to chronic diseases would benefit from more rigorous clinical trial designs.” Ya think? In my post of 12/9/24 (“I’ll Believe It When I See It”), I mentioned the work of Edward Dowd, the financial guru who conducted painstaking statistical analysis of the highly irregular excess mortality occurring in 2021 and 2022, which enabled him to measure the lethality of the poison injections. Shortly after the presidential election, Dowd asserted that if all mRNA “vaccines” are not recalled from the market within six months of the inauguration, we may conclude that Big Pharma is too big to touch, and/or that the country cannot handle the truth, and life will go on as if nothing happened. Well, we still have two months to go, but it seems that the MAHA report has laid to rest any doubt as to the approach the Administration is taking. They are burying their heads in the sand, plain and simple. Not only have none of the criminals been held accountable; on the contrary, the pharmaceutical venom that killed, injured, or rendered infertile millions of Americans (and others worldwide) is still being distributed, and the underlying technology slated for further development. [Check out this excellent recent discussion on the Scamdemic, featuring Edward Dowd and Neil Oliver. They summarize the whole scandal, including the aspects of mass hysteria and elephant-in-the-room. Dowd explains his work on excess mortality starting at around 13:45 into the video.] UPDATE, 5/30/2025, 5:00pm ET: U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has announced that “the Covid vaccine for healthy children and healthy pregnant women has been removed from the CDC recommended immunization schedule.” So we will continue to poison unhealthy children and unhealthy pregnant women, and everyone else? Better than nothing, I suppose, but it’s still pathetic. Contemporary life has many odd and often infuriating aspects that leave one scratching one’s head, searching in vain for some shred of logic to explain them. A prime head-scratcher is the late-model automobile. Have you ever wondered why cars have become outrageously expensive, ugly, overly complex, packed with unnecessary electronic nonsense, and increasingly unrepairable?
Wonder no more. Everything is explained with great clarity on the fascinating and informative YouTube channel, “Uncle Tony’s Garage.” Here's a sample. "A person's wisdom lights up his face⸺and the boldness of his face is transformed."
— Ecclesiastes 8:1 The study and practice of physiognomy has been somewhat neglected in the contemporary West, drowned out by the endless din of the equality-mongers. But it never really goes away. Everyone practices the art; we all react to a person’s face. At the very least, we evaluate it on a gut level, as we do with body size and shape, voice, skin color, movement, gestures, etc. Physiognomy has been at the forefront of my thoughts lately due to the dramatic changes, over the last few years, in the facial characteristics of the population. This transformation includes a strong tendency toward dullness of expression, lack of symmetry, and downright ugliness. [I discussed these trends, from an evolutionary perspective, in my post The Darwinian Surprise (4/18/2025).] The severity of this deterioration was driven home to me when I stumbled across a certain video clip from Fox News. The topic in this case was irrelevant; what was important was the newscaster, a young man named Andy Mac. Take a look at this three-minute clip. It is clear immediately that something is awry with this specimen of homo sapiens. Physiognomy tells all: the shape of the face (and head), the placement of features, the bizarre haircut, the protruding ear, the odd movement of the mouth. Emanating from that mouth is an unpleasant and halting voice, with faulty cadence and pronunciation. He has difficulty reading the text of a tweet shown on the screen. The whole performance is no less awkward than a midget playing in the NBA. This man is a newscaster on a national network, for crying out loud. We are not talking about a bus driver, or an amateur from Podunk making a podcast in his living room, but rather the face of an important institution, seen by millions of people. Walter Cronkite he is not. Even a standard media apparatchik such as Jake Tapper is, by comparison, normal-looking and articulate. At any time and place, there is a distribution of facial attributes among the population. Not every man can resemble Sean Connery. But there has been a distinct shift toward the dysfunctional side of the curve. And, presumably, in the wake of that shift, more of those people are “promoted” into inappropriate roles. (But is the case of Andy Mac the result of something nefarious; part of the effort, in media and entertainment, to consistently portray white men as defective?) There is no question in my mind that the precipitous decline of our culture and in the overall level of intelligence is reflected in physiognomy. If you want proof, spend some time watching movies from the 1940s and 50s, or even a bit later. Look at the faces of the actors. You will see brightness, intelligence, curiosity, and humor. And this before they even speak. I can also attest that when I was growing up, in the 1960s and 70s, the percentage of people with this “look” was substantially greater than it is now. Today, it’s a different story. The aforementioned verse from Ecclesiastes could be rewritten for our era as: “A person’s idiocy darkens his face⸺and the dullness of his face is transformed.” Can this trend be reversed? "Although men flatter themselves over their extraordinary feats, these are not so often the result of a grand design, but rather of mere happenstance."
— La Rochefoucauld The resounding success of Net-Zero energy policies in Spain prompted me to imagine how splendid it would be if the entire world pursued these same initiatives. I played it out in my mind, and developed a possible scenario for attainment of the ultimate goal: a truly 100% Net-Zero world.
[Keep in mind that the following story is pure speculative fiction.] In this version of the future, Net-Zero energy policies are pushed to the limit worldwide. The result, over time, is a massive die-off. Despite the numerous woke progressives among the deceased, the news is spun positively in the New York Times, which emphasizes the crucial benefit of drastically reduced carbon emissions. Eventually, the Times can no longer engage in the act of emphasizing; it ceases to exist when its last staff member, the Science and Technology editor, freezes to death in her Chelsea loft. Two young humans, Madison and Liam, are chosen by Fate to survive the apocalypse. These two beneficiaries of white privilege became acquainted with each other while camping, in neighboring tents, at a Hamas peaceful protest at Columbia University. Through a series of fortuitous circumstances and events, they escape the utter ruin of civilization, and embark upon a grueling odyssey that terminates in being marooned on a desert island. Madison and Liam are the last of their species, as Net-Zero has been implemented down to the last human producers of carbon. Life on the desert island is simple and carefree, with fish and tropical fruit available in abundance, and warm weather year-round. The two survivors agree to mark a boundary down the middle of the island, with an ironclad promise to enter the other’s territory only with permission. This ensures the inviolability of safe spaces. Madison and Liam both, but especially the young lady, spend hours each day attempting to revive their iPhones, which sadly have no hope of ever again being functional. Madison complains that her social-media friends never respond to texts or posts. Two years go by with no change in living conditions, and no contact with the outside world (which effectively has ceased to exist). One day, while Liam is surveying his domain from atop an outcrop of rocks, he sees Madison, a stone’s throw distant, bathing nude in a natural pool under a waterfall. She normally does this after nightfall, so as to remain invisible, but just this once forgets her own protocol. The young man is shaken to the depths of his soul. Feelings of intense desire are quickly supplanted by shame, as he struggles with his thoughtcrime. There is no question, he reckons, that this remnant of toxic masculinity must be purged from his system. Over the course of the next few days, however, desire makes a comeback, and returns to the forefront of Liam’s consciousness. What to do? He cannot cross the territorial boundary; that would be considered by Madison to be an unforgivable transgression. Liam hatches a cunning plan: he will convince his female counterpart, by means of reasoning and subtle persuasion, to engage in physical contact with him. The next morning, he walks to the spot along the border where they usually go to converse with each other. “Good morning, Madison. Nice day, isn’t it?” Madison displays her typical frown, but nods grudgingly. Liam pays no attention to this negativity, instead focusing on her physique, which is appealing to him in the extreme. “What did you want to talk to me about?” Liam takes a step toward the object of his attraction but then halts abruptly upon his realization that the sacrosanct boundary lies between them. He gathers his courage and clears his throat. “You know, Madison, I was thinking, like, you know, kinda….well maybe we could take a walk along the beach on my territory, it’s really pretty over there.” Madison frowns again, and then stretches her slim body upward with a big yawn. “No thanks. I’m okay with my own beach. Anything else?” Liam, anticipating this response, switches to his backup strategy. “Yeah, I’ve been thinking….we might be the last two people on the planet, just you and me. Kinda sad, that everyone else had to die, but in a way it’s totally awesome, right?” “They had to die, to save the planet. But what’s so awesome about us being alive? We’re still using up resources and contributing to climate change.” “True, true,” says Liam, again suppressing his desire. “But we could be like Adam and Eve. You know, starting the whole human race all over again.” “What?!” shrieks the young woman. “Adam and Eve? That story the Nazis cooked up to justify the patriarchy?” She looks at him with scorn, shaking her head in disbelief. “You never said anything like that at Columbia. What are you, some kind of Republican?” She storms away in a huff, and is soon out of view. That evening, Madison captures one of the poisonous spiders that inhabit a cave on her side of the island, and places it in a bamboo box that she had made. In the middle of the night, she crosses the boundary into Liam’s territory, sneaks up to his hut, approaches his bed, and releases the spider. The creature fulfills his mission and bites the hapless victim. Liam goes into convulsions, and expires a few seconds later. Madison uses her last remaining lipstick to draw a swastika on his chest, along with the words, “literally Hitler.” Life is good again for the young lady. She can now bathe in her pool at any time of day or night, and no longer has to worry about anyone stepping over the boundary onto her territory. More importantly, the world has been rid of one more MAGA fanatic. But regret soon takes hold; Madison feels terrible guilt from her complicity in the survival of a white male Republican fascist, who consumed precious resources and delayed the moment of complete Net-Zero. In fact, she reasons, her own survival is not much better. Okay, she’s not a Trump supporter, but still, it’s one more mouth for eating and a set of lungs for breathing, postponing the glorious day of Gaia’s deliverance. Overcome with remorse, Madison feeds herself to the sharks, hoping that her sacrifice will help humanity atone for its sins against the planet. Net-Zero is finally achieved. The Babylon Bee has done it again, producing a humorous skit on the trials and tribulations of being a real Nazi in today's America. Just a few minutes long; worth the watch.
In my post of 5/2/2025, I lamented the fact that President Trump and his associates have failed to attain legitimacy, to fully assert their authority over the executive functions of the presidency. The discussion centered on domestic issues. Recently, the problem has expanded to encompass the international arena as well.
It seemed that right out of the gate, the new Administration would extract America from one of its greatest foreign policy disasters: the Ukraine mess. The closing of the money spigot, various declarations from the President and senior officials, the blowup with Zelensky in the White House, renewed contact with President Putin, and other moves all gave hope that the adults newly in charge of the United States were finally going to end this travesty. But just as we have seen on the domestic front, the Leftist Establishment was not about to quietly accept the demise of one of its most vital projects. It is up to its neck in Ukraine, a linchpin of the ecosystem of fraud and grift. The threat to NGO funding is enough by itself to instill panic in the ranks. The forever war on Russia also is crucial ideologically, to provide a focal point in the battle against “right-wing extremism”; that is, anyone who refuses to acquiesce in the dismantling of civilization. The Russians are considered heretics, and as such must be punished and brought to heel; among their many crimes are the abandonment of Communism, the revitalization of native religion and culture, and the humiliation and suppression of the “Pussy Riot” woke hooligans. (“I stand with Ukraine” is a declaration—alongside advocacy for poison injections, illegal aliens, and child genital mutilation—that one will support the Left through thick and thin, with no conceivable limit. In other words, there is no act so outrageous, so absurd, and so downright evil that one would recoil in disgust. Remember, comrade, you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.) It’s déjà vu all over again as Trump 2.0 caves to the Left. The “mineral deal” is a pathetic smokescreen to cover the continuation of the Progressive jihad against the Muscovites. The deal was announced simultaneously with the proposed federal budget for FY2026, which includes a noticeable increase in military spending. No doubt many of the countless new billions of dollars sloshing around will find their way to the Ukraine war. (Not to mention the severe blow to the finances of the bankrupt USA.) Hasn’t Trump learned that you can’t placate the Left? They are far too power-hungry and bloodthirsty. Millions of dead and wounded Slavs is like catnip for them; they are emboldened, looking for an even more dramatic collectivist crusade. And as the Ukraine quagmire drags on and on, guess who will be blamed? In six months, the talking heads on Face the Nation will be saying something like this: “Under President Biden, we were so close to victory, Russia was collapsing…but then Trump stepped in, always equivocating, never really committed, so we find ourselves embroiled in this endless war…” We all know the playbook. For President Trump to assert the executive power of the presidency, he must revert to the policy taking shape in the days following the inauguration. How to proceed? Announce the immediate end of the Ukraine war. Pull every American out of the area. Turn off the money. End the sanctions on Russia, and resume full, normal relations. Let the Europeans take over this sordid affair. Monsieur Macron, who apparently fancies himself as a transsexual version of Napoleon, can personally lead all three battalions of EU troops as they wade ashore on the beaches of Crimea. Onward, brave women and men! We’ll take Stalingrad! Le jour de gloire est arrivé! To the gates of Moscow! In the fever dreams of the European elite, the evil Putin will be brought in chains to Brussels, where the feminized dictators of the great woke axis can curse in multiple languages and throw rotten eggs at the ultimate symbol of “toxic masculinity.” Would the jihad crumble without American participation? Maybe, maybe not. Perhaps Starmer & Co. are just crazy enough to push Russia into a full-scale war. Then Vlad can pull out all the stops and slay the totalitarian monster once and for all. The way things are going in London, Paris, and Berlin, it might just play out in this fashion. A bit of delicious irony: Let us recall the immediate post-World War II decades, with all the protests by the European Left against the American military presence, particularly the nuclear arsenal. Now the Left demands that America throw its full military force into the killing fields of Europe so that Woke Progressivism can be expanded into the former Soviet bloc. You simply can’t make this stuff up. Please Mr. Trump, assert your authority, and end the madness, as you said you would. Then keep going. Dismantle the global empire, one of many archaic institutions and arrangements that are sucking the life force out of the country. Stop being the “world’s policeman,” and bring our boys home. Cut the military budget, eliminate the waste, and re-orient the armed forces to protection of the homeland. If you must engage in imperial adventures, focus on the Western hemisphere. Last but not least, begin the long-overdue prosecutions of the criminals responsible for turning Ukraine into a money laundromat for individuals, corporations, and NGOs. Oh but I forgot, all of this could be nullified by a judge. Never mind. [The post below was first published in 2007 on the original AWOL Civilization blog. It should be mentioned that Scruton passed away in 2020.]
It is unusual in our day to find a philosophical work that is profound, erudite, and oblivious to current intellectual fashion. I have just finished reading such a work: An Intelligent Person's Guide to Modern Culture, by Roger Scruton. First published in 1998, it is a thoughtful attempt to explain the demise of Western culture. Scruton takes on all the familiar antagonists: deconstructionism, contemporary art, the youth culture, and much more. They scatter in disarray before his mighty pen. For example, discussing the role of artists in contemporary society: "Art is no longer a reflection on human life but a mechanism for excluding it." As for the more vulgar varieties of pop music: ”We witness a reversal of the old order of performance. Instead of the performer being the means to present the music, which exists independently in the tradition of song, the music has become the means to present the performer...it has a tendency to lose all musical character. For music, properly constructed, has a life of its own, and is always more interesting than the person who performs it.” I particularly enjoyed his debunking of deconstructionism, the best such effort I have seen. Scruton traces the development of this exaltation of nothingness, showing how it is intimately connected with the culture of repudiation, that phony pose of our self-styled intellectuals who claim to be in a permanent state of rebellion against the authorities. He shows how deconstruction became a quasi-theological underpinning of the culture of repudiation, enabling people to believe that they are in the opposition, even as they are being swept up by the dominant wave: “The subversive intention in no way forbids deconstruction from becoming an orthodoxy, the pillar of a new establishment, and the badge of conformity that the literary apparatchik must now wear. But in this it is no different from other subversive doctrines: Marxism, for example, Leninism, and Maoism. Just as pop is rapidly becoming the official culture of the post-modern State, so is the culture of repudiation becoming the official culture of the post-modern university.” Scruton delves into a thorough analysis of the Enlightenment and its aftermath, tracing the main lines of thought through the 19th century to Modernism, Post-Modernism, and finally the morbid state of collapse in which we now find ourselves. He presents several interesting hypotheses, including the notion that art, in its post-Enlightenment sense, stepped in to fill the void left by the collapse of religion as a guiding force in the West. Explore these fascinating insights when you read the book in its entirety. |
Dystopian literatureWelcome to the blog! While you're here, check out the six dystopian novels by Gary Wolf. His latest is The Cubist Supremacy. 
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