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Legitimacy, Part II: The International Arena

5/9/2025

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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.
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Book Review: Roger Scruton

5/5/2025

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[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.
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Digging Our Own Grave

4/25/2025

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The Trump Administration has taken steps to block federal funding to Ivy League universities; for example, the freeze on $2 billion worth of payments to Harvard. One could desire more vigorous action, but this is a good start. Combined with a few other power plays, such as deportation of foreign agitators, the withholding of funds at the very least puts a dent in the chutzpah of these “prestigious” institutions of higher “learning,” which in reality function as ideological incubators for the colossal Leftist ecosystem of fraud and subversion. The message is clear: America no longer wants to bankroll its own demise.

Speaking of bankrolling our own demise, that $2 billion taxpayer subsidy of Harvard’s shenanigans is small potatoes compared with the student loan mess, now sitting at around $1.7 trillion in outstanding debt. Imagine how many lectures on “white racism” were funded with that pile of cash.

The scandalous transformation of American universities into brainwashing factories is matched by the junior-varsity team of Progressive indoctrination: the nation’s public schools, which purport to engage in primary and secondary “education.” Total spending on this monstrosity is running about $1 trillion annually. Yes, we spend a trillion dollars per year to churn out masses of illiterate, sickly, ignorant, confused morons who don’t know which sex they are. Couldn’t this prodigious feat be achieved for, say, half a trillion?

The skool racket is funded in large part by the immense swindle known as property tax. On my last property tax statement, the municipal authorities informed me that 25 percent of my payment was destined for the public schools. I should be happy; this figure is actually lower than the national average, which is about 35 percent.

Property tax is an outrage on multiple levels, beyond the forced funding of the K-12 Leftist indoctrination camps. It is an affront to private property. It is taxation of unrealized gains. It is disruptive to the building of stable communities. It is bankrupting numerous homeowners, and making home ownership increasingly unaffordable. Not to mention the fraud involved in the valuation process.

If this weren’t enough, additional money is shoveled into the babysitting grift via federal subsidies, local and state programs of all sorts, and the issuance of municipal bonds. And still they howl for more. We are truly digging our own grave.

There is so much institutionalized fraud in this country, it is difficult to name a front-runner. But the property tax/public school scam is surely one of the most pernicious and devious ways the citizenry is fleeced by the government.
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Europe Has Gone Insane

4/21/2025

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This past Friday (4/18/25), the boys at The Duran released a good podcast exploring the current transformation of Europe into an open-air insane asylum. The 25-minute discussion nicely summarizes the situation.
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Conquest's Law, Part II

4/4/2025

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[SERVICE NOTICE: For the foreseeable future, I am going to publish one article per week, every Friday. There will still be a smattering of other quick posts, such as quotes, and links to interesting posts on other websites. But Friday will be the day for the real "thought pieces."]

In my post of 3/24/2025, I discussed Conquest’s Second Law of Politics, which states that any organization that is not explicitly right-wing, sooner or later becomes left-wing. Part of my analysis revolved around the question of high versus low culture, and the difficulty in maintaining the higher form, which is a bedrock of civilization. The entropic forces in society, always present, tend to drag us down to the level of low culture, which is one of the symptoms of Leftism.


In the article below, first published on the original AWOL Civilization blog just after the 2008 presidential election, I examined this issue from a somewhat different perspective.


                                 *          *          *

So it finally happened: a bonafide neo-Marxist has been elected President of the United States. He will have a sympathetic majority in both houses of Congress, along with a choir comprising the judiciary, the press, academia, the cultural “elite," and the most hardened enemies of America at home and abroad. This is not a macabre scene from a dystopian novel. It is our reality.

In order to grasp the full significance of the catastrophe that has enveloped America—and indeed, Western civilization—we must cast our intellectual net far and wide, so that it encompasses the great thinkers of the past. They can guide and inspire us as we confront a phenomenon with which we, in America, have no experience. They can help us re-examine our approach to politics, the arts, education, and a host of other realms, a task that is part and parcel of salvaging and reinvigorating our culture.

We can start by reconnecting with the thinkers of the ancient world. It is there, in the literary masterpieces of Athens and Rome and Jerusalem, that one finds clues to the riddles that present themselves to us. It is there that one sees how people prevailed in the face of upheavals that defy the imagination.

In this spirit, I would like to present two ancient literary references that have been in the forefront of my mind in recent days. The first is from the Bible, the second is from the comic theater of Athens.

In Genesis 25:29-33, a moving scene occurs between Esau and Jacob, the sons of Isaac. Esau sells his birthright to his brother Jacob for a bowl of pottage (a type of stew):

“And Jacob cooked pottage, and Esau came from the field, and he was faint, and Esau said to Jacob, Give me to swallow, I pray thee, of that red pottage, for I am faint…And Jacob said, Sell me this day thy birthright. And Esau said, Behold, I am going to die, and what benefit is this birthright to me? And Jacob said, Swear to me this day, and he swore to him; and he sold his birthright…”

The American people possess an impressive birthright: Living in a land of liberty, with all that is necessary to pursue their dreams. All the accoutrements are available: natural resources, a beautiful landscape, vast spaces, a noble history, brain power, and a deep tradition of opportunity.

But we have sold our birthright for the slick visage of Barack Hussein Obama, our latter-day bowl of pottage. The moaning, self-proclaimed victims have thrown away their heritage. What good is it? they ask. “Behold, I am going to die," so just feed me and clothe me, and let me forget the rest.

The second reference from the ancient world is The Frogs, a comedy by the great Athenian playwright Aristophanes (c. 450 – 388 BC). The play was written in 405 BC, as the Athenian empire stood on the brink of destruction. Dissension was rife in the city, and defeat at the hands of the Spartans was nigh (it occurred in 404).

The plot is simple. Dionysus, patron of the drama, descends into Hades (the underworld) to find the greatest Greek playwright. The intent is to bring the champion back to the land of the living, to Athens, where he might be able to rescue the city’s decomposing culture.

The selection process for best playwright boils down to a contest between Aeschylus and Euripides, in which each attempts to demonstrate that he is the greatest practitioner of the art of tragedy. Dionysus acts as moderator of the debate.

Aeschylus (525 – 456 BC) represents the old world, with its fine manners, its gymnastics, its piety, and its honor. Euripides (484 – 406 BC), by contrast, is presented as the poet of decadence, sophistry, and philosophical relativism.

Euripides accuses Aeschylus of using highfalutin language, of ignoring romantic love, and of being an elitist divorced from the taste and temperament of the people.

Aeschylus, for his part, accuses Euripides of contributing in no small measure to the downfall of the city:

“You have taught boasting and quibbling; the wrestling schools are deserted and the young fellows have submitted themselves to outrage, in order that they might learn to reel off idle chatter, and the sailors have dared to bandy words with their officers…Of what crimes is [Euripides] not the author? Has he not shown us procurers, women who get delivered in the temples, have traffic with their brothers, and say that life is not life? ‘Tis thanks to him that our city if full of scribes and buffoons, veritable apes, whose grimaces are incessantly deceiving the people…”

Then there is the following exchange between Dionysus and Euripides, almost creepy in its applicability to our current predicament:

DIONYSUS: And you, Euripides, prove yourself [fit] to sprinkle incense on the brazier.

EURIPIDES: Thanks, but I sacrifice to other gods.

DIONYSUS: To private gods of your own, which you have made after your own image?

EURIPIDES: Why, certainly!

DIONYSUS: Well then, invoke your gods.

EURIPIDES: Oh! Ether, on which I feed, oh! Thou Volubility of Speech, oh! Craftiness, oh! Subtle Scent! Enable me to crush the arguments of my opponents.

We learn that Aeschylus used only heroes and god-like figures in his plays, whereas Euripides invented every sort of vulgar character imaginable. Euripides explains that his intent was to “please the people." Moreover, he says,

“I introduced our private life upon the stage, our common habits…I did not burst out into big noisy words to prevent their comprehension; nor did I terrify the audience by showing them Cycni and Memnons on chariots harnessed with steeds and jingling bells. Look at his disciples and look at mine. His are…all a-bristle with long beards, spears and trumpets, and grinning with sardonic and ferocious laughter, while my disciples are [the effeminate and loquacious] Clitophon and the graceful Theramenes.”

Euripides democratized the theater. He catered to the popular desire to portray the vulgar, the seedy side of life. Often, his characters were beggars dressed in rags. Theater was now for everyone, and about everyone.

It is tempting to speculate: How similar was the situation in the Athens of 405 BC, the year The Frogs was written, to the America of today? Could one not easily think of a contemporary Euripides, some best-selling author or popular screenwriter, succeeding handsomely here in our dumbed-down victimocracy, with its effeminate and sophistic king, crowned by the rampaging mob?

Which great cultural figure would Dionysus bring back to help save us? We cry out for our Aeschylus—who would it be?

​[Quotes from The Frogs taken from Aristophanes, the Eleven Comedies, vol. 2, Immortal Classics republication of the 1912 London Athenian Society edition, pp. 227, 245-46, 235, 239-40.]
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Judging the Judges

3/28/2025

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We have discussed in several posts one of the major challenges facing America at this late stage of its cultural meltdown: the seizure of power by rogue judges. This threatens to derail many of the reforms instituted by the Trump Administration, and to further tighten the stranglehold of the Left on our collective throat. The question I ask today: From what ideological septic tank percolates this audacious assault on the political system?

To begin with, let us note that this is nothing new, though admittedly the current surge is rather extreme. Degradation of judicial practice in the United States has a long and storied history. It received notoriety during the tenure of the Warren Court (1953-1969), i.e. the Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren. That period overlapped the Civil Rights Era, and the Court (along with the rest of the federal judiciary) did its utmost to stretch the Bill of Rights to a degree that would have made the Founding Fathers spin in their graves.

Earlier instances of creative interpretation still bore some relation, however shaky, to the actual wording of the Constitution. But in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), the Court gave itself the authority to extract from the Constitution whatever principles they desired. In the words of Justice William O. Douglas, “specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance.” Penumbras and emanations, got it. Translation: We can invent any legal principle we want.

The actual text of the Constitution became irrelevant; the door was opened to Leftist bullying under cover of supposed constitutional law. This brazen attack on the foundations of the American republic paved the way for the eventual complete disregard, by Leftist judges, of due process of law; nay, of the entire Anglo-Saxon legal tradition.

Our current judicial insurrection is an outgrowth of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries’ seemingly inexorable march toward totalitarianism; more specifically, the expansion of the modern administrative state to monstrous proportions. This springs from a compulsion to control human behavior by means of central planning. If it can be achieved in the realms of health, economics, education, etc., then why not the political machinery itself? It is up to us, says the federal bench, to ensure that the federal government (and state and local, for that matter) dutifully obey the maxims of the Progressive canon.

In this view of the world, everything is justiciable. There can be no sphere of life that remains outside the purview of the black-robed priesthood. Whether it be the laws passed by the legislature, the executive functions of the president, or the way a man interacts with a woman, they consider it their proper role to intervene, at any time and for any reason.

​A natural result of this infinite justiciability and destruction of the rule of law is the proliferation of lawyers, courts, and lawsuits. The legal system has become the arena for the settling of every imaginable type of dispute or moral controversy, across nearly all tiers of society. Normal human life, under these conditions, is gradually asphyxiated.

To my knowledge, no individual or institution has ever slowed the progress of this bulldozer. And here we are.
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Memorable Quotes (no. 12)

3/26/2025

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"People are sometimes confused about the apparent contradictions in that wider world: What do, say, open borders have to do with the trannification of the school system? Well, it's not difficult. What they have in common, throughout the West, is chaos: you get on the bus and a 'migrant' stabs you; you send your little girl off to school and she comes back a little boy; your boy gets picked for the rugby team and drops dead on the pitch; you could really use a break, but the airport is closed.

The easiest way to figure out the purpose of public policy is to look at the universal outcome: the abolition of even the possibility of normal life."


— Mark Steyn

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The Ideological Face of Chaos

3/24/2025

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There are three maxims, or "laws" of politics attributed to the British historian Robert Conquest. One of them is,

Any organization that is not explicitly right-wing, sooner or later becomes left-wing.

We see it occurring time and again. Why is this so?


The default state of mankind is entropy, decay, and chaos. If there is no force to guide society into a beneficial mold, and to maintain the required level of energy, then entropy takes over. Leftism is the ideological face of chaos; it provides the justification, putting lipstick on the pig.

It is futile to search for logic or consistency in any substantive Leftist program. Their “platform” is merely whatever coat of paint is needed at that particular moment to enable the entropy to flourish. For example, when the working class can be used as a catalyst for chaos, it is seen as good; when the working class is an impetus to stability, it is condemned.

One might be tempted to believe that the Left is clever and quick on its feet. They always seem to have us reeling from their attacks, like a boxer on the ropes. After we expend huge amounts of time and money to neutralize one of their insane campaigns, there is no time to catch our breath before multiple new salvos are launched. Are they really that clever?

I don’t think so. The apparent cleverness is largely an optical illusion, because the Left always starts from an advantageous position.
It is easier to be glib when you have the wind at your back. Society’s ingrained entropic tendencies provide a permanent fertile ground for the rapid growth of Leftism’s core characteristics: envy, parasitism, manipulation, projection, and decadence.

This is analagous to the advantageous position of the petulant child vis-à-vis his parents and other adults. The parent invests an enormous amount of time and energy to turn the little savage into a respectable member of society, whereas the child can destroy the work of years by committing any number of simple acts that are fully within his power, and that can be accomplished in a matter of minutes.

To be “right-wing” means to resist the torrent of entropy, the tantrums of the misbehaving child. It is the task of building and maintaining civilization, which requires that common sense and tradition be respected, and that high culture prevail. Otherwise, society cannot suppress the ideologies that correspond to envy, manipulation, parasitism, etc. Wherever high culture retreats, even to the slightest degree, Leftism automatically flows into the space, like a gaseous substance filling a vacuum.

​And thus, “any organization that is not explicitly right-wing, sooner or later becomes left-wing.”
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Some Personal Testimony for DOGE

3/21/2025

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As more reports of waste, fraud, and abuse emerge from Elon Musk’s DOGE undertaking, I thought it would be an opportune time to offer some of my own personal experience in the matter.

After returning to the U.S. in 2006 from an extended stay abroad, I worked for a major defense contractor, and then a defense-related research institute of the Federal government. In both of these environments, waste, fraud, and abuse were in full swing.

L
et us start with the simplest aspect: basic incompetence. It was everywhere. Most of the people, from top to bottom, had no idea what they were doing. The majority of jobs were pure make-work. This was exacerbated by an inefficient, heavily bureaucratized organizational structure that suppressed any possible outbreaks of intelligence and creativity. Naturally, this state of affairs produced outcomes that were inexcusable, even by the low standards of FedGov. The problem was addressed by importing an endless stream of “experts,” many of whom were outside consultants living off fat contracts, providing zero value. They usually just added a new layer of procedure, clogging the system to an even greater extent.

Speaking of systems, it seemed as though everybody and their grandmother was a “systems engineer.” In most cases, this turned out to be a pseudo-qualification, a special favorite of women and minorities. It was a way to identify as an “engineer” without knowing how to do engineering. They were very good at PowerPoint slides and Excel spreadsheets, which were excellent tools for “streamlining” (adding more bloat).

Then there was the diversity grift. Its influence could be felt in every nook and cranny. Again, “experts” floating around. Incompetent minorities coddled and promoted. Constant drumbeating, seminars, emails, and thinly-veiled threats. At one “workshop,” after hearing about an hour’s worth of preaching from poster-children of the oppressed, myself and three hundred or so other attendees split up into little working groups. We were tasked with “brainstorming” ways to be more sensitive to the needs of the unqualified delicate little flowers injected into the ranks by the DEI tyrants.

When it was my turn to pour forth the result of my brainstorm, I asserted that diversity is a racist, un-American institution, a violation of civil rights, and should be abolished. Later that day, one member of my little group, a feminized, twenty-something NPC type, ratted on me to the authorities. I was warned by management in no uncertain terms that if there was ever another similar outburst of heresy on my part, I would be shown the door.

The amount of money wasted was off the charts. The budget back then at the FedGov research institute was around three billion dollars per annum; now it must be at least five. There may have been some real benefit to national defense hiding somewhere in that pile of manure, but I never encountered it.

Some of the issues were not caused by the organization itself, but rather inherited from the broken society as a whole. Some of the old-timers were bravely hanging on, trying to stem the tide of idiocy and wokeness from the younger cohort. But it is a losing battle when your recruits are graduates of the American educational system, particularly the “elite” “institutions” of “higher” “learning.”

The last straw for me was the response to the Scamdemic. As you can imagine, both management and employees were engaged in a frantic effort to outdo each other in worshiping the golden calf. Even DEI had to take a temporary back seat to the Chicken Littles proclaiming every five minutes the arrival of epidemiological Armageddon. I resigned my post at the moment when I expected a SWAT team any minute to bang down my door and force the poison needle into my arm.

​My only criticism of DOGE is that it doesn’t go far enough.
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Moses, But Not Joshua

3/17/2025

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In my post of 3/10/2025 on the Scamdemic, I wrote that “so far, [there have been] no investigations, no indictments, no fines, no prison.” Unfortunately, the same can be said of numerous crimes committed in other domains, all in the name of the government.

As far as I know, the steps taken by the Trump Administration to right the wrongs of the Biden regime have been exclusively remedial; that is, fix the damage and stop the bleeding. For example, pardons for the victims of malicious prosecutions; cutting off the flow of money; gutting the institutional bases of Leftist corruption; and closing the border. These are all excellent and necessary moves. But they are not sufficient.

In his speech of March 14, President Trump declared that during the Biden regime, “a corrupt group of hacks and radicals within the ranks of the American government….weaponized the vast powers of our intelligence and law enforcement agencies to try and thwart the will of the American people….They spied on my campaign, launched one hoax and disinformation operation after another, broke the law on a colossal scale, persecuted my family, staff, and supporters, raided my home….”

Well? What are you going to do about it?

When it comes to this “corrupt group of hacks and radicals” responsible for the incalculable damage done to the nation in recent years, as well as those causing damage right now, the most severe personal punishments have been loss of employment and the revoking of security clearances. And I see nothing more severe on the horizon, despite the bluster, and the hoo-hah over the appointment of Kash Patel and Dan Bongino at the FBI.

There is still no fear of consequences. Governors, mayors, and other state and local officials can publicly proclaim that they support and defend illegal aliens. This means that these officials are bragging to us that they are committing a felony crime. Has a single one of them been arrested? No; all we get is threats, heated rhetoric, withholding of funds, “lawsuits,” etc.

The same dynamic applies to the mini coup d’état being rolled out by the judiciary. Numerous Leftist judges in the Federal courts, low-level apparatchiks of the Deep State, are taking over the policymaking functions of the Executive branch, casually nullifying the actions of the President. They do this because nothing is done to stop them; they have no fear of personal consequences. Some commentators have called this behavior “judicial overreach.” I would use much stronger language.

The reaction of the Trump Administration: Dag nabbit, by gum, by golly, we’ll appeal all the way to the Supreme Court. That’ll show ‘em! Well, guess what? The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Deep State.

Some observers have expressed shock that two “conservative” justices joined the Leftist clown-car contingent in ruling against the President. But I am not surprised in the least. We are not living in the 1950s, when one could debate the fine points of constitutional law over a glass of bourbon and a pipeful of Cavendish tobacco. If the tortured years of the Biden regime demonstrated anything, it’s that we have descended to the level of pure power relations. The Left peeled away any remaining veneer of civility and rule of law, and mobilized the full brunt of the law-enforcement apparatus to lower the boom on anyone standing in its way—from the president on down. Thousands of innocent people went to prison, or worse.

The unwillingness of “our team” to use this same apparatus to suppress actual criminality could easily lead a wishy-washy Supreme Court justice (and others in the same situation of confronting the Deep State) to make the following calculation: The Deep State might return to full, formal power within a few years. And Trump could be neutralized even before then. If I rule against the Leftist Establishment, they will eat me for breakfast, and throw my carcass to the dogs. If I rule against Trump, nothing will happen to me, other than a few strongly-worded letters to the editor. Hmmm….whatever shall I do?

The bottom line: The President must seize the power of the presidency. We need to see handcuffs and perp walks, immediately. There is no reason for further delay. And for goodness sake, stop obeying the illegal orders handed down by the black-robed priests of the Progressive cult.

​Perhaps Donald Trump is not the person who will take us into the Promised Land. He is our Moses, leading us out of Egypt, across the desert, to within view of our destination. Now we are waiting for our Joshua, a warrior who can raise the standard, and rally the troops to conquer the territory that is held by our latter-day Philistines, the Leftist Establishment.
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    Dystopian literature

    Welcome 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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