A new law in California bans the use, in official documents, of the term “at risk” to describe youth identified by social workers, teachers, or the courts as likely to drop out of school, join a gang, or go to jail. Los Angeles assemblyman Reginald B. Jones-Sawyer, who sponsored the legislation, explained that “words matter”. By designating children as “at risk”, he says, “we automatically put them in the school-to-prison pipeline. Many of them, when labeled that, are not able to exceed above that.”
The idea that the term “at risk” assigns outcomes, rather than describes unfortunate possibilities, grants social workers deterministic authority most would be surprised to learn they possess. Contrary to Jones-Sawyer’s characterization of “at risk” as consigning kids to roles as outcasts or losers, the term originated in the 1980s as a less harsh and stigmatizing substitute for “juvenile delinquent”, to describe vulnerable children who seemed to be on the wrong path. The idea of young people at “risk” of social failure buttressed the idea that government services and support could ameliorate or hedge these risks.
Instead of calling vulnerable kids “at risk”, says Jones-Sawyer, “we’re going to call them ‘at-promise’ because they’re the promise of the future”. The replacement term — the only expression now legally permitted in California education and penal codes — has no independent meaning in English. Usually we call people about whom we’re hopeful “promising”. The language of the statute is contradictory and garbled, too. “For purposes of this article, ‘at-promise pupil’ means a pupil enrolled in high school who is at risk of dropping out of school, as indicated by at least three of the following criteria: Past record of irregular attendance … Past record of underachievement … Past record of low motivation or a disinterest in the regular school program.” In other words, “at-promise” kids are underachievers with little interest in school, who are “at risk of dropping out”. Without casting these kids as lost causes, in what sense are they “at promise”, and to what extent does designating them as “at risk” make them so?
This abuse of language is Orwellian in the truest sense, in that it seeks to alter words in order to bring about change that lies beyond the scope of nomenclature. Jones-Sawyer says that the term “at risk” is what places youth in the “school-to-prison pipeline”, as if deviance from norms and failure to thrive in school are contingent on social-service terminology. The logic is backward and obviously naive: if all it took to reform society were new names for things, then we would all be living in utopia.
Seth Barron, “Orwellian Word Games”, City Journal, 2020-02-19.
January 16, 2025
QotD: “At promise” youth
January 15, 2025
Is there anything climate change can’t do?
Seen on social media earlier this week:
Confirming this, Chris Bray talks about current reporting on the wildfires in and around Los Angeles:
In his much-discussed piece on the Los Angeles fires at the Free Press, Leighton Woodhouse looks to Mike Davis for a narrative foundation. In his book Ecology of Fear, Woodhouse notes, Davis “argued that the area between the beach and the Santa Monica Mountains simply never should have been developed. No matter what measures we take to prevent it, those hills are going to burn, and the houses we erect upon them are only so much kindling.” Malibu and the Palisades, the land of hard living. That’s why so many rich and famous people lived there: because it was so inherently miserable and dangerous.
Mike Davis was full of shit for thirty years — he died in 2022 — and I’ve been rolling my eyes at him throughout. He described Los Angeles as an “apocalypse theme park”, a place of ruin and pain, populated by hardened survivors who, “dutifully struggling”, stagger on through the “Job-like ordeal” of clinging to a brutal landscape.
Also, Sierra Madre has bears. The Los Angeles suburbs are a place of horror and agony, because they back into the mountains, where blood-clawed wild animals prowl and stalk and slaughter. Places where life is especially grim and sanguinary, pgs. 240-41: Bradbury, La Crescenta, Glendora, the areas around the hellscape of Santa Barbara. A poodle was eaten by a mountain lion in Bradbury once, as neighbors gaped in open-jawed terror, YET STILL DO FOOLS ENDURE THE HORROR OF LIVING IN SUCH A PLACE.
Current real estate listings in Bradbury, a gated hillside community incorporated as an independent city in the San Gabriel Valley with a population of about 900 people:
How then would ye endure such horror, oh pilgrim, to live thus amid such blood and death? How bearest thou brutal existence upon this land?
Famously, in 1999, the Los Angeles Times, which used to be a newspaper, ran a long story examining Mike Davis and his vision of Southern California. It’s full of sentences like this:
- Los Angeles’ most provocative social critic has stretched, bent and broken more than a few facts in “Ecology of Fear,” his latest, darkly themed work on the urban area he claims to love.
- … more than a third of the time there were factual problems with his work.
- Davis concedes the error.
- Davis does not say where he got this piece of information.
- “I honestly don’t know what I’m referring to,” Davis said.
- Some of Davis’ mistakes involve mergers of fact and fiction, including making up a quote.
- Davis attributes the false quote to a mix-up.
- Then he takes readers on a partial flight of fantasy …
- An examination of the Malibu Times article shows that Davis made up the parts about the jewels, the hair color, the kayakers’ occupations, the evidence of their callous classism and the ethnicity of their maids.
- Davis is mischievously unrepentant.
- Davis also merges fact and literary fiction, without acknowledgment, while arguing that Pomona, like other older, outer suburbs, is dying.
And so on.
The Times concluded that Davis could be read as “a polemicist, who makes cogent, incisive arguments on big themes”, but not as “a historian who is expected to be reliable, even on details”.
The Korean War 030 – Revived North Korean Army Strikes Wonju – January 14, 1951
The Korean War by Indy Neidell
Published 14 Jan 2025UN troops around Wonju get a gentle reminder that they’re not only fighting the Chinese. The North Koreans are back, and hammer the weak point in the UN lines all week. With UN forces still organizing a defence, and lots of holes in their formation, will they be able to hold on? Or will failure here undo all of Eighth Army Commander Matt Ridgway’s good work thus far?
Chapters
00:00 Intro
00:45 Recap
01:06 Disposition
02:00 The KPA Attack
05:38 Cracking an Almond
07:55 The New Eighth Army
10:50 At the UN
12:41 Summary
12:57 Conclusion
(more…)
Desert Storm: The Gulf War 1990-1991
Real Time History
Published 6 Sept 2024When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in the summer of 1990, he didn’t anticipate a massive international backslash and unanimous Security Council response. Soon a broad military Coalition under leadership of the United States assembled and kicked the Iraqi Army out of Kuwait. In the aftermath several Iraqi groups rose up against Saddam but the Coalition didn’t support a regime change.
CHAPTERS:
00:00 Intro
00:29 Saddam Hussein Victorious (but Broke)
03:49 Iraqi Invasion of Kuwait
06:02 The Coalition Against Iraq Forms
08:37 Operation Desert Shield
10:55 Operation Desert Storm
20:26 Iraqi Highway of Death
21:39 Iraqi Uprisings
(more…)
January 14, 2025
Baking the Original Brownie – The History of Brownies
Tasting History with Max Miller
Published 3 Sept 2024Fudgy brownies with walnuts
City/Region: Chicago, Illinois
Time Period: 1904I love a gooey, chocolatey brownie, so I opted not to make the first recipe for something called brownies from 1896, because it had no chocolate and instead used molasses. Certainly not the brownies of my heart.
There are a couple of origin stories about brownies, but the one for Bangor brownies goes that a housewife forgot to put baking powder into her chocolate cake. While I question the validity of this story, we do see a lot of recipes for Bangor brownies during the early 20th century that closely resemble brownies today.
While these may not rival my favorite modern ones, they’re very good. They come out fudgy and dense without being heavy and have a surprising amount of chocolate flavor for the amount of chocolate in the recipe. No matter their origin, brownies haven’t changed all that much in the last 120 years.
Bangor Brownies
Cream one-half cup of butter, one cup sugar. Add two squares (one-quarter cake) Baker’s chocolate, melted, two eggs. One half-cup pastry flour and one-half cup chopped walnuts. Spread on baking tins and bake fifteen minutes in a moderate oven.— Service Club Cook Book, 1904
January 13, 2025
Muttering something about “manifest destiny” while glancing north
The Line‘s weekly dispatch is, as usual, mostly behind the paywall but the portion visible to cheapskates contains much of interest:
Manifest Destiny, 2025? Big Serge’s updated map for the old US War Plan Red for a military invasion of Canada.
It’s no coincidence that as Canada’s leadership devolved into its own navel, the very-soon-to-be-inaugurated Donald Trump escalated his provocations. This week, Trump threatened to use “economic force” to push Canada to bend the knee. Meanwhile, we cannot help but notice that the idea of a Canadian state is starting to gain significant traction in even moderate and mainstream American conservative circles. Meanwhile, we’ve got Alberta Premier Danielle Smith supping with Kevin O’Leary and Jordan Peterson down in Mar-a-Lago.
Tap tap. May we suggest that you peruse the safety cards tucked into the back of your seat, buckle up, and take note of your nearest emergency exits?
Whether we are talking about some kind of economic union, or a full-blown annexation, the fact that at least some in America are reviving the term “Manifest Destiny” is a possibility that we can no longer afford to dismiss as mere trolling. While we hope that the Trump administration is going to be so bogged down with other policy priorities that “Canada 51” is soon overshadowed, your Line editors have been game theorying out a host of possible scenarios and … none of them look great. If Trump et al get serious about this idea — and, again, we have no way to know if they will get serious about this idea — then we at The Line fear that Canada is in for some serious turmoil in the coming few months.
As I said in an email to Severian the other week, “… Canada will have very little ability to react to whatever Hitler, er, I mean “Trump” will do as soon as he’s inaugurated. It was clear before this that Trudeau cared very little about ordinary Canadians’ lives, but this really is dereliction of duty on a cosmic scale. If Trump does follow through with that huge tariff, the Canadian economy is likely to collapse, as we’re so deeply intertwined with the US on so many levels. Sadly, this might make it even more attractive to Trump, as it would absolutely encourager les autres on a global scale. If the BOM is willing to destroy the economy of his closest trading partner, what might he do to France? Or Germany? Or South Korea?” Back to the dispatch:
To explain our alarm, let’s first look at another news item to cross the desk. This week, Justin Trudeau travelled south to attend the funeral of Jimmy Carter, and stopped at the CNN studios for a quick interview with Jake Tapper on the way through.
On the whole, we think his interview was fine. Look, Trudeau’s been through a lot in the last few days, and considering the circumstances, it’s not reasonable to expect a breakthrough performance. So we’re being a bit unkind to nitpick, but something he said during that interview deserves scrutiny.
Justin Trudeau got far too comfortable with being treated as a progressive superstar, not only among the sycophants with CBC nametags but even on the international stage … perhaps especially on the international stage. Trudeau was always inclined to the performative in everything he did, and he might well only feel fully alive when cameras are rolling. The evidence certainly seems to point in that direction.
The “most prolific Canadian actor” meme was mildly amusing during Trudeau’s first term in office, as he went out of his way to put on elaborate costumes and to perform for the audience. This sort of thing was understandable if not particularly welcome to those who wanted Canada to be taken seriously by our allies and trading partners. It was clichéd to joke about what novelty socks Trudeau was wearing at any given international event … because it was his trademark. As was the clearly diminished respect he got as his time in office went on.
When asked about Trump’s provocations, Trudeau affirmed Canadians’ pride in their own sovereignty by noting — half jokingly, we presume — that we fundamentally define ourselves as “not American”.
Firstly, this is not a particularly diplomatic jibe to be launched at actual ordinary Americans; it made us wince to consider how it must have landed to CNN’s ordinary watching audience.
Secondly, if the only way in which Canadians can define themselves nowadays is “not-American”, Jeez, that’s an extraordinarily thin peg upon which to hang a hat.
This stuff matters.
It is to wince. However, even that pathetic response was better than launching into yet another diatribe about Trudeau’s firm conviction that Canadians are all genocidal white supremacist morons, I guess.
The ability of a population to withstand neighbourly aggression — “economic force”, if you will — depends on two things. The first is internal social cohesion and identity. The second is what the aggressor is willing to do or offer in order to secure capitulation.
In this case, the second part of that equation is outside our control. So we look to the first: does Canada have a strong sense of self right now? Do its leaders command the moral authority necessary to create the social cohesion required to withstand a period of sustained material sacrifice?
If we are “not Americans”, it rather asks the question why aren’t we Americans? And, more crucially, what are we actually willing to give up in order to preserve that independence?
A people can be rallied to make extraordinary sacrifices for a greater ideal, including the ideal of independent nationhood. Look at the sacrifices of blood and treasure made every day in Ukraine, for example.
If necessary, Canadians can band together and survive on lentils and supply managed dairy and eggs for many months or years. We can pull together through a period of inconceivable material hardship — but only if we’re doing it for something. Canadians, as per usual, can talk a big game, but how many of us are willing to suffer a real collapse of our quality of life to preserve a quasi-ironic, tautological, or negative self-identity?
Before Trudeau’s time in office, I wouldn’t have thought to question Canadians’ pride in their country and willingness to defend it. Nearly ten years later, Trudeau and his minions have done a fantastic job of undermining any kind of patriotic enthusiasms in our “post-national state”, haven’t they?
We at The Line don’t believe there is even a vanishingly small chance of the Americans using martial force to secure Canada — and if they choose to amass a brigade at the border on Monday morning, we’re all taking the Pledge of Allegiance by noon, so let’s not grace this fantasy with a lot of real consideration.
I’d love to refute that, but it’s probably true, at least in the more densely populated areas of southern Canada … the US could send a brigade north to Vancouver, another to Calgary, another to Winnipeg, and one to Montreal. Thanks to the lower lakes, it’d take a bit more to secure Toronto and Ottawa but not a lot more. We literally couldn’t stop them, both because our very limited troops are not positioned to stop an invasion from the south and because they’re not even close to being in a ready-to-move condition. Even our local reserves would have to be notified, travel to their local armouries, be issued weapons and the very limited amount of ammunition kept in local storage and by the time they were ready, there’s a foreign flag waving over Queen’s Park and Parliament hill.
Big Serge’s map at the top of this post vastly overstates the number of US troops necessary to secure the major population areas.
However, it is worthwhile to imagine it as a pure thought experiment: what would you really be willing to give up in order to continue to be “not-American”.
Your investment savings? Your property? Your house? Would you sacrifice the life of your child, or your grandchild, to preserve the legal independence of Canada?
We ask this question not because we think it’s going to come to that, but rather because these questions test the integrity of our national concept. They allow us to examine our resilience, and our willingness to withstand an assault of an economic or moral nature. And, folks, we’re just not convinced that our national resilience is very high at the moment.
Well, I’m sure a lot of new Canadians would want the rest of us to defend the place while they take advantage of all the government and corporate positions that need to be “diversified” … surely us evil white supremacists are willing to lay it all on the line for a more diverse society, right?
It was interesting to us to note, this week, that the most powerful moral appeal for the concept of nationhood was proposed in a Globe and Mail oped by Jean Chrétien. While we salute the old patriot, we can’t help but point out that he’s, well, very old — 91, to be precise.
We at The Line have a sneaking suspicion that Canadian patriotism and, more importantly, a willingness to make serious sacrifices to preserve that patriotism, is going to decline precipitously by age cohort in any well-constructed survey of the topic.
Would the young fight to preserve Canada against the Russians or the Chinese? Yes, we think our fellow Canadians could absolutely be called upon to make serious sacrifices to circumvent the rule of autocrats and dictators. But to prevent being subsumed by the — checks notes — wealthiest and most powerful democratic nation on earth (presuming America stays that way)? A nation that shares almost all of our essential values; one that looks and sounds just like us, and would probably provide a better set of opportunities to our kids? The place an increasing number of us are going to do start business and receive timely medical care?
Why?
Why would we do that? Can someone — anyone — please articulate a vision, here? Is anyone in our leadership class even trying?
It’s been noted many times that people are willing to charge even bare-handed into machine guns and cannons for things like “Liberté, égalité, fraternité“, but nobody is going to man the ramparts for “peace and good government”.
We put a lot of the blame for this on Justin Trudeau, and on the identitarian politics that consciously sought to undermine national legitimacy in the pursuit of progressive ends. But, if we’re being honest, we think this complacency of identity predates these social movements by many decades.
The Liberal Party as an institution owns a lot of it for the ways in which the “Natural Governing Party” has tied national identity to its preferred partisan policy options, at the direct expense of more transcendental and bi-partisan national self concepts. The Liberals have usurped “Canada” into a party brand
The national flag is effectively the Liberal Party flag … thanks Mr. Pearson!
and marshalled the very concept of “patriotism” to build consensus for picayune material entitlements. Trudeau couldn’t even help but do this in his CNN interview with Jake Tapper this week: “We delivered $10-a-day childcare. We’re delivering a dental care program that provides free dental care for people who don’t have coverage. We’re moving forward on a price on pollution that puts more money in the pockets of eight out 10 Canadians.”
We suppose Trudeau found that argument very compelling argument to Americans marvelling at Canada’s inability to meet its basic NATO commitments.
The weird thing is that Trudeau could have deflected a lot of these criticisms by our NATO allies almost painlessly without spending any more money directly on the Canadian Armed Forces — “It’s well known that Justin Trudeau has no time for military issues, but it’s surprising that he hasn’t done a few things that wouldn’t increase the actual spending on the CAF, but would be “bookkeeping” changes that would shift some existing government spending into the military category, like militarizing the Canadian Coast Guard. (That is, moving the CCG from the Fisheries and Oceans portfolio into the National Defence portfolio, not actually putting armaments on CCG vessels. Something similar could be done with the RCMP, switching it from Public Safety to National Defence with no other funding or operational changes.) That Trudeau hasn’t chosen to make even these symbolic changes shows that he actively opposes fulfilling the commitment his government has made twice in the last ten years for reasons of his own.”
This tactic has been very electorally effective for the Liberals, no doubt, but it’s also reduced the idea of “Canada” to a smug transactional exchange. “Canada” as nothing more than what provinces and citizens can wheedle out of the commonweal in transfer payments, equalization cheques, and grandiose but poorly executed national program spending. At least we’re better than America, though, right? We’re “not American!” — we’re so much more thoughtful and compassionate, as evidenced by the entitlements we’ve voted for ourselves, secure in the knowledge that the troglodytes to the south will spend and bleed and die for our coddled asses if Russia lobs a missile from the North.
Canada has become a question of what we, citizens, are able to get, rather than one of what we’re willing to give. And we’re smarmy, preachy assholes about it, to boot. (There’s a very famous political quote we could drop in here about what citizens can do for their countries and vice versa, but you’ll know why we aren’t, if you can guess the quote! It would be a little on the nose.)
A nation that is unwilling to make serious sacrifices of blood and treasure to protect its own sovereignty is a nation that is going to cease to be a nation sooner or later — and if we judge Canada by its commitment to its military, ours is a nation that has regarded itself as a quasi-ironic post-modern punchline for many generations now.
Forgotten War – Ep 7 – Imphal ’44 Pt1 – Planning Prevents
HardThrasher
Published 12 Jan 2025DO NOT PANIC IF YOU HAVEN’T WATCHED THE OTHER VIDEOS IN THIS SERIES YOU CAN START HERE
A video discussing the planning phase of the Battles of Imphal and Kohima at the start of 1944
Please consider donations of any size to the Burma Star Memorial Fund who aim to ensure remembrance of those who fought with, in and against 14th Army 1941–1945 — https://burmastarmemorial.org/
(more…)
The “Thucydides Trap”
At History Does You, Secretary of Defense Rock provides a handy explanation of the term “the Thucydides Trap”:
In the world of international relations, few concepts have captured as much attention — and sparked as much debate — as the “Thucydides Trap”. Brought to prominence by Harvard political scientist Graham Allison, the term suggests that conflict is almost inevitable when a rising power threatens to displace an established one, a dynamic often invoked to frame the strategic rivalry between the United States and China. Lauded as a National Bestseller and praised by figures like Henry Kissinger and Joe Biden, Allison’s Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? has become a staple of policy discussions and academic syllabi. Yet beneath the widespread acclaim lies a deeply flawed analysis, one that risks oversimplifying history and perpetuating a fatalistic narrative that could shape policy in dangerous ways. Far from an inescapable destiny, the lessons of history and the nuances of modern geopolitics suggest that the so-called “trap” may be more myth than inevitability.
The term “Thucydides Trap” is derived from a passage in the ancient Greek historian Thucydides’ work History of the Peloponnesian War, where he explained the causes of the conflict between Athens (the rising power) and Sparta (the ruling power) in the 4th century BC. Thucydides famously wrote
It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable.
Allison defines the “Thucydides Trap” as “the severe structural stress caused when a rising power threatens to upend a ruling one”.1 More articles by Allison using this term previously appeared in Foreign Policy and The Atlantic. The book, published in 2017, was a huge hit, being named a notable book of the year by the New York Times and Financial Times while also receiving widespread bipartisan acclaim from current and past policymakers. Historian Niall Ferguson described it as a “must-read in Washington and Beijing”.2 Senator Sam Nunn wrote, “If any book can stop a World War, it is this one”.3 A brief search on Google Scholar reveals the term “Thucydides Trap” has been cited or used nearly 19,000 times. In 2015, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull even publicly urged President Xi and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang to avoid “falling into the Thucydides Trap”.4 One analyst observed that the term had become the “new cachet as a sage of U.S.-China relations”.5 The term has become so prominent that it is almost guaranteed to appear in any introductory international politics course when discussing U.S.-China relations.
Allison wrote in his essay “The Thucydides Trap: Are the U.S. and China Headed for War?” in The Atlantic published in 2015, “On the current trajectory, war between the United States and China in the decades ahead is not just possible, but much more likely than recognized at the moment” forewarning, “judging by the historical record, war is more likely than not”.6 A straightforward analysis of the 16 cases in the book and previous essays might indicate that, based on historical precedent, there is approximately a 75 percent likelihood of the United States and China engaging in war within the next several decades. Adding the additional cases from the Thucydides Trap Website would still leave a 66 percent chance, more likely than not, that two nuclear-armed superpowers will go to war with one another, a horrifying and unprecedented proposition.7
With such alarm, it’s no surprise that the concept gained such widespread attention. The term is simple to understand and in under 300 pages, Allison delivers a sweeping historical narrative, drawing striking parallels between events from ancient Greece to the present day.8 International Relations as a field often struggles to break through in the public discourse, but Destined for War broke through, making a broad impact on academic and popular discourse.
1. Graham Allison, Destined For War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017), 29.
2. Ibid., iii.
3. Ibid., vi.
4. Quoted by Alan Greeley Misenheimer, Thucydides’ Other “Traps”: The United States, China, and the Prospect of “Inevitable” War (Washington: National Defense University, 2019), 8.
5. Misenheiemer, 1.
6. “Thucydides’s Trap Case File” Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School, accessed December 31, 2024
7. Graham Allison, “The Thucydides Trap: Are the U.S. and China Headed for War?” The Atlantic, September 24, 2015.
8. Misenheimer details what Thucydides actually said about the origins of the Peloponnesian War, 10-17.
January 12, 2025
Big Serge updates War Plan Red for a 2025 invasion of Justin Trudeau’s “post-national” “genocide” state
After the farcical attempt by outgoing PM Justin Trudeau to pretend that he somehow has changed his mind and now likes and wants to defend the country he’s described variously as a “post-national state” with no core beliefs, steeped in white supremacy and misogyny, and still engaged in “genocide”, Big Serge suggests the US invasion plan should change like this:
When Trump invades Canada, the key will be rapid advances in the opening 48 hours to take advantage of Canada’s odd force disposition.
The country’s political and economic center of gravity is the urban corridor from Toronto to Montreal, but a significant share of the Canadian Army is dispersed, with large garrisons in Quebec, Halifax, and the western provinces. Only handful of brigades are garrisoned in the critical theater.
The war will be won quickly and decisively, without massive destruction of Canadian cities, if American forces can establish blocking positions to isolate the urban corridor from peripheral Canadian garrisons. In this maneuver scheme, we utilize highly mobile elements including 1st Cavalry Division and airborne forces to block the highways into Toronto, while an eastern screening group isolates the urban centers from reinforcements scrambling in from Quebec.
We envision inserting HIMARS at operational depths via Chinook slings, saturating Canadian road traffic with rocketry. A mobile firebase (“Firebase Maple”) will be established north of Toronto near Lake Simcoe that will have a dominant position over the city’s northern approach.
With reinforcements unable to scramble into the critical theater and Toronto severed from the cities in the eastern corridor, the Canadian 31st and 32nd Brigade Groups will be isolated and destroyed. Unconditional surrender is anticipated within 14 days.
If there is a Canadian insurgency, we’re calling it the Maplejideen.
As an addendum, artillery airlifted onto Isle Royale in Lake Superior will support an advance out of Minnesota towards Thunder Bay, which will add an additional level of interdiction on Canadian reinforcements moving eastward by rail.
People are so mad about this!
And after much kerfuffle among the easily trolled, he suggests:
There’s no community note on this post which means it has been fact checked as true by real patriots.
As to why Trump would want to invade a frozen failed state on the brink of bankruptcy, even Big Serge doesn’t have an answer.
Quebec within the British Empire after 1760
Fortissax, in response to a question about the historical situation of Quebec within Canada, outlines the history from before the Seven Years’ War (aka the “French and Indian War” to Americans) through the American Revolution, the 1837-38 rebellions, the Durham Report, and Confederation:
First and foremost, Canada itself, as a state — an administrative body, if you will — was originally founded by France. Jacques Cartier named the region in 1535, and Samuel de Champlain established the first permanent French settlement in North America in Quebec City in 1608. This settlement would become the largest and most populous administrative hub for the entire territory. Canada was a colony within the broader territory of New France, which stretched from as far north as Tadoussac all the way down to Louisiana. It included multiple hereditary land-owning noblemen of Norman extraction.
Much of the original territory of New France
During the Seven Years’ War, on 8 September 1760, General Lévis and Pierre de Vaudreuil surrendered the colony of Canada to the British after the capitulation of Montreal. Though the British had effectively won the war, the Conquest’s details still had to be negotiated between Great Britain and France. In the interim, the region was placed under a military regime. As per the Old World’s “rules of war”, Britain assured the 60,000 to 70,000 French inhabitants freedom from deportation and confiscation of property, freedom of religion, the right to migrate to France, and equal treatment in the fur trade. These assurances were formalized in the 55 Articles of the Capitulation of Montreal, which granted most of the French demands, including the rights to practice Roman Catholicism, protections for Seigneurs and clergymen, and amnesty for soldiers. Indigenous allies of the French were also assured that their rights and privileges would be respected.
The Treaty of Paris in 1763 officially ended the war and renamed the French colony of “Canada” as “the Province of Quebec”. Initially, its borders included parts of present-day Ontario and Michigan. To address growing tensions between Britain and the Thirteen Colonies and to maintain peace in Quebec, the British Parliament passed the Quebec Act in 1774. This act solidified the French-speaking Catholic population’s rights, such as the free practice of Catholicism, restoration of French civil law, and exemption from oaths referencing Protestant Christianity. These provisions satisfied the Québécois Seigneurs (land-owning nobleman), and clergy by preserving their traditional rights and influence. However, some Anglo settlers in America resented the Act, viewing it as favoring the French Catholic majority. Despite this, the Act helped maintain stability in Quebec, ensuring it remained loyal to Britain during the American Revolutionary War and Quebec was fiercely opposed to liberal French revolutionaries.
British concessions, from the terms of the 1763 Treaty of Paris to the Quebec Act of 1774, safeguarded the cultural and religious identity of Quebec’s French-speaking Catholic population, fostering their loyalty during a period of significant upheaval in North America. Following this period, merchant families such as the Molsons began establishing themselves in Montreal, alongside early Loyalist settlers who trickled into areas now known as the Eastern Townships. These merchant families quickly ingratiated themselves with the local Norman lords and seigneurs.
The Lower Canada Rebellion arose in 1837-1838 due to the Château Clique oligarchy (an alliance of Anglo-Scottish industrialists and French noble landowners), in Quebec refusing to grant legislative power to the French Canadian majority. The rebellion was not solely a French Canadian effort; to the chagrin of both chauvinistic Anglo-Canadians and French Canadians, who in recent years believed it was either a brutal crackdown on French degeneracy, or a heroic class struggle of French peasants against an oppressive Anglo elite. It included figures like Wolfred Nelson, an Anglo-Quebecer who personally led troops into battle.
In response to the unrest following the rebellions of 1837-1838, Lord Durham, a British noble, was sent to Canada to investigate and propose solutions. His controversial recommendation, outlined in the Durham Report of 1839, was to abolish the separate legislatures of Upper Canada (Ontario) and Lower Canada (Quebec) and merge them into a single entity: the Province of Canada. This unification aimed to demographically and culturally assimilate the French Canadian population by creating an English-speaking majority.
However, the strategy failed for multiple reasons, and was given up shortly after. Lord Durham, having neither been born nor raised in the New World, underestimated the complexities of Canadian society, which was a unique fusion of Old World ideas in a New World setting. His assumption that French Canadians could be assimilated ignored their strong cultural identity, rooted in large families, which encouraged high birth rates as a means of survival. While Durham hoped unification would erode divisions, the old grievances between the British and French began to dissipate naturally.
The Province of Canada, whose unofficial capital was Montreal, where the two groups mixed
Despite Lord Durham’s intentions, French Canadians maintained their dominance in Quebec. Families averaged five children per household for over 230 years, a trend actively encouraged by the Catholic Church’s policy of La Revanche des Berceaux (the Revenge of the Cradles). This strategy aimed to preserve French Canadian culture and identity amidst the British short-lived attempts at assimilation. In Montreal, British industrialists expanded their influence by forging alliances with French landowning nobles through business partnerships and intermarriage. This blending of elites produced a bilingual Anglo-French upper class that became historically influential.
Such alliances drew on long-standing connections established as early as 1763 and later exemplified by the North West Company (NWC). The NWC in particular is interesting as a prominent fur trading enterprise of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, in that it embodied this fusion of cultures. Led primarily by Anglo-Scots, the company’s leaders frequently formed unions or marriages with French Canadian women, fostering vital ties with the French Canadian communities crucial to their trade. Simon McTavish, known as the “father” of the NWC, maintained alliances with French Canadian families, while his nephew, William McGillivray, and other leaders like Duncan McGillivray followed similar paths. Explorers such as Alexander MacKenzie and David Thompson married French women. These unions strengthened familial and cultural bonds, shaping the broader Anglo-French collaboration that defined this period.
This relative harmony between Anglo and French Canadians continued with the formation of the modern Canadian state in 1867 during Confederation. Sir John A. Macdonald deliberately chose George-Étienne Cartier as his second-in-command. This collaboration contributed to the emergence of Canada’s ethnically Anglo-French elite, who have historically been bilingual. This legacy is evident in the backgrounds of many Canadian politicians, such as the Trudeaus, Mulroneys, Martins, Cartiers, and countless others who have both Anglo-Canadian and French-Canadian roots.
In more recent history, this dynamic has been further solidified by the federal government, where higher-paid positions often require bilingual proficiency. Interestingly, about 20% of Canada’s population is bilingual, reflecting the ongoing influence of this historical coexistence.
The last cannon which is shot on this continent in defence of Great Britain will be fired by the hand of a French Canadian.
~ George Etienne Cartier
January 10, 2025
QotD: The “bottle service” model as a “douchebag Potlatch”
As to whether I’ve gotten a grant to pay for bottle service, mercifully no. I have had dinner with a (former) model, but it was Ashley herself at the kind of restaurant that occasionally has a hedge fund Powerpoint deck critiquing its management go viral. It was a decent hour, both of us were completely sober, there was no party promoter arranging the meeting, and there was no EDM played at OSHA-violation decibel levels. My idea of a good time is a lucid conversation with a smart friend, such as both that occasion and this email exchange, whereas I’d pay a good amount of money to avoid getting extremely drunk and staying out until dawn in an environment too loud for conversation.1 However I salute Ashley for doing so and thereby providing us with this book. The most I’ve had to suffer for my scholarship is writing response memos to annoying reviewer questions, or struggling with merge errors whilst munging data files.
And yet, contrary to my own taste, the people at the night clubs are paying a lot of money and/or waiting in line to get in, so obviously they seem to think it is appealing. I don’t think we can call this false consciousness either. Ashley is very clear that part of the reasons the models go to the clubs is as a favor to the promoters (much more on that later), but part of it is that a lot of models think going to a famous night club is really glamorous and cool. I’m tempted to say this is just de gustibus non disputandum, but just shrugging at taste is kind of a cop out for a sociologist since one of our mandates is to explain socially patterned taste.
I think a key explanation for what’s going on is Girard’s mimetic desire. The club is glamorous because there’s a long line of people outside waiting to get past the velvet rope. The women are beautiful because everyone agrees that tall skinny women are beautiful, even though in other contexts a lot of men (including the promoters) are more attracted to the kind of shorter curvier women who are barred entry to the club as “midgets”. Everyone and everything in the world of models and bottles that is desirable is desirable primarily because they or it are desired by others.
John: I’ve never read a fashion magazine or watched a runway show, so I just naively assumed that models were stunningly attractive and feminine. But as Mears points out, the models are not actually to most men’s tastes. They tend to have boyish figures and to be unusually tall.2 Is this because the fashion industry is dominated by gay men, who gravitate towards women who look like teen boys? Whatever the origins of it, there is a model “look”, and the industry has slowly optimized for a more and more extreme version of it, like a runaway neural network, or like those tribes with the rings that stretch their necks or the boards that flatten their skulls. There’s actually a somewhat uncanny or even posthuman look to many of the models. The club promoters denigrate women who lack the model look as “civilians”, but freely admit that they’d rather sleep with a “good civilian” than with a model. The model’s function, as you say, is as a locus of mimetic desire. They’re wanted because they’re wanted, in a perfectly tautological self-bootstrapping cycle; and because, in the words of one promoter: “They really pop in da club because they seven feet tall”.
The men don’t want to sleep with the models, and by and large they don’t. This leads directly to one of the most jaw-dropping insights in the entire book: the models are a potlatch of sorts too. The men are buying thousand dollar bottles of champagne and dumping them out on the floor, destroying economic value just to show that they can. And likewise, they’re surrounding themselves with dozens of beautiful women and then not sleeping with them. A potlatch of female beauty, sexuality, and reproductive potential — flaunting their wealth by hoarding women and conspicuously declining to enjoy their company, but at the same time denying them to every other man. An anti-harem.
Actually, you know what else the models remind me of? Medieval jesters. There was a point in the 15th century when every ruler in Europe had to have a dwarf in his entourage — not because there was anything intrinsic or valuable about very short men, but just because it was rare. The first guy did it to show that he was a big enough deal to have something expensive and hard to find, and then everybody else started doing it because it was the thing to do. (When dwarfs became too commonplace, the status symbols got weirder.) I think model phenotype is a little bit like that — desirable because it is rare, and because gathering and showcasing all these rare objects is a way to demonstrate your wealth and power.
John Psmith and Gabriel Rossman, “GUEST JOINT REVIEW: Very Important People, by Ashley Mears”, Mr. and Mrs. Psmith’s Bookshelf, 2024-03-04.
1. Another interesting work of scholarship on partying is Minjae Kim’s work on Korean work team binge drinking. Minjae shows that people go binge drinking because most of them hate it and thus it serves as a costly signal of loyalty.
2. In fact, an unusually high proportion of models are intersex individuals with a Y-chromosome and androgen insensitivity syndrome.
January 9, 2025
Hollywood’s favourite creation … the “hero forgives” scene
I’ve never been much of a moviegoer or TV-watcher, so I hadn’t consciously noticed what kulak is discussing here:
“El Cid” (Charlton Heston) releases enemy raiders who’ve just burnt down a village … for no reason.
“All that it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”
-Edmund BurkeThe reason the boomers are the way they are, and the reason no one in the west fights back against their dispossession and replacement is an 80 year long program to indoctrinate an Ideology I call “Hollywood Anti-justice”.
In almost every piece of media to do with violence, crime, justice, and individual heroism of the past 80 years there is a scene: The “Hero Forgives” scene.
Upon violently defeating, disarming, and capturing the villain, the hero, in spite of his every instinct, in spite of friends screaming at him and reasoning with him with arguments he can’t counter, in spite of the villains mocking unrepentance, dead to rights evidence, gleeful confessions, and even vows to reoffend.
Even if the villain is guilty of hundreds of murders, rapes, and treason, even if the hero himself has killed hundreds of henchmen to capture the villain …
The hero will refuse to kill or punish him.
Sometimes the hero will insist that he must go through the courts … Sometimes the villain will openly mock him that the courts are corrupt and will never convict him, and the hero still will refuse to take matters into his own hands …
Sometimes the hero himself IS the lawful authority. Sometimes the hero is a Military officer, post apocalyptic militia captain, Medieval Knight, Greek Hero, Roman Centurion … etc. And in fact his private judgement IS the official lawful means of passing judgement and executing obviously guilty villains … And he STILL refuses to punish or kill them.
I recently saw El Cid, where the hero, a Knight, refused to hang brigands who had pillaged, raped, burnt a town, confessed and were themselves quite resigned to dying, and even as his fellow knights berated him that the law itself demands he hang them, that it is his sacred duty to hang them, and that it would be treason for him not to…
And the Hero simply cuts their bindings and lets them go … Choosing to be forsworn as a traitor rather than hang the confessed and red-handed guilty. Now this may be a historical, but as far as I’ve been able to find such an event never occurred, it’s been made up for the film, doubly egregious because the historical El Cid almost certainly executed many criminals and brigands, committing and ordering justice … Which is NOT depicted in the film.
Even if the hero has been in this exact position before and spared the villain only for more to die, sometimes even his own family and friends, demonstrating the failure of this unspoken philosophy, the hero will STILL let them go … AGAIN.
Ussually there is some Deus Ex Machina that makes this all workout some ironic or divine punishment will find the Villain through their own folly … but not always. Indeed entire franchises have been perpetuated on THE SAME serial killer villain being forgiven, released, allowed to escape, etc. over and over again.
And audiences consistently hate this, this is always the most cliched, poorly written, out of character, film breaking scene in the entire work … Supposedly great kings, ruthless bounty-hunters, outlaws, veteran knights, military officers, grey and black market criminal anti-heroes, smugglers … All of them transformed into the most inconsistent pacifists for exactly this scene. I’ve seen audiences groan and scream at the TV “Just kill him” and yet the hero, often entirely contrary to their character, will not.
This is not an old literary trope, this is a Hollywood trope.
You can read the original Greek legends, the tales of King Arthur and his Knights, early modern nationalist heroes’ stories, the adventure stories of the Napoleonic officer, the Boys’ Own adventures of empire, and well into contemporary fiction westerns, crime stories, military science fiction, historical fiction, etc.
And in all of them you will see heroes kill their enemies in cold blood, order executions of the guilty, demand deserters, spies, and traitors be shot, seek revenge, order mass hangings … Etc.
Nor is this some uniquely American madness … As late as the 1950s the vigilantes/terrorists of the original reconstruction era (1864-1877) Ku Klux Klan were treated as folk heroes… Birth of a Nation was played at the White House when it was released. The idea of vengeance, wild justice, and vigilante killings being some unconscionable moral horror was simply not the case in the first half of the 20th century … It was celebrated, much as it had been for the previous 3000 years of the west.
In 1915 the legitimacy of Vigilantism, Vengeance, and Private Justice was so accepted that even arch-progressive, Princeton University Professor, and US President Woodrow Wilson screened Birth of a Nation, a celebration of the Ku Klux Klan’s vigilante-terror campaign, at the White House.
Why did Hollywood invent this trope?
Where Hollywood producers just so attached to an idea of Christian forgiveness and pacifism that they just HAD to include it over the groans and often shouting of their audiences?
Were any of these writers, directors and producers even Christian to begin with!?
Why would the communists, atheists, Jews, and pedophiles that comprise the core of Hollywood writing include such an unusual Christian theme so insistently and often story breakingly?
Well. why do they insist on bullshit girl-bossery, race mixing, and woke theming today over the protests and disinterest of their audience?
Because it benefits them to brainwash the masses that way.
The Hollywood writers never identified with the hero refusing to kill an enemy … they identified with the villain and quite liked for him to get away (indeed many Hollywood writers will openly say as much, that they identify with the villains and much prefer writing them).
Trump plays fast and loose with numbers over US/Canadian trade
On her Substack, Tasha Kheiriddin refutes some of the big numbers US President-elect Donald Trump has been using in his “make Canada the 51st state” campaign:
US President-elect Donald Trump successfully trolled Justin Trudeau about Canada becoming the 51st state of the union.
“We don’t need their cars. … We don’t need their lumber”, Trump said. “We have massive fields of lumber … We don’t need their dairy products. We have more than they have.”
This is, of course, a giant lie. Canada has plenty of things America needs, including raw materials like oil and food that it refines and transforms. That transformation generates millions of well-paying US industrial and manufacturing jobs. The US also imports nearly $5 billion in fertilizer to boost agricultural production.
And if we don’t have anything America needs, why would Trump want to annex us? Because, he claims, the US trade deficit with Canada is a “subsidy.” Trump asks, “Why are we losing $200 billion dollars a year and more to protect Canada?”
This is a second lie. First of all, trade deficits are not subsidies. A trade deficit represents the difference in the value of imports and exports. Second, the US trade deficit with Canada isn’t $200 billion, or even the $100 billion figure Trump has previously used. In 2023, according to the US Bureau of Economic Analysis, it was $USD 41 billion. And if you remove energy exports, the US actually runs a surplus with us, not a deficit. Energy exports accounted for over $177 billion of Canada’s exports south of the border. Twenty-eight per cent of what we export is energy, namely, over four million barrels per day of oil, the largest amount from any country in the world.
Trump is correct that Canada has benefitted from the American military’s umbrella. We benefit by proximity, because we happen to be next to the US – just like Americans benefit from buying our discounted crude oil, because they happen to be next to us. The US would maintain their military whether we were neighbours or not. They wouldn’t have a smaller military if they annexed Canada; if anything, they’d spend more, because they would be actively engaged across our entire landmass, directly defending our borders. We have also been a steadfast ally in times of war, a fact Trump handily omits.
So Trump’s argument is a lie, but a clever lie. It’s something that will resonate with his voters, with the average American struggling to pay their bills. It’s purportedly about fairness, doing what’s right. Not taking over a sovereign nation, but returning to Americans what’s rightfully theirs.
It’s like Putin saying that the Donbas is full of Russians, so it really should be part of Russia. Or Xi Jinping saying that Taiwan is really part of China, so the two countries should be “reunified”.
It’s also cover for the real reason Trump would like to take over Canada: because we do have a lot of what the US needs, namely oil, water, and critical minerals. He would love to take control of the Arctic, ostensibly for security reasons, but really for the resources that lie beneath. Drill, baby, drill. But Trump can’t say that part out loud, because then he sounds like a communist dictator, not the leader of the free world.
Trump wants to use tariffs to break Canada. Our GDP could drop by two to four per cent and put us in an official recession. Two and half million jobs would be at risk. People would get poorer at a time when two million of us are already using food banks. Throw in a simultaneous diet of pro-annexation propaganda pumped out by Trump’s friends on social media, and the blathering of front groups funded by vested interests, and the 13% of Canadians who favour joining the US could swell to the point where they put political pressure on Ottawa to cave to Trump’s demands.
And then, all bets are off. Trump figures Canadians will beg to join the US, and he may not be wrong. Manifest destiny, achieved — and a YUGE legacy for him.
In the National Post, Carson Jerema wishes the Canadian media would calm the hell down and recognize that Trump is still trolling the heck out of them:
So it turns out Donald Trump doesn’t really want to annex Canada. Seriously. Anyone who watched his news conference Tuesday, and not just the short clip shared on social media, should come away assured, as much as one can be with Trump anyway, that his comments about this country becoming the 51st state really are little more than trolling. Certainly, the U.S. president-elect repeatedly musing about absorbing Canada has never been funny, and the words themselves undermine Canadian sovereignty, but nothing Trump said Tuesday was much different than what he’s been saying for weeks.
Yes, I’m aware that we are supposed to be in crisis mode at Trump’s latest musings, which the Toronto Star called “explosive”, and the Globe and Mail referred to as an “escalation”. Even the National Post’s Wednesday front page played up the president-elect’s comments. A similar response came from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who posted on social media that “There isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell” that Canada would merge with the U.S., and Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, who posted that “Canada will never be the 51st state. Period”.
As is so often the case, what Trump actually said is less exciting than the reaction it generated.
When asked by a reporter if he was “considering military force to annex and acquire Canada?” Trump responded, “No. Economic force because Canada and the United States, that would really be something. You get rid of that artificially drawn line and you take a look at what that looks like and it would also be much better for national security.”
That response is the sum total of the so-called “escalation”.
It is, at a brief glance, easy to see why so many felt compelled to react the way they did to the president-elect’s comments, but it was the reporter, not Trump, who used the word “force” first, and getting “rid” of the border could mean any number of arrangements, short of a merger. Beyond that, however, there isn’t much in the way of a new development in the supposed annexation crisis of 2025.
Forgotten Armies of the Vietnam War: Australia, Korea, China, USSR
NR: Sorry about this … RTH must have taken this video down at some point between me scheduling it to appear and today.
Real Time History
Published 16 Aug 2024The Vietnam War is mainly remembered as a conflict between the Vietnamese and the United States. But both sides received direct and indirect support from other countries.
(more…)
January 8, 2025
The Korean War 029 – The Third Battle of Seoul – January 7, 1951
The Korean War by Indy Neidell
Published 7 Jan 2025The Chinese People’s Volunteer Army crosses the Imjin River in force and attacks the South Korean capital. The best units available to Eighth Army commander Matt Ridgway defend it, but with more Chinese armies and reformed North Korean units pushing in the east, is there any hope of holding onto it?
Chapters
00:00 Intro
00:50 Recap
01:09 Seoul Good
03:13 Seoul Gone
07:39 To Line D
10:20 The Ceasefire Committee
14:02 Summary
14:20 Conclusion
(more…)
