“An Army marches on its stomach.” — Napoleon
As we take our own little march down memory lane, let me state up front that I can’t stomach applesauce, just can’t. I liked it as a kid but now it has less appeal than the prospect of being duct taped to a chair, face down, in prison. Yeah, I hate it.
This may seem unreasonable, but anyone who was in at the time, at least in the Army or Marines, and some portion thereof that actually went to the field a lot, will probably remember the Great Applesauce Blight of 1977 and 1978, which was the reason I can’t stand the crap.
The “Great Applesauce Blight?” you ask. Oh, yeah.
The story I got, after some years and some digging, goes like this: It seems that sometime in the late 1960s or early 1970s, a fruit company – the Monterey Fruit Company, so it was said – was going out of business. So the Monterey Fruit Company, if that’s who it really was, called the Department of Defense and said, “Boys, have we got a deal for you. Hundreds upon hundreds of tons of Grade A applesauce, and you can have it. All of it. Cheap.”
McNamara and his Whiz Kids – neither of them ever sufficiently to be damned, of course – were gone, but their spirits remained. Department of Defense, ever conscious of the value of a well-squeezed penny, bought that inventory of applesauce, and began to put it into the old style, canned, MCI; Meal, Combat, Individual, which is to say, “C-rations”.
C Rations of the day were entirely canned and composed of a main meal, for one meal, plus either a cake (or very rarely, canned bread) or fruit of some kind, usually a small tin of peanut butter or cheese of some kind of jam or jelly, and one or another type of B Unit, which would have some variant of crackers plus either candy or cocoa. Sometimes, as with the B-2 unit, the cheese was in those.
Now, perusing a case of 1978 C-rats, which would have been newer than those of the Great Applesauce Blight, but still broadly similar, one notes that there were twelve menus, twelve different main meals, and 12 different kinds of dessert, a sundry pack, plus variable candies, spreads, etc. Of that latter twelve, eight were fruit and four were cake of some kind. I seem to recall that, possibly for reasons of economy, the amount of fruit during the Great Applesauce Blight had gone up to usually ten cans out of twelve, some extra cheese or peanut butter seemed to be included with some, and the cakes went down to two, one of which was going to be Chocolate Nut Roll, essentially inedible, from the Nashville Bread Company and the other would be the even more thoroughly disgusting fruit cake. I don’t recall who made that, and that lack of memory may have been an automatic defense against a future charge of capital murder. None of the cakes except pound cake could be relied on to be edible, and pound cake was always rare.
Now picture this, you’re a soldier in the Panama Canal Zone, training – training hard – to fight for the Canal, living in the jungle maybe twenty-five or more days and nights a month, eating C-rats to the tune of sixty or seventy a month, and virtually every meal contains applesauce or something more innately disgusting. “No, none of that nice fruit cocktail or those ever so delectable pear slices for you, young man; Department of Defense, to save a few bucks, has determined that applesauce is good enough, three meals a day, for weeks on end.”
*****
Now we were already kind of thin, because no military feeding system can ever completely keep up with the caloric requirements for a soldier either continuously fighting or realistically training to fight. Normally, this isn’t a problem because he can pack it on in the mess hall. These were unusual circumstances, though, with an unusually high chance of fighting – or riot control, which is worse – over the Canal. So we’re pretty much living out there, in pretty much trackless jungle, with nothing like enough helicopters for regular hot rations from the mess. Besides that, the old 193rd Infantry Brigade, in the Panama Canal Zone, was unusual in that it made a very serious effort to train even the cooks to fight, which takes time, too. C’s are pretty much it.
Even so, thin and hungry or not, after a month or two we could not eat the applesauce. That was probably seven or eight hundred calories a days that just got tossed.
We began going from thin to frigging emaciated.
*****
When I think upon the Great Applesauce Blight, though, I do not think about hardship or hunger. No, I think – as we old farts are wont to – about happier aspects of it.
Now this is no shit:
There we were, the heavy mortar platoon of 4th Battalion, 10th Infantry, stuck on top of a non-descript hill somewhere southwest of Gamboa, Canal Zone.
PFC McBrayer had a birthday out there in the jungle. I think it was his nineteenth birthday. None of us had been able to do any shopping, so we were all just stuck for getting him a birthday present. “I’m not giving up my pet scorpion,” said Big Al, who in fact, had a pet scorpion for the mega-ant versus scorpion gladiatorial combats we used to stage. “I’d offer to give him some of my crotch rot,” said Art, “but I think he already has some of his own.” “Howler monkey?” “Who’s going to catch it? And those suckers are mean, too.” “How about a sloth? They’re easy to catch.” “If the Lord God didn’t see fit to give B’rer Sloth an asshole, I don’t see why we should add to his troubles by catching him and wrapping him as a present.” Finally someone, I don’t think it was me, might have been Sergeant Sais, said, “Gentlemen, there can be only one proper gift under the circumstances,” and then he held up a – you guessed it – can of applesauce.
So we stuck nineteen or twenty Canal Zone Matches in a Nashville Bread Company Chocolate Butt Roll, invited McBrayer over, torched off the matches, sang Happy Birthday, then presented him his can of applesauce.
He was touched; you could see that. As he dashed tears from his eyes while making his, “Gee, you guys are just all so special … you shouldn’t have,” speech, you could see the emotion radiating from his face. And then, all choked up, he turned to go and tossed that can off applesauce off the hill with a casual contempt I have never seen before or since. It was the sheer, distilled essence of everything we all felt about applesauce.
Tom Kratman, The social media site formerly known as Twitter, 2025-09-05.
December 7, 2025
QotD: The Great Applesauce Blight of 1977/78
December 6, 2025
The least offensive kind of soft power – The Rest is History
Ed West recounts his (very) early discovery of The Rest is History, a podcast featuring Dominic Sandbrook and Tom Holland (not that Tom Holland, I’m told). I’ve been a (free) subscriber on YouTube for the last year or two, but Ed got there much earlier than I did:
The Rest is History must be the only thing of which I can say that I was into it before it was popular, my sole experience of being an early adopter. I remember listening to the very first episode as soon as it was released, during Lockdown 2, because I had been a fan of Tom Holland for years and followed him on Twitter. Straight away, I knew that it would be an enormous success, because even people who rarely watched history documentaries or read history books would find it entertaining.
And now, as they say, “the rest is history” (ho ho). The programme has just been named Apple Podcasts Show of the Year 2025, the first ever British winner, and is beyond successful, into the realm of “phenomenon”. When television writers in the distant future make dramas set in the 2020s and wish to give immediate shorthand to establish the decade, they’ll put The Rest is History soundtrack somewhere in the background, just as they always have Tears for Fears playing on the radio during any drama set in the 80s.
It became such a huge part of my life that, when cooking or cleaning and unresponsive to questions, the children came to learn that I must be listening to “Tom and Dom” on my AirPods. Initially, of course, when I mentioned that I had actually met Tom Holland a few times, they’d respond with awe until they realised that I was not talking about the Spiderman actor. It became a running joke about “your Tom Holland” rather than the “famous” one.
During the golden years of television there were a number of shows which became so commonly popular in one’s friendship circles that they were routinely talked about – The Sopranos, The Wire, Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones – but there were always plenty of people who had never watched them; there’s so much choice, after all, and the media culture has fragmented.
As Tom and Dom discussed on an old episode about the 1990s, that was the last period when the whole country had a common popular culture. Yet The Rest is History is approaching something close to that. It’s become so all-pervading that literally everyone I know, or ever speak to, listens to it. Perhaps I live in a bubble, but it’s a warm and cosy bubble filled with chat about the Kaiser’s deck shoes and Costa Rica’s infamous Dr Valverde, a sick and twisted psychopath who liked to torture frogs. The word I’d use to describe the show is “wholesome”, a term they’re fond of, an escape from the modern world, without rancour, hectoring or — crucially — swearing.
I realised that it must have become something more than popular when I read that it was the biggest podcast in Finland. Admittedly the Finnish market is not globally important, but this obviously wasn’t some quirky localised fanbase, like Norman Wisdom in Albania. It had become big everywhere, including the largest market of all; to use an analogy that Holland might appreciate, they’d reached their Ed Sullivan moment.
[…]
All the great drama series of the 2000s I mentioned were American, and I’d even go as far as to argue that The Rest is History is now Britain’s main cultural export and proponent of soft power. While the case might be made for the Premier League or Warhammer, the Goalhanger production has far more sway on international elites and how educated, cultured people around the world see our country.
Foreigners tend to value an idea of Britishness characterised by classiness and erudition, but also humour and modesty. Yet the global popularity of our national brand is out of tune with what our own cultural elites value, which reflects their sense of cringe but often comes across as strangely parochial and inward-looking. Two erudite historians who wear their scholarship lightly, whose interests are openly Anglocentric but reflect a passionate interest in the world beyond our island, talking to the audience like a pair of friendly academics in a cosy pub in Oxford – that’s the fantasy they want.
Fans are always conscious that any show will pass its peak, and then start to decline as everyone runs out of ideas. There’s no sign of it yet, and the good thing about history is that it’s literally endless, and you can always return to the subject at greater length. Their recent series on Nelson was outstanding, despite covering previous ground, and nothing says the holiday season like that festive subject, the Nazis. I can’t wait for the eleven-episode series about the Costa Rican Civil War.
Battle of Tarawa, 1943
Real Time History
Published 5 Dec 2025The Marine and US Army landing on the Tarawa Atoll’s Betio and Makin islands were the first operations in the new Central Pacific front of the Pacific War. Tarawa was one of the deadliest amphibious landings for the Marine Corps which hadn’t yet perfected such complex operations. But the lessons learned at Tarawa would already be applied a few months later at Kwajalein and Eniwetok.
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Canada – a subsidiary of the Brookfield Corporation
Melanie in Saskatchewan reminds us that Prime Minister Mark Carney’s interests seem to align far more with those of the Brookfield Corporation than with those of ordinary Canadians:
Canadians are tired of being treated like an afterthought. Eight months ago, Mark Carney parachuted into the safe Liberal seat of Nepean, shoved aside a long-serving MP, and promised voters he would be their voice in Ottawa. Today, there is still no constituency office open in the riding. Residents who need help with immigration files, CRA problems, or passports are told to send an email and wait, sometimes for several weeks. That betrayal starts at home, and Nepean is living proof that Carney’s priorities lie somewhere else entirely.
That “somewhere else” has a name: Brookfield Asset Management.
A $500-million federal “green steel” subsidy was rushed through cabinet for Algoma Steel in Sault Ste. Marie. Nothing wrong with helping steelworkers, except the electricity for the project comes almost exclusively from wind farms owned by Brookfield Renewable Partners. Mark Carney still holds roughly $6 million in unexercised Brookfield stock options that vest based on the company’s renewable-energy profits. In other words, every tax dollar sent to Algoma flows through to the bottom-line gains that Carney himself pockets.
The Parliamentary Budget Officer has already flagged the transaction as one of several in Carney’s $78-billion deficit budget that rely on “creative accounting” to hide the true cost.
This isn’t a conspiracy theory; it’s on the public record in Carney’s own ethics disclosure filed with the Conflict of Interest Commissioner Konrad von Finckenstein. The same disclosure that conveniently claims his former advisory role was “exempt” from stricter rules, rules that apply to every other cabinet minister.
While Canadians wait 33 hours in emergency rooms, watch their real wages shrink, and see layoff notices pile up at Stellantis, CAMI, and Algoma itself, the Prime Minister’s old firm is doing just fine. Brookfield’s stock is up 18 per cent since the subsidy was announced. Coincidence?
Hardly.
The hypocrisy runs deeper than one subsidy. Carney spent years on the world stage lecturing banks and governments about “climate risk and the urgent need to phase out fossil fuels”. Yet the same Alberta energy memorandum that triggered Steven Guilbeault’s resignation quietly allows new pipelines and extends oil recovery through carbon-capture tax credits, credits that, once again, flow disproportionately to companies in which Brookfield has major stakes.
Green Party Leader Elizabeth May says Carney personally assured her those provisions would never see the light of day. Nine Liberal MPs are now telling reporters, off the record, that they feel betrayed by the same broken promise.
G150: Swiss Silenced Guerrilla Anti-Materiel Rifle
Forgotten Weapons
Published 21 Jul 2025The G150 is a rifle specifically assembled by and for the Swiss P-26 organization: a very secretive stay-behind group intended to fight foreign occupiers of Switzerland. It was one of a series of such organizations that began with a concern during World War Two the Germany might invade, and continued during the Cold War with the threat of Soviet occupation in the aftermath of nuclear war. The P-26 group specifically was formed in 1981, and disbanded in 1991 under a cloud of controversy over its political leanings.
P-26 was armed with an assortment of weapons ideal for guerrilla warfare, including P210 pistols and suppressed MP5 submachine guns. The G150 rifle was intended to be a very quiet rifle for destroying enemy materiel like radar systems, fuel tanks, parked aircraft, and the like. About 250 were made using commercial JP Sauer actions, SIG 540 like pistol grips and folding stocks, and very large two-part suppressors. They were chambered for the .41 Remington Magnum revolver cartridge, loaded with a 408-grain subsonic bullet. The scopes were adjustable from 4-6 power (yes, 4-6: it;s a weird choice) and had BDC elevation turrets adjustable out to 200 meters.
Only three G150 rifles are known today, although the remainder may still be in some deep military storage in Switzerland. Many thanks to the anonymous viewer who arranged access to this one for me to film! To see another perspective on one of the other known examples, I recommend Bloke on the Range’s video:
• BotR Exclusive! Swiss 10.4mm G150 subsonic…
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QotD: King Henry wants a divorce
In 1532, then, Parliament presented the King with the Supplication Against the Ordinaries. “Ordinaries” means “members of a religious order” — basically, the Supplication is everyone’s beefs with the Church. You can read the list at the Wiki link, but they all boil down to this: The Church was effectively a state-within-the-State, operating a different system of law, taxation, etc. And that’s what praemunire means, too — “a 14th-century law that prohibited the assertion or maintenance of papal jurisdiction, or any other foreign jurisdiction or claim of supremacy in England, against the supremacy of the monarch”. By accusing Wolsey of it, Henry VIII was saying that he, Wolsey, was ultimately working for the Church, not the King … which is kinda what you’d expect from a Cardinal, no?
That’s the problem.
Long story short, by 1532 the state-within-the-State that was the Church was blocking the upward mobility of new men like Thomas Cromwell.1 There was an entire secular education system; it was cranking out talented, ambitious men; in short, there was an “overproduction of elites”, since there were limited spaces in the nobility and the Church and they were all already occupied by either bluebloods, or guys like Wolsey who had jumped on the gravy train much earlier.
But this was an artificial bottleneck. The Tudor state had plenty of room to expand; they needed far more educated bureaucrats than the old system was capable of supplying. The old system needed to go, on order to make room for the new, and in many ways that’s what the Reformation was: A brushfire, clearing off the deadwood. A political and administrative brushfire, disguised as a theological dispute. It’s no accident that the most Reformed polities — late Tudor England, the Netherlands, the Schmalkaldic League — were the most politically and economically efficient ones, too.
And by Reforming the Church, the brushfire could extend to the rest of the depraved, decadent, moribund, fake-and-gay culture. The Renaissance is obsessive about the old, but it is, obviously, something very very new. People raised in the Late Medieval world were emotionally incapable of a total break with the past — I don’t think any culture really is, but a culture as hidebound as the Middle Ages certainly isn’t. But so long as they could find some warrant for change in the Classical past (and being the inventive types they were, they’d always find such a warrant), they could purge the culture, root and branch, in the guise of “returning ad fontes“.
Severian, “Reformation II”, Founding Questions, 2022-03-08.
- This is where the analogy breaks down, because Late Medieval men were not Postmodern men — Cromwell was actually loyal to Wolsey almost to his, Cromwell’s, literal death. Men had honor back then. It also speaks to the kind of man Wolsey must’ve been, to have inspired the loyalty of a guy like Cromwell despite it all. Cromwell was a ruthless motherfucker, even by Tudor England’s Olympic-class standards; he’d stab his own mother if he found it politically necessary; but he still stayed loyal to his man even when it looked like that would cost him his life.
December 5, 2025
“I can stop [buying books] anytime. It’s not an addiction!”
In The Freeman, Nichole James resists the notion that her bookbuying habit is an addiction (because she could stop anytime she wants, unlike addicts who clearly can’t ever stop):
A small portion of my own book hoard. These shelves at least have a bit of commonality to them, unlike a lot of other shelves I could share.
There are people who collect sensible things, like pensions or matching dining chairs. Then there are people like me, who collect books and then build new shelves to hold the books, then buy more books to fill the shelves, then realize the house is now 70% paper.
I have always loved books. The magical lands they open up, the lives you try on for a few hundred pages. Places you cannot reach with a passport and an airline ticket. Narnia, Hogwarts, Mordor, and the parts of Sydney where even Google Maps looks nervous. The whole lot. Some people fall in love with the smell. Others with the weight of someone’s thoughts in their hands. I fall in love with all of that and then apparently forget that my house has finite wall space.
Which is why, as I call the carpenter for “just one more bookshelf”, a tiny voice in my head wonders if this is still charming or if I now qualify for some kind of diagnosis.
As it turns out, I might. The diagnosis even has a very fancy Greek name: bibliomania.
Back in the 19th century, an English cleric called Thomas Frognall Dibdin wrote a whole book called Bibliomania, or, Book Madness. He gleefully catalogued the symptoms of the afflicted: obsession with first editions, uncut pages, vellum, rare bindings, and the sort of Moroccan leather that smells faintly of money and self-satisfaction. It was a time when collectors bid like lunatics at auctions, paid “fancy prices”, and were generally regarded as slightly cracked.
That was then. Now, we call it a “TBR pile” — To-Be-Read.
Today, psychologists define bibliomania as a type of compulsive buying disorder. The warning signs are sobering. You buy more books than you can possibly read. You feel out of control. You get into financial trouble. You feel guilty. Your loved ones begin sentences with “Do you really need …?” and gesture helplessly at the tottering stack of paperbacks by the bed.
I recognize a few of these symptoms. I have definitely skipped a meal to afford a hardback. I have walked into a bookshop to “just browse” and come out clutching a small tower and a freshly re-mortgaged soul. There are hardbacks I have moved house with three times that I haven’t yet opened. They look at me accusingly whenever I walk past, like neglected gym memberships in dust jackets.
But here is where I part ways with the diagnosticians and join the Church of Umberto Eco.
Eco, the Italian novelist and semiotician with the beard of a wizard and the library of a dragon, reportedly owned around 50,000 books. He did not consider this a problem. He considered it a system. He said it was foolish to think you have to read every book you buy, just as it would be foolish to insist you must use every screwdriver before you are allowed to own another one.
Books, in his view, are like medicine. You keep a lot in the cabinet. Most of the time they sit there harmlessly. Then one day, in some dark night of the soul or slow Wednesday in July, you need the exact one that will fix you. So you reach into your “medicine cupboard” and pull out the right book for that moment. Which, he argued, is exactly why you should always have more than you need.
This is the philosophy I am choosing to live by, rather than the one that suggests I should be monitored by a spending app and gently reintroduced to the public library.
Censorship and “cancel culture” are symptoms of a cultural sickness
A guest post at Woke Watch Canada by C.C. Harvey lays out the evidence that our culture — and most of the western world — is struggling with a spiritual sickness and that arbitrary cancellations and formal censorship of dissenting views are symptoms of that ailment:
When a society begins to suppress intellectual and spiritual searching and dreaming — by punishing speech, regulating thought, discouraging questions, denying the existence of spiritual reality — it is not only a political decline, but a sign of deep unwellness.
Where populations lose respect for liberty of conscience, inquiry, and discourse, society becomes nasty and brutish. Truth-seeking, spiritual health, and peace are inexorably linked. Across formerly open, stable, safe western societies, censorship and repression have been rising as safety, cohesion, and quality of civic life decline.
We must resist cancel culture and speech codes for the following reasons:
- Suppressing Truth-Seeking Violates a Fundamental Human Impulse
Across religious and knowledge traditions, truth-seeking is expressed as a moral duty. When authorities obstruct honest questioning, they interfere with something built into the human spirit.
- Fear Becomes the Organizing Principle
Where dissent is forbidden, fear takes the place of reason. Fear diminishes moral clarity, discourages integrity, and pushes people toward silence rather than responsibility. A fearful society cannot become a virtuous society.
- Conscience Is Treated as a Threat Instead of a Gift
In every major tradition — religious or philosophical — conscience is seen as a source of moral insight. When institutions punish people for following their conscience, they reveal a belief that the individual soul has no intrinsic worth, only value as a compliant unit.
- Dialogue Is Replaced With Dogma
Healthy societies debate, persuade, and refine ideas through open conversation. Unhealthy ones replace discussion with mandatory narratives and speech codes. Leaders who fear questions fear the truth those questions might uncover. Dogma can be secular or religious. It is ideologically rigid, generally not truth-seeking.
- Collective Identity Replaces Individual Worth
Authoritarian systems elevate the group above the person: the party, the ideology, the movement, the “community”. When people are valued only as members of a group rather than as individuals, conscience becomes irrelevant and conformity becomes the main civic expectation. This is materialism, and denial of spiritual reality.
- Repentance and Correction Become Impossible
A culture that silences criticism cannot correct its own errors. Without the freedom to point out problems, there can be no course correction, no growth, and no accountability. Mistakes multiply because they are protected by enforced silence.
- The Vulnerable Are Punished First
Censorship and ideological enforcement nearly always fall hardest on those with the least power — dissidents, researchers, students, teachers, and ordinary citizens. When moral pressure is used to intimidate rather than uplift, society reveals a deeply inverted understanding of justice.
- Curiosity and Creativity Decline
When questions become dangerous, people stop asking. When our human body, spirit, and intellect work in tandem without fear, we are capable of incredible scientific, artistic, and intellectual discovery and achievement. A society that punishes inquiry slowly starves itself of spirit in the form of innovation and insight.
- Tribal Narratives Replace Shared Reality
When open debate disappears, competing ideological factions manufacture their own “truths”. Without a shared standard for evidence or meaning, society fragments into groups that can no longer communicate across boundaries. This is a recipe for distrust, polarization, and alienation … in dogmatically religious societies: a recipe for holy war and violent oppression.
- A Culture That Punishes Dissent Is Living by Avoidance, Not Truth
Suppressing dissent is always a sign that an ideology cannot withstand scrutiny. Societies that silence critics pretend confidence but are insecure. The greater the fear of open conversation, diverse thought, and public debate, the greater the underlying instability and spiritual decay.
- Each Soul’s Journey Is Sacred — And Faith Must Be Chosen, Not Forced
Across traditions, genuine belief is understood as something voluntary:
- Love and faith cannot be coerced.
- Insight cannot be mandated.
- Moral understanding cannot be imposed through fear.
A society that tries to control belief tries to destroy the inner space where thought, reflection, and integrity develop. Coerced belief is not belief; it is compliance. An individual’s free relationship with God is sacred. No human rightfully owns another’s body, mind, or soul.
Update, 7 December: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Please do have a look around at some of my other posts you may find of interest. I send out a daily summary of posts here through my Substack – https://substack.com/@nicholasrusson that you can subscribe to if you’d like to be informed of new posts in the future.
Abolish the Temporary Foreign Worker program
The CBC presented a sob story about a restaurant owner in Lloydminster who had to reject over a hundred job applicants because they couldn’t cook Indian food to her satisfaction. I’m no great cook, but there are about a dozen Indian dishes I make regularly that are, in my opinion, nearly as good as I can get from any of our local Indian restaurants. I’ve never been trained in cooking and I don’t have access to all the ingredients, but I do well enough. I’m sure that with some training and access to a proper restaurant kitchen I could do much better … as could a lot of those rejected job applicants, I bet.
Ms. Garner added the next day:
The more I think about this story the more preposterous the assumption behind it becomes — that no one out of the 100 applicants the owner rejected could be taught to cook at this place.
Yet the article essentially accepts this preposterousness as fact.
Abolish the TFW program.
As Fortissax responded:
Star Wars and Aliens: A Look at Interstellar Communications
Feral Historian
Published 2 Feb 2024I’ve said before that Star Wars originally appears to not have real-time interstellar communications. Many have disputed that, with several good points. Here I finally explain my reasoning with a solution that fits everything we observe in the film without requiring convoluted excuses for why they have to fly an Astromech droid around. Think of this as off-week bonus content.
00:00 Intro
00:53 Taking It Seriously
02:10 Dantooine
03:43 They Tell Two Ships …
06:56 Is the Falcon Really that Fast?
07:50 Delegation🔹 Patreon | patreon.com/FeralHistorian
🔹 Ko-Fi | ko-fi.com/feralhistorian
QotD: The Anglosphere
Ironically – and this must drive those of a pro-EU frame of mind nuts – it is still North America, with its rawer culture and politics, its legal similarities to the UK (for good and for ill) that resonates, even in the minds (for want of a better noun) of the sort of folk going on BLM demos. What goes on in France, Germany or Italy tends not to have the same grip on the mind. The Atlantic is wide and the Channel is narrow, but in every other sense, it is the other way around. To that extent, then, the Anglosphere lives, even in the hearts and minds of the far Left.
Johnathan Pearce, “The Anglosphere and our present discontents”, Samizdata, 2020-06-08.
December 4, 2025
“… the biggest problem facing disabled people is that they aren’t eager enough to call themselves disabled”
On his Substack, Freddie deBoer decries the New York Times viewpoint that “there is no such thing as a person, only beings that exist to function as sets of interlocking identities”:
(you would find this horribly condescending too)
Image from Freddie deBoer
I’m not joking! Paula Span has produced this particular bit of scolding for The Official Publication of Liberals Who Occasionally Look Up From Their Crosswords to Disapprove of Everyone and Everything. Span writes
Identifying as a person with a disability provides other benefits, advocates say. It can mean avoiding isolation and “being part of a community of people who are good problem-solvers, who figure things out and work in partnership to do things better”
Of course, you can enjoy those benefits without identifying as disabled, without allowing one unfortunate aspect of your life become an entire identity. But that doesn’t fly in the world of the brownstone liberals who fund and run the New York Times, who seem to believe that there is no such thing as a person, only beings that exist to function as sets of interlocking identities.
Here’s the maddening thing about this piece: it quietly smuggles in a worldview that has metastasized across the discourse, a worldview in which the biggest problem facing disabled people is that they aren’t eager enough to call themselves disabled. Not, you know, being blind or paralyzed or suffering from dementia or constantly wracked with chronic pain, no, all of that is subservient to the only question anybody seems to care about anymore, the all-devouring question of identity. The whole thing hums along with the cheery institutional conviction that the answer to every human frailty is more identitarian self-labeling. If only the elderly would embrace the capital-D Disability identity, we’re told, everything would be better — their health care would run smoother, their interactions with institutions would be less demeaning, their sense of community would blossom. Maybe they’d even be happier! The Times treats this as self-corroborating common sense, like, well, everything else argued in the New York Times.
What this kind of thinking actually represents is the natural endpoint of a cultural project that has turned medical pathology into a personality type. It’s the codification of a worldview where suffering is not something to address, treat, alleviate, or recover from, but a new kind of boutique identity, complete with community membership, branded discourse, and moral status. It turns vulnerability into a form of social currency, rewarding performance over authenticity and turning genuine suffering into a spectacle for peer validation. In doing so, it erodes the very possibility of meaningful treatment, because the focus is no longer on recovery or well-being, but on cultivating a carefully curated self-image that fixates on impairment. And what I think, as I read this person tut-tutting senior citizens for not embracing that new ethos, is “Maybe they just feel like they’re too fucking old to take part in such nonsense?”
The piece insists, without evidence or even really argument, that treating disability as an identity will improve access to accommodation. Disability accommodations matter; of course they do. But what this article is concerned with is patently not getting older adults the practical support they need. The piece is instead fixated on the idea that the real issue here is that people don’t want to be disabled in the metaphysical, self-defining sense, as though the reluctance of an 84-year-old to call herself Disabled-with-a-capital-D is some retrograde psychological failure rather than a perfectly sane human impulse born of a lifetime of struggle. Span frames this as a story about insufficiently enlightened seniors who need to be ushered into the disability “community”. But maybe the reluctance they’re describing is the whisper of something older and much wiser: the understanding that disability is not a polity you join, not a club whose membership conveys special epistemic authority, but a condition of life that you endure and attempt to mitigate. These older people don’t identify as disabled because they remember, stubbornly enough, the distinction between having a problem and being the problem. They treat disability as a practical reality, not an existential category. And they’re right to do so.
Update, 5 December: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Please do have a look around at some of my other posts you may find of interest. I send out a daily summary of posts here through my Substack – https://substack.com/@nicholasrusson that you can subscribe to if you’d like to be informed of new posts in the future.
The Swiss vote overwhelmingly against a new wealth tax
As the California government wants to impose a new wealth tax, it’s worth checking how similar schemes are viewed in other jurisdictions. The Swiss voters were given an opportunity to scalp their very richest citizens and permanent residents with a proposed wealth tax, but it went down with 78% voting against it:
“Switzerland on Sunday overwhelmingly rejected a proposed 50% tax on inherited fortunes of 50 million Swiss francs ($62 million) or more, with 78% of votes against the plan, an outcome that even exceeded the two-thirds opposition indicated in polls,” Reuters reported this week.
All Swiss cantons already tax assessed gross worldwide assets, minus debts and with exceptions, making it one of the few countries in the world to retain a wealth tax. But competition among cantons keeps the tax burden relatively low and, as the Tax Foundation notes, “the Swiss wealth tax acts as a substitute for a capital gains tax and an estate tax, which are common in other countries”. The referendum would have imposed an additional and very steep national tax.
This was actually the second recent failed attempt to impose a national wealth tax on inheritances. Seventy-one percent of Swiss voters rejected a 2015 proposal for a 20 percent tax on estates and gifts of over 2 million francs. The revenues would have been earmarked for old-age pensions.
‘Inequality in Opulence is Better than Equality in Poverty’
The 2025 tax scheme openly played to envy. It was targeted at combating “inequality” by seizing half the assets of the rich and allocating proceeds to offset the climate damage they allegedly cause.
Finance Minister Karin Keller-Sutter opposed the proposal, warning that “many wealthy people would simply emigrate to avoid the tax and keep their wealth”. She also pointed out that while all but two of the country’s 26 cantons tax inheritances, “the people have abolished inheritance tax for children and spouses in many cantons”. She added, “I think it is right that what was developed in the nuclear family can be passed on”.
Philosopher Olivier Massin, a professor at the University of Neuchâtel, criticized the motivation driving much of the campaign for the tax. He wrote that “inequality is by nature neither good nor bad” and that envy is the main driver of egalitarianism. “Envy being inglorious, we grimace in indignation, making what is ultimately only the expression of resentment a moral cause.”
Massin added that “inequality in opulence is better than equality in poverty”.
And Switzerland is undoubtedly “opulent” — or, at least, prosperous — with a per capita gross domestic product of $103,669 as compared to $85,809 for the U.S., according to the World Bank. It builds that wealth with a second-place score in the current Index of Economic Freedom (the U.S. is now ranked at 26), suggesting that less government meddling in economic matters is the best way to increase prosperity.
Don’t put a lot of trust in the “surging Canadian GDP stories” they’re pushing
On the social media site formerly known as Twitter, Stephen Punwasi put together an interesting thread on the latest “rosy scenario” GDP numbers the state media have been making such a big deal about:
2/ What do we see? Imports contributed 0.7 points out of 0.6 points of Q3 GDP growth. The rest of the economy was a net drag.
Imports contribute to GDP as a part of net exports: exports minus imports.
Smaller imports boost net exports. Imports made the biggest drop since 2022.
3/ What we’re seeing is a phenomenon called import compression: the balance was boosted by falling imports.
It’s a superficial improvement due accounting mechanics. The only growth is actually weakness.
We figured it out. But wait — how do they get import/export data? 😬
4/ Let’s start with imports. I recalled reading about the CBSA’s new customs & revenue management (CARM) platform.
Totally normal bedtime reading for weirdos, I know.
CARM delayed data to StatCan, who had to estimate on trend & revise. I can’t recall the issue being resolved.
4/ I contact StatCan. Delays have improved but recent data is heavily impacted.
They warn to expect larger than usual revisions to September — a third of Q3. 😅
It gets funnier: 🇺🇸’s gov shutdown means 🇨🇦 can’t get data for ~75% of its exports. Trend estimate again.
5/ so all GDP growth was imports, which fell faster than exports.
Imports & exports are estimates based on trend.
But wait — what exactly is a trend? It’s based on seasonal adjustments — smoothing predictable variation.
In 🇨🇦, that means suppressing summer & boosting winter.
6/ non-predictable variations to consumption like recession & trade wars can’t be filtered out.
The adjustment over/understates. e.g. 🇺🇸 Fed research shows this overstated recovery & lengthened the financial crisis. Ditto with COVID.
It can’t be fixed until years later.
7/ let’s put this together:
– 🇨🇦’s GDP grew exclusively due to the trade balance.
– import compression — a weakness that overstates growth
– trade had to be inferred via trend
– trend overstated by irregular shock
Yup.
8/ just to clarify — none of this is StatCan’s fault.
They’re tasked w/a deadline over the past year & 🇨🇦 decided to overhaul its trade data during a trade war.
They told me Dec 11th will be when revisions for imports come in & we’ll get an update on CARM.
9/ Bonus fun facts for the pros:
– by pushing it back to the 11th, this overstatement helps suppress yields for the GoC cash management program
– the 11th is after the last auction data is provided to dealers
Fascinating combo while 🇨🇦 is asset cycling for short-term optics.
10/ anyway, full write up, direct quotes from StatCan, & a fun bonus GDP fact for the kiddos.
Also, follow @BetterDwelling if you found this interesting.
We take research & insights reserved for deep-pocketed investors & give it away to normies w/plain english explanations.
M103: The Tank With No Name
The Tank Museum
Published 1 Aug 2025In 1950, the USA was facing a tank crisis … and the M103 was supposed to be part of the solution. But it would hardly ever be used.
After the Second World War, the USA made massive cuts to their conventional forces – declaring the majority of their tanks obsolete, with those left coming to the end of their service life. And the appearance of the Soviet IS-3 meant that the pressure was on. The US Army and the US Marine Corps wanted new tanks – and they wanted them fast. And the appearance of the Soviet IS-3 meant that the pressure was on. The USA declared a “Tank Crisis”.
The T-43 heavy tank was intended to be the response to new Soviet armour. But vehicles were being built before the bugs had been ironed out – and the delays began to mount up. Whilst the Army began to question the need for a heavy tank, the Marines went all in on the concept – ordering over 200 for their forces. But the T-43 was nowhere near ready to enter service, and the vehicles went into storage with 114 improvements needed.
Changes were made and eventually the Marines got their heavy tank – now named the M103. But its effectiveness was limited, and the M103 was only operationally deployed once. The Marines rejected replacement M60s in favour of the Future Main Battle Tank – a project that would end up being cancelled. Their existing M103AA1s were modernised using M60 parts, creating the M103A2 – which The Tank Museum has an example of in its running fleet.
The M103 is a heck of a tank: powerful, capable and incredibly imposing to be around. But did the Americans really need it? Was it the ultimate panic buy?
This is the story of the M103 Heavy Tank – and the panic that produced it.
00:00 | Introduction
00:30 | Meet the M103
03:06 | T-43 and the Tank Crisis
06:21 | Unfit for Service?
11:33 | In Service
15:26 | M103 In Retrospect
