Quotulatiousness

July 7, 2026

The Democratic Socialists of America

Filed under: Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

On the social media site formerly known as Twitter, Cynical Publius sounds the warning about the impending takeover of the Democratic party by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA):

Logo of the Democratic Socialists of America

Since 2023, I have kept the same pinned post because I feel that post (the one discussing “my side of history”) is the most important sentiment I have ever posted on this platform.

For the short-term future, however, I am changing that pinned post to this one, because it is of such crucial importance to our nation’s survival.

Here goes.

The Democrat Party is in the process of being taken over by the Democrat Socialists of America (the “DSA”).

The DSA is an explicitly Marxist organization.

Marxism has impoverished more people and genocidally murdered more of humanity than all other ideologies ever to exist in human history combined.

It is a grotesque form of evil that is wholly incompatible with the Constitution of the United States of America.

Marxism in all its forms must be reviled and publicly treated with the same disdain with which intelligent adults view Naziism, pedophilia, serial murderers and cannibalism.

Do not back down. Each and every time you encounter Marxism in any of its forms, please call it out for the evil that it is. It is a rapidly metastasizing cancer that can only be defeated by public awareness.

Thank you.

Tom Knighton reacts to another self-identified Democratic Socialist’s criticisms of America:

… when I see someone like this, I have to think this should be automatically disqualifying for office.

    Pennsylvania state and socialist Chris Rabb, the Democratic nominee for Pennsylvania’s 3rd Congressional District, has joined the growing chorus of Democrats denouncing the founding documents and core institutions in the country on our 250th anniversary. The Democratic socialist is running unopposed for Congress and will almost certainly be a member of Congress after November.

    Rabb spoke at an event billed as “America at 250 — Trump Fascism, Historical Erasure, and the Battle Over Truth” at People’s Plaza on Independence Mall in Philadelphia.

    He denounced the country as based on “stolen land and stolen labor.” He lashed out at the Declaration of Independence:

    Those screeds that were very lofty but were notoriously catering to a performative aspect of collective genius that purposely erased indigenous and black peoples … It created distance from an empire to help very privileged people continue that privilege and ultimately institutionalize that through the U.S. Constitution many years later. But it certainly did not provide independence to indigenous and black peoples. And we cannot talk about anything today without acknowledging that this is a nation born on stolen land & stolen labor.

Actually, I think the Declaration did provide independence to American Indians and black people. It just took way too long to be recognized.

Lincoln cites the concepts of the Declaration in the Gettysburg Address, and there’s little doubt that many of those who worked to end slavery did so because our nation was founded on the principle that all men were created equal.

It should have been a given, granted, and I have no problem with anyone taking issue with the imperfect application of that concept, because that’s legitimate. The thing is, we fought an entire war to end slavery once and for all. As many as 750,000 Americans lost their lives in that war, and it was ultimately worth it to end that particular scourge.

Yet I find it disgusting that while socialists like Rabb will cite that imperfect application of natural rights as an evil, they completely ignore the blood price this country paid to end that scourge.

[…]

How can someone like this want to serve a nation they despise? He’s not really looking to make it better; he’s looking to destroy the nation it is in favor of something it was never meant to be. It’s not about improving it. It’s about overturning it.

I’m still flabbergasted that “Democratic Socialism” is taking hold as strongly as it has, especially considering socialism’s track record in the 20th Century, and while I believe Rabb has the right to say whatever retarded thing he wants, I also believe the voters of this country should see that kind of rhetoric as disqualifying for public office.

Yes, that includes the Democrats.

Unfortunately, they nominated him, and he’s far from the only DSA nutball who has won their primary this election cycle.

Remember, boys and girls: You can vote yourself into socialism, but you’ll have to shoot your way out.

Andrew Sullivan is also concerned with the DSA consuming the rest of the Democratic party:

I’d say the DSA is to the Democrats in the 2020s what the John Birch Society was to the GOP in the 1950s. But the Dems won’t expel or cauterize them, so dozens of DSA candidates are surging to victory this year, from Colorado to New York State, with a big boost from Mayor Mamdani and Hasan Piker.

The DSA backs Hamas terrorism, the Maduro regime in Venezuela, and the Castro tyranny in Cuba. Its new platform — to be voted on next month — supports “scrapping the U.S. Senate, ‘abolishing the carceral forces of the capitalist state’, defunding the Department of War, amnesty for all immigrants, and ‘replac[ing] the President and Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress’.”

Jon Chait has a good rundown of the the group’s darker undercurrents. Last year, they amended their founding documents to allow members of communist cells to join. The DSA “Red Star Caucus” brags:

    We in Red Star are communists who believe that DSA is the most effective place to serve the socialist movement … We call on all communists in the United States to join us in the democratic struggle within DSA … as we continue to improve the democratic structures of DSA, and as communists contest for and win hegemony within the organization, we continue to move toward a revolutionary horizon.

When Donald Trump calls someone a commie, it’s a good rule to ignore him. This time, he’s right. Lenin-fan Darializa Avila Chevalier showed up to a pro-Hamas rally on October 8, as bodies still lay on the ground at a music festival — yes, that’s how deep the Israel-hatred runs. She supports abolishing all prisons, police, and national borders. Her now-deleted Twitter discourse is a 2020 fever dream: “Yes, literally, abolish the border”, “Seize the means of production”, “ALL PIGS EVERYWHERE ARE HARAM”. She also converted to Islam. Check out her answer to the simple question, “What should happen to somebody who has killed somebody else?” It’ll take a while.

Claire Valdez, another primary winner, pledges to abolish ICE and nationalize the airline industry. Melat Kiros, who defeated a staunch progressive in Denver, is more rooted in opposition to Israel’s existence as a Jewish state and “genocide” in Gaza. She refused to condemn as antisemitic the fatal firebombing of a solidarity walk for Israeli hostages. It was merely “anti-Zionist.” Israel is increasingly the dominant fixation among the activist left — just ask Scott Wiener.

After this wave of extremism, you might expect some Democratic pushback. And some came: a new group of 13 House Dems signed a “Promise to America”, rejecting socialism. “We disagree with MAGA. We disagree with socialists”, Congressman Tom Suozzi said. “We don’t want this extremism. We want mainstream.” But 13 signatures are not much against a growing and organized machine. And the pressure more broadly is on the critics: “You are creating the antagonistic dynamic that we do not need”, AOC said. “These are two young, talented, intelligent women that got elected against all odds, against millions of dollars. Perhaps there is something we can learn from them.” There is: communism.

June 18, 2026

QotD: James K. Polk – a dark horse?

Filed under: History, Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

“Who is James K. Polk?” the Nashville Republican Banner asked in a headline after news of Polk’s nomination as the 1844 Democratic Party standard-bearer reached the Tennessee capital. The question was meant to be derisive, and it struck so shrill a chord that the Whigs adopted it as their national campaign taunt.

The truth is that Polk’s political opponents knew very well who James K. Polk was — and why they should fear him. Yet almost two centuries later, despite solid standing in modern presidential polls and a portrait that currently graces the Oval Office, Polk’s legacy is entwined in mischaracterizations.

The Myth of the Dark Horse

Many will tell you that Polk was a dark horse. No, he was not.

Born in North Carolina in 1795, Polk aspired to the presidency at least from his first election to the Tennessee House of Representatives at the age of twenty-eight. He always had what every budding politician craves: the unqualified support of the era’s greatest hero. Although some vilified Andrew Jackson, Old Hickory was a political force that could not be denied. With Jackson’s encouragement, Polk entered politics and then married Sarah Childress, whom Andrew and Rachel Jackson treated as a daughter.

Prior to his nomination, Polk had served seven terms in Congress, including two as Speaker of the House; he had been governor of Tennessee; and he had tried to unseat the sitting vice president to become President Martin Van Buren’s running mate in 1840. To be sure, there were defeats along the way. Polk lost his first try for the Speakership and two gubernatorial campaigns in Tennessee, a state as bitterly divided as any between Jackson’s Democrats and emerging Whig forces.

But Polk never lost sight of the prize. Even in defeat, he continued to correspond with Democratic leaders across the country. His presidential nomination in 1844 at a convention divided over the annexation of Texas may well have been — as one of his most ardent supporters advised — four years ahead of schedule. After all, former president Van Buren, who had lost his reelection campaign in 1840, again sought the nomination in 1844. But Polk was not a dark horse suddenly surging from the back of the field. He was in the arena and one of the most astute and well-connected politicians of his day.

Walter R. Borneman, “James K. Polk and the 5,106 Votes That Changed America”, Coolidge Review, 2026-02-20.

May 13, 2026

A quick look at the race to be the next governor of California

Filed under: Government, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

Chris Bray somehow seems to find the election coverage by a multi-decade veteran Los Angeles Times political reporter to be, dare I say, lacking just a little objectivity and honest analysis:

Robin Abcarian has been a professional journalist for four decades, mostly at the Los Angeles Times. She’s spent her adult life writing about politics. So go read her column about the last gubernatorial debate in California. Here’s how it opens:

    What am I looking for in a new California governor?

    Like a big chunk of the state’s voters, I’m not exactly sure.

You can already tell you’re in the hands of an experienced professional. There aren’t really any big issues or anything in California right now, so how would you zero in on something you would want from someone who wants to lead the state’s executive branch, right? It’s all just a shrug and a guess.

Then she recites: This candidate said X, and this other candidate said Y. And she tells you which of the recited things she likes: I like X. I do not like Y. She doesn’t analyze or argue or contextualize: she just says I like that one and I do not like that one. The effect is that you’re watching someone wander barefoot through a field of statements and either make “ooooh, pretty” sounds or “ick, yucky” sounds with a kind of vibration from her brain stem. Billy likes blue balloons, they are pretty. Becky loves pink balloons, they are even prettier! She can’t explain any of it, though she attempts some explainy noises, and then it gets worse:

    I know who I don’t like, though.

    Every time I see Republican Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, with his Tom Selleck mustache, I can’t help thinking he should play a lawman on TV.

  1. Should Chad Bianco become the governor of California?
  2. He has a mustache

CHAD BIANCO WISHES TO BE THE GOVERNOR BUT ACTUALLY HE APPEARS TO BE VERY MASCULINE THINK ABOUT IT

Have I mentioned that Robin Abcarian has a graduate degree in journalism? You can see how her education sharpened her mind.

She adds that Bianco has said some deeply disturbing and disqualifying things, and then she gives an example: “A lack of affordable housing has nothing to do with homelessness, Bianco has said repeatedly”. Gasp!

Instead, outrageously, he claims that homelessness has something to do with “drugs and mental illness”.

It is very bad to say this. Why is it very bad to say this? She doesn’t explain, but it’s very bad to say it. Homeless people are all just fine, and they would immediately be okay if you just gave them a house, because the whole crisis is just affordability. Drugs and homelessness!?!? In CALIFORNIA!?!?!? What are you even talking about!?!?

This woman is a journalist in Los Angeles, where you can experience psychotic episodes in the street next to an encampment by driving to lunch.

By the way, this video of homeless people on Skid Row smoking fentanyl right next to the LAPD’s Central Division station? I drove over there this afternoon, and yes. Open drug dealing, drug overdoses, ambulances running day and night, bodies in the street, police station.

Let’s have a look at Abcarian’s analysis of Katie Porter, whose marriage quite notoriously ended with her husband accusing her of once expressing an (apparently frequent) rage by dumping a boiled pot of mashed potatoes on his head, part of a pattern of what he described as an abusive relationship. Abcarian:

“I’ve always liked Porter and her famous white board. I don’t believe snapping at your staff or a reporter is disqualifying, and I’m glad she’s been able to joke about the leaked video that damaged her campaign.”

I like Katie Porter. She is nice. People say she yells a lot, but that is okay. She makes jokes about when she yells at people who work for her. That is funny! She is funny and nice.

Decades on the payroll of a major American newspaper. Will a candidate be an effective governor? “I’ve always liked Porter.” Thanks for your analysis, Robin.

And then finally, big finish, watch how aggressively obtuse this person is. Just watch. It’s a gold medal performance.

First she discusses the attacks on Democratic frontrunner Xavier Becerra. The other candidates are criticizing him because “on his watch at HHS, the Office of Refugee Resettlement lost track of 85,000 migrant children”. Abcarian acknowledges what happened next, when “many of the minors, mostly teenage boys, were exploited by sponsors, who illegally put them to work in various factories, food processing plants and as roofers”. So she has explicitly discussed migration as a source of human trafficking and exploitation.

Then she says that Tom Steyer won her heart by promising to shut down ICE and prosecute ICE agents. Here’s Abcarian’s complete discussion of the way she feels about Steyer promising not to enforce immigration laws: “Could it be I’m falling in love?”

  1. Unmanaged migration across borders is human trafficking and exploitation, often of children
  2. My uterus is a little gushy over this candidate who says he’ll block the enforcement of immigration laws and shut down the agency that enforces immigration laws

Does she notice that she did this? Does she notice the one-two punch of talking about tens of thousands of minors trafficked across the border to be exploited and then the immediate wine aunt pivot to this ooh-he’s-so-cute swooning about Dreamy Tom Steyer promising to not let anyone enforce immigration laws?

My position regarding the high-cultural-status AWFL and biologically male pseudo-AWFL, in media and politics and academia and NGOs, is that none of them notice themselves at all. They have noises that they’re been trained to make, and they make the noises. Warm and wonderful unhoused neighbors. Warm and wonderful trans kids. Warm and wonderful immigrants. They have categories that they purr about, because one purrs about those categories or else one is a Trump person who belongs in a trailer park. It’s been purely automatic for years and years.

April 18, 2026

QotD: Democratic versus Republican Senators

Filed under: Media, Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

A few years ago, Democratic Senator Kyrsten Sinema provoked the rage of progressive activists by occasionally having an independent thought, voting with her caucus on “party unity votes” only 96% of the time. Senator Joe Manchin caused comparable disgust by joining his party in those votes only 92% of the time. Sinema and Manchin were EVIL MONSTERS, and progressive activists showed up at their public events to scream at them.

Sinema eventually left the Democratic Party, declaring herself an independent, because a disgusting heretic couldn’t remain in a party that she only agreed with 96% of the time. Burn the witch, Democrats explained.

The descent of the Democratic Party into a state of increasingly obvious group psychosis is a product of the absence of internal debate, and of the degree to which Democratic legislators wholeheartedly believe that their job is to hold up their hands in unison whenever their party leaders tell them to. They can’t talk themselves out of their madness — they don’t know how. They don’t have the cultural habit of thought. Watch someone like Chris Murphy speak, and ask yourself if there’s a person inside there. I find myself unable to say yes to that question. He will read anything that is put on that teleprompter, and I mean an-y-th-ing.

By comparison, the Republican legislative habit of wandering around like the residents of a feline daycare center is a strength, and the presence of independent thought in the GOP’s legislative caucuses makes the party relatively sane. The presence of a Rand Paul, refusing to get on board, is more a good thing than a bad thing. The culture of debate is healthier than the behavior of the North Korean legislature or Tina Smith, soulless human robots.

Chris Bray, “The Greatest Republican Strength is the Greatest Republican Weakness, Again”, Tell Me How This Ends, 2026-01-15.

April 6, 2026

Coolidge “does not deserve credit for winning the 1924 election … it just happened to him”

Filed under: Economics, History, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

While I wouldn’t agree with the statement in the title of this post, it has been a common enough reading of the US 1924 presidential election — that it wasn’t an endorsement of Coolidge and his policies but merely a reflection of voters’ overall satisfaction with the economy. The editors of the Coolidge Review would beg to differ:

From the distance of more than a century, a political scientist has taken a fresh look at the 1924 presidential election.

In an article published last year in Presidential Studies Quarterly, Christopher Devine questions the conventional wisdom about how and why the incumbent, Calvin Coolidge, won that election in a landslide. Coolidge had assumed the presidency little more than a year earlier, after the unexpected death of Warren Harding. In 1924’s three-way race, he received more votes than the other two candidates combined and carried thirty-five of the forty-eight states.

As Devine points out, most historians say that a robust economy was by far the biggest reason Coolidge won. Strong economic conditions did work in the president’s favor. But Devine notes that many historians adopt a form of economic “determinism”. In this very common view, Coolidge “does not deserve credit for winning the 1924 election”. Rather, “thanks mostly to the economy, it just happened to him”.

That argument is too simplistic, Devine suggests. He presents both qualitative and quantitative evidence to challenge the standard narrative of the 1924 campaign.

Old Assumptions, New Data

For his empirical analysis, Devine examines “county-level political, economic, and demographic data” alongside county-by-county voting results. Using these data, he tests three common explanations for the election’s outcome:

Did Coolidge win primarily because of the economy? Scraping the data, Devine concludes that the answer is largely yes. And he shows it’s misleading to claim that — as one history textbook put it — Coolidge merely rode “the crest of a wave of economic prosperity for which he was given undeserved credit”. Devine demonstrates that from behind the scenes, Coolidge “took an active role in coordinating campaign messaging” that showcased the administration’s and Republicans’ achievements. For example, Coolidge worked closely with his running mate, Charles Dawes, to keep the famously free-range vice-presidential candidate focused on the economic message. “In the matter of economy and tax reduction”, Dawes declared, “the Federal Government is headed in the right direction”. Moreover, as Devine reports, Dawes argued that the administration’s work to stabilize Europe via the Dawes Plan spared America from “the depths of an inevitable and great depression” while also ensuring that “the whole world enters upon a period of peace and prosperity”.

Did third-party candidate Robert M. La Follette hurt Democratic nominee John W. Davis more than Coolidge? Devine concludes that this effect appeared only in the Great Plains and the Mountain West. It probably wasn’t large enough to change the election’s outcome.

Did internal divisions cost the Democratic Party votes in 1924? The Democrats were so fractured that they needed 103 ballots to choose a nominee at their convention. Devine says it would be hard to imagine that such disarray did not hurt Democrats in the election. Yet he notes that quantitative evidence on the reasons for Democratic losses in 1924 is hard to find because “scientific polling did not exist in the 1920s”.

Seeking an alternative approach, Devine looks at patterns of defection from the Democratic Party by state. He finds that northern states that voted to defeat the anti-Ku-Klux-Klan plank at that year’s Democratic National Convention — in other words, states whose delegations supported the Klan — saw heavier defections in the general election. From that, Devine extrapolates to suggest that Coolidge “benefited from the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan — or, perhaps one might say, Democrats lost ground because of it”.

March 9, 2026

QotD: Why they’re called “The Stupid Party”

Filed under: Media, Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

    Yes, it’s real: Trump is collapsing. Can the MAGA faithful save him?

How do you know it’s all wishcasting? When they start with “Yes, it’s real”. They’re pushing that Narrative hard; I guess the faithful really need a pick-me-up.

    Even Republicans are unhappy with Trump’s vicious, failing agenda. That doesn’t mean they’re ready to bail

Or, Karen discovers why they’re called “The Stupid Party”. Being unhappy with the GOP’s “vicious, failing agenda” is just what Republican voters do. Here’s a partial list of non-Trump Presidential candidates the GOP faithful have supported this century: George W. Bush (twice). Jeb Bush. John McCain (twice). Mitt fucking Romney. Herman “Godfather’s Pizza” Cain. Ted Cruz. Ben Carson. Marco Rubio. And I’m just talking about the guys who won enough primaries to get noticed. And I’m deliberately not talking about the girls, although The Media rushed to inform us that Republicans took the likes of Carly Fiorina and Nikki “War Karen” Haley very, very seriously (and for the sake of our collective sanity, let us not discuss Sarah Palin’s impact on the McCain campaign).

Notice a pattern there, Chauncey? Milquetoasts at best, obvious fucking Judases at worst. I guess you can’t really say that the likes of Mitt Romney “sold out” his voters, because that would imply Mitt Romney is capable of “selling out”. You have to have a baseline of integrity for that phrase to apply. Metallica can “sell out” (oh boy, can they!); the Backstreet Boys, by definition, cannot. Mitt, Jeb Bush, George W. Bush, Paul Ryan (can’t forget him! he was Mittens’ veep choice), Marco Rubio … that’s the shittiest boy band of all time, and like shitty boy bands they had their moments in the sun, but if that’s not enough to convince you that GOP loyalists simply don’t know when to fold ’em, I don’t know what possibly could.

    Trump’s softening support is amplified by growing rumors about his health and reports on his reduced public schedule. Even the mainstream media noticed that he repeatedly appeared to fall asleep during Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting. While he sends out numerous social media posts in the middle of the night, he seems increasingly disconnected from real-world events by daylight. Any appearance of physical weakness or frailty in a man who is nearly 80 years old, threatens to undermine his carefully constructed persona as a vital and dynamic political strongman.

See what I mean about The Stupid Party? We’ve seen this before. We’ve seen it for the entirety of the 21st century, in fact. It’s the “I’m rubber and you’re glue, whatever you say bounces off me, and sticks to you!” theory of political discourse. Like kindergartners on the playground, the Left simply cannot let anything go. They must respond by flipping the accusation. “Nah-AH, I’m not stinky, you’re stinky!” is tedious coming from five year olds, and putative adults should never do it, but that’s where we are here in AINO. Knowing that … I mean, Jesus, guys, it’s not hard. All you had to do is accuse Joe Biden of being too vigorous, too competent, stuff like that, and you’d have The Media inadvertently singing Trump’s praises …

But, of course, see above, about “all they ever do is sell out”. Thus landing us in the most hilarious situation of The Current Year, in which the GOP never fails to fail, even when they’re trying to fail. It’s what an intra-squad scrimmage must look like for the Washington Generals — everyone’s trying so hard to lose, but somebody has to be ahead when the buzzer sounds …

    When voters are asked which party they will vote for in the 2026 midterm elections, Democrats now lead Republicans by 14 percentage points. That historically large gap suggests that Democrats are well-positioned to win a House majority, and perhaps even the Senate (although the latter is less likely for structural reasons). Democratic voters are also more enthusiastic than Republican voters; if we view November’s off-year elections as a de facto referendum on Trump’s presidency, the results were almost unanimous.

No, that’s backwards. The problem isn’t Trump. The problem is that Trump, personally, pulls voters, but the Republican Party in general does not. “MAGA” will enthusiastically pull the lever for the Orange Man; they can’t be arsed to do it for some generic GOP shitweasel, and do you see why, Chauncey? You’re stupid — so, so stupid — so I’ll spell it out for you: It has to do with the fact that when you’re asked to pull the lever for some generic GOP shitweasel, you are, in actual fact, voting for a generic GOP shitweasel. See how that works?

And again, I know you’re stupid — so very, very stupid — but those of us who don’t enjoy making shapes with pudding have to wonder: If the GOP is so bad, and they’re failing so much, if their agenda is so obviously “vicious”, and whatever else, why do you keep losing to them? I’ll give you a hint. Here’s a far from exhaustive list of major Democrat Presidential candidates in the 21st century:

Joe Biden. Kamala Harris. John “the Silky Pony” Edwards. Howard Dean. Bernie Sanders (twice). Barack Obama (twice). Hillary Clinton (twice). Dennis Kucinich. Al Gore. John Kerry. Pete Buttigieg (we’ll go ahead and say twice, because you know he’s running in 2028). Again, we’re only talking guys gals persyns who won a primary or three. Notice a pattern there? If the GOP runs only milquetoasts and Judases, you guys always manage to top them by running the most ludicrous, unfathomably corrupt people you can find. Frankly I don’t know how the world survived the contest of George W. Bush vs. John Kerry; the planet’s collective IQ must’ve dropped ten, fifteen points. If the Fake and Gay Singularity were real, instead of a theoretical construct posited by our most jaded astrophysicists, the faceoff between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney would’ve caused our universe to disappear up its own vajazzled asshole, and prolapse into another.

Ponder that: Barack Obama was, somehow, the least ridiculous person on that debate stage.

Severian, “The Year-End Blues”, Founding Questions, 2025-12-08.

February 22, 2026

“[T]he trans cult … attracted many mentally ill people [offering] instant visibility, attention, and status”

Filed under: Health, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

In the visible-to-cheapskates portion of his Weekly Dish post, Andrew Sullivan tries to point out how the Democrats can salvage something from their decade-long, all-in approach to all things trans (warning, contains Andrew Sullivan):

I had dinner this week with a young gay man who was castrated and had his endocrine system permanently wrecked as a result of “gender-affirming care” for minors. He was super girly as a kid and had an undiagnosed testosterone deficiency which delayed his male development. He liked playing with girls, seemed to act like one, and when he socially transitioned as a teen, he passed easily. Suddenly all the sneers of “faggot” he’d endured as a boy went away. In today’s “gender-affirming care” environment, that was enough.

“Compassion” and “science” took a gay boy, flooded his young male body with estrogen, and removed his genitals — because the docs and the shrinks determined he was too effeminate to be a “real man”. Only when he personally figured this out as an adult and got himself off estrogen and onto testosterone did everything change. He felt energy and mental clarity for the first time. And his life as a man could finally begin — although his body will never be fully repaired.

Readers keep telling me to shut up about this topic (I can hear your groans now). I’m obsessed, you say, and this is a trivial (boring) matter. I’ve lost some good friends who feel very much that way, and my social life has shrunk. But then I meet someone like Mike (a pseudonym) — and I’ve met many others, gay and lesbian — and realize not a single gay group or resource is on his side. In fact, the “LGBTQIA+” lobby all but denies he exists, or dismisses him as transphobic — a dreaded “detransitioner”.

I was thinking about Mike as I read the latest polling — out this week in a liberal online mag, The Argument. The poll shows what we well know: 63 percent of Americans want to protect trans people from discrimination. This isn’t a transphobic country. But, equally, 62 percent oppose transing minors (50 percent strongly), 60 percent support banning transwomen competing against women in sports, and 53 percent want to ban gender ideology in elementary schools. These numbers have gone up the more the debate has raged. The backlash is so intense it has even reversed the public’s previous opposition to bathroom bills.

Now check out the liberal response. Bluesky erupted in fury that the poll was published at all. “Please help us,” one X member tweeted with direct appeals to Tim Cook and McKenzie Scott, who have bankrolled this campaign. Jill Filipovic complained that the “Dems … should have focused on things like ending discrimination in housing and employment”, rather than sports and kids, unaware that the Bostock decision already did that with employment. Most liberals have literally no idea that trans people already have civil rights. Off-message.

In this air-tight ideological bubble, where Bostock is unknown, the Dems flounder. “This isn’t happening” was the first gambit. Good try. Then: “this has all been ginned up by the far right, and Dems did nothing”. Did they miss the Obama and Biden Title IX diktats, Admiral Levine’s removal of lower age limits for transing kids, Biden’s “nonbinary” official Sam Brinton stealing dresses, or other embarrassments like the White House invite to Dylan Mulvaney? Then they say it’s a tiny issue. But it helped Trump massively in 2024. And if it’s tiny, why not compromise? After that, it’s just MLK-envy all the way down, the desire to be the next Rosa Parks. But it’s odd to campaign for “civil rights” when you already have them.

After trying to debate, you come to realize it’s pointless. The woke mind is not really a mind; it’s more like a bunch of synapses. Presented with an actual argument, they snap shut. This is part of what Eric Kaufmann calls the “sacralization” of minorities. For the woke, the “oppressed” are sacred. And in the social justice hierarchy, no minority is as oppressed and thereby as sacred as trans.

And so what sacred trans people say they want — or rather, what a tiny group of trans activists say they want — is all that matters. Anything else is illegitimate or “hate”. And any opponent is a bigot. Try arguing your way out of that dogmatic thicket. It’s like trying to disprove the Holy Trinity. I’ve given up.

But the real world keeps intervening. We just saw a ground-breaking lawsuit that won a $2 million judgment for a double mastectomy at 15. And this month saw two awful mass shootings by mentally unwell men caught up in the trans craze. Between Tumbler Ridge, Canada, and a Rhode Island hockey match, 12 people are now dead, including 6 children. And this is no longer a shock. Ask yourself what the 2023 Nashville Covenant School shooting, the 2025 Annunciation Catholic Church shooting, and even the 2024 attempted assassination of Trump, have in common.

Yes, it’s categorically wrong to link trans people to mass killings. That’s false and dangerous. But you’d be dumb not to worry that the trans cult of the last decade may have attracted many mentally ill people into a space where they have instant visibility, attention, and status. We have set up an open-ended subjective category — anyone who says they’re trans is trans, period — almost designed to attract delusional narcissists, and, with every safeguard thrown away, there’s no way to distinguish the nutters from the genuinely in need.

February 20, 2026

Stephen A. Smith as a Democratic Trump

Filed under: Media, Politics, Sports, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

It’s been noted many times that the Democratic Party has had a logjam of aged boomers at the top of their “bench” for future leadership positions. This is a serious problem for the self-described “Party of Youth”, that they have remarkably few viable Gen X, Millennial or Gen Z rising stars who might be future presidential candidates. Donald Trump took the political insiders by surprise in 2015/16, because he was an outsider with no political track record but a huge media profile. He may be the template that Stephen A. Smith hopes to follow on the Democratic side:

Stephen A. Smith at The Moody College of Communications, 23 January 2021.
Wikimedia Commons.

Stephen A. Smith is flirting with a run for president. In a recent CBS News interview, the telegenic ESPN commentator openly entertained the possibility of seeking the Democratic nomination in 2028. He offered additional comments on policy that were striking in their normalcy. He dismissed the idea that racism defines contemporary American life, rejected “defund the police”, and emphasized economic flourishing as the surest path to social stability.

Smith has a gift for performance, a fondness for hyperbole, and a resume devoid of elective office. Historically, that would have made him an unorthodox fit for the White House. But since Donald Trump’s 2016 election, those facts do less to disqualify a figure than to clarify his potential appeal.

And Smith seems to be taking the possibility seriously. His CBS interview builds on previous comments criticizing politicians who support income caps or engage in class-war rhetoric, framing prosperity as a moral and civic good, and condemning the Democratic Party’s excesses on cultural matters like transgenderism. In these comments, Smith captured the sensibility of millions of voters who feel alienated by the ideological vocabulary of contemporary Democratic politics.

While it’s tempting to write off Smith’s flirtation as unserious celebrity theater, that impulse overlooks the weakness of the Democratic field. Kamala Harris enters the cycle as the nominal frontrunner, but her standing reflects name recognition more than enthusiasm. Gavin Newsom commands attention through media savvy and partisan combativeness but carries the burden of California’s abysmal policy record. Other prospective contenders — none of whom have managed to crack double-digit support — may offer competence without excitement or excitement without coalitional appeal.

A primary defined by such choices creates space for an outsider, especially one who can command attention and articulate a distinct political persona. Smith lacks the accumulated baggage of conventional politicians. Even more importantly, he speaks like someone accustomed to unscripted confrontation. Two decades of live television have trained him to think quickly, read audiences, and project conviction. While such skills cannot substitute for governing experience, they matter a great deal in an era where voters evaluate authenticity and affect alongside ideology.

In fact, Donald Trump demonstrates that a candidate who pairs ideological flexibility with rhetorical aggression can reshape a party. Trump softened Republican orthodoxy on entitlement reform, health care, and even social issues — like gay marriage, guns, and abortion — at various points. Yet he maintained the loyalty of a base that valued his willingness to fight. That in turn forced GOP insiders to capitulate to many of his views. Smith shares Trump’s intensity, and could by the same method push the Democrats to moderate.

At the same time, his nascent platform could complicate Democratic coalition politics. The party’s donor and activist classes exert powerful pressure against moderation. These interests remain influential in candidate recruitment, messaging, and resource allocation. That influence often produces nominees who align with activist priorities even when those priorities diverge from median Democratic voter preferences.

February 13, 2026

QotD: The Democrats re-focus on the youth vote

Filed under: History, Media, Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

That’s why it might work. Young people’s lives are simpler; it’s one of the great things about being young. That’s not me, the old guy, knocking the kids; it’s just the way it is. If that’s the way they decide to go — Jungvolk uber Alles — then that’s how they’re going to have to do it. Mamdani, the young, vigorous, exotic, foreign-born socialist weirdo — you know, a Barack Obama for The New Generation.

Which is why I’m tempted to write it off. After all, Obama was just a Bill Clinton for The New Generation. Who was just a JFK for The New Generation. Who — we forget this — was just FDR for The New Generation. Most of the idiot Boomers who voted for Bill Clinton as “the New JFK” barely remembered JFK. Nor did JFK himself win “the youth vote” by all that much — or at all — because “the youth vote” wasn’t a thing back then. For one thing, the voting age was still 21. I’m in History, not math, but even I can do Historian math, and 1960 – 21 = 1939. Most of JFK’s voters had clear memories of The Depression; even his youngest voters remembered the tail end of WWII. JFK sounded like an East Coast patrician, just like FDR did, and as opposed to that young parvenu from California, Richard Nixon.

That’s just a wee bit different from “the Youth Vote” Bill Clinton appealed to. To say nothing of the later freaks.

I’m tempted to write it off, but I’m not going to. For one thing, Obama, Clinton … they all won, and look at the incalculable damage they did. More importantly, I want to return to an issue we tabled earlier: The fact that there’s no “middle age” cohort in the Donk Party. They really are the Volkssturm — kids and oldsters. Or, if you prefer, they’re the Bolsheviks — having shot all their “technical intelligentsia” during The Revolution, they have to go out there and reinvent everything. All their accumulated experience is gone, so their rookies don’t just make rookie mistakes, they make the kind of mistakes that anyone with the tiniest shred of experience could see coming.

You know, those “hmmmm, I wonder what this big red button does?” types of mistakes.

You see it in the business world. Z Man, may he rest in peace, used to talk about this all the time. The Boomers were retiring, the kids were just so epically clueless, and all the thousands of workarounds and jimmy-rigged stuff that makes any operation go were seizing up, for lack of maintenance. And even the smart, ambitious kids were having a hell of a time getting up to speed, because they were looking for a Policies and Procedures manual that simply doesn’t exist. There’s no Official Manual for jimmy-rigged workarounds.

Say what you will about the Boomers, they’re competent. They might well be the last competent generation …

… maybe the older, smarter half of Gen X, but a) there were never that many of us, and b) in politics, as in so much else, the Groovy Fossils just would. NOT. leave, and so the competent among Gen X had to go do their own thing, if they ever wanted a chance to move up. This leaves your big Legacy Systems — you know, like the Apparat — in one hell of a bind. The Groovy Fossils don’t want to leave, but eventually they have to — 90 may be the new 30, but dead is dead. And they’re the only ones who know how to operate the Legacy Systems, because there are two, three “generations” of people who, if they had anything on the ball, had to go their own way.

Those who stayed had no choice, and all they know how to do is push buttons and fill in blanks. Look at Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Anyone 50 or older looks at her with horror, because we’ve all had to deal with that kind of kid. That’s the kind of person who has filled up every layer of the Apparat below Top Management. If they had anything at all on the ball, they’d be somewhere else … but they don’t, so now they’re all in Senior Management, because somebody’s got to do it, and they were better at pushing buttons and filling in blanks than anyone else who was available at the time.

But note that I’ve just been talking about candidates, politicians. The VOTERS are like that, too. See what I mean? That’s why it’s so dangerous … and very likely to succeed.

Severian, “Groovy, Baby!!”, Founding Questions, 2025-11-10.

December 11, 2025

US Democrats, like Canadian Liberals, love performative gestures but ghost on delivery

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

I’ve remarked many times that Canada’s federal Liberals love themselves some photo ops, sound bites, ribbon-cuttings, and making announcements in front of temporary stages … they can’t help themselves, they’re what happens to theatre kids who don’t have to grow up. The American Democrats seem to be falling into the same pattern of “putting on a show” rather than implementing policies that address whatever the declared problem really is:

In 2015, the City of Los Angeles announced an ambitious plan (led by the person we then referred to as Mayor Yogapants) to completely eliminate traffic deaths by 2025. It was a vision: Vision Zero, they called it. Ten years later, traffic deaths in Los Angeles have doubled. A wonderfully progressive local government announced a plan to eliminate something, so we got much more of that thing. A community group, @peoplesvisionzero, is now trying to carry out some version of the failed plan with guerilla traffic engineering, sneaking new safety infrastructure into place without city permission. Recent result:

In similar fashion, Gavin Newsom announced his ten-year plan to end California homelessness in 2008. I struggle with the math, but there’s a possibility that we’ve passed the ten-year mark since then. […]

Theater-kid governance is the empty-to-the-point-of-ruin declaration of a symbol-desire, a performance about what we want and don’t want. It doesn’t do anything; it’s a posture, not an action. To the extent that it does do any actual thing in physical reality, it creates pots of money to be looted by NGOs and metastasizing government bureaucracies.

Infamously, when California audited $24 billion in state homelessness spending last year, auditors couldn’t track where a bunch of the spending went, or figure out what it had paid for. See also the growing scandal over Somalian immigrant social services fraud in Minnesota. Facial expressions are made. Symbols are invoked. Money goes … somewhere. It’s a show, with a rich loot bucket, not an actionable set of policies that produce positive trends toward declared goals. By the way, it’s been fifteen years since the Obama administration and a Democratic-majority Congress made healthcare affordable.

California infrastructure is a persistent disaster, because the California legislature and our sociopathic idiot governor are deeply invested in signaling about warm and wonderful trans kids and standing up to Mean Orange Hitler. They don’t stoop to highways and bridges — they’re much too progressive. Related, the increasingly sharp near-term projected decline of fuel production in California is becoming a national security problem in a state that needs to gas up a lot of military traffic. The state performs constantly against Big Oil and its mean climate change agenda, and somehow keeps losing refineries. The endless symbol-gestures cause the loss of real things.

November 22, 2025

Democrats may come to regret their “refuse illegal orders” messaging

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Government, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Many current and former military folks ridiculed the Democrats for their sudden discovery of the right (and obligation) to refuse illegal orders … which has been part of western military doctrine since the end of World War Two. I poked some fun at them as well, but J.D. Tuccille points out that it’s a weird stance for the party that is always fully in favour of government agents’ maximizing their powers:

I favor government employees defying orders and sabotaging the instruments of the state as much as the next libertarian (well, maybe a little more). But I suspect the Democratic lawmakers urging members of the military and the intelligence community to “refuse illegal orders” haven’t entirely thought through their positions. While their advice is commendable so far as it goes, as officials of a political party known for its expansive view of the role of government their words are likely to come back and bite them on their collective asses. It’s hard to imagine them being so enthusiastic about a reboot of this message directed at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and IRS agents under a Democratic administration.

Lawmakers Say: Refuse Illegal Orders

In a video message released this week, Democratic Sens. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan and Mark Kelly of Arizona, and Reps. Chris Deluzio of Pennsylvania, Maggie Goodlander of New Hampshire, Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania, and Jason Crow of Colorado, introduce themselves with emphasis on their past roles in the military and intelligence agencies.

“We want to speak directly to members of the military and the intelligence community,” they say. “We know you are under enormous stress and pressure right now. Americans trust their military, but that trust is at risk. This administration is pitting our uniformed military and intelligence community professionals against American citizens. Like us, you all swore an oath to protect and defend this Constitution. And right now, the threats to our Constitution aren’t just coming from abroad, but from right here at home.”

That’s a nice lead-in. Then we get to the heart of the message: “Our laws are clear. You can refuse illegal orders. You can refuse illegal orders. You must refuse illegal orders. No one has to carry out orders that violate the law or our Constitution.”

Stirring stuff. And accurate. Referencing a Vietnam War-era atrocity, retired General Philip M. Breedlove, former Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, told NewsNation regarding the video, “Since My Lai, the way we have interpreted this is, as a combatant, as a military officer, you are not obligated, not obligated, to carry out an illegal or an immoral order. You simply refuse the order.”

[…]

Take Advice to Refuse Illegal Orders Seriously, and Apply It Universally

So, if we’re to take seriously — and I believe we are well-advised to do so — the six Democratic lawmakers’ advice that “no one has to carry out orders that violate the law or our Constitution,” there are interesting implications for our political culture. That’s because much of what the federal government does on a daily basis flouts constitutional protections and offends human decency.

So, how would Slotkin and Kelly, and Deluzio, Goodlander, Houlahan, and Crow, respond to campaign a few years from now under the next Democratic administration urging ATF and IRS agents, federal regulators, and general workers to refuse orders? How would they treat an attempt to recruit more whistleblowers like Manning and Edward Snowden?

Don’t get me wrong, I think the advice the lawmakers offer is praiseworthy. But I look forward to seeing it applied universally and becoming a permanent feature of our dealings with government. I suspect that likelihood hasn’t occurred to those six legislators, but thanks to them for showing the way.

In counterpoint to my original take on the issue, on the social media site formerly known as Twitter, Cynical Publius expresses his belief that the Democrats are actually encouraging disobedience to legal orders that they happen to dislike:

I’m not sure I’ve ever been angrier at Democrats than I am right now.

As a career Army officer, I take this latest nefarious chicanery from these filthy Congressional Democrat veterans quite personally,

It is loathsome and disgusting. You know, I know, they know and even their brainwashed acolytes know that what they are REALLY doing is encouraging active duty service members to refuse to follow lawful orders under the guise of pretending the orders are “unlawful”.

What these Democrat filth are doing is encouraging a form of military coup where service members get to decide not to do things they disagree with politically by pretending those otherwise lawful things are “unlawful”.

This is the greatest threat to US internal stability since the last time Democrats started a civil war. A military ruled by politics is no military at all. Instead, it is a group of armed thugs akin to the South American military juntas of the 1970s.

I cannot overstate what an extreme threat this situation is to our nation.

This is a precursor to civil war, initiated and deliberately created by traitorous elected officials hiding behind the honor of the uniform they once wore but now disgraced.

I have never been angrier.🤬

November 19, 2025

US Democrats issue clarion call to the military: “You must refuse illegal orders”

Filed under: Government, Law, Military, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Well, thank goodness that someone remembers Nuremberg! Apparently President Trump has been issuing illegal orders to the US Army, Navy, and Air Force, and these brave legislators are putting their careers — and even their lives — on the line to defend democracy. I’m unaware of what these specific orders may be, but as Chris Bray points out, he’s the Bad Orange Man so pretty much anything he orders must be illegal:

Note what they don’t say. They say that the American military is being “pitted against” their own countrymen, and they say to servicemembers that “you can refuse illegal orders …”

… they don’t say, even once, even in a pretty clear hint, precisely what illegal orders Trump has issued. He’s being vaguely bad, so you don’t have to obey him. The serious version would look like this: On [date here], the President of the United States ordered [unit name] to enter [place name] for the purpose of [specific action], and that order violated [explicit citation of US Code]. They mushmouth around a set of feelings-signals about Mean Orange Something, but they never quite manage to spit it out. What’s the illegal order anyone is supposed to disobey, and what makes it illegal? News reports suggest that they mean to refer to the boat strikes, but click on that link if you want to see more vagueness and weak hinting.

This is exactly what the Catholic bishops just did in their own stupid virtue performance, the precise mark of an absence of seriousness in a coven of drama queens, as they declared that they’re very concerned about questions that have arisen regarding certain situations involving immigrants. More mush from the wimps. Donald Trump is very bad, because mumble mumble mumble. Be precise and clear, or be silent.

This is an age of unseriousness, and here’s another heaping plate of it. Soldiers, you don’t have to obey the orders of your military superiors if you feel that they, that they, uh, oh hey look at the time anyway I have to go. It’s passive-aggressive bad girlfriendspeak as politics. I guess if you feel like you have to obey, that’s fine. No, it’s fine! I’m not mad! Let’s just go to dinner!

We want to speak directly to members of the military, but we don’t actually have anything to say. Just, you know, disobey the president. Small thought, not a big deal.

High school drama club president Elissa Slotkin has been banging on this drum in an especially insistent way, as she holds town hall meetings with veterans who mumble their own vague slogans about Trump bein’ against the Constitution real hard and stuff.

But all of their descriptions are stupid. Sending a few hundred National Guard troops to a city of hundreds of thousands of people with narrow orders about protecting federal facilities and personnel or patrolling to deter violence isn’t military conquest of the population or the militarization of all law enforcement. The hyperbole renders the argument insane. Related, the veterans in Slotkin’s video talk about the “systematic removal” of military leaders, and the “purge of the generals”. The US military has over 800 flag officers; the Trump administration has removed about 15. There’s a desperate stupidity to all of this panic-mongering that just renders it deeply tiring.

Actual servicemembers will be familiar with the rhetorical style of the shithouse lawyer, the idiot in the barracks who tells you that akshully they can’t order you to do that, it’s totally illegal.

You should just tell your drill sergeant that you refuse! He can’t even do nothin’ about it! He’ll just back right down!

November 6, 2025

Mamdanimentum – NYC gets its very own Justin Trudeau clone

Filed under: Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

It’s been decades since I last visited New York City, so I don’t know if they really deserve what they’ve just voted for, but I guess we’ll all get to find out over the next few years. On the City Journal substack, Reihan Salam weighs in on the newly elected mayor and what to watch for:

New York State Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani photographed in Assembly District 36, 10 February 2024.
Photo by Kara McCurdy via Wikimedia Commons.

A year ago, not even the most perfervid Astoria leftist would have thought that Zohran Mamdani would soon be elected mayor of New York City. Back then, it was easier to imagine Eric Adams coasting to reelection on the strength of declining crime, or state attorney general Tish James, who came close to running for mayor in 2021, swooping in to unite a fractious Democratic coalition. With Adams badly damaged by a federal indictment and James anxious about what a mayoral bid would mean for her ongoing battle with President Donald Trump, however, the path was seemingly clear for Andrew Cuomo to make a dramatic comeback.

Though it was no secret that Cuomo had real weaknesses, thanks to his polarizing tenure as governor, his name recognition and formidable fundraising machine were enough to freeze out other serious contenders. As a result, the Democratic mayoral field was so bereft of talent that Mamdani — an obscure, hard-left state assemblymember with no legislative or professional accomplishments to speak of — was able to cut through, buoyed by surging anti-Israel sentiment and a series of half-baked pseudo-solutions to the city’s very real affordability crisis.

From one vantage point, then, Mamdani is best understood as an accidental mayor. If federal prosecutors had declined to prosecute Adams, if James had jumped in and Cuomo had stayed out, if Hamas had surrendered its hostages a few months sooner, if moderates and conservatives had consolidated behind a single candidate in the general election, or if any of a number of other possibilities had obtained — the outcome of New York City’s 2025 mayoral race would have been quite different.

In another sense, however, Mamdani’s victory represents the culmination of New York’s larger leftward turn. The shift started in 2018 with the dissolution, at Cuomo’s behest, of the state’s Independent Democratic Conference, an eight-member coalition of centrist Democratic senators who caucused with the Republicans. Their subsequent replacement heralded a broader takeover of Albany by progressives who — again, with Cuomo’s assent — passed a series of ideologically inflected bills: bail reform, the “most aggressive climate change legislation in the nation“, and a major overhaul of tenant protection statutes, to name only a few.

The Mamdani revolution was led by downwardly mobile elites — children of the professional class struggling to make ends meet and entranced by the promises of frozen rent and fare-free buses. They were fired by the same ideas that animated those Albany progressives: that some New Yorkers have been handed the short straw, that soak-the-rich policies can correct these imbalances, and that New York’s private sector was resilient enough to sustain a further ratcheting up of punitive taxation and regulation.

The voters of NYC are not the same demographic distribution as of old … among other things, the Jewish population has shrunk while the Muslim population has grown to nearly the same over the last 25 years, although Jewish women probably voted more similarly to women generally in this election:

October 26, 2025

The financial gap between Zohran Mamdani’s promises and what NYC can afford

Filed under: Economics, Government, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Short of a couple of political earthquakes, Zohran Mamdani is going to be the next mayor of New York City. He has, as Andrew Sullivan admits, a lot going for him with Democratic voters, but he’ll have to get some special magic formula working to fund all the things he’s promising:

New York State Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani photographed in Assembly District 36, 10 February 2024.
Photo by Kara McCurdy via Wikimedia Commons.

It is not hard to see the appeal of Zohran Mamdani. He is, after all, not Andrew Cuomo — another corrupt, old, Democratic sexual harasser who’s already spent years in power and thinks he’s entitled to be mayor because of his last name. He doesn’t appear steeped in petty corruption like Mayor Adams. He’s not as obviously nutty as Sliwa seems to be. And he has done politics, pace Ezra, the right way: listening to the other side, earning people’s votes one by one, talking to people on the street, and, of course, mastering our new collective replacement for civil discourse: 30-second videos on TikTok.

Those videos are fantastic. Check out this one in favor of freezing rents in NYC, with the man, in full suit and tie, jumping into a freezing bay and out again. Or this one about “Halalflation” — on how licensing food carts has become a grift for middlemen. Or this one, when he sits down with two old white men — one for Adams and one for Cuomo — and tries to talk them into an alternative. If I were a Democrat, I’d be thrilled to see someone this fresh, this approachable, and this likable as a new face of the party. He’s young and charming and upbeat in a party lacking in all three.

He’s also right to focus his campaign on the question of affordability. New York City is ridiculously expensive in every way; the toll that high taxes and inflation have taken on working-class residents has been huge. Capitalism isn’t working the way it should, and we need to reboot our economic policies to address that as a priority. Trump has promised this but is delivering the opposite. Just this morning, we see an accelerating inflation rate. An opening beckons.

So I get why Mamdani is popular. And I have little doubt he will be the next mayor, as well as a major national figurehead for the Democrats — a nice dose of youth to a party debilitated by seniorityitis. He will define the Democrats nationally — certainly if the GOP has any say in it. And in many ways, he is the perfect candidate for today’s Dem elites: wealthy, woke, with a degree in “Africana studies.” His only problem is not being female — but since he denies that the category of female exists, no big deal I suppose. He will give the MSNBC/Bulwark crowd a new lease on self-righteousness.

But to be honest, when I read his proposals, at first I thought I was reading a high-schooler’s essay. Free everything! I mean: why not? Free universal childcare for kids as young as six weeks old. Free buses for everyone. Rent control for everyone already privileged by it. Subsidized collective supermarkets. $30-an-hour minimum wage by 2030 — up from $16.50. Woohoo! And arresting Bibi as an added bonus. (I have to say the last plank might even tempt me to vote for him.)

The problem, of course, is how to pay for it. And a NYC mayor, quite simply, cannot. Mamdani simply won’t have the power. None of the tax hikes he proposes — a new 2 percent tax on everyone earning over $1 million a year, and jacking up the corporate tax to 11.5 percent — can be passed by his council. Albany has the final say, will almost certainly say no, and the Democratic governor, Hochul, opposes the hikes.

So a lot of this is purely performative, no? He has a good chance to create his Soviet bodegas and, in all likelihood, freeze rents if he replaces members of the board. (That will, of course, make housing availability and expense even worse.) He may be able to wangle some increase in NYC’s minimum wage — by trying to bypass Albany. But doubling it in five years? Meh. All of the economic stuff is iffy because of the very probable lack of funding. Maybe a big victory will change the dynamics and allow a big tax hike in one of the most highly taxed cities on earth. But it’s hard to believe it.

So what’s left? What’s left is cultural leftism on hormones. You may get daycare — but it will come with full woke indoctrination of kids from the earliest years on. No more “boys” or “girls” allowed! Mamdani, as we all know, regards the police as the enforcers of “white supremacy“, supports the end of Israel as a Jewish state, will subsidize the transing of children with no safeguards, and has erased gays and lesbians from our own history, re-marginalizing us as “queers”. There’s no one the woke left hates more than an empowered and integrated person who just happens to be gay or lesbian.

Like all good critical-theory racists, Mamdani believes in a racial hierarchy with whites, Jews, and Asians as oppressors, and blacks and Hispanics and “queers” as victims; he wants to make NYC “the strongest sanctuary city in the country” — i.e. go to war with ICE — and kill the educational programs that help gifted poor kids in kindergarten — because most turn out to be of the oppressor races. A racist, in other words — to his fingertips.

And he is a near-perfect foil for Trump. “Queer liberation means defund the police,” he once tweeted — though he says he no longer wants to defund the cops. It’s the kind of 2020 slogan almost designed to ensure MAGA control of the national discourse forever. And if I were a show-runner on the Trump show, Mamdani would be central to provoking the kind of real fascist putsch that Trump and Miller are itching for, if they can find a suitable provocation. Mamdani is that provocation. He will go to war with ICE in NYC, and Trump will go to war with him. And broadcast it every day.

October 25, 2025

Red tribe versus Blue tribe

Filed under: Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

David Friedman responds to a recent post by Scott Alexander at Astral Codex Ten, discussing the differences between the bicoastal “blue” and flyover “red” tribes in US culture and politics:

A pair of images from a search for “Red tribe versus Blue tribe”. I assume this is from a TV show.

One commenter on my post observed that both I and the majority of my readers are culturally closer to the bicoastal elite than to flyover country, to Blue than to Red by Scott’s terminology. That started me thinking about how one could tell. What are the markers for tribal membership? On how many of them am I Blue, how many Red?

Here is my list. “Blue Tribe does X” does not mean everyone in Blue Tribe or even a majority do X, it means most people who do X are Blue Tribe — a marker not a definition. Similarly for Red Tribe. Someone who has many markers for Red Tribe and few for Blue Tribe is probably Red and similarly for Blue.

What You Own

Red Tribe drives a pickup truck, SUV or sports car, Blue Tribe drives an EV or at least a hybrid, probably a Prius. A cybertruck, both EV and pickup truck, codes Red.

Red Tribe owns guns. Blue Tribe doesn’t own guns, thinks that people who do are being stupid.

Blue Tribe owns sailboats, Red Tribe power boats.

Philosophy and Religion

Blue Tribe believe that they are moral relativists, take seriously the “you shouldn’t stop the Eskimo from putting his grandfather on an ice floe to die because in his moral system that is not wicked” argument. Like almost all humans they are actually moral realists, take it for granted that their moral beliefs are true, including the belief that you shouldn’t … Red Tribe are also moral realists but it never occurs to them that they shouldn’t be.

Blue Tribe are atheists, mainstream Protestants, Catholics who use birth control. Red Tribe are Evangelicals, possibly Fundamentalists, possibly Catholic. Preachers of both tribes preach things their tribe already believe in, but different things.

Blue Tribe believe in evolution, take it for granted that all reasonable people, including all their friends and acquaintances, do. Some but not all of them understand it except when understanding it leads to conclusions they don’t like.1 Red Tribe don’t believe in evolution, take it for granted that all reasonable people, including all their friends and acquaintances, share that belief, mostly don’t understand it.

Marriage and Children

Blue Tribe thinks having from zero to two children is fine, three a little odd, more than three weird. Red Tribe thinks there is something wrong with a couple that has fewer than two kids and that more is better.

Blue Tribe marries late, Red Tribe early. Blue Tribe sees a couple meeting in college, marrying after they graduate, as one possible pattern, marrying later than that another and perhaps more prudent. Red Tribe likes the idea of a couple meeting in high school.

What They Do

Red Tribe hunts. Blue Tribe doesn’t hunt and disapproves of people who do.

Red Tribe goes to football and baseball games, watches professional wrestling. Blue Tribe plays pickleball, drives their children to soccer games.

Red Tribe watches television, including soap operas, unashamedly. Blue Tribe watches soap operas ashamedly, leftish talk shows unashamedly.

Red Tribe listens to country music. Blue Tribe youth listens to rap, as do Red Tribe blacks. Blue Tribe approves of classical music but rarely listens to it.

Red Tribe males like to show off how strong they are. Blue Tribe, male or female, likes to show off how smart and well educated they are.

Blue Tribe drinks coffee in coffee shops. Red Tribe doesn’t.

  1. Such as that intelligence must be heritable or that the distribution of intellectual abilities is unlikely to be the same for men as for women since both are optimized for reproductive success and play different roles in reproduction.
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