Quotulatiousness

March 31, 2025

The infighting among the Conservatives is becoming a story in this election

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

Listening to Jen Gerson and Matt Gurney on The Line podcast a few days ago, I was surprised to hear that the Ontario Progressive Conservatives seem to be trying to actively torpedo the federal Conservative election campaign. While internecine combat among conservative factions is pretty normal, it isn’t quite as normal for it to be happening in the middle of a federal election campaign. It’s almost as if Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s team would rather throw the election to the Liberals than to let Pierre Poilievre’s team score a win. Some friction, sure, but this level of conflict is almost unheard of.

At Acceptable Views, Alexander Brown mulls the chatter he’s been hearing from the campaign trail:

“Something’s really going on here,” says word from on the ground in once-Liberal-safe Toronto.

“The polls say one thing, but we’ve never given out so many signs. We’ve had to print thousands more than usual.”

“We’re actually doing just fine,” says another source high up on the federal campaign trail.

“Don’t believe the chatter from disgruntled so-called conservatives … Nobody here is hanging up their skates. We’ve had a very good week — long days notwithstanding! — and are beginning to inflict solid brand damage on Carney.”

“The best is yet to come. We are running the campaign we should be running. One that’s true to conservative values and principles.”

On that “chatter”, this non-profit campaigner and writer has no qualms about going weapons-hot.

For those unaware, Ford-“conservative” insiders in Ontario have been taking to the media circuit, issuing complaint after complaint, as both anonymous and named sources, in an effort to pull the Conservatives off of major pocketbook issues such as immigration, housing, affordability, and crime, and on to, all but exclusively, Trump, Trump, Trump.

It matters to them not, apparently, that the Liberals have lucked into booby-trapping both sides of the Trump issue, and that it forces the Conservatives onto uneven terrain.

Drag this out and make it worse, as Carney has largely chosen to do? His elbows are up!

Get shoved around by the administration to the south? See, this is why he’s the one to deal with it. He’s Trump’s enemy!

(Apparently, it also matters not that Carney has received repeated pats on the head and quasi-endorsements from #45, and now, #47.)

The real story here? Allegedly embittered that they were left out of the war-room for reasons of not being all that conservative and being untrustworthy (a point they are now proving over and over again), and wanting to neglect a youth vote they were incapable of turning out, a select few in an Ontario crew think they know best, and would rather engage in public displays of industrial sabotage than keep it private and above the belt.

It’s a ridiculous little consultant slap-fight, at a time when 5000 people are standing out in the rain, to tell a man they don’t know that their Canadian Dream is now a nightmare, that they’re now drowning in debt and don’t feel hope for the future.

“These guys have no idea what they’re talking about. When this is all over, I hope they regret ever weighing in like this.”

For Doug Ford’s campaign manager Kory Teneycke, who has been working the Liberal podcast and media circuit the hardest, it might be worth noting that not every campaign has the advantage — nor indulgence — of being able to run on Liberal-lite and solely Trump.

The Ontario PCs were granted the easy road of being able to cut the corner to the polls in February, in an election no one asked for, while running Carney-adjacent messaging, and they still couldn’t pick up a seat against the worst Ontario Liberal leader of a generation.

The Line‘s Gerson and Gurney both seem quite taken with the attacks on Poilievre by Ford’s right-hand spokes-hatchetman, but others are reporting lots of enthusiasm on the campaign trail and contrasting it with Carney’s handlers deliberately keeping the PM away from the press as much as they can.

The numbers of people who show up to political events isn’t a dependable metric, but if the disproportion gets to the point that you’re able to hand-count the number of supporters at a given venue, it might be a useful bit of anecdata:

March 24, 2025

Canada could learn from the Finnish example

Filed under: Cancon, History, Military, USA, Weapons — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

US President Donald Trump tossed several grenades into the still waters of Canadian defence platitudes and forcefully called attention to the clear fact that Canada has been a world-leader in defence freeloading since the late 1960s. In The Line, Tim Thurley suggests that Canada should look more closely at how Finland has maintained its sovereignty with a larger, militarily dominant, and unpredictable neighbour for more than a century:

Map of Finland (Suomen kartta) by Oona Räisänen. Boundaries, rivers, roads, and railroads are based on a 1996 CIA map, with revisions. (via Wikimedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Map_of_Finland-en.svg)

Canadians pretended we didn’t need to take defence seriously. We justified it with fantasies — the world wasn’t that dangerous, threats were distant, and America would rescue us if needed. That delusion is dead. U.S. Republicans and some Democrats don’t trust us to defend our own territory. Trump openly floated annexation and made clear that military protection now comes at a price — potentially statehood. Canadian military leaders now describe our closest ally as “unpredictable and potentially unreliable”. And even when America was a sure bet, our overreliance was reckless. Sovereignty requires self-defence; outsourcing it means surrendering power.

We should take cues from nations in similar situations, like Finland. Both of us border stronger powers, control vast, harsh landscapes, and hold valuable strategic resources. We’re internally stable, democratic, and potential targets.

We also share a key strength — one that could expand our military recruitment, onshore defence production, rebuild social trust, and bolster deterrence: a strong civilian firearms tradition.

We should be doing everything we can to make that tradition a bigger part of Canadian defence, and a larger part of our economy, too.

That may sound absurd to some Canadians. It shouldn’t. Finland is taking full advantage by attempting to expand shooting and military training for civilians both through private and public ranges and the voluntary National Defence Training Association. Finland is seeking to massively upgrade civilian range capacity by building 300 new ones and upgrading others to encourage civilian interest in firearms and national defence, and is doing so in partnership with civilian firearm owners and existing non-government institutions.

Multiple other states near Finland are investing in similar programs. Poland is even involving the education system. Firearm safety training and target practice for school children are part of a new defence education curriculum component, which includes conflict zone survival, cybersecurity, and first aid training. Poland’s aim is to help civilians manage conflict zones, but also to bolster military recruitment.

Lithuania and Estonia encourage civilian marksmanship as part of a society-wide comprehensive defence strategy. The Lithuanian Riflemen’s Union, one of the small nation’s most recognizable institutions, is a voluntary government-sponsored organization intended to prepare civilians for resistance to an occupying power. It has 15,000 members in a population of 2.8 million. The Estonian Defence League trains mostly-unpaid civilian volunteers in guerrilla warfare. It has an 80 per cent approval rating in Estonia, where over one in every 100 men and women with ordinary jobs have joined to learn defence techniques, including mastering standard-issue military service rifles that they may keep at home, ready to fight on a moment’s notice.

These strategies are modern. These countries are no strangers to cutting-edge modern warfare, necessitated by a common border with an aggressive Russia. But technologies like drones are not a replacement for a trained and motivated citizenry, as the Ukraine conflict illustrates. Against a stronger and more aggressive neighbour, these societies deter and respond to aggression through organized, determined, and trained populations prepared to resist attackers in-depth — by putting a potential rifle behind every blade of grass.

Canada, meanwhile, is spending money to hurt our own capacity. It’s coming back to bite us. The Trudeau government misused civilian firearm ownership as a partisan political wedge and ignored the grave flaws of that strategy when they were pointed out, hundreds of times, by good-faith critics. Thousands of firearm models have been banned at massive and increasing expense since 2020 despite no evident public safety benefit. In the recently concluded party leadership race, Mark Carney pledged to spend billions of dollars confiscating them. Government policies eliminating significant portions of business revenue have maimed a firearm industry that historically contributed to our defence infrastructure. Civilian range numbers, which often do double-duty with police and even military use, plunged from roughly 1,400 to 891 in five years. Without civilians to maintain ranges for necessary exercises and qualification shoots, governments must assume the operating expenses, construct new ranges, or fly participants elsewhere to train.

March 23, 2025

Tariffs versus income taxes – pick your poison

Filed under: Economics, Government, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:29

Walter Block on the pros and cons (from the government’s point of view) of income taxes and tariffs:

Every fiber of my economic being cries out against tariffs. If they are so good, why doesn’t each state in the US have one against the products of all of the other 49? That is, Ohio could “protect” its industries against the incursions from Arizona. This is obviously silly. One of the important reasons America is so prosperous is that we have a gigantic, internal, free trade area.

Donald Trump supports them on the ground that the McKinley administration was prosperous, and relied upon tariffs. But this is to commit the post hoc ergo propter hoc logical fallacy: that since A precedes B, A must be the cause of B. No, America did indeed become rich during this epoch, but that was in spite of tariffs, not due to their benign influence. If you are looking for a historical episode to shed light on this matter, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930 will do far better: it greatly worsened an already bad recession, plunging our economy into a deep depression.

Our President also claims that the US is victimized by a negative balance of trade: we buy more from Canada and other countries than they purchase from us. However, I have a horrid balance of trade with McDonald’s and Wal-Mart. I acquire several hundreds of dollars’ worth of their products every year, and neither has yet seen fit to reciprocate with any of my economic services (hint, hint!). On the other hand, I have a very strong positive balance of trade with my employer, Loyola University New Orleans. They pay me a decent salary; apart from a few lunches in their cafeteria, my expenditures to them fill their coffers to a zero degree. Should anyone worry about this sort of thing? Of course not. Ditto for international trade. If Country A buys more from B than it sells to it, money will flow from the former to the latter, reducing prices in the former and raising them in the latter, until matters balance out.

Everyone realizes the foolishness of tariffs when it comes to absolute advantage. No Canadian objects to the importation of bananas from Costa Rica. Producing this tropical product in the frozen North would be financially prohibitive (gigantic hothouses). Ditto for maple syrup in the country to the south. The only way they could produce this item would be to place maple trees in gigantic refrigerators. Ludicrous and prohibitively expensive.

But when it comes to comparative advantage, all too many people are out to lunch insofar as the teachings of Economics 101 are concerned. They fear that other countries might be more efficient than we are; with free trade, they would produce everything, we, nothing, and we would all starve to death from massive unemployment.

March 22, 2025

Fundraising is much tougher for Democrats right now … and they’re not coping well

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

It’s not just Canadian politicians getting driven completely insane by the Bad Orange Man’s antics — he’s even doing it to his domestic opponents in the Democratic party as well:

“REMINDER: It Is Offensive And Possibly Illegal To Photoshop Anything On These Democrats’ Signs That Would Make Them Look Foolish.
The Babylon Bee.

Kansas City Star:

    Democrats Suffer Blow Ahead of Senate Elections

It’s a goddamn slide show, but as it might be amusing I shall wade in. The things I do for you people …

    Sen. Jeanne Shaheen’s retirement is expected to significantly impact the Democratic Party’s prospects for the upcoming Senate elections, amplifying pressure on Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY). The party’s challenges ahead have heightened with the departures of Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI) and Sen. Tina Smith (D-MN). Democrats must regain four seats to reclaim the majority.

It sure looks like the Donks are planning to get clobbered in 2026. Or, more likely, they anticipate a series of bruising primary fights as the old grift-and-grin Democrats are challenged by True Believers, because as HGG has taught us — credit where it’s due — SJWs always double down. Batshit insanity is the hill they’ve chosen to die on — Trump keeps handing them 80/20 issues, and they keep jumping on the 20 with both feet.

    CNN’s Chris Cillizza recently noted the Party’s challenges in the upcoming Senate elections. With the need for a net gain of four seats, Cillizza expressed concern over potential financial limitations that may hinder effective campaigning.

Yes. “Financial limitations”. Democrat donors are stupid — if they weren’t, they wouldn’t be Democrats — but even they can see that 80 is way, way bigger than 20.

Oh, and also: It doesn’t help that you’re openly, gleefully endorsing no-shit terrorism against Tesla dealerships — and drivers! — calling for Musk’s assassination, and so on. It’s a bad look in general, and a bad look in particular, because now the guys with the big checkbooks are wondering if that kind of thing won’t happen to them if they get crosswise with the most lunatic members of the lunatic fringe (hint: It will. As the scorpion said to the frog: can’t be ‘elped, mate, it’s me nature).

    Cillizza said, “The money that gets spent there playing defense, just to hold Democratic seats, means money that doesn’t get spent playing offense in, let’s say, a state like Ohio, where Democrats are trying to recruit Sherrod Brown, the former senator, to take on John Huston, the appointed Republican senator.”

Yes, a dwindling asset pool forces those kinds of choices. It also doesn’t help that you keep going back to the well like that. One assumes there’s a reason Sherrod Brown is a former senator. Do you have no one else?

Haha, just kidding, obviously you don’t have anyone else. That’s one of the biggest problems with gerontocracy — the Groovy Fossils are going to have to be carried out at room temperature, so anyone with anything on the ball has been giving Government a pass since the 1980s. Trump went around the Official GOP for lots of reasons, but not the least of them was: he had to. They have the same gerontocracy problem as the other side of the Uniparty. It’s turtles all the way down.

    Cillizza concluded, “I just do not see it. I don’t see the money there. I don’t see the energy there. I don’t see the candidates there to expand the playing field”.

It won’t be for lack of trying, though. You’ve still got The Media in your pocket, and they can still do some damage. You’ll never get to the 80 side of those 80/20 issues, but you might get it to 50/50 — as has been done with abortion, gay “marriage”, and so on. On the other hand, those took 40, 50 years, and The Media hadn’t totally pissed away all its credibility back then. It’s a real corner you’ve backed yourselves into, guys gals persyns.

It also doesn’t help that you’re stupid:

    Democrats have identified potential pickup opportunities in Maine and North Carolina, targeting Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC).

Holy breakdancing Buddha, why would you target them? Thom Tillis is the very definition of “RINO”; Collins is a Leftist, full stop. The next time they vote against the Democrats on any issue of substance will be the first time they’ve ever done it. It’s as predictable as sunrise, so much so that it’s a joke to anyone right of Mao — the GOP officially has X number of seats, minus Collins and Murkowski.

    Vulnerabilities among current incumbents, especially Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA), have added to the party’s challenges.

    Oh, don’t worry about it — the GOP will find some way to throw it. Georgia, Georgia … hey, what’s Herschel Walker up to these days? Think he’s up for another run? Why not parachute in Alan Keyes or Ben Carson? They’re still alive, right? What about “Nikki” “Haley”? She’s gotta keep her arm loose for the 2028 primaries …

      Some Democrats have remained optimistic despite the hurdles. Discussions have included potential candidates such as Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) and State Sen. Mallory McMorrow (D-MI) for key races. New Hampshire Democrats have prepared for competitive primaries, with Rep. Chris Pappas (D-NH) considering a bid for Shaheen’s seat.

    As we know, when it comes to crime 13 does 50. When it comes to Leftism, though, it’s more like 20 does 100, and there’s no better illustration than New Hampshire. It should be the reddest state in the union, and people who live there tell me it really is… except for their Congresscritters, because the good people of New Hampshire didn’t shoot every Masshole they could catch. The fine folks in Oregon, Colorado, and (soon enough) Texas know what I mean — y’all didn’t introduce migrating Californians to wood chippers when you had the chance.

March 21, 2025

Apparently the US Constitution elevates the judiciary over the other branches of government

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Government, Law, Military, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Chris Bray on recent innovative judicial activism to constrain the evil machinations of the Bad Orange Man:

It won’t be news to anyone that the federal judiciary has decided Donald Trump has no authority as President of the United States but to serve and protect the status quo, absolutely without deviation. Change is unconstitutional. Policy is unconstitutional. But even by that standard, today has been very special.

Without digging into all the details about everything, skim your way through a single judicial decision to begin to see what’s happening: the decision from District Court Judge Ana Reyes, ordering the Department of Defense to allow the continued service of transgender military personnel. You can click here to read it, or open the PDF file below.

This is not a judicial decision. I mean, it is a judicial decision, but it doesn’t represent judicial culture or a judicial outlook. At all. It’s a bitchy schoolgirl essay about being fair and not being mean, with healthy doses of platitudinous foot stompery. Screenshot, bottom of page one and top of page two:

“Today, however, our military is stronger and our Nation is safer for the millions of such blanks (and all other persons) who serve.” Because she says so, is why. The old bigoted American military was very weak. I don’t remember: Did the old dumb bigots ever even win any wars or anything?

[…]

Our military is much stronger now than it was when gay and transgender service wasn’t warmly encouraged, the end. (Stomps foot.) It’s a TikTok video formatted to look like a, you know, a judge thing. You can even agree with the judge and see that she hasn’t made an argument. “Today, however, our military is stronger.” Like when we beat the Taliban, or all the other wars we’ve won lately. This is the declarative reality in which a thing becomes true because you type it.

Now, watch this. Watch Judge Ana Reyes roll right over herself without noticing that she’s doing it. You don’t have to read past page two to see this.

On page one, she characterizes the reasoning — the premise the administration advanced to forbid military service by transgender personnel: “Service by transgender persons is ‘inconsistent’ with this mission because they lack the ‘requisite warrior ethos’ to achieve ‘military excellence’.” That’s it, those mean monsters! That’s their whole reason! They said trans people can’t serve because of, I don’t know, some stupid ethos thing. What does that even mean?

March 19, 2025

The Trumpocalypse – “The outlook for universities has become dire”

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

John Carter suggests that American higher education needs to find a new funding model that doesn’t depend on governments to shower their administrative organizations with unearned loot:

Shortly after taking power, the Trump administration announced a freeze on academic grants at the National Science Foundation and the National Institute for Health. New grant proposal reviews were halted, locking up billions in research funding. Naturally, the courts pushed back, with progressive judges issuing injunctions demanding the funding be reinstated. Judicial activism has so far met with only mixed success: the NSF has resumed the flow of money to existing grants, but the NIH has continued to resist. While the grant review process has been restarted at the NSF, the pause created a huge backlog, resulting in considerable uncertainty for applicants.

The NIH has instituted a 15% cap to indirect costs, commonly referred to as overheads. This has universities squealing. Overheads are meant to offset the budgetary strain research groups place on universities, covering the costs of the facilities they work in – maintenance, power and heating, paper for the departmental printer, that kind of thing. Universities have been sticking a blood funnel into this superficially reasonable line item for decades, gulping down additional surcharges up to 50% of the value of research grants, a bounty which largely goes towards inflating the salaries of the little armies of self-aggrandizing political commissars with titles like Associate Vice Assistant Deanlet of Advancing Excellence who infest the flesh of the modern campus like deer ticks swarming on the neck of a sick dog. Easily startled readers may wish to close their eyes and scroll past the next few images btw, but I really want to make this point here. When you look at this:

A 15% overhead cap, if applied across the board, has an effect on the parasitic university administration class similar to a diversity truck finding parking at a German Christmas market. Thoughts and prayers, everyone.

Meanwhile at the NSF, massive layoffs are ongoing, and there are apparently plans to slash the research budget by up to 50%. While specific overhead caps haven’t been announced at the NSF yet, there’s every reason to expect that these will be imposed as well, compounding the effect of budget cuts.

There is no attempt to hide the motivation behind the funding freeze, which is obvious to both the appalled and the cuts’ cheerleaders. Just as overheads serve as a blood meal for the administrative caste, scientific research funding has been getting brazenly appropriated by political activists at obscene scales. A recent Senate Commerce Committee report found that $2 billion in NSF funding had been diverted towards DEI promotion under the Biden administration. In reaction to this travesty, as this recent Nature article notes, there are apparently plans to outright cancel ongoing grants funding “research” into gay race communism. DEI programs, formerly ubiquitous across Federal agencies, have already been scrubbed both from departmental budgets and web pages. Indeed, killing those programs was one of the first actions of the MAGA administration.

The outlook for universities has become dire, and academics have been sweating bullets all over social media. Postdocs aren’t being hired, faculty offers are being rescinded, careers are on hold, research programs are in limbo. This comes at the same time that budgets are being hit by declining enrolment due to the demographic impact of an extended period of below-replacement fertility along with rapidly declining confidence in the value of university degrees, with young men in particular checking out at increasing rates as universities become tacitly understood as hostile feminine environments. They’re hitting a financial cliff at the same point that they’ve burned through the sympathy of the general public.

The entire sector is in grave danger.

Politically, going after research funding is astute. Academia is well known to be a Blue America power centre, used to indoctrinate the young with the antivalues of race Marxism, provide a halo of scholarly legitimacy to the left’s ideological pronouncements, and hand out comfortable sinecures to left-wing activists. The overwhelming left-wing bias of university faculties is proverbial. The Trump administration is using the budgetary crisis as a handy excuse to sic its attack DOGE on the unclean beast – starting with cutting off funding to the most ideological research projects, but apparently also intending to ruin the financial viability of the progressives’ academic spoils system as a whole.

Cutting the NSF budget by half may seem at first glance like punitive overkill, and no doubt the left is screeching that Orange Hitler is throwing a destructive tantrum like a vindictive child and thereby endangering American leadership in scientific research. After all, for all the attention that NASA diversity programs have received, the bulk of research funding still goes to legitimate scientific inquiry, surely? However, the problems in academic research go much deeper than its relentless production of partisan activist slop. Strip out all of the DEI funding, fire every equitied commissar and inclusioned diversity hire, and you’re still left with a sclerotic academic research landscape that has spent decades doing little of use – or interest – to anyone, and doing this great nothing at great expense.

March 17, 2025

America’s modern Triumvirate

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

Last month, I posted John Carter’s amusing riff on Trump, Musk, and Vance as the American Pompey, Crassus, and Caesar, the original Triumvirate. Apparently John isn’t the only one struck by the similarities, as David Friedman also considers the three as America’s modern Triumvirate:

Trump, Vance, and Musk as America’s Triumvirate – Grok

Trump is the most important at present, since both Vance and Musk have political power only to the extent he gives it to them. He is a very competent demagogue, as demonstrated by his winning a series of political conflicts that almost everyone expected him to lose. So far as I can tell from his history he has no political views of his own, uses ideology as a tool to get power, attention, status. Conservatives were a substantial faction unhappy with the state of the nation, with what they viewed as the political and cultural domination of the country by their opponents, hence a potential power base for him. Progressives had overplayed their hand, pushed woke ideology too far, due to face a backlash, useful as enemies. He adopted the role of conservative champion, destroyer of wokeism, borrowing details of his program most recently from Project 2025, a detailed conservative plan for how a conservative administration could restructure the federal government.

Trump’s Ukraine policy is to produce a peace for which he could claim credit, a deal that holds until at least 2028. To force Zelensky to accept he had to make it believable that he was willing to drop US support for Ukraine if Ukraine refuses to go along, and he did. To force Putin to accept he will have to make it believable that the US is willing to continue, even expand, support for Ukraine if Russia refuses to accept a peace plan.

[…]

Assuming no rupture with Trump and no failure of their administration extreme enough to break Trump’s control over his party, Vance will be the Republican nominee in 2028. He is young, handsome and smart with a beautiful and intelligent wife, is playing a minor role now but could be a major political figure in the post-Trump world. Unlike Trump he has political views of his own, not merely the desire for power. What are they?

I devoted two of my earlier posts to trying to answer that question, Vance and Revising the Republican Party. My conclusion:

    The conservative movement of Bill Buckley rejected the New Deal. Vance does not. The past he wants to return to is an idealized version of America in the fifties, perhaps the sixties. The movement he wants to build rejects both the pro-market economics of the pre-Trump conservative movement and the cultural program of current progressives. He wants an America of stable marriages, views parents as more reliably committed to the future than the childless — hence the much-quoted line about childless cat ladies. One of his more intriguing proposals is that children should get votes, cast by their parents, giving a family with three children five votes.

    …

    The Republican party Vance wants to build looks, economically, like the Democratic party of the fifties and sixties, culturally like the inverse of the progressive, aka woke, movement.

[…]

The project the three of them are attempting is a full scale revision of the federal government. Of the three, Musk is the one who might be competent to do it. Trump’s skill is charisma, the ability to get people to pay attention to him, admire him, want to please him. That is how he got to a position from which to revise the government but it is not the skill needed to do it. Vance has demonstrated even less of the relevant abilities; his accomplishments so far are writing a very interesting book and winning a senate election

Musk, in contrast, has created two very successful firms, taken over and revised a third. None were projects on the scale of what he is now attempting but they are smaller projects of the same sort. Hence it is at least possible that, with the authority Trump has so far been willing to delegate to him, he can convert the federal government into something smaller, less expensive, better functioning, judged at least by the standards of Trump and his supporters.

March 15, 2025

Trump’s actual goal in Ukraine

Filed under: Europe, Military, Russia, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

David Friedman posted this a couple of days ago, considering what President Trump’s real goals may be in the Russo-Ukraine conflict:

There are two possible interpretations of Trump’s policy. The pessimistic one is that he plans to give Putin what he wants, force Zelensky to accept peace terms that give Russia substantial amounts of Ukrainian territory and leave Ukraine disarmed and defenseless against future Russian demands. On that theory the clash with Zelensky was a pre-planned drama intended to provide an excuse for the US withdrawing support, make it less obvious that Trump now supports Putin. As of Monday that looked like a plausible reading of the situation.

The optimistic reading was that Trump wanted to force an end to the war on compromise terms, use the withdrawal of support to force Zelensky to agree. Tuesday’s news, Zelensky agreeing to a proposed cease fire and Trump responding by resuming US support for Ukraine, is evidence for that reading. The ball is now in Putin’s court. If he rejects the proposal Trump will be under pressure to continue, perhaps even increase, US support. That is a reason for him not to reject the proposal. My guess is that Putin will agree to a temporary cease fire, at least in principle, although he may haggle over details, try to push for a version more favorable to him.

What Trump wants, on the optimistic interpretation, which I now find likely, is to end the war. To do that he needs to find terms that both sides will accept. Zelensky will not accept terms that amount to surrender — even if the US abandons him, he has the option of continuing the war with increased support from the European powers, now moving to rearm. If they are sufficiently committed to Ukraine or sufficiently annoyed at the US they should be able to replace most, although not all, of what the US has been providing, if necessary with munitions purchased from the US; it is hard to imagine even Trump forbidding US arms manufacturers from selling to allies. Ukraine would be worse off than continuing the war with US support but, if Russia is willing to agree to terms Trump approves of and Ukraine is not, that will not be an option.

Putin was, despite American support for Ukraine under the previous administration, winning, although very slowly and at considerable cost. Unless Trump is willing to respond to Russian rejection of his peace plan by greatly increasing US support, which I think unlikely — no boots on the ground nor wings in the air — Putin has the option of returning to that, so will not accept anything much less. That suggests that the most likely terms amount to an extended cease fire. Ukraine does not disarm, Russia does not withdraw from territory it is occupying. Both sides stop blowing things up on territory controlled by the other, stop shooting at each other.

Judged by territorial control that is a win for Russia, since it ends up controlling most of what it wanted, the parts of Ukraine occupied by Russian speakers plus the areas that can block the water supply into Crimea, with Ukraine even further from recovering Crimea than before. That might be enough to let Putin present it to his population has a victory sufficient to justify the decision to invade Ukraine.

Seen from the outside, it would be an expensive victory, which might be enough to deter future adventurism or a renewal of the war. To get it, Russia has consumed a large part of the store of military equipment inherited from the Soviet Union, making it less formidable in any future conflict with Ukraine or anyone else. Worse still, the war has driven two neutral powers, both militarily substantial and one of them on the Russian border, into joining NATO. And between Putin and Trump they may have pushed the European powers into finally rearming. The population of the European NATO members is several times that of Russia, their economies as well:

    “It’s striking but it’s true. Right now, 500 million Europeans are begging 300 million Americans for protection from 140 million Russians who have been unable to overcome 50 million Ukrainians for three years.” (Donald Tusk, prime minister of Poland)

What would be the effect of an extended pause in the war on the balance of power between Russia and Ukraine, the prospects for a renewed conflict? Both Russia and Ukraine will be able to rebuild what the war has destroyed; that will be a bigger benefit for Ukraine, since it has lost much more. One of Russia’s advantages in the war was that it not only had more munitions, it could build more, could fire far more shells at Ukrainian forces than Ukraine could fire back. An extended pause will give Ukraine and its allies time to build the factories they need. It will give states not involved in the war, such as South Korea and India, time to build up supplies of armaments and ammunition some of which can be sold to Ukraine when and if the pause ends. It will give US arms firms time to expand for a world where there is increased demand for what they produce.

If the European powers go through with their current talk of greatly increased military expenditure and continue to back Ukraine, there will be much more money bidding for arms on behalf of Ukraine than on behalf of Russia. That could shift the balance when and if the war resumes.

March 10, 2025

Deep State delenda est

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Economics, Government, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Elizabeth Nickson calls for the destruction of the deep state, Cato the Censor-style: salt the earth and leave no stone standing upon another stone:

There has been some argument in my house about Trump’s tariffs on Canada, and indeed the rest of the world. I’m on the American side; why on earth should the Americans pay for everything? Because they do. They pay for Europe’s defence, they allow every single country to tariff American products while allowing their goods in for pennies. When anyone, anywhere is in trouble, who do they call? The Yanks. Where do the pleas of all the desperate people all over the world land? America. Who did the Israeli captives hope for? Trump and the Americans. (Actually just Trump. They didn’t think that the Biden people would lift a finger. Which they didn’t.)

Please explain why these countries below, numbering 550 million people, cannot defend themselves?

Why can’t they defend themselves? They are broke.

The following represents $150 billion in missed opportunity in the last FIVE years. Canada is so broke, it is broke-ass broke; it is a shriveling carbuncle on the American economy. We send 80% of our exports to you because we are TOO DAMNED LAZY to develop our own country.

If we had built those projects, Canada would be rich, the middle class would be crackling along, creativity would have soared and we would actually be proud. No one is proud of Canada except for the people paid to bloviate or who hope to be paid to bloviate, and those too stupid to bloviate. The rest of us are sullen and angry and so frustrated we don’t know what to do with ourselves.

But no. Climate Change. Look, I am sorry to say this, but anyone who “believes” in climate change being somehow catastrophic is stupid, malignant or has not done the required reading. Which means lazy. Which means childlike. There is no there there. Climate alarmism is nonsense, it is bullshit, it is utter crap made up by subsidized kids looking for “significance” and an endless supply of taxpayer dollars. The science is far too new to be reliable, there are thousands of real (not NGO) scientists in opposition to it and the policy implications are so vast we are looking at a new feudalism. Anyone promoting climate change is unserious.

Childhood is where we are. Canada is the only country in the Western Hemisphere which exacts a crippling carbon tax. And this:

The above is a perfect illustration of vanity, of a detachment from reality. And the only way people can detach from reality is that they are subsidized by the Americans. This means the Heartland people, the Flyover people. Those subsidies to the world added to a massive, unsustainable, insane, debt of thirty-seven trillion, created a giant fuzzy rainbow coloured cloud inhabited by perpetual children built by ghastly people like Samantha Powers, Al Gore, Hillary Clinton, and their legion of sick, larcenous, pedophile supporters, the ferociously stupid women on the east coat of America, the idiots at all the Ivies, and the two million federal workers who are about to be reduced by, I wish, 50%.

March 9, 2025

Europe’s leaders start talking about rearmament

Filed under: Europe, Government, Military, Russia — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Yet another side-effect of the Trumpening has been a shift in attitude among European leaders on the issue of self-defence and military spending. eugyppius points out that the flashy new media campaign to drum up support for the new position has “borrowed” its design from an unfortunate donor:

For three years we have had war in Ukraine, masterminded on the NATO side by senile warmonger-in-chief Joe Biden. This war included bizarre moments, like direct attacks on German energy infrastructure, and also escalatory brinksmanship, as when Biden authorised long-range missile strikes within Russian territory, and the Russians responded with a not-so-subtle threat of nuclear retaliation. Throughout all of this madness, the Europeans slept, sparing hardly a single thought for their defence. Now that Donald Trump hopes to end the war in Ukraine, however, Continental political leaders are losing their minds. War: not scary at all. Peace: an existential threat.

The first way our leaders hope to dispel the disturbing spectre of peace, is via Ursula von der Leyen’s “ReArm Europe” initiative, which will permit member states to take on billions in debt to fund their rearmament. In this way, the clueless histrionic Brussels juggernaut hopes (in the words of Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk) to “join and win the arms race” with Russia, even if (in the words of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung – h/t the incomparable Roger Köppel) we must “avoid for the moment a confrontation with the new Washington”. Becoming a global superpower with a view towards confronting the hated Americans is all about spending and time, you don’t need strategy or a plan or anything like that.

Those of you wondering whether it might be a better idea to rearm first and then set about alienating our powerful geopolitical partners simply lack the Eurotardian vision. These are such serious people, that in the space of a few days they spun up this remarkable logo for their spending programme …

… which obviously portrays the EU member states smearing yellow warpaint on themselves and in no way evokes the most notorious obscene internet image of all time. Nations just do stuff, but the Eurotards cannot even take a shit without bizarre hamfisted branding campaigns.

As I said, these are deeply serious people, and they also speak very seriously, in declarative sentences that don’t mean anything. In a publicity statement, von der Leyen said that these are “extraordinary times” which are a “watershed moment” for Europe and also a “watershed moment for the Ukraine”. Such extraordinary watersheds require “special measures,” such as “peace through strength” and “defence” through “investment”. Top EU diplomat and leading Estonian crazy person Kaja Kallas for her part noted that “We have initiative on the table” and that she’s “looking forward to seeing Europe show unity and resolve”. Perhaps there will also be money in the ReArm Europe programme to outfit Brussels with an arsenal of thesauruses so we do not have to hear the same words all the time.

At Roots & Wings, Frank Furedi says that “Europe Has Just Become A More Dangerous Place” thanks to the shift to “military Keynsianism” where future economic growth is mortgaged to current military spending:

Net Zero image from Jo Nova

Of course, it is still early days, and wise counsel may well prevail over Europe’s jingoistic shift towards a war economy. The justification for opting for military Keynesianism is the supposed threat posed by Russia to European security and the necessity for defending the integrity of Ukraine. However, it is evident to all that even if all the billions earmarked for the defense of Europe are invested wisely it will have little bearing on developments on the battlefields of Ukraine. Converting Germany’s ailing automobile industry to produce military hardware will take years as will the process of transforming Western Europe’s existing security resources into a credible military force.

Just remember that Germany’s railway infrastructure is currently in too poor a state to transfer tanks and other military hardware across the country. Years of obsessing with Net Zero Green ideology have taken their toll on Germany’s once formidable economy.

It is an open secret that Europe has seriously neglected its defence infrastructure. It is also the case that initiatives led by the EU and other European institutions are implemented at a painfully slow pace. The failure of the EU to offer an effective Europe wide response to the Covid pandemic crisis exposed the sorry state of this institutions capacity to deal with an emergency. The EU is good at regulating but not at getting things done. The EU’s regulatory institutions are more interested in regulating than in implementing a complex plan designed to rearm the continent.

Nor is the problem of transforming European defense into a credible force simply an matter to do with military hardware. European armies – Britain and France included – are poorly prepared for a war. The nations of the EU have become estranged from the kind of patriotic values necessary to support a real military engagement with Russia. Keir Starmer’s “coalition of the willing” raises the question of “willing to do what?”. At a time when neither France nor Britain can secure their borders to prevent mass illegal migration their willingness to be willing will be truly tested.

Macron and his colleagues may well be good at acting the role of would-be Napoleon Bonapartes. But these windbags are not in a position seriously affect the outcome of the war in Ukraine. As matters stand only the United States has the resources and the military-technological capacity to significantly influence the outcome of this war.

While all the tough talk emanating from the Brussels Bubble has a distinct performative dimension it is important to take seriously the dangers of unleashing an explosive dynamic that has the potential of quickly escalating and getting out of control. As we head towards a world of increased protectionism and economic conflict there is a danger that European rearmament could inadvertently lead to an arms race. History shows that such a development inevitably has unpredictable consequences.

What’s really concerning about the decision taken by the European Council is not simply its “spend, spend” strategy or its wager on the economic benefits of the arms industry. What is really worrying is that Europe’s leading military hawks lack clarity about the continent’s future direction of travel. Afflicted by the disease of geopolitical illiteracy the leaders of Europe have failed to address the issue of how they can navigate a world where the three dominant powers – America, China, Russia – have a disproportionately strong influence on geopolitical matters.

March 8, 2025

Kevin Zucker on “The Big Fat Surprise”

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

I just got the most recent free Wargame Design PDF from Operational Studies Group and found that Kevin Zucker, the head of the company and one of the best wargame designers ever, had indulged in a little bit of non-wargame writing to open this issue:

For decades, Teicholz tells us,

    … we have been told that the best possible diet involves cutting back on fat, especially saturated fat, and that if we are not getting healthier or thinner it must be because we are not trying hard enough. But what if the low-fat diet is itself the problem? What if the creamy cheeses, the sizzling steaks are themselves the key to reversing the epidemics of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease? Misinformation about saturated fats took hold in the scientific community, but recent findings have overturned these beliefs. Nutrition science has gotten it wrong, through a combination of ego, bias, and premature consensus, allowing specious conclusions to become dietary dogma.1

We are conditioned to think that some specialist always knows better than we do. Despite the common wisdom, I always ate butter, not margarine, despite the “experts”, because I trusted my instincts.2 With experts influencing you to disregard your senses and what you already know, you can learn to believe the opposite of what is natural and true … “Boys and girls are the same”; “men and women are the same”. The French structuralists, who have somehow taken over academia, talk as if the whole world is merely a verbal construct, and whatever we speak becomes literally true if repeated enough.3

In the 1960’s and ’70’s, males joined the feminine on a quest for identity through music, love and drugs. I too was taken-in by the “men and women are the same” argument, and fancied myself a feminist. For me, that illusion was eventually shattered upon contact with reality. Today, instead of liberation, in many quarters the feminine principle is actively denied and suppressed; to prove a point, many women have short-circuited their feminine side, while masculinity is reviled as toxic. So now we have feminized men and masculine women, and neither side is happy. Seventy percent of divorces are initiated by women.

During the recent campaign, women’s anger was used to divide the sexes. A wife filed for divorce in November because her spouse voted for the wrong candidate. Supporters of the two sides cannot even be in the same house, much less discuss their differences rationally. After all, someone might get “triggered”, a brand-new coinage that promotes a fatal lack of reflection. The media have abandoned the fig leaf of nuance and balance and have hit their stride in stirring up fear and polarizing hatred.

The main tool of the demagogue is to stir up one group against another: divide and conquer. How does a society remove the influence of demagogues? History shows that once democracy is destroyed, it doesn’t just grow back. Undemocratic methods, such as censorship, brainwashing, propaganda, and the stifling of dissent, cannot “protect” democracy — just the opposite. A government is only an instrumentality of power, and it is only as democratic as its administrative cogwheels. Power is either administered democratically or it is usurped by a strong man, by the administrative state, or by oligarchs such as the World Economic Forum (who meet regularly in Davos, Switzerland). So that is the choice we face at the moment. Ten years ago, a study by professors Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page found America to be no longer a democracy, but a functional oligarchy. Aside from the eternal vices of greed and projection, we urgently need a strong repudiation of the folly of structuralism. This conversation should be taking place in academia, whose original purpose was to foster such discussions, but academia has now become the stronghold of “safe spaces” where open dialogue cannot be held.

The main reason for studying history, in my view, is to understand the present moment: Where are we, where did we come from, how did we get here, where are we going?4

Today, I am hopeful, for the first time since January 2009. In a chat with my good friend John Prados, I remarked, “Surely, like the proverbial stopped clock, by sheer accident, Trump might be correct about a few things”.

“No, Kevin, everything he says is a calculated lie,” reducing politics to a cartoonish level. We are, after all, the first generation raised on cartoons, where good and evil are simplistically segregated into representative types. Donald Trump has been cast as “Bluto”. The President has certainly brought grist for the mill by his tweet of 15 February, echoing Napoleon: “He who saves his country does not violate any law”.5 We might not have Trump in office today if his first campaign hadn’t been assisted by the Clinton machine in 2016. He was the candidate they wanted to run against, so they promoted his tweets and made a star out of him — just to help him in the primaries. Unfortunately, they created a monster.

It is obvious that the two candidates in the recent election are not the best our country has to offer. This reveals the absolute corruption of the political system. It has been obvious for some time that most of our institutions are vastly corrupt, with disastrous consequences for all of us. As a historian it is not my job to take sides or make predictions about the future. In my view, no one can predict the future: neither of the stock market, nor even tomorrow’s weather. A historian has to be concerned with facts, known, established and well-documented, not gloomy prognostications. Many pundits make their gravy by spouting dire predictions, but there is no one to hold them to account if they are inaccurate or flat-out lies. The voices of hysteria are still tooting like they hadn’t been repudiated at the ballot box.

I was asked recently, which sources of information I trust. I don’t trust any of them. I agree with Suzanne Massie, a scholar of Russian history: “Trust, but verify”. With historical research, a single source is insufficient, especially on controversial issues. As you dig deeper, you find a more three-dimensional view that often lays bare the simplistic assumptions of your primary source.

I cannot claim to have any particular insight into the first five weeks of the Trump Administration, but I look forward to seeing how it all turns out.

    1. The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet, Simon & Schuster, 2014. Nina Teicholz

    2. Margarine can also affect the nervous system and lead to depression and mental illness.

    3. https://humanidades.com/en/structuralism/

    4. D’où Venons Nous, Que Sommes Nous, Où Allons Nous — Paul Gauguin

    5. Celui qui sauve sa patrie ne viole aucune loi—Maximes et pensées de Napoléon by Honoré de Balzac (1838), a compilation of aphorisms attributed to the emperor.

March 7, 2025

Trump marks the overdue end of the Long Twentieth Century, part 2

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

In The Conservative Woman, N.S. Lyons continues his essay contending that the arrival of Donald Trump, version 2.0, may finally end the era we’ve been living in since immediately after the end of WW2:

The Long Twentieth Century has been characterized by these three interlinked post-war projects: the progressive opening of societies through the deconstruction of norms and borders, the consolidation of the managerial state, and the hegemony of the liberal international order. The hope was that together they could form the foundation for a world that would finally achieve peace on earth and goodwill between all mankind. That this would be a weak, passionless, undemocratic, intricately micromanaged world of technocratic rationalism was a sacrifice the post-war consensus was willing to make.

That dream didn’t work out, though, because the “strong gods” refused to die.

Mary Harrington recently observed that the Trumpian revolution seems as much archetypal as political, noting that the generally “exultant male response to recent work by Elon Musk and his ‘warband’ of young tech-bros” in dismantling the entrenched bureaucracy is a reflection of what can be “understood archetypally as [their] doing battle against a vast, miasmic foe whose aim is the destruction of masculine heroism as such”. This masculine-inflected spirit was suppressed throughout the Long Twentieth Century, but now it’s back. And it wasn’t, she notes, “as though a proceduralist, managerial civilization affords no scope for horrors of its own”. Thus now “we’re watching in real time as figures such as the hero, the king, the warrior, and the pirate; or indeed various types of antihero, all make their return to the public sphere”.

Instead of producing a utopian world of peace and progress, the open society consensus and its soft, weak gods led to civilizational dissolution and despair. As intended, the strong gods of history were banished, religious traditions and moral norms debunked, communal bonds and loyalties weakened, distinctions and borders torn down, and the disciplines of self-governance surrendered to top-down technocratic management. Unsurprisingly, this led to nation-states and a broader civilization that lack the strength to hold themselves together, let alone defend against external threats from non-open, non-delusional societies. In short, the campaign of radical self-negation pursued by the post-war open society consensus functionally became a collective suicide pact by the liberal democracies of the Western world.

But, as reality began to intrude over the past two decades, the share of people still convinced by the hazy promises of the open society steadily diminished. A reaction began to brew, especially among those most divorced from and harmed by its aging obsessions: the young and the working class. The “populism” that is now sweeping the West is best understood as a democratic insistence on the restoration and reintegration of respect for those strong gods capable of grounding, uniting and sustaining societies, including coherent national identities, cohesive natural loyalties, and the recognition of objective and transcendent truths.

Today’s populism is more than just a reaction against decades of elite betrayal and terrible governance (though it is that too); it is a deep, suppressed desire for long-delayed action, to break free from the smothering lethargy imposed by proceduralist managerialism and fight passionately for collective survival and self-interest. It is the return of the political to politics. This demands a restoration of old virtues, including a vital sense of national and civilizational self-worth. And that in turn requires a rejection of the pathological “tyranny of guilt” (as the French philosopher Pascal Bruckner dubbed it) that has gripped the Western mind since 1945. As the power of endless hysterical accusations of “fascism” has gradually faded, we have – for better and worse – begun to witness the end of the Age of Hitler.

“The Resistance” achieves lame nirvana

Filed under: Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

President Donald Trump is a boisterous, noisy distraction in so many ways and rubs a heck of a lot of people the wrong way in everything he does … and yet the politicians who oppose him seem to be engaged in a scientific experiment to discover just how cringeworthy they can be:

“REMINDER: It Is Offensive And Possibly Illegal To Photoshop Anything On These Democrats’ Signs That Would Make Them Look Foolish.
The Babylon Bee, https://x.com/TheBabylonBee/status/1897140039777239181/photo/1

Remember when the phrase “the Resistance” would conjure up visions of sexy French youths in berets battling actual Nazis? Now all it brings to mind is ageing dullards in pink suits holding up signs saying “This is not normal” while sporting the most turbo-smug look on their faces. As US president Donald Trump spoke to a joint session of Congress last night, “across the aisle the Resistance was stirring”, gushed the Guardian‘s DC reporter. His piece was illustrated with a pic of some congresswoman in pearls and a balding Democrat looking aghast as Trump talked. Seriously, if this is “the Resistance”, the world’s tyrants can rest easy.

Yesterday’s “Democrat fightback” and “resistance to Trump’s rhetoric” – journalists are literally calling it that – was next-level cringe. It occurred during Trump’s 100-minute speech, the longest Congress talk in 60 years. As Trump bashed Joe Biden and bigged up Elon Musk, the Dems came over all soixante-huitard. Fury coursed through their ranks. Then the revolt started. The Squad’s Rashida Tlaib held up a scrawled sign saying “That’s a lie!”. Dem representative Al Green “shook his cane and pointed his finger” and cried “You have no mandate” to cut Medicaid. How the regime must have quaked at the sight of this revolution!

The way some hacks are talking about this tantrum masquerading as a protest you’d think it was a modern-day storming of the Bastille. The Dems’ “stirring” acts of rebellion will have “given hope to the Resistance” and sent a message to “the world”, said the Guardian. Nurse! Even leftists who’ve been disappointed with the Dem establishment seemed to get a moral kick from this political pantomime. So far, the “resistance” to the Trumpist tyranny has been “splintered”, but now we know it’s “getting better”, fawned Vox. Perhaps, it said, we’ll soon see the “aggressive resistance” we really need.

Can these people hear themselves? Overpaid politicians holding up mass-produced black placards with hackneyed complaints like “False” and “Liar” are not “the Resistance” – they’re the establishment cosplaying as campus radicals for likes and headlines. In one especially squirming scene, some Dems “removed their outer business wear” to reveal black t-shirts with the word “RESIST” in “bold white letters”. Their delusions of radicalism are off the scale. Resistance is when young Iranian women rip off their hijabs or Kurdish revolutionaries fight the neo-fascists of ISIS, not when politicians on $174,000 a year put on a t-shirt their stressed intern ordered from some hip printer on 7th Street.

March 6, 2025

As Trump’s tariffs begin to bite, Canadians strike back at … King Charles and Wayne Gretzky?

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

As if more evidence were needed that Canadians aren’t well-served by our political leaders, social media personalities and legacy media types are pointing at uninvolved figures to be rounded up as the targets of maple-flavoured Two Minutes’ Hate sessions:

Canada’s latest Emmanuel Goldstein replacement, “The Great One” aka Wayne Gretzky

You can’t have an outburst of nationalism without purity tests coming into play, and two prominent Canadian figures have failed theirs in the court of chattering-class opinion: Wayne Gretzky and King Charles III, of all people.

In recent consecutive days, hilariously, The Globe and Mail‘s website published the following headlines to its online readers’-letters pages: “Wayne Gretzky’s fall from grace is a long time coming”; “Let Wayne Gretzky feel some pain”; and “Wayne Gretzky has always been held in the highest regard … now, he is dead to me”.

Gretzky is friendly with President Trump, you see, which is unacceptable. And if Gretzky isn’t willing to publicly disavow Trump, he should be using his influence to sit Trump down and explain that Canada will never be the 51st state … at which point, presumably, something useful is supposed to happen. It’s never clear what that useful thing would be, beyond a cheap nationalist thrill.

Gretzky’s Yankeeism was confirmed when he served as honorary captain of Team Canada in the final game of the 4 Nations tournament in Boston. (Imagine if he hadn’t served as honorary captain!) He gave the American players a thumbs up — which in any other context would have been considered simple good sportsmanship. He didn’t wear a Team Canada sweater, but rather a suit — which in any other context wouldn’t even have been noticed. He didn’t wear his Order of Canada pin — well, now we’re just grasping at straws.

It’s funny that the same kind of people who have no time for the Crown under normal circumstances (even if they’re not quite out-and-out republicans) are delighted to pile on to any accusations that King Charles isn’t doing … something … to fight off the Bad Orange Man for us:

This brings us to our head of state, and the baffling calls in recent days for him to shake his sceptre toward Washington and declare that Canada shall never never never be the 51st state. If these calls were coming just from anti-monarchists, it would be understandable (though it’s odd to hear them suddenly demanding that the sovereign speak on our behalf). But all kinds of otherwise reasonable people jumped aboard as well, as if this was something the King should self-evidently be doing.

It is self-evidently not what the King should be doing — certainly not before receiving advice from the Canadian prime minister, and probably not at all. Charles’s mother wouldn’t have mouthed off, and I have to wonder if she would have gotten the same criticism were she still alive to see this mess.

Indeed, I think a moment like this is precisely when having an apolitical head of state — maybe even one that doesn’t live here — is most valuable. We have more than enough people, elected and unelected, completely and vocally embroiled in the Trump Tariff Wars, pursuing some combination of national, partisan and personal gain. Isn’t it nice to have precisely the sort of democratic constancy the United States now lacks? You don’t throw away an anchor, however rusty, with a gale on the horizon.

March 5, 2025

Trump’s next target – Europe

Filed under: Britain, Europe, Government, Liberty, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Andrew Doyle thinks that the next step of Donald Trump’s culture war will be highlighted by a struggle over freedom of speech with the UK and the regulators of the European Union:

British PM Keir Starmer talks with US President Donald Trump in the White House.

New battle lines are forming in the culture war. While the woke movement appears to be in retreat, the forces of authoritarianism are regrouping for a fresh assault. Rather than maintaining a straightforward conflict between right and left, the next phase of the culture war will most probably be waged between Europe and the United States. It has all the qualities of a novel by Henry James for the digital age, with the distinctions between the old world and the new brought once again into sharp focus.

Free speech will be the key issue. Most of us will have seen the footage of vice-president J. D. Vance last week in the Oval Office taking Keir Starmer to task for the “infringements on free speech that actually affect not just the British” but also “American technology companies and by extension, American citizens”. Starmer pushed back, saying “in relation to free speech in the UK, I’m very proud of our history there”. It’s a bit like Hannibal Lecter boasting about his ongoing commitment to vegetarianism.

The word “history” was apt, given that Starmer’s government is seemingly determined to ensure that free speech is consigned to the past. One of its first acts after seizing power was to ditch the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act. In February, Angela Rayner revealed her plans for the establishment of a sixteen-member council on “Islamophobia” which could see the criticism of religion criminalised. Meanwhile, Yvette Cooper has been staunchly defending the police for recording “non-crime”, while the chairman of the College of Policing, Lord Herbert, has suggested that the best approach to tackling the controversy is to simply rename “non-crime hate incidents” as something more palatable. Apparently Lord Herbert believes that the problem is the nomenclature, not the fact that citizens are being investigated by the armed wing of the state for lawful behaviour.

All of this is before we get to Starmer applying pressure to the judiciary to mete out draconian sentences for offensive posts and memes on social media, and the government’s determination to crack down on online “disinformation”. Ours is an authoritarian government, and Starmer’s Orwellian denial of the truth of his position in the Oval Office is to be expected. Autocrats throughout history have enacted censorship “for the public good”. Today, they target “disinformation”, a term so vague that it can be applied to anyone who questions the narrative of the ruling class.

And so, as I say, the new front of the culture war will most likely be transatlantic. The US government will simply not tolerate the widespread censorship of its citizens by laws passed overseas. Jim Jordan, chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary of the House of Representatives, has already issued subpoenas to eight US tech companies to divulge all communications they have had with the UK government regarding “content moderation” (i.e., censorship). Jordan is particularly concerned about the Labour government’s intention to empower OfCom to regulate social media, and he has specifically mentioned UK officials who “have already threatened to use UK laws to police American speech”.

N.S. Lyons suggested in the latest post at The Upheaval that Vice President J.D. Vance’s real message to the European leaders can be rephrased as “Give Up the Information War and GTFO”:

The political elite of Europe and the Anglosphere appeared shocked by J.D. Vance’s wonderfully blunt speech in Munich last month. The U.S. Vice President declared Washington’s top security concern to be “the threat from within” the NATO alliance and castigated assembled leaders for their increasingly brazen assaults on “democratic values”, including censoring speech, suppressing popular opposition parties, and canceling elections. But if this shock isn’t feigned then it is rather remarkable, given that these elites were in their own way already effectively at war with the United States. All Vance did was point out the nature of this hidden conflict.

Vance delivered multiple messages with his speech, the broadest and most historic of which was that the era of “post-national” globalist liberalism is over. The United States, he indicated, now has a core interest in seeing a Western world that is collectively strong because its sovereign nations are strong, with the self-confidence to independently defend themselves physically, culturally, and spiritually. His emphasis on promoting free speech and democratic legitimacy tied into this message, but was about far more than the importance of “shared values” or even Washington’s new friendliness to nationalist parties. Practically, it was an implied warning that the role Europe has been playing as a proxy actor in the political and ideological conflicts raging in the United States will no longer be tolerated. More specifically, it was a declaration that ongoing transatlantic institutional, technological, and legal support for America’s embattled left-wing deep state must end – or else.

After Donald Trump’s election in 2016, America’s panicked establishment elites reacted by attempting to construct a system for managing public opinion through strict control of information, especially online information. The idea was that growing public support for populism was fueled by “low-information voters” and their consumption of “misinformation” and “disinformation”, including from foreign actors, and that if their “information diet” could just be controlled then they would stop voting wrong. The underlying assumption here was of course that the elite’s own increasingly radical policy preferences were the only rational path, opposable only by the stupid and easily manipulated. As Trump’s defeated opponent Hillary Clinton would later put it, social media platforms had fundamentally changed the information environment and “if they don’t moderate and monitor the content, we lose total control”.

This intended system of thought-control would later grow into the censorship industrial complex that was partially revealed following Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter. But a big obstacle initially stood in the way: the U.S. Constitution and its protection of free speech. The public might be receiving the “wrong” information on the internet, but “our First Amendment stands as a major block to be able to just, you know, hammer it out of existence”, as John Kerry lamented in a speech to the World Economic Forum.

Under the Biden administration, this legal problem was partially solved by simply ignoring it, the federal government directly colluding with technology companies and a network of “independent” (state-funded) “fact-checking” organizations to impose mass censorship on American citizens. The result was, as one federal judge later described it, effectively “the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history”.

A more subtle and sustainable work-around was also discovered, however. This was to circumvent the U.S. Constitution by outsourcing the policing of the internet and populist movements to other countries around the world. This could be done because the internet is global and so the whole network is affected by government regulations on any local market of sufficient size. Leaders on both sides of the Atlantic immediately grasped that legal and regulatory structures imposed by the European Union, with the leverage of its huge unified market, could for example force internet companies the world over – including U.S. companies – to change their behavior in order to comply and avoid losing access (this imperialistic regulatory strong-arming was dubbed the “Brussels Effect”, becoming Europe’s only significant innovation this century).

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