All true. The Maduro snatch does a number of good things, and hurts and humiliates all the right parties: China, Iran, Putin, Hamas, Hezbollah, Antifa, the Democratic Party, the entire worldwide left. Trump is going for a sweeping victory. He’ll use the Somali fraud in Minnesota to devastate every connected Democrat, which is a lot of them. I guarantee some of that stolen welfare money got into ActBlue and lots of campaigns.
In addition to defunding them and putting them in legal peril, he’s forcing them to stand up for their leftist principles. He’s daring them to defy federal authority, knowing he has the law and the public on his side. They either cave to ICE (Trump wins) or they get the Insurrection Act and other consequences (Trump wins).
He’s turning his second term into a reality TV show. He’ll get his vindication, his enemies will be discredited and disgraced (if not in prison), and he’ll have set up a MAGA majority. Free of the chains of election fraud, the Deep State, much of the Democrat-created welfare state, and Marxist collectivist “social justice” thinking in general, we’ll be heading for a Golden Age.
I mean I hope Trumps domestic policy takes shape, but most of the GOP still sucks and the Dems still walk in public knowing they've broken several laws. So it's cope until something happens, I want it to happen.
Sure, but until the "happening” becomes Ws for domestic policy it’s just coping until then. The GOP turnout is still horrible and everything (that has been done) can be undone after midterms. Trump can do what he can, but the GOP is probably just as bad as the Canadian Conservative Party. I live in California and the Dems just stack Ws here, a lot of them illegal Ws.
Key word, "worthy." Vance is a techbro and pajeet lover. Perhaps he'll break free of Thiel et al. and do some shit, but I'm generally pessimistic of people in government doing things that help real Americans.
JD has what Vox Day calls "familial complications." He has an indian wife and half indian kids. Dj'all see that Thanksgiving photo of around 30 people, looked to be taken in a typical mid-West U.S. subdivision backyard? JD was THE ONLY White person in the entire group -- from babies on up to grannies and great-grandads... 100% foreigners.
HOW is he going to be able to balance: they must ALL GO HOME -- and his wife, kids, and inlaws aren't a part of that? I'm generally impressed with what I've SEEN of JD in action... but this is the irresolvable imbalance!
I've seen Fuentes and his groypers (mostly brown themselves) pushing this line (and that Newsom is the Trve Chad Aryan). I don't think it's politically relevant. Vance has completely won over the Internet racists, who are the only people to whom this matters.
Perhaps this is absolutely nothing. But I'm seeing talk of how Erika is making moves on Vance. He might decide to ditch his Indian family and take up with Erika instead. Or this theory might be Cope. I don't know but something to consider. Especially as Elites don't treat marriage and family the same as the rest of us.
To me all the attacks on Erika Kirk look like bitchiness turned into 5G warfare. It shows how feminized Democrats have become: attack the (presumed) private thoughts and life of a recent widow, all for politics. Wow, suddenly Democrats are concerned about sexual morality. They’ve become the suspicious, hypocritical, killjoy snoops and gossips that the left used to make fun of.
“are not actually worried that a Delta Force team will rappel down from an MH-47G Chinook Special Operations Helicopter to blackbag Prime Minister Mark Carney from 24 Sussex Drive, Ottawa, Ontario, K1M 1M4, and not only because the inadequate security of the traditional prime minister’s domicile has motivated Carney to instead take up residence at Rideau Cottage, 1 Sussex Drive, where he is usually home by 9 pm with his wife Diana. “.
I hear that the night watchman makes his rounds starting at midnight and by 12:30 he’s usually at the gatehouse having lunch and watching TV that he plays really loud for about an hour, maybe an hour and a half. Maybe two and half if you leave some Kentucky bourbon by the door. Just sayin’
They aren't worried because they'd see that as an opportunity to advance towards the top.
Remember, these people have (1) loyalty: Moar Powah.
Anything that results in that, is a Good Thing.
And they all think that they are the only one thinking that way - I guess maybe that is one of the things setting Trump apart from the USAmerican politicos of various shadings: he too thinks that way, but he remembers that so does everyone else, so he makes sure as few as possible can backstab him without also cutting their own throats, if that makes sense?
I would share in the general jubilation surrounding this, if i still existed under the impression that President Trump is a manifestation of American patriotism, or even a malleable mercenary as he has been marketed. But he is not. Or, at least, i do not believe him so. I would be overjoyed to be wrong.
I view President Trump, and the MAGAsphere generally, as a kind of extreme autoimmune response by the System. It has become sluggish and infected by the DEI cancer and rot, but it nonetheless predicted the coming of the Frogs the same way it predicted what i believe would and should have been the next Great Awakening in the '60s, and deployed countermeasures.
By the time the young Boomers were waking up to the realities of the MIC-controlled government, they had already been preemptively worked over by Money, Kinsey and the like, so that their fervor was corrupted and their energies spent upon the Sexual Revolution.
The enemy predicted my generation the same way, and deployed MAGA for the same purpose, to digest or incorporate the threat. Note that many of President Trump's major wins have rather missed the essential point of the topic. Going back to my immune analogy, these deeper issues are the immune-privileged areas, places where engaging the contaminant would cause unacceptable collateral damage to the host. The Administration is all about hunting illegals, but the basic problem (population replacement via Turd-world importation) is unharmed, merely overseen by H1Beezlebub now. Likewise purging trannies from so-called "women's spaces", while the essential Feminist vanguard of women athletes and soldiers goes unchallenged.
In the same vein, it seems to me that bringing many of our hundred-and-seventy-plus-thousand troops home from foreign deployments and using them, instead, to cleanse the southern border (which is far more in line with the military's purpose anyway than playing mall cop in the middle east) would have been a far more effective strategy for countering the drug trade issue, the alleged impetus for the Caracas raid. Less grandiose, maybe, but since securing the border was the backbone of his original campaign anyway, wouldn't honoring that promise be its own kind of vindication?
Excellent piece. My first realization of decline being a choice came in Trump's first term when the U.S. became energy independent. I had been led to believe that it would take some wizard from middle earth to achieve such a thing. That was the beginning of my awakening.
An anonymous source claims that Trump is planing a coordinated attack with Girl Scouts on e-bikes to simultaneously black-bag Walz, Mamdani, and Newsom in an attempt to save the people in Minnesota, NYC, and California from themselves.
So far, it seems like Trump is smarter than Bush or LBJ and will not get sucked into a quagmire but it is early days yet and many in the Deep State love quagmires. Maduro is a bad guy but insignificant compared to the Euros or about 20 governors here at home.
I have been reading some of the speculation. Trump's style is to see what opportunities present and then do something else. Unlike Bush, he can walk and chew gum and 10 other things.
I think Tom Luongo's theory is the most accurate, that there is a Gantt chart in the bowels of the White House that Trump and his incredibly competent cabinet are following: Maduro on Saturday, Greenland on Monday, defund 66 NGOs on Wednesday....
An easier (?) signaling device FOR the Euros and internal enemies? You visibly
'wrap up' the prey that is high status but unimportant to your intended eventual targets so as to make them nervous and then as they begin tiptoeing around and throwing worried glances back over their shoulders, you can saunter in their front door and chuck 'em out?
Trump has sufficient allies in Europe, among the leadership as well as within the populations, to rescue us, if he chooses. He may not, however, since Europe under the disastrous EU has woked itself into irrelevance.
Read up on Ho. Basically, he was a Vietnamese patriot who wanted the French AND the Chinese out of the country. We should have stayed clear of the place, but felt loyalty to our ally from 100 years' earlier.
Incredible that they fought as long and hard as they did. Tough people.
Also worth noting that they intervened in Cambodia the moment the war on their own turf was over. "Communism" was clearly not their primary motivation.
Well it all had its genesis in the American people waking up and smelling the coffee. It's not clear whether the Anglosphere or continental Europe have that will. Although the farmer's revolts in Europe and the trucker's rebellion in Canada look initially promising, it's also possible that those people are so inured to their serfdom that, for them, the process is irreversible. Time will tell. If so, strategic interests of Russia will take care of the EU and security concerns of the US will align with the prairie provinces desire to no longer be plundered be Ottawa and Quebec.
I'm looking askance at the "51st-54th" new **states**... Happy, delighted even, to have them join as territories or protectorates. The farmlanders and oil-monkeys will likely fit in pretty well, over not-too-long a time. B.C., despite giving us a great land bridge up to Alaska, may be too many foreigners and too liberal to fit in...
(NOT Quebec though; someone REALLY need to point out to the Québécois that the official language of the U.S. is ENGLISH -- so they'll have to give up their Frenchified street signs and govt papers and school books... (And the LAST thing we need are boatloads-more idiot-liberals!!)
Territories, probably for a long while e.g. Ontario and, as you say BC. Remigration would be the first step to making things fit for statehood. I also agree Quebec would not be part of an annexation. No sense buying problems.
OK, well worth the read! I decided I'm going to post this in 'Also share as Notes' as it might attract 3 or 4 new readers to his site so excuse me if I repeat things I've said before about John C of B for that reason.
Things such as to the best of my knowledge he's STEM educated, hence he may use big words were 3 small ones would do just ta show how astute he is (shuckydarn, me, a no account white trash poduck hairy legged country boy, I had to look up one and extrapolate three more from context!) in a more classical manner.
Things, using that word again, such as since abandoning any chance of an academic future he started his substack getting so rich far beyond any dreams of avarice that instead of wintering in his beloved homeland, Canada, he lulls in the tropics with a cold Margarita in hand and a warm one on the beach blanket beside him.
OK, & OK using that word too again, I hesitate to say this knowing how the least praise can swell the head of a smart assed kid; he's articulate, rational, builds a logical argument and makes a heck of a lot of sense!
So! On the Venezuela 7 minute war (Why yes I am quite willing to indulge in hyperbole.), John C of B's take on it, very well worth the read!
-33°F. (-36° C.) right here, right now so though you're not warming your toes on Praia do Estaleiro this year, none the less, sounds to me like you're enjoying your whine in the banana belt. ;-)
Not that either of us, being stout hearted men willing to face the frost with a smile and the freeze without a sneeze, would be interested, but Alaska Airlines flights to Rarotonga, Cook Islands seem priced quite reasonably today.
Right. Between. The. Eyes. I rename your essay A Carterian Strike. And regarding the once-Great Britain and the demise of Europe, (although I prefer to see Europe as its countries, each unique in people and culture,) may your solutions be so. We need it desperately. But I think the fall will come soon of its own. Still, a Neitszchian push will help.
He seems to be going for shock and awe at the start of the New Year, judging by all the announcements yesterday. Withdrawing from 66 UN organizations, inverting the food pyramid, banning corporations from owning single family dwellings...
I think the big picture take, the highest level historical analyses, is that Trump & Co. are getting the First Mover Advantage by acting on the realization that global hegemony is no longer an option, and that 'rules based international order' is a fiction that can now be dispensed with. Instead we are now in a world of competing regional hegemons. The US may be the biggest badass in the world, but we haven't put a carrier group through the Straights of Taiwan since Clinton; recently we couldn't keep the Red Sea safe for traffic against some bathrobe-wearing goat fuckers supplied by some other group of bathrobe-wearing goat fuckers.
If Trump was trying to keep our status as global hegemon, keeping NATO together and the EU under our boot would be of far greater importance than access to the minerals of Greenland. There is no military purpose for taking Greenland, as we can already put it to military use due to treaties with Denmark.
Ditto for Canada. If Trump desired to keep the US as a global hegemon, Canada as an ally would be of far greater importance, even if we had to continue paying them to be our friends as we've done since the start of the Cold War. The only reason to annex them is to make 100% sure they are our bitch and never become controled by an outside power. e.g., a Maidan-style Revolution happens in Ottawa and suddenly the new PM is talking about how great of a trade partner China will be, and how maybe Canada will allow China to have large sections of land for military purposes including nuclear missile bases.
===
I agree with much of what you say, however I think fixing things is far harder than you imply.
"One does not simply walk into DC and elect a bunch of good people," as some guy in a movie once said. Trump won on a fluke due to internal DNC squabbles, and I see no one to take his place that isn't a techbro pretending to be Trump's buddy. State-level parties would have to be taken over from the ground up to get good candidates to run and get voted for in primaries. Look into how Ron Paul got stabbed in the back every time he tried to run for President; multiply this by 6 million in a post-Trump world.
The elite of the elite w/i our military showed they are elite; there is still a lot of rot within the rest of the military, especially the generals who survived multiple rounds of Stalinist purges by Obama/ Biden.
TL;DR
We cannot win simply by voting.
===
"Canadian liberals... are not actually worried that a Delta Force team will rappel down from an MH-47G Chinook Special Operations Helicopter to blackbag Prime Minister Mark Carney from 24 Sussex Drive, Ottawa, Ontario, K1M 1M4..."
As I said at the end: obviously, once leadership is replaced, you need to go down the chain from there.
But that is impossible without replacing leadership.
And I never said it was *easy*. Only simple, and these are not the same.
As to the military use of Greenland, so long as it belongs to someone else they can change their mind about treaties, making continental security dependent upon the internal politics of a small foreign kingdom. No empire worthy of the name can accept that.
" There is no military purpose for taking Greenland, as we can already put it to military use due to treaties with Denmark."
Don't agree. DENMARK may be "internationally legal" to say "stay the hell out of our straits" -- but WHO would listen? The U.S., newly in possession of the green island and its international waters on either side, CAN lay -- and enforce -- rules about who , when, and how other nations sail by. Also, if we ever DO decide to jump in and help the Euros regain control of what was once their lands (and MAN! I hope we don't: "made yer bed, lie down and shut up!"), it's an excellent way station for our mil gear.
John, you are an excellent writer-and a funny one: “Canadian liberals, for example, are not actually worried that a Delta Force team will rappel down from an MH-47G Chinook Special Operations Helicopter to blackbag Prime Minister Mark Carney from 24 Sussex Drive, Ottawa, Ontario, K1M 1M4…” 😆
All true. The Maduro snatch does a number of good things, and hurts and humiliates all the right parties: China, Iran, Putin, Hamas, Hezbollah, Antifa, the Democratic Party, the entire worldwide left. Trump is going for a sweeping victory. He’ll use the Somali fraud in Minnesota to devastate every connected Democrat, which is a lot of them. I guarantee some of that stolen welfare money got into ActBlue and lots of campaigns.
In addition to defunding them and putting them in legal peril, he’s forcing them to stand up for their leftist principles. He’s daring them to defy federal authority, knowing he has the law and the public on his side. They either cave to ICE (Trump wins) or they get the Insurrection Act and other consequences (Trump wins).
He’s turning his second term into a reality TV show. He’ll get his vindication, his enemies will be discredited and disgraced (if not in prison), and he’ll have set up a MAGA majority. Free of the chains of election fraud, the Deep State, much of the Democrat-created welfare state, and Marxist collectivist “social justice” thinking in general, we’ll be heading for a Golden Age.
I mean I hope Trumps domestic policy takes shape, but most of the GOP still sucks and the Dems still walk in public knowing they've broken several laws. So it's cope until something happens, I want it to happen.
Quite a bit is in fact happening.
Sure, but until the "happening” becomes Ws for domestic policy it’s just coping until then. The GOP turnout is still horrible and everything (that has been done) can be undone after midterms. Trump can do what he can, but the GOP is probably just as bad as the Canadian Conservative Party. I live in California and the Dems just stack Ws here, a lot of them illegal Ws.
CE I share your concern that the moment will pass.
Papaya…🤞🙏
If he has a worthy successor, which I haven't seen yet.
It's obviously Vance.
Mark my words: Octavian.
Barron?
hmmmmm...
Trump->Vance-> Rubio (maybe De Santis) then the one who wasn't 3rd.
Perhaps.
Key word, "worthy." Vance is a techbro and pajeet lover. Perhaps he'll break free of Thiel et al. and do some shit, but I'm generally pessimistic of people in government doing things that help real Americans.
Vance looks good to me. He’s learning at the feet of the Master Persuader.
If you want a techbro surveillance state with infinite pajeets imported, I guess.
Trump doesn’t want either of those, so they won’t be happening.
Which is why I said that in reference to your post about Vance.
JD has what Vox Day calls "familial complications." He has an indian wife and half indian kids. Dj'all see that Thanksgiving photo of around 30 people, looked to be taken in a typical mid-West U.S. subdivision backyard? JD was THE ONLY White person in the entire group -- from babies on up to grannies and great-grandads... 100% foreigners.
HOW is he going to be able to balance: they must ALL GO HOME -- and his wife, kids, and inlaws aren't a part of that? I'm generally impressed with what I've SEEN of JD in action... but this is the irresolvable imbalance!
I've seen Fuentes and his groypers (mostly brown themselves) pushing this line (and that Newsom is the Trve Chad Aryan). I don't think it's politically relevant. Vance has completely won over the Internet racists, who are the only people to whom this matters.
Perhaps this is absolutely nothing. But I'm seeing talk of how Erika is making moves on Vance. He might decide to ditch his Indian family and take up with Erika instead. Or this theory might be Cope. I don't know but something to consider. Especially as Elites don't treat marriage and family the same as the rest of us.
That sounds like pure copium. Vance has kids with Usha. Divorce is a bad look.
That's fair enough.
To me all the attacks on Erika Kirk look like bitchiness turned into 5G warfare. It shows how feminized Democrats have become: attack the (presumed) private thoughts and life of a recent widow, all for politics. Wow, suddenly Democrats are concerned about sexual morality. They’ve become the suspicious, hypocritical, killjoy snoops and gossips that the left used to make fun of.
Make Tight Leather Pants Great Again
As long as they are black it is appropriate for mourning.
He'll need to remain in place for as long as it takes.
“are not actually worried that a Delta Force team will rappel down from an MH-47G Chinook Special Operations Helicopter to blackbag Prime Minister Mark Carney from 24 Sussex Drive, Ottawa, Ontario, K1M 1M4, and not only because the inadequate security of the traditional prime minister’s domicile has motivated Carney to instead take up residence at Rideau Cottage, 1 Sussex Drive, where he is usually home by 9 pm with his wife Diana. “.
A little wishful thinking perhaps?
No, that was a joke (people were making the same joke all over X lol)
Yes, I was laughing big time on that. Wow, what a CIA operative you are!
I hear that the night watchman makes his rounds starting at midnight and by 12:30 he’s usually at the gatehouse having lunch and watching TV that he plays really loud for about an hour, maybe an hour and a half. Maybe two and half if you leave some Kentucky bourbon by the door. Just sayin’
Alternate take on that:
They aren't worried because they'd see that as an opportunity to advance towards the top.
Remember, these people have (1) loyalty: Moar Powah.
Anything that results in that, is a Good Thing.
And they all think that they are the only one thinking that way - I guess maybe that is one of the things setting Trump apart from the USAmerican politicos of various shadings: he too thinks that way, but he remembers that so does everyone else, so he makes sure as few as possible can backstab him without also cutting their own throats, if that makes sense?
Certainly on my part...
Thank you for what you do. Great read and I might add, inspiring.
Thanks, man!
💯
I would share in the general jubilation surrounding this, if i still existed under the impression that President Trump is a manifestation of American patriotism, or even a malleable mercenary as he has been marketed. But he is not. Or, at least, i do not believe him so. I would be overjoyed to be wrong.
I view President Trump, and the MAGAsphere generally, as a kind of extreme autoimmune response by the System. It has become sluggish and infected by the DEI cancer and rot, but it nonetheless predicted the coming of the Frogs the same way it predicted what i believe would and should have been the next Great Awakening in the '60s, and deployed countermeasures.
By the time the young Boomers were waking up to the realities of the MIC-controlled government, they had already been preemptively worked over by Money, Kinsey and the like, so that their fervor was corrupted and their energies spent upon the Sexual Revolution.
The enemy predicted my generation the same way, and deployed MAGA for the same purpose, to digest or incorporate the threat. Note that many of President Trump's major wins have rather missed the essential point of the topic. Going back to my immune analogy, these deeper issues are the immune-privileged areas, places where engaging the contaminant would cause unacceptable collateral damage to the host. The Administration is all about hunting illegals, but the basic problem (population replacement via Turd-world importation) is unharmed, merely overseen by H1Beezlebub now. Likewise purging trannies from so-called "women's spaces", while the essential Feminist vanguard of women athletes and soldiers goes unchallenged.
In the same vein, it seems to me that bringing many of our hundred-and-seventy-plus-thousand troops home from foreign deployments and using them, instead, to cleanse the southern border (which is far more in line with the military's purpose anyway than playing mall cop in the middle east) would have been a far more effective strategy for countering the drug trade issue, the alleged impetus for the Caracas raid. Less grandiose, maybe, but since securing the border was the backbone of his original campaign anyway, wouldn't honoring that promise be its own kind of vindication?
Excellent piece. My first realization of decline being a choice came in Trump's first term when the U.S. became energy independent. I had been led to believe that it would take some wizard from middle earth to achieve such a thing. That was the beginning of my awakening.
The abrupt reversal of decline whenever their hands are taken off power gives the game away.
An anonymous source claims that Trump is planing a coordinated attack with Girl Scouts on e-bikes to simultaneously black-bag Walz, Mamdani, and Newsom in an attempt to save the people in Minnesota, NYC, and California from themselves.
😂
Lmao
So far, it seems like Trump is smarter than Bush or LBJ and will not get sucked into a quagmire but it is early days yet and many in the Deep State love quagmires. Maduro is a bad guy but insignificant compared to the Euros or about 20 governors here at home.
Maduro is small potatoes, I agree, but removing him seems to have been a small move with big implications strategically.
I have been reading some of the speculation. Trump's style is to see what opportunities present and then do something else. Unlike Bush, he can walk and chew gum and 10 other things.
He's very good at doing the unexpected, which even his supporters have a hard time getting used to.
I think Tom Luongo's theory is the most accurate, that there is a Gantt chart in the bowels of the White House that Trump and his incredibly competent cabinet are following: Maduro on Saturday, Greenland on Monday, defund 66 NGOs on Wednesday....
An easier (?) signaling device FOR the Euros and internal enemies? You visibly
'wrap up' the prey that is high status but unimportant to your intended eventual targets so as to make them nervous and then as they begin tiptoeing around and throwing worried glances back over their shoulders, you can saunter in their front door and chuck 'em out?
Trump has sufficient allies in Europe, among the leadership as well as within the populations, to rescue us, if he chooses. He may not, however, since Europe under the disastrous EU has woked itself into irrelevance.
Do you think black bagging Ho Chi Min would have changed anything?
If they'd snatched Ho Chi Minh from under the noses of his security detail at the center of his power?
Yes this would have had an immense psychological impact on the Viet Cong. That's very basic psychology.
They took ghastly losses and never quit
Ho told the Frogs , we kil one of you, you kill 10 of us and in the end you will tire first.
Read up on Ho. Basically, he was a Vietnamese patriot who wanted the French AND the Chinese out of the country. We should have stayed clear of the place, but felt loyalty to our ally from 100 years' earlier.
AND the Japanese, AND the Americans.
Incredible that they fought as long and hard as they did. Tough people.
Also worth noting that they intervened in Cambodia the moment the war on their own turf was over. "Communism" was clearly not their primary motivation.
Communism/Socialism is like farts: everyone thinks their own brand doesn't smell like shit.
Absolutely. The Vietnamese are called Asia's Germans for good reason.
But losing your leader always has a huge impact on morale.
Ho Chi Min died in 1969.
Would we have won the war? Would the Vietnamese just given up?
Depends on when. If you had got him when he was a waiter in France, sure. After the communist party organization had been established, probably not.
"After the communist party organization had been established, probably not."
And that's where Venezuela is now. So pointless.
Do you think black bagging Salah ad-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub would have changed anything?
Well it all had its genesis in the American people waking up and smelling the coffee. It's not clear whether the Anglosphere or continental Europe have that will. Although the farmer's revolts in Europe and the trucker's rebellion in Canada look initially promising, it's also possible that those people are so inured to their serfdom that, for them, the process is irreversible. Time will tell. If so, strategic interests of Russia will take care of the EU and security concerns of the US will align with the prairie provinces desire to no longer be plundered be Ottawa and Quebec.
Problems do get solved, one way or another.
I'm looking askance at the "51st-54th" new **states**... Happy, delighted even, to have them join as territories or protectorates. The farmlanders and oil-monkeys will likely fit in pretty well, over not-too-long a time. B.C., despite giving us a great land bridge up to Alaska, may be too many foreigners and too liberal to fit in...
(NOT Quebec though; someone REALLY need to point out to the Québécois that the official language of the U.S. is ENGLISH -- so they'll have to give up their Frenchified street signs and govt papers and school books... (And the LAST thing we need are boatloads-more idiot-liberals!!)
Territories, probably for a long while e.g. Ontario and, as you say BC. Remigration would be the first step to making things fit for statehood. I also agree Quebec would not be part of an annexation. No sense buying problems.
OK, well worth the read! I decided I'm going to post this in 'Also share as Notes' as it might attract 3 or 4 new readers to his site so excuse me if I repeat things I've said before about John C of B for that reason.
Things such as to the best of my knowledge he's STEM educated, hence he may use big words were 3 small ones would do just ta show how astute he is (shuckydarn, me, a no account white trash poduck hairy legged country boy, I had to look up one and extrapolate three more from context!) in a more classical manner.
Things, using that word again, such as since abandoning any chance of an academic future he started his substack getting so rich far beyond any dreams of avarice that instead of wintering in his beloved homeland, Canada, he lulls in the tropics with a cold Margarita in hand and a warm one on the beach blanket beside him.
OK, & OK using that word too again, I hesitate to say this knowing how the least praise can swell the head of a smart assed kid; he's articulate, rational, builds a logical argument and makes a heck of a lot of sense!
So! On the Venezuela 7 minute war (Why yes I am quite willing to indulge in hyperbole.), John C of B's take on it, very well worth the read!
I wish I was rich, and lazing on a tropical beach over the winter. Sadly I'm spending winter in my frozen homeland...
Frozen homeland?
-33°F. (-36° C.) right here, right now so though you're not warming your toes on Praia do Estaleiro this year, none the less, sounds to me like you're enjoying your whine in the banana belt. ;-)
Not that either of us, being stout hearted men willing to face the frost with a smile and the freeze without a sneeze, would be interested, but Alaska Airlines flights to Rarotonga, Cook Islands seem priced quite reasonably today.
Dear God. I'll stop complaining, now.
Mistake
Events beyond my control...
Alaska Jim gives us the real perspective
Not since HL Mencken has such cutting analysis been expressed with such wicked flair.
And this on top of his brilliant exposition last year of the future of higher education as cultural abs sculpting.
Damn, that's rather high praise.
John you bad boy stop seducing me with your prose.
Analysis ain't bad neither.
Aw shucks
Of all the people I unwillingly admire I unwillingly admire you the most.
You said it for me 😌
Right. Between. The. Eyes. I rename your essay A Carterian Strike. And regarding the once-Great Britain and the demise of Europe, (although I prefer to see Europe as its countries, each unique in people and culture,) may your solutions be so. We need it desperately. But I think the fall will come soon of its own. Still, a Neitszchian push will help.
Thank you, good sir, for helping me bring focus and clarity to my various wonderings these past few days.
The Caracas Raid was Check Freaking Mate. To the 4th power. Just astonishing, in its implications, impact, and insane precision.
Yes, The Donald now must deliver an equally flawless Act II. My gut tells me he’s scripted and choreographed it to the last detail.
He seems to be going for shock and awe at the start of the New Year, judging by all the announcements yesterday. Withdrawing from 66 UN organizations, inverting the food pyramid, banning corporations from owning single family dwellings...
I think the big picture take, the highest level historical analyses, is that Trump & Co. are getting the First Mover Advantage by acting on the realization that global hegemony is no longer an option, and that 'rules based international order' is a fiction that can now be dispensed with. Instead we are now in a world of competing regional hegemons. The US may be the biggest badass in the world, but we haven't put a carrier group through the Straights of Taiwan since Clinton; recently we couldn't keep the Red Sea safe for traffic against some bathrobe-wearing goat fuckers supplied by some other group of bathrobe-wearing goat fuckers.
If Trump was trying to keep our status as global hegemon, keeping NATO together and the EU under our boot would be of far greater importance than access to the minerals of Greenland. There is no military purpose for taking Greenland, as we can already put it to military use due to treaties with Denmark.
Ditto for Canada. If Trump desired to keep the US as a global hegemon, Canada as an ally would be of far greater importance, even if we had to continue paying them to be our friends as we've done since the start of the Cold War. The only reason to annex them is to make 100% sure they are our bitch and never become controled by an outside power. e.g., a Maidan-style Revolution happens in Ottawa and suddenly the new PM is talking about how great of a trade partner China will be, and how maybe Canada will allow China to have large sections of land for military purposes including nuclear missile bases.
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I agree with much of what you say, however I think fixing things is far harder than you imply.
"One does not simply walk into DC and elect a bunch of good people," as some guy in a movie once said. Trump won on a fluke due to internal DNC squabbles, and I see no one to take his place that isn't a techbro pretending to be Trump's buddy. State-level parties would have to be taken over from the ground up to get good candidates to run and get voted for in primaries. Look into how Ron Paul got stabbed in the back every time he tried to run for President; multiply this by 6 million in a post-Trump world.
The elite of the elite w/i our military showed they are elite; there is still a lot of rot within the rest of the military, especially the generals who survived multiple rounds of Stalinist purges by Obama/ Biden.
TL;DR
We cannot win simply by voting.
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"Canadian liberals... are not actually worried that a Delta Force team will rappel down from an MH-47G Chinook Special Operations Helicopter to blackbag Prime Minister Mark Carney from 24 Sussex Drive, Ottawa, Ontario, K1M 1M4..."
Maybe they should be...
As I said at the end: obviously, once leadership is replaced, you need to go down the chain from there.
But that is impossible without replacing leadership.
And I never said it was *easy*. Only simple, and these are not the same.
As to the military use of Greenland, so long as it belongs to someone else they can change their mind about treaties, making continental security dependent upon the internal politics of a small foreign kingdom. No empire worthy of the name can accept that.
" There is no military purpose for taking Greenland, as we can already put it to military use due to treaties with Denmark."
Don't agree. DENMARK may be "internationally legal" to say "stay the hell out of our straits" -- but WHO would listen? The U.S., newly in possession of the green island and its international waters on either side, CAN lay -- and enforce -- rules about who , when, and how other nations sail by. Also, if we ever DO decide to jump in and help the Euros regain control of what was once their lands (and MAN! I hope we don't: "made yer bed, lie down and shut up!"), it's an excellent way station for our mil gear.
Also, flight routes over the place are kinda important;-)
Can we all at least agree that it should be renamed "Trumpland"?
Gulf of America.
An interesting analysis, definitely worth reading. Big hello from one of your beer buyers from an unpopular country.
Thank you very kindly for the beer, my friend!
John, you are an excellent writer-and a funny one: “Canadian liberals, for example, are not actually worried that a Delta Force team will rappel down from an MH-47G Chinook Special Operations Helicopter to blackbag Prime Minister Mark Carney from 24 Sussex Drive, Ottawa, Ontario, K1M 1M4…” 😆
That was my favorite bit.