Saturday, April 11, 2026

Crazy

Apparently in the wake of Trump's post calling out Tucker, Megyn, Candace, and Alex, commentators are beginning to weigh in on what those people are actually saying. Rich Lowry at The National Review, which has never been especially favorable to Trump, has the following to say in the video embedded above:

I think first factor is the isolationist Right, overlap with a lot of these people, thought they controlled Donald Trump. They thought Trump was an isolationist the way they are isolationists. And it was never true, he was never an isolationist, and also, in his second term, he's actually been hyperactive in terms of foreign policy. So this led to extreme disappointment, which led on the one hand to a massive reevaluation of Donald Trump. Now yes, Donald Trump made wild threats in the runup to the cease fire with Iran. Are we really shocked by that? Do we not remember fire and fury with North Korea in the first term? And also, he dropped an f-bomb in that post on Easter morning. Bad! Shouldn't have done it! But also, we're shocked? We think he's polite in all his communications and observes all of the norms? No!

. . . Now, Tucker Carlson sounds like a member of the Committee to Save the World during the first term. This was the establishment type that considered Trump a danger and thought he had to be controlled. . . . Here he was, calling on people around Trump to get the nuclear codes and stop potential nuclear conflict. [inserts clip of Carlson] Now, there's another way to deal with disappointment with Trump, not mutually exclusive to the one we just talked about, which is to believe he's being controlled by shadowy forces that happen to be Jews. . . . This is why it's such a key part of the world view of a Tucker Carlson, or of Candace Owens, that the United States government killed JFK.

. . . And Tucker Carolson sees these kinds of conspiracies everywhere, right? The USS Liberty, the spy ship that was accidentally and tragically shot up by Israeli forces during the Six Day War, was a deliberate attack, and the US government was in on it and is still covering it up. Chemtrails, the US government is using commercial aviation to spread these chemicals in the atmosphere for dastardly reasons. The government might be covering up the real killer of Charlie Kirk. . . .

So Tucker Carlson is suggesting Donald Trump might be part of some Satanic project. Now, what country around the world considers the United Ststes the Great Satan? Right? Iran. And now you put on top of this that a lot of these people think Israel is the main problem in the Middle East and perhaps in the international system broadly, and here, our domestic politics as well.

Sundance at Conservative Treehouse also weighed in following Trump's post, specifically referencing Alex Jones:

When President Trump responded to the goofball diatribe of Alex Jones, what he apparently was referencing was a segment Jones put out on his podcast when he first requested the administration to intervene and use the 25th amendment to remove Trump. Mr. Jones followed that call for the 25th amendment, by saying he wanted administration officials to conduct a soft-coup against the President of the United States, because Trump wasn’t following his advice.

He then embedded this clip from Jones's podcast: Robert Barnes, who as I've noted frequently appears on these Woke Right podcasts, gives his inchoate solution to the obstacles posed by the 25th Amendment:

Tackle Trump and let him pretend he's president, and publicly report that he's going through a health issue, and they have to take over.

In other words. just don't bother following the 25th Amendment, don't involve the cabinet and Congress, just lock him up and proceed. Sundance concludes,

Folks, these characters are not psychologically stable people. This is a level of weird only evident now because Trump decided to address it.

But let's look a little farther into Candace Owens and her allegations against the Macrons. According to a defamation suit filed against Owens by the Macrons,

These outlandish, defamatory, and far-fetched fictions included that Mrs. Macron was born a man, stole another person’s [her brother] identity, and transitioned to become Brigitte; Mrs. Macron and President Macron are blood relatives committing incest; President Macron was chosen to be the President of France as part of the CIA-operated MKUltra program or a similar mind-control program; and Mrs. Macron and President Macron are committing forgery, fraud, and abuses of power to conceal these secrets.

. . . she makes absurd claims that Mrs. Macron (as Jean-Michel) participated in the Stanford Prison Experiment, which Owens claims is somehow linked to her later “transition.” Owens has also gone so far as to suggest that the Macrons are involved in an alleged conspiracy to distract Owens from investigating Charlie Kirk’s assassination.

I think Rich Lowry's explanation is the most generous: some people, even given what Trump revealed about himself in his first term, somehow sincerely thought he'd always agreed with them, not necessarily just in foreign policy, but over a whole range of other issues. But Trump has been remarkably consistent in his views on Iran, dating back to before he entered politics. These people are sincere, if mistaken, but they need to be careful not to be drawn into the craziness. I suspect Edward Feser is in this group.

There's a second group that's disappointed, assorted conspiracy theorists like Candace Owens, Alex Jones, Tucker Carlson, and Michael "Lionel" LeBron, who have always believed in one or another widely held conspiracy theory, and they apparently thought Trump believed in those theories as well. Trump has turned out to be more grounded and hard-headed than they thought.

A separate issue is Trump as Jacksonian. I think I must have missed school the day they taught Andrew Jackson in history class -- they maybe might have mentioned the Battle of New Orleans and the Bank of the United States, but for whatever reason, they leave out the business of him invading and seizing Florida without authorization in 1818. Walter Russell Mead promoted the parlor version of Andrew Jackson when he called Dubya, a Yale Bonesman, a "Jacksonian". Dubya would have been on the board of directors of the Bank of the United States. Part of the Trump problem is Walter Russell Mead's fantasy of Andrew Jackson.

Andrew Jackson probably said the f-word on Easter morning himself, just he didn't do it on Truth Social. Nobody seems to have thought very hard about what "Jacksonian" really means. I'm sure Trump hasn't, because he's never needed to. That's at the heart of the bigger problem.

posted by test @ April 11, 2026   0 Comments

Friday, April 10, 2026

The Empire Strikes Back

Last night:

President Trump lashed out at four right-wing critics of the Iran war Thursday, describing them as “NUT JOBS” and “losers” who will say anything for attention.

“I know why Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens, and Alex Jones have all been fighting me for years, especially by the fact that they think it is wonderful for Iran, the Number One State Sponsor of Terror, to have a Nuclear Weapon — Because they have one thing in common, Low IQs,” Trump wrote in a lengthy Truth Social post.

“They’re stupid people, they know it, their families know it, and everyone else knows it, too!” the president raged. “Look at their past, look at their record. They don’t have what it takes, and they never did!

Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly both wore out their welcome at Fox, for reasons that have never been fully explained. Megyn Kelly has built her podcasts into something of a media machine; accounts say she has an army of producers nearly as big as she had at Fox, but she projects a breathless girlie-girl persona that's hard to get past -- and nobody's gonna want to cross the girlboss by telling her that. And ever since he left Fox, Tucker has struggled to find a center, and at 56, the preppie schtick is more and more incongruous.

Maybe Fox simply decided that no matter their eye and neck lifts, both had reached their sell-by dates. But Trump is always able to cut to the heart of the matter: "they have one thing in common, Low IQs". This brings us to Candace Owens. In this whole context, there's a strange data point. Michael LeBron, a YouTuber and standup comic who posts under the name Lionel, has recently hopped aboard the Candace Owens train along with Kelly, Carlson, and Jones. But not all that long ago, he had this to ssy on WABC New York:

Candace Owens, as you know, is this firebrand, African-American lady, who suggests, out of nowhere, and states, repeatedly, repeatedly, that Brigitte Macron, the first lady of France, is a man. WAWAWAWAWA! Born a man. WAWAWAWAWA!n Wait a minute! That's not it! You think that's it? I can't even go through the list of the crimes she has alleged. . . and one of the allegations that she has made. . . was that she is Macron's father. Sounds like "Luke, I'm your father", sounds like a
Star Wars episode. I mean, it's crazy.

I don't know exactly when Lionel made these comments, maybe sometime last summer, but since then, he's done a complete 180 on Candace Owens. As of last December, he was saying Candace Owens's Radical Shift in Conservative Discourse Has Them Terrified:

Lionel celebrates Candace Owens as the vanguard of new media, whose bold questioning of taboos exposes the obsolescence of legacy conservative figures like Ben Shapiro and accelerates the shift to decentralized, authentic discourse.

Ben Shapiro is just another relentless self-promoter in Conservative, Inc. You don't need to think Candace Owens is good to think Ben Shapiro is a hack. But this brings me to another question. Not only Lionel, but several other C-list YouTubers like David Freiheit, who posts as Viva Frei, and his frequent guest Robert Barnes, have all turned against Trump at roughly the same time, when they'd been supporting him well after the 2024 election. It would take some effort to trace exactly when this happened -- Lionel and Candace had done it before the March 1 Iran attacks.

On the other hand, Megyn, Tucker, Candace, Alex, Lionel, and Viva Frei are all B- and C- listers, and I'm not sure if they're worth the time to figure them out. But not only is Lionel anti-Trump, he's also singing the praises of Candace Owens, whom he'd previously skewered for claiming not only is Brigitte Macron a guy, but he's Emmanuel's dad. I'd been following Lionel since 2016. He's sharp. He's got a sense of humor. What changed his mind?

When I looked into Candace Owens not long ago, I learned that Candace married the son and heir to a wealthy member of the UK House of Lords, whirlwind courtship, and her net worth with her husband is now thought to be in the hundreds of millions. On the other hand, it's hard not to think that her B- and C-list colleagues, particularly Alex Jones, must need money, especially Megyn and Tucker, who are trying to run legacy-style media operations without legacy-style budgets. That kind of money can buy a lot.

On the other hand, Trump is a lot smarter than any of those, and he thinks the explanation is just low IQ. Occam's razor would support Trump's estimate.

UPDATE:

posted by test @ April 10, 2026   0 Comments

Thursday, April 9, 2026

Legacy Media Thinks It Sees An Opening

Real Clear Politics is a creature of big investment money and legacy media, although the conventional wisdom says it's pro-Trump:

In November 2020, The New York Times published an article alleging that since 2017, when many of its "straight-news" reporting journalists were laid off, RealClearPolitics showed a pro-Trump turn with donations to its affiliated nonprofit increasing from entities supported by wealthy conservatives. RCP executive editor Carl Cannon disputed the newspaper's allegations of a rightward turn. . . . Cannon stated that RCP regularly publishes perspectives from both liberal and conservative publications, saying that "the simple fact is that the amount of liberal material published in RCP every week dwarfs the annual conservative content in The New York Times".

But the circumstance on the ground is that RCP gets its reputation from polling averages, when polls wouldn't exist if they weren't financed by legacy media, and legacy media won't buy polls that don't tell them what they want to hear.

In 2012, Ben Smith, editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed, said "They are a huge force. Their polling average is the Dow Jones of campaign coverage."

Nevertheless, as I've discussed here, recent RCP averages, for instance from last year's midterms, were wildly outside the margins of error for the individual polls that made up the average. The whole process was garbage in-garbage out. The same applies to the opinion pieces they run twice a day: one from Victor Davis Hanson, Column A, against one from Robert Reich, Column B -- what are we supposed to do, put them in a blender and figure out what's the truth? This is a meaningless exercise.

As of this morning, RCP seems to have taken it on faith that Iran has split MAGA, and Trump has lost his coalition: A teetering ceasefire bodes ill for treacherous US-Iran talks ahead. A New Theory of Trump: The 'Soft TACO'. Iran Folly Blasting GOP Coalition to Smithereens.

Granted, each of these is a Column A, counterbalanced at least in theory by an equivalent piece from Column B, but how are we expected to derive any real insight from this process? Let's take the last piece above, from Megyn Kelly of all people -- she covered the military action of the past five weeks almost not at all on her podcast; for most of that time, she was still breathlessly reporting on the whole Nancy Guthrie nothingburger when everyone else had moved on. But here's what she says now:

So what led Trump, at 79 years old, to sit in there in that Situation Room when Bibi Netanyahu was seated as an equal? Trump didn’t even sit at the head of the table. Trump sat at the side of the table and Bibi was across from him as an equal in the American Situation Room.

What led him to sit there and buy what that guy was selling hook, line, and sinker when every other president was able to see through that liar?

This isn't commentary, it's repetitious hysteria. And it's hard to avoid seeing hysteria in this whole strain of opinion. Yesterday I noted that Edward Feser seemed to have calmed down, at least a little, after Trump announced the cease fire, but by evenning, Trump was again immoral and corrupting consciences: In fact, Feser now seems to see himself as a whole new political species, a "postliberal": You know what? Edward Feser is an angry guy. Down deep, there's something basic that doesn't have anything to do with Trump. Farther up in the thread, he muses that maybe libertarians aren't so bad -- "While many libertarians are, from a postliberal point of view, awful on social issues – abortion, drugs, pornography and sexuality in general – they often produce penetrating critiques of economic and war-making policy that identify perverse incentives, unintended consequences. . ." So he's rethinking whether maybe he should cast his lot with atheist, pro-abortion, pro-gay, pro-LGBTQIA+, pro-porn Ayn Rand cultists as long as they hate Trump as much as he does. There's something out of kilter here.

I think the basic problem for the current crop of Never Trumpers is that Trump is actually succeeding at resetting both domestic and international political arrangements. For instance,

I estimate that net international migration has plummeted to roughly one-third of the levels observed at the end of Biden’s second term. Official U.S. Census Bureau projections already indicate that net international migration in 2026 is expected to be roughly nine times lower than in 2024—an estimate I view as broadly reasonable.

The largest declines in net international migration have occurred in Democratic-leaning urban areas—particularly in California, Chicago, and the Northeast, but also in parts of Texas, Colorado, and Florida. Given that the Census has already signaled that 2030 U.S. House reapportionment may already be unfavorable to Democratic states, a continuation of this trend—where domestic outmigration from blue states is not offset by international inflows—could further exacerbate those losses and frankly make the 2032 Electoral Map pretty scary for Democrats.

Internationally, he's simply recognizing changed circumstances. Traditionally, let's keep in mind, the UK was the lead non-US NATO ally. Certainly others are aware that this is no longer the case: A better perspective on the overall view of Trump is from Sundance at Conservative Treehouse:

Most of us have supported Trump throughout his endeavors in office, trusting him to do what needed to be done, and using his best judgement on whatever the issue was while understanding that he has much more information than us. This still applies today.

This doesn’t mean that President Trump can see everything or has immediate reference for everything happening.

. . . The White House is focused on the issues confronting them daily; they have a priority perspective, and they do not see everything. Trust God, and pray for President Trump.

Hysteria and bitter anger aren't a recipe for success in any case. Trump has had people like George Conway, John Bolton, Michael Cohen, Mike Pence, and Ann Coulter throughout his political career. But these have never been anything but blips. My view continues that on one hand, Trump is astonshingly lucky, and it's better to be lucky than good. On the other hand, the harder he works, the luckier he gets.

posted by test @ April 09, 2026   0 Comments

Wednesday, April 8, 2026

So, What Was All The Fuss About?

Yesterday morning: Oh, well, never mind: And the chuds wanna have it both ways! At minimum, Prof Feser seems to be dialing things down -- but it doesn't matter too much; if a sinful thing, viz, making a threat, has a good outcome, that doesn't make it good. But then there's Luke 14:5:

Then he said to them, 'Who among you, if your son or ox falls into a cistern, would not immediately pull him out on the sabbath day?'

I guess even if that had a good outcome, that didn't make it good, huh? But here's the story from the UK Telegraph:

On Tuesday morning, before he posted his ultimatum to Truth Social after weeks of extending the deadline, Mr Trump had reportedly expressed in private that although negotiations with the Iranians had been “very serious”, he did not know whether a deal could be reached.

He fired off his salvo, threatening to destroy Iran’s bridges and power plants if leaders did not agree to open the Strait of Hormuz.

. . . In the other corner was China, who reportedly pressured Iran to accept the terms of the ceasefire – presented by Pakistan – at the 11th hour, according to The New York Times.

Talks had so far been indirect. Egypt, Pakistan and Turkey had passed messages between the US and Iran over the past two weeks as they desperately tried to avoid a global recession caused by the effects of rising energy prices on markets, as well as more death and destruction in the region.

On the morning of the ceasefire announcement, following Mr Trump’s warning, Tehran ruled out direct talks completely.

. . . Meanwhile, the US struck Kharg Island overnight. The island is Iran’s economic lifeline that handles 90 per cent of its oil exports.

It was a sign of the US’s determination to show that this was no bluff.

. . . As the hours ticked by, everyone from Pope Leo to the actor Ben Stiller called on the president to back down. At the same time, the administration fielded calls from executives and political allies trying to decipher whether Mr Trump was bluffing.

Then came the breakthrough. Three hours before the deadline, Iran said it was “positively” reviewing Pakistan’s proposal.

Mr Trump, who is thought to have been holed up in the Oval Office all day, was considering the proposal and would issue a response, the White House said.

The ceasefire gives Mr Trump a win, or at least the appearance of one, at a moment when it really mattered.

As The Telegraph noted, Pope Leo weighed in, saying “this threat against the entire people of Iran … truly is not acceptable”. But the problem is that Trump has developed a negotiating style over three different careers that's proven effective. It includes making wildly unreasonable demands until he gets a response he can live with, but it also includes careful study of his opponent. The Iranian mullahs are intransigent, they don't negotiate in good faith, and they treat the Western wish to seem reasonable as weakness.

Trump's counter-strategy was plain all along. Yesterday I linked to Fred Kaplan at Slate, who asked, "What Kind of Person Talks Like This—Let Alone a President at War?" But he almost got things right:

[O]ne might charitably interpret Trump’s tweets as a reprise of Richard Nixon’s “madman strategy”—the notion that an enemy will surrender out of fear that the American president is as crazy as he sounds and really will carry out his threat. But it’s worth noting that the ploy didn’t work for Nixon against North Vietnam—and it’s unlikely to work for Trump against Iran.

While Kaplan accurately characterizes Nixon's "madman strategy" (which was carefully calibrated with Kissinger), he underestimates its success. In 1972, faced with North Vietnamese intransigence, Nixon progressively removed previous restraints on US strategy, ordered B-52 strikes on North Vietnam, and ultimately mined Haiphong Harbor.

Though both the Soviets and Chinese frowned on the mining, they did not take active steps to protest it. With the North Vietnamese coast effectively closed to maritime traffic, Nixon ordered a new air interdiction campaign, dubbed Operation Linebacker, to commence.

. . . With imports into North Vietnam down 35-50% and with PAVN forces stalled, Hanoi became willing to resume talks and make concessions. As a result, Nixon ordered bombing above the 20th Parallel to cease on October 23, effectively ending Operation Linebacker.

If anything, Pope Leo facilitated Trump's "madman strategy" when he called it "not acceptable". Indeed, Trump cultivates his bad-boy image, again because it serves his purpose as a negotiator:

During a phone interview with Fox & Friends on Tuesday, Aug. 19, the president gave a new explanation for taking action to end the war in Ukraine — including positioning himself as a mediator between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

“If I can save 7,000 people a week from being killed, I think that’s pretty-- I want to try to get to heaven if possible," Trump said.

"I’m hearing that I’m not doing well. I am really at the bottom of the totem pole,” he added, to laughter from the Fox News hosts. "But if I can get to heaven, this will be one of the reasons.”

But let's take the potential alternative to dropping nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki that opponents often float -- why couldn't the US have simply demonstrated the power of such a bomb by dropping it over the open ocean near Japan, instead of destroying cities? The problem is that while this might have demonstrated that this was technically possible (although in the actual circumstance, the Emperor's cabinet saw the possibility that even the actual damage at Hiroshima was American deception), it still wouldn't have sent a message that the Americans had the will actually to use it against cities.

All the hysteria in the leadup to yesterday's deadline, including Pope Leo's remarks, sent the clear message, not just to the mullahs, but to the Chinese and Pakistanis, that Trump didn't even care if he went to hell, he'd destroy a civilization. Trump couldn't have asked for a better group of people to vouch for his intent. Even the mullahs began to see these weren't your grandfather's Republicans.

It's worth noting that Nixon employed the "madman strategy" to further the US's then policy of containing the Soviet Union, and negotiation that resulted in a stalemate was the desired outcome. Trump's object, on the other hand, isn't containment -- but he's employing a strategy that Nixon in fact did demonstrate was effective.

posted by test @ April 08, 2026   0 Comments

Tuesday, April 7, 2026

Toward An Understanding Of Anti-Trump Hysteria

Yesterday I posted about a long-ago ex who could be so badly triggered that she would foam at the mouth, and this somehow reminded me of Edward Feser, the detached neo-Thomist academic philosopher who rages against the chuds. Then it occurred to me that there were two notionally big news events over Easter weekend, one a "historic" return to the moon by the Artemis II mission, the other the effort to rescue the downed weapons system officer who'd had to eject from his F-15 over Iran.

The Artemis II mission, with its one-from-column-A-one-from-column-B crew struggling with two versions of Outlook and a stinking multimillion-dollar toilet, was paralyzingly anodyne. The story of how the WSO was recovered, details of which are still coming out, is what gripped the country. Nevertheless,

Edward Feaser is convinced that Trump is a truly evil man: Fred Kaplan at Slate:

In the wake of President Donald Trump’s obscene and vile Easter-weekend posts on social media, two questions come to mind: Are any senior U.S. military officers preparing to resist unlawful orders? Are any Cabinet secretaries or GOP legislators weighing whether it’s worth the shame and career suicide to continue bootlicking an unhinged war criminal?

Why are people so triggered? The odd thing is that Trump was incredibly lucky. According to The Wall Street Journal:

For the Pentagon, this was a worst-case scenario. It was the first time a piloted U.S. aircraft had been lost over enemy territory in more than 20 years, military experts said. Video footage of a captured U.S. airman in enemy hands would have handed Tehran a major propaganda tool and a source of leverage at a critical moment in the war. U.S. officials worried that the regime would use the airman’s capture to seek maximalist concessions.

Except that Trump was in the White House while all this took place, monitoring the situation minute by minute. The harder he works, it seems, the luckier he gets. I think that's part of the problem: Reagan was characterized as an amiable dunce, someone who sleepwalked through history. Nobody calls Trump amiable or a sleepwalker. They call him an unhinged war criminal whose immortal soul is in danger, a very different thing.

Here's the problem with this characterization of the events over the weekend: the US has had a long history of humiliations at the hand of Iran and various other enemies, mostly Islamic, over the past half century, starting with Operarion Eagle Claw, the failed US operation on April 24, 1980, intended to rescue 52 US hostages in Tehran. In the general confusion caused by equipment failures and bad weather, a helicopter crashed into a C-130, killing eight service members and leading to abandonment of the mission.

This was a major factor behind Carter's loss to Reagan in the election later that year. Other such disasters, like the Blackhawk Down episode in Mogasishu on October 3–4, 1993, or the Benghazi attack on September 11-12, 2012, also had major political consequences; Hillary Clinton's connection with the Benghazi attack was one factor that cost her the 2016 election. I have a feeling that Trump has been acutely aware of the danger such snafus pose to his own military operations and understands how important careful planning, rehearsal, and managerial oversight are to their success.

In short, he's lucky, and the harder he works, the luckier he gets. Each lucky escape triggers people who can be triggered that way.

Scott Pinsker wrote yesterday:

Most Americans, I suspect, had a three-prong reaction to Trump’s post:

1. “Wait, Trump wrote WHAT? Is that true?”
2. [checks social media] “Welp, I guess it’s true.”
3. “LOL”

After all, Trump is the world’s most famous man. Ever since he descended Trump Tower’s golden escalator in 2015, he’s been studied, scrutinized, debated, and analyzed. Everything about him — from his hair to his personality to his use of social media — has been discussed ad nauseam.

At this point, he’s a known quantity. If his Truth Social post surprised you, you haven’t been paying attention.

. . . America and Israel are battling an enemy that’s been the #1 sponsor of global terrorism for 39 straight years, slaughters its own civilians, and is hellbent on acquiring nuclear weapons. Iran has repeatedly attempted to blow up bridges, power plants, hotels, airports, residential areas, and desalination stations. Even today, while waging war, the mullahs haven’t stopped murdering innocent teenagers.

But Trump’s use of an F-bomb — while warning them to stop — is the problem?

Please. This handwringing over the president’s language is ridiculous. And for Marjorie Taylor Greene, it’s especially hypocritical, considering this is the same virtuous “Christian woman” who called Rep. Lauren Boebert “a little b***h” on the House floor.

One thing I learned from watching On Patrol: Live is that police are trained specifically to use the f-bomb as part of "shock and awe" tactics in certain situations, like "Get out of the f-in' car!" This indicates a level of urgency appropriate to the situation. In this case, Trump is messaging that the situation is urgent. Pinsker goes on,

We nominated and elected President Trump because he’s a fighter. If we wanted another Bush, Jeb(!) was waiting in the wings. Good ol’ Jeb(!) was an excellent governor, a kind, moral man, and would NEVER use potty-language on social media.

Of course, he also wouldn’t have closed the border, deported illegals, renegotiated trade deals, ended DEI, forced NATO to increase its military funding, or played hardball against the radical left. We needed a fighter, not an appeaser.

The problem for certain people is that the electorate knows Trump quite well. They elected him twice to do what he's doing. They had three Bushes to compare him to. This may be triggering. Viewer discretion is advised.

UPDATE:

The sanctimoniousness here is astonishing. Genesis 12:1-3 seems to say Zionism is not just OK, it's established in an eternal covenant. To tell the truth, I kinda think the Almighty is having a chuckle about now.

posted by test @ April 07, 2026   0 Comments

Monday, April 6, 2026

Edward Feser Big Mad!

I haven't checked in with Edward Feser for several weeks, but others have pointed to his posts on X here and there. The big thing that strikes me lately is his use of the term "chud", as we see above. I asked the AI oracle, "can you give an estimate of how many times Edward Feser has used the word 'chud' on X?" Remarkably, it answered,

It is highly unlikely that Edward Feser has ever used the term "chud" on X (formerly Twitter). A search of his public posts and interactions reveals no instances of him using the word.

The term "chud" is a modern internet slang insult typically used by left-leaning users to mock those they perceive as being on the far-right. As a Gen X Catholic philosopher and academic known for a formal, Thomistic style of writing, Feser’s vocabulary generally avoids such contemporary online pejoratives. He has even criticized the use of similar slang, such as "boomer," as being "too stupid for words" and a substitute for actual engagement. While he is very active on the platform in discussing ethics, politics, and theology, his "insults" tend to be more traditionally academic or dryly humorous.

Well, AI itself says AI can be wrong, and it looks like AI is going to be surprised at some point. I wish AI had done an actual search -- I was more or less idly browsing recent posts, and his use of the term seems pretty frequent. The one above was yesterday; here's another one from this past Saturday: During my single days, I dated a woman who would get so upset at some of my remarks that she would begin to foam at the mouth. I'd simply never seen this phenomenon, and maybe from a bit of a cruel streak, I'd sometimes see what I could do to set her off. It was pretty predictable, and it resulted in a completely irrational, uncontrollable rage. I'm glad those days are long in the past, but I'm getting a sense of this same distant nightmare in Feser's recent posts. For instance, in the post just above, he calls Israel a "secular state", when this is at best a controversial view; for instance, at Quora:

The common misconception is the Israel is A Jewish State, when in fact Israel is THE Jewish State, or, more accurately, the national State of the Jewish nation. The Jewish religion is the unique national religion of the Jewish People, just as Hebrew is the unique national language of the Jewish People. The very word “Jew” is derived from the name of the land from which the Jews originated, Judea.

A quick web search reveals that couples can't marry in Israel without going through religious jurisdictions. Cremation is very difficult due to Orthodox Jewish opposition. Many of the conditions of ordinary life are affected by Jewish law. In the post above, Feser is implying that Israel is "another secular state" comparable to the US, which has a constitutional prohibition against established religion, which Israel does not. This stretches the definition of "secular" in a way that I wouldn't expect from a careful academic writer.

This again brings me to the question of why Feser seems to have created a sort of intellectual carveout for his estimates of Trump. If I were to ask him, say, about the logical validity of a proof of God's existence, he would speak as a neo-Aristotelian philosophy professor. If I were to ask him about how just war doctrine applies to Trump's strategy in Iran, he would start to use words like "chud" -- the neo-Aristotelian in him would take a siesta.

In fact, as I used to do with my long-ago ex-girlfriend, I'll bet I could find out how to set him off and get him foaming at the mouth. This has me scratching my head. I've seen references lately to a first anniversary of the New Jersey drone hysteria of early 2025 (for instance in an upcoming April 8 episode of the Discovery show Conspiracies and Coverups), in which New Jerseyites, who have always been the butt of a certain kind of joke, began looking up at the sky at night, seeing airliners with blinking navigation lights on approach patterns to Newark Airport, and anxiously reporting that these were drone swarms. Local politicians angrily demanded explanations. TV news reporters pointed upward at the ominous flashing lights.

This died down after several weeks, but now we seem to be seeing a new level of interest in the phenomenon. What caused it? I actually think it was the reelection of Trump and the slow recognition that he was returning to the White House. It seems to have caused a mass hysteria, at least in New Jersey.

Something about Trump makes certain people start foaming at the mouth. I think he even finds it amusing, and sometimes he deliberately sets people off. I need to give further thought to the question of why this is.

posted by test @ April 06, 2026   0 Comments

Friday, April 3, 2026

The Wall Street Journal Stands Up For NATO

Yesterday,

A second Republican senator spoke out in defense of Nato on Thursday, joining Mitch McConnell and the Democrats, after Donald Trump said that he was “absolutely” considering withdrawing from the alliance after it refused to take part in the joint assault with Israel against Iran.

“Nato stood by America when we were under attack and came to our aid after the September 11th attacks. Their soldiers fought and died alongside our troops in Afghanistan,” said Thom Tillis, a Republican, and Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat, who co-chair the Senate Nato observer group.

McConnell and Tillis are both lame ducks who seem to be opposed to anything Trump has ever proposed, but by gum, The Wall Street Journal has their backs:

Could the Iran war do what even Vladimir Putin couldn’t and blow up the North Atlantic Treaty alliance? That’s no longer an idle question as most of Europe refuses to help the U.S., and President Trump responds by threatening to leave NATO. This would be the dumbest alliance breakup in modern history.

Several paragraphs of irrelevant blah-blah follow, but they don't explain why this would be "the dumbest alliance breakup in modern history". The writers finally wander back to the point:

A U.S. withdrawal from NATO would nonetheless serve only Russia, Iran and China. Blowing up NATO has been the main goal of Russian strategy since the alliance formed in 1949.

But NATO was formed as an anti-Soviet alliance, not an anti-Russian alliance. Putin would probably like to get rid of NATO, but it seems to me that, especially with Sweden and Finland joining, the original 1949 alliance is overextended -- the point of NATO in 1949 was to place territories that the US primarily had won back from the Nazis under the US nuclear umbrella. The calculation under Truman and Marshall seems to have been that this was something the US, primarily with the support of the UK and the Royal Navy, could afford.

The idea of adding Soviet satellites like Poland, Hungary, or Czechoslovakia to NATO between 1949 and 1991 would have been wildly impractical, and NATO did nothing when Soviet tanks went into several of those satellites during that period. Adding the former satellites to NATO became cost-effective only when the Soviet Union collapsed and the potential for any type of revanchism became much more remote.

In addition, as of 1949, Iran was a Western ally, and China was much less of a factor. At the start of the Korean War, Truman was able to use the UN to provide a legal foundation and justify an international alliance against Soviet-backed North Korean and Chinese forces. Under those circumstances, he didn't need NATO.

The world has changed a lot since 1949. Iran is no longer aligned with the West, and China is a more formidable adversary than Russia. Meanwhile, the European powers have already factored in the disappearance of the Soviet Union; the decline or the Royal Navy since the 1990s has been a topic of discussion for weeks. And as we saw yesterday, the German defense minister effectively admitted that the only naval force the European NATO members can assemble is "a handful of frigates".

The Journal concludes,

The larger reality is that Russia and Iran are working together as an axis against the West. The two share weapons, especially drones and missiles, and Russia is providing intelligence to Iran about American targets. Mr. Trump is especially obtuse on this point, refusing even to acknowledge this Russian harm to U.S. troops, much less condemn it.

. . . This axis of adversaries that includes China wants to weaken the Western alliance and the free world. It wants the U.S. and Israel to fail to defeat Iran, and Russia to defeat Ukraine militarily and become the dominant power in Europe. If the Western allies let this happen, it will be the height of folly and an historic tragedy.

This at least is an effort to answer the question my old colleague Phil used to ask in meetings, "What problem are we trying to solve?" The Journal's answer appears to be that Iran, China, and Russia have formed a 21st-century Axis against the US, and we can solve this only with NATO's help. But even if we were to invoke Article 5 against Iran, or even Russia or China, the best NATO could provide would be "a handful of frigates", which wouldn't be much help at all.

Is it in our interest to live in a fantasy world where this isn't true? In addition, in 1949, the British controlled the Iranian oil industry via the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, which was 51% owned by the UK government to ensure oil fuel for the Royal Navy. The UK at that time was also the leading NATO partner, and it was capable of acting to ensure its control. This is no longer a factor -- why try to pretend things haven't changed?

In other words, Trump has made what seems to be a realisic appraisal of the current world situation, which in part simply ratifies the NATO members' own appraisal of the Russian threat, or at least their appraisal that the US would decisively defeat a Russian threat without much need for other than token NATO assistance. Therefore, Trump is pursuing US policy goals in this changed environment using resources other than NATO.

It's also intriguing that the Journal throws Ukraine into the argument. As things stand, once it's become plain that neither Russia nor Ukraine wants to end that war, which is heading for a four-year stalemate, Russia in particular has been squandering ammunition, personnel, and equipment that it can't use against NATO. On the other hand, adding Ukraine to NATO simply adds one more country to the growing number that the US would be committed to defend without much serious assistance from other members.

Trump is simply making the realistic assessment presidents are expected to make.

posted by test @ April 03, 2026   0 Comments