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Sounds About Right

From our e-pal Bill Keezer comes a handy checklist:

Nothing Is Real

The fog of war is abroad in the land, and in every direction sturdy, familiar realities dissolve into grotesque phantasms and chimeras. Trumpets and bullhorns blare in the smoke and chaos. The ground trembles and shifts under our feet. One thing seems clear, I think: this Republic, as we have known it in our lifetimes […]

“Typical A.P. Work”

Here’s Michael Yon — who knows more about this sort of thing than anyone — about the role of Antifa in the Capitol riot.

Nothing To See Here

Curtis Yarvin, the former Moldbug, commented at once on yesterday’s big fizzle. In a post written late yesterday, he offered a quote from Twitter: The Internet impresario Kantbot, who has become one of the most obnoxious literary talents since Marx or possibly Wyndham Lewis, still captured the day perfectly: Imagine storming the Capital of the […]

2021, Day Six

As I have been saying for a long time now: “Gradually, then suddenly”.

Round Two

OK, so the polls are open in Georgia today. At stake in the two runoff elections is control of the United States Senate. Is everyone feeling as optimistic as I am?

2021

Well, here we are. Happy New Year. I thank all of you who’ve visited in recent weeks; there hasn’t been a whole lot to see here for some time now. My shoulder injury kept me off the keyboard for a while, but that’s not a problem any longer. Mainly it’s been that we have entered […]

ABCDEFGHIJKMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ

Merry Christmas, everybody! Sorry to have been so shtum lately; I seem to be in a kind of limbo, just busying myself with reading and musical work. I’m sure I’ll perk up soon.

Go Local

Writing at American Greatness, Christopher Roach argues that the Left, after patiently mounting a well-organized assault on all institutions, and after a century of expansion of the managerial state, now has power that is “largely immune from elections.” (After what we’ve just seen in 2020, can anyone doubt this?) He advises us that henceforward “Any […]

It’s A Feature

From a just-released forensic report on the widely used Dominion voting system, as tested in Antrim County, Michigan (a red county where vote-tabulation errors were already known to have happened): We conclude that the Dominion Voting System is intentionally and purposefully designed with inherent errors to create systemic fraud and influence election results. The system […]

Accelerando

Aaaand… SCOTUS strikes again, refusing to take the Constitutional election-irregularity case brought by Texas and joined by many other states. Newcomers Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett all teamed up with Sotomayor, Kagan, and Roberts to stonewall the complaint. As Thomas and Alito pointed out in their dissent, this was an abrogation of their responsibility as original […]

It Was 40 Years Ago Today

… Mark Chapman took the band away. R.I.P. John Lennon, who transformed the world of music, and so the world.

Another One Gone

I haven’t written much lately — I’ve been too busy with work and with personal matters, and frankly I haven’t had much to say. I’ve been thinking a lot about where matters stand, here in the senescent West, as this pivotal year winds down, and have been doing a lot of interesting reading — but […]

Pro Tip

It’s possible to enjoy this world a whole lot more if you aren’t convinced it’s all there is.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Best wishes to all of you. This year has been a difficult test, and we will be tried even more severely in the months ahead, but we still have much to be thankful for. Take a breath, and focus on gratitude.

Reasonable Doubt

A commenter on our previous post asks how any intelligent person could actually be suspicious about the result of the recent election. He also mentions, in support of his confidence that the results are legitimate, that Joe Biden won the popular vote by millions of votes. Here’s my reply: First of all, the point about […]

Let’s Get Kraken

I’ll follow on my previous post by saying that, regardless of how persuasive the statistical, anecdotal, testimonial, technological, and other indicators of election fraud may be, none of it matters unless those litigating the claims produce a coherent and consistent case, with hard evidence sufficient to convince the courts and state legislatures to alter the […]

Hang In There

I haven’t written for a few days, because I have nothing new to say; like all of you I am waiting to see how this election challenge plays out. We are up against titanic forces, not least of which is just the colossal, viscous mass of institutional inertia, media resistance, and partisan antipathy that stands […]

On Serpent-Tongued Calls For “Unity”

David Harsanyi has posted a tart reply. An excerpt: When Democrats win the presidency, we are treated to solemn calls for national restoration and political harmony, and to the expectation that, for the good of the nation, the opposition will embrace decorum and pass legislation they oppose. When Republicans win elections, grown women put on […]

Fair And Balanced, Cont’d

Here’s another perspective on things: Curtis Yarvin, AKA “Mencius Moldbug”, has published an essay today about the 2020 election. In it he describes himself as being “so pro-Trump, I wrap all the way around to pro-Biden.” Yarvin makes an important point about the difference between traditional American conservatism and all forms of Leftism: subsidiarian, small-government […]

Fair And Balanced

My last couple of posts have been, to put it mildly, a tad heated. It has been a bitter year in our cold civil war, and the counting of the votes in our recent election has been unlike anything we’ve ever seen before — in large part due to newly (and in many cases it […]

Earthquake Weather

Rage is building in America as the audacious manipulation of this election, and the naked complicity of the media, become more and more self-evident (the major networks cut away from the President of the United States today as he was making remarks at the White House). This cannot stand. The historic American nation has watched, […]

Dum Spiro, Spero

And here we are: a closely contested election, which will now drag on for days or weeks and likely be resolved in the courts. (There appears to have been no shortage of electoral shenanigans and monkeyshines, exactly as we feared.) This certainly isn’t what we’d hoped for: if President Trump prevails by superior lawyering, the […]

The Locust Years

I am chastened by the discussion in the previous posts. (See here and here.) All I had sought to do in my original remarks was to point out the natural advantages of cohesion, compact unity, patriotism, faith, competence, and positive worldview that Red America has over Blue, and to suggest that whatever happens next, we […]

Red America, Cont’d

A lively discussion has ensued in the comment-thread to our previous post. Commenter “vxxc” argues that my assessment of the natural assets of the Red coalition is too optimistic: that our lack, so far, of functional organization puts us at a lethal disadvantage in the gathering struggle. I, on the other hand, think this is […]

Red America: A More Perfect Union

The political situation is like nothing I have ever seen in my longish lifetime; as I wrote a little while ago, we are no longer a single community disagreeing about the difficulties of the world we share, but rather two bitterly antagonistic camps inhabiting utterly different realities of belief and perception, with nothing objective in […]

Service Notice

Today I saw my shoulder surgeon, Dr. Laith Jazrawi of Langone Orthopaedics, for my six-week post-op followup. The result was gratifying: everything is fine, with impressive progress toward full range of motion, and I no longer have to wear that bloody sling. I am also cleared to drive again, which is enormously liberating. I’m able […]

La Différence

I’ve just read a pithy and sensible article at Quilette on the subject of psychological and behavioral sex differences. The essay was written by David Geary, a professor of psychology at the University of Missouri, and it disputes the social-sciences orthodoxy that sees all such differences as social constructions, remediable (as if remediation were actually […]

The Camel’s Nose

It is notable that the Biden campaign hasn’t denied the veracity of the material taken from Hunter Biden’s laptop, even though it appears to be damning indeed. To the cynical observer this suggests what we’ve suspected all along: that the senescent and ineradicably tainted Biden is simply a Trojan horse intended to get the most […]

The American Multiverse

What an extraordinary time in American history this is. We are bifurcated, not into opposing political camps as in normal times, but into opposing realities. The developing story of Biden-family corruption is, in one of these dimensions of reality, evidence of disgraceful, comprehensive political and moral malfeasance that should utterly, and obviously, disqualify the Democratic […]

On The Toxic Appeal Of Wokeness

From a sharp new item by Andrew Sullivan: What antiracism brilliantly does is adopt all the instincts of racism and sexism — seeing someone and instantly judging them by the color of their skin, or sex — and drape them with a veil of virtue. Also this: Many moderns want the experience of religion without […]

The 1619 Project: Fracture At the Times

Here is a scorching critique of the New York Times’ calumnious “1619 Project”, from one of its own.

The Inverted Monarchy

My latest, about the modern-day sanctification of democracy as an end in itself, is up at American Greatness. Have a look.

How This Works

From the Perry Bible Fellowship, a timely and essential truth:

Mending

Sorry to have been so neglectful here. I’m recovering normally, but am still supposed to keep use of my right arm to a minimum for another week or two, and am living in a sling. Typing is slow and uncomfortable. Meanwhile the lovely Nina had surgery yesterday to remove a basal-cell carcinoma from the bridge […]

Service Notice

Shoulder surgery tomorrow, 9/14. I’m glad to be getting it done, but my right arm’s going to be in a sling for six weeks, so it’s going to be hard to write. Back when I can. Update, typed with left hand only, Monday 7 pm: All done. Supine and resting at home, generously medicated and […]

What’s Going On

I want to apologize to all of you who have been coming here over the past few months only to find little or no new content. I’ve written three articles this summer for publication elsewhere, but since my excruciating shoulder injury in July I’ve badly neglected the blog. Since 2005 I’ve written over five thousand […]

Masks

In an article a few weeks ago at American Greatness I wrote about the dark effect of mask-wearing: The face we present to the world is our “sigil,” our flag of individual distinctness. Our faces, and the richness of expression they make possible, are the primary medium of interpersonal communication. [The old expression “Smile when […]

Buckle Up

The election is two months away. I don’t get the sense, from most people, that they have any inkling of what a catastrophe it’s going to be. But if you think it’s been a crazy year so far, the period after Election Day is going to make the first ten months of 2020 look like […]

Critical Mass

I’ve just posted an adaptation of my old (2013) “Small World” essay at American Greatness. Here.

The Flight 93 Election, Only More So

Essential reading: Michael Anton explains, more persuasively than I’ve read anywhere else, why we must have a Trump win in 2020. You may not fully understand the scope of the calamity that awaits us if the Democrats consolidate their power; read his essay and you will. Here.

And Now For Something Completely Different

Here’s the latest collaborative video from my Star Island music team: a lighthearted cover of another Beatles classic. (You can see our others here.) Lead and background vocals, some bass guitar, and mixing: your humble correspondent.  

Dog Days

Our August hiatus continues. I’m a little hampered by the painful shoulder (broke a toe yesterday as well), and there have been the usual distractions of this late-summer season. (There’s a lot going on in the world, as always, but I’m taking a little break.) What time I’ve had for writing I’ve been using to […]

The Singularity Is Near

I’ve a new essay up at American Greatness on the prospect of civil war. Have a look here.

Service Notice

Sorry, readers, for the quiet around here. (August is always a bit of a hiatus for the blog.) I’ve been back and forth to NYC to get the shoulder looked at (will head back for surgery in a few weeks), and have been distracted in other ways as well. I’ve also been working on some […]

Service Notice

Off to NYC for a couple of days to have the shoulder looked at. Back soon. Update, 8/4: Surgery it is; seems I tore it up as badly as I had feared. September, most likely.

What We’ve Lost

I had a post ready to go here yesterday, but I sent it off to American Greatness and they picked it up, so I’ll ask you to read it there. Note: a disclaimer about the reality of the pandemic didn’t make the final cut. I’ll I’ll post the unedited, and possibly slightly revised, version here […]

What’s The Word?

You may have noticed an uptick in mobs surrounding drivers in their cars, and an increasing willingness in drivers thus imperiled simply to step on the gas. “What shall we call this?” wondered someone on Twitter. The answer, of course, is obvious: Accelerationism.

Service Notice

Sorry (again) that it’s been so quiet here. I’ve been nursing this shoulder injury — due to insurance-coverage issues I’ve had trouble getting an MRI, and will end up traveling from Wellfleet to Connecticut next week to get it done — and although it’s been getting a little better, it’s still been uncomfortable to type. […]

The Bonfire Of The Sanities

From The True Believer, by Eric Hoffer: “When hopes and dreams are loose in the streets, it is well for the timid to lock doors, shutter windows and lie low until the wrath has passed. For there is often a monstrous incongruity between the hopes, however noble and tender, and the action which follows them. […]