April 10, 2022 – 11:04 pm
Ah, this world… I’d hoped I might have had something original, or at least interesting, to say in the few days since my last, rather apologetic post — but it’s Spring, and the lovely Nina and I haven’t gone anywhere since March of 2020, so on an impulse we are heading South for just a […]
Jeepers, where does the time go? I had no idea it had been so long since I’ve written anything here; I’ve been distracted with what’s known as “IRL” stuff (which, I suppose, is not altogether unhealthy). Among the things I’ve been doing has been reading a lot. Right now I’m re-reading a book called The […]
March 26, 2022 – 12:35 pm
I’ve referred on several occasions to the old Chinese story about “calling a deer a horse”, which describes the scheming courtier Zhao Gao’s stratagem (this was way back in the third century BC) for testing the loyalty of potential political allies by seeing what lies they would assent to. I first read about this over […]
March 21, 2022 – 11:41 pm
Here’s a brief item of mine, just posted at American Greatness.
March 20, 2022 – 11:49 pm
Currently underway in Iceland:
Writing at City Journal, my friend Jim Meigs (who is also, by the way, a hell of a good musician) discusses the folly of U.S. biofuel policy. In brief: it’s a disaster already, and it’s about to make things much, much worse. Here.
James Kalb stopped by to comment on yesterday’s post, and his remarks deserve a post of their own in reply. (I’ve known Jim for quite a few years now, and for those of you who don’t recognize his name, he is a lawyer and scholar who has written extensively on politics, religion, and culture, and […]
March 18, 2022 – 11:53 am
If you’re like most people — and most people are! — you’re probably looking at the news, and the fantastic things you are asked to believe, with a deepening feeling that either everyone’s gone completely mad, or that you have. If it’s any comfort, let me reassure that you haven’t gone insane, and neither has […]
Hat-tip to our commenter Jake for this one.
March 13, 2022 – 12:24 pm
I haven’t had much to say — Ukraine is all smoke and fog and lies and propaganda, and I’ve been focused on personal matters. Now we are off to NY and NJ for a few days (Nina’s having surgery on her hand), and I don’t expect to be posting anything till we get back. A […]
Curtis Yarvin. a.k.a. Mencius Moldbug, has posted a pungent item about Ukraine today at Substack. In it, he had this to say: A foreign policy conducted solely in the interest of Americans would not involve intervening in a civil war against a nuclear power on the banks of the Dnieper, for the reason that there […]
Here is a caustically sarcastic item by Michael Anton that I encourage you all to read and share.
It’s good to see that Lewis Anselm, AKA “Diplomad”, is blogging again. Anselm, having spent his professional career working for the State Department all over the world, is always especially good on international affairs, and he’s just posted an excellent item on Ukraine. You should read the whole thing, but I’ll quote one longish passage […]
We are hearing, once again, a lot of incoherent prattle about “the right side of history”. It’s no surprise, given current events, but as time goes by, I find it increasingly annoying. It’s a vain and silly expression, full of swollen and virtuous self-pride; all it really refers to, in most people’s mouths, is whether […]
February 27, 2022 – 2:25 pm
Lee Smith has posted an essay at Tablet summarizing the decades-long runup to this war in Ukraine. It’s an excellent synopsis — brief, clear, and insightful — and I highly recommend it to you all. Greed, bluster, folly, and hubris — this story has it all. Read it here.
February 23, 2022 – 11:52 pm
That great rumbling sound you’re hearing is history resuming. Reports of its death, or that it has “sides”, were greatly exaggerated. We see tonight, as we have seen again and again and again, century after century, that imaginary “order” based on political and diplomatic abstractions — or on anything but a vector-sum of power, fear, […]
February 23, 2022 – 10:49 pm
Sad news yesterday: Gary Brooker, the singer, composer, and pianist of the English band Procol Harum, has died of cancer at the age of 76. This was a particularly poignant passing for me; I’ve been haunted by his masterpiece A Salty Dog since the first time I heard it, more than half a century ago, […]
February 21, 2022 – 10:05 pm
It is with great joy that the lovely Nina and I welcome to the world little Cooper Joseph Wright, our third grandchild, born today in Hong Kong. Mother (our daughter) and son are happy and well.
February 17, 2022 – 1:37 pm
You may have had some concerns about gathering tensions on the Russian frontier. (There’s much I could say about what it all means, and about our decades of folly regarding Russia, but I’ll leave that for another time.) Well, I’m happy to say you can put your mind at ease, and get on with your […]
February 17, 2022 – 12:00 pm
Rush Limbaugh died a year ago today. Over at American Greatness, Christopher Flannery has published a remembrance. Read it here.
February 16, 2022 – 11:48 pm
I’m 65, soon to be 66. My lovely wife Nina is about a year-and-a-half older. (She “robbed the cradle”!) We are already both eligible for Social Security. Neither of us had been planning to file for it yet, though, because for each year you wait (until you’re 70), the benefit rate that you lock in […]
February 15, 2022 – 12:30 am
Watching those truckers standing up for their liberties against Justin Castreau has me in a feisty temper tonight, and so here’s a post that fits my mood. I have a friend who, back in the heady days before everything became so grim and tedious, used to be a leading light, with a large following, of […]
February 13, 2022 – 10:31 pm
Richard Hanania has just published an excellent piece at Substack on the enfeebling and corrosive effect of the feminization of public affairs. The problem, as he describes it, is that the natural asymmetry between men and women gives women a pass when they respond emotionally to the rough-and-tumble that is an inevitable part of every […]
February 7, 2022 – 3:10 pm
Yes, Justin “Trudeau” is Fidel Castro’s son. This is about as obvious as it could be, and if you are wondering why those in power keep lying about this, I advise you to look up “Point deer, make horse”. If this is actually news to you, read this. (And as current events amply confirm, the […]
February 6, 2022 – 12:12 am
Readers who have been coming around here for a while will know that in recent years I have felt the need to re-examine all that I once believed about scientism, philosophical materialism, and the existence of God. It began as a grudging acceptance, even as an unbeliever myself, that atheism and secularism might have a […]
January 29, 2022 – 5:42 pm
We’ve had quite a storm today here on the far end of Cape Cod, and it’s still raging as I write (5:26 PM Saturday). All day long the northeast wind off the Atlantic has been ferocious, and the snow’s been falling (or more accurately, blowing sideways) at two to three inches per hour. I’m writing […]
January 28, 2022 – 11:26 pm
It appears we are about to be blasted by the first serious winter storm of the season here in the Outer Cape – a potent nor’easter that’s undergoing “bombogenesis” as I write. The current predictions have us getting about two feet of snow between now and Sunday morning, with howling winds. I hope the power […]
January 23, 2022 – 11:19 pm
I’ve just read an article at Substack, written by one N.S. Lyons (whose bio tells us only that he or she is an “analyst and writer working in Washington, D.C.”), listing twenty reasons why none of us should harbor any hope that we might at last be emerging from the collective insanity of Wokeness that […]
January 21, 2022 – 11:11 pm
Following on that essay on “mass formations” at American Greatness, Bill Valicella’s reply to it at his place, and my own follow-up post from a few days ago, JM Smith has posted a substantial contribution to the discussion over at The Orthosphere. Professor Smith’s post brings to the conversation Gustave Le Bon’s 1896 study of […]
January 18, 2022 – 11:15 pm
The chattering classes are atip at the titillating prospect of a Russian operation into Ukraine. The appeal is obvious: above all, they can imagine a surge of patriotic cohesion, a nation united against a familiar external foe — the Russkies — that much of our colossal Deep State still misses with a poignancy that is […]
January 15, 2022 – 5:43 pm
Recently I published an essay at American Greatness about the idea of “mass-formation psychosis”, a concept that has gone “viral” after being discussed by Dr. Robert Malone in a widely viewed interview with Joe Rogan. (The interview was, within days, widely censored on media platforms — which is, we should note, relevant in itself.) The […]
January 12, 2022 – 6:38 pm
I saw this online today. I think it’s brilliant.
January 12, 2022 – 12:01 am
A few days ago I promised to put up a post about “mass formation psychosis”, but it turned into an essay that I sent off to American Greatness instead, and has been published there today. I might reprint it here, after a decent interval, but for now I’ll invite you to go read it over […]
January 10, 2022 – 7:23 pm
Having just had a commenter casually toss the execrable term “climate denier” into my comment-thread, comparing any dissent on climate policy and other such technically complex, politically charged topics to stubborn belief in a flat Earth, I thought I would draw your attention to a useful resource: a collection of thirty-one pages, each presenting useful […]
January 6, 2022 – 10:48 pm
The astonishingly prolific Victor Davis Hanson observes Insurrection Day with a fine essay on just who constitutes the actual threat to the American Way. Read it here. If you are wondering, by the way, what the title of this post refers to, you can read the story of Zhao Gao over at Spandrell’s place, here. […]
January 5, 2022 – 7:45 pm
Well, tomorrow is January 6th, the anniversary of the greatest assault on civilization since the sack of Rome — and all of the good people in our news media, and all of our friendly Democratic politicians, are breathless with excitement thinking of the gifts this special day will bring. From Washington to Atlanta to New […]
January 2, 2022 – 8:23 pm
By far the most polarizing issue at the moment is the Wuhan Red Death, a.k.a. COVID — and things got sharply hotter over the past few days, when (as I’m sure you’ve heard) Dr. Robert Malone, one of the inventors of mRNA-vaccine technology and one of the world’s foremost experts on vaccinations and disease outbreaks, […]
December 31, 2021 – 6:42 pm
Best wishes to you all, and I hope we get some sanity back in 2022, though I won’t be betting on it. I’ll be revving up the blog in the New Year. I’ve been idle too long, and I’m starting to miss writing.
December 25, 2021 – 6:04 pm
All the best to each and every one of you — and thanks as always for coming by.
December 22, 2021 – 11:46 pm
Following on yesterday’s post; here is OpenVAERS, which is a more easily accessible front-end for the VAERS data.
December 21, 2021 – 1:12 pm
Here’s a chart I requested from the CDC’s VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System) website. (Keep in mind that these are totals for events from 1990 up to December 10th of this year, and that the COVID vaccines have only been around for 18 months or so.)
December 20, 2021 – 12:43 pm
I must apologize again for having so little on offer here lately. We’ve been distracted by personal matters, but I’ve also felt I have very little of value to say that I haven’t already said. This is as much due to laziness and indiscipline as to anything else, though: not-writing has a momentum of its […]
December 13, 2021 – 10:30 pm
With thanks to Bill Keezer, here is a translation of a speech given by the Frenchman Eric Zemmour announcing his candidacy for President. May he prevail! My dear Countrymen— For years, the same feeling has swept you along, oppressed you, shamed you: a strange and penetrating feeling of dispossession. You walk down the streets in […]
December 9, 2021 – 12:32 pm
Here’s an item from Taki’s Magazine in which Steve Sailer discusses a new study of mass murder. The results will not, I think it is safe to say, be discussed in our major media outlets, or in polite society, anytime soon.
December 8, 2021 – 12:35 am
Sorry not to have been writing more. (Soon the Muse will nag me again, I hope.) So, instead: I bet you’ve never heard of Devin Townsend. Headphones on, and brace yourself.
December 4, 2021 – 6:12 pm
From the UK Daily Standard: Up to 300,000 people facing heart-related illnesses due to post-pandemic stress disorder, warn physicians These stories are popping up all over. I wonder if there’s something else that could be responsible…
November 29, 2021 – 10:10 pm
Here we go: With the help of a supercomputer running AI software, boffins at an American university have created a new life-form they call “xenobots”, which are are tiny, motile blobs of tissue made from frog stem-cells. Under the guidance of the AI — which, as AIs tend to do these days, took off on […]
November 29, 2021 – 6:58 pm
Wellfleet Harbor today, in a late-November mood:
November 29, 2021 – 3:15 pm
Please watch — this might not be up for long.
November 25, 2021 – 12:04 pm
This day, my favorite holiday of the year, is consecrated to remembering the vital importance of gratitude. Yes, things are not going well in America right now, but the story is far from over, and the strength of our good people is undiminished. Dum spiro spero!