When I was very young, my even younger brother asked our two grandfathers, What is the difference between a Democrat and a Republican? Now, one grandfather was a Democrat and one was a Republican. And here we all sat together for this little conversation. My Republican grandfather answered first. Well I would say that we all want the same things, but we disagree on how to achieve them. Obviously he was being diplomatic, but this left a lasting impression, and I more or less believed it for many years.
But I can no longer believe this. I am 59 years old, and I have been following politics and culture since I was in high school. If the above sentiment was ever true, it is certainly not true today. Dear reader, let me ask you: Do left-of-center types and right-of-center types (I no longer use the party labels) want the same thing? Perhaps it is just me, but I do not think they do.
So while I appreciate what Peter Boghossian is doing, and I appreciated what Charlie Kirk tried to do, my question is this: What is the point of these conversations when the goals are so diametrically opposed? It is kind of like slavery: At some point, there is nothing left to talk about.
The problem is that not only do we have different goals. But we have different perceptions of the goals of the other side.
I think we can boil it down like this:
The right would define their goal as: Widespread prosperity
The left would define their goal as: Universal equality
But how would the left define the goal of the right: Prosperity for few
And how would the right define the goal of the left: Power for few
So where is the truth? Well the truth depends on where you sit. Yes of course I believe in absolute truth. I believe the right-of-center types are correct, both in the description of their goal and in their perception of the goal of the left. But any left-of-center type will make the exact opposite claim to truth.
The left may be delusional, but you have to remember that the left is a religion. And like any religion, their doctrine is their truth.
So like 1860, really, what is there left to talk about? I am not calling for war. But it seems to me that we must admit reality. These two sides will not, and perhaps cannot, be reconciled. We can have a separation, which has already begun. I predict this will accelerate. But a chaotic civil war at some point seems just has likely.
And of course, governments assist their villainous behavior. Today, post Covid, we must acknowledge that the pharmaceutical industry is much worse than the tobacco industry. If for no other reason than it affects more people. But the truth is these firms are knowingly working against public and individual health in order to produce long term customers for their recently patented, expensive drugs.
Over the decades, I became skeptical of Big Pharma. At first, I think it was all the creepy ads. But later I noticed how physicians seemed to morph into little more than drug dealers. Paid by us, their patients, and/or our insurance companies, but also handsomely paid by Big Pharma as well.
And by the time Covid came along, the grift was up. At least for me. But sadly not for most. And today, the racket continues. If during or after Covid, you were late to recognize the grift, only to do so in hindsight, welcome. I myself did not learn about the complete lack of proper testing for any vaccines, until after Covid, and after I received a number of recommended vaccines for international travel. But at this point, if you do not see the grift for what it is, you are recklessly naive regarding your own and your family's health.
As for the mRNA so-called vaccines, we still do not know what that was about. What we do know absolutely is that they were not designed as a vaccine against Covid. Are there any other vaccines that do not immunize against their target disease? Any? As Bret Weinstein recently pointed out, if these drugs were not designed to create immunity, perhaps they were purposefully designed to create some future vulnerability. What other reason could there be to insist that every person on this planet receive multiple doses of this poison?
Yes of course, the men attending a gay pride parade are perhaps overachievers in the field of sexual conquest. But the stereotype of the promiscuous gay man is long established and accurate. Do not pretend otherwise.
Gay men want to be treated like everyone else; get married like everyone else; these days, have children like everyone else. But don't kid yourselves, they are not like everyone else.
I'm pretty liberal about gay people and the gay lifestyle; they can do whatever they like, both in and out of the bedroom. But this level of promiscuity does not lend itself to marriage and children, not to mention public health.
Yes, these debates are over. But maybe they need a second, more realistic, look.
The public has largely accepted what gay men do. Even if most of us do not really want to think about it. But if a heterosexual man has this many sexual partners, most people would consider that licentious and degenerate. Here, even the term partner is out of place. These are not partners in any sense of the imagination. But I do not know a better term to describe the person on the other side of a daily, one-off, anonymous, sexual encounter. Of any type.
Well there is slut, right? But call a gay man a slut and his response is likely to be: Oh honey, you are so right. You don't know the half of it. Look at the men in the above video; they are proud of it.
Regarding a heterosexual man with that amount of sexual activity, some will surely envy his sexual prowess. But they will also call him a womanizer or a player; and no one is going to consider him marriage material. But is the heterosexual male slut also proud? Yeah maybe. But how many of these guys are there versus what is really normalization on the gay side.
I recently watched the Netflix remake of Alan Alda's The Four Seasons. And today of course, it includes a married gay couple. Okay fine. But in the series, the gay couple pick up an anonymous stranger and take him back to their hotel room to have sex. Like this is normal.
That is not normal. I mean it may be normal gay behavior and I do not care if that is what you want to get up to. Have at it. But it is not normal marriage behavior. And this is not the first time I have seen this in a television series. I saw one production a couple of years ago where the requisite gay couple had multiple outside partners. Hollywood has decided that this is, in fact, normal and the rest of us should get on board with it.
Now, I am perfectly well aware of the fact that some small number of heterosexual married couples also have so-called open relationships. But here too, let us not pretend this is normal marriage behavior. I will add what I always think about when someone is unfaithful to their spouse: If you do not want to be married, just do not be married. It is not as complicated as people sometimes want it to be.
Like I said, I do not care what anyone does. But let us not pretend that gay men are like us. And if this is normal behavior for you, straight or gay, maybe marriage is not your thing.
The film is sort of Death Wish meets contemporary European immigration. With Armie Hammer stepping in for Charles Bronson.
I cannot say that Death Wish was ever my cup of tea. Too much gratuitous violence, and in this case gratuitous sex, for my taste. But if the powers that be in Europe, particularly the increasingly authoritarian German regime, feel the need to censor it, then I must do my small part to fight the censorship.
So is the movie any good? Again, it's not really to my taste. But if you like the John Wick series, you will like this. And because the targets are immigrants rather than the mere thugs and criminals in Death Wish, there is definitely a political dimension to this film. In the end, whether or not you appreciate this film probably depends on your own political convictions.
I will add that both Armie Hammer and Costas Mandylor are excellent in their roles. Same for the supporting cast. I suppose the film is classified as low budget, but it is well made and the reduced budget did not interfere with the story.
In summary I would say that the movie is worth watching for its message. And here I mean, whether you agree with the message or not. You need to hear it. This problem is not going away. And I do not believe that European leaders will sincerely address it. European elites do not suffer the consequences of their policies and actions, so they do not care. Ultimately that is the message of this film.
This line really got my attention: I'm skeptical about any possibility of anybody voting themselves out of this trouble (14:18).
Here it is in context:
All over Europe, you see the rise of alternative political movements. Said before and I'll say again, I'm skeptical about any possibility of anybody voting themselves out of this trouble. But the instinct is there. People want political alternative. So you see it all over. You know the Alternative for Germany for example, the AFD, where the response of the regime is to try and make the AFD illegal. You know surveilling its would be candidates and arresting people just for posing, being a threat to the incumbents.
So the the trust in the in the political system, not just for me, but for millions, billions of people, is gone. What do people do then if the mechanisms that they've been told to trust are demonstrably useless? What do you get? Well, apart from anything else, you get loss of trust.
I am not sure that Oliver, who I quite like and appreciate, really believes this. He's skeptical. Fair enough. But I for one have absolutely come to believe it. The problems of the United Kingdom and continental Europe will not be solved at the ballot box.
Absolutely not.
And sadly, I will take it a step further with this question: In the United States, can we solve the political differences between left and right at the ballot box?
The left is an intolerant religion and proud of it
I do not know if this is real or not; I hope it is. But even if it is not, I think it makes a fair point. Popular culture, media, and the education establishment endlessly foist left-of-center views on people from the right. And those on the left need not ever entertain any views from the right. They are actually proud of this.
Since Charlie Kirk's death, the organization he founded has gone off the rails. I think he was naive about the people he surrounded himself with; including his own wife. But that should not diminish his own contributions. The question asked here is paramount.
Rupert Lowe asks: Is the British government a criminal enterprise?
Lowe says that change can be driven through the ballot box. Well as a politician, he would have to say that, right? But as in California and Minnesota, I'm not at all sure that will work any more.
Lowe thinks that people will vote for things to get worse before they get better. That is wishful thinking; I do not believe that people will do that. Collapse is inevitable.
I mean in Britain you have an elite class and a government class who absolutely refuse to hold rapists accountable. Mind you, over decades. They minimize it, they dismiss it, they hide it. And it doing so, they prove themselves worse than the actual rapists. It is, in fact, criminal.
Can the government at large be guilty of accessory and/or obstruction? Or aiding and abetting? Because that is exactly what happened. And Keir Starmer was the head of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).
And this is before we get to the vast crimes of the Covid "pandemic" response. Weinstein wonders aloud if the mRNA "vaccines" were not designed to create immunity (which so clearly, they were not), but rather purposefully designed to create some future vulnerability. To what, we cannot yet know. But given the players involved, this clearly is a possibility. This would certainly explain the unhinged enthusiasm for the jab from the powers that be.
Whether designed for immunity or future vulnerability, my question is, what other alternatives are there?
Well there is pure profit. But to me, that does not adequately explain the multi-government fervor, both domestically and internationally. And the punishments for noncompliance. The governmental actions and supposed reactions were unexplained, dark, and sinister. We may not know the tree, but we sure saw the fruit. It was not merely profit-driven; just my opinion.
In any case, these same people are in charge of the election processes. So my question is: Have we reached the end of functional democracy?
I think we have. These people must be dislodged and prosecuted. Keir Starmer must be jailed. Along with many thousands of his ilk. And now, I hear that Andy Burnham will be even worse.
Do not lay the blame at the feet of the immigrants. Of course, they should be removed, but they are who and what they are. No, the blame lies with the elites and their government minions. They must pay dearly for what they have done to the country.
This is not a consumer oriented website. But I think this issue rises to the level of importance that it warrants inclusion here. I featured Lindey Glenn in a post on McDonald's earlier this year. Here she returns with a video on digital pricing in a Walmart retail store.
I have become a Glenn fan and she does excellent work in a usually entertaining fashion.
For those who may not know, Walmart has started using digital price displays on its shelves. The prices shown on these displays can be changed at will by the company. This lowers the labor cost involved and gives the company greater pricing flexibility. But if you think this may not be as advantageous as Walmart does, you really should watch this video.
My question is: Is Walmart acting out of malice for its customers or sheer incompetence. I mean, hey, it's Walmart. And Walmart's deployment of technology. So almost assuredly, it is incompetence.
But this is what I walked alway from this video with: In regard to digital pricing in any retail environment, whether the motivation is malice, purposeful deceit, or incompetence, the point is, shoppers should not trust it.
Even if the store does everything above board, say for example, they only change prices once a day, at midnight, the potential for abuse is high. And further, we all know that retail businesses lust for the dynamic pricing precedent set by airlines and Uber.
Let's just imagine a future: You push your cart past a display of Walmart toothpaste, on sale for $2.69. But you just bought toothpaste last week, so you move along. But somewhere around the auto parts section, you remember that you paid $3.19 for the same toothpaste last week. So you return to the toothpaste display only to discover that now, ten minutes later, the price has changed to $2.99.
But that is not the worst of it; yes, the price changed, but only for you. The system reads the MAC or IMEI identification number on your smartphone and says, hey, that guy was just here, let's charge him more. Meanwhile, the next customer still gets the original $2.69 price. And a third customer, who has never purchased this particular toothpaste before, gets a price of $2.49.
You do not have to be very creative to come up with any number of similar scenarios. One day, the tags will only include QR codes and you have to use your phone to see the price. So every customer will get their own unique price based on shopping history, demographics, credit score, education level, time of day, etc.
Take a date and time stamped photo of the digital price display tag (ESL, Electronic Shelf Label) of any important purchase. Or even of any possible purchase. And as in this video, do not put up with any bullshit.
Under what circumstances is it okay to publicly call for civil war?
Is that ever allowed in polite society?
In the United Kingdom, it is not any one event or situation, but the cumulative actions and attitude of those in charge. Over, say, the last decade or so. The government, the courts, the police, all of them. It should be noted that this situation has evolved under both of the two major political parties, first under the Conservatives and now under Labour. Is it not time to remove them?
The problem stretches beyond government. It is really the elites, who are immune to the consequences of unchecked immigration, versus the working and middle classes, who are forced to suffer the actual consequences. Because the immigrants do not live and work among the elites; rather they burrow down with the working classes.
The elites and their government henchmen are responsible for the rape and murder of the lower classes. It may be the immigrants doing the actual raping and killing, but clearly it is the elites who are responsible. And they are completely cavalier about it. The only question I really have is: How long are the people of Great Britain going to put up with this? How many daughters have to be raped and how many sons have to die?
Believe me, if it was the sons and daughters of the elites, this problem would have been solved years ago. But they could not care less about the sons and daughters of their inferiors. They look down their noses, call them racists, and put Tommy Robinson in jail. When will it be enough?
Of course, I am not British and it is not for me to say. But if any government acts this way, regardless of how it is installed, should something not be done about it?
What is going on in Gaza? How do we know? For many months, I viewed this question as, well, you can accept reporting from Israel or you can accept reporting from Hamas. Take your pick.
I can tell you, I will never accept anything coming out of Hamas. Anyone who uses civilians as human shields is not honorable and not credible. But after Trump's appalling behavior since his second election, and after Thomas Massie's failed re-election, I have to question everything coming out of Israel as well. And while I am generally supportive of the war against Iran, it seems completely obvious to me that Benjamin Netanyahu is also not credible. And that he has some kind hold over Donald Trump. That also seems obvious.
We can speculate: It seems that Netanyahu wants to milk his hold over Trump for all it is worth, while he has the opportunity. Maybe he views this as now, while he has Trump in his pocket, or never. I have no idea what is really going on, but it is strange that the American president seems to be acting on behalf of another nation. While we may not know exactly what is going on, we can see the results. And we can know the tree by its fruit.
For many years, I have given Israel the benefit of the doubt. But I am just not sure this can continue. I am no longer convinced that they are deserving of our trust. On the other hand, the people who are convinced that there is a genocide happening in Gaza mostly seem to accept Hamas reporting, either directly or indirectly.
Anyway, this physician, Nick Maynard, does seem credible to me. Is he linked to Hamas, or Islam, or some Arab money, etc.? Maybe he holds some Arab-funded chair at Oxford? I do not know. He just seems believable. That alone does not make him honest, but judge his reporting for yourself.
I have been fooled before. Of course; we all have. And Gaza offers the most recent, and perhaps best, example of the Cartesian Crisis.
Broadly speaking, today we are witnessing the complete absence of honest journalism.
I like to walk for around sixty to ninety minutes a day. I try to do it early, before the sun gets too high, but it is never as early as I would prefer. First things first, we start with coffee and the news, and only after that, can I make it out. Yes, I miss some days, but I try not to miss two days in a row.
If you are walking a new path, even the most mundane route will keep you occupied and entertained. But after a while walking the same path, one does seek something to occupy the mind.
Now I pretty much live in my head. And I can easily spend an hour, or a morning, just thinking about life, family, business, and the latest variety of Dairy Queen Blizzard. And there are mornings when I do exactly that. Particularly on weekends.
There are those who prefer to walk and otherwise exercise with music. I get that, and the devices today are small enough to be carried along unnoticed. But I was never one of these walkers, as I was more likely to listen to talk radio.
But there was another way that I used to occupy myself walking. Phone calls. I could and often did make phone calls for the entire walk. Friends, co-workers, clients, no one seemed to mind. I found it amazingly productive. And the time flew by; before I knew it, my walk was done.
More recently, I have interrupted my walks with stops for photos, almost always landscapes or cloudscapes. Above is a photo I took today. While this may interrupt the monotony, you still have the distance to cover. Photos just slow you down. Not complaining, that's just the way it is.
Enter podcasts. All of this changed three years ago, when I purchased a set of Apple AirPods. Up until this point, I suppose I did watch some podcasts, but only on Youtube and only on my computer. What's the difference between a podcast and any other Youtube video? Until that point, I don't think I knew. And I never downloaded Youtube videos to watch or listen while walking. That seemed more trouble than it was worth.
But at some point I did become aware of how podcasts worked, and importantly, I realized that several Youtube channels that I subscribed to, were also podcasts. Which came first seems unimportant to me.
I think it is worth pointing out that far and away the Youtube videos I watch the most simply contain one or two people talking into a camera. They are not girls in bikinis or some dude pranking strangers for clicks. In other words, it is the sound that is important, not so much the video. Your mileage may vary.
So anyway, today I walk with podcasts. There are about five that I listen to regularly, though I am actually subscribed to quite a few more. That's more than enough to fill my weekday walks with usually enough spillover to fill my weekend walks. And if not, that's okay too. At least once a week I walk alone with my thoughts.
Podcasts may not be my own thoughts, but I often stop the podcast and think about what I just heard. It is not radio. It is not phone calls. It is not music. But they are thoughtful. I would argue that the DarkHorse Podcast is one of the most thoughtful broadcasts in all of media, old or new.
My podcasts have also replaced radio in the car, and fill most of my downtime. I would love to tell you they are mostly about poetry, highbrow literature, and stoic philosophy, but no, sadly, they are mostly news and commentary about current affairs.
My walks may not go by as fast as when I was making phone calls. But today, I find more value in the solitude, listening to a quiet podcast interspersed with a few photos.
It always seems to start with noise in public. No matter what, public noise, the speakers, the smartphones, loud voices, whatever it is, well, it's their culture.
And because it is their culture, you are not supposed to complain. And if you do have the temerity to complain, you are expected to accept it's their culture as a legitimate excuse; and let that be the end of it.
Well no, just no.
But noise is only the start. Bad behavior in restaurants, undisciplined children running amok, cultural scams like the skin tax, praying en masse on the streets and sidewalks, the amplified adhan five times a day, the lack of daily bathing, the failure to respect lines (queues), elastic punctuality, the list is endless.
And don't get me started on table manners and eating habits. Now I do not care what people eat. Different cultures eat different things. But I do care a great deal if your culture attempts to control what I eat. No, that's really bad, and no, I don't care if it is your culture. Not even a little.
Lately ghetto and racket behavior are ruining, or threaten to ruin, all public spaces. But don't you dare complain; you see, it's their culture.
And notice this: It's their culture is rarely applied to good habits. Why? Because few of us notice a culture's good habits. Why would we? Oh, he bathes every day? I hadn't noticed.
So each of us can decide for ourselves whether cultural practices should be accepted. But I do not accept, cannot accept, the cultural excuse for bad behavior. Bad behavior is bad behavior. And here is a dirty little secret that only gets revealed over time and only if you pay close attention. People are fully aware that their cultural practice is bad.
Does anyone really believe that Pakistani rape gangs are unaware that rape is unneighborly? The idea is absurd.
One final example that I like to use is people from Holland and Germany and Scandinavia, who love to tell others how direct, blunt, and frank, they are, as a culture. But I have long suspected that what is really going on is that they use frankness as an excuse for rudeness. And moreover, they are perfectly well aware that this is what they are doing. Bad behavior is bad behavior; and rudeness is rudeness.
They all know. Of course they know. It's my culture is just the most efficacious excuse.
Remember, culture is what we tolerate.
If you want to improve your culture, do not tolerate bad behavior.
At the end, she addresses Vladimir Putin directly. Transcript below.
Iuliia Mendel (Speaking in Russian):
Vladimir Vladimirovich, with all your life experience I don't understand how you see this world. But I'm not a NATO representative, not a Western representative, and I don't work for Zelensky — they're political opponents. You're not a threat to me. I'm a Ukrainian woman from provincial Kherson.
You say you're a man of God, but what's happening in Ukraine has nothing to do with God or humanity. You say you want peace — the only right thing today. It's the only way Ukraine and Russia can both win. No victor. Both lose. Slavs kill Slavs.
Your army tells you only noble victories, but there's a drone safari on people. My mom, a nurse, was talking on the phone going home — a Russian drone wounded her. Another nurse, back from her grandson's birthday in my Kherson village, was killed by a Russian drone getting out of her car. We see videos of old people evacuating, falling in blood and snow, shocked by explosions.
On frontlines, the oldest and poorest have no money to leave. Your army posts videos hunting people with drones. There must be limits of humanity. One word, one order from you can stop this.
You want peace? Stop. No one may thank you, but people will know. Peace is the only possible decision today.
Ordinarily I would not take such a speech seriously. And I confess, at the beginning of this video, I did not really take her seriously. Her English is imperfect and she is too pretty. At first glance she comes across as a pretty Ukrainian woman who lacks depth and seriousness. This is incorrect.
I'm telling you, set your stereotypes aside and listen to her. If you watch the video, it becomes clear that she is a master of her subject, Volodymyr Zelensky, and she deserves our attention. She describes Zelensky as a tyrannical child who simply does not want the war to end, because that would end his grift. That sounds about right to me.
And this ending was completely unexpected, which I guess is what makes it notable. Because I don't see Putin responding at all, even if he does see it. I just wish she would have also addressed her fellow Ukrainians. Message: Arrest Zelensky before he plunders the entire country and gets us all killed.
There is a shopping center in town that ripped out much needed parking spaces to install pickleball courts.
The tennis courts down the street are almost always empty.
Los Angeles mayor, Karen Bass is incompetent. How much rebuilding has been done in fifteen months?
Seattle mayor, Katie Wilson, and New York City mayor, Zohran Mamdani, do not understand that billionaires can live anywhere.
In fact, most Los Angeles, Seattle, and New York City residents could live anywhere.
China is having a property valuation depression.
Everything about China is a scam.
Candace Owens scares the elites.
I hope Candace Owens has more than adequate security.
The US can open the Strait of Hormuz any time it chooses (see AC130 gunship).
The US has thirty AC130 gunships.
The foreign government of Israel wants Thomas Massie defeated.
So Trump wants Thomas Massie defeated.
The recent Met Gala only proved, again, that Anna Wintour has no class.
When I was a kid, the school cafeteria served peanut butter sandwiches, I'd say, round about once a month. And, no one had autism. It is worth asking what has changed?
Big Food and/or Big Pharma do not want us asking.
The engine of the international economy runs on...petroleum.
If you are paying through the nose for energy... Europe and California ...it is no one's fault except your own.
Regarding the ongoing Hantavirus outbreak, once again the public health apparatus, led by WHO, proves that it is entirely untrustworthy, and likely working against the interest of actual public health. And once again, Bret Weinstein is on it.
Leather pants may be okay for a night club, but I cannot take anyone wearing leather pants seriously.
This seems obvious to me: Volodymyr Zelensky is worse than Vladimir Putin. Zelensky thrives on this war; why would he finish it?
"One thing we know about the state is that it's generally incompetent."
Nominally, this is an interview about New Zealand. But David Seymour, the current Deputy Prime Minister of New Zealand, offers a case study in the kind of thinking we desperately need in every western democracy.
The biggest problem for New Zealand, and for all western democracies, is that the Jacinda Ardern and Kamala Harris and Angela Merkel types will be back in charge before we know it. And while these three examples are all women, they are as power-hungry as their male counterparts. Say Keir Starmer, Gavin Newsom, and Tim Walz. These people only care about power; not good public policy. They weaponize the suicidal empathy of their voters to achieve and maintain their own power. That's the whole game.
And power-consumed leftists win because people on the right do not know how to fight. The right believes that the fight is with the leftist politicians. So they talk about how incompetent Tim Walz is. But the real fight is with the people who have voted for Walz and would vote for him again.
Let's take an example. Donald Trump loves New York City. Of course he does; it is his home. But last year, the good people of NYC elected a socialist mayor. They need to pay for that decision. They, the voters. And it needs to hurt. So when New York asks for the inevitable bailout, the answer must be no. The same for Seattle and Portland and Minneapolis and California. End the deduction for state and local taxes. Or at least cap them. The fight is not with Mamdani; it is with his voters.
So long as voters never pay for the consequences of their votes, they will continue to behave in an irresponsible manner. Mamdani and newly elected Seattle mayor Katie Wilson are power-hungry fools; but we all know exactly what they are. The people who voted for them also know what they are. They, the voters, must pay dearly for their decisions.
But the right will not do this; has never done this. They wring their hands, and complain about the slow but sure leftward drift of the country. They criticize Zohran Mamdani and Brandon Johnson.
Stop trying to win over the suicidal empathy crowd. You are never going to win them over. Instead, start talking about how stupid they are. And it is so easy to cite examples. Think for example: The Trump campaign ad about Harris is for They/Them; Donald Trump is for you. More like this. Much more.
How about: Stop funding Somalia you morons. Okay, clean it up a bit, add a little context, but that needs to be the message. Or: Wait, you want boys on the girl's volleyball team; what is wrong with you? No, of course you will not win over someone who does want this. Rather, you will win everyone else.
I would go max on voter ID. Start with buying alcohol and cigarettes. But find the most stupid thing that people need an ID for, and compare that to voting. Also, voting machine manipulation compared to the numerous internet hacking cases. High taxes are a bit more difficult, but not if you link them to stupid spending cases. And if they want to confiscate the wealth of billionaires, remind the public that billionaires can choose where they live. Billionaires choose where they live, you morons.
You get the idea; do not be afraid to point out stupidity. Relish it, roll in it. For God's sake, learn how to fight. And learn who exactly you should be fighting.
I think it is worth having a look at the actual text of the WHCD shooter's manifesto. This guy sounds like any number of leftists that I have encountered over the last three decades.
And to be clear, at first this attitude could only be found on the fringes of leftist political thought. But over this time period, I have watched this sort of thinking move closer and closer to mainstream left of center thought and argument. Which of course meant that ever greater numbers of left of center types agreed with it.
Also, I am not sure what subject Allen taught, but let's hope it was not English or writing. (More below)
Cole Allen’s manifesto in full:
Hello everybody!
So I may have given a lot of people a surprise today. Let me start off by apologizing to everyone whose trust I abused.
I apologize to my parents for saying I had an interview without specifying it was for “Most Wanted.”
I apologize to my colleagues and students for saying I had a personal emergency (by the time anyone reads this, I probably most certainly DO need to go to the ER, but can hardly call that not a self-inflicted status.)
I apologize to all of the people I traveled next to, all the workers who handled my luggage, and all the other non-targeted people at the hotel who I put in danger simply by being near.
I apologize to everyone who was abused and/or murdered before this, to all those who suffered before I was able to attempt this, to all who may still suffer after, regardless of my success or failure.
I don’t expect forgiveness, but if I could have seen any other way to get this close, I would have taken it. Again, my sincere apologies.
On to why I did any of this:
I am a citizen of the United States of America.
What my representatives do reflects on me.
And I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes.
(Well, to be completely honest, I was no longer willing a long time ago, but this is the first real opportunity I’ve had to do something about it.)
While I’m discussing this, I’ll also go over my expected rules of engagement (probably in a terrible format, but I’m not military so too bad.)
Administration officials (not including Mr. Patel): they are targets, prioritized from highest-ranking to lowest
Secret Service: they are targets only if necessary, and to be incapacitated non-lethally if possible (aka, I hope they’re wearing body armor because center mass with shotguns messes up people who aren’t
Hotel Security: not targets if at all possible (aka unless they shoot at me)
Capitol Police: same as Hotel Security
National Guard: same as Hotel Security
Hotel Employees: not targets at all
Guests: not targets at all
In order to minimize casualties I will also be using buckshot rather than slugs (less penetration through walls)
I would still go through most everyone here to get to the targets if it were absolutely necessary (on the basis that most people chose to attend a speech by a pedophile, rapist, and traitor, and are thus complicit) but I really hope it doesn’t come to that.
Rebuttals to objections:
Objection 1: As a Christian, you should turn the other cheek.
Rebuttal: Turning the other cheek is for when you yourself are oppressed. I’m not the person raped in a detention camp. I’m not the fisherman executed without trial. I’m not a schoolkid blown up or a child starved or a teenage girl abused by the many criminals in this administration.
Turning the other cheek when someone else is oppressed is not Christian behavior; it is complicity in the oppressor’s crimes.
Objection 2: This is not a convenient time for you to do this.
Rebuttal: I need whoever thinks this way to take a couple minutes and realize that the world isn’t about them. Do you think that when I see someone raped or murdered or abused, I should walk on by because it would be “inconvenient” for people who aren’t the victim?
This was the best timing and chance of success I could come up with.
Objection 3: You didn’t get them all.
Rebuttal: Gotta start somewhere.
Objection 4: As a half-black, half-white person, you shouldn’t be the one doing this.
Rebuttal: I don’t see anyone else picking up the slack
Objection 5: Yield unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.
Rebuttal: The United States of America are ruled by the law, not by any one or several people. In so far as representatives and judges do not follow the law, no one is required to yield them anything so unlawfully ordered.
I would also like to extend my appreciation to a great many people since I will not be likely to be able to talk with them again (unless the Secret Service is astoundingly incompetent.)
Thank you to my family, both personal and church, for your love over these 31 years.
Thank you to my friends, for your companionship over many years.
Thank you to my colleagues over many jobs, for your positivity and professionalism.
Thank you to my students for your enthusiasm and love of learning.
Thank you to the many acquaintances I’ve met, in person and online, for short interactions and long-term relationships, for your perspectives and inspiration.
Thank you all for everything.
Sincerely,
Cole “coldForce” “Friendly Federal Assassin” Allen
PS: Ok now that all the sappy stuff is done, what the hell is the Secret Service doing? Sorry, gonna rant a bit here and drop the formal tone.
Like, I expected security cameras at every bend, bugged hotel rooms, armed agents every 10 feet, metal detectors out the wazoo.
What I got (who knows, maybe they’re pranking me!) is nothing.
No damn security.
Not in transport.
Not in the hotel.
Not in the event.
Like, the one thing that I immediately noticed walking into the hotel is the sense of arrogance.
I walk in with multiple weapons and not a single person there considers the possibility that I could be a threat.
The security at the event is all outside, focused on protestors and current arrivals, because apparently no one thought about what happens if someone checks in the day before.
Like, this level of incompetence is insane, and I very sincerely hope it’s corrected by the time this country gets actually competent leadership again.
Like, if I was an Iranian agent, instead of an American citizen, I could have brought a damn Ma Deuce in here and no one would have noticed s–t.
Actually insane.
Oh and if anyone is curious is how doing something like feels: it’s awful. I want to throw up; I want to cry for all the things I wanted to do and never will, for all the people whose trust this betrays; I experience rage thinking about everything this administration has done.
Can’t really recommend it! Stay in school, kids.
End of manifesto
Less of a manifesto; more of a statement, I suppose. And, am I the only one not surprised this guy is a teacher? Does this episode not perfectly encapsulate where our education system has brought us? When education becomes indoctrination, this is the result. And this is one goal of our modern education establishment.
The left will never admit it, but God, they love it. And Cole Allen is not alone; far from it. Today there are millions of young people just like this guy. If you doubt this, I would suggest you talk with recent college graduates. You might start with a few teachers.
The ultimate goal of our modern education system is to create an army of leftists, willing to use any means necessary to remake the United States into a socialist utopia. It is worth noting that Allen is 31 years old. So not only is he a participant in the education establishment, but he is also a product of it.
We are not going to defeat these people in the war of ideas. They are completely immune to logic and rational thought. For them, it is a religion.
When Trump lost the Carlson brothers, he lost the Right
Watch the whole thing, but the last twenty minutes are truly revealing.
Open questions: Before his assassination, was Trump about to lose Charlie Kirk's support as well? Why is the FBI only pretending to investigate Kirk's death? Who wrote the now famous Tyler Robinson text messages? Why all the subterfuge surrounding the Kirk assassination? And most importantly, why does Trump allow Benjamin Netanyahu such latitude to prosecute the Iran war as he sees fit, even though Israel is clearly the very junior partner in this endeavor?
Now Jackson refers to this as black culture, and that is his prerogative, but I have met too many decent black people to refer to it this way myself. I find the more appropriate term to be ghetto culture. An interesting question for Jackson would be what percentage of black Americans subscribe to ghetto culture?
Why do people on the left believe what they believe?
Bret Weinstein says that he believes communism stems from insurmountable bad luck. And while there is some truth to this, it is not the primary cause. Communism is primarily a function of envy. And there is a class of people who stoke the envy, not for the good of society, certainly not the good of the working classes, but to accumulate power for themselves.
Has history not proven this time and again? If this fact troubles you, just name one communist leader who lived a communist life? Just one.
Weinstein goes on to argue that the best way to immunize people from communist impulses is to give people access to the market and the tools to compete in the market.
Excellent. Left unsaid is that the left believes this can and should be done with some series of never-ending government programs. They argue, who or what else is going to do it? But the reality is that the best way to provide access to the market is to limit the burden of government on everyone: Employer, employee, entrepreneur, investor, laborer, etc.
Further, Weinstein wants to hypothesize and test solutions to our various problems. And that sounds great. But who ends up controlling the process? Again, the government. And government is unwieldy and bureaucratic. Hypothesize, test, fail, re-tool, try again differently. This is not something government does. It is not something government has ever done. But you know who has always done this? The free market.
One thing that pro-government types struggle with is the concept of incentives. And without this understanding, government programs of any type, are doomed to fail. Again, who gets this concept correct? The free market.
When government is involved, they bring their bureaucracy and their group think and their politics and their power dynamics. And their guns. It is always worth remembering that everything government does, and every policy that it enacts, is at the point of a gun. Group think with guns. That pretty much sums up every government ever.
But that is not the worst of it. Leftist power players care very little about policy. They only care about policy insofar as it helps them achieve and maintain their own power. They certainly do not care about the long term effects and consequences of their policies. So Weinstein's experimentation process is never actually started much less accomplished. The left's so-called solutions are only proposed to win elections. To the extent that anything ever gets done, there is zero attention to efficacy. The whole thing is a sham.
But then it gets even worse. Because all governments lie with impunity. Either to further their political ends or to hide their corruption and/or failures. Yet the left seems to believe that if they could just get their imagined version of an honest, good government, then everything will work as they envision it. But this never happens; has never happened in the history of the world. But next time, they assure us, they will get it right. Just in time to carry out Weinstein's experiments.
So let's keep government in a small box, doing only the absolutely necessary. Yes, I realize this ship has sailed. But this should be our goal.
This is so obvious that it begs the question, why do leftists believe what leftists believe? Well there are two kinds of leftists. The small group I mentioned above who lust for power. And the more common useful idiots, some driven by envy, some driven by other emotions, such as an overabundance of empathy, who buy all the bullshit peddled by the power players. Many of the useful idiots have turned away from faith in God and replaced it with faith in government. And as with any religion, faith does not make it true.
Now let's consider Weinstein himself. I like Bret, I really do. And I have learned a great deal from him. See capture; see Cartesian crisis; see Goliath; see the difference between complicated and complexsystems; see his numerous Youtube videos produced during the Covid crisis and response. In fact, I credit Bret and his wife Heather for largely guiding my thinking through the time of Global Covid Nonsense™.
So it is odd to me that in the video discussion above, Weinstein advocates for the use of complicated government solutions, yet to be identified, to solve highly complex societal problems; ignoring his own distinction between these concepts. Why does he do this? Yes, he is obviously smart enough to recognize that he is doing this. So why?
Government can provide for basic societal needs. Roads, bridges, parks, police, courts, military. It can address, if not solve, some more complicated problems like social security, immigration, and antitrust. So I think what happens is that pro-government types assume that it can also address complex societal problems like black family disintegration, climate concerns, drug abuse, and a falling fertility rate. They advocate for and usually win the argument that government must act and spend vast sums of other people's money to address these and uncountable other societal problems. But as with any complex system, government fiddling simply ensures new problems, greater problems, and/or perpetual problems.
Again, Weinstein knows this. He is not a useful idiot and he does not lust for power. I just cannot understand how anyone who knows this can remain on the left.
Odom: There is a rising movement of regular gay people who are against all the nonsense
Back in January, I wrote about the gay show and how the time has come to take a considered look at the whole topic. Well here is a gay man who agrees that the show is getting old.
I really appreciate Amir's honesty. All the more so because of how rare it is in the alphabet community and among the left in general.
Gay fatigue is a real thing, and here I was thinking that it was just me.
In this video, Odom makes two important divisions. Let me restate them here. He does not make them in this order, but let me state them in a way that makes sense to me. First, he divides the alphabet people between the LGB and the TQ+. Then he further divides the LGB people between the normal everyday types and the gay show types. These seem like fair divisions to me.
Now, I have no idea what percentage of alphabet people are normal gays. And clearly, it is the gay show types that we all tend to notice. How could we not? Maybe the majority of gay people are normal and do not put on a show. How would we know?
By the way, what is "normal" anyway? Well normal people do not walk around shouting their sexuality so that everyone can see it. That is not normal.
It was Bret Weinstein, during the Covid response episode, who first introduced me to the contemporary metaphorical concept of Goliath. It may be a metaphor, but it represents something real. This is clearly true even if we cannot identify exactly what that something is. Matthew 7:16 taught us to know a tree by its fruit. Using this lesson, we may not know exactly whatGoliath represents, but we can know its purpose by what it does. The purpose of any system is what it does. And today, I think we can broaden Matthew: By its fruit, we know it exists.
There is much in this two part conversation that I disagree with; there is much more that I do agree with. Plus, I also share many of Weinstein and Carlson's open questions. In any case, if you want to be smarter about what is going on in the world today, have a listen.
WSJ: There's an inverse correlation between power and proper grammar
That's pretty much the long and the short of the whole article (archive). But I would add that there is a correlation between proper grammar and respect. So when did power come to mean a lack of respect?
I am a terrible self-editor, but I do make every effort to not make, and certainly not send, grammatical or spelling errors. But according to The Wall Street Journal, in 2026, this makes me some kind of toady.
Have we become so blasé about written communications that we fail to comprehend that there is an etiquettical dimension to the process? Or do we just no longer care?
I mean even if I am communicating with a subordinate, I will make every effort to write properly. I might even make more of an effort, because I would not want them to think I am illiterate, right? That would be shameful. Or at least embarrassing.
Well...no.
The authors of this piece seem to be saying that we demonstrate our power by using bad grammar. Or at the very least, power gives us permission to dispense with proper grammar and editing. Personally, I think they have been reading way too much Foucault.
But this much is clearly true. People today like to assume that whomever they are communicating with will not assume that they are illiterate. The correspondent will simply assume that they are busy or blame the technology or whatever. Or, they assume that the correspondent will simply believe that they just cannot be bothered. So there is no embarrassment much less shame.
Is that the message that we want to send? And if it is, what does that say about us? Here's a question: What would your grandmother have thought about your grandfather if his love letters were full of grammatical errors and spelling mistakes? Maybe you would not be here.
No, consistently bad grammar and spelling is a signal. He just cannot be bothered. That's the signal.
Here's my question: What else is he not bothered about?
If you believe that bad grammar signals something else; maybe it does. It could represent any number of signals. But all of them are bad.
And if etiquettical is not a word, I will be ashamed.
