Uncategorized – Page 3 – Libertate Virtute (Virtue + Liberty)

August 9, 2025August 27, 2025

Who Pays the Tariffs?

us president donald trump holds a signed executive order for tariffs increase — Trump has signed an executive order for tariffs increase. (Reuters: Kevin Lamarque)

Introduction: An era of freer trade made it possible for me to give new life to a dying refrigerator. Better for it to be of use in my garage than in a landfill. No freer trade, I junk the thing.

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No news here. President Trump proclaimed that his tariffs brought into the treasury $150 billion so far, by the end of July. His Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, projects $300 billion by the end of the year (see #1). The use of tariffs as a revenue generator is now a familiar part of Trump’s spiel. We’ve always had tariffs for a variety of well-worn reasons, but for most of our country’s history, a history without an income tax, tariffs were the chief source of revenue for Uncle Sam for all that the feds did at the time. Now we have an invasive income tax AND a new and ubiquitous tariff regime with a 15% floor covering most that enters the country thanks to Trump. The key lesson is our federal government’s insatiable appetite for more money to cover its still-growing $37 trillion debt, which just piles onto the backs of the citizens both the income tax and Trump’s tariff protectionism and its accompanying higher prices.

But who really pays the tariffs? In a display of economic illiteracy, Trump really believes foreigners pay. Read this display of historical and economic incoherence:

“In 1913 for reasons unknown to mankind, they established the income tax so that citizens, rather than foreign countries, would start paying the money necessary to run our government.” (see #2)

Is Trump advocating the abolishment of the income tax to make room for his “most beautiful word in the English language”? No, an end to the income tax appears nowhere in sight. Astonishingly, he actually claimed that foreign countries paid for our federal government. In the same breath, he and his Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnick, contradict their logic by admitting price increases and fewer choices are the likely outcome.

Here’s Trump in an interview with Kristen Welker: “I don’t think that a beautiful baby girl needs – that’s 11 years old – needs to have 30 dolls.”

Here’s Lutnick in an interview with CBS’s Margaret Brennan advocating the avoidance of the tariffs by buying American: “[people who manufacture here] don’t pay a tariff. They don’t pay a tariff at all. So, President Trump says it all the time, build in America, you don’t pay a tariff.” And assumably you don’t have to worry about any tariff-induced price increases, or so says Lutnick (see #3).

The statements are incomprehensible. Trump doesn’t care that a margin of the buying public will be priced out of the market, and Lutnick fails to understand that a tariff raising the price of imports will lead to jumps in domestics as well. The price of the imported Toyota increases by $1,500 which leaves room for Ford to raise theirs by $750. The price floor is raised for all products no matter their country of origin (see #4).

Artificially raising prices alters behavior of all who confront them. Like me. Recently, my house refrigerator/freezer went on the fritz. It wasn’t cooling. The condenser coil was frosting over blocking the flow of air from the fan. The compressor is fine, so why the frost blockage? The defroster function clearly wasn’t working. The two most accessible parts in the defrost chain are the thermostat and defrost timer. Now began an online search for parts.

The price of parts varied dramatically for OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer, possibly American) and the import (some from China). The price for the thermostat ranged from the OEM $60 to the import $8, and the defrost timer went from the OEM $120 to the import $22. Following the advice of the $3.37-billion in net worth Howard Lutnick or the $5-billion Donald Trump, versus the income of pensioners (my wife and I), they would have me pay the $180, which might not fix the thing. These guys could afford to junk the thing and shell out $1,500 for new, for two, maybe more. No big deal for them, one living in a $35 million Bridgehampton, NY, estate, and the other at Mar-a-Lago. For me, $30 makes the gamble worth it, which is what I did.

May be an image of 1 person, the Oval Office and text that says 'W' — President Trump with Mar-a-Lago in the background

May be an image of 1 person, lighting and text — Howard Lutnick and his Bridgehampton, NY, mansion

It worked. “Buying American” would mean another appliance in the county landfill instead of one in my garage for ice cream and cold drinks.

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That’s how economics works. Prices are signals to us and unleash incentives and disincentives for certain economic actions. Policies that artificially raise prices inordinately affect people at one end of the income margin while being meaningless to those at the other end. But those at the upper-income end seem to be making the policy.

Speaking of being out of touch. Trump portrays himself as the blue-collar messiah. No, he’s only a blessing to certain blue-collars – the ones with plenty of campaign cash and political pull – at the expense of other blue-collars. And for the rest of us, we must navigate a more difficult market. Unfree trade has its costs, big time.

RogerG

Sources:

1. “July tariff revenues break monthly record, with $150B collected so far in 2025”, Amanda Macias, Fox Business, 7/29/2025, at https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/july-tariff-revenues-break-monthly-record-150-billion-collected-so-far-2025.
2. “’A little tough love’: Top quotes from Trump tariff talk”, France 24, 3/4/2025, at https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20250402-a-little-tough-love-top-quotes-from-trump-tariff-talk.
3. “Transcript: Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan,” July 20, 2025”, CBS News: Face the Nation, 7/20/2025, at https://www.cbsnews.com/news/howard-lutnick-commerce-secretary-face-the-nation-transcript-07-20-2025/.
4. “Tariffs—Everything you need to know but were afraid to ask”, Adam S. Hersh and Josh Bivens, Economic Policy Institute, 2/10/2025, at https://www.epi.org/publication/tariffs-everything-you-need-to-know-but-were-afraid-to-ask/#:~:text=By%20raising%20the%20cost%20of%20foreign-produced%20goods%20or,goods%2C%20allowing%20domestic%20businesses%20to%20also%20raise%20prices.

August 2, 2025August 27, 2025

The Costs of Coddling on a National Scale

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Helicopter parenting seems to be a feature of some child raising today, may be an inbred reflex for older marrieds finally birthing one or two children. It comes with unforeseen costs which will be borne by the child later in life. The coddling cripples the youngster from developing the coping mechanisms and needed personality corrections when facing difficulties. Life disciplines if allowed to operate. The costs of leniency appear later when bail becomes necessary for storming federal courthouses, assaulting ICE agents, toppling statues and defacing cemeteries, and roaming around in mobs threatening free speech on campus. Mom and dad, get prepared for a hefty therapy bill as well. Coddled people are frequently nervous wrecks as adults.

The costs of coddling reach humungous levels when implemented on a national scale, such as showering subsidies, tax code benefits, and tariff protections on certain industries. Government becomes a helicopter parent, permissive and indulgent, enticing their dependents to continue in their morbid obesity and gross wastefulness. Who ultimately pays? Guess what . . . You!

Does any of this make any sense? “Yes” to the recipients, and “no” to everyone else. The more important question is, do our elected poohbahs wallow in this form of bad parenting on a national scale? Yes, because it pays. It buys the votes of people nostalgic for a world before the latest innovation. It goes something like this: my dad worked on Chevies, Fords, and Dodges, and that’s how God created the world. Who doesn’t want to freeze in amber the world of their formative years? Luddites of every generation will always be a potent political constituency.

The application of economic laws (supply, demand, price signals, incentives, etc.) to government was explored by economists Gordon Tullock and James Buchanan in something that they called Public Choice Theory. Surprise, they showed that politicians shop around for votes. They won the Nobel prize in economics for their groundbreaking work. Tullock took the analysis further by examining the immense hidden costs of tariffs; something Trump refuses to understand (see #1, #2).

Tariffs coddle the too-big-to-fail companies and their extortionate union parasites, both with their tentacles deep into the campaign war chests of the elected. Then, once in office, the bennies roll in, now especially under Trump. Trump’s most beautiful word in the English language, tariff, acts as an accelerant for a new growth industry, special consultancy services (tariff brokers and such) to help business navigate the new flood of paperwork and rules, and army of new government hires, regurgitated out of Leviathan. These services aren’t free, and add new costs to the bottom line and the public purse, all to be borne by you in fewer choices, higher prices, and higher taxes and/or public debt.

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Think about it, think about a time before the income tax. Yes, there was a time when April 15 was just another spring day, and not the deadline to avoid fines and jail. It used to be the natural order of things, except for the brief period of the Civil War, until 1913 and Woodrow Wilson signed the implementing law after the 1909 approval of the 16th Amendment allowed the monstrosity. After it and other changes to the tax code, who doesn’t need a tax accountant to steer clear of the maw of the IRS? Many, many. The government’s insatiable appetite for more money added a new layer to the cost of living, the professional tax accountant and lawyer and software.

Trump is accomplishing the same feat with his “Liberation Day”. That and all the subsequent trade deals will end up spiking the average U.S. tariff from a low of 2.5% in 2024 to over 5% in 2025, and a general 15% on a huge portion of it (see #3). It’s a flat-out tax increase added to the bottom line, added to your cost of living and running a business. Trump boasts of billions pouring into the federal treasury as if it is coming out of the pockets of foreigners. He’s selling a falsehood. Much analysis has been devoted to who pays the tariffs (see #2). It shows the residents of the authoring country footing the bill. I don’t think Trump cares because tariffs are “beautiful” to him; they harken him back to a time 70 years ago, the world of his youth, and his obsession with recreating it.

The sheer absurdity of Trump’s tariff regime will be clear if we take a look at one industry, copper. You know, the hotly sought-after basic and essential stuff for the Dems’ greenie electrified utopia or Trump’s buy-only-America one. It’s a classic case of a blockheaded Trump obsession mucking up U.S. industries by pushing a solution in search of a problem.

Let’s start with a basic stat: 45% of U.S. copper consumption is imported (see #5). The remaining 55% is domestically produced. So, why the 50% tariff on imported copper? Intended or not, Trump is forcing domestic users of copper to pay more for it out of a constricted internal supply. Why constricted? Over decades, we willed it so. Try to open a new mine and avoid the stinging swarms of eco-zealots at all levels. Behind walling off the richer seams behind national monuments and lines of legal-eagle firing squads, the potentially condemned seek other venues of investment. 55% could be a lot more but isn’t because we’d rather pay to dig up the land under other people. Currently, the U.S. ranks seventh in proven reserves in the world, more than China, but won’t touch much of it (see #5).

And, anyway, it’s not such a bad idea to diversify sources for national security reasons. Domestic supplies can be disrupted by events such as strikes by Trump’s newfound allies in organized labor’s extortion racket. Natural disasters and mechanical breakdowns in the chain from mine to mill, as happens in oil refining, are inevitable. Is it such a horrible thought to be on good terms with countries like Chile, our largest foreign source? Though, If you see foreigners as enemies, like Trump, economic or otherwise, don’t be surprised that many of them end up providing new naval basing and investment opportunities for the CCP. Tariffing our hemisphere will require a much bigger navy to blockade South America.

The bottom line is that coddling domestic producers behind the padded walls of 50% tariffs makes them more willing to buy off the eco-gangsters and their featherbedding union masters, a win/win for producer and parasites alike. The only loser is the DIYer trying to wire his garage. Maybe now, his only option is shivering in winter.

Coddling “Made in America” by federal helicopter parents is a surefire way to screw up people. It isn’t good policy in raising children nor in the making of prosperity.

May be a doodle

RogerG

Sources:

1. If you want to get into the weeds of Tullock’s insight, read “The Welfare Costs of Tariffs, monopolies, and Theft”, Gordon Tullock, Rice University, June 1967, at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1465-7295.1967.tb01923.x.
2. For a more concise depiction of Tullock’s thesis, go to “The Hidden Costs of Trump’s Tariffs”, Augustin Forzani, National Review, 7/31/2025, at https://www.nationalreview.com/2025/07/the-hidden-costs-of-trumps-tariffs/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=right-rail&utm_content=capital-matters&utm_term=first.
3. “Trump Tariffs: Tracking the Economic Impact of the Trump Trade War”, Erica York and Alex Durante, Tax Foundation, 7/29/2025, at https://taxfoundation.org/research/all/federal/trump-tariffs-trade-war/.
4. “Chart: The Average U.S. Tariff Rate (1890-2025)”, Dorothy Nuefeld, Visual Capitalist, 4/10/2025, at https://www.visualcapitalist.com/the-average-u-s-tariff-rate-since-1890/.
5. “45%”, Dominic Pino, National Review Magazine, September 2025, p.11.

July 31, 2025August 27, 2025

Has the Fever Broke?

Are you tired as I am of being lectured to in ads? The normalization of a morbidly obese kid in a hotel ad. Sexual transgressiveness throughout the commercial breaks. A major bank constantly reminding us of how they use our mortgage payments and savings and checking deposits to reinflate the 2008 financial crisis. Car companies showing us how slavish they are to the kind of people who have destroyed California’s grid and economy, and the government who has become their handmaiden, by trying to sell us on range anxiety. The list goes on and on.

Now, at last, we the sane get a two-fer. American Eagle Jeans gave us a smoking hot lass in a smoking hot car burning rubber. Take that Bud Light!

Please watch the clip. It’s great. It’s about time.

RogerG

July 30, 2025August 27, 2025

EPA’s Zeldin Is Trying to Pull the Gun Away from California’s Head

Lee Zeldin talks new EPA position — EPA’s Lee Zeldin

Is California intent on committing suicide? Indeed, should a state be allowed to consciously self-poison itself to death, or play Russian roulette with no empty cylinders? The state’s electorate seems to be gung ho. It isn’t the only state in the psych ward. Illinois, New York, much of the northeast, share adjoining cells. A cure, though, is on the way in the form of the EPA’s Lee Zeldin reversing Obama’s 2009 “Endangerment Finding” on carbon dioxide despite the kicking and screaming of the patients (see #1).

Oh, they’ll fight it in court, trying to make their last stand on the Supreme Court’s Massachusetts v. EPA decision of 2007 (5-4) which concluded in an act of mind reading of the 1970 Congress in its Clean Air Act that the unmentioned carbon dioxide should be included as an “air pollutant”. Carbon dioxide is part of the cycle of life: plants love our waste (carbon dioxide exhalings, fertilizer) and we love theirs (oxygen). One would think that Congress would have devoted special sections in the law declaring that a part of the cycle of life to be “harmful” to human health. Silence on the subject is not proof of inclusion, and so said three of the dissenters in the decision, the only remaining Court members from 2007 (Roberts, Alito, Thomas). It’s very likely that Zeldin’s decision will be upheld.

Zeldin is trying to rescue California from itself. Its grid is a bankrupting mess, and an ugly fire hazard to boot. The state is busy destroying cheap energy – much of it right under their feet – and affordable, reliable transportation. I don’t know what golf courses are going to do with lawnmowers powered by battery packs the size of cinder block walls. California had over 43 refineries in the late 1970s; now the state will be down to 6 producing fuel by 2026 (Philips 66 in Long Beach and Valero in Benicia are set to close in 2026) (see #2). A projected $8-to-$10-per-gallon gas price will dent anybody’s plans for upward mobility (see #3).

California’s shedding of population over the past couple of decades is nothing new. President Biden had an answer in throwing open the borders and producing a tidal wave of illegal immigrants ready to flood into the state’s well-established illegal-immigrant underworld. After all, it promises to protect illegals from federal law. So, after the chaos, some 2024 projections of the state’s population showed a slight uptick. But what happens when the American people get sick of it, elect as president illegal-immigration’s worst nightmare, shuts down the border, and the deportations and self-deportations begin? The ongoing flight of the middle class and their jobs will be glaring as ever.

Back in 2023, one study predicted that California could lose 5 congressional seats after the 2030 census (see #4). The reasons are obvious. The state has made itself inhospitable to the backbone of civilization and prosperity – the strivers, middle class, etc. Though, it must be admitted, based on decades-long election results, that degringolade (a rapid decline or deterioration) is electorally popular. It’s a one-party state not by accident, a one-party state to oblivion.

Please watch the interview of Prof. Marshall Toplansky, Business and Economics professor at Chapman University, on the troubling circumstances which Californians have brought upon themselves. Admitting the problem is the most important step toward to recovery.

RogerG

Sources:

1. “EPA Releases Proposal to Rescind Obama-Era Endangerment Finding, Regulations that Paved the Way for Electric Vehicle Mandates”, EPA bulletin, 7/29/2025, at https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/epa-releases-proposal-rescind-obama-era-endangerment-finding-regulations-paved-way.
2. “California Oil Refinery History”, California Energy Commission, at https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/energy-almanac/californias-petroleum-market/californias-oil-refineries/california-oil.
3. “California gas prices could top $8 a gallon by 2026, new study says”, KGO ABC 7, 5/10/2025, at https://abc7news.com/post/california-gas-prices-could-top-8-gallon-2026-university-southern-study-says-heres-what-know/16370075/.
4. “California Could Lose 5 Congressional Seats in 2030 Reapportionment”, The Census Project, 9/21/2023, at https://thecensusproject.org/2023/09/21/california-could-lose-5-congressional-seats-in-2030-apportionment/.

July 29, 2025July 29, 2025

The Shrill and Shallow Rule the Roost

AOC and Bernie Sanders at rally — Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders participate in a stop on the “Fighting Oligarchy” tour at the Dignity Health Arena Theater in Bakersfield, California, on April 15, 2025. (photo: REUTERS/Aude Guerrucci)

Zohran Mamdani, wearing a suit and tie, smiles broadly while standing behind a lectern. — Zohran Mamdani, NYC mayoral candidate. (photo: Angelina Katsanis for The New York Times)

Kids News: American trade tariffs affecting Australia explained | KidsNews — Pres. Trump announcing his “Liberation Day” tariffs, April 2, 2025

It’s probably always been true that shallow thinking prevails in our world. X good/Y bad, the binary pervades thought without much cognitive work behind it. What else explains the teenage rise of the now 22-year-old phenom Greta Thunberg (mentioned in earlier posts)? Or the overturning of the century-plus expansion and refinements of the grid and personal transportation in the crushing span of two decades, by law? Or the sudden appearance of sex shapeshifting as an incontrovertible “reality” taking over women’s swimming and track meets? Or sports gaming profits are a “good” without any recognition that these profits represent many more “losers”? Or, in a similar manner, a boost in government revenues from tariffs is a “good” absent any realization that they come at the expense of consumers and businesses, a much bigger class of “losers”? Our public conversation is chock full of the silliness. It’s the era of the shrill and shallow.
At the spearhead of this nonsense is a combination of the Trump phenomenon and the neo-Marxist Left in the Democratic Party and its street militias. The former first. Take Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs. The only thing being liberated is money out of our wallets and “freedom” from our beneficial supply chain arrangements. The confluence of “liberation” and rising economic distress is . . . amazing.
That won’t stop pundits like Hugh Hewitt on his radio show announcing the “good news” of higher-than-expected government revenues from Trump’s tariffs (last week). It doesn’t take much more than a thimble of reasoning to understand that, for instance, the MSRP of that new truck on the showroom floor just jumped $1,500, or Amazon deals are fewer and far between. When was the last time that you heard a self-proclaimed Reagan Republican extolling the virtue of a huge tax increase?
It doesn’t stop there. Trump’s on-again/off-again support for Ukraine stands out for head-scratching. Is Putin a good guy or bad guy, despite the fact that he wantonly invaded another country like the Wehrmacht did Poland. Is a dogmatic obsession with a “pivot to Asia (China)” the right way to go, even though crap happens elsewhere? In 1984, when asked by a reporter about the greatest difficulty facing a Prime Minister, British ex-PM Harold Macmillan responded, “Events, my dear boy, events.” Events are happening elsewhere that unexpectedly impact Trump’s much cherished “pivot”. Is it too much to expect of our leaders to understand that a green light to Putin is a green light to Xi, is a green light to the mullahs, is a green light to Kim? Empty grousing in the 1930s about Japan in Manchuria and Mussolini in Ethiopia was fully appreciated by the Chancellor of Germany. Dominoes exist in more than a game.
Many of Trump’s political successes is less evidence of him playing 4-D chess but is, more than anything, proof that he’s blessed by the sheer incoherence, incompetence, and malignancy of his opponents. Popular loathing for the donkey party is at record highs according to the latest WSJ poll (see #1). Are election results a product of an overwhelming enthusiasm for a particular candidate or a measure of a greater dislike for the other choice?
Trump-love occupies a niche in the American public, far from sufficient to get him elected. Helping Trump along the way is an opposition party oriented for dystopia. No matter Trump’s negatives, the alternative has positioned itself as a catalyst for XX “boys” and XY “girls” throughout K-12 into college, education dysfunction, defund the police, the mutilation of the economy and the quality of life in green fads and inflation and mounting public debt, and urban wastelands of filth, crime, and homelessness.
Who, other than Democrats, wants an intermingling of genitalia in middle school bathrooms based on nothing but the hormone-fueled feelings of tweens? Mercurial teen self-identity leads to XY “girls” blasting through the tape by 4 yards at the girls’ state high school track championships. Of course, don’t look for it to happen the other way around (XX “boys” taking gold medals in competitions with the XY variety). The whole scene flummoxes and angers ma and pa and grandma and grandpa in the stands. Democratic Party infatuations suddenly hit home.
When Trump tariffs, the Dems are boxed in a corner. Trump proves that he can be just as good a central planner as they ever were. How can they complain? Ever since Republicans began to embrace their inner Milton Friedman in the 1960s, Democrats were the buddies of economic xenophobia and our extortionate labor unions. Trump flips the old political script, tossing freedom economics out the window, and proves that the GOP can function as economic xenophobes and gangsters every bit as well as the Democrats in their effusive pandering to the AFL-CIO.
What’s left of the old Democrat coalition? They’ve got their eco-lobby with its thinly educated white-collar and mostly public-employee constituency. Add to them the cadres of social revolutionaries led by old socialist crackpots like Bernie Sanders and the New Age socialism of the glib and juvenile AOC. Oh, let’s not forget the only expanding clump in their atrophying coalition: unmarried women. Husbands and children are not on their agenda, while preferring a government spouse to a biological one. The party’s future is even more depressing as they fling the LGBTQ+ agenda at the face of God-fearing Hispanics, flood the labor market with desperate peasants, and persist in abandoning the economic and social interests of Black males.
We have the rule of the shallow and shrill. Our primary elections are not faithful renderings of a party’s members, but a playground for the most animated, the shrill and shallow. The rest stay home. MAGA and the Democrats’ social revolutionaries present firebrands to the general public in November, or people who speak the lingo. American politics, as seen by outsiders, must appear to be riotous clown show. Interesting.
Speaking of the shrill and shallow, an update: President Trump and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced a trade deal this past Sunday (7/27). After chores, and during exercise, I’ll listen to podcast and talk-show punditry and be exposed to the latest hyperbole about the deal. There’s too much we don’t know and too much yet to be negotiated. Yet, we do know to expect a jump in automobile and durable goods prices since tariffs on cars (15%) and steel and aluminum (50%) remains. Don’t forget that “tariff is the most beautiful word in the English language” for Trump. At least for now, till our potentate-in-chief changes his mind, some certainty returns to business. Stay tuned for more “progress” on the America-as-victim-of-the-world front.
RogerG
Sources:
1. “Democrats Get Lowest Rating From Voters in 35 Years, WSJ Poll Finds”, Aaron Zitner, Wall Street Journal, 7/25/2025, at https://www.wsj.com/…/democratic-party-poll-voter….

July 16, 2025July 17, 2025

Our Age of Tech-Assisted Manias

47 Examples of Group Behavior - Simplicable

Social Manias (Wikipedia): mass movements which periodically sweep through societies. They are characterized by an outpouring of enthusiasm, mass involvement and millenarian goals. They are contagious social epidemics, and as such they should be differentiated from mania in individuals.

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It’s Wikipedia. Take it for what it’s worth. Nonetheless, the words generally hit the mark about a defining characteristic of our times: our self-conceit. We have convinced ourselves that we are smarter and wiser basically because we have instant access to nearly everything written, said, and done, which in reality means that we access no more than a molecule of it, the stuff that caters to our biases. Rather, instant communication has made us easily triggered as we congregate into zealous groupings of fellow believers in the unbelievable. Smart phones have nothing to do with making us smart. They’ve made us stupid, and armed with a heightened capacity to rally around our stupidity. More commonly, instant connectivity has produced a flurry of just-add-water social manias.

*Please watch the accompanying video of an interview with Lionel Shriver on the Triggernometry podcast, “Mania: How Societies Go Crazy – Lionel Shriver”. Watch it below.

Mania: How Societies Go Crazy - Lionel Shriver

She went from vocally pro-choice and a 2020 Biden supporter to DeSantis and a scourge of the “woke” (see NPR interview in #1) in four years. She’s a contrarian in regards to current trends but also against her past self. For me, that’s integrity.

Take three of the hottest topics paralyzing the public conversation today: climate change, transgenderism, and Trump-o-mania. First, who thunk it possible that an emotionally troubled teenager, Greta Thunberg, would be elevated to the Jeremiah of our times? How’s that possible? It can happen when nearly every natural phenomenon is fed into the mania vortex of climate change, something simplistic enough for an addled youngster.

Climate activist protest in front of BlackRock headquarters in New York on October 29, 2022 (Getty Images)

Think about this omnibus excuse – climate change – as you watch it. Lefty politicians are able to duck responsibility for poor wild land management practices while pursuing utopian social engineering schemes instead of focusing on keeping the lights on, streets and neighborhoods safe, maintaining roads, water at the tap, collecting the garbage, and schooling that actually enhances cognitive abilities – the Main Street stuff of government. Instead, anything bad is shoved into the climate-change worm hole: droughts in a windy drought-prone climate (Mediterranean), firestorms in overgrown and deadened wildlands that seemed to be intentionally groomed for combustibility if it wasn’t for simple and willful neglect. Can it get any more insane?

Human agency in this schema only counts if it can be assigned as the cause – not them and their policies, of course – and always tied to a grand theory that denounces you and I for having a life independent of their direction. We are said to be the cause of Katrina in 2015, not the corrupt, incompetent, and lazy state and local officeholders who neglected the levees in a city below sea level. Yes, insanity rules, alongside the influence of Greta.

Nature will hand to them an unending stream of pretexts for meddling in our lives, nature being nature. The latest made-to-order excuse came via the Guadalupe River flash flood of July 4th with 121 dead, 170 still missing. The “Texas Flash Flood Alley” area that stretches in a southwest arc from Dallas through Austin to the Rio Grande is described by the Lower Colorado River Authority as having “one of the greatest risks for flash floods in the United States” (see #2, #3). Of course, for the maniacs, large numbers of people filling recreational sites on a holiday in a region prone to flash flooding, the river rising 25 feet in a mere 2 hours in the early morning, at a time of year conducive for it, had nothing to do with it. For the unhinged, its’s SUVs, Big Oil, affordable and reliable energy. Hmmmmm.

A man surveys debris along the Guadalupe River after a flash flood struck the area, in Kerrville, Texas. (photo: AP/PTI)

Flash Flood Alley lived up to its reputation leaving grieving parents and relatives. It’s too horrifying to contemplate. Pray for God’s solace for the grieving.

It’s not a time to politicize nature. Yet, some of us do it, and ignore the history of, for instance, the 1900 Galveston hurricane and flood (8,000-12,000 died) or the San Antonio floods of 1913 (180 died) and 1921 (220). Right now, the quest for political power trumps all (no pun intended). It’s easy to do once climate change becomes embedded in our mental architecture. The millenarian side of the social mania soon kicks in to bully by edict the entire population into the preferred lifestyles of the true believers.

Deep inside every true believer lies a budding totalitarian. If you’re old-school enough to believe that chromosomes matter, you and your kids will be ostracized, hopefully not in a gulag. How did we go from dating, the prom, and childhood innocence to doctor-assisted chemical and surgical mutilation, sometimes without parental knowledge or consent?

It’s baffling, until one notices the ubiquity of cell phones around 2013/14 and the simultaneous appearance of gender anxiety, especially among pre-teen and teen girls (see #4). The connection is highly suggestive. What we have are the makings of a social mania, a contagion. The sudden rise of it is astonishing, and can’t be explained by sole reliance on the LGBTQ+ lobby’s favorite cause: children are freer to announce their “gender fluidity”. Is it actually the “freedom” or the viral spread of the notion of that “freedom”?

managing teen cell phone usage

Colin Wright, evolutionary biologist at the Manhattan Institute, is an astute observer of the transgender scene. He cites research that unsurprisingly shows California to be a hotbed of youthful transgenderism. “Sanctuaries” for illegal immigrants and transgendered youth means more of both (see #5). Youth in the state between the ages of 13 and 17 are identifying as transgender at a rate 38% higher than the national average. Middle and upper middle-income communities in the state with a major university, like Davis, are keenly susceptible. One sample of youth in the Davis Joint Union School District expressed trans identities at “nearly 4.3 times the national average, and 3 times California’s average” (see #6). In a state already governed by the Left’s idea of anything goes, the surge is likely due to something other than “freedom”. Could it be that the notion spread at the speed of digital bytes across cell towers to your daughter’s TikTok app on the cell phone that you provided her from your family plan?

Gender Confusion - Culture Smart Moms - Moms for America

More than gender confusion can transit the digital pipeline. Zany fan clubs can quickly coalesce around an online celebrity. Donald Trump flooded the digital airwaves in 2015-16 with no real claim to fame other than his celebrity. From then on, Trump, Inc., was sidelined in the minds of most people. If your teenagers have those cell phones sticking out of their back pockets as they stroll around campus, so do the likes of Paul Gosar (R, Arizona), Marjorie Taylor Greene (R, Georgia), and Lauren Boebert (R, Colorado). So does your grandpa and grandma and mom and dad. MAGA goes viral. The attempted assassination of Donald Trump in Butler in 2024 was caught on many more cameras than Reagan’s near-death experience in 1981 – Trump’s occurring before a crowd of thousands, each person with the A/V and broadcast power of CBS News.

Lauren Boebert's cell phone is decorated with a sticker... of Lauren Boebert. — Lauren Boebert (R, Colorado) and her cell phone.

Opinion | Why MAGA Nation Embraces Donald Trump - The New York Times — MAGA crowd, July 17, 2024

His stage presence is magnified to a part of the population degraded and abandoned by the self-anointed “better people”, of those whose wealth and status insulate them from the consequences of their actions and beliefs, and are almost invariably condescending and of the Left. Peggy Noonan wrote eloquently about this growing class of the culturally dispossessed in 2016 in “Trump and Rise of the Unprotected” (see #7). Trump scratched their itch and the rabid fan club MAGA was born.

This is a mania, emotive and reactionary, for people suffering under another form of bigotry. People without an appetite for haute cuisine and lefty/progressive views, who live in the “wrong” zip codes, who believe in the Bible and not the denizens of the faculty lounge, who own guns and a V-8 pickup, who work by the hour, and have no appetite for the scolding of the pampered set in their leafy suburban homes, lofty Manhattan flats, gentrified brownstones, insulated behind the walls of their gated HOA, and tightly, socially cocooned with others like them.

MAGA is rooted in more than Trump. For that reason, a “cult of personality” is inadequate in explaining its emergence. It’s more of a fan club around Trump because he captures their angst. Yet, they’d suffer severe anxiety if Trump should ever find common cause with the immigration/regulation/taxation/transgender agenda of the California Democratic Party. Celebrity fan clubs can be volatile, especially if the object of affection should turn out to be a child molester, which in this context would be politically analogous to Trump becoming squishy in the culture war. Watch some self-anointed MAGA mouthpieces go bonkers over Trump’s decision to support Ukraine. Betrayal can be disorienting, dizzying. Keep a close eye on family members so disposed.

Around the dawn of the new millennium, my wife, son, nephew, and I packed 2 canoes for 5+ days on the Wild and Scenic Upper Missouri River, reliving the Lewis and Clark expedition. At the campfire, I read passages from the Lewis and Clark journals at the places on the river where the events occurred. In one location were the so-called buffalo jumps, places where Native Americans stampeded a herd over a cliff, harvesting some of the carcasses and leaving the rest to rot. The Native Americans triggered a few at the front and led the rest over the precipice. A few influencers were enough to spell doom to the rest. Sound familiar?

buffalo-jump-11

Herd opinions, herd confusion, viral manic-depression. These features of our time are spiked by the cocooning made possible by Googling and cell towers. It’s proof that technology has little to do with making us better people. In fact, it can bring out the inner demons of our nature (as opposed to Lincoln’s “better angels”). Just look at the peaceful-but-violent happenings in L. A.

RGraf

Sources:

1. “Contrarian Lionel Shriver deftly satirizes anti-intellectualism in ‘Mania’”, Maureen Corrigan, NPR, 4/9/2024, at https://www.npr.org/2024/04/09/1243652224/contrarian-lionel-shriver-deftly-satirizes-anti-intellectualism-in-mania
2. “Managing Floods in Flash Flood Alley”, Lower Colorado River Authority, at https://www.lcra.org/water/floods/.
3. Thanks to Jim Geraghty for the heads up in “Progressive Voices Turn Texas Tragedy into Partisan Blame Game”, 7/11/2025, at https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/progressive-voices-turn-texas-tragedy-into-partisan-blame-game/.
4. “Yes, Gender Confusion Is Socially Contagious”, John Stonestreet and Shane Morris, Colson Center, 10/17/2024, at https://colsoncenter.org/breakpoint/yes-gender-confusion-is-socially-contagious.
5. “How Many Adults and Youth Identify as Transgender in the United States?”, Herman/Flores/O’Neill, Williams Institute, UCLA School of Law, at https://web.archive.org/web/20230106231411/https:/williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/Trans-Pop-Update-Jun-2022.pdf.
6. “BREAKING: New Documents Reveal Shocking Surge in Trans-Identified Students in Davis, CA Schools”, Colin Wright, Reality’s Last Stand, 1/17/2023, at https://www.realityslaststand.com/p/breaking-new-documents-reveal-shocking.
7. “Trump and Rise of the Unprotected”, Peggy Noonan, originally in the Wall Street Journal, 2/25/2016, but available here: https://fairlyhonestbob.com/2016/03/02/trump-and-the-rise-of-the-unprotected/

June 19, 2025July 17, 2025

A Golden Opportunity

(Post on June 19, 2025, before US air and naval cruise missile strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities)

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Donald Trump has the ball on the 10-yard line, just 10 yards away from the winning touchdown. However, the braggart quarterback, the Deshaun Watson of political football, is mistake prone. Will he fumble the ball, be befuddled by the cacophony of bad advice in the huddle, or throw an interception? The allegory describes the situation facing Trump in the broader Ukraine-Iran-Taiwan conflict. At stake is success in the looming face-off with the dangerous ChiComs.

Will he blow it? Probably, if he listens to Steve Bannon, Tucker Carlson, VP Vance, and the rest of the MAGA-adjacent crowd who are paralyzed in fear by their version of the old Vietnam Syndrome, the Iraq Syndrome. Every conflict is imagined to be Iraq all over again. Trump is already preternaturally inclined to a kind of right-wing pacificism due to his loud commitment to no more “forever wars”.

But not all wars are “forever wars”. Many are one-and-done, quick strikes, no boots on the ground, what one 19th-century British wag referred to, in their Frontier Wars, as “butcher-and-bolt” affairs. And that leaves aside the mangling of the history of the Vietnam and Iraq Wars, which is necessary to make the story fit the debilitating prescription of conflict avoidance at all costs.

Right now, Trump has the golden opportunity to clear the field for a genuine pivot to Asia. Putin is bogged down in Ukraine. The mullahs are on the cusp of collapse. They could go with their nuclear program. All that is needed is cementing a broad coalition to feed more aid to Ukraine, drop a few GBU-57 MOPs on Fordow, and construct a parameter of allies around China. America doesn’t have to do it all. It can be done on the cheap if Trump doesn’t blow it in pacifism and trade wars.

Today, there appears to be sweaty palms and hand-wringing in the administration over airstrikes to finish off the ayatollahs’ nuclear ambitions. Whether the regime survives or not is beside the point. So, this won’t be “regime change”, which by the way would be a pleasant thought, nonetheless. Pleasant but not necessary. Leave it to the millions of the disaffected in the country to deal with. Chaos or no, gone will be a nuclear-armed “Death to America”.

Elbridge Colby, the number two at Defense, is known for his insistence on a pivot to Asia. Well, stop the tariff campaign against friends, the threats to allies like Denmark over Greenland, the sideshow of militarily menacing Panama, and the belittling of allies that you’ll need to corral China like Australia and the rest of the AUKUS coalition. And stop the Putin pandering (It’s absolutely shameful.) and funnel more coalition support to Ukraine. Clear the decks to be better able to confront Communist China and leave no brush fires burning behind the lines. Burdens are shared giving us time and resources to build up.

Trump, drop the MOPs and get out. Is that so difficult?

RogerG

June 18, 2025July 17, 2025

Boy, What a Week!

(Post from June 18, 2025)

Flags of Ukraine and Israel Lying Together Symbolizing Political Relationship. 3D Rendering ...

X (Twitter) An image showing a Tu-22M on fire at Soltsy-2 airbase — Photo from the BBC show a Tu-22M bomber on fire at Soltsy-2 airbase, Russia

Thank God for Ukraine and Israel while some places in the good ‘ol USA go insane. Ukraine and now Israel have taken momentous steps to reestablish a civilized order in an often-chaotic world, but some on the Right – the MAGA-adjacent Right – refuse to accept the heady opportunity staring us and them in the face. Just devote a moment’s thought to a world without a nuclear-armed “Death to America”. On the other hand, the Left – now synonymous with the Democratic Party – has gone bonkers in violently defending the indefensible. Lawbreaking, compounded by more lawbreaking, appears to be a core tenet of the Party’s manifesto. It’s now a key aspect of what it means to be “blue” on today’s electoral map. The progressive’s “arc of history” is a fantasy; it’s a roller coaster. Civility and incivility reside side by side at the same time on the same planet, sometimes in the same country.

Much of our public discussion encourages the schizophrenia. Victor Davis Hanson on the Right has honed a reputation as a Ukraine skeptic in line with the “restrainers” in Trump world. He planted his flag on the inevitability of Ukraine’s defeat if they persist in fighting the war, maybe to justify Trump’s immoral attempt to strong arm the victim into accepting Putin’s aggression against them, or just a plain kowtowing to MAGA isolationists. In Hanson’s reckoning, Putin has more of everything: 5x’s the population, military dominance, resources, you name it. Then, in the fashion of Israel’s decapitation of Hezbollah, Ukraine eliminated a third of Putin’s strategic bomber fleet in one day. They have proven to be quite inventive in fighting the big bear to a standstill. Now, it’s an open question whether Putin will be able to outlast Ukraine or vice versa.

The West, with its consensual republics, is proving to be quite resilient no matter the numerical weight against them. A short time after Ukraine’s daring move, Israel struck. Under Hanson logic, Israel shouldn’t be on the same playing field with Iran: 9x’s the population and oodles of more resources (oil!). On paper, it’s the midget versus Andre the Giant. Of course, its relative standing shrinks further if you factor in much of the Middle East. Yet, Israel has systematically decimated Hamas, then Hezbollah, and now has taken on the big meanie, the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Tackling the ayatollahs sent shivers down the spine of Tucker Carlson, MAGA-adjacent pacifists, the Biden/Obama administrations, the donkey party’s militias in the streets, and, honestly, me too. However, I favored war, war to jaw, jaw (in a reversal of Churchill’s famous formulation) after decades of fruitlessly piddling around with the ayatollahs. October 7 woke Israel up. They took on the head of the anaconda after chopping up smaller portions of its entrails.

What we are witnessing is absolutely amazing. It puts to shame Hanson’s defeatist logic. Consensual republics possess indefinable reserves of gumption and wiliness. They are proof that the prospect of looming destruction concentrates the mind.

In America, we’d rather enfeeble ourselves between isolationist hand-wringing on the Right and the neo-Marxism of the Democratic Party. The donkey party is so compromised that flying the American flag at one of its confabs is . . . incongruous, to say the least. The flags of Palestine and Mexico seem more at home, along with bricks, Molotov cocktails, and homemade flame throwers directed at law enforcement.

Why the furor from the Left? It’s the sudden realization that Title 8 of the U.S. code (federal immigration law) actually exists. Trump took his Article II job of executing the law seriously. Some obviously don’t like the law to be enforced. Many Americans have grown accustomed to cheap landscaping, domestic servants, and ag labor as if that is the natural order of things. The cognitively compromised Biden took this logic to its ultimate conclusion, just eliminate the border and be done with it.

The donkey party is onboard with lawbreaking. Let’s be honest, at its core, “sanctuary” cities and states have little to do with federalism and everything to do with an indulgence for law breaking. The Constitution only matters to them as something to be twisted to protect their preferred type of law breaking, immigration law breaking.

So, Trump and his people found a way to write them and their “sanctuaries” out of the picture. Use federal warrants to renew respect for immigration law over the interference of by people like Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass. They dare not obstruct this federal justice, for federal charges await them if they do. How sweet would it be to see Newsom and Bass in perp walks?

California is home of this insanity. Conversely, Ukraine and Israel are beacons of clear-eyed moral purpose in a world with the U.S. bullying Ukraine and countries like Denmark over Greenland, and conducting trade wars against friend and foe alike.

True to form, Trump tries to unseemly hog the spotlight of Israel’s success on Truth Social: “WE [my caps] now have complete and total control of the skies over Iran.” He crudely panders to a kind of American chauvinism when he touts American-made: “[Iran’s stuff] doesn’t compare to American made, conceived, and manufactured ‘stuff.’” Further, “Nobody does it better than the good ol’ USA.” Our stuff is indeed great but it’s Israelis, their people in command, on the ground, and in the air, who pulled this off. That’s the real lesson for MAGA and the donkey party’s neo-Marxists. Resilience, perseverance, and possessing the moral high ground are force multipliers and crude jingoism is just plain embarrassing.

Americans riot in the streets for law breaking. Ukraine and Israel show guts and gumption. Trump displays his crudity. Will he, fearful of missing his share of the glory, finally do the right thing and obliterate the last remnants of the mullahs’ nuclear program?

In sum, wow, what a week!

RogerG

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RogerG

June 4, 2025June 8, 2025

Crazy Times

May be an image of 2 people and the Oval Office — AOC (l) and Pres. Trump

Major elements of the Right and Left are completely unhinged. Crazy has been institutionalized. In Freud-speak, the superego and ego have been short-circuited and it’s a clear path to the raw id.

On the Right, something happened in the time frame from the 2008 Tea Party to the MAGA of today. It actually took a short seven years (2008-2015). What had started out as a call for a smaller government of lower taxes and less regulation, an advocacy of a return to our governmental roots, had somehow morphed into a cathartic cry, a demand for a rhetorical middle finger, an enthusiasm for stick-it-to-the-libs political theater. Thus, we get a continual stream of owning-the-libs YouTube videos; we get Donald Trump and his MAGA in all its bombast and incoherence. It feels good to watch and hear Trump crudely insult anybody not-Trump or Charlie Kirk in his well-choreographed, rapid-fire schtick verbally dismantling a mental adolescent without the public practice. It’s Lebron James against the weekend warrior. It’s fun, it feels good, but how healthy is it?

May be an image of 3 people, crowd and text — MAGA

The Right “wins”, but what have they won? A trade war against the world? A cuddling with anti-American thugs? A fusillade of verbal tirades against our friends and allies? The cavorting with union thugs? A silly nibbling at our spending habits (DOGE, a banal assault on “waste, fraud, and abuse”) while ignoring the drunken sailors of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid who are pell-mell driving us over the cliff? Does any of this make any sense? Of course not.

On the Left, they’ve got all the political theater of Donald Trump at his worst, and more, much more. They’ve got Antifa, antisemitism, racism as “anti-racism” (DEI, CRT, etc.), campus mayhem, a summer of riots, keffiyeh-clad street goons armed with guns and Molotov cocktails, LGBTQAI+ gangsters, Bernie bros, the neo-Marxism of neo-Marxist professors, The Squad, AOC’s babblings, and a monopoly on the cultural commanding heights to propagate the cognitive filth. I could go on, but your eyes would glaze over.

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For them, something happened from the time of Harry Truman, Adlai Stevenson, George Kennan, and JFK to The 1619 Project, to Trayvon Martin/Michael Brown/George Floyd, to maybe 2014, maybe 60 years. “The long march through the institutions” of the neo-Marxist Frankfurt School (google it) took a little longer to fully dominate the synapses of the stewards of the Democratic Party. After that, it didn’t take long for them to replicate MAGA – a middle finger but only on the left hand – and take it to Spinal Tap’s “11”, their preferred behavioral stance.

When the Left resorts to political theater, it’s often of the lethal variety. Talk to store owners across the country in 2020 and the Holocaust survivors of today marching for mercy for the Hamas-held hostages. Many of the innocent end up walking on rubble, maimed, dead, or being treated in burn wards. “Free Palestine” has replaced “Allahu Akbar”.

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The fringes of the political continuum are an unholy mess. I don’t expect darlings of the Right like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Charlie Kirk (sometimes), a chunk of the Right’s podcast world, et al, to rush out and praise Ukraine’s amazing drone strike against Russia’s strategic airfields (see #1) or Israel’s sudden decapitation of Hezbollah with exploding pagers and airstrikes. Such imaginative gutsiness on the part of the Ukrainians and Israelis is hardly applauded in such circles. The fact that Ukraine and Israel occupy the front lines in the defense of western civilization scarcely crosses their radar screen.

Records Show Fox and G.O.P.’s Shared Quandary: Trump - The New York Times — Tucker Carlson with Marjorie Taylor Greene and former President Donald J. Trump summer 2020. “I hate him passionately,” the Fox host texted in January 2021, referring to Mr. Trump. (photo: Doug Mills/The New York Times)

Their tunnel vision is America First, which really is America Alone, and America Weaker. In their myopic minds, we are not to have a foreign policy till every American problem, real or imagined, addressable by government or not, has been eradicated. Till then, our oceans will protect us, they assume . . . despite the fact that illiterate jihadists wielding box cutters, strategic bombers, missiles, high-altitude surveillance ballons, nuclear subs, drones, and satellites have shown them to be irrelevant or just another conduit, not a barrier, for those who wish to do us harm. Faith in geographical features is not a substitute for strategy.

I also don’t expect the elders of the donkey party to turn over a new leaf from the neo-Marxist infestation in their midst since Barack Obama ushered it into the party’s inner sanctum. They are just as fearful of their fanatics as the GOP is of the MAGA horde lurking in their venues. Both cohorts at the fringes cause the parties’ “adults in the room” to cower in fear.

For donkey party loyalists, their notion of reform after their defeat at the hands of the orange man is to be shriller about what got them booted in the first place: boys now girls/girls now boys, border erasure, a state-sponsored onslaught on the people’s quality of life in pursuit of environmentalist fairy tales, a morbidly obese government that only promises the déjà vu of 1980s Argentina, etc. – the same stuff that drives average people nuts. They don’t get it, and probably won’t till a few more debacles finally detox them.

For a GOP still hitched to an impulsive and bullheaded chieftain, they are left to be dragged along in whatever direction his impulses take them. They are left to stunningly embrace Big Labor’s robber barons after spending a career condemning them. No “right to work” for these sycophants. Former free traders are sounding like zealous converts to the cult of Smoot-Hawley. If Regan were alive today, he’d have to leave the Republican Party as the Democratic Party left him in the 1950s.

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Watch Trump castigate the Courts, his courts, since many of these judges were appointed by him, including the current 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court. They were chosen for their adherence to the rule of law – original intent – not the rule of Trump. The Rule of Trump is strict obedience to his every wish. In a few upcoming cases, he may come to understand that the rule of law is not the rule of Trump. He may well learn that “emergencies” are not construed to be a carte blanche takeover of Congress’s trade powers in Article I, Section 8, Clause 1 (Trump, it’s in Article I, not Article II.). The vast body of immigration law has some due process provisions in limited circumstances; the whole thing does not fall under Trump caprice. The presidency does not have temples with altars waiting to receive sacrifices to them.

As for the Democratic Party, their temples have in their inner sanctums, not open to the prying eyes of the general public, altars to Karl Marx and his apostles. He goes unmentioned but is the guiding light for the party beliefs and actions. Little that they propose escapes the ideological straitjacket of his junk thought. Their Don Quixote revolution against imaginary oppressors has little room for reality, culture, restraint, law and constitutions. The crusade ends up where it always has: a disaster for all concerned. Look at California. Look at North Korea. Look at post-Soviet Russia.

Karl Marx and the Dems | Editorial Cartoons | wmicentral.com

So, here we are, buffeted by fringe crazies. MAGA follows their guru in lockstep and the donkey party can’t escape the neo-Marxist mind-fog of its shrillest members. Interesting times.

RogerG

Sources:

1. “Ukraine stages audacious attack on airfields deep in Russian territory”, Christopher Miller, et al, Financial Times, 6/1/2025, at https://archive.is/dVnxk#selection-1571.0-1571.70

June 3, 2025June 8, 2025

The Babylon Bee Shows Itself to be More Reliable than Cable News

Trump brings in Chick-Fil-A manager to negotiate peace between Russia, Ukraine. The latest from the Babylon Bee news service. I thought you might want to know. I guess that his buddy, Steve Witkoff, was “you’re fired!” Question, though: Is it an improvement?

Image for article: Trump Brings In Chick-Fil-A Manager To Negotiate Peace Between Russia, Ukraine

RogerG