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My latest at the Belmont Club. The Hall has stood set in its ways above its vast root network of support for many decades, beyond any hope of reform. Can these outsiders mount a challenge where so many have failed?

Belmont Club: The Hall Versus the Strangers

They say there are only two kinds of stories: ones that begin with a man leaving on a journey and ones that start with a stranger riding into town. But there is a third type: one about a man who goes on a journey and returns four years later with a bunch of formidable-looking strangers.

New at PJMedia VIP. Is dismay at being let down the same thing as sowing chaos? Why trust is treated as a test of relationship loyalty instead of the outcome of customer experience.

Losing the Ability to Trust Just When We Need It Most

Lack of trust in institutions, especially the media, is often blamed for the breakdown of Our Democracy. The decline in trust, according to some, is the result of rumor mongers, conspiracy theorists and paid misinformation and disinformation agents. If we trust our leaders, we will be united once again and the remembered Golden Age will return. But can you force the public to trust a source—for example, “the news media” or “our leaders”— even to save democracy?

My latest at the Belmont Club. Elon is simultaneously a principal source of the U.S. bureaucracy’s greatness and locus of rebellion against the venality, dysfunction and stupidity of the status quo. How does the establishment contain yet exploit him?

Belmont Club: Excellence in the Service of Mediocrity

The New York Times describes the federal government’s efforts to both exploit and control Elon Musk. His genius is simultaneously a principal source of America’s greatness — and by extension the U.S. bureaucracy’s — and locus of rebellion against the venality, dysfunction and stupidity of the status quo.

My latest at PJMedia VIP. How it became bad to succeed and victimhood became synonymous with virtue.

The Embarrassment of Success

For those who believe “property is theft,” success as exhibited by SpaceX’s catching of a huge booster or South Korea’s prosperity compared to the north is prima facie proof of guilt. How could anything be so successful without diabolism? By contrast, destitution and dysfunction are irrefutable signs of virtue because failure is — to some people’s way of thinking — caused by victimhood. Recently North Korea blew up some of the few roads it had in rage at the unfairness of it all. Self-multilation enhances the virtue effect because the previously pitiable become even more so.

New at the Belmont Club. The cruel disappointment you feel when you view the world through the window rather than the TV screen.

Belmont Club: Waking Up

Totalitarianisms work by mass denial. Although living conditions can actually be bad, the public can be brainwashed through hypnotic sloganeering into willing reality away. The result is a kind of mass dishonesty called “preference falsification.” But it is fragile. The danger for the hypnotist is if the public snaps out of it. Once the subject wakes up the problem for the hypnotist becomes reality itself. We all know the movie dialogue:

New at PJMedia VIP. Hezbollah learns that you can’t live in someone else’s civilization with impunity. But will the West realize that when the world one makes determines survival, the culture which defines it is supremely important?

The Meaning of the Pager Strike: Mind Over Matter

Israel’s devastating strike on Hezbollah’s command and control structure, by turning the militants’ consumer devices into bombs against them, confirms what many have been suspecting since the war in Ukraine began in 2022: The entire modern world can be turned into a weapon by those who understand it against those who don’t. The pager attack maimed thousands of Hezbollah’s militants.

My latest at the Belmont Club. After the USSR collapsed in 1989, the progressives turned their efforts to taking over the institutions of the West. To their surprise resistance to their coup has emerged. Who and what is forcing a showdown?

Belmont Club: Dusk or Dawn?

There is a feeling among some that the November 2024 election is special. It is useful to consider why.

My latest at PJMedia VIP. Is today the “hinge of history” where activists have a right, indeed a duty to do extraordinary things, act with unlimited license, attempt unprecedented transformations because the future depends specially on them?

Do We Live in a Special Time?

Peter Baldwin examines the question of whether we live in a special time. “Over a decade ago the late British philosopher Derek Parfit included the following statement in the conclusion of his last book, On What Matters.”

My latest at the Belmont Club. When fantasy has a price. How pretending to be Green made Europe vulnerable to red, red war.

Belmont Club: Coming to Terms With Our Needs

You may be surprised to learn that Russian natural gas is still flowing to Europe across Ukraine. Kyiv lets it happen, and even the pipeline at Sudzha in Kursk captured in the recent offensive will remain unmolested. “Even after 2 1/2 years of war and repeated rounds of sanctions, Russian natural gas keeps flowing through Ukraine’s pipeline network to customers in Europe. That hasn’t changed despite Ukraine apparently taking control of a gas measuring station near the Russian town of Sudzha as part of Kyiv’s push into Russia’s Kursk region.”

My latest on PJMedia VIP. The credibility of the media is a function of the credibility of the system, whose spokesmen they are. So the fundamental credibility problem is not with the Mouth of Sauron, but Sauron himself.

Why Nobody Believes the Media

The U.S. presidential candidates’ inability to agree on a Fox vs. ABC presidential debate venue is another indication that the belief in a neutral, impartial media is dead. News now travels down two separate channels. The only way for the establishment to regain signal dominance and re-merge these streams into one channel is to suppress their rivals as “disinformation.”

My latest at the Belmont Club. A ringside seat to drama. Miraculous misfortune versus miraculous fortune.

Belmont Club: The Battle of the Miracles

Why was there no security posted on the rooftop from which the would-be assassin of Donald Trump took his shot? Not for any profound reason but because the Secret Service was afraid of its agents falling according to Director Kimberly Cheatle. “There’s a safety factor that would be considered there that we wouldn’t want to put somebody up on a sloped roof. And so, the decision was made to secure the building, from inside.” It is part of a succession of marvels that occurred on July 13, 2024. First there was the rapid preparation of the alleged assassin Thomas Crooks, a 20-year-old cook in a nursing home, for the task of killing an ex-president. Trump’s campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, was advertised approximately ten days before the shooting. “Donald Trump will be holding a rally at the Butler County Farm Show grounds this Saturday … Doors for Trump’s appearance are set to open at 1 p.m. Saturday; Trump himself is scheduled to speak at 5 p.m.” reported Pittsburgh’s WSA. ’In the 48 hours before he opened fire on former President Donald Trump, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks made a series of stops,” reported CNN.

My latest at PJMedia VIP. The rise of virtual politics. No human candidates are required for an election between two ideas, both characterized by the same media outlets.

Virtual Politics: No One and Possibly Nothing Is Real

The administration courtiers are working overtime to keep their jobs as “Joe Biden.” Joe Biden is more a brand name for a political package than a reference to a specific person. Staffers speak for him, think for him, and possibly decide for him. There’s no way of knowing for sure to what extent things come from him personally because the individual in the package is only part and possibly the least important aspect of the overall product. The Huffington Post explicitly suggested that the president should actually be synthesized to avoid burdening his youthful, progressive message with his tired old body.

My latest at The Pipeline. We know what we can eat from a 100 thousand years of human trials. Suddenly we’ll replace all that hard won knowledge with …

Now They’re Coming for Your Food | The Pipeline

The greatest social-engineering project in history.

New at the Belmont Club. All over the Western world the status quo is being challenged. A countdown clock has started. We must adapt or face disaster.

Belmont Club: Countdown to Destruction and Renewal

It has been a momentous week with three nearly simultaneous developments: 1) the exposure of the senile Joe Biden to the public in the presidential debate; 2) the SCOTUS body blow to lawfare in the form of a 6-3 decision holding that “the nature of Presidential power entitles a former President to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority” and 3) the political collapse of the center-left in Europe fueled by a grassroots rejection of unlimited migration are challenging the status quo as never before.

My latest at PJMedia VIP. Suddenly the public has discovered that the President is missing, substantively speaking. With the chief missing, the race between those who would replace him and foes who would seize their chance is on.

The Man Who Was Not There

What was scheduled to simply be the first debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden rapidly became a full-blown political crisis after Biden’s manifest collapse into incoherence on stage. Within hours of the exhibition, stalwart Democratic publications like the Atlantic and multiple authors in the New York Times were openly imploring Biden to step down.

My latest at PJMedia VIP. The way of the frontier. First come the explorers. Then comes the sheriff.

Regulating the Future

Bill Gates is trying to start a whole new industry of new technology sodium reactors that reliably produce electricity while avoiding the use of hydrocarbons. “In Wyoming, Bill Gates moves ahead with nuclear project aimed at revolutionizing power generation,” writes the Associated Press.

My latest at the Belmont Club. Hiding hostages behind layers of civilian human shields doesn’t always work. When the raiders have information superiority you will need a Plan B.

Belmont Club: The Unexpected Hostage Rescue

The IDF pulled off “one of the most complicated hostage rescue missions in history,” by rescuing four hostages from a Hamas stronghold. Israeli author Hen Mazzig explains what made it so hard.

My latest at PJMedia VIP. Why accountability is not the same as revenge and why “moving on” doesn’t take you to the future but mostly to a repeat the past.

The Unavengers

Some people may actually be reluctant to prosecute Hunter Biden to avoid repeating the unjust persecution of Donald Trump. The belief in the possibility of political prosecutions was revealed in the jury selection process in Hunter’s case. “Potential jurors were asked, ‘Do you believe that Americans can be prosecuted based on their political beliefs and affiliations?’ Many answered yes to the question … the judge would then probe as to what they viewed as specific examples of political prosecution. Every potential juror who stated that they believed in political prosecution cited Donald Trump as the example. These potential jurors gave examples of CrossFire Hurricane and Donald Trump’s New York Conviction.” That would ironically be a good reason not to proceed against the younger Biden, some would say.

My latest at the Belmont Club. When two groups decide to divorce they build increasingly separate lives. Although competition will predominate, conflict is also inevitable because of the winner take all nature of the game.

Belmont Club: The Next Civil War

Historical events, like people, have a life story. They are conceived, come into a life of their own, and are either rejected by events or become part of what is called the future.

My latest at PJMedia VIP. Activists who would change the world want history’s approval in advance. Alas, sometimes history has other ideas.

We Should Know What History Says Before It Happens

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way…”. So begins Charles Dickens’ famous opening paragraph in “A Tale of Two Cities.” By setting his story in the days of the French Revolution, at a distance of time from publication nearly equal to that between our present and WW2, Dickens is able ask the same question of a different generation. What would they have done had they lived in 18th century France? Be as vengeful as Madame Defarge or as self-sacrificing as Sydney Carton?