HUCKLEBERRY DAYS

“I’ll be your huckleberry.” – Doc Holiday to Johnny Ringo

A huckleberry, on the hoof, is a midnight blue, bush-born berry, not unlike the elderberry or blueberry. The huckleberry has ten seeds and a gamier taste. In America, they are found in mountainous bear country, places like Montana and Utah. Indeed, huckleberry comestibles in America, notably syrup, come mostly from Montana. All such berries can be distilled into a moonshine called “screech;” the sound you are most likely to make when you wake up after being overserved.

A hangover from black & blue berry moonshine feels like having brain surgery without anesthesia.   

Huckleberry is one of those nouns that assumed several meanings over time. In the Middle Ages a huckleberry could be an advocate. A fair maid might put a cluster or sprig of dark berries on a sword or lance to signify that a contestant was her champion. In 19^th Century America, a huckleberry might be a pallbearer who wore a lapel sprig of mourning; indeed, a coffin mule, the guys that carry boxed cadavers from chapel to grave. Recently, a “huckleberry friend” has come to mean a childhood, or lifelong, chum (aka BFF) for lyricists like Johnny Mercer and composers like Henry Mancini, popularized in song by Audrey Hepburn and others.

A huckleberry friend in the 20^th Century was probably someone who might have accompanied you on your riparian adventures when you were a child.

As rhetoric will have it, the most infamous usage comes from a fact-based Hollywood horse opera, Tombstone, where Doc Holiday, history’s lethal dentist, tells Johnny Ringo: “I am your Huckleberry.” The gunfighting tooth surgeon was telling Johnny that he, Holiday, was the man who would put Ringo in the grave. In the real world, a few months hence, Johnny Ringo was found under a tree, shot in the head by an unknown culprit. The real Doctor Holiday died in bed in Colorado. His sidekick, Marshall Wyatt Earp, just moved to Los Angeles to the delight of rhinestone cowboys everywhere.

                                  Hollywood Holiday

I used to pick berries on the trail in the canyons of Utah for a snack. I discovered that they made great fish bait too. Whilst trespassing one breezy summer afternoon on a stretch of the Weber River, I noticed that ripe berries were falling off a streamside bush and being devoured almost as soon as they hit the water.  

You might think that vegan trout would be unusual, but I discovered, by trial and error, that the most aggressive predatory fish will bite any moving colorful object out of hunger, lust, or just pique. The Pacific salmon family, for instance, as they school in brackish water before heading upstream for romance and death, do not dine. However, they will strike a flashy spoon out of spite; probably because they know what awaits upstream; marriage, huckleberries – then death.

I’m not a fly guy, nor do I believe “catch and release” will make me a morally superior angler. Nor do I believe that worms, grubs, crickets, berries, or dead fish baits are sinful. Since my huckleberry days, I have caught my own bait and made my own lures, mostly from yard sale jewelry. There’s something about a little bling that makes grown men and large fish want to nibble.

We are derisively called “hardware” piscators.

I also catch as many fish as my mates and I can eat and no more. Recreational or trophy fishing is a sport for woke wankers. Most fly anglers, like salt water charter boat captains, will not eat any variety of fish on a dare.

The idea behind fly fishing is “light tackle;” this is to use fragile, and mostly expensive, gear to hook and “play” the largest fish, for as long as possible, before unhooking and release. Light tackle torture requires a couture ensemble befitting a poseur who targets bonefish (inedible), bass (edible but sad), snook (also inedible) or trout/salmon (universally delicious).

My aversion to the fly cult is pragmatic.

I don’t care for all that gear, like suicide waders, or the ethos. Ever tried to swim back to dry land wearing waders? Fly fishing reminds me of bullfighting or golf, fashion forward sports for sadistic men who fancy swords, pedal pushers, sequins, small balls, long clubs, and even longer hot walks in the sun.

My drift to the fish side of the argument began with my Huntsville niece, Renee, as were about to poach our breakfast on a stretch of the Weber where we noticed a flock of buzzards circulating above the river downstream. With our catch of two, we hiked downhill, beyond the public access stretch, and discovered that the birds were eating dead fish below the wader wankers. The floaters, for the most part, were lovely rainbow trout that had not survived the hook, play, and release fetish underway where the Abercrombie “sports” were fishing.

My fishing ethic from that day on was to hook no more than I keep, and keep no more than I can eat.

My piscatorial ethics are confirmed by several species from the best fish families; the Halibut, the Sables (black cod), and the Walleyes; the latter, a well-kept fresh water secret. None of the foregoing fish consume insects; surely not real bugs or the contrived overpriced forgeries used by Cabela cowboys. None are tortured on light tackle either. Withal, there is no better eating than; fish and chips made with halibut, smoked fish made with black cod, or Walleye cheeks prepared in any combination of lemon and butter.

One last huckleberry tale before we leave the slack water.

My basecamp in Utah was at a friend’s house in the tiny valley community of Huntsville, a Mormon village of no more than 750 even in a good birthing year. Huntsville has a single claim to fame, the Shooting Star Saloon; the oldest saloon west of the Missouri.  If you don’t know the difference between pub, a dive bar, and a saloon; you need get out more.

In my huckleberry days, the Shooting Star was run by a couple of “Jack” Mormons, a comely lesbian pair in fact; a twosome united by comity if not piety. A Jack Mormon is any sinner who may have given up on temple, but not on Utah. Sociable women behind the bar out West is a kind of compensatory capitalism, especially in a parish that frowns on strong drink while still relishing plural indoor sports. The Star serves a dozen kinds of beer, seven varieties of tasty burger and one edition of hot dog; no fries, no salad, no chicken, no tofu, no yogurt and no Jell-O.

A plague of Jell-O attends most Mormon picnics. Sister wives often make a shade of Jell-O to match their pastel bonnets or frocks, a colorful if not gourmet experience. Sister wives, like nuns, are usually proceeded by whiffs or hints of talcum powder in the air.

In Winter, the Shooting Star is overrun by skiers, more fashion forward sports. But in the warm months, the Star falls back on its roots; bait piscators, (Huntsville is adjacent to a reservoir), and all the cowboy slackers you might expect to find in a mountain saloon. If you walk into the Shooting Star in August and sit at a table, whilst there’s room at the bar, you will probably insult the server (nee barmaid) and have to fetch your own beer anyway.

At the Star, the bar is place to be. Conversation is anthropologic.

One sweaty late afternoon I wandered into the Shooting Star for a beer and burger when I noticed that the mounted jackalope behind the bar was festooned with gay apparel. The jackalope is a rare issue of mixed marriage out West, a cross between a jack rabbit and an antelope, not unlike a Jack Mormon.

The jackalope feeds exclusively on huckleberries. The mounted jack was just one of many examples of the taxidermic arts at the Star, which as I recall, included a stuffed sled dog, a noble elk, an angry bear, and several lesser trophy varmints.

The lass pumping beer proceeded to tell me that there has been a “panty toss” the previous evening. As she told it, a distaff patron is asked to donate knickers to male players at the bar where contestants wad the delicates into a ball and toss them at the jackalope. String bikinis are preferred because, apparently, they have few aerodynamic virtues, but do add color to the sport.

The object is to impale the undergarments on the jackalope horns.

Rules are simple but absolute. Players must stand flatfooted on their side of the bar. No jump shots or dunks. All wagers must be on the bar before the toss; two dollars minimum. Tie scores are resolved by a shoot-out where the ante may be raised. Half the jackpot must be shared with the lassie who donated the knickers. Winning lingerie can be left on the jackalope horns or auctioned to the highest bidder.  

The barmaid must have mistaken my wonder for skepticism. As I paid for my lunch, she chirped; “It’s not like it would be the first time anybody in this valley went home without their underpants.”

                     Fair maid flanked by jackalope

Even a trip to the in-house out-house at the Shooting Star was a hoot. When you visit the men’s room, as surely you must, they only serve beer; note the vintage wooden toilet seat, inverted like a good luck horseshoe, nailed to the back of the door. The inscription reads:

“This toilet seat was liberated from the lady’s room. $.25 cents a sniff. Honor system. Pay at the bar.” The notice is signed Huckleberry Hound.

If you didn’t know the difference between a pub and a saloon, you know now. In a pub, they might throw darts, in a saloon they throw, well, you get the idea.

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I usually write about the politics of national security. However, I squandered my early years in the Bronx, then spent my huckleberry days in Texas, Colorado, Utah, and Hawaii. This essay is dedicated to the Koi fish aficionados of Nashville, Tennessee.  

Images;  

https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=http%3A%2F%2Fsaloonsoftheoldandnewwest.com%2F&psig=AOvVaw08qFCgVPLk5nH5vkIExkpJ&ust=1652196246811000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAwQjRxqFwoTCPCIzY3j0vcCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAO

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Normalizing Grotesque

“He who does not regret the break-up of the Soviet Union has no heart; he who wants to revive it in its previous form has no head.” ― Vladimir Putin

Vladimir Putin once claimed that the Russian army could take Kiev in two weeks if the need arose. Two months into the so-called “special military operation” of 2022, Putin’s forecast seems to have hit a wall of reality. Or as Robert Burns might say, “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft a-gley.”

Plans gone awry indeed!

Early on, the Kremlin sought to decapitate Ukraine by seizing Kiev and other cities in the northeast with special forces, backed by armor and artillery. The conventional blitz stalled short of Kiev due to unwarranted optimism, unanticipated resistance, and an apparent logistical “cluster foxtrot,” as an American GI might put it. To their credit, the Kremlin adjusted quickly, changing military leadership and operational plans. Less ambitious, albeit more realistic, objectives now characterize Moscow’s operations at least for the near term.

The axis of attack is now focused on the Donbas border region and the Azov/Black Sea littoral.

Donbas has been at war for ten years now and, heretofore, much of the fighting there was done by 30 some odd “right sector” volunteer militias. These neo-Nazi, self-described “anarchists” came to prominence during the 2014 Maidan coup. Not coincidentally, the more infamous neo-Nazi Azov Battalion is the unit surrounded by Russian naval infantry today in Mariupol.

If General Alexander Dovornikov manages to cut off the right sector “volunteers” in the Donbas sector and crush the Azov fighters at Mariupol, then the Kremlin will have met a large part of their de-Nazification strategic objective.

Ironically, Kiev’s willingness to give militias a free hand in the East and South might solve a problem for both Ukraine and Russia. Just as NATO is willing to fight Russia right down to the last Ukrainian, the Kiev establishment seems to have similar sentiments about Azov anarchists. Not too many years ago, Ukraine and Poland were the worst collaborators cum Holocaust deniers in Europe. If Zelensky, with Jewish antecedents, really subscribes to Menachem Begin’s “never again” ethic, putting Ukraine’s Right Sector in the Russian crosshairs might be a two-stroke mulligan; both operational genius and poetic justice. 

Conversely, should Ukrainian Nazi nationalists win anywhere, Ukraine and Zelensky still lose, thanks to CIA, NATO, and Victoria Nuland at the US State Department. So far, at the tactical level, the Right Sector has done well as anti-Russian partisans. How well these anarchic volunteers hold up as the Russian “operation” morphs into war remains to be seen.

Chokehold strategy seems to have similar objectives in the South, where Kiev might have to tap out without access to the Azov and Black Seas.  Most agricultural output goes by sea. If Russia controls Ukraine’s waterways, game over in the long run. The impact of Kiev not getting a crop in the ground soon and not being able to ship, combined with sanctions on Russia (Biden’s dollar weaponization) are now global problems.

Ultimately, General Dvornikov would probably like to control the breadbasket east of the Dnieper.  If he secures the western border of Russia and Mariupol; Mykolaiv and Odessa to the west are probably next on the hit list. The port city of Odessa, like Sevastopol, has significant Russian ties.

Putin is a lot of things, but he is not some nutter or some “woke” sissy trying to reclaim empire. To his credit, from a realpolitik perspective, Putin already separated himself from NATO dilettantes. He is willing to bleed Russia, change commanders, and change strategy until he gets a winning combination, the kind of military moxie that hasn’t been seen at NATO or in the Pentagon since Korea.

Leadership matters.

In the end, pain thresholds may be the difference between success and failure in Ukraine. The stakes for Moscow and Kiev are existential. Regime change in either capital is still on the table and Putin and Zelensky know it, “existential” is personal for both men. Brussels and Washington, in contrast, seem to view Ukrainian and Russian leaders as tactical cannon fodder, another chapter in a Cold, now hot, War underway since 1948.

Ukraine, alas, is likely to be road kill on any count, after she is finished being used by both sides.

Intractable or existential strategic objectives for Kiev and Moscow are pretty clear; Brussels and Washington, not so much. We don’t hear much about what victory looks like for the West these days, because the only players that really matter, Moscow and Washington, are playing with Ukrainian blood chits and Russian body bags.

In any prolonged conflict, Kiev is in danger of becoming another near-sighted business opportunity for the NATO “defense” industries whilst Ukraine and Zelensky become rubble and kibble for the big dogs, the real antagonists. China, India, and the Muslim world are sitting on the fence leering like vultures waiting to pick over the carnage. Whoopie, of all people, captured global racial sentiment best. “Whites on whites,” who cares?

Alas, if we believe the logic of deterrence; the prospect of Russian conventional defeat lowers the nuclear threshold.  First use and last use become interchangeable in a world where deterrence fails catastrophically. When you can’t win by other means, the last chapter in modern warfare is massive retaliation, the Strangelovian, nee RAND Corporation, euphemism for radioactive revenge.

The only sure loser in the East European edition of the “big game” is Ukraine. So far, the best that can be said is that grotesque is being normalized.  

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This article appeared in the May, 1922 edition of New English Review

RESET IN UTAH

“The most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome.” – Orwell

We hear much these days about paradigm shifts and resets. Much of the chat comes from crucibles like the World Economic Forum. The WEF is a kind of “masters of the universe” boys club that meets to greet, eat, and ski at fabulously expensive hotels and restaurants in Davos, Switzerland. The globalist press covers these champagne and caviar festivals because the Fourth Estate loves to hobnob with power and money. The holy grail these days seems to be the pursuit of a “great reset,” or stakeholder capitalism; in practice a Beijing model, more like capital Communism. A Chicom theologian would argue that their “capitalism” is just a phase on the way to totalitarian social stability. For monopolist mandarins in America and Europe, the Covid-19 crisis is indeed a golden opportunity to remake the world, “capitalism with a Chinese face” if you will.

For western oligarchs, the Sino model means better control, hegemony, and wealth concentration. For the global lumpen proletariat, unfortunately, the great reset means; conformity, subordination, wokeness, utopian rhetoric, and new age social leveling.

The “stake” in stakeholder capitalism goes through the heart of individual liberties.

Some of the necessary paradigm shifts have already been successful above and below the radar. Above the horizon, hiding in plain sight, the guy who blew the whistle on Big Brother in America is now an international fugitive. The Snowden leak is unique to the extent that he seems to have been motivated by morals at the expense of professional ethics. Conscience, alas, is a character defect in the Intelligence business.

After Edward Snowden’s sierra hit the fan, DNI Jim Clapper actually went up to Congress and denied the advent of universal surveillance in Snowden’s Top Secret National Security Agencyreveal. General Clapper claimed that “metadata” collection (nee wiretapping) did not represent warrantless surveillance of individual citizens.

The theater of federal arrogance is now compounded by parallel commercial digital fascism. Mark Zuckerberg, for example, has rebranded his global Facebook data hustle as META Inc. You can’t make this stuff up. Data mining is a polite euphemism for wiretapping, spying, or surveillance. Big government and Big Tech are now joined at the hip by visions of meta control.

Congress then kissed that fish on the mouth and sent another big check to Big Brother in Bluffdale, Utah. So much for congressional oversight, the real truth about Intelligence abuse and domestic spying is that the American Intelligence Community, including the FBI, are above the law; free agents, politicized deep state civil “servants.” And thus, do elections and maybe democracy itself become less relevant over time. Without accountability, republican democracy is a mirage.

Big reset there.

The urban deep state, the real deciders, as Bush Junior might say, are a toxic majority in large cities, blue states, and nearly all bloated federal bureaucracies, like NSA, across America these days. The American election of 2016 was an inflection point when the apparatchik Left came out of the closet with their azimuths on fire. An outsider, God forbid, threatened to drain the Beltway swamp. Alas, elections in America only matter now if the unelected nomenklatura, todaywell left of center, agree with the electorate.

Big reset there too.

Below the radar since 9/11, a digital hardware paradigm shift is underway also, out in the desert sands. Bluffdale, Utah is now ground zero for a mega-shift in the metadata trade. Heretofore, the national Intelligence meme was a “needle in a haystack” model, to wit; industrious agents and analysts labored in the bowels of a dozen or more Intelligence agencies, like George Smiley, looking for the pins of enemy capabilities and the needles of enemy intentions.

At some point on the Clapper/Obama watch, some genius said “needles be damned,” let’s collect and store all the haystacks instead. When your safety pin pops up on Big Brother’s radar, NSA can access to your present and her past. At any time, any citizen’s future is also a virtual federal hostage, indefinitely.

Abuse here is not just likely; it’s inevitable, Clapper’s faux reassurances notwithstanding.  Ironically, the Bluffdale paradigm and curtailment surveillance was born out of the ashes of Islamist 9/11 infamy. The literal response to Islamic religious fanaticism is now virtual digital fascism.

Who wins that fight?

To be sure, Orwellian spying is only possible with industrial scale collaboration. The Davos crowd was in on the meta-mega collection paradigm caper from the start. Here, the tradeoffs are obvious, big data in exchange for a laissez faire internet. Uncle Sam now has access to communications and Internet “back doors” across the world, and that includes all commercial and domestic digital scat at your house, coast-to-coast.

The price of vague promises about national security is now an absolute loss of privacy, another Chinese model. The motto for the 21^st century Animal Farm should now be “Trust Me,” courtesy of the Intelligence Community.

The siting of mega collection and storage in Bluffdale is no happenstance either. That desert oasis has three distinctions; isolation, sister wives, and a state prison. NSA, a DOD agency, has a sweetheart deal with Utah State Police where local cops are paid $50 per hour for perimeter security. In exchange, NSA is unlikely to see any citizen dissent or unsightly protests anywhere near Bluffdale’s harems or the NSA data facility.

Indeed, for social buffering, Bluffdale is also host to the headquarters of one of the creepiest of many polygamist sects in Utah, the Apostolic United Brethren.  Here, local AUB bulls coral herds of Salt Lake Valley underage heifers. No one in Bluffdale is likely to ask too many questions about another sugar daddy, even if its Uncle Sam. Rural religious cults are happy to be left to their own kinky devices. Indeed, the Utah state legislature has reduced polygamy (and incest and pedophilia by inference) to a misdemeanor, like littering.

Now there’s a grand cultural reset with “Me Too” appeal. Social recidivism in Utah, Nevada, and Arizona never makes it above the fold in any major media outlet.

No Congress and no citizen ever voted for the Bluffdale Data Center (aka Bumblehive) or metadata collection. So much for democracy. That reset, that paradigm shift flew under the radar and out of the smoke and the opportunism generated by 9/11, then Covid. Ironically, there’s precious little evidence, after 22 years, to suggest that Big Brother or Uncle Sam is winning the wars against terror, Islamism, or the spread of theocracy. Indeed, on the theological front, reset in Utah, like Islamism, is just another victory for social declension.

Never mind. If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.                                              

There is zero correlation between investments in electronic super snoops and national security dividends so far in the 21^st Century. Arguably, with the spread of theocracy in the Ummah, Islamic religious fascism (aka Islamofascism) is a growth model. Extremism is winning. See Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Libya, and now maybe Detroit and east London.

So, let’s give credit where credit is due. The caviar crowd at Davos is correct about resets, and wrong about the  rule of law, progress, or the blessings of global communal memes. Progressive doesn’t mean progress any more at Davos any more than it does in Detroit or San Francisco. The great reset is what authoritarian elites do because they can; fix governance and economic apparats by any means: to accommodate what Marists used to call the “vanguard of the proletariat.” In practice, Davos is a consortium of deep state oligarchs, allied with Louis Vuitton liberals and dot.com deep pockets.

Big government and Big Tech are in the same business, virtual voyeurism; the former driven by control, the latter driven by coin. Glen Greenwald put it best; defining the domestic threat as “the unholy trinity of the intelligence community, the corporate press, and Big Tech.”

When Uncle Sam next takes a knee facing East, American supplications should not stop just in Mecca, but continue on to Beijing where the future of an ominous global reset is being written by totalitarians and painted with bold red letters.

Davos voyeurs may poach your mail and pick your pocket today, but tomorrow they will still be unable to read the handwriting on the Great Wall.

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G. Murphy Donovan is the former Chief of the USAF Intelligence Research Division (Friendship Annex), National Security Agency, Fort Meade, Maryland.

Images:

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/a-polygamist-cults-last-stand-the-rise-and-fall-of-warren-jeffs-230800/

https://www.businessinsider.com/pictures-of-the-nsas-utah-data-center-2013-6

The Utah Data Center Covers More Than 1 Million Square Feet, And It Holds A Massive Amount Of Info

JAWBONING THE JIHAD

No one abuses or misuses language better than a politician, except maybe a political “scientist.” Calling the study of politics, science, is in itself more than a bit of a reach. Serious study is to political science as Plato is to graffito, free-forms of daily invention. Nevertheless, in the age of social mediums, banal clichés often become memes or even movements overnight. The “Arab Spring” comes to mind. Climatological or seasonal metaphors are a thing in our age of environmental angst these days, and just as ephemeral.

Not too long ago, the media and the academy were euphoric about Arabia, or the Muslim world generally, emerging from a long dark night of religious tyranny into the warmth of secular, if not enlightened democracy; the so-called “Arab Spring.”  All the while, it was much too dangerous to actually say or write that one third of the world’s population had been living in the dark since the 7th Century. Today, any serious debate about persistent Muslim recidivism, Islamist threats, or perennial jihad is dismissed as “racism.” Never mind that Islam is an absolutist ideology, a politicized religion, indeed a kind of theofascism, not a race or a class of people.

In the debate about Islamism, facts and logic are often irrelevant. Never mind the obscenities of 9/11, the slaughter in Benghazi, beheadings in the Levant, the Laura Logan rape in Cairo, the recent triumph of the Taliban in Kabul, or the Islam bomb now on both sides of the Sunni/Shia schism; all signal events for a modern, “moderate” (sic) Islam.

The Arab Spring euphoria peaked in the Obama era. Barack Hussein’s first foreign policy stumble as US president was to launch an apology tour in Arabia, taking a knee in Cairo, a kind of strategic genuflection after 9/11.

Professor Marc Lynch, of George Washington University, minted the “Arab Spring” metaphor. GW is one of those “second tier” schoolhouses that cluster inside or near the capital Beltway. Lynch, an Obama Democrat, anchors the “two-state” or pander lobby in Washington. At best, Lynch is anti-Israel, if not anti-Semitic. He pedals the apartheid slur about Israel, loudly and often, in left-leaning establishment journals like Foreign Policy.

And now with Biden, a Winter of discontents descends on Washington in the wake of the Abraham Accords. No talk now of “Spring,” or sunshine for that matter. Trump era policy can’t possibly be an achievement if you are reading DC demagogues like Lynch. And so goes analysis in political science, a lot like weather, climate, and meteorological arguments; ounces of fact larded with pounds of bile, bias, or wishful thinking.

If you lose the Middle East foreign policy thread in Washington, just remember that a Democrat White House equals Spring, a Republican Oval Office equals Winter. Yes, it’s that simple for the academy and media allies these days. We are now led to believe that historic treaties and Arab/Israeli reproachments like the Abraham Accords are ignorable, irrelevant, or counterproductive.

Honest analysis, and truth, about Islam and Israel these days is hostage to a host of such shibboleths, the most prominent of which are fear, demographics, moral equivalence, and the two-state fantasy.

Appeasers are literally terrified about jihad and Islamism. Alas, the real global terror threat is the fear that energizes appeasement, immigration policy, and imprudent atrocity tolerance in the West. Note that Islam’s migrants travel on a one-way street, always from East to West.

For the ayatollahs and imams, to be sure, victory by a thousand cuts will still be a win.

Recall that Saudi jihadists trained in America before 9/11 whilst team Clinton’s FBI was asleep at the wheel. After 9/11, team Bush repatriated resident Saudis even before the smoke cleared at the Twin Towers. When it comes to the Muslim wars, American national security impotence is bi-partisan.

The late Director of CIA, John Brennan, actually argues that religious jihad is not war, but rather a personal “spiritual” struggle for Muslims, not warfare. Brennan confuses Muslim mayhem with Catholic soul searching. Any attempt to link terror, religious war, or theocratic coups to global Islam or theology is dismissed as racism, again conflating biology and ideology. Global jihadists have no need to apologize for atrocities. American Intelligence oligarchs, like Brennan, do that for Islam.

Apologists go to any length to create a space between alleged “moderates” and unspecified jihadists (aka radicals) in the Ummah. Muslims (1.5 billion) represent a third of the world’s population. That number, that demographic threat alone, is simply too big, or terrifying, for the West to accept, no less confront.

Moral equivalence is the pink elephant in the approach/avoidance clinic. Scholars and pundits take great pains to claim that Islam is just one of the world’s three “great” Abrahamic religions. Hindus and others, apparently, are just chopped liver. Allegedly, Jews, Christians and Muslims are united by common roots. The Abrahamic trope gives Islamic imperials, terrorists, and jihadists cover under a contrived burka of moral equivalence.

The object of the Abraham shibboleth is tolerance; tolerance for Islam, not Judaism or Christianity. Muslim states are happy to oblige. Conflating an Islamic “republic” with true republics is like confusing astrology and astronomy; worse still, misrepresenting theocracy as democracy. Israel is the lone tolerant democracy in a Levantine swamp. Unfortunately, Israel is also the canary in the geopolitical coal mine. If we can mix some more metaphors; without Israel, the cradle of civilization is just another third world “sierra hotel.”

Unfortunately, whence Israel, so goes the democratic West.

Bogus moral equivalence enables cultural decay and here, if anybody is keeping score, recent rot now includes; Iran, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, and now Afghanistan, just to name the most visible. Pakistan too, with the first Islam bomb, is always one bullet away from recidivist theocracy. The success of the Taliban and ISIS next door in Afghanistan, suggests the days of Islamic janissary in Islamabad are numbered.

The CIA gravy train in south Asia ran/runs through Pakistan. It’s not likely that the Taliban or ISIS will forget Pakistan’s perfidy and double dealing.  The Indian sub-continent now has an official state sponsor for Islamism too. Kabul is host to the Muslim Brotherhood, Taliban, al Qaeda, and ISIS just to name some of the nastier tribal thugs with global reach.

Worse still, Sunni and Shia Islamist factions, now have nuclear leverage with state sponsors like Pakistan (Sunni) and Iran (Shia). None of this bodes well for enlightened globalism or progressive democracy worldwide.

The most pernicious trope propagated by American Intelligence and academic fakirs is the notion that dividing Israel into two states will assuage Arab or Muslim angst. The division of India in 1947 into religious cantons should be a cautionary tale about the imprudence of sectarian surgery. Beyond ignoring ugly precedent, the notion that Palestinians are the key to peace in the Levant or anywhere is another common fiction. Neither Americans nor Israelis have answers to historic and persistent Muslim civic or religious pathologies in spite of what the Muslim Brotherhood or Edward Said tell us.

The root of conflict within and without the Muslim world is the Shia/Sunni schism. (Sam Huntington takes a legacy bow here.) Medieval militants on both sides of the grand religious rift seek to overthrow hereditary, tribal, mostly autocratic, sometimes secular regimes who have strayed from Islamic religious orthodoxy. With the Shia, the vector of futures in Persia was resolved by theocratic coup in 1979, freeing Iran’s ayatollahs to focus their hate on Arab and Sunni apostates and neighbors.

Apostates are priority one targets for jihadists. Kafir kills just keep a keen edge on the swords of the Prophet. The less visible strategic war is not with, but within Islam. America and Israel are caught in the crossfire, perennial if not potential road kills.

Taking sides in a family feud is always a dicey proposition.

Arabian despots, for their part, are now caught in a pinch too, between home-grown and Persian jihadists. The recent rapproachement between Israel and Arabia may be a child of necessity. Nuclear capability gives Tehran strategic parity with the Israelis and an equalizer for Sunni numbers. Iran’s nuclear card might be taken but not given. Any assurances, to the contrary, from the ayatollahs will be like getting a get-well card from your bookie.

Seems that Arabia now sees Israel as a buffer, proxy, or surrogate against an existential threat from Persians. Why not a marriage of convenience that shifts the burden of confronting Shia militants and the Islam bomb to the Israelis? Hopefully, Israel appreciates the calculus. American national security plodders prefer not to think about it.

In any case, with Afghanistan, we have another breach birth theocracy, quickly relegated to yesterday’s news. Journalists and national security pundits are back to whistling in the dark and romancing the Kaaba Stone. Jawboning the jihad is a symptom of weakness, a flaccid American tactic that just whets the appetite of Mohammed’s strategic cutthroats.

Muslin religious imperialism, Islamofacism if you will, is on a roll. The West is losing the ongoing “clash of civilizations,” albeit in slow motion. The difference in the 21^st Century edition of East/West clash will be an Islam that has a strategy and a goal; and knows how to get there. The best that America and the West will do is hope for the best and endure the rest.

——————————–

This essay appeared in the January issue of the New English Review

AFFLENZA

The greater our wealth, the greater our dangers.” – Aristotle

The only bet more speculative than assessing personal motives might be a bet on conventional wisdom, issues like national security policy. Just to game the system for a moment, let’s look at possible personal political motives vis-à-vis the current Ukraine kerfuffle.  The big dogs in this cage match are Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. in one corner and Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin in the other.

For Biden, the Ukraine is a kind of desperate, or no-lose, gambit. If Moscow does little or nothing with those massed troops, then Biden can strut and claim that he bluffed the bear and the beast caved. Like Afghanistan, if Russia backs off, White House courtiers will gloat, and claim a win. If the Kremlin does strike Ukraine, even with a trespass short of an all-out invasion; Biden can say “I told you so” and play the prophet.  Either way, Biden doesn’t risk much. The burdens of risk are borne by the Ukraine and maybe Georgia. And surely anything done in the name of “defense” takes place in shade thrown by a pending, 2022 American congressional election with game changing potential.

Consider too, that Uncle Sam has already savaged the national sovereignty myth in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Libya just to name a few recent foreign policy fiascos.

In game Ukraine, the Kremlin is surely driven by different stimuli. Clearly, Putin sees Biden as an easy mark, maybe an unpopular Delaware dilettante whose sole achievements in 40 years are; attendance, tenure, and AMTRAK subsidies. Putin reads too, knows that Biden has a very good chance of becoming lame duck in a matter of months. Russia may not be trying to restore empire, but surely Putin knows a buffering opportunity when he sees one. The Biden era is prime time to draw a line in the East European sand. Putin believes that locus of that line is a function of EU/NATO imperial restraint, not Russian “aggression.”

Putin is hoping for a buffer of non-aligned states; certainly not an unrealistic or unprecedented goal in light of existing uncoerced Finnish, Swedish, and Swiss precedents. In Kiev, Zelensky probably sees the potential of compromise too, which is why he would like team Biden and the American press to stop thumping the war drums. After all, the big dogs will be rolling the bones for Ukrainian turf.

Beyond the personal political motives of leadership on both sides of the divide, the larger question of American Russophobia still remains unanswered. After a century of Cold War, why can’t the West take yes for an answer?

European Communism is dead. The so-called “hostage” nations of Europe are free. The Warsaw Pact is on the ash heap. Why can’t neo-con America, right and left, recognize the hazards of pushing Moscow too far. Notice also, in keeping with American national cultural memes, the Russophobia hysteria now has a racist flavor.  Cold War arguments are no longer caveated with red, communist, or totalitarian ideological adjectives, the ogre is now the “genetically” aggressive Russian, according to former DCI James Clapper.

Assuming racism might be a minority view, the obvious Russophobic wellspring is economic. Clearly, the Cold War with Russia and the perennial war on “terror” are cash cows for the US Intelligence Community and the Defense Department. Washington is now surrounded by a ring of sutlers and mercenary camp followers, “Beltway whores” as one RAND Corp wag sagely put it a few years back.

Indeed, America throws money at chimeras because it can. Prudent foreign policy may now be a victim of affluence.

Call it affluenza.

Ever since the Soviet turn-of-the century implosion, and 9/11, virtue signaling xenophobes have been buoyed by unlimited cash and deficits. Not so much for Europeans. Aside from a general reluctance to finance NATO, Germany stands to take the biggest economic gut punch if things go from bad to worse in the Ukraine morass. Awash in fiscal excess, Beltway arm chair warriors don’t just ignore the concerns of Russia, but also ignore hazards to keystone allies like Germany.

Berlin is now as green as Greta Thornburg. Alas, if natural gas matters, even as a transition fuel, Rodina has her finger on Berlin’s thermostat. We also demonize Russia at the expense of other more serious Ideological and kinetic threats too. Communist China and global Islamism are examples.

Just the other day. Russia, China, and Iran conducted unprecedented joint/combined military exercises; an event lost in the miasma of Ukraine hysteria. Imagine a future political condominium, that included a revanchist Russia, a Communist China, and Shia Islamism, a nightmare troika. You would think that such a prospect would make twits at State and martinets on the E-Ring soil their knickers. But no, the national security crowd continues to play whack-a-mole with Islamic terror in the Levant, believing that special ops pin pricks will compensate for ignoring the state sponsors of global jihad and the totalitarian blight metastasizing in China.  

Another threat related phenomenon flying below the radar these days is schism politics. Russia and China seem to be siding with Shia/Persian irridentists whilst America and Europe are endorsing Sunni/Arab tribal totalitarians. Taking sides in Muslim religious politics is a little like asking for a replay of the Reformation holy wars on a global scale.

As toxic threat memes proliferate, alas, US foreign policy still fights the last war. American Intelligence has been pitching hay for the Russian strawman since the fall of the Romanovs over a century ago now. Maybe it’s time to rethink the Cold War national security threat paradigm and get our heads out of our strategic azimuth.

———————————–

G. Murphy Donovan writes about the US Intelligence Community and the politics of national security. This essay appeared in American thinker in January.

Image:

The greater our wealth, the greater our dangers.” – Aristotle

The only bet more speculative than assessing personal motives might be a bet on conventional wisdom, issues like national security policy. Just to game the system for a moment, let’s look at possible personal political motives vis-à-vis the current Ukraine kerfuffle.  The big dogs in this cage match are Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. in one corner and Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin in the other.

For Biden, the Ukraine is a kind of desperate, or no-lose, gambit. If Moscow does little or nothing with those massed troops, then Biden can strut and claim that he bluffed the bear and the beast caved. Like Afghanistan, if Russia backs off, White House courtiers will gloat, and claim a win. If the Kremlin does strike Ukraine, even with a trespass short of an all-out invasion; Biden can say “I told you so” and play the prophet.  Either way, Biden doesn’t risk much. The burdens of risk are borne by the Ukraine and maybe Georgia. And surely anything done in the name of “defense” takes place in shade thrown by a pending, 2022 American congressional election with game changing potential.

Consider too, that Uncle Sam has already savaged the national sovereignty myth in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Libya just to name a few recent foreign policy fiascos.

In game Ukraine, the Kremlin is surely driven by different stimuli. Clearly, Putin sees Biden as an easy mark, maybe an unpopular Delaware dilettante whose sole achievements in 40 years are; attendance, tenure, and AMTRAK subsidies. Putin reads too, knows that Biden has a very good chance of becoming lame duck in a matter of months. Russia may not be trying to restore empire, but surely Putin knows a buffering opportunity when he sees one. The Biden era is prime time to draw a line in the East European sand. Putin believes that locus of that line is a function of EU/NATO imperial restraint, not Russian “aggression.”

Putin is hoping for a buffer of non-aligned states; certainly not an unrealistic or unprecedented goal in light of existing uncoerced Finnish, Swedish, and Swiss precedents. In Kiev, Zelensky probably sees the potential of compromise too, which is why he would like team Biden and the American press to stop thumping the war drums. After all, the big dogs will be rolling the bones for Ukrainian turf.

Beyond the personal political motives of leadership on both sides of the divide, the larger question of American Russophobia still remains unanswered. After a century of Cold War, why can’t the West take yes for an answer?

European Communism is dead. The so-called “hostage” nations of Europe are free. The Warsaw Pact is on the ash heap. Why can’t neo-con America, right and left, recognize the hazards of pushing Moscow too far. Notice also, in keeping with American national cultural memes, the Russophobia hysteria now has a racist flavor.  Cold War arguments are no longer caveated with red, communist, or totalitarian ideological adjectives, the ogre is now the “genetically” aggressive Russian, according to former DCI James Clapper.

Assuming racism might be a minority view, the obvious Russophobic wellspring is economic. Clearly, the Cold War with Russia and the perennial war on “terror” are cash cows for the US Intelligence Community and the Defense Department. Washington is now surrounded by a ring of sutlers and mercenary camp followers, “Beltway whores” as one RAND Corp wag sagely put it a few years back.

Indeed, America throws money at chimeras because it can. Prudent foreign policy may now be a victim of affluence.

Call it affluenza.

Ever since the Soviet turn-of-the century implosion, and 9/11, virtue signaling xenophobes have been buoyed by unlimited cash and deficits. Not so much for Europeans. Aside from a general reluctance to finance NATO, Germany stands to take the biggest economic gut punch if things go from bad to worse in the Ukraine morass. Awash in fiscal excess, Beltway arm chair warriors don’t just ignore the concerns of Russia, but also ignore hazards to keystone allies like Germany.

Berlin is now as green as Greta Thornburg. Alas, if natural gas matters, even as a transition fuel, Rodina has her finger on Berlin’s thermostat. We also demonize Russia at the expense of other more serious Ideological and kinetic threats too. Communist China and global Islamism are examples.

Just the other day. Russia, China, and Iran conducted unprecedented joint/combined military exercises; an event lost in the miasma of Ukraine hysteria. Imagine a future political condominium, that included a revanchist Russia, a Communist China, and Shia Islamism, a nightmare troika. You would think that such a prospect would make twits at State and martinets on the E-Ring soil their knickers. But no, the national security crowd continues to play whack-a-mole with Islamic terror in the Levant, believing that special ops pin pricks will compensate for ignoring the state sponsors of global jihad and the totalitarian blight metastasizing in China.  

Another threat related phenomenon flying below the radar these days is schism politics. Russia and China seem to be siding with Shia/Persian irridentists whilst America and Europe are endorsing Sunni/Arab tribal totalitarians. Taking sides in Muslim religious politics is a little like asking for a replay of the Reformation holy wars on a global scale.

As toxic threat memes proliferate, alas, US foreign policy still fights the last war. American Intelligence has been pitching hay for the Russian strawman since the fall of the Romanovs over a century ago now. Maybe it’s time to rethink the Cold War national security threat paradigm and get our heads out of our strategic azimuth.

———————————–

G. Murphy Donovan writes about the US Intelligence Community and the politics of national security.

Image: https://encryptedtbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTSCtx_RDDMnPnxMFdzBStPXcKmqaUpFBlvZPAJNJG95V8N_nYevgrcw8qjf69hEBAY39A&usqp=CAU

BLOWBACK

“Sooner or later, everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences.” – Stevenson

Not long ago, the adjective “bully” meant superb or wonderful. Indeed, Teddy Roosevelt coined the phrase “bully pulpit” to describe the Oval Office, an ideal perch from which to define or support policy. Like so many English words, over time, meaning often migrates to the opposite pole. Today, a bully might be rhetorical thug, a demagogue who uses the political pulpit to demean, belittle, or humiliate opponents – or abuse pretty much anyone who departs from the prevailing orthodoxy.

Alas, political issues that require orthodoxy today are as numerous as they are varied: pandemics, Russia, China, Israel, Islam, Donald Trump, race, addiction, immigration, public education, climate, and even gender (nee sex) pronouns/adverbs, just to name a few hot buttons. If you challenge mandates on these issues, you do so at the risk of being “cancelled” on-line, in the press, in the workplace – or even at the ballot box.

Hecklers with cameras recently pursued a Democrat congresswoman into a restroom because she refused to vote for the latest “Christmas tree” spending legislation.

Bullying is now a standard tactic in the public square; at the same time, a kind of political Russian roulette. “Blowback” is a term Intelligence operatives use to describe operational folly that produces unintended consequences, sometimes catastrophic failure.

The IC should know. American Intelligence fails litter the historical landscape from Pearl Harbor, to Vietnam, to the Bay of Pigs, to 9/11, and on to the recent fiasco in Afghanistan – just to name a few.

Unaccountable as they are, the IC and the FBI are not above bullying either – or beyond the reach of blowback. Indeed, you could argue that excess and overreach in the Beltway ghetto, a cabal of federal institutions, internet mandarins, and mainstream media produces the kind of voter blowback that produces national sea changes.

Call it the Richmond effect.

Blowback is probative today in more than a few venues.

                                 Donald Trump

Of the many ways to assess Trump phenomena today, two stand out. He is either self-made or created. The truth is probably some of both. Clearly, long before politics, Donald Trump courted publicity and made hay with it. Early on, Trump learned to exploit his press, often a step ahead of critics.

Now that Trump has been unseated by coup-plotting and Covid, he is still every troll’s obsession, a permanent inflection in local and national politics.

Where you stand on Trump matters in November.

Bullying by establishment Democrats, Republicans, and a venal media designed to cancel Trump has only made him bigger, more influential; now both a national whipping boy and a political martyr to his many constituents. Trump is seen as a more candid and courageous alternative to the usual Democrat and Republican establishment dissemblers.

In Virginia recently, you might believe that Trump was running against Terry McAuliffe if you listened to Democrat 2021 campaign rhetoric. Midst phobic hate, political excess, and feckless Biden policy; Donald Trump is a larger, and savvier, political presence today than he was in 2016.  Biden, Obama, and the American left ran against Trump the other day – and Democrats lost the entire top tier and legislature in the state of Virginia.

Of all Oval Office veterans, no former President has more political juice today than Trump; thanks, in large measure, to blowback.

Nothing exceeds like excess. Haters are a suicide cult on both sides of the aisle.

                                 Covid-19

Were it not for the weaponization of the Wuflu pandemic and election shenanigans that Covid hysteria enabled, Trump probably would have won in a 2020 by a landslide, given his rude pragmatism and policy hutzpah.

Regretfully, the opportunity costs of politicized science and health care are now measured in body bags and headstones. Andrew Cuomo (D) takes a bow here. Remember when Trump was bullied relentlessly as the grim reaper and Cuomo was held up as the “gold standard” governor or “only adult in the (pandemic) room?” Remember when Joe Biden was the second banana who would put an end to Trump and the plague – and immunize the universe?

Biden and the gauche lobby are now the poster children for promises not kept. Andrew Cuomo has been cancelled; dumped by woke women in his own party. Biden now has lower approval numbers than Alex Baldwin. Bullying about mask mandates and vaccinations by Democrat governors and the White House has produced a backlash of morbidity statistics. The blowback from shaming, bullying, and mandates has alienated mothers, health care workers, cops, firemen, and even rank-and-file military; just to name a few “resisters.”

Nanny state nitwits have prolonged the Covid epidemic with confusion and counterproductive public bullying. Biden’s handlers have him on a short leash, however, seldom allowing the President to speak directly on any subject. When Joe does have a go at the teleprompter, he makes Donald Trump look like Demosthenes.

The amalgam of national Covid backlash and local school board bullying of children and parents, alone, puts the 2022 Congress and 2024 White House in play.

All the while, sport fans nationwide chant: “Let’s go Brandon.”

That’s blowback.

                        National Security

You could argue that American Intelligence agencies, which include the FBI, created today’s norms of political bullying. Indeed, since 1947, CIA and affiliates have pretty much undermined or toppled any Third World government that did not pass some vague political smell test. That kind of global bullying, alas, is now a feature of domestic American politics, where national security fixtures and apparatchiks alike scheme to undermine any people’s choice, like Trump, that doesn’t merit insider approval.  

Messrs. Clapper (DNI), Comey (FBI), and Brennan (CIA) take a bow here.

The American deep state, that tenured trough of civil servants and affiliated national security camp followers, is hard-wired to liberal ideology too, if not de-facto socialism.  The federal octopus, and all its tentacles, is now well left of the American center and will probably do anything to preserve that ideological chasm.

Unfortunately, tainted domestic politics and elections are mere down payments on blowback. The real cost of deep state bullying is assessed in foreign policy and national security coin.

Anti-Trump scheming and mendacity since 2016 has so completely absorbed Russophobic haters that the Chinese and Islamic threat has metastasized in a global defense vacuum. Totalitarian opportunists smell blood, weak American sisters in troubled foreign policy waters. Appeasing Beijing, Mecca, and Moscow is now the default setting for European and American elites. The bully boys of Beijing and the hit men of Islam have run a timid Uncle Sam, and Europhiles, off the international high ground. 

Chinese and Islamic totalitarian imperialism is on the move, and winning. US national security mandarins still fake a cold war in Europe, hype vintage Moscow conspiracies, while obsessing about Trump. Withal, the fall of Hong Kong and Kabul are mere harbingers of worse to come from the dragon and the simitar.

Taiwan, Pakistan, and Israel; you’re next.

The broken link in the global security chain now sits in the White House torn by mandates, correctness, fake Intelligence, and clueless apathy.

In the age of sexual ambiguity, Uncle Sam seems to have exchanged his global cutaway and muscular elan for knickers and a frock. Fair enough, given today’s fey American cultural memes.  Alas, for the next few years, Joseph Robinette Biden will probably sputter in place blaming Donald Trump – wondering when “Brandon” gets to Pennsylvania Avenue.

————————–

G. Murphy Donovan writes about the politics of national security. This essay appeared previously in the 14 November 21 edition of American Thinker.

————————–

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/2021/10/23/the_battle_over_school_boards_is_a_disaster_for_democrats_554764.html?utm_source=rcp-today&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mailchimp-newsletter&mc_cid=58d4662b83&mc_eid=d8016833dc

UNDERACHIEVERS

“The real tragedy of the poor is the poverty of their aspirations.” – Adam Smith

There’s probably nothing more annoying than listening to political drones preach on some social issue clearly out of their wheelhouse. Alas, the public pulpit is now largely the domain of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Silicon Valley oligarchs.

The prevailing cultural winds now blow from a very woke establishment left.

Beyond obvious political bias, the public and digital airways now feature a pernicious narrative targeted on guilty whites and gullible blacks. In a rapid succession of sensibilities, we see heliographic films on Jackie Robinson, Jack Johnson, Muhammed Ali, Miles Davis, and Sammy Davis; three jocks, a musician, and a tap dancer.

Political pandering or condescension needs a big public stage.

American Public Broadcasting, the largest government propaganda network in the world, is now a forum for racial tropes. Public television (350 stations) reaches 75% of American households. Public radio blankets 50 states with well over 1,000 stations. Public television is also the nanny state nanny, providing Orwellian cartoon programing for young minds and insomniac parents 24/7. Ironically, PBS and NPR management and audience is a demographic of guilty zealots, mainly liberal white women with a spritz of fey gents, countrywide.

PBS is clearly America’s “progressive” baby sitter, a kind of national pre-school.

Concurrently, the public airways seldom report on, or sponsor documentaries on, professionally diverse black role models; genuine achievers such as Clarence Thomas, Ben Carson, Condi Rice, Candace Owens, or Thomas Sowell are just a few examples. Were Sowell a beatified liberal, he probably would have a Nobel Prize for economics by now.

Nor will you see any documentaries on the dark side of African American culture, now a social stew that would choke a maggot.

Athletics, entertainment, and street “culture” have become separatist ghettos, servile urban Democrat political slums dominated by; tattooed/pierced punks, obese women, vulgar victims, athletes, “influencers,” hip hoppers, and rappers.

George Floyd, a skell or habitual offender by any measure, is now an iconic global martyr, canonized before the “black lives matter” blue screen. Concurrently, black punks will probably take the lives of six to eight thousand other American blacks in 2021. No one will ever know the names of those perps or victims. In New York City alone, thousands more black babies will be aborted than born alive.

No one will ever know their names either.  

If facts matter, homicide and abortion numbers should go in the books as a rolling African American pandemic. No one, especially black liberals, should be able to cry “BLM” without having their pants catch fire. Taking a knee today is the sporting and cultural equivalent of diving into an empty pool.

Self-inflicted genocide is aggravated by social recidivism, a retreat to segregated ghettos. The modern black separatist meme originally bled out of American prisons with the Nation of Islam, a hustler’s cult wearing an Islamic burka. The resegregation of public schools was a more subtle process where academic quality and performance in black America were thrown under the bus in the name of civil rights. There are no “A” list, elite, black high schools or colleges anymore. Lowering the academic bar for blacks in the name of equity, amounts to making inferiority or incompetence a graduation requirement.

In contrast, performance and talent are standard for professional and college athletics. Making the team, alas, comes at the expense of social skills and academic achievement. The “cake-and eat-it” model for the black youngsters cultivates cultural, social, and academic inferiority.  No intelligent premier black athlete or scholar aspires to matriculate or teach at a segregated, or inferior, university where the predicate is skin color.

Smart black athletes go to Notre Dame, not Howard. Separate inferior schools, segregated by skin color, is the worst kind of government subsidized bigotry. Apparently, the only unique feature of black academies today is the marching band.

Credentialism, across the board, is the new scholarship.

The certificate, diploma, or degree is a token signifying nothing. Scholarship, skill, and even literacy is forfeit to the woke void. Testing for subject competence is a symptom of “white” (sic) privilege. Dumbing down is the new up.

The racism of low expectations is now a cash crop too at national institutions like PBS and NPR, where a largely white, liberal establishment exploits and manipulates the emotions of the gullible, especially athletes. The PBS message to young blacks is clear; the only lanes open for African Americans are basketball courts, football gridirons, boxing rings, or recording studios.   

The recent Casius Clay/Muhammed Ali biopic, now on view at PBS, provides a tale of the trope.

Ken Burns would have us believe that “greatness” is a semi-literate boxer who makes a career beating other black men to amuse whites: or “greatness” is a black man who gives his fortune to hustlers or religious cults; or maybe “greatness” is a palooka who stays in the ring long enough to have his lights punched out; or maybe greatness is a priapic baby daddy, not a father or husband; or possibly “greatness” is a black man who spends his golden years as a brain damaged mute, drooling into his oatmeal and signing autographs for chump change.

Ali stayed in his lane too long, unfortunately, because he was incapable of doing anything else.

Ali was not great yesterday any more than jocks or rap minstrels are the “greatest” today. Clay was used, first by a white Nashville cartel and then Ali was used by black hustlers like Elijah Mohamed and Don King. Clay was never his own man. He was a slave to a big gate and a child-like ego that never allowed reflection or self-awareness, confusing notoriety with character.

When low personal standards or expectations become contagious, communal or generational; “systemic” isolation is inevitable.  The modern American ghetto is a self-inflicted wound.

It does not take a village to raise a child; a child needs the deuce that produced. A stable family is the bedrock of all societies. No state subsidized pre-school or CPB cartoons can do a better job than two competent, responsible parents.

Baby daddies and single mothers will not do.

Adam Smith wrote the book on social integration. He argued that prudent men devote their energies first, to a successful family and then to building local social and economic institutions. By doing so, men and women, in their own ways, contribute to the common weal and ultimately a successful community and country.

Muhmmad Ali or George Floyd are not heroes or role models for any youngster; black, white, or pink. Such icons are especially suspect when elevated by condescending, guilty or pandering white liberals. The assumption that blacks cannot learn, earn, speak for themselves, or succeed without “white” help, is a social shibboleth that underwrites permanent inequality.

The politics of low expectations lowers the bar for everyone.

———————————

G. Murphy Donovan usually writes about the politics of national security.

Images;

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/gallery/2014/oct/30/muhammad-ali-25-best-photographs-cassius-clay-legendary-boxer

https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.forbes.com%2Fsites%2Frachelsandler%2F2020%2F06%2F03%2Fgeorge-floyd-had-coronavirus-autopsy-finds-but-it-wasnt-factor-in-his-death%2F&psig=AOvVaw0bVrIuBIbS38F0hu8yzp26&ust=1633438648763000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAsQjRxqFwoTCLjkhqXnsPMCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAJ

GUNFIGHT AT THE PC CORAL

                      

“My definition of a man’s man is a man who knows gun safety, and we all did.” – Kurt Vonnegut

Reality is often stranger than fiction.

A few days ago, Alex Baldwin, an outspoken Hollywood political activist, shot and killed his cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins, on the set of Rust in New Mexico. Early press reports characterized the incident as a “prop” (property department) gun “misfire,” immediately establishing a narrative suggesting that the shooter was innocent whilst the gun or safety procedures were at fault. As reporting escalated, the yarn changed to blame the assistant director who apparently handed Baldwin a “cold” gun – with a hot round.

Some reports suggest the set “armorer” was to blame. Armorer is one of those Hollywood feather bed jobs you see in film credits that is supposed to ensure firearm safety on location. Can you picture some union scale temp telling Alex Baldwin what he can or cannot do on set?

Baldwin apparently fired the gun while “practicing” or rehearsing for the next take. So far there is no discussion of what kind of gun safety training is required for actors like Baldwin before they are to allowed handle weapons on set. There is no filmed record of the shooting either – or so we are told.

Press reporting doesn’t explain why real weapons and live ammunition are required to film yet another horse opera. A true cowboy “prop” gun would be a reproduction revolver, not a lethal weapon. The use of the adjective “prop” to describe a weapon that kills someone is a little like using the adjective “accidental” to describe a drug overdose, or worse still a suicide.

Such is the reality of reporting and media servility today. To date, the polite phrase for press coverage of the latest Baldwin controversy might be “cover up;” indeed, another bravo sierra, fake news story gone viral.

Alex Baldwin is a press darling, a Hollywood activist, an acerbic liberal with a history of verbal child abuse, public thuggery, anger management issues, and vulgar outbursts. Baldwin has fantasized aloud about beating up the President of the United States. His most recent political rave recommends: “Bury Trump in a Nazi graveyard and put a swastika on his grave.” 

Given what we know about the shooting, the most generous assessment possible of the Hutchins tragedy is negligent homicide. Put aside for a moment, if you can, Baldwin’s history as an angry public bully. Alas, if you pull the trigger, you are ultimately responsible for the bullet.

Any other judgement is a bold lie, an excuse, or both.

A kid who has been through a basic NRA gun safety course knows the difference between a live round and a blank. A bullet doesn’t look like a blank.

Adults know the difference between a hot or cold gun too, especially a revolver where ammunition is clearly visible, even without spinning the cylinder.  

A slick-sleeve military private knows to clear any weapon before and/after use.

A child with basic gun safety training knows also that you never point a hot or cold gun at somebody or something you don’t intend to shoot.

And even a novice knows that you don’t pull the trigger, for fun or practice, on an empty gun. Dropping the hammer on an empty chamber can damage the gun and make it unsafe.

There are two grim speculations to be made here in light of known labor and safety problems on set.  The Rust cast might have been using the guns for target practice (plinking) during down time and a live round was left in the gun – or some malcontent salted the “prop” guns with live rounds as some kind of sick message to management.  In any case, press reporting to date doesn’t pass the smell taste.

Ultimately, the man with his finger on the trigger is responsible for due diligence, checking the weapon before pulling the trigger.  A revolver has to be cocked to fire, a very deliberate act. You can drop a fully loaded Colt revolver on the ground and it will not discharge unless it is cocked.

Calling Baldwin’s negligence a “misfire” is another example of fake news, a lame attempt to blame the inanimate and exonerate the culprit. Sadly, given what we know about liberal media politics, Hollywood mores, and celebrity accountability these days; the Hutchins family may get compensation, but in the end see very little justice.

————————–

The author is a military veteran and erstwhile hunter who usually writes about national security.

Key Words: Alex Baldwin, Halyna Hutchins, Rust, negligent homicide.

Image:

https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nydailynews.com%2Fentertainment%2Fgossip%2Falec-baldwin-street-scuffle-new-york-photographer-article-1.1438362&psig=AOvVaw0nMO4jOv-iKX6cNO2KQ37b&ust=1635612222508000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAsQjRxqFwoTCJj09N2I8PMCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAD

The Biden Skedaddle

                       Charlie Foxtrot on the E-Ring

“The history of the intelligence community is replete with violations of the trust of the American people.” –  General James Clapper

Back in the day when American generals knew the difference between a win and a loss, a running defeat was called a “skedaddle,” a rout so humiliating that the vanquished would drop their weapons and kit and flee the battlefield at a gallop.

No horses in evidence this week. Americans are fleeing the Taliban fight in USAF cargo holds. Afghanistan is Joe Biden’s big skedaddle.

And yes Joe, Kabul is not Saigon; the Afghan humiliation is much worse by any measure. Like Vietnam, Afghanistan is now compound evidence of both failure and strategic incompetence; to many observers like China, Russia, and the Ummah, clear omens of American national decline.

Let the hand wringing and recriminations begin.

Poor military leadership and even worse Intelligence, again, top the usual suspect list. We were led to believe that American Intelligence speaks truth to power. Alas, candid Intelligence left the station at the end of WWII. Recall that the Korean War, unresolved to this day, was characterized as a “police action.” Ever since, both the Pentagon and Intelligence Community have been cooking the strategic books at will. Afghanistan just continues a late 20^th Century tradition of strategic mendacity.

Words matter.

Without rehashing all the warning and/or analytical failures from Korea to Cuba to Vietnam on through 9/11 let’s review the most recent Intelligence fictions; the fake “Intelligence” that led to the humiliation underway in Afghanistan today.

Strategic illusions are both probative and predictive, harbingers of even worse humiliations to come. 

Nationhood fiction

Afghanistan was never a nation, in any sense of what sovereignty means in the secular world. Afghanistan is a toxic mix of ethnic, tribal, and family affiliations; aggravated by a lack of a common language, illiteracy, and political fanaticism wearing a religious burka. Factions are indeed divided by a common religion, Islam; where most militants believe they are “mujahadeen” of one sort or other; in short, god’s warriors.  

As with Iran, toxic theocracy is the only realpolitik truth in Afghanistan. With the Taliban victory, political Islam and Islamofascism gets another a big win.

Mujahadeen fiction

Before the Soviet departure in 1989, CIA was running a closet war in Afghanistan with some success, exploiting Tajik mujahadeen. Unfortunately, Ahmad Shah Masoud, putative leader of the “Northern Alliance,” was always viewed by the Pashtun majority as a CIA or American stooge. Masoud was assassinated by the Taliban a few days before 9/11. The so-called Northern Alliance evaporated after the Pentagon took the point in Kabul in 2001.

The Panjshir Valley, under Masoud’s son may continue to be a locus of resistance to Pashtun rule. But this time around, CIA Mujtahids will have fight without Charlie Wilson and Gust Avrakotus.

At this point, it is instructive to compare the manner of Soviet departure in 1989 to the American skedaddle today. The 40^th (Soviet) Army, even in defeat, literally paraded out of Kabul, flags flying, equipment and most of their military honor intact.

Knowing when to furl your flag or spike your guns are military options lost on woke warriors at the Pentagon today. No army wins anywhere with clueless brass.                      

Timeline fiction

The White House continues to date the Afghanistan War to 2001, as if it were a modest 20 year debacle, when the true narrative covers almost 40 years. Charlie Wilson’s War, run by a Democrat congressman and the CIA, commenced shortly after the Soviet invasion in 1979.

Facts matter. America was poking the bear, and Islam, long before 9/11.

Petraeus fiction

We are now told by the White House that the mission in Afghanistan, or any of the Islamic wars in progress, is not “nation-building.” Really? If true, that would make US Army Field Manual 3-24 a fantasy and Generals Petraeus and Milley liars. If our “laser focus” is now only on tactics; then we are back to another lame euphemism, that pyrrhic “War on Terror.”

Waging a war against a tactic is the kind of operational nonsense that now passes muster in the woke warrior school of military arts and sciences. A war on terror is the semantic equivalent of “Islamic freedom fighter” or “Islamic republic.”

War Fictions

We are now told by the White House that Afghanistan is a “civil war” where American troops have no constructive role to play. Really? By that metric, almost every small war where American troops are deployed is a waste.

Indeed, in countries like Iraq, Syria, and Libya; America created or enabled civil wars that persist to this day. If the truth be told, America has positioned itself betwixt Shite and Sunni religious fascists where the only sure outcome is Yankee road kill.

Mohamed now has Uncle Sam by the operational short hairs. Better that America should now think of all those small wars in the Ummah as Muslims do, as local theaters of the larger global jihad.

Quantification fictions

We end the Afghan adventure as we began; putting lipstick on a pig.

Vietnam veterans will recognize the statistical hair spray now being laid on by the Pentagon; a mist of numbers about American lives lost, tax dollars invested and the salutary troop redeployments, sorties, and passenger loads coming out of Kabul; the kind of bravo sierra meant to cover or distract from the ugly strategic truth of failure.

If they are watching, Robert McNamara and Daniel Ellsberg are probably having hot flashes of déjà vu.

Blame fictions

A stand-alone Kabul “government” and the Afghan “Army” were always fictions and now they are handy scapegoats. Spiffy uniforms and guns do not an army make. Even lap dancers on Wisconsin Avenue know that a puppet regime and a nutcracker militia would not survive without Intelligence and close air support. Bagram Airbase was abandoned by Americans surreptitiously, at night, without consultation; leaving our Kabul “partners,” Afghan ground forces, and the American embassy up the proverbial creek. 

Blaming Afghans for the military collapse and impending national rape is an insult to dead and wounded US Marines still coming home in bandages and body bags. 

Ally Fictions

Pakistan, not Afghanistan, is host to the various headquarters staff of the Taliban and al Qaeda in South Asia. Bin Laden had to be killed, by Americans, in Pakistan. Islamabad tolerates terrorists because accommodation is an existential matter for the fragile Pakistan janissary, always one bullet away from the Islamic abyss.

Trusting Pakistan on Islamism is like confusing Covid-19 symptoms with a head cold.

Withdrawal date fictions

The withdrawal date for the American troops was set by Trump administration for 1 May, mid-way through Ramadan, when jihadists might not make mischief. Team Biden extended the deadline to September hoping to take a political victory lap on the 20^th anniversary of 9/11.

God save America from political fakirs.

.                            Key Judgements

After decades in Afghanistan, America has been defeated by Muslim fanatics equipped primarily with small arms and Toyotas.

Removing American troops and air support from Afghanistan before noncombatants, was a grave operational error which enabled the collapse of the Afghan Army, accelerated the Taliban advance, and created the panic and chaos now evident in Kabul.

The failure to destroy arms, equipment, and facilities was another military fail, indeed a gift to the Taliban and the global jihad.

As the 20^th anniversary of 9/11 approaches, Afghanistan is likely, again, to become a haven for jihadists in South Asia.

No principal at the National Security Council, Department of State, or Pentagon will be fired or relieved. The 9/11 precedent abides, flag officers who enabled that fail were decorated, celebrated, and promoted.

The small wars fiction, the so-called “war on terror,” will abide, emphasizing the tactical sectarian ghettos of Islam: the Taliban, Hezbollah, Hamas, al Qaeda, and ISIS instead of the strategic global threat, state-sponsored imperial jihad.

Sunni Arabs and Shite Persians will continue to finance and enable Islamist politics and the global jihad with impunity.

Drug money from urban America will continue to be a primary source of revenue for jihadists in Afghanistan and elsewhere. The irony of American junkies financing America’s Islamic enemies will continue to be lost on the State Department and the Pentagon.

Islamofascism will continue to be rationalized by America as unrepresentative of the larger Muslim demographic.

The United States and Europe will absorb unvetted Muslim refugees fleeing Afghanistan.

The Pentagon and the Intelligence Community will continue to cower behind fictions that confuse tactical trees with strategic forest.

The next likely target for the Taliban may be Pakistan, another potential strategic coup that would create yet another “Islamic emirate,”  this time with a nuclear weapons capability.

At this point, America is clearly losing the global war with Islamic religious fascism. One wonders if the Biden administration, like Barack Obama still thinks ISIS and the Taliban are “second” string players.

Things will get a lot worse before they get better.

https://taskandpurpose.com/news/afghanistan-c-17-kabul-airport-video/

https://www.outlookindia.com/photos/topic/taliban/100122?photo-261098

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRNmEWuRYMZQhytnJpTcHa59NnfsY0Pb2jFng&usqp=CAU

GASLIGHTING AT THE ACADEMY

“It’s pretty clear that my tenure was not taken up because of political opposition because of discriminatory views against my viewpoint and, I believe, my race and my gender.” – Nikole Hannah Jones

Black victims and white guilt now meet at the merge of journalism and the academy; nowhere is this more apparent than in the case of Nikole Hannah-Jones and the so-called 1619 Project, a clever piece of pseudo-academic trolling, yet another “woke” theory about the centrality of race in American history; presented first, by the New York Times, and then ratified by the Pulitzer Committee.

Ms. Jones has a basket of press prizes, most from the political American left. Her resume also includes a history of advocacy journalism, loose talk and conspiracy theories coupled to race baiting. Most recently, Nikole claimed her five-year contract with the University of North Carolina “guaranteed” tenure, in advance, until southern white racism poisoned the well.

Neither claim was true.

After playing the victim for several days midst the subsequent media firestorm, Nikole abandoned the UNC tender and retreated into the black academy at Howard University where she will be able to preach to the choir – with tenure. Absent teaching credentials, Nikole’s demand for tenure is a symptom of victim privilege at best, or affirmative action at its worst.

Professional victims in America are now weaponized and monetized.

Alas, self-segregating colleges, like Howard, are part of the race problem, not the solution. Like urban public schools, so-called historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) are academic ghettos, second rate at best. Few blue-chip African American scholars or athletes go to the black academy if they can matriculate, recreate, or teach elsewhere. The black American schoolhouse, at all levels, is a job’s program; an expensive, subsidized, mediocre artifact of America’s race wars.

The University of the District of Columbia, also in the nation’s capital, might be the best example of the worst. The dirty secret about “separate and unequal” is that progressive elites know that a segregated black academy, like public assistance, keeps blacks in their place; permanently in second place that is.

Like Barack Obama, Jones is a product of a mixed marriage; white mother, black father. Like our former president, Nikole self-identifies as black. With the woke; race or sex is choice, not biological fact; very convenient options for insecure, or paranoid, double dippers of color.

Jones is now a 21^st Century liberal American political pin-up, fast approaching a stereotype. Ms. Jones “matriculated in white,” start to finish; including a bachelor’s degree from Notre Dame and a master’s from UNC. Blacks make up three percent of Notre Dame’s student body and most of those are men sporting helmets or jockstraps. Like the Obamas, Ms. Jones has been rump high with black privilege in white school ghettos her entire life. Jones may wear a coat of many colors, but victim she is not. Character is seldom an issue these days on the American left.

Alas, integrity, or lack of it, is at the heart of Project 1619. Problems with Nikole’s thesis begin with innumeracy.

There were no “united states” in 1619, only European colonies; Dutch, Spanish French, Portuguese, and English; the latter, especially Virginia, central to the Jones polemic. Suggesting that Virginia spliced slavery into a defining “American” narrative in 1619 is a little like saying European buggery began with Bulgaria. Slavery was flourishing midst native Americans and all European imperialists for eons before the Virginia plantation got into the act. Slavery was a global phenomenon in the 17^th Century, a social and economic standard that dates back to pre-history.

And the color of slavery has always been gold or green, never exclusively black. Slavery might be American “original sin,” in the same sense that hamburgers are made from ham.

Ms. Jones fails to acknowledge that legal slavery survived in the United States for only seventy five years (1788-1863); before that, slavery was a European colonial sin or crime. Ironically, black slavery still thrives today where it began, in black and Muslim Africa. Slavery no more defines the “white” American narrative than crime, cocaine, and fatherless families tells the African American story.

The American revolution was not fought to “defend slavery” either, any more than the Civil War was fought to save cotton, tobacco, hush puppies, or grits.

All European settlers, no matter race or class, were second class citizens outside their motherlands; a sore spot for Dutch, English, French, and Spanish 17^th Century colonists alike. The heavy hands of George III and the British parliament on the original 13 English colonies was felt from Boston to Beaufort.

“White” America, in a bitter civil war, bled profusely to end slavery in the 19^th Century. But then again, as we now know from Nikole, and a host of like-minded shills, only black lives really matter, then or now. Ironically, black servility and indenture is still a necessary predicate to the success of today’s Democrat Party and the careers of race baiters like Hannah-Jones countrywide.

Slavery in America might be an economic footnote compared to the historical plight of native Americans, where genocide, not servitude was the norm. One might also point out that, unlike black Africa, native Americans (nee Indians) seldom sold their brothers, sisters, and children into export slavery.

If any American institution is to be held accountable for systemic racism, slavery, aparthied, or Jim Crow; the Democrat Party, by any measure, should be the first culprit in the dock.

Nothing said so far excuses or minimizes the horrors of slavery or social injustice anywhere.

But slavery, even black slavery in America is not unique; rather, it is just one of many national sins that now include the native American genocide, Japanese American interments during the last great war, and willful indifference to the plight of Jews in Europe during the same era. Ironically, institutions like the New York Times, which ignored 19^th American and 20^th Century European genocides, now seeks redemption by pandering to racist fictions about the place of slavery in American history.

If America must repent for “original sin,” if justice is overdue, then the remnants of 574 Amerind tribes and the American Jewish tribe might go to the head of the any reparation’s line.  The impact of racism on Africans doesn’t come close to the impact of racial crimes visited on Native Americans.

African slaves may have been abused, but they were not brought to America for extermination. The abuses of servitude don’t come close to the impact or finality of racial genocide.

To be fair, we should also give Nikole Hannah-Jones her due. As a race victim, Ms. Jones has already donned the robes of moral superiority; she really doesn’t need teaching experience, a PhD, or automatic tenure. No one has done more for professional victims and gaslighting since George Cukor allowed Charles Boyer to abuse Ingrid Bergman on the silver screen in 1944.

Bergman won an award for her portrayal of a victim that year too.

Addendum

Hannah-Jones’ 1619 argument captures the worst of two professions, teaching and journalism, both doubling down as partisan political propaganda platforms. Black servility and indenture are necessary predicates to the political success and professional careers of race profiteers in America today. For a fact based and scholarly assessment of the role of slavery in the American historical narrative, consider Dr. Thomas Sowell’s (Stanford) excellent Intellectuals and Race.

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Key words; Nikole Hannah Jones, Thomas Sowell, University of North Carolina, Howard University, Notre Dame University, District of Columbia University, NY Times, Pulitzer Prize, 1619 Project, Black Lives Matter, and Racism in America.