Random Thoughts (8): Pardon My Color Revolution

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One

It’s been a long time since I had as much fun as I did yesterday. From about 11:58 AM, when J.D. Vance took the oath of office, to 9:00 PM or so when I called it a night to the sounds of wailing and gnashing of teeth on CNN, it was just awesome.

I have had a gut feeling that started with Butler last summer. That feeling grew in August with Kamala’s attempt at “Joy” and “Brat Summer.” It grew even stronger during Jimmy “Malaise Forever” Carter’s funeral.

It was stronger still during Trump’s inaugural address, when he said, “The United States will once again consider itself a growing nation. One that increases its wealth, expands our territory, builds our cities, raises our expectations, and carries our flag into new and beautiful horizons… launching astronauts to plant the Stars and Stripes on planet Mars.”

Then

when Trump pardoned the J6 protesters, with pictures of them being released from jail, it hit me.

We’re in a color revolution. No more apologies for being American. In a world of growing darkness, we will be the shining light of the West. To paraphrase that great philosopher Reginald Martinez Jackson, we will once again be the straw that stirs the global drink.

I hereby call it the Orange Man Revolution.

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Happy Civil Rights Day!

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On my long-neglected blog I recommended replacing Martin Luther King Day with Civil Rights Day. Here’s the case I made.

For years I’d heard news stories about debates over whether or not to establish an official Martin Luther King holiday, and never did anyone report the arguments against. I always suspected that one was that we had way too many day-off-of-work holidays as it was. Having one three weeks after Christmas does seem a bit superfluous. MLK Day would be only the third national holiday named after a person, the others being Christmas and Columbus Day, commemorating the chief catalyst for Western culture and the chief catalyst for extending Western culture to the Americas. (In the case of the latter, make that Western cultures; English and Iberian influences were vastly different.) Some, I imagine, feel that only those rare individuals who have had such a radical impact should have holidays named for them. Dr. King isn’t in that league; the only Americans who are are the Founders; their holiday is July 4.

Here’s my argument against making [the third Monday of January] an official holiday: it’s not fair to everyone else involved in the civil rights movement. Independence Day isn’t just about one guy. We have a holiday for all those who made the Declaration of Independence happen. We should have a federal holiday called Civil Rights Day. It would be like Memorial Day, honoring leaders of past civil rights struggles instead of soldiers of past wars.

Predictions

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I have two predictions for 2025. These are based not on any deep analysis, but strictly on vibes.

–There is going to be a lot of new activity in manufacturing: startups, reshoring, rollups of small shops, skills training, and much more respect for the industry.

–The fertility rate will tick upwards.

Other predictions, whether vibes-based or analytical?

Biden, Scandals, and His Place in History: A First Look

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I was going to write a post a few days ago regarding the historical legacy of the Biden administration, but I had a sense that the scoundrel wasn’t quite done yet and so I held off.

With the news this morning that Biden has pardoned Milley, Fauci, and the J6 Committee members I’m glad I did.

That old villain Lenin once said, “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” Well, four years is a bit more than a few weeks, but in one very important respect this has been one of the most consequential administrations in American history.

That one respect I am speaking of is scandal.

We’ve had presidential scandals in the past: presidents obstructing justice over flings with interns, presidents obstructing justice over second-rate burglaries, presidents selling arms to Iran in order to run guns to the Contras. Note those are just the ones we know about. I would argue that the way Carter treated the country as his moral possession was an underappreciated scandal.

However, all of those scandals (that we know of) constitute the JV team compared to the record of the Biden years. With Scranton Joe and friends we are talking about historical, shaking faith in the Constitutional system to the core, type stuff. Things that you find only in a Third World country or maybe a Mel Brooks movie.

I’m going to take a historian’s view and list five scandals that not only constitute things that are hard to square with the notion of a republic governed by laws and beholden to a free people with inalienable rights, butt that will have damaged our political norms for decades to come. This record of scandal should follow Biden, and those who enabled him, through history.

These are not the abusive actions of some faceless bureaucrat in the CIA, or subterranean troll toiling away in the bowls of the EPA, but rather deliberate and active conspiracies at the highest levels of the Biden administration and government. The enormity of the scandals lies not just with Biden, but with all of those in the DC establishment who enabled him and who will remain when Joe leaves town.

You can add other scandals such as fiscal insolvency, immigration and the hollowing out of the military. However, those scandals, while possibly dramatic in their future outcomes, are more policy blunders with effects as-yet unrealized. Don’t think so? We’ll see. But several thousand years of empirical evidence shows that it’s hard to predict things, especially the future. We’ll just have to keep playing the game and find out about those.

The Cover-Up of Biden’s Physical and Mental Disabilities

The fact that Biden was in mental decline has been obvious for years, even during the 2020 Election. That decline seemed to accelerate once he took office, and the alarming nature of his various missteps was rivaled only by the political establishment’s closing of ranks in telling us to ignore our lying eyes. Even when Biden’s disastrous debate performance last June finally allowed the story to break cover, they still tried to cover it up.

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What We Must Remember

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I understand that 10/7 seems like an eternity ago, but as we watch the ceasefire in Gaza unfold there are some things we need to remember.

While there is an “exchange” of people between Hamas and Israel, it is not an equal trade. Israel is releasing from its jails blood-thirsty killers, members of a group that has sworn to destroy it. Hamas is releasing men, women, and small children which it had kidnapped on 10/7.

Those who were kidnapped on 10/7 were the lucky ones that day. Hamas invaded Israel and killed more than 1,200 civilians. These dead were not the collateral damage of war, but deliberately targeted by Hamas as it overran Israeli towns to commit mass torture, rape, and murder.

Those civilians kidnapped by Hamas were as targeted as those which it so cruelly tortured and killed. They were kidnapped to be used as bargaining chips, both to escape destruction by the Israeli military and to inflict psychological torture against the Israeli population at large. Much as Hamas cynically uses its own civilian population as human shields, fortifying its positions with so much living concrete, it uses Israeli civilians to weaken Israel’s will to resist through the implementation of horror and pain.

The recently implemented ceasefire is merely the logical extension of that psychological campaign as Hamas uses those innocents it kidnapped on that awful day as the means to escape (for now) its richly deserved destruction. Every released hostage is for their families, and for Israel itself, a cause for celebration. It is also a cause for all civilized people to refill our hearts with a determined resolve.

Never forget.