German Infantry Anti-Tank Tactics 1941/1942

This is hair-raising.

Sucks to be the guys who suddenly find out the untermenschen have T-34s and KV-1s and none of the wonderful German guns will penetrate the enemy tanks’ armor.

The Aryan Supermen were obliged to climb onto the back of the Soviet tank, chop through the ventilation grill over the engine with an axe, and then place a hand grenade through this improvised opening to try to disable the engine. Meanwhile, the Red Army infantry were, in theory, being kept too busy by the other Wehrmacht guys on the team to shoot Hans off the back of the tank before he was finished with the axe-and-grenade improvisation.

The Germans also had a gimmick of mines affixed to a plank and then maneuvered in front of the tank with a rope by a guy hiding in a nearby hole in the ground, as another low tech solution to the problem.

Relying on kludges is bad enough under peacetime conditions. This stuff could get you killed.

Are you a White man? Is it funny when you die?

Democrats in a public, political meeting cheer and laugh at the mention of the increased number of white men committing suicide.

The speaker says, maybe I should not say this in public, but when I heard more White men are committing suicide, I almost said “yeah, great!”.

But he does say it, and the crowd likes it, as he knew they would.

The speaker knows that he is talking about a group that has no organized capacity to oppose his despicable, dehumanizing, eliminationist hate speech. Attacking those who are not (yet) organized to resist is easy and fun.

About which other ethno-cultural community is it permitted to laugh and clap when they die by their own hands in larger numbers?

The despair that leads to this horrible increase in suicides is a gauge of the success of the policies the people in this video espouse. They are jeering over a defeated enemy. So for this crowd laughter and clapping is appropriate.

Every other group in American life is now self-consciously tribal, and mobilized to respond to any grievance, real or imaginary.

As noted elsewhere, liberal whites who believe themselves to be post-tribal cosmopolitans are merely a very wealthy and very powerful tribe, with their own rituals of recruitment and exclusion, who smugly believes themselves entitled to rule others.

The last group to self-consciously form a tribe will be non-liberal, lesser-educated, lower status white males. This will happen, and is happening, out of self-defense. This is a very large group. They do not think it is funny when they and their friends, neighbors, classmates, military buddies, coworkers, sons, brothers, fathers, people like them, are reduced to hopelessness and commit suicide in increasing numbers.

The younger members of this group, young white men, the generation aged 30 or so and under, are not easily shamed by accusations of political correctness. They see where this is going. This younger cohort is taking, and will take, the initiative.

The balkanization of America is moving along at an accelerating rate. There is only one domino left. The groups which have been directing their animosity against an inert and un-reacting mass will probably be shocked when they have finally awakened something that can and will push back.

Democrats who disagree with this kind of thinking and this kind of speech should insist that it stop. It is destructive, and it is even bad for their electoral prospects. But they won’t stop it. It is apparently intensely satisfying to enjoy the warmth of in-group solidarity, including expressing contempt for the disdained “other”, including laughing when they die in increasing numbers.

Identity politics is the core of what the Democrats stand for now. It feels so good, to so many people, it is apparently even better than winning elections. It is sick that our politics is reduced to this level. FDR, HST, JFK and the patriotic, civic nationalist Democrats of bygone days are scowling down from that great smoke-filled room in the sky.

Sad!

Some Thoughts on Trump, Free Trade, and Horses

A friend sent a link to a leaked, recorded conversation between Trump and Wilbur Ross, his nominee for Commerce Secretary. There is nothing particularly troubling in the conversation. Trump is talking like Trump. He is the same person in public and in private, which is nice.

I responded:

Sounds good to me.  A tariff is a consumption tax collected at the port of entry.  The American founders expected to fund the operations of the national government with revenue from a tariff, and it worked.  He is also right that the Japanese and other countries use safety regulations as non-tariff import barriers.  There is nothing bad on here at all.  

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Shaking the Tyrant’s Bloody Hand

Please read this piece, from the excellent Mauldin Economics page, entitled Something Rotten in the State of Russia. It shows the many profound problems besetting the Russian state.

That horrible, horrible man, Putin, is indeed horrible.

But how dangerous is Putin to the USA? Or to our allies?

Putin presides over a crumbling country.

Meanwhile Trump, who some believe is under Putin’s control, is focused on driving down oil and gas prices and pushing NATO to increase defense spending, both of which are hard blows to Russia. Trump is also promoting pro-growth policies which will help fund a military buildup and modernization.

Russia has no prayer of matching this.

Putin has real problems, with no real solutions.

Trump is confronting Putin with challenges he cannot overcome, which will only grow worse over time.

The idea that Russia is capable of embarking on a new Cold War against the United States is laughable.

Russia is only considered to be a country of the first rank because of its nuclear arsenal. But that arsenal is useless, other than as a deterrent to invasion, or as a way to commit suicide. No one is going to invade Russia any time soon. More importantly, Putin and his cronies are not suicidal. Putin may even be the richest man in the world. Putin and his posse have a nice life, and a lot to lose. They likely want to enjoy the benefits of their despotism in peace, not see their dachas reduced to radioactive ash.

(Further, the Russian nuclear arsenal may be of diminished value if, as expected, Trump pushes forward on missile defense.)

China is a rising power; Russia is a declining power, even a dying power. Russia is a menace to its neighbors; Islamic Terrorism is a menace around the world.

China is the long term challenge, Islamic Terrorism is the acute, immediate challenge, to the USA and its allies. Russia faces a long-term threat from China, which seems destined to simply overrun the entirety of Asiatic Russia. Russia is also threatened by Islamic terrorism. The USA and Russia face the same serious threats.

Russia should be aligned with the USA with regard to both China and Islamic terrorism.

The current situation is absurd and should be resolved.

This does not mean the USA will become “friends” with Putin, or the Russians.

We will not trust Putin or the Russians.

We will not be allies, beyond allies of convenience, case by case, with Putin or the Russians.

We will not have shared values with Putin or the Russians.

We will simply recognize important common interests, including ramping down the hostility between our countries, cooperating where it is mutually beneficial to do so, and focusing on more important, mutual threats and challenges.

There is plenty of room for a deal here.

Nixon shook Mao’s hand, a hand dripping with the blood of 65 million victims.

FDR shook Stalin’s hand, a hand dripping with the blood of 50 million victims.

Trump will do what is best for the peace, prosperity and security of the United States.

That will likely include shaking the tyrant’s bloody hand.

Dominic Cummings: How the Brexit Referendum was Won

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Dominic Cummings explains how the Brexit referendum was won. Cummings was the Campaign Director of Vote Leave. He was in effect the executive director of the Brexit referendum campaign. This article explains how it happened. It is also long and rambling. But read it all anyway.

It is full of many interesting observations and various insightful, epigrammatic comments:

Most of the MPs we dealt with were not highly motivated to win and lacked extreme focus, even those who had been boring everybody about this for decades. They sort of wanted to win but they had other priorities. …
 
This lack of motivation is connected to another important psychology – the willingness to fail conventionally. Most people in politics are, whether they know it or not, much more comfortable with failing conventionally than risking the social stigma of behaving unconventionally. They did not mind losing so much as being embarrassed, as standing out from the crowd. (The same phenomenon explains why the vast majority of active fund management destroys wealth and nobody learns from this fact repeated every year.)

This happens all the time, not just in politics.

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