Shot in the Dark

Category: Western Civilization

  • Opportunity Knocks

    Joe Doakes, once of Como Park, emails: Members of the German Parliament have been talking tough about Trumps tariffs.The tariffs will hurt Americans worse than Germans. America doesn’t make anything anymore.  There’s nothing they need from us.     Excellent. High tariffs are gone. And so are our soldiers, airmen, Marines.  Germany can have those empty…

  • Modeled Behavior

    Cretin who apparently was spawned from the radical campus antisemitism movement murders a couple of Israeli Embassy employees in DC: The killer shot them both in the back, and then reloaded and finished them off on the ground as disarmed, bovine DC residents milled around like stampeded cattle. This is not an aberration.  This is…

  • Sunday Open Thread

    Have at it. What could possibly go wrong?

  • Level-Setting

    This sums up the moment we’re in as well as anything I’ve seen.  Worth a watch.

  • Notes From The Soggy Zone

    Last week, I ruffled some of the usual feathers by posting a link to this video by Ryan McBeth. McBeth is a former anti-tank grunt who now does open-source intelligence and systems work. His Youtube and Substack channels are interesting; he doesn’t get everything right (he is still claiming Mossad figured out how to remotely…

  • Morning In Canada

    It’s a cliché of modern Western life – “youth” rebel against their elders. Since the dawn of western “youth culture” right around 70 years ago, that’s pretty much always meant a leftward tilt – and in much of the world, it still does. But something interesting is going on in Canada: I can remember the…

  • We Live In An Age Of Miracles

    Other generations crossed oceans, built the impossible, decoded the indecipherable, flew to the moon. But never let anyone say the frontiers have all been surmounted: All glory to the heroes!

  • Today’s Hero Of Western Civilization

    Mad props to this bloke: Tangentially related: anyone unironically wearing a “Guy Fawkes” mask should be a legitimate target for tasing or thrown rubbish. Mostly for leftists, naturally. But even if I agree with you, wearing one of those gawdawful masks knocks your credibility back by two orders of magnitude. .

  • Let’s Stir Up Another Republic-Threatening Hornets Nest: Part I

    I saw “The Fall of Minneapolis” again last week. Now, when I first mentioned seeing it a few months back, a few smart people whose opinions I never discount asked “is there anything new that the courts didn’t settle?” That brings up a couple of questions. In our society, we usually think that if a…

  • Controlled Demolition

    This past Sunday was the 34th anniversary of one of the highpoints of the entire history of Western Civilization. Along with the signings of the Magna Carta and Declaration of Independence, VE Day, and a short list of other highlights, the literal and figurative collapse of the Berlin Wall, and the fall of the Soviet…

  • The Enemy Within, Around And Above

    This is this sort of thing that should send Americans to be barricades. This is ample reason to block freeways (in DC and Silicon Valley and Saint Paul’s Government Canyon anyway). This is a reason to break out tar and feathers and lots and lots of harsh tweets. It’s a thread. Click through in Twitter.…

  • Controlled Demolition, Part III

    Earlier in this exceptionally loosely linked series, I lamented that the conditions that set up the great American resurgence of the early 1980s aren’t, largely, there in our society today. I’ll return to the example of France. The French nation and people have a culture that goes back, in one form or another, to pre-Roman…

  • As The Forefathers Warned

    This is a new Australian Army recruiting video. Who are they training to fight? Taliban? ISIS? The Chinese? After three years of absurdly restrictive Covid regulations met by some strenuous civil and less than civil resistance, they are not just training to fight Australians – who are officially disarmed – but they are putting that…

  • Things I Dream About

    One of mine is that one day, I get a chance to respond to a grievance pimp like Cori Bush tyhe way Alex Epstein does here (around 1:30 into the video): Til I do, I guess I’ll just keep practicing. And eating my vegetables.

  • Believe In Miracles

    It was 43 years ago today that this happened: It was one of a short series of events that blasted the US out of its post-Vietnam, Watergate-era funk, and played a role, at least psychologically, in ushering in one of the greatest eras in American history. To paraphrase Sydney Greenstreet in that other great American…

  • Inimical

    To: Rep. Liz CheneyFrom: Mitch Berg, Obstreporous PeasantRe: It’s Not Me, It’s You Rep Cheney, I’m not the biggest fan of Marjorie Taylor Greene. For that matters, I’m not the most passionate of your detractors. But on this issue? So let me make sure I’m clear on this; if our government is violating the Constitution…

  • Also Ran

    Secretary of State Simon wants to throw away whatever a little relevance Minnesota has in presidential elections. No, really. He said it in as many words on Monday: Let’s be clear about this: the Electoral College exists because smaller states realized that a national popular vote for President would essentially leave the Executive branch of…

  • It’s About Suburban Maryland…

    …but Jude Russo’s description of a train ride from his home into the District of Colombia may as well be about the Twin Cities, from the post-Covid pathologies of the drivers on the freeways…: I rarely leave the greater D.C.-Maryland-Virginia area, so I cannot speak to the case in other parts of the country, but…

  • The Tytler Spiral

    A quote: “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy…

  • Flailing

    Hamline University – my neighbor here in the MIdway, a university with almost as much hamfisted woke cred as Saint Thomas and Macalester, recently fired an art professor for showing an artistic representation of Mohammed. Here’s a quick rundown: López Prater, an adjunct professor, showed a picture of the Prophet Muhammad in an art history class-causing an…

  • The Drawing Board

    An anonymous lawyer friend (who is not Joe Doakes) writes: I’d get in so much trouble if I posted this, but when I see people say that 70% opposethe overtruning of Roe v. Wade, my first thought is that no more than 2% even know what it says, much less what overturning it would mean.…

  • Paper Tigers

    Joe Doakes from Como park emails: Richard Fernandez writes an uncomfortable column about Ukraine, and the United States. Joe Doakes As with pretty much everything Fernandez has ever written, it’s worth a read; in this case, a pull quote: In a counterfactual world where the Russian president agreed with this site and continued to feint,…

  • Speaking Of Munich

    After reducing the size of the German military by 85% in the face of a resurgent Russia, decommissioning all of Germanys nuclear power plants and actively making the German economy in effect entirely dependent on Russian natural gas (as the German “green energy program” – could could have seen this coming? – ignominiously flopped), and…

  • Dudley Do-Fus

    The backpedaling has begun. Politicians throughout the U.S. are winding it all down and hoping (against hope) that the blowback won’t be anything approaching what is happening in Ottawa. Mind you, it’s been peaceful thus far, despite the increasingly manic sputterings of Justin Trudeau, who didn’t think much of those who would suggest a course…

  • Culture Is Everything

    Joe Doakes from Como park emails: Is this a clever public relations ploy to divert attention from Ukraine, is it a mere prank tweaking the Left’s nose, or have Russians actually become more sensible than Democrats? Substitute “America” for “Russia” and I could sign up today. Joe Doakes It’s all three. And I suspect most…