Well, it’s been six days since The Catastrophe – or as they call it in Michigan, the “Nakba” – and I’ve been getting my mind off the rotten political situation by doing more reading and watching more non-political television.
Because there is only so much bourbon one can consume before one crosses the line between “medicinal/He’s a jolly good fellow” and into “problematic/Yikes!”
The fourth season of Reacher is good (if you can ignore the idiotic political mewlings that came out of Alan Ritchson recently), and I’ve got the second seasons of The Terminal List and Black Doves lined up. And I just finished a history book that I can recommend.
It’s called The Lost Empire of Emanuel Nobel, and it’s written by Douglas Brunt, who is Megyn Kelly’s husband. (I used to like her a lot, before she drank deeply from the anti-Juden kool-aid and became obnoxious.) Brunt’s writing in this book – about an entrepreneurial dynasty in Russia before and after the filthy communists took over – is like this site’s own Christopher Silber’s writing about Chinese history: it’s about a fascinating subject about which I know almost nothing.
(I’m reminded of the great comedian Nate Bargatze’s bit about how he knows that he knows nothing about history, because every time he watches a historical movie he does so on the edge of his seat. “What is going to happen? I watched Pearl Harbor. And I was as surprised as they were.”)
The book covers three generations of Swedish entrepreneurs in Russia. The founder was Immanuel Nobel (1801-72), who invented many things, including the first anti-ship mines. His sons were cantankerous businessman and adventurer Robert, chemist (and founder of the Nobel Prize) Albert, and engineer/entrepreneur Ludwig. (Plus one more who died as a young man, of “natural causes” when you’re in a family of smart guys trying to invent dynamite, i.e. he died in a lab explosion.)
The main subject of the book is Ludwig’s son Emanuel (1859-1932), who was an Elon Musk type, starting and thriving in various businesses, the main one of which was oil production. Stalin was a contemporary of his, and the last, dramatic part of the story covers the conflict between the commies and Emanuel, who may have been the world’s largest oil producer, edging out Rockefeller and the Rothschilds.
The book reminded me of the mess we’re in right now. The communists then wanted to kill Emanuel just as their socialist descendants now would love to jail and/or kill Elon, and for the same reason: the envy in the center of the leftists’ black little hearts, and in their political program. But they needed Emanuel, because he could produce things, and they were parasites who were bad at everything but political thuggery.
Sound familiar?
One of my favorite paragraphs reads like a prediction of what I expect from the new Dem majorities (shudder) when they’re sworn in next year. It described the dysfunctional commie leadership after they took over the government of Baku, a town on the Black Sea that Emanuel had built into the efficient centerpiece of Russian oil production. Here it is:
“The Baku leadership that emerged from this disorder was not only inexperienced but preposterous. The newly appointed minister of war was a former asylum inmate whose first acts included the election of a donkey to represent oppressed animals. An illiterate sailor became superintendent of schools, and a prominent pimp held oversight of public welfare.”
If we had all been issued Bingo cards featuring the rogue’s gallery of last week’s election winners, and then read that paragraph, would any of us NOT have yelled “Bingo!” immediately?
Inexperienced and preposterous? Check and check.
Elected donkeys? Too many to count.
Asylum escapees? Ditto.
Illiterates in charge of education? Randi Weingarten, plus the thousands of scary, facially-pierced school teachers who made Tiktok videos celebrating Charlie’s murder.
Pimps controlling the welfare system? Sure, Willie Brown is an easy and funny answer. But isn’t our welfare system riddled with bureaucrats getting people hooked on handouts and then pimping them out for the bureaucrats’ own profit?
If you like history – and as happy an ending as you can expect from a story that has commies in it – give The Lost Empire a read.
Oh, and spoiler alert: As soon as the commies ran Emanuel off, things in Baku went to Schiff.
Unexpectedly!
Back here in the Year of our Lord 2026, we at CI Enterprises are Ameri-CANs, not Ameri-CAN’Ts, and we’re going to get through this. The early indications are that the Dems are gearing up to learn all the wrong lessons from their electoral wins, and to push ideas that will give normal people a buyer’s remorse hangover.
There’s already lots of talk of endless investigations and show trials, which shouldn’t do much for their 29% approval rating. On the bright side for them, though, they have already made some things more affordable.
Unfortunately, those things are tech stocks.
One outcome that I’m sure of is that the lefties triumphant are going to be even more repellent than the lefties when they were powerless, and they’ll provide us with a lot of opportunities to contrast ourselves with them.
One of my lefty buddies already got a little gloat-y with me on Wednesday, rubbing it in about how despondent we all must be now that we lost so badly.
I went along with him, saying, “Yes, every conservative I know is in shock. We’re all really upset and heartsick. In fact, did you hear about the Republicans rioting, and even burning some cars and vandalizing some buildings in the deep red states where we’d never expected to lose?”
He looked surprised, but also a little gleeful. “No, I didn’t.”
I said, “Neither did I. Because we’re not Democrats, so we didn’t do Schiff like that.”
Then I didn’t kick him in the groin, and then shove him into a mud puddle, and spit on him.
Because as my man Marcus Aurelius says, “The best revenge is not to be like the Democrats.”
Hamas (and the DSA) delenda est.
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I didn’t care much for the last season of Reacher. Too far away from the books. Seems like Reachers character had just morphed into a bully and every answer was for him to pound someone.
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