Tag: history

History Corner: Why We aren’t Nazis, and Trump isn’t Hitler (posted 11/12/25)

I hope you all had a meaningful and contemplative Veteran’s Day, and that you’re getting into a Thanksgiving mood.  Here in north Florida it has dropped below 40 degrees, so many locals have broken out the parkas, and are still shivering anyway. 

I’ve been paying at least minimal attention to the current kerfuffles in Washington, and am glad that this pointless shutdown is finally ending.  And it’s fun to watch the blue-on-blue sniping over that, with the most extreme lefties raging at the Senate Dems who voted to break the filibuster and end the shutdown, while those lefties try in vain to reason with Those Who Can’t Be Reasoned With. 

Note to self: Pick up another bag of popcorn at Publix tomorrow, because you’re out.

Amidst all that, I saw a few new stories of more violent attacks on ICE agents doing their jobs, and yet another rash of Dems comparing them to the Gestapo.  And this on the heels of a lefty friend of mine asking what I think of “the Right’s Nazi problem.” 

If it was anybody but him, I would have let my sarcastic freak flag fly – I keep it in my temperature-controlled flag wardrobe, along with my Stars and Stripes, my Gadsden “Don’t Tread on Me” flag, and my Gator flag (the latter will remain in storage until we can find a coach who can distinguish between his fundament and a hole in the ground). 

But because I love that guy, I didn’t say, “Do you mean the problem we have with the left calling us Nazis all the time for no rational reason?”

Instead, I wrote a thoughtful reply pointing out that with the exception of a handful of whackos who have no mainstream support in conservative circles, American conservatives have no connection to Nazis whatsoever.  Because we hate Nazis as much as we hate communists.

But that got me thinking that perhaps some of you would like a quick primer to summarize why the Nazi-GOP and Hitler-Trump comparisons are ridiculous, which you can share with any lefty relatives or acquaintances who raise the subject.  (Because if you just punch them in the face, then YOU’LL be the bad guy.)

So, before you can say, “We don’t deserve you, Martin!” here it is: 

First, for most leftists, “Nazi” has become an almost meaningless term of utter derision, to be applied to nearly every conservative they disagree with.  In that way, Nazi is just like “fascist” – it basically means very, very bad, and has been divorced from all historical meaning and context.

It is taken as axiomatic in academia and the mainstream left that Naziism and fascism are both right-wing ideologies.  But as with so much that is axiomatic in academia, that is at best a distortion, and at worst just false.  Because there is plenty of evidence that Naziism and fascism are more leftist than rightist ideologies.

A great book on the subject is Jonah Goldberg’s “Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning” (2008).  Even though Jonah has sadly contracted a severe case of TDS, he’s a very good writer, and he lays out the ideological and historical connections in great detail.    

Mussolini was a committed socialist for years, and started the fascist party only when the mainstream socialists rejected Italian nationalism.  But he didn’t reject socialism/leftism, as much as combine it with nationalism. He named his party after the “fasces” – a Latin word for a bundle of bound wooden rods/sticks that the Romans had used as a symbol of authority. 

That branding combined his love of Italy and the Roman Empire, authoritarianism, and his leftist devotion to collectivism.  (The explicit symbolism was that the weak individual sticks become unbreakable when combined into a collective.) 

A common definition of fascism starts by calling it “far right” (because of course it does), but then says that it is characterized by, “a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived interest of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.”

Look at that the description, and tell me what parts do NOT also apply to communism or the various “socialist republics” (USSR, Cuba, Cambodia, Vietnam, every nation behind the Iron Curtain, etc.).

“Ultranationalist” doesn’t apply, because good commies are internationalists (workers of THE WORLD unite, and all that), and possibly “natural social hierarchy” (though that is the defacto situation in communist countries, where party members are always an elite class above the peasants).

But all the rest of that definition applies 100% to communist governments.  1. Dictatorial leader (Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro, Ceausescu et al)  2. Centralized autocracy (check) 3. Militarism (yep) 4. Forcible suppression of opposition (yep)  5. Subordination of individual interests for the nation/collective (yep).  6. Strong regimentation of society and the economy (hell yeah!)

Hitler and the Nazis, on the other hand, were such eccentric weirdos that their political DNA is tough to fit as neatly into a left/right spectrum. The Jew hatred was apolitical, and made them almost unique, in that they were fanatically devoted to winning the war…but simultaneously crippled their own war effort by devoting tons of badly needed resources – men and materiel – to killing Jews.  And Hitler’s personal pathologies and enthusiasms made his government’s policies volatile and erratic. 

Just like Mussolini, Hitler was a nationalist, and didn’t reject socialism – just international socialism.  That’s why he named his party the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. (If the Nazis truly were wholly right-wing, they would be the first and only rightist party in the history of the world with “socialist” and “workers” in its name!)  But since nationalism is (correctly) usually associated with the right, and because Hitler’s most hated enemy (after the Jews) was the communists, it became easy to see the Germany/Russia conflict as right vs. left, rather than the fratricidal battle among socialists (national vs. international) that it was. 

That’s not to say that Naziism was purely a leftist ideology.   Only that it was a weird goulash of multiple, sometimes contradictory influences: right-wing nationalism; virulent anti-Semitism; Master Race/perverted Darwinist racism; and authoritarian leftism. 

What has always aggravated me is that our country (and the West writ large) has rightly come to terms with and utterly rejected Naziism, but we’ve never done the same with socialism/communism.  (I join those because Marx and most of his orthodox descendants see them as inexorably joined: socialism is the interim step in which the workers take control of the means of production, and communism is the second step in which the State withers away.  Step 2 has never happened, of course, because the theory is fatally flawed and disregards human nature.)       

It’s socially acceptable (and even chic) for college kids to wear Che Guevara t-shirts and commie iconography (hammer and sickle jewelry or pins, etc.) in a way it would never be for them to wear a Himmler or Hitler t-shirt or swastika pins. In colleges, whole fields can call themselves “Marxist” without any stigma, and I’ll bet that only a tiny minority of college kids know that Stalin almost certainly killed more people than Hitler, and Mao slaughtered more than the two of them combined, or that communism/socialism killed well over 100 million people in only a little more than a century.

I think that that’s what makes communism/socialism so dangerous: it has never been held to account and rejected, the way Naziism (rightly!) has been.  Too many people still attribute good motivations to the commies/socialists – they supposedly wanted a more egalitarian and economically fair society (some surely did, but many clearly didn’t!) – and completely gloss over the fact that that system inevitably descended into dictatorship, oppression, poverty, environmental degradation and mass murder. 

This terrible, dishonest distortion – Hitler’s crimes and 15-20 million killed are the epitome of human evil, but the gulags and 100+ million communist murders are just well-intentioned tragedies along the path paved by collectivized farming, 5-year plans and the Great Leap Forward, etc.  You can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs, as Lenin said – is in large part the result of the dishonest and inaccurate way history is taught in America.

Finally we come to the idiotic Trump = Hitler comparison.

Hitler took power at the end of January, 1933.  Within his first SIX MONTHS, he banned other political parties and labor unions, pushed through the Enabling Act which allowed him to make laws without even consulting the Reichstag (congress), and in 18 months he’d executed over 150 leaders of a rival element in the Nazi party in the Night of the Long Knives, and taken total control of the judiciary.  Within his first 5 years, he’d invaded and subsumed another country, forced all young boys to join the Hitler Youth, murdered an estimated 70K-100,000 disabled or gay Germans, and started throwing dissidents into proto-concentration camps.

By comparison, Trump has been in office for a little less than 5 years over his two terms, and unlike Hitler in his first 5 years, he has not tried to ban the Democrat party or unions. (In fact, a near or actual majority of private sector union members likely voted for him last year).  He has not tried to abolish congress, and they’ve hampered him at every turn, tying him up in hoax investigations that took years before he was vindicated.  The oppositional judiciary has buried him in a blizzard of bogus TROs, which he’s appealed but abided by.   

He hasn’t murdered a single Republican (not even the RINOs!), Democrat, gay guy or anybody else.  He’s got Jewish grandchildren and has appointed many Jews to his administration, and he’s a national hero in Israel, after having spearheaded a peace treaty and the release of Jewish hostages. 

You know, just like Hitler did, with the Jews putting an honorary kippah on his head and carrying him out of the Reichstag on their shoulders, chanting, “Hit-ler! Hit-ler!” and “We love you, Adolf!”  

So remember: If some leftist asks you why conservatives love Nazis so much, don’t punch him.  Instead, print out this column and give him a copy.  Then say, “Good day, sir,” and turn on your heel.

If he tries to speak again, say, “I said GOOD DAY!” 

If he insists on continuing to bother you after that… commence to punching.   

Hamas (and Trantifa) delenda est!

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Who Are the Real Insurrectionists?(posted 10/14/25)

There is a lame tradition – at graduations, in some pedestrian columns (not mine, shut up you haters!) – of giving a dictionary definition of a well-known term as an introduction. “Webster’s defines ‘graduation’ as a ‘ceremony marking the end of a period of study,’ but it is actually the beginning of a whole new journey into a new phase of life…”

Well, I’m going to risk following that lame tradition to make an argument about a contentious political term that the left has been using as a weapon in recent years. The same way they’ve used “Nobody is above the law!” – but are now running from that claim, now that it turns out that all Democrat bad actors would very much like to remain above the law, thank you very much.

That term is “insurrection.” And here – brace for the lameness – is the definition, from the American Heritage dictionary:

“1.The act or an instance of open revolt against civil authority or a constituted government.

2. A rising against civil or political authority, or the established government; open and active opposition to the execution of law in a city or state.

3. A rising in mass to oppose an enemy.”

The Democrats have been calling January 6th an insurrection every day for years, and using it as a cudgel with which to beat all conservatives. They held sham congressional hearings over it – with no GOP members chosen by the GOP, which has been the accepted practice in such hearings, for obvious reasons – and repeated it endlessly, everywhere.

During a four-year period in which they had zero accomplishments and plenty of disasters – the Cadaver and the Cackler at the top of government, the humiliating and incompetent withdrawal from Afghanistan, 9% inflation and trillions of extra debt, a wide-open border, mentally disordered males in every women’s room, etc. – the Dems have turned the “worse-than-9/11 insurrection of January 6th” into the sole reason to vote for them.

Of course, all conservatives have acknowledged that to the extent a minority of those involved in January 6th were destructive, and got violent with the police, they should be condemned, and charged and punished according to the law. And we don’t condone the bad actions that day.

At the same time, the left’s wild exaggerations and lies about January 6th required rebuttal, which we’ve done, if for no other reason than to shoot down the ridiculously exaggerated comparisons to 9/11 and Pearl Harbor.

To wit: the whole thing only lasted a few hours; of the roughly 1500-2000 people who were there, only around 10-15% did anything violent at all; the majority of the protestors were middle-aged or senior citizens with clean records, who walked around inside the capitol taking selfies for a half hour or less and then departed peacefully. Even the ones who fought with cops brought no weapons, and they killed or seriously injured zero people.

(I’m not 100% sure about the “serious injury” part. But considering that the MSM wildly exaggerated every single aspect of that day – including breathlessly reporting that the MAGA-nauts brutally murdered 5 cops, when the actual number, again, was zero – I’d bet my house that no cops were seriously injured that day. Because if they had been, they’d be the most famous cops in history, and we’d all know their names the way we know George Floyd or Trayvon Martin.)

I guess if you really stretched the formal definition hard, you could say that the minority of January 6ers who fought with cops engaged in some insurrectionist – I would say insurrectionist-adjacent – behavior. I don’t think you can call a very short-lived, unarmed struggle with a small number of cops “an open revolt against civil authority” to be taken deadly seriously.

I suppose you could call it “a rising…[in] active opposition to the execution of the law,” in the sense that the ostensible goal was to prevent Biden from taking office, as far-fetched and delusional as that aim was.

But as to the third part of the definition, I don’t see how you can call a few hundred unarmed people – out of a nation of 330 million – brawling like drunken, idiotic frat boys for several hours a “rising in mass to oppose an enemy.”

Now compare that to the gigantic, repeated, months-long, nationwide orgy of violence and destruction of property committed during the BLM and Antifa protests/riots/vandalizing loot-fests of 2020, and the sustained and violent anti-ICE protests and attacks this year.

Not one nationally prominent Democrat (with the possible exception of Fetterman?) or MSM talking-head propagandist that I’m aware of has called ANY of those mob attacks acts of “insurrection.”

But let’s go back to our tripartite definition. Could these events be reasonably called “act[s] of open revolt against civil authority or constituted government?”

Obviously! The insurrectionists are openly defying our immigration laws and multiple federal agencies (ICE, Border Patrol, DHS), and opposing the well-precedented legal use of the National Guard to protect and safeguard federal property and agents.

Could they also be called “open and active opposition to the execution of law in a city or state?”

Same answer. And it’s not just happening in “A” city or state, it’s happening in MANY cities and states all across the country. And it’s happening with the open support of governmental officials on the local, state and national levels.

In my late, great home state of Illinois, Brain-dead Brandon (mayor of Chicago) and Governor Goodyear, (D)irigible, are both defying federal authority as we speak. And Mayor Brandon has declared areas of the city “ICE-free” zones.

On the one hand, that is likely to be as successful as declaring Chicago a “gun-free zone.” (How’s that working for you, Brandon? What’s that? I couldn’t hear your reply over the incessant chatter of small arms fire and bodies hitting the ground.) But on the other hand, trying to ban federal agents enforcing federal law clearly violates the supremacy clause, among other constitutional strictures.

Finally, and obviously, they clearly represent groups “rising in mass to oppose an enemy.” It’s hard to know precisely how many different people have participated in this years-long insurrection, because many of them are serial offenders, participating in dozens or even hundreds of separate riots in separate cities and states. But the numbers of perpetrators are obviously well into the hundreds of thousands, and likely into the low millions.

(Put your shoes back on and take my word for it, AOC: that’s a lot more than the several hundred bad actors on January 6th.)

But let’s get beyond the letter of the law in the definition above. Everybody can easily tell the difference between seriously threatening insurrections and momentary tantrums by tiny groups of marginalized people with no chance of overthrowing the government.

Consequential insurrections with even a tiny chance of success always involve armed perpetrators, recognized leaders among the rebels, serious organization, a plan for an end game, and strategic, coordination actions to get there (ex: taking control of armories, communication facilities, or other significant government facilities; arresting or taking hostage key government figures, etc.).

Does any of that sound like what happened on January 6th? None of those boneheads were armed. The closest thing they had to a leader was a bi-polar weirdo in a horn-hat whom nobody knew. (The logical leader for a real insurrection would have been the president who stood to retain power… but Trump never coordinated or communicated with the J6ers, and in fact explicitly told them only to protest, and to do that peacefully!) (Which would make him the Worst. Insurrection leader. Ever!)

They had no organization, no plans for an end game, and no strategic plans to gain control over any location or assets more consequential than Imhotep Pelosi’s ceremonial gavel.

But the leftist insurrectionists pass all of the tests required to be considered a serious threat. They are obviously armed with everything from slingshots, clubs and various deadly throwable objects (cans of soup, pavement, frozen water bottles) to cars (used to ram agents and their vehicles) to fireworks, handguns and long guns. They’ve murdered at least 27 people, and have badly injured literally thousands of others.

They have recognized leaders, and an organizational structure composed of associated national networks and coordinated local cells, like the 10-creature team who lured ICE agents out of a facility in TX with fireworks, and then ambushed and shot at law enforcement, striking one in the neck.

They obviously coordinate, with some supporters providing housing near ICE facilities, some providing political cover, some gathering and disseminating intelligence (including doxxing individual ICE agents and broadcasting the locations and movements of law enforcement who are carrying out their legal and constitutional roles). Others provide them with funding, and also with legal support. (One such idiot was the Vice President, who used the power of her office to solicit funds to bail out violent insurrectionists who had been arrested!)

They were also determined enough to cost literally billions of dollars of damage in just the second half of 2020: $2 billion in insured damage, and likely that much more in uninsured . And that’s not counting the costs of paying for what is likely millions of man-hours of LEO time and overtime, not to mention the costs of trying, convicting and housing those who end up in jail. Or the clean-up costs of public buildings, highways, court-houses or other government facilities and private businesses.

And they have won victories. They forced kangaroo trials that failed in many places (against Kyle Rittenhouse in WI, for example) but succeeded in others (against Derek Chauvin in MN). They set up temporary lawless zones like CHOP, even though those ended in disaster. (UNEXPECTEDLY!) More importantly, they have cowed state and local officials in many insurrectionist cities and states.

What is a “sanctuary city” if not a place where insurrectionists defeated law-abiding citizens and seized control over their public infrastructure and government, in open rebellion against our democratically established democratic republic?

I always like to apply the double-standards test to all political issues, and something tells me that the lefties who love designating “sanctuary cities” when it comes to our immigration laws would not be so happy with conservatives declaring their cities and states as sanctuary areas.

For example, I for one would love to declare my hometown a sanctuary tax-law city. If Dem mayors can declare LA, Chicago and NYC to be ICE-free zones, how about we declare half the country IRS-free zones? We demand that the IRS stay out, and we won’t obey any tax laws within our state or city borders. Starting tomorrow our gas stations will stop collecting gas taxes (gas is now $1.50 per gallon!), our grocery stores will stop collecting taxes on food, snacks, beer, cigarettes, and sombreros for use in comic videos mocking Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer.

Also, we could create and distribute an app to allow citizens to track IRS agents or other tax collectors who come into our cities. We will also form mobs – and if we can’t get there, we will lionize such mobs – to surround, obstruct, attack and possibly shoot at such agents. Because everyone knows that people who enforce tax laws are Nazis and fascists.

That’s absurd of course, because we’re the ones who obey laws and pay more than our fair share, and we are disgusted by the idea of murdering people who disagree with us.

I hope the violent left has enjoyed their victories, because now we’re turning the tables on them, and helping them to reap that which they so eagerly sowed. They lectured us about how “no one is above the law,” and now we’re proving them right. (Ask Letitia, and Fani, and Comey, and Pencil-Neck, etc. how they feel about that.)

And since they screamed that insurrectionists deserve the harshest of punishments?

Coming right up, comrades!

Hamas and Trantifa delenda est!

History: Does Part of the US Belong to Mexico? (posted 10/13/25)

This week I’ll be doing some travelling, starting on Wednesday.  I’ll go up to TN to see my mom and sister, then on up to IL and WI to see some leaves change and hang with my cousins, before visiting mom again on the way back home. 

But I’ve been noodling around with many column ideas for a while, so I’m hoping to post columns on Wednesday and Friday, and I’ll play it by ear for next Monday.

Today, as Trump appears to be on the verge of shepherding a peace deal in the Middle East that would earn him universal acclaim – even on the left, if he weren’t so orange and trumpy – I’m going to talk about his other greatest accomplishment (IMHO): his success at stopping illegal immigration and deporting the illegals who are already here.

I want to focus on one specific aspect of that struggle, which is the ideological arrogance of some of those who have come here illegally, especially those from Mexico. 

I’ll be the first to acknowledge that many Mexicans came here for a very logical reason, which is to escape the poverty and chaos of their badly run homeland in favor of the opportunities to improve their lives and future in America. That is a worthy goal, and I don’t blame anybody who wants to achieve it.

Don’t get me wrong: if they came illegally, they’ve still got to go back.  If they voluntarily self-deport, they can have a chance to be heavily vetted, and to someday potentially immigrate legally.  (If they don’t, and they force us to catch and deport them, don’t let the door flatten your sombrero on your way out.)

But I’m not talking about those Mexicans.  I’m talking about the ones who have adopted an obnoxious and false leftist ideological fantasy that much of the United States morally and legally belongs to them.  This belief has been part of the lefty/multicultural/anti-colonizing ascendency in academia generally, and Hispanic and American studies in particular.  (Common terms are the “All of Mexico” movement, and the “Reconquista.”) 

The theory is that much of the southern and western United States once belonged to Mexico, and since taking land by political conquest is immoral and illegitimate (at least when Europeans or white folks do it), a big chunk of the USA is not really “America,” and Mexicans have a right to be here and stay here.  And maybe be given the land back officially, just as some argue that black Americans should get cash reparations or else property, in a variation on the “40 acres and a mule” formula. 

As a former academic, I encountered later iterations of this aggressively misinformed concept in the form of “land acknowledgements,” those fatuous pronouncements preceding various events (graduations, conferences, etc.) bemoaning the fact that the event is taking place on land once owned by various Edenic, noble (non-white) peoples such as the Hekawi tribe or the Wakandans, from whom it was brutally stolen by Euro-whities. (Boo, whitey!  Boo!) 

Basically, the conceit is that the imaginary Elizabeth Warrens – brown gals with long black hair in braids, deer skin dresses, and cheekbones you could skin a Tatanka with – were all dispossessed by the actual Elizabeth Warrens – translucent AWFL shrews whiter than a yodeling competition in Reykjavik in January.  (#wemustneverstopmockingher)  

Phony land acknowledgments were the highest form of virtue signaling, making the scolding whiners feel morally superior while costing them nothing.  (If they believed their own BS, they’d cancel the event, insist that the venue be given to the descendants of the Apaches or whoever, and abandon their own houses immediately.)  

This ideological stance only added to the larger trend of resistance to assimilation, which has made the recent explosion in illegal immigration so much more destructive than earlier waves of immigrants.  And this is obviously a significant problem with at least a large portion of Mexican illegals – and their pale-face lefty enablers – judging from the violent protests and attacks on ICE this year, including those involving flying Mexican flags and burning the American one.

Needless to say, believers in those ideas vigorously oppose any suggestion that they should assimilate to American culture!  To the contrary, they are entitled to claim the land for themselves, after which we can be required to assimilate to their culture, if they allow us to stay.

So let’s take a little stroll down history lane, and see how well this theory holds up.

Spain started controlling parts of the Americas in 1493, and started planting cities and missions in what is now the USA in 1565 (starting with St. Augustine).  Their control of parts of America lasted for almost 3 centuries, until they started weakening in the 19th century.  They lost Louisiana to the French in 1803; they ceded Florida to the US in 1819.  And then they lost the rest to Mexico in the Mexican War of Independence in 1821, who then lost it to America in the Mexican-American War of 1846-48. 

So to the extent that most of the disputed Western territories that eventually became the site of the “Reconquista” political fight today (CA, AZ, NM, etc.) were “owned” by any nation, they were owned by Spain for 250 years, then by Mexico for 25 years, and then by the USA for the last 175 years. 

Which means that the La Raza rioters say that big chunks of the US belong to them because Mexico controlled it for only 25 of the last 450 years!  Needless to say, they don’t talk a lot about how the Mexicans “stole” it from the Spaniards before America “stole” it from them!  

Because after all, the Mexicans won their land fair and square, in a war, whereas the grifter gringos won it from the Mexicans…um…fair and square…in a war.  (What’s Spanish for “D’oh!”?)

And their case is even weaker when seen in the light of the racialist identity politics of most “educated” young lefties.  Because from what I’ve read, Mexico has a much more stubbornly persistent racially binary, privileged/under-privileged make-up than the multi-racial USA does.

A disproportionate number of the most influential/rich/politically connected Mexicans descend pretty clearly from the Spaniards who ruled Mexico for most of its history.  The descendants of Aztecs – shorter and more squat, with darker skin and flatter features – are easily distinguishable from the taller, lighter-skinned European Spaniards. 

And those guys were European colonizers to the core, and would be considered white in modern leftists’ racial taxonomy. 

But before you award the Nobel Prize for Victimology to the “native” Mexicans, hold on to your maracas.  Because if we canoe back a little farther into the mists of history, we find that those “native” Mexicans were actually the racial descendants of the Aztecs, who were very successful colonizers in their own right. 

In fact, Cortes’ conquest of the Aztecs was made possible in part by brutal Aztec treatment of their neighboring tribes, which motivated those tribes to take revenge on them by giving the Spaniards assistance and local knowledge.

Now I don’t believe in all of this racialized identity politics that the professional/academic left does.  I’m more of a conservative, merit-based/MLK guy, into judging people by the content of their character instead of the color of their skin.  But if I did buy into the racialist left’s taxonomy, I STILL wouldn’t think that the Mexican protestors should be fighting ICE and Americans. 

To the extent that they are Aztec-descended, they should be pissed at the Spanish (i.e. “white”) power structure that’s been keeping them down in Mexico.  To the extent that they are Spanish/white, they should mock the Aztec-descended Mexicans, because they are condemning the Spanish for colonizing them, while the Aztecs only had “Mexico” because THEY had colonized/genocided the previous inhabitants.

And to the extent that they are proud Mexican patriots/nationalists who don’t care about racial differences amongst them – and good for them! – they should be ashamed of themselves for whining that the Yankees “stole” Mexico from them 175 years ago, when THEY had stolen it from the Spanish 25 years earlier.  Just like they should feel sheepish because they resent being forced to speak English, when they only speak Spanish because a bunch of white Europeans forced it on them, and wiped out the native Nahuatl language.

However it would be fun, if they did manage to drive out the Americans and take over LA, to hack their phone systems with messages that started, “For Nahuatl, press one…”  And then they could suffer when some Aztec jerk who calls himself whatever is Nahuatl for “Bad Bunny” gives them four months to learn Nahuatl before he yowls out some terrible music at halftime of the Super Bowl of soccer.  (Making a horrific experience even worse!)

Illegal aliens’ fantasies of forcing American citizens to adapt to their own cultural norms is just one more reason to deport them.  Unlike earlier immigrants who admired America and were excited and eager to become Americans – like my Scots-Irish and German ancestors, and my wife’s Norwegian and British ones – too many illegals prefer their home cultures, and would rather create outposts of El Salvador or Somalia here, or live in Muslim enclaves with sharia law here. 

That is certainly not true of all immigrants, and I’m sure there are many Muslims who want to get out from under the jihadi freaks running their nations, and many Central Americans who want to escape the d-bags who have turned their countries into an oppressive hell-holes, and many others who just want to work hard and become patriotic Americans.

However, thanks to Joe Biden, many Democrats and some Republicans, we’ve got a huge mess on our hands now, and we got here by allowing millions of unvetted illegals to flout our laws.  But as the Secretary of War once said, “That sh*t is over!”

It’s going to be hard to devote a lot of time and resources to processing more would-be immigrants while we’re spending a fortune to deport the millions of illegals here now.  (Again, thank Joe Biden for that!)

When we do get back to vetting new immigrants, we’d better vet the hell out of them!  Because along with all of the good ones hoping to come for the same reason most of our ancestors came – before there was a welfare system or any social safety net, and you were expected to assimilate to American culture, instead of the other way around – there are many who want to come for the welfare benefits, and the chance to spread their own hatred of the West and American culture.

And we’ve already got enough leftists, thank you.  

Hamas and Trantifa delenda est!

Celebrating Independence, & Contemplating the Left-Right Pride in America Gap (posted 7/4/25)

Well, this is my fourth column of the week, and I’ve still managed to fall behind somehow on all of the (mostly good) news that’s happening.  And I’m half-way through the process of reading the entire SCOTUS ruling from last week on nationwide injunctions. 

So my plan is to have a column on Monday with my thoughts on that great SCOTUS ruling. (Will I also be mocking Ketanji Jean-Pierre?  Damn straight.)  And I foresee another 4 column-week (at least) coming next week, if I’m going to have any chance of keeping my head above water during the deluge of winning that’s happening right now.

But I’ve buried the lede, because it’s Independence Day, and I hope you all have a great one.  

It’s hard to talk about this day without going through a bunch of cliches that are so familiar that we’re now too close to see them.  But this really is an amazing country, founded by geniuses, and with a history we should be proud of.  And while we often take it for granted, I’ve been encouraged by a feeling that there seems to be a recent uptick in appreciation for the country. 

However, that appreciation might not be as widespread as it feels to me, a fact brought home by a Gallup poll I read a few days ago, which is fascinating for three reasons: 1. It ties into a discussion I’ve been having with one of my lefty buddies recently.   2. The reporting on it was a textbook example of MSM media bias. (And no, we don’t hate them enough.)  3. It clearly illustrates a profound difference between the left and right in America.

I wrote a few months ago about several lefties who are good, old friends of mine, and in one of my recent email exchanges with one of them, I commented on those leftists who really dislike America.  In his response, he said that he hoped I didn’t think he was among them, and I assured him that I didn’t.  He’s a good man and he loves the country; I wouldn’t be able to maintain a friendship with somebody who hates my country. 

But I think it’s pretty obvious that there is a disturbingly large segment of the left who disdains America, and it includes too many of the party’s leaders, including their last living president.   Obama famously expressed his desire to “fundamentally transform” America because he thought it communicated the ambition of his policy agenda.  But many of us realized the clear inference of that statement: if you love something or someone, you don’t want to “fundamentally transform” them. 

When they look at American history, many leftists focus almost exclusively on the sins that we share with all other nations throughout history – slavery, violent clashes with earlier inhabitants, bigotry – rather than the breathtaking achievements that set us apart.  And they judge us for the former more harshly than they ever would judge other nations, while they downplay, deny or elide our accomplishments.

They don’t just view us as no better than other nations, but as much worse.  Ilhan Omar says that Somalia is better than America (though she seems frustratingly unwilling to go back there), illegal thugs from Mexico wave their flag and burn ours, and Nikole Hannah-Jones’s influential leftist screed blames America for 1619 (which we shouldn’t have to point out was a century and a half before America existed) and denigrates 1776.

Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan was well calculated to enrage the left, and boy did it!   Their primary response was summarized by creepy Andrew Cuomo, then governor of one of our largest states: “America was never that great.”

On this Fourth of July, let the left have that pinched and sour lie. I’ll stick with the idea in one of my favorite poems, this one from Sir Walter Scott.  It starts with these lines:

“Breathes there a man, with soul so dead/Who never to himself hath said,/This is my own, my native land!/Whose heart hath ne’er within him burn’d,/ As home his footsteps he hath turn’d,/ From wandering on a foreign strand!”

(I wish the complainers on the left would spend a little more time wandering on a foreign strand, instead of staying here and b*tching.) 

The end of the verse switches to contemplating the rightful end such a person will come to:

“The wretch, concentred all in self/Living, shall forfeit fair renown,/ And, doubly dying, shall go down/ To the vile dust, from which he sprung,/ Unwept, unhonour’d, and unsung.”

Walter knew what he was talking about. 

So here’s the reporting on the Gallup poll’s results.  In 13 left-leaning publications – HuffPo, Daily Kos, Axios, Newseek, etc. – the headlines are a variation on a theme:  American pride falls to record low.  (Remember: this isn’t talking about pride in your sexual tastes or fetishes.  That was last month.) 

Several publications are a little more dramatic (“Americans have never hated being Americans more,” says the New Republic), or identify the real cause of the problem: “American pride plunges to new low under Trump,” says Alternet; “National Pride in American takes dramatic nosedive under Trump,” sneers the Daily Beast.     

So the message is clear: more Americans than ever think that America sucks, and it’s all Trump’s fault.  Unexpectedly!      

But you won’t be shocked to find that the feckless media bottom-dwellers skewed their headlines.  Because the poll itself breaks the results down by political groups, and it finds that Republicans are pretty consistently proud to be American, while pride among Independents has been slowly slipping over the last 10 years, but is still a majority position.

But the vast majority of diminished pride has happened among the Democrats, 62% of whom were proud to be American last year, while only 36% feel that way now.

So the accurate headline isn’t “Americans’ pride plunges under Trump.”  It’s “GOP consistently proud, most Independents proud, Democrats throw a tantrum like whiny little beeyotches when they don’t get their Cadaver in Chief.” 

Which leads me to my final point concerning the dramatic differences between the parties.  It’s natural for your pride to ebb and flow a little bit, depending on whether your guy is president or not. 

Even I (an optimistic, America-loving patriot) – when watching Joe Biden fall up staircases and over sandbags, and scream at the clouds like Grandpa Simpson, and poop on the Pope – had to fight the urge to wear dark glasses and a baseball cap low over my forehead in the hopes that people would mistake me for a miserable Canadian. 

But the surprising thing is that pride in our country is not only highest among Republicans, it’s much more consistent.  The Gallup poll has tracked national pride since 2001, and in the wake of 9/11, GOP pride was at 90%; for the next 24 years, it averaged right around where it is now, at 92%.  It only dipped into the 80s during the 4 years of Biden, and at its low point was still at 84%.  

The Democrats started out at 87%, and briefly touched 90% once, in 2002.  Since then it’s been a steady decline, staying in the high 70s to low 80s until 2015, when it plunged down to 42% during Trump I.  It recovered when Biden began his reign of error, but even then it only reached a high of 62.

The Independents have generally been in between the two parties.  It’s a little troubling that Independents’ pride has also been sliding – if less extremely, and with less volatility than the Dems’ – from 76% ten years ago to 53% now.  But my instinct is that if you forced Independents to declare for one party or the other, the most patriotic among them would go to the GOP, and the less patriotic to the Dems, leaving both parties about where they are now.

We probably didn’t need this poll to tell us the two main take-aways from the data. 

First, Democrats are generally less patriotic than Republicans. Over the last 10 years, which were evenly split between Dem and GOP presidents, only a little over half of Democrats (55%) said they are proud to be American, while more than 90% of Republicans said that over the last 25 years. 

Second, Democrats’ patriotism is much less steadfast; it waxes and wanes depending on whether or not they control the White House.

On both of those points, I’d much rather be on our side than on theirs.  I’m glad that we can see America with all of its flaws – and yes, these are often expressed in the foolish choices manifested in badly chosen presidents – and still love it, and be proud to be American.

Watching so many on the other side cling to their bitterness and focus it on this amazing country is hard to take.  Their rejection of our founding and traditions leads to so much unhappiness, as we’ve seen in the degradation of the big blue cities, the hollowed-out universities, and the lost reputation of the compromised legacy media. 

But we can’t let that temper our own optimism.  We’re winning a lot of battles now, and the ship of state is slowly turning in the right direction.  Our successes and their failures are making the differences between our philosophies all the more stark, and more and more people are voting with their feet,  

We’re still facing a lot of challenges, and we’ve got a lot of obstacles to overcome.  Getting our budget under control, repairing the damage caused by an open border, and cleaning up our damaged institutions is going to be a long slog.  But every generation since the founding has had to fight to preserve the republic, so we know that it can be done.  

And we can see the road the Democrats are on – in California, Chicago, and now New York City – and we know how they’re going to end up.

Unwept, unhonour’d, and unsung.

Happy Independence Day, everybody!

Hamas delenda est!

Whoopi is Strange, Chase Strangio is Stranger, and Hank Johnson defiles Jimi Hendrix (posted 6/23/25)

Note: I drafted this column on Saturday afternoon, before we bombed the Iranian nuke sites, and I’ve got nothing to add to that great story. 

Except to say that it is really refreshing to see a military that is giving zero attention to understanding white rage, or figuring out how we can make helmets that fit over a male drag-queen pilot’s beehive wig, or establishing call-signs that aren’t ethnically offensive, and is focusing instead on putting warheads on targets.

I was going to say “putting warheads on foreheads,” but the Israelis seem to have already turned the correct foreheads into a thick goulash, served with a side of (General) salami on finger sandwiches.  Made of actual fingers!

So thank you for your service, American military bad asses!

Also, on Friday I teased my take on Greta Thunberg’s comedy of errors on the high seas, but this column went so long that I had to bump Greta back to Wednesday.  (But I still snuck a little Greta into this column, and I know you’ll recognize it when you hear it.)

I now return you to your regularly scheduled column…

To start today, how about some praise for our beloved CO, who has been making some AI graphics for my recent columns?  My favorite part of the cartoon version of me is the CORCA fedora, and if CO is reading this (and doesn’t He see all and know all?), the one he made with me drinking the “medicinal bourbon” is my favorite.  I’ve got a little firmer jawline in that one, and there’s a little Archer vibe to it. 

In fact, if I can request my own edits – and word on the street is that I’m a bit of a show pony (in an adorable, not off-putting sort of way) – how about a cross between Archer and me… and go a little heavy on the Archer? 

On The View last week, racist goblin Whoopi Goldberg said that it’s worse to be black in America today than to be a woman in Iran.  Obviously – just like Sunny Hostin and Ana Navarro – Whoopi Goldberg is an idiot.  But you could already tell that just from that Predator haircut of hers.  (For a moment, when I heard that Arnold was going on The View last week, I wished for a re-match of the Arnold-Predator battle at the end of the movie.) 

Her hatred of America (reliably echoed by Hostin and Navarro) typifies the worst of the left’s hostility that has driven away so many working class and minority citizens who used to be reliably blue voters.  Bill Maher summed it up best when he said that liberals “have to do something about The View.”

Because I’m an optimist and like to try to find something good to say about people when I can, I’ll say this for Whoopi: she was much better in Ghost than she was in Predator.

You may remember Chase Strangio because of her on-the-nose “nom de delusion,” or from her appearance in my nominees for Moron on the Month back in April.  She’s the wacky gal who underwent what had to have been a brutal regimen of hormone injections to transform herself from a confused little twig of a girl into a heavily tattooed, sad, older twig of a girl, with a boy’s haircut and the rugged masculinity and patchy beard of effete Lil’ Davy Hogg.  (I miss that demi-guy!)

Then she went to law school.  And because the legal bar ironically doesn’t have a mental stability bar that those who want to practice law must clear, she became a lawyer. 

And last December, she became the first gender-dysmorphia sufferer to appear before the Supreme Court, where she argued against states’ rights to ban surgical mutilation and injecting chemicals that do life-long damage into children in pursuit of the fantasy that humans can change genders. 

Or, in the left’s words, “gender-affirming health care.” 

The professional left: PhDs in Euphemisms, held back for five years in grade-school Reality 101 class.    

“How did that argument in front of SCOTUS go, Martin?” you are not asking.  Because: Duh! 

By the way, a couple of years ago I started reading some complete SCOTUS rulings, and I’ve been disappointed by the total absence of the word “duh” in any rulings, even those written by the clearest writers and thinkers on the court – Alito and Thomas, IMHO. 

I’d argue that some rulings should have consisted of nothing BUT that word.  When a case went up to settle the question of whether Americans have the right to own guns, or whether lefties really can’t racially or sexually discriminate against their fellow citizens, even if those citizens are creepy straight people or evil whites, I would have liked the shortest rulings ever.

Just the date, the case name (“Whiney Wusses vs. the 2nd Amendment” or “Racists who hate Whitey vs. Whitey”) and then: “Duh!”

Possibly with a few short concurrences (Thomas: “Get outta here with that nonsense.”  Alito: “Ya think?!”  Kavanaugh: “C’mon man!”).  And of course some cogent dissents from Kagan, Sotomayor and Ketanji Jeanne-Pierre: “Waahh!  Why can’t our political preferences trump the dusty old constitution?  How dare you?  You have stolen our dreams with your empty words!  Waaaahhh!”

Where was I?

Oh yeah: Miss Strange-io

Here are some excerpts from a Slate article in which she summed up her argument, which I swear to you I am not making up: “There is no such thing as the ‘male body.’  A penis is not a male body part.  It’s just an unusual body part for a woman.”

I’ll say!  In fact, if even one woman has one, that’s not unusual enough!  One solitary woman with a penis would make that situation far too common, and would threaten to tear what we call “reality” asunder. 

Not to mention ruining your Saturday night when you’d thought you were making good progress… right up until the worst reveal since enough mail-in ballots postmarked “Sorosville” came in to declare Joe Biden the winner in 2020.

But move over, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas and Cato the Elder, because C-Strange has the floor: “Of course the phrase [“born male”] is easier to understand, since it reinforces deeply entrenched views about what makes a man and what makes a woman.  But it is precisely these views that we must change.” 

Yes.  “Deeply entrenched.”  (And before anyone can object, I’ve said before that I’m not up on gay slang.  So if that phrase is offensive, mea culpa.) And good luck changing precisely THOSE views, Strange-y.               

Well, SCOTUS finally ruled on the case last week.  They found that Ms. “A-Penis-is-not-a-Male-Body-Part” is out of her non-binary gourd, and of course states can outlaw child mutilation performed to facilitate mental illness.

Unexpectedly!

Columnist T. Becket Adams put it best: “The obvious lesson here is: don’t send crazy people to argue your case before the Supreme Court.” 

I would add two corollaries:  Don’t argue a crazy position before the Supreme Court.

And if no conservative troll was there at the Court to play Chase into the room with the Doors’ “People are Strange,” (“People are strange, when you’re even stranger…”) we left money on the table. 

And on that musical transition, I’m going to end with one of the oddest bits of theatre from a theatre-kid congressman that you’ve ever seen. 

If you know who Hank Johnson is, it’s probably because he’s the special human who asked, totally seriously, in a congressional Armed Services committee hearing about a proposed increase to the size of a base on Guam, whether “the whole island will become so overly populated that it will tip over and capsize.”

YAY, democracy! 

So how does one follow up that assault on basic logic?  With an assault on some great music, in this case Jimi Hendrix’s “Hey Joe.”

Trigger warning: If you decide you want to watch it, and insist on doing so with the sound on, you can find the video online. But PLEASE follow these instructions first:

1. Wash two Extra-Strength Tylenol down with a heavy-pour shot of Knob Creek 9 bourbon (thank you God, for inventing Kentucky!) first.

2. Find Stevie Ray Vaughn’s live cover of “Voodoo Child” (from Austin City Limits) – the one with the reverb so thick you could brush your teeth with it, if you don’t mind some bleeding gums afterwards – and cue it up so that you can watch it immediately after you watch Hank Johnson’s abominable war crime of a cover.  Because you don’t want that thing bouncing around in your frontal lobes for too long afterward.

Johnson added his own lyrics to the song – and if his singing and off-tune guitar playing were like painting a mustache on the Mona Lisa (and they were), his lyrics were the equivalent of spray painting a big ol’ phallus on her.  Those lyrics are as awful as you’d guess, if you had the imagination of Stephen King on a toxic combination of mushrooms and meth. 

To wit: “Hey Trump, where you goin’ with that gun in your hand?  I’m going down the street to shoot down democracy.”

Ugh! 

Here’s my quick response – please listen with the melody in your head – in this rap battle between two talentless song writers:

“Hey Hank, where you goin’ with no brain in yo’ head?

Hey Hank, I said, where you goin’ with no brain in yo’ head?

I’m goin’ down to Congress,

‘Cause I’m worried that Guam’s ‘bout to capsize.

Yeah, we’re addin’ to our base there,

And I’m ‘fraid that Guam’ll capsize.

And that ain’t cool!

[begin surprise Kinison sampling filter]  Hey Hank, you’ve gotta be sh*tting me, right?

Hey Hank, I said you can’t actually think that Guam’s gonna capsize, right?

‘Cause you know what, Hank?

ISLANDS DON’T TIP OVER!!  

THEY’RE NOT BOATS, HANK!  THEY DON’T FLOAT!  THEY’RE ISLANDS! 

OH!  OHHHHHHH! THIS MORON CAN’T BE AN ELECTED OFFICIAL!

YOU HEAR THAT, HANK?  THAT’S JIMI HENDRIX SPINNING IN HIS GRAVE!!

OH!  OHHHHHHHHH!” [end Kinison sampling filter]

And, scene. 

My apologies to the Hendrix estate for even bringing this up.

By the way, regular readers know that I’m a Christian, but if I ever have moments of doubting God, it’s because of things like the fact that Stevie Ray Vaughn died in his mid-30s in a plane crash, and Sam Kinison died in his 30s because he was hit by a drunk driver. 

But Barbra Streisand is still alive in her late hundreds, and Madonna will be flogging her wrinkly old arse around on stage until she’s in her 90s. 

In the words of the great Oliver Anthony, “That math don’t seem right.”

Hamas delenda est!

The Cousins’ Trip, Part 1 – Shenandoah, Harper’s Ferry, Antietam, Gettysburg (posted 5/26/25)

After 10 days of traveling, I’m glad to be back home.  I had intended to write a few columns during this cousins’ trip as I had in the past, but I was only able to take some notes along the way.  So this column is about the first part of our trip, which fits the occasion of Memorial Day, and I’ll post a column tomorrow about the rest of the trip. 

I was glad to be able to visit with my mom, sister and brother-in-law in Tennessee at the beginning and end of the cousins’ trip.  Mom is hanging in there, and my sister is doing a great job of watching over her.  Mom’s spirits are still good, and the whole family has gotten some much appreciated help from a woman who has been coming in to help two days a week. 

I was also able to spend a day in Illinois having meals and visits with an aunt and uncle, as well as a few cousins who weren’t going to be traveling with the three of us. 

Our trip this time was for five days, and the weather forecast changed our plans a bit.  We had three sunny, cool days to start, and two rainy days at the end, so we opted to take my cousin’s relatively new Ford Explorer, rather than the ’76 Caddy convertible that we’d taken on our previous trips. 

Regular readers may remember that that beautiful old car is less than completely water-proof, and its wipers less than efficient.  Shakespeare was right when he said that “Conscience makes cowards of us all.”  But if he were taking a long road trip in the rain in May of 2025, he might have had a few things to say about comfort and convenience, as well as conscience.

Anyway, we looked at the forecast, and then at the Caddy, and then at the forecast again.  And then “our native hue of resolution was sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought.”  So the Explorer it was.

The rain also changed the order of our trip.  We’d originally planned to head east first, and then south to the Shenandoah National Park and Harper’s Ferry area.  But the promise of some sunny days for our outdoor activities meant that we headed southeast and drove longer than planned on our first day.

Fittingly for this trip shortly before Memorial Day, we went to four battlefields.  Tippecanoe (in Indiana) was first, the site of a much smaller battle in a war with Indians associated with Tecumseh.  Though that battle was much more important to Liz Warren (#wemustneverstopmockingher), the three Civil War sites to follow dwarfed it, in scale and casualties.

We made it down to Clarksburg, WV late that night, and the next morning we visited the Shenandoah National Park, which was as beautiful as advertised.  From there we made our way to Staunton, VA, a small town surrounded by wooded hills that punches above its weight, with a charming downtown and blocks of well-preserved old buildings.  After lunch we went to the Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library and Museum.  That’s a modest place with pretty grounds, and a garage exhibit featuring a sweet Pierce-Arrow limousine billed as “The Chariot of the President.”

We didn’t tour the museum and house, partly because of time, but mostly because Wilson was a racist leftist president whose bossy wife was the defacto president when he was debilitated during his last year in office. 

And I’ve already had my fill of that, and don’t want to support it any more!

That evening we made it to Harper’s Ferry, which made a strong, if strange impression on me.  The site is lovely, with the old town occupying three or floor blocks along a hillside where the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers meet.  There is a train station on the low ground closest to the Potomac, and a few inns and restaurants, but most of the old town is a national historic park, and basically shuts down at night. 

Of course the town is best known for John Brown’s famous raid in 1859.  Meant to start a slave rebellion, the raid failed, and most of the raiders were killed during the skirmish or executed afterwards.  Because of its proximity to DC and strategic location on two rivers and a major railroad line, the town was fought over throughout the Civil War.    

We stayed in an 1840 inn, and took the opportunity to wander around the town and watch the last commuter train of the day arrive from DC, before we ate a late supper.  The next morning we were up early, before many people were out, and walked the mostly empty streets. The morning air was cool and refreshing, and smelled like honeysuckle.  We made our way up to Jefferson Rock, an outcropping on which the great man sat in October of 1783, and pronounced the view one of the most beautiful he’d ever seen.

After coffee and breakfast, we crossed a pedestrian walkway attached to a railroad bridge over the Potomac, and climbed on a forested path, up a steep hillside to where a battery of guns had been stationed during the war.  As we climbed, we were treated to intermittent views out over the valley and the town below, which confirmed Jefferson’s opinion of the scenery.  The timber was full of birds, and the honeysuckle scent was even stronger there.  On our way back downhill we began to see more people, but that morning felt like a tranquil break from normal life.

On the other hand, I kept thinking about something that was never far from my mind as we visited two more battlefields over the next 24 hours: What must it have been like to fight the battles that happened in those places?  After a half hour of walking on a cleared, wide pathway up to where the gun emplacement had been, I couldn’t imagine hauling cannon up that hill, when there was no path and tons of obstacles, and only manpower and horsepower to accomplish the feat.

From Harper’s Ferry we drove the 18 miles or so to Antietam, site of the bloodiest one-day battle of the war.  The visitor’s center had some interesting exhibits, and we watched a film recounting the course of the battle, before walking the nearest portion of the battlefield, and then taking a guided driving tour around a series of spots that followed the various stages of the battle. 

I’d read a lot about the Civil War years ago, and watched Ken Burns’ excellent 10-part documentary on the war, so most of the key positions were familiar to me: Burnside’s bridge over Antietam creek, the Dunker Church, the Cornfield, etc.  But it’s a different thing to see the actual site, with the monuments identifying which units were at which spots, and the gently rolling land on which so many men died.

I remembered reading about the Sunken Road (soon to be known as Bloody Lane) from which confederates were first able to ambush federal troops who marched right up to it without knowing it was there.  But even as we drove into the small parking lot that the audio tour identified as the Sunken Road, we still didn’t see it until we’d left the car and were right on top of it.  And then we could instantly understand how it turned into a death trap, once the union troops knew it was there, and could fire down into it. 

The beauty and peacefulness of the day when we visited Antietam contrasted with the horrific battle that had taken place there. 

But that was not the case when we arrived at Gettysburg, in a cold rain, the next morning.

The museum there was excellent, with many exhibits of weapons and uniforms, and a moving film that proved an old adage: you can’t go wrong with Morgan Freeman narrating.  After watching the film, we went upstairs into the Gettysburg Cyclorama, a large round room, with a raised, rounded platform in the middle, surrounded by a gigantic, 360-degree oil painting of the battle.  Between the platform and the walls, there is a hillside – complete with artifacts (cannon, wagons, rifles) and vegetation – that slopes away from the platform, and blends into the painting beyond. 

After that we went out into a chilly, foggy rain, and took another driving and audio tour of the large battlefield.  The low skies and grim weather seemed to perfectly match the somber events of the three-day battle, and once again I was surrounded by famous places I’d read about since childhood: Little Round Top, the Devil’s Den, the Wheatfield, Cemetery Hill. 

Overall, Harper’s Ferry was too quaint and the landscape too charming to feel like a battlefield to me, and Antietam was too bucolic and the day too pretty.  But experiencing Gettysburg under slate-gray skies and a cold rain was appropriately somber, and felt fitting, considering the bloody struggle that unfolded over three terrible days there.

On this Memorial Day, I’m in a Gettysburg state of mind, and I feel the kind of gratitude that it took the pen of Lincoln to express, when he wrote about our military men who “gave the last full measure of devotion” in the service of our country. 

God bless them, and their memory.

Hamas delenda est!

Tesla Vandalizers Are Exactly Who You’d Expect Them to Be (posted 3/21/25)

Yesterday was the two-month anniversary of Trump’s swearing in.  Can you believe it?  Only two months!  I’ve got column ideas piling up like productive citizens caught in a traffic jam fleeing New York, California or Illinois, and I don’t know how I’ll get to most of them.

Columns about crime.  Columns about schadenfreude.  Columns on evergreen political topics, leavened with a dusting of humorous observations about Liz Warren being whiter than Edgar Winter singing A Whiter Shade of Pale in an igloo during the winter solstice. 

#wemustneverstopmockingher

But I can no sooner get a few sentences out before something funnier or more satisfying happens.  I’m just trying to keep my head above water over here!

Joy Reid gets fired, but before I can make a joke about her sitting on the street with a cardboard sign saying, “Will hate whitey for food,” some MSNBC host is asking why Trump has been in office for 12 minutes and egg prices are still so high?

I start brainstorming some sort of a “you didn’t mind a president whose brains were scrambled, but…” thing that’s not working, before Bret Baier notes that egg prices just dropped 10%. 

HA!  How ironic that—What’s that?  Margaret Brennan just said that the Nazis only took power in Germany because they loved free speech so much?

Okay wait, I’ve got something for that.  Yes, the Nazis were world-renowned for their passion for the free exchange of ideas.  “Ein volk, ein reich, ein free-wheeling debate,” that was their–   

Annddd…egg prices are down 25%. 

And Tampon Tim Walz was just celebrating that Tesla stock is way down…until someone pointed out that Minnesota government workers’ pensions have a bunch of Tesla stock in them.  D’oh!

I give up.  It’s too much winning.  I’ve got to start somewhere, so I’m sticking with Tesla for this one.

You’ve probably heard about all of the leftists who are very angry with Elon now.  They don’t like his fetish for free speech at Twitter/X; they don’t like his exposing and cutting leftist waste and corruption in government; they don’t like him rescuing astronauts, for some reason.

So they’re taking to various public fora (“archaic Latin plurals for 500, Alex”) with logically coherent, rhetorically persuasive critiques to change public perception through rigorous, democratic debate.

 HA! I kid. 

Actually, they’re threatening Tesla drivers, vandalizing dealerships and setting charging stations and cars on fire.

A few of these criminal masterminds have already been caught, and you’ll never guess what they’re like.  If by “you’ll never guess” I mean “you absolutely know.” 

Which I do.

Consider Contestant #1, Justin Thomas Nelson, who allegedly vandalized and threw Molotov cocktails at a Colorado Tesla dealership several times, before getting arrested on a return trip there several weeks ago. 

In keeping with my policy of giving you trigger warnings before you look these people up – remember “the bowling ball with eyes” illegal immigrant from Wednesday’s column? – I’ll paint you a picture, and you can proceed at your own risk. 

Justin looks like what would happen if Penn (from Penn and Teller) and Herman Munster somehow had a baby, and that baby grew up and got breast implants. 

You heard me.  Justin has got a Stage-4 case of gender dysmorphia, and I don’t think he’s been taking his meds.  He goes by the name “Lucy Grace Nelson,” and one look at his picture will bring out the Ricky Ricardo in you.  (“Luuuccy, you got some ‘splainin’ to do!”)  (“Timely comic references from 1952 for 100, Alex.”)

Nelson was listed on “her” driver’s license as “female,” which doesn’t fill one with confidence in the DMV.  I’m guessing that if I moved to Colorado and listed my gender as “marmoset,” some beaten-down Loveland cop would listlessly play along the next time I got caught speeding. 

“I see here that you’re a 6-foot-tall marmoset with green eyes and brown hair.  You still live on 5th Avenue?” 

 Anyway, Nelson’s booking sheet also lists him as female.  Because of course it does.  Aggravatingly, even the nominally conservative NY Post uses female pronouns to refer to Nelson in its story, and many media stories never mention that this “woman” ain’t one.

At least Nelson’s dad – Claiborne “Jerry” Nelson – seems to understand that he’s got a son. 

By the way, I’m not sure that Claiborne understands how nicknames work.  I get calling a Joseph “Joe,” or a Thomas “Tommy,” or even a Martin “Martacus.”  But how do you get “Jerry” out of “Claiborne?”

Though in his defense, it’s a lot shorter jump from “Claiborne” to “Jerry” than from “Justin” to freaking “Lucy!”

Where was I?  Oh yeah.  

Claiborne/Jerry describes Justin/Lucy in what I think may be the first-ever instance of a “5-implied- unexpectedly” paragraph.  To wit:

“He changed his name to Lucy a few years ago. [unexpectedly]  He’s in his early 40s, but has been living with this mother who has been taking care of him. [unexpectedly] He has emotional problems [unexpectedly] He hasn’t been able to keep a job. [unexpectedly!] Our entire family support[s] the Democrat party. [UNEXPECTEDLY!]”

There are pics in Justin’s social media labeled “baby gets her first bra” and “baby gets her first dress,” and you don’t want to see them.  But spoiler alert: they will NOT remind you of Jennifer Grey in Dirty Dancing.

Because sometimes somebody DOES need to put baby in the corner.

…of a room with bars on the door and windows.

Meanwhile, in South Carolina, Contestant #2 – Daniel Clarke-Pounder, 24 – also had the brilliant idea to attack a Tesla dealership with Molotov cocktails.  Ironically, he apparently throws more like a girl than Justin/Lucy does, or else he is easily fatigued.  Because he managed to set himself on fire with his fifth Molotov cocktail.

Sadly, all he lost was a burned shirt, and what little dignity he had.  

While his mug shot doesn’t have the “She’s a MAN, baby!” shock value of the Justin/Lucy pic, he does give off a bit of a Buddy Repperton vibe. (“I’ll take 1980s Stephen King movie references for $200, Alex.”)

Unfortunately for him, he looks a little softer in his social media photos.  He’s facing charges that could result in 20 years in prison, and if those old “Scared Straight” shows are accurate, Daniel might find that “Clarke-Pounder” is not only his last name, but his new cell-mate’s eventual nickname.

Can you imagine how it must feel to be a Democrat today?  Their political leaders are Ken-Doll Newsom, Jasmine “Fake-Lashes” Crockett, and Juicy Booty.  Their men are women, and their women are crazy.  They were just swept in the swing states, DOGE is derailing their gravy train, their bag of dirty tricks is as old and ineffective as Imhotep Pelosi, and their approval ratings are in the toilet. 

And it’s only been TWO MONTHS!

Hamas delenda est!

Loving the First Month of Trumpkrieg™, Despite a Few Stumbles (posted 2/21/25)

I’m up in Tennessee now — with the wife, one daughter and the Wonder Dog — visiting my mom, while my sister and her hubby are taking a well-deserved trip. We drove up on Tuesday, and got to see two brief snowfalls since we got here, which partially made up for it being too cold to take mom out for walks in and around town.

Regular readers may remember that my mom has Alzheimer’s, and she’s experiencing the gradual sliding involved in that disease. We have to remind her many times each day that this is her home, and we won’t be leaving until after my sister gets back home, and she’ll never be alone.

But she’s still got her sweet disposition, and she loves to laugh, and the stories that I tell her about her and my dad and our lives together never fail to delight her. Some of them she remembers, and enjoys the remembering. Some of them she doesn’t, but even with those, there’s a special grace in the way she experiences them for the first time, each time.

While we’ve been enjoying our time with her, the world has continued to turn, and the Trumpkrieg™ continues apace. But Trump has finally taken a few wrong steps, IMHO. His pick for Sec Labor seems to be a hostile lefty; while I think her nomination is a mistake, it’s a minor one, because if she behaves in office the way she has before, I think Trump will fire her pretty quickly.

More seriously, I’m surprised by the way he’s handling the Ukraine situation. I know that Zelensky has been acting a little too entitled lately, and Ukraine has had corruption problems that pre-date this war. But I admire Zelensky’s guts – when Biden’s first instinct was to offer him a flight out of the country after Putin invaded, he said he wanted to stay and fight, and I’ve generally got a soft spot for Davids taking on Goliaths.

So while I think that Trump rightly wants to pressure both sides to take an off ramp that will end the war, it sucks that Putin is going to gain some land when the dust settles, necessary though that may be. Whatever Zelinsky’s flaws, they pale in comparison to Putin’s evil invasion, and Trump’s claims that Ukraine started the war are idiotic. By coming down so unfairly hard on Ukraine, he’s also strengthening Putin’s negotiating hand, a misstep that sharply contrasts with Trump’s usually skillful application of pressure.

Still, having said all of that, Trump’s first month has been amazingly successful. With Kash Patel’s confirmation, he’s rounded out a cabinet of downhill runners that promises more victories to come, and more Democrat malfeasance to be revealed.

And holy cats, are the Dems ever continuing to play right into his hands, and hitching their wagons to one unpopular cause after another! They’re trying to elicit sympathy for illegal gang-bangers getting deported, and IRS agents getting laid off. They valorize corrupt, soft-insurrectionist bureaucrats who publicize their own resignations in a vain attempt to cast insubordination as righteous self-martyrdom. (This isn’t an airport, drama queens – you don’t have to announce your departure. Just cram your participation trophies into cardboard boxes and go!)

Trump’s filling his roster with alpha dogs and apex predators, and the Dems are fielding pencil necks, white squaws (#wemustneverstopmockingher) and wet-behind-the-ears non-binary they/thems like Lil’ Davy Hogg!

And the self-beclowning self-owns! The glorious, hilarious, oblivious self-owns!

Al Sharpton – the walking embodiment of “unfit for any office” – actually sounded outraged when he asked the dozens of MSNBC viewers to imagine what Madison or Jefferson would think of Trump’s attempt to “overthrow the government!”

Nevermind the difference between “fixing” and “overthrowing.” Sharpton wants his listeners to recoil in horror at the thought of our Founders’ disgust at someone trying to revolt against a government. Why, that kind of terrible behavior could even lead to a war!

Some might call such a hypothetical war… and I’m just spit-balling here… a “revolutionary” war!

Who wants to tell the desiccated, un-revered un-reverend?

And that wasn’t even the stupidest attack attempt of the week! That dishonor goes to poor Margaret Brennan, who by now has been publicly depantsed more often than AOC at a Miss Juicy Booty contest. (Her words, not mine.)

When Brennan wanted to grab the “20” end of an 80-20 issue by taking the “anti-” position on free speech, she chose the stupidest historical example that anyone could possibly pick.

While interviewing Marco Rubio, she seemed bothered that JD Vance had called Europeans out on their hostility towards free speech, especially since he did so while he was in Germany. She noted that Vance “was standing in a country where free speech was weaponized to conduct a genocide,” and closed her question with the insulting assertion that Vance’s delivery of the speech in Germany “changed the tone [of his message]. And you know that.”

Ugh. Ignorant and condescending is no way to go through life, Marge.

Margaret thinks the Nazis weaponized free speech. Now I don’t know if you’re a history buff, but…do you have to be a history buff for that to sound a little strange to you?

Like most middle-aged straight guys, I’ve read a lot about WWII. And I don’t remember the part when Hitler was constantly vexed by the vibrant German-Jewish press, with their kvetching about his pogroms, and their strongly worded op-eds pushing for him to build fewer death camps. Right up until the end of the war, the Berlin Kosher Press was a thorn in Hitler’s side.

Or that’s the way it happened in Margaret’s imagination. But in the real world, the Nazis were actually pretty skilled at weaponizing one thing.

[Begin Sam Kinison filter] WEAPONS!! OH! OHHHHHHHH!! [end Kinison filter]

Stuka dive bombers early on, the first jet fighter plane at the end of the war, and the V-1 and V-2 rockets. Innovative U-boat wolf pack tactics, and tank designs like the Panther, Tiger and King Tiger. The Nazis were whiz kids when it came to weaponizing weapons. But a free, candid and open exchange of ideas?

Not so much.

In fact, I saw several stories that noted the reality, i.e. that the Weimar government (preceding Hitler’s rise) had very restrictive speech codes that they used against the nascent Nazi party, including preventing Hitler and Goebbels from speaking publicly for several years.

Ironically, those speech restrictions helped Hitler to rise. Many Germans wondered what these Nazis were saying that so antagonized the government, and being censored gave them a frisson of forbidden attraction. A famous Nazi propaganda poster showed Hitler with tape over his mouth, capitalizing on the idea that he was being kept down by the censors.

And of course, as soon as they gained power, the Nazis doubled down on the speech restrictions, killing or driving out any publishers or journalists who criticized Nazism.

The truth is that the Nazis weaponized speech restrictions to help them gain power, and then weaponized speech repression to help them hold onto power. Just like the Biden administration. (And no, I’m not saying that the Dems are as bad as the Nazis.) (And not just because the Nazis were competent.)

So pull up your pants and take a seat, Margaret!

On second thought, you keep doing you, Ms. Brennan.

But make sure that you’re always wearing clean undies, because the American people are going to be seeing a LOT of them over the next four years.

#mooningMargaret

Hamas delenda est!

The Winning Continues, Jim Acosta is Gone, & Trump is Re-Naming Everything! (posted 1/29/25)

Okay, I’m not saying that all of this winning has to stop. But it’s got to slow down a little bit.  Because I am getting nothing done!

It’s been 8 days since the inauguration.  Regular readers know that I’m a working dog, not a show dog, so typically, I get more done in 8 days than 10 men of normal powers do in a month. 

For example, in that time, I would usually be saying my prayers; playing with Cassie the Wonder Dog; mansplaining a bunch of stuff to my wife (which she always appreciates); nodding along and pretending to understand some astrophysics thing that my smarty pants daughter is trying to explain to me; maintaining my rental properties; doing good deeds; setting a good example; reading some good books; helping old ladies across the street; rescuing cats from trees and toddlers from house fires; explaining to young women who are getting a little handsy that I’m both married and way too old for them; laughing at my own jokes in my columns as I’m writing them…   

(For example, that “handsy young women” thing just cracked me up.  Because as they say, “It’s funny because it’s true.”)

…and just generally being a ray of sunshine in the lives of everyone I meet.

But not these last 8 days.  Because since the 20th I have been on the computer from dawn to dusk, just getting hammered by one wave of good news after another.  Ooh, Trump has signed a boatload of executive orders: illegals out of America, dudes out of women’s sports, and women’s jails, and women’s bathrooms. 

Wait, he just yanked security clearances for the 51 Russian laptop hoaxers!

Hey, he just fired a bunch of dead-weight bureaucrats from the “resistance” movement.

Ooh, he just canceled the bald-eagle-slaughtering, heavily subsidized windmills – including the whale-killing ones off the coast.  And he re-instated all of the soldiers who’d been bullied out of the service because they wouldn’t take an experimental shot to prevent a virus – which never would have killed them – from killing them.

Wait, let me get my head above wa—

Uh oh, more executive orders: no more racist DEI crap throughout our government; the life sentences for taking selfies in the capitol on January 6th are reversed; no more funding for the United Nations’ pro-Hamas “Jewish toddler-killing munitions” program.

And the personnel upgrades!  Won’t somebody think of the personnel upgrades!

Lyin’ “Lex Luthor” Mayorkas is gone, replaced by Tom “Yippee-Ki-Yay, Mfers!” Homan, who was just on tv, frog-marching another long chain gang of illegal, face-tattooed gang members out of my country.  We just traded corrupt and oily Merrick Garland for honest, disciplined Pam Bondi (giggity). 

Look there, in the White House briefing room!  It’s hyper-competent, smart and perky new press secretary Karoline Leavitt, replacing the ginger Circle-Back Lady, and the sapphic Kewpie Doll who could only answer questions by reading verbatim from her Lying for Dummies Briefing Book™

We just upgraded from Mayor Pete – whose only qualifications for Sec Transportation (I almost said, “SecTrans,” but that’s not a thing any more!) was being gay and liking choo-choo trains as a kid, to Sean Duffy, who just got confirmed with 77 votes.

I’ll be honest: I have no idea who Sean Duffy is.  But since he didn’t bring up his sexual preference in his confirmation hearings, and he’s never overseen a disastrous, toxic train derailment, and he’s never taken weeks of maternity leave time off to recover from giving birth to an adopted baby that he obviously didn’t give birth to, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that he’s going to do a better job than Mayor Pete did.   

Pete Hegseth will be a better SecDef than Lloyd “AWOL” Austin.  Mario Rubio will be a better SecState than a potted plant, which would have been a better SecState than Tony Blinken.  

And corrupt MSM leftist-bubble-dwellers are dropping like Bill Clinton’s pants in a sorority house!

Even TDS-suffering narcissist Jim Acosta is leaving!  (As Ben Shapiro used to say, “Ladies, find yourself a man who loves you as much as Jim Acosta loves him some Jim Acosta.”)  Acosta apparently lost half his audience in a car wreck shortly before Trump’s inauguration.  (All four of them were in a Prius that got stuck on train tracks when a train was coming.) 

So CNN offered him a show at midnight, opposite reruns of “Welcome Back, Kotter,” hour-long ads for My Pillow, and Korean-language broadcasts of Korean triple-A soccer games.  (Go, Busan Bandits!)

Acosta responded by telling CNN management that if they tried to shove him to midnight, they would just have to do without the services of one Abilio James Acosta!  

Annnnnddddd… he’s gone.

By the way, that’s his real name.  Since I’m a working dog – as I may have mentioned earlier – I did my research, and discovered that his parents named him “Abilio.”  Which, strangely enough, is Spanish for “a-hole.”  True story. 

I can even use it in a sentence: “Let’s put that abilio on at midnight, and dare him to quit!” 

I can hear many of you asking, as I write this, “Martin, did your extensive research turn up any more fun A-hole Acosta facts?”  And the answer is yes.  Yes, it did. 

For example, he is reportedly of mixed ancestry, a combination of English, Irish, Czech and Cuban.  But for the record, the embassies of England, Ireland and the Czech Republic have all  released official statements saying that they’re pretty sure he’s just Cuban. 

A phone call to the Cuban embassy was answered by a guy who wouldn’t give his name.  When asked about Jim Acosta allegedly being Cuban, he would only say, “Never heard of that abilio,” before hanging up.  

Trump offered Acosta a much-deserved verbal beat-down on his way out the door, in a tweet that (I swear I’m not making this up) featured the words, “one of the worst and most dishonest reporters…major sleazebag…BAD RATINGS… [and] no talent.” 

And that was the NICE part, which came before the hard sac-tap of an ending: “Jim is a major loser who will fail no matter where he ends up.  Good luck Jim!”  

Which, if my high-school Spanish hasn’t failed me, could be translated as, “No dejes que la puerta te golpee en el culo al salir.”  (But since it’s past January 20th and we don’t have to “Press 1 for English” anymore, I’ll re-translate: “Don’t let the door hit you in the abilio on your way out.”)

Even Trump’s sillier-seeming moves actually have substance behind them.  Changing the name of a mountain from Denali back to McKinley, and renaming the Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America are good examples.

I think it’s natural to laugh the first time you hear “Gulf of America.”  It feels cartoonishly patriotic.  I first thought of the short-lived fad of replacing “French” with “freedom” back when France was reverting to their “cheese-eating surrender monkey” form. 

It was funny to say, “For breakfast I’m having freedom toast, and for lunch my sides will be freedom fries and freedom onion soup.  And tonight, I’ll be plying my wife with freedom wine, after which I hope to be freedom kissing her as she slips off her freedom lingerie.”

But once you get past the initial reaction, you can see a more serious philosophical point beneath it.  Because naming things is a powerful expression of what a culture values.  Many American settlers named their cities and states after their original homes, which they still loved (New Amsterdam/New York, New Jersey, New England; Athens, GA; Paris, TX), or people they honored (the Carolinas, the Virginias, Williamsburg, Pittsburg, Cincinnati).

They named some towns after religious virtues (Hope, Temperance, Providence), or after religious figures (St. Paul, St. Augustine, Saints Francis and Monica – San Francisco and Santa Monica) or even “body of Christ” (Corpus Christi).  They named their colleges Holy Cross or Our Lady (Notre Dame). 

And later, when we’d produced our own civic heroes, we named towns and schools after them.  There are towns named Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln scattered across the land.  (I went to McKinley school for a few grades, and Lincoln grade school for a few more.)  We named a mountain after McKinley.

We also named many places after the Indian tribes or leaders whom – contrary to racist leftists’ slanders – we admired, and wanted to pay tribute to.  So there are counties or towns named Black Hawk, Sauk and Cherokee, and states named Illinois, Oklahoma and Minnesota, not to mention one primary Dakota, and another auxiliary Dakota.

But this trend is not just something conservatives do, as some angry lefties now suggest, as they rail against renaming mountains or gulfs.  You may have noticed that the Left has been on a name-changing spree in recent years, too. 

The small park in DC where the dozen protestors put up a guillotine on inauguration day is officially known as Meridian Hill Park, but the commie protestors renamed it “Malcolm X Park.”  As they renamed an intersection in Minnesota “George Floyd Square,” after one of their recidivist criminal heroes.  They’ve renamed many schools and parks, tossing presidents’ or generals’ names in favor of Cesar Chavez, Malcolm X, MLK and many more.

Most people approve of many of these changes, which again, reflect social changes.  While most people would balk at naming places after communists, or black criminals like Angela Davis or George Floyd, pretty much everyone is okay with various MLK sites.  And, with some caveats, most Americans are probably not too upset over removing Confederate names from various things.  (You won’t see a ton of Go-Fund-Mes with the theme, “Let’s keep the name of Nathan Bedford Forrest High School!”)

The point is that everyone changes names to reflect their own values. And if I had to pick a side, it’s an easy call to choose the one changing names to Gulf of America, Reagan National Airport or Mount McKinley, over those changing to George Floyd Square, Saul Alinsky Street, or Joy Reid Avenue. 

In this one rare instance, I agree with Tony Soprano’s instincts.  In one episode his son AJ came home from school spouting a bunch of leftist nonsense after reading Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States,” and touting his teacher’s preference for “Indigenous Peoples’ Day,” because of Columbus’ supposed villainy.

Tony was flabbergasted.  “Your teacher said that?”

AJ said, “It’s not just my teacher, it’s the truth.  It’s in my history book!” 

After wryly observing, “So you finally read a book, and it’s bullsh*t,” Tony laid down the law.  “He [Columbus] was a brave Italian explorer.  And in this house, Christopher Columbus is a hero!  End of story.”

Well in my house, we watch the Redskins play football and the Cleveland Indians play baseball.   We hope to one day climb Mount McKinley, and in the summer we like to read some Thomas Sowell at the beach, with our feet in the warm waters of the Gulf of America. 

End of story!

Facebook Censors Finally Catch Up With Me (posted 12/4/24)

Well, it’s finally happened.  After a blissful 8 years of writing one snarky column after another with no interference from the powers that be, I have received two notices within the last week that two of my columns have been removed from this site (i.e. the Cautious Optimism FB site) because they violated “hate speech” rules. 

This was a little perplexing to me, because I am almost universally thought of as quite lovable.  In fact, it is often said that to know me is to love me.  

And though I regularly poke fun at the most fun-poke-able of our political opponents – I’m looking at you Grandma Squanto (#wemustneverstopmockingher), Imhotep Pelosi (“Aiiieee!  The mummy walks among us!”) and Que Mala – mocking is not hating. 

Odder still, the two columns of mine that were flagged were from 11/7 of this year and 5/5 of last year, so I’m not sure what would cause such a delayed reaction to both. 

The November column was written the day after the election, and as you may remember, I was giddy with a potent mix of relief and actual joy (not that faux stuff that Que Mala tried to build a campaign on).  Thus I was bouncing around from topic to topic, and I wasn’t sure what part was the potentially offensive bit.

So I went back to last May’s column, and the issue became a little clearer. In that one, I discussed an angry politician in Montana who is – how can I put this? – someone who believes himself to not be in line with what he was “assigned” at birth.  I also discussed a Navy recruiter who presented as a person of the opposite sex.

So I am pretty sure what topic has triggered the FB watchers. 

Side note: It was interesting to go back and read last year’s column, because enough time has gone by that I had forgotten what I wrote.  So I read it like anybody else would, and got caught by surprise by a few lines here and there. 

And as immodest as this sounds, I came to the same conclusion that many of you have: I am one funny weirdo! 

For example, I hadn’t remembered referring to Churchill’s famous critique of the traditions of the Royal Navy as “Rum, sodomy and the lash,” and then saying that the US Navy now has its new recruiting slogan: “Hold the rum.” 

I kill me!

Anyway, these warnings sounded ominous, and I didn’t want to risk getting this site shut down because of my hilarious yet allegedly hateful musings. So I went right to the top, and emailed  the Great and Powerful CO to ask his opinion. He called me back on Monday, and I thought I’d give you a little peek behind the curtain to the discussion we had.

When I got the call, I was a little flummoxed.  You’d expect it would be something like a call from Reagan or Trump: “This is the White House.  Hold for the president.”

But no, it wasn’t even a minion on the line.  It was just CO himself, calling from – I’m assuming – a SCIF at the CO Compound in Boca.

Naturally, I went directly to my home office and activated the translucent, soundproof and climate-controlled Cone of Silence, which I had installed after we bought this house.  Because I watched just the right amount of Get Smart as a child. 

My Cone of Silence descends from the ceiling to surround me – obviously – and it’s big enough to contain me and Cassie the Wonder Dog.  Because while she understands English (duh!) – and ein bisschen deutsche, which she picked up during a youthful fling with a German shepherd –  she doesn’t speak it, and thus couldn’t reveal anything she hears there.

Not that she would anyway, because she’s as trustworthy as the day is long.  Unlike certain terrible presidents I could name, who swear up and down for months that they would never pardon their felonious junkie son, and then… wait for it… pardon their felonious junkie son.

So once we were both in our secure locations, CO put me on hold while he engaged voice-scrambling software as a security precaution. 

By the way, CO’s hold music?  All Beatles tunes.  True story.

Anyway, once measures had been taken and our due diligence done, we had a high-level discussion.  I can’t reveal the details here, of course.  But the gist of it was that CO believes that mine is a once-in-an-epoch, national treasure of a mind that must be free, and he couldn’t live with himself if my thoughts were suppressed.  (I’m paraphrasing loosely.) 

He also said that even if it meant that the Cautious Optimism site were shut down, his only regret would be that he had but one site to lose for his country.  (I know.  I broke out in spontaneous applause, too.)

He also said that after January 20th, he’d be reaching out to Tom Homan, Kash Patel and POTUS Maximus himself to see if they could call on Zuck to explain a few things.  (I’m guessing that Luca Brasi would be played by Tom Homan at that meeting.)   

So I’m going to continue writing here – my next column will be Friday – even though I may occasionally have to do a little of the ol’ “ixnay on the ranny-tay” talk. 

In the meantime, let me ask all of you to read both of my offending columns, because I’d like to hear your opinions on their relative offensiveness.   

Since you can no longer find them here on Facebook, please go to my WordPress page on your computer – Martinsimpsonwriting.com.  On the right side of the screen you’ll find the monthly lists of my columns in reverse chronological order.  The two columns in question are dated 11/7 of this year, and 5/5/23.   

While you’re there, consider clicking on “Subscribe.”  It’s free (although hitting the PayPal Tip Jar wouldn’t offend me), and once you’ve subscribed, you’ll get an email to alert you every time I post a new column, just in case any more of them get removed from the CO site.

In the meantime, as always…

Hamas delenda est!