1) stop saying the United States won the Cold War. Last I checked the communists merely transferred their flag from Moscow to Beijing.
2) stop pretending that non-communist Russia is a threat to the west rather than an excellent potential ally for containing the CCP. It's probably to late to do that thanks to the Ukraine war, so really the US is going to have to go it alone.
3) Cleonomes and Themistocles knew that to beat the Mede abroad you first have to beat the Mede at home. The fact that US policy makers are willing to plan for shooting war with the communists but aren't willing to engage in a trade war to eliminate their stranglehold on our key strategic industries just goes to show you everything you need to know about how seriously they take the threat.
I would also add that once the Soviet Union fell, our domestic Left became unmoored, and they have never forgiven the US fr the fall of CCCP. The Left is ascendant here as well as China.
Very true. Our "main stream" media and academia were in love with the CCCP. They only started hating Russians after the gave up on the Socialist Republics.
Is America even worth fighting for after seeing what this administration is doing to Donald Trump?
Everyday I see an administration less capable of dealing with the problems that affect her citizens and in fact regards those same citizens as deplorable enemies to be humiliated and beaten down.
I think it is, Pete, for no greater reason than what has been orchestrated against Trump. The enemy within must be defeated before we will defeat the enemy at the gates. The Democrats have sold their souls to marxism and it's hateful manifestations. Nothing of any value will be accomplished under their regime. We need an immediate course correction.
I think they have won. It’s not just Trump. What is now routine was once considered impossible. Schools encouraging children to change their gender without bothering to inform parents. Praising people who burn, loot and murder while turning the FBI loose on 1 6 trespassers or Catholics who like the Latin mass. An open border. Fraudulent elections and rigged juries. Didn’t Earn It. Need I go on? After what happened to the Marines in Kabul how can we ask any young man to risk his for this administration? Give Hunter Biden a rifle and let him fight for Taiwan.
There will be no course correction. If Trump isn’t found hanging in his jail cell then millions of ballots will turn up in every inner city after midnight Election Day. These people staged a coup and have no intention of letting go for any reason.
One of the things I find sadder than the pessimism I see in others is the magnitude of the poisonous pessimism I find in myself. Maybe it is time for me to quit eating the comfort food, start PT-ing again and take to heart Rev. Niemöller's famous quote.
Perhaps. It will indeed be fait accompli if it is not actively, even physically, resisted. I do not disagree with your points but the our late republic is worth the attempt. I don't have quit in me, these elitist swine will have to keep working for it.
You had better care about him because after they are done with him, they are coming after you - you bitter clinger. The truckers in Canada who had their back accounts frozen because they dared to protest thought that Canada was their home, too. Justin Castreau showed them otherwise.
One does not have to care about DJT personally to recognize that to accept what Leviathan has done to him signals the end of the Republic, and therefore cannot be accepted
Wow. Really?! I don't have like Donald Trump to care what precedents the Deep State sets? My God, where were you to tell me that in May 2017 when Mendacious Moron Mueller was appointed special counsel?
You are firing both barrels at someone who has never particularly disagreed with you. I think President Trump was and is great for us, and I hated/hate what was and is being done to him. My point is that even though I do support him, I care about the country independently of that, and am disgusted by what the "deep state" for lack of a better term has done to our beloved Republic in order to tear him down.
I have decided to skip the fed elections and am concentrating on my local politics. As in County and state elections. Babylon is a shitshow but staying vigilant in local politics and being present and vocal is a way. When it all collapses, the states will be the Phoenix or they won’t. It’s our last best hope Obi Wan. Also gathering aggregate news and turning off the MSM propaganda and not spending my money on woke companies or sportsball crap.
The threat from China is real and must be dealt with. However, I believe the greatest threat to the US is the internal threat posed by the failure of our leaders to work together to produce wise policies that unite us as a people. The "United we stand, divided we fall" axiom comes to mind.
I think the greatest threat to our Republic is the success of our leaders and "representatives" in working together to erode our freedom, destroy our industrial base, undermine civil society, and promote an authoritarian view of the world as envisioned by a guy who has a bust of Lenin on his desk.
They are dividing us on purpose, because a population divided is a minimal threat to their ruling class.
That's gonna be a great pitch to the electorate. "Hey Boomers and Gen Xers, have you thought about how much more war we could wage in Eurasia if y'all took a 2-3% haircut on your monthly Social Security payments?!" That sounds like an LBJ 1964 sized national electoral mandate in the making!
I'd like to see us repeal 16 and 17, eliminate the immoral construct known as the income tax, phase out true Social Security (the post-65 stuff) and 95% of government offices and departments. One can dream
There is nothing that can possibly unite a people that believes in lockdowns and forced masking and vaccines with a freedom loving people. America is already 2 distinct nations and wise leaders are not going to change that.
The great thing about this country is that your superiors don't have to care what you think. Now go run along to Daddy Fauci like a good boy to get your 8th booster!
There was no reason for the Union and Confederacy to remain under the same roof in 1861; there is even less reason for free people to remain under the same roof with lockdowners in 2024.
A significant issue is that the ideological divide does not follow state lines, but rather the urban/rural divide. There are many people, probably even a majority of actual legal voters, in "blue states" that are freedom loving Americans whose vote has not been counted in a long time.
I think you’d enjoy reading Kurt Schlichter’s novels, which have this very theme - red America vs blue America- People’s Republic is the first book, I’ve read all 8 of them. All very entertaining yet very sobering at the same time.
Ron Furgerson: Part of the "uniting problem" is that we are no longer "a people." Just look at California, where the state provides voting information in more than 18 different languages, as if understanding English is of little importance in understanding our political process. Our shared heritage, based on the founding principles and history of our country, has been blown apart, intentionally.
Lee was a loser. He shoukd have listened to E. Porter Alexander and dissolved the NVA at Petersburg into numerous battalion minus sized guerilla groups.
CDR Sal, thanks for the clarity outlined in today's post.
Denial is strong in D.C. So is inertia. The smartest people in the room have led us to this ledge, and keep telling us there is nothing to see here.
We need to make sure that elected leaders (yea, that is our fault!) have access to the concepts outlined in today's post, and keep reinforcing to them that this issue is more vital to the US than the majority of policy minutiae they spend their time entangled with.
I don't claim to have a solution....but a large share of We the People are too easily distracted by the "news" they are fed by people that try to make sure they remain distracted. That is a topic that deserves more attention.
Add in changes to election processes added in violation of existing statute and you end up with the quicksand we seem to be stuck in.
No slight on our host, but, I stopped reading when I got to the "Foreign Affairs" pull quote, "the Biden administration’s China policy has stood out as a relative bright spot." There are no bright spots in the Biden administration.
I remember the old baseball Maxim: “teams play at the same level as their competition”.
We are not following the Maxim. We can’t even find our gloves.
We need a complete change of government, from the elected politicians , the selected politicians and we need to remove, with prejudice, the federal civil servants of all agencies.
Only then, can we find a Weinberger or a Lehman to clean house.
Only then, can we get to the task of building a shipyard and repair capacity and restock our magazines.
Next we need a state department devoid of its past 20 years of corruption masked as incompetence. We need to rebuild the political credibility that we have squandered with our own arrogance.
Only then, can we take China to task around the world with their unholy mafia BRI.
We need to start massive and forcibly to destroy the China presence in South America, Central America and the Caribbean.
It’s not hard to have a game plan. We simply need the willpower and we need to shit can the current political class. Time is short.
Do you think we enough time to get control of 37 sane states and repeal the 16th and 17th Amendments? I really don't see any other way to restore freedom in the Republic. DC will never give up power; it must be retrieved by the states.
I think Orwell was referring to the income tax which allows the fat bloated deep state to exist. Teddy R. was able to build a fleet without an income tax.
"Spend more money" is not a sustainable option. We need to reduce 95% of spending, 100% in most areas, and use our legitimate military spending wisely. The only way to reign in the Federal government is to reduce it, and that means stop funding it.
Pillsbury is the only guy I’ve read who openly admits that he and other “china experts” got it all wrong. The Hundred Year Marathon. Duped. Mandarin speakers. Guys who had conversions with deng xiaoping. worth the read. Wireless Wars, too. highly recommend. west sucks at identifying indirectness and understanding it. everything is taken at face value.
From a link within the article: “In the Internet era . . . what is truth and what is a lie is already unimportant; what’s important is who controls discourse power.” I'd be a toad if I advocated against the 1st Amendment. So I won't. But what do you do when you can hardly get a word in edgewise or have it heard? Maybe some modern version of this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4ozAB3SsdI&ab_channel=JayKat7_
Time to start The Ten-Thousand Centuries Of Humiliation, so the Chinese learn their lesson!
Fantastic read.
1) stop saying the United States won the Cold War. Last I checked the communists merely transferred their flag from Moscow to Beijing.
2) stop pretending that non-communist Russia is a threat to the west rather than an excellent potential ally for containing the CCP. It's probably to late to do that thanks to the Ukraine war, so really the US is going to have to go it alone.
3) Cleonomes and Themistocles knew that to beat the Mede abroad you first have to beat the Mede at home. The fact that US policy makers are willing to plan for shooting war with the communists but aren't willing to engage in a trade war to eliminate their stranglehold on our key strategic industries just goes to show you everything you need to know about how seriously they take the threat.
Well said.
We drove Russia into the arms of China
Last I checked we never lost a single job or factory to Russia.
Now we confront the entire Eurasian landmass thereby undoing Nixon a greatest accomplishment of separating those two nations.
I would also add that once the Soviet Union fell, our domestic Left became unmoored, and they have never forgiven the US fr the fall of CCCP. The Left is ascendant here as well as China.
Much of the hate of Russia comes from the fact that they failed at communism.
Like over 95%! Solid point.
Very true. Our "main stream" media and academia were in love with the CCCP. They only started hating Russians after the gave up on the Socialist Republics.
Thanks for the massive reading assignment! Well done. I'll try to have a comment after I've digested all of this.
Is America even worth fighting for after seeing what this administration is doing to Donald Trump?
Everyday I see an administration less capable of dealing with the problems that affect her citizens and in fact regards those same citizens as deplorable enemies to be humiliated and beaten down.
I think it is, Pete, for no greater reason than what has been orchestrated against Trump. The enemy within must be defeated before we will defeat the enemy at the gates. The Democrats have sold their souls to marxism and it's hateful manifestations. Nothing of any value will be accomplished under their regime. We need an immediate course correction.
I think they have won. It’s not just Trump. What is now routine was once considered impossible. Schools encouraging children to change their gender without bothering to inform parents. Praising people who burn, loot and murder while turning the FBI loose on 1 6 trespassers or Catholics who like the Latin mass. An open border. Fraudulent elections and rigged juries. Didn’t Earn It. Need I go on? After what happened to the Marines in Kabul how can we ask any young man to risk his for this administration? Give Hunter Biden a rifle and let him fight for Taiwan.
There will be no course correction. If Trump isn’t found hanging in his jail cell then millions of ballots will turn up in every inner city after midnight Election Day. These people staged a coup and have no intention of letting go for any reason.
One of the things I find sadder than the pessimism I see in others is the magnitude of the poisonous pessimism I find in myself. Maybe it is time for me to quit eating the comfort food, start PT-ing again and take to heart Rev. Niemöller's famous quote.
Perhaps. It will indeed be fait accompli if it is not actively, even physically, resisted. I do not disagree with your points but the our late republic is worth the attempt. I don't have quit in me, these elitist swine will have to keep working for it.
Who the hell cares about Donald Trump. America is worth fighting for because it is my home.
You had better care about him because after they are done with him, they are coming after you - you bitter clinger. The truckers in Canada who had their back accounts frozen because they dared to protest thought that Canada was their home, too. Justin Castreau showed them otherwise.
But you just said the fight is lost already. Like a dumbass.
Bravo ! Spot on.
One does not have to care about DJT personally to recognize that to accept what Leviathan has done to him signals the end of the Republic, and therefore cannot be accepted
Wow. Really?! I don't have like Donald Trump to care what precedents the Deep State sets? My God, where were you to tell me that in May 2017 when Mendacious Moron Mueller was appointed special counsel?
You are firing both barrels at someone who has never particularly disagreed with you. I think President Trump was and is great for us, and I hated/hate what was and is being done to him. My point is that even though I do support him, I care about the country independently of that, and am disgusted by what the "deep state" for lack of a better term has done to our beloved Republic in order to tear him down.
It’s still worth fighting for. We must.
How?
The elections and the courts are rigged.
Anyone who says or does anything is canceled and if not them then their family.
We live in East Germany.
I have decided to skip the fed elections and am concentrating on my local politics. As in County and state elections. Babylon is a shitshow but staying vigilant in local politics and being present and vocal is a way. When it all collapses, the states will be the Phoenix or they won’t. It’s our last best hope Obi Wan. Also gathering aggregate news and turning off the MSM propaganda and not spending my money on woke companies or sportsball crap.
Why?
The threat from China is real and must be dealt with. However, I believe the greatest threat to the US is the internal threat posed by the failure of our leaders to work together to produce wise policies that unite us as a people. The "United we stand, divided we fall" axiom comes to mind.
I think the greatest threat to our Republic is the success of our leaders and "representatives" in working together to erode our freedom, destroy our industrial base, undermine civil society, and promote an authoritarian view of the world as envisioned by a guy who has a bust of Lenin on his desk.
They are dividing us on purpose, because a population divided is a minimal threat to their ruling class.
you left out the two precursor essentials to a viable resurgence of US power.
- reining in the entitlement state
- dealing with our debt bomb
100%
That's gonna be a great pitch to the electorate. "Hey Boomers and Gen Xers, have you thought about how much more war we could wage in Eurasia if y'all took a 2-3% haircut on your monthly Social Security payments?!" That sounds like an LBJ 1964 sized national electoral mandate in the making!
I'd like to see us repeal 16 and 17, eliminate the immoral construct known as the income tax, phase out true Social Security (the post-65 stuff) and 95% of government offices and departments. One can dream
There is nothing that can possibly unite a people that believes in lockdowns and forced masking and vaccines with a freedom loving people. America is already 2 distinct nations and wise leaders are not going to change that.
I'd rather here you complain about the crotch scan at the airport.
The great thing about this country is that your superiors don't have to care what you think. Now go run along to Daddy Fauci like a good boy to get your 8th booster!
You complain about that? At this point it's the only action some of us get!
As does “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
There was no reason for the Union and Confederacy to remain under the same roof in 1861; there is even less reason for free people to remain under the same roof with lockdowners in 2024.
A significant issue is that the ideological divide does not follow state lines, but rather the urban/rural divide. There are many people, probably even a majority of actual legal voters, in "blue states" that are freedom loving Americans whose vote has not been counted in a long time.
Maybe it shouldn’t stand.
Amen!
I think you’d enjoy reading Kurt Schlichter’s novels, which have this very theme - red America vs blue America- People’s Republic is the first book, I’ve read all 8 of them. All very entertaining yet very sobering at the same time.
Ron Furgerson: Part of the "uniting problem" is that we are no longer "a people." Just look at California, where the state provides voting information in more than 18 different languages, as if understanding English is of little importance in understanding our political process. Our shared heritage, based on the founding principles and history of our country, has been blown apart, intentionally.
Our current leaders want us divided. Marxist playbook. Why else tear down confederate statues?
Because they hate Robert E. Lee and love Karl Marx. It really isn't as complicated as you're making it.
Too bad. Bobby Lee was once second in war, second in peace and second in the hearts of his countrymen both North and South.
Lee was a loser. He shoukd have listened to E. Porter Alexander and dissolved the NVA at Petersburg into numerous battalion minus sized guerilla groups.
They like shaking the jar. It keeps the ants unfocused and angry.
Heer is....challenging. His fingerprints are on several bad decisions.
Two cups in, sir. Excellent read.
CDR Sal, thanks for the clarity outlined in today's post.
Denial is strong in D.C. So is inertia. The smartest people in the room have led us to this ledge, and keep telling us there is nothing to see here.
We need to make sure that elected leaders (yea, that is our fault!) have access to the concepts outlined in today's post, and keep reinforcing to them that this issue is more vital to the US than the majority of policy minutiae they spend their time entangled with.
How is it all our fault when elections are a farce?
"Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun - Mao Tse-Tung, 1938. The 2A was a gift from our Founding Fathers. We've always had options.
Amen !
I'm sure China approves of armed "options." They'll support an insurgency against the federal government or for secession.
Nothing would make them happier.
I don't claim to have a solution....but a large share of We the People are too easily distracted by the "news" they are fed by people that try to make sure they remain distracted. That is a topic that deserves more attention.
Add in changes to election processes added in violation of existing statute and you end up with the quicksand we seem to be stuck in.
No slight on our host, but, I stopped reading when I got to the "Foreign Affairs" pull quote, "the Biden administration’s China policy has stood out as a relative bright spot." There are no bright spots in the Biden administration.
Well, you missed the beauty of the forest because you saw an ant mound on the walk from the parking lot to the trailhead. Your loss.
CDR: Nah. The Biden administration gets innocent people, including American servicemembers, killed. There's no parsing, here.
To be fair, they have a mountain of cash coming in to their personal accounts, so that's a pretty bright spot for them.
Well, this is definitley not a "read on my smart phone" substack post!
well golly, CDR. THIS (and those) was worth waiting a couple of empty days for!
People complained about the AI Midrats show description, saying they missed "the Old Sal" ... well ... here we go.
I used to think that "Alice in Wonderland" was supposed to be a fantasy. Now it seems like it is the foreign policy guide for this administration.
Hunter is the caterpillar smoking the hookah filled with cocaine.
I always thought it was a math book:)
I remember the old baseball Maxim: “teams play at the same level as their competition”.
We are not following the Maxim. We can’t even find our gloves.
We need a complete change of government, from the elected politicians , the selected politicians and we need to remove, with prejudice, the federal civil servants of all agencies.
Only then, can we find a Weinberger or a Lehman to clean house.
Only then, can we get to the task of building a shipyard and repair capacity and restock our magazines.
Next we need a state department devoid of its past 20 years of corruption masked as incompetence. We need to rebuild the political credibility that we have squandered with our own arrogance.
Only then, can we take China to task around the world with their unholy mafia BRI.
We need to start massive and forcibly to destroy the China presence in South America, Central America and the Caribbean.
It’s not hard to have a game plan. We simply need the willpower and we need to shit can the current political class. Time is short.
Do you think we enough time to get control of 37 sane states and repeal the 16th and 17th Amendments? I really don't see any other way to restore freedom in the Republic. DC will never give up power; it must be retrieved by the states.
The States need a catalyst to act.
Repealing the federal government's power to tax? Ya, that will help boost the defense budget and build ships.
I think Orwell was referring to the income tax which allows the fat bloated deep state to exist. Teddy R. was able to build a fleet without an income tax.
We're not going back to 1900, with federal receipts at 3% of GDP. A fantasy.
Heck, the US spends 3% of GDP on defense alone.
US total tax revenue of 27% of GDP is below average in the OECD.
If you're going to fight a war, you need a strong federal government.
True That:)
"Spend more money" is not a sustainable option. We need to reduce 95% of spending, 100% in most areas, and use our legitimate military spending wisely. The only way to reign in the Federal government is to reduce it, and that means stop funding it.
What would you cut to "reduce 95%?"
Pillsbury is the only guy I’ve read who openly admits that he and other “china experts” got it all wrong. The Hundred Year Marathon. Duped. Mandarin speakers. Guys who had conversions with deng xiaoping. worth the read. Wireless Wars, too. highly recommend. west sucks at identifying indirectness and understanding it. everything is taken at face value.
I thought that book was excellent
“China isn’t aiming for a stalemate. Neither should America.” 🎯
unfortunately i think we already have many in government and government service who are comped. for decades.
https://www.axios.com/2020/02/19/china-rating-us-governors
From a link within the article: “In the Internet era . . . what is truth and what is a lie is already unimportant; what’s important is who controls discourse power.” I'd be a toad if I advocated against the 1st Amendment. So I won't. But what do you do when you can hardly get a word in edgewise or have it heard? Maybe some modern version of this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4ozAB3SsdI&ab_channel=JayKat7_